Show notes
American Clean Power’s Q1 report shows the weakest quarter since 2023, China plugs an undersea data center into offshore wind, and thermal imaging spots hidden blade damage.
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Allen Hall: The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now your hosts
Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us, everyone except Rosie, went to Houston this past week. Matthew, you were on the floor. Yolanda, you were on the floor this week. What did you think?
Matthew Stead: I think there was a few sort of common themes that I picked up. One, the obvious one which keeps coming up every time is insurance and lightning, and insurance, and all those sort of things. probably the other point that I observed was really strong supply chain. they had everyone, all the people, e- even people, building boxes.
And [00:01:00] so they had boxes, transportation, cranes, really strong, supply chain. also really strong on the batteries, like the CATL batteries, et cetera, et cetera, and solar. I think that seems to be getting a bit more, a bit more, mature and more obvious. obviously blades, lots of people talk to us about blades, maybe ’cause we talk about blades.
But, lightning root issues, blade bolts, those sorts of things, leading edge erosion, robotic repair, et cetera, et cetera. a bit about, add-ons like PowerCurve, were fairly visible, so that was good. but there was a lot of secret meetings in rooms away from the actual event.
so that was one observation. and the other observation was perhaps not so many operators that actually [00:02:00] work on a day-to-day basis. That was my subjective impression
Rosemary Barnes: Speaking of secret meetings in rooms, what were you guys doing around the time of ACP?
Matthew Stead: So the Australian American Chamber of Commerce organized a special event, with two Australian companies to launch a new product, which monitors lightning and then transmits the results using satellite communications.
So it was very open, but invitation only, Rose.
Rosemary Barnes: I, actually, I- the comments, ’cause people are always, after our first go organizing wind O&M event in Australia, I would hear about it from people who didn’t, just chatting at, on, different wind farm sites. They didn’t know I was involved, and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, there’s a secret event now.”
And it’s we did our very best to publicize this, the most that we could. It was not intended to be secret. So yeah, I’m just wondering if, people are gonna think the same if [00:03:00] they, they missed out on, your event. But how was it re- received? Do, we need more events in the US?
Matthew Stead: Yes, absolutely.
And I, I don’t have my pin on here, but, yeah, I do have a pin from the Australian American Chamber of Commerce Texas division,
Rosemary Barnes: How was the event for you, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: It was good. It was good. the showroom was the, or the exhibit floor was a little bit em- more empty than I thought it would be, but it was good.
It was good to, to see people, to catch up with everybody. There were some really good chats happening everywhere. and I got … I don’t know about you guys, but I saw a lot more people not from the US that wanted to come in and understand the market better than I did other years, which was nice to see.
Matthew Stead: Was there any new technology on the floor this year? I thought there was a new robot company, but it was actually solar cleaning.
Yolanda Padron: I saw some rebranding from some companies, moving from former ties to [00:04:00] OEMs just m- moving into their own little companies and stuff. in a very interesting, PR move, a, an insurance company was raffling a motorcycle, which was really, funny for us to see.
Allen Hall: Not very safe, is it?
Yolanda Padron: Was
Rosemary Barnes: it at least an l- an electric
Yolanda Padron: motorbike?
Allen Hall: Rosemary, you’re in America.
Yolanda Padron: I don’t know very much about bikes, but it was big and scary for me. did I put my name in there? Yes. We’ll see how that turns out, but
Rosemary Barnes: I’m always trying to win Lego sets at, events and, try to sweet talk the, the stall managers or s- stall minders into “Oh, if somebody wins and they don’t show up, could I have it?”
yeah, so far unsuccessfully. Although I do have, actually you can see I’ve, I’ve got a Le- a L- Lego, in inverted commas, not Lego TM, wind turbine that we’ve just started making. So that’s a, [00:05:00] or a tower for a… that we have created. I have succeeded in getting some sort of Lego for my podcast background.
Allen Hall: Are you gonna buy the Sagrada Família Lego set that just appeared?
Rosemary Barnes: I haven’t. I’m not like the hugest Lego fan. I wouldn’t call myself an, what is it? AF- AFOL, adult fan of Lego? Is that what, There’s a, there’s an acronym. I’m not one. None of us are apparently.
Allen Hall: Oh, I don’t know. I think we’ll buy that one.
Allen, does it take 200 years to make? Probably. I think there’s around 10,000 pieces. that’s what I re- recall. It, there’s a lot of pieces. It’s built in sections. I watched had a little discussion about it. It is really complex, but we may purchase one and put it in the lobby of our shop because that cathedral is protected by strike tape, some of the ornamental features at the top.
