Show notes
As the number of wind turbines increases, the spare parts business has room to grow. But would third-party blade replacement options be technically or financially possible? Plus a review of Vestas' quarter 2 financial call...the company posted a net loss of 156 million euros, widening from a 115 million euro loss from the same period last year. Visit https://www.eologix-ping.com/en/ to learn more about the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensor.
Register for the AMI Wind Turbine Blades Event!
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.com
Allen Hall: This is a world announcement. We've been begging for a low cost lightning sensor to be installed on turbines that requires no wiring and no maintenance, and we finally have it. And it's been produced by our friends at EOLOGIX-PING. I have a sample right here. It's quite lovely. It's small, it magnetizes to the turbine, and it tells you if your turbine's been struck.
Joel and I have been using it for the last year or so, and it has been 100 percent effective. So this new low cost sensor is being included with our StrikeTape sales, so anytime we sell StrikeTape to our turbine, we are including, we Weather Guard are paying to have a EOLOGIX-PING Lightning Sensor installed so you can track how your turbine is doing with StrikeTape.
So this is what everybody's been clamoring for. It is now here. And if you are interested in purchasing one of these low cost lightning units, You gotta get a hold of EOLOGIX-PING. Just go to https://www.eologix-ping.com/en/, or you can just call Joel, (832) 593-2782. We have about a thousand units that are ready to go, and now's the time to get it installed.
Call now.
I'm Allen Hall and I'll be joined by the rest of the uptime host. After these news headlines, Germany has announced results for a 5.5 gigawatt offshore wind auction. Three North Sea sites were awarded, RDE partnering with Total Energy secured two sites, while asset manager Luxkara won the third. These wind farms are set to become operational between 2029 and 2031.
In the Belgian North Sea, the world's first wind powered electric ship charging station has been launched. Developed by Parkwind and MJR Power and Automation, this station is connected to the Noble Wind Farm, 29 miles offshore. The system can deliver up to 8 megawatts of power to service vehicles, operating effectively in choppy seas.
Parkwind aims to deliver the first commercial offshore charging system by early 2025. China's central bank is extending its low carbon lending program to the end of 2027. This initiative provides financial institutions with low cost loans to support corporate carbon reduction efforts. China plans to promote battery powered vehicles, energy efficient appliances, and eco friendly building materials.
The government aims to transition its economy to a green, low carbon model by 2035. Increasing non fossil energy consumption to about 25 percent by 2030. Vineyard Wind, America's first large scale offshore wind farm, is resuming partial construction following a turbine blade incident on July 13th. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has authorized tower and nacelle installation, but blade installation and power generation remain suspended.
GE Vernova attributes the blade failure to a manufacturing deviation of an adhesive bond line. GE is employing high tech crawlers to inspect the existing wind turbine blades at the Vineyard Wind site. The project also is developing a new algorithm to use with existing blade sensors to detect issues quicker.
Vineyard Wind states that no blades will be installed or used until thoroughly inspected. In Hull, England, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has applied to expand its wind turbine factory. The expansion includes a multipurpose manufacturing building and a staff welfare building. This development is expected to create 40 additional full time jobs, bringing total site employment to over 1, 600 employees.
The plan includes using environmentally friendly air source heat pumps instead of gas fired boilers. And Samsung Heavy Industries has signed a preferred supplier agreement with Equinor for floating foundations for the Firefly Bandabuli offshore wind farm in South Korea. This agreement covers fabrication of floating substructures and marshalling operations.
The 800 megawatt project is set to be operational in 2027. Located 70 kilometers off the Olsen coast. This marks SHI's expansion from oil and gas into renewable energy. And this project awaits selection into South Korea's upcoming offshore wind auction. That's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be joined by my co host, Renewable Energy Expert and founder of Partello Consulting, Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Intel Store, Phil Tataro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of WeatherGuard.
Mark your calendars for AMI's Winter and Blades Conference happening October 2nd and 3rd in historic Boston, Massachusetts. This two day event, which is similar to the well established edition in Europe, will bring together the whole blade value chain to examine market outlook, innovations in blade materials, design, manufacturing, testing, and lifecycle management, with a special focus on the North American market.
Gain insights from experts from Vestas, Along with scientists and engineers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Plan your trip to Boston this fall by visiting the link in the show notes or just Google 2024 Blades Boston.
All right, so Joel and I have been on a number of jaunts across the states and every place we go, we get asked, Do you know where I can find X Blade? Because I need a couple.
Joel Saxum: No, we are getting asked this all the time and it doesn't matter what platform it is. Some of them, of course, more than others, Hey, do we need this?
Do you have this? And the crazy thing is it's. It's not just blades. It's all kinds of things associated with it. But the most problem is blades. So people want to repower. There's multiple options. I've seen some discourse on LinkedIn about this and I've actually been through it myself as a, for projects.
Hey, we're going to do a repower. Okay. So our options are buying new blades from the OEM. We can get secondhand blades in the market that have already been built, that have been basically, safe Harbor or dry store. We can try to rebuild the ones that are there and maybe upgrade them. Like on our side.
We've been called about this many times for weather guard to do lightning protection upgrades as a part of a program, right? They're gonna re, they're gonna redo these blades. So they've done internal inspections, external inspections, fix 'em up, put lightning protection upgrades on, put arrow upgrades on other things like that.
So that's an option. And then the other option is. Scrapping the turbines that are there and getting completely new ones. And then sometimes it's an adapter plate on the tower and a, a Vestas to a GE or something of that sort. But Phil you were talking to us a little bit off air before this about an idea of a blade manufacturer repurposing some facilities to Build some blades for this same exact purpose.
Philip Totaro: Exactly. And in particular for the asset owners or operators that are not on an OEM long term service contract, because what happens on that circumstance is the OEMs tend to lock in their subcomponent suppliers, whether it's blades or bearings or gear boxes or what have you. Those suppliers are locked into supplying the OEM, then the OEM supplies, the customers.
But what if there were a third party option, which is, we talk about this all the time, the similarities to the automotive sector or other industries, where you can go to someone else That can either reverse engineer what you need, or might be able to just build you something from scratch that would be an upgrade to what you have, and would still fit in, on the turban, in our case, on the turban.
As long as you had the rough bolt circle diameter to be able to, figure out the size of the root and all that sort of thing, and as long as you also had a rough sense of the arrow profile so that you weren't going to introduce loads or anything that, that were going to be too dissimilar to what the turbine was already used to experiencing, could you use more modern manufacturing techniques than that existed, 15 years ago, let's say to make a higher quality blade that would be a replacement to the OEM supplied blade.
And the reason this came up is we've been contacted by a couple of different customers who either want to sell blades, In that fashion, like as a third party offering, or the other trend that's recently come up is there's a lot of factories in particular in China that are idle right now because they've migrated their manufacturing capability from, two, three, and maybe even four megawatt turbines.
up to 5, megawatt turbines for onshore, and they're literally, rather than repurposing those factories that were used to make let's say, 37 to 53 or maybe 55 meter long blades, they're literally letting those, some of those factories sit idle. Instead of repurposing them for, they're literally just building a new factory for building the, 60, 70, 80 meter long blades.
So there's potentially a market opportunity here.