Show notes
This week, Allen Hall and Joel Saxum explore Suzlon Energy's record-breaking quarter, featuring a 5.1 GW order book and 96% earnings increase. They detail plans for the Wind Energy O&M Australia conference in Melbourne, aimed at sharing global technical expertise. Allen and Joel discuss the game-changing discovery of America's largest lithium deposit in Arkansas, and spotlight Michigan's Isabella Wind Farm project, which powers major automotive companies while generating substantial community benefits.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comWind Energy O&M Australia Conference - https://www.windaustralia.com
Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we just don't seem to have the luck of some people, I'm telling you. Because a gentleman down in North Carolina found a 20 bill laying on the ground outside of a gas station and used it to buy, of all things, a scratch off lottery ticket. And that ticket was worth one million dollars.
Joel Saxum: You know, Allen, sometimes they say, you gotta play to win.
And if someone, if some, by some luck of chance, you get 20 and it's not, you're playing with the house's money, then. I think that, uh, maybe we need to just keep our heads on the ground a little bit more.
Allen Hall: He had the opportunity to buy all kinds of lottery tickets. I don't know if you go into a gas station in North Carolina, there's several kinds there.
He couldn't find the one that he wanted. So he ended up buying just one that seemed okay. And that was the winning one. So if he had chosen the ticket that they had, the ticket that he wanted, he wouldn't be a million dollars richer. Now, the real funny thing about this is they asked this gentleman, well, what are you going to do with all that money?
And it says, we are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they've got. So he's gonna spend like 40 bucks worth of it? It's hard to spend a million dollars at Golden Corral. But, however, I, it did force me to take a look at the dessert menu. Cause that's one thing about Golden Corral is that they have a lot of desserts.
It's like, it's a big dessert bar thing. And If you, I will read some of these to you and go, wow, okay, this is not bad, right? Chocolate dip marshmallow skewers. Come on. I'm out on that. No way. So they have cakes and pies. They always have cakes and pies. All right. All right. Right? Pumpkin pie, peanut butter pie.
The Sweet Home Carolina cake, which is popular. Uh, carrot cake. Are you a carrot cake fan? I am, but it has to have good frosting. It's gotta be a cream cheese frosting. Otherwise, I'm out. Carrot cake is an acquired taste. I think it's an American taste, weirdly enough. Now, do you want it with walnuts? No walnuts.
No nuts. I want it clean and clear. And I have had one with a little bit of ginger in it that was
Joel Saxum: really good.
Allen Hall: Oh, the ginger is terrific in carrot cake. I have to admit, I'm a recent convert on that one because I thought, there's no reason to put ginger into a cake. What are we doing? But it is quite good.
So this, this gentleman is going to be a golden corral quite a while. I wonder what the calorie intake is going to be in his life for the next couple of years.
Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Halladay, and I'll be joined by my Uptime co hosts after these news headlines. Vattenfall has expanded its landfill ban to include more wind turbine components beyond blades. The Swedish developer will now prohibit landfilling of permanent magnets, nacelle canopies, and nose cones from its wind farms.
The company aims to achieve 100 percent recycling of these components by 2030, with a particular focus on recovering the rare earth elements from permanent magnets. This latest initiative builds upon Vattenfall's 2021 blade recycling commitment and is already being integrated into current wind farm decommissioning contracts.
The strategy underscores the company's dedication to reducing dependency on newly mined materials while decreasing environmental and social impacts associated with Rare Earth Mining. In Texas, RWE's Champion Wind Farm will power Rivian's DC fast charging Adventure network through a new 15 year purchase power agreement.
The 127 megawatt facility is undergoing repowering with 41 upgraded Siemens Gamesa turbines and six new 3. 1 megawatt units. Once completed by mid 2025, the wind farm will generate enough electricity to power nearly one billion miles of renewable driving annually. The project demonstrates innovative circular economy practices with decommissioned turbine blades being repurposed through regen fiber for use in construction materials.
These recycled fibers will be incorporated into concrete To enhance strength and durability, extending infrastructure lifespan. Belgium is advancing the world's first artificial energy island with a 650 million euro green loan from the European Investment Bank. The Princess Elizabeth Island, to be constructed 45 kilometers offshore, will channel 3.
5 gigawatts of wind power, enough for over 3 million households. The project scheduled for completion between 2024 and 2027 will feature both high voltage DC and AC infrastructure. Foundation caissons are already under construction in the Netherlands. Additional funding includes 100 million euros through the European Recovery and Resilience Facility.
GE Vernova has launched an online store for wind turbine components in Latin America, featuring over 30, 000 items. The digital marketplace aims to reduce turbine downtime during maintenance and repairs across the region, where GE currently operates more than 3, 400 onshore wind turbines. The platform follows successful implementation in the United States and Europe, allowing wind farm owners to purchase spare parts and essential items in a single transaction.
And Fred Olsen of 1848's Floating Wind Foundation, Brunel, has received DNV Basic Design certification. The semi submersible steel foundation features a modular design with two forward leaning towers, and a single point mooring system. The design is specifically engineered for the North Sea conditions and aims to utilize existing global fabrication capacity.
The Foundation's weather veining function enables a passive ballast system that continuously optimizes its position relative to wind thrust force. The certification validates comprehensive design methodologies for primary steel design, secondary steel mooring, manufacturing, assembly. Integration, logistics, transportation, and installation protocols.
That's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be joined by my co host, the chief commercial officer of WeatherGuard Lightning Tech, Joel Saxom.
Lightning is an act of God, but lightning damage is not. Actually, it's very predictable and very preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard.
It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more, read a case study, and schedule a call today.
Allen Hall: Well, Joel, we have been to a number of conferences, including SkySpecs annual forum. And there's so much O& M activity at the moment, all over the world, it's insane.
Yeah,
Joel Saxum: and you know, the problem is, is getting the right people in the right room to talk about it. Like you said, the Sky Specs Forum, to be honest with you, okay, it's a private event, it's like invite only, right? But that's one of the best events I've been to, uh, from a knowledge sharing standpoint, in the wind industry ever.
And to me, the reason being is, is you have all the people that are dealing with the same problems that have their own solutions that have figured things out in lessons learned and best practices to make their wind farms more profitable to solve problems in the field. Uh, so everybody together in one room and kind of breakout sessions about specific things.
We, we were there, we did one about lightning, right? And we had a room in there, small room, not like we weren't speaking to 2000 people, right? We're speaking to 20 and everybody kind of broke, broke down and broke some barriers down because we're all. Engineers in there talking about technical stuff. So I think that that's, there's a huge amount of value to that.
And that's why we got to the point where we said, you know what, let's do this wind O& M Australia thing, because a lack of technical conferences, uh, in that part of the world, uh, it just kind of means that there's nobody really talking about the things that matter day to day in the wind world, right? How do you run these turbines?
What do you do to make them more profitable? How do you solve this problem? Um, and a lot of that knowledge exists. It just needs to be shared.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And there's not a lot of infrastructure in Australia at the moment, even though there are a significant number of turbines, there's no blade factories there.
There's no nacelle factories there. Everything that they're doing in Australia is imported. So the expertise doesn't necessarily lie in country, unlike Europe and the United States where there's.