So we’ll, probably build one, but it’ll, it will take a year
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Let’s talk about American Clean Power’s, first quarter 2026 market report. So the American Clean Power Association’s first quarter 2026 market report shows United States developers brought 6.4 gigawatts [00:07:00] of new clean power online in Q1, but overall capacity was down 17% year over year, the weakest quarter since 2023.
Onshore wind took the hardest hit with less than 500 megawatts installed, the slowest pace since about 2018. the Department of Defense delayed approximately, 165 projects totaling 30 gigawatts and $54 billion of investment. Ken Young, the CEO of Apex Clean Energy, put it plainly, quote, “This DoD thing is real.
They found a button to hit, and we got punched in the face.” Unquote. Developers won a preliminary injunction in Massachusetts federal court, but the Interior Department has pledged to appeal in regards to offshore wind. Is this gonna be a permanent setback, Matthew? You think this is gonna continue on, or will this eventually get wrapped up and wind will be back on track?
Matthew Stead: If I wanted cheap power, I would be building wind, [00:08:00]battery, and solar. So I think, if people want cheap power, it, will definitely come back. That’s my view.
Allen Hall: Yolanda, you see some of the development. You’re close to it in Austin, Texas. What are you seeing on the ground there? I think there’s repowering going on, but is there much in terms of new development?
Yolanda Padron: There’s repowering. I think new development slowed down a little bit than this time last year, but it’s still going on, both for wind, solar, and battery, which is good. on the ground level in some of these very rural towns, this is a very important source of income for a lot of those people, regardless of political affiliation.
so it’s important for some of these people to get these on their, in their land.
Allen Hall: Does American Clean Power have a plan to try to address this situation? Are there any lawsuits in place or any legal action on the docket?
Yolanda Padron: Not that I know of. I, know there was a, there was that lawsuit end of last year, for offshore.[00:09:00]
but from American Clean Power itself, I don’t know of anything off the top of my head. Do you guys know?
Allen Hall: I haven’t seen much of a roadmap from American Clean Power on this particular issue on the onshore wind. I haven’t seen much e-except but for a couple of summary pieces explaining what is happening on the ground, but n-no action to push back.
And maybe there’s some lobbying going on with Congress people and, senators, but you think we would hear about some of it. I haven’t heard anything, and I’m watching pretty close. it is a little confounding because it does seem like this could be broken with one court case. Maybe not. Maybe it’s more difficult than that.
Yolanda Padron: I don’t know. There’s always a lot of, yeah, there’s always a lot of lobbying going on by, not just by American Clean Power, but by a lot of these larger owners, right? A lot of them have some sort of office in DC
and people coming in and out and going to meetings [00:10:00] with everybody, So I don’t know. I’m also very curious to see what goes behind the scenes for that political side of things.
Allen Hall: just as a quick aside, one of the discussions I was having during the week was about AI data centers and the push for power.
If gas turbines aren’t available for a couple of years and they’re gonna… the administration’s gonna push back on renewables, AI data centers are gonna have a hard time getting the power they need. I know the administration wants them to, be powered by natural gas, but that’s not possible right now. I don’t see how this ends easily.
Rosemary Barnes: It seems like e- everybody’s looking into any single way that you can power a data center. There are people making serious plans to do it. There’s obviously, we’ve talked about space-based data centers before. then there was a podcast I listened to this week. Allen, you actually suggested it to me, but it’s one that comes up for me anyway, Catalyst podcast about, [00:11:00] data centers on ships.
It, actually isn’t just purely about data centers on ships. It’s about, this company, and they have a ship that’s designed to fairly passively capture energy from waves of a ship out on the o- open ocean. They’ve actually designed the shape of the hull so that it is, will actually capture energy.
They choose the location of their factories very carefully, put it in the ocean where there’s already enough energy, and it just, phew, off it goes, just powers itself off to the, I think it was somewhere in the South Pacific, where there’s nice big fetches of, of water and power whatever, including data centers.
But I think each ship was about a megawatt or something like that, so you’ll need a lot of them. And then wasn’t there one that you were, you wanted to bring up today, Allen, an, underwater data center?
Allen Hall: The one that I think you’re talking about is Penthalassa, which has recently come out of the dark mode, and they have been working on this, in at least a couple of years from far as I can tell, [00:12:00] trying to develop data centers that…
using a, system driven by not necessarily the waves. It’s not the waves, Rosemary. I think it’s more to do with the pressure, of the ocean. It’s, something to that effect, which is really interesting. but, China has, like in many things, working offshore and trying to get data centers up and running.
they’ve commissioned the first undersea data center powered directly by offshore wind. The Shanghai Lingang project, built by a subsidiary of China Communications Construction, CCC, began operations off Shanghai’s eastern coast in May. Planned capacity is 24 megawatts, and the core design transmits offshore wind power directly to submerged data modules via subsea photoelectric composite cables.
I’m not sure what that is, but I’ll have to dig into that deeper. And by bypassing grid routing entirely. Seawater obviously will serve as the cooling medium [00:13:00] through circulating pipes in the heat exchangers, reducing electricity consumption by about 20%. one of the local v- university professors estimates that this kind of data center model could save about 50 billion kilowatt hours annually across China’s data center fleet, equivaling, equivalent to not burning 15 million metric tons of coal per year, and that would be nice.
Is there a future in offshore data centers that use the ocean to cool themselves and Plug ’em into wind turbines offshore, just get the electricity straight from the wind. Does this have growth futures,
Matthew Stead: particularly in China? I love it. I think it’s absolutely fantastic, and it just means you don’t have to send them into space, because that’s a silly idea.
The other point, do you remember a couple of years ago they were going to build, hydrogen electrolyzers, offshore n- next to wind turbines? So all they do is [00:14:00] just scrap the electrolyzer and then put in the data center. It’s just perfect.
Rosemary Barnes: But that’s what this, ship one that I was, I listened to the podcast of, that’s their, thing.
It’s just power for whatever. whatever, obviously it has to be something that’s capable of, operating on a ship environment. You’re not gonna be doing probably precision manufacturing or anything out there. But, apparently failure rates for, data center stuff is not…
They’re not expecting it to be higher. Higher in some types of failures will be higher, and some will be lower, but, they think that overall it’s so much, so much cheaper. But yeah, they did also talk about doing, yeah, I don’t know, hydrogen. Is anybody, is anyone still talking about hydrogen anymore?
I feel like we’re finally, not n- not doing that.
Allen Hall: Rosie, I think you killed it. I’ve seen more news reports about it, where they’re not proceeding and there’s been some funding challenges, and those things are happening. Like any new technology, it’s, hard. The beginning is hard.
Rosemary Barnes: But, you know that, already hyd- making [00:15:00]hydrogen the way that we make it today is something like 2% of the world’s, emissions.
So it’s okay, we do need heaps of clean hydrogen for that 2%. So I’m definitely not against, some hydrogen projects happening, ’cause we’ve gotta… That’s the, same size as y- you know, nearly as much as aviation, for example. so not insignificant.
Matthew Stead: Yeah, someone actually came up to us and s- I had a bit of a discussion about that, Rosie.
We’ve got a bit of information to share with you about that-
Rosemary Barnes: Oh, yeah …
Matthew Stead: that will dispute some of your claims. we’ll share that with you
Rosemary Barnes: offline. They’re not my claims. I’m merely reporting what people who are working on it say. But I, was saying to Allen, ’cause we had a big chat offline about contrails and how challenging it is to just alter an aircraft’s path to reduce them, I need to, Engineering with Rosie video on this and get an expert on and ask them all of Allen’s very informed questions.
maybe I’ll get you on as a co- co-interviewer. I’m actually keen on viewer input, listener input. we’ve got a, Pardalote actually has a training course [00:16:00]coming up. I’ve been trying to organize this training so that I and my employees can learn more about blade repairs. So we have a course coming up, organizing it in collaboration with Direct Wind Services.
We’ve got a great, blade repair guy who’s gonna be taking the course- It’s gonna start out with an optional day that I’ll be running about blade design, manufacturing, certification, those sorts of things. And then three days on blade repair. So we’ll go through the theory, also, hands-on stuff.
So we’ll be doing grinding, we’ll be doing layups, infusions, all that sort of thing for three days in Ballarat. but the extra cool part is that I’m gonna be using this opportunity to make a video about wind turbine blade repairs, ’cause, one, I’ve been si- trying, I’ve wanted to make a video on this ever since I started my YouTube channel, six years ago.
So this is the opportunity that I can take to, talk about what kinds of repairs are actually done. I think people will be really surprised to see, even in, when they’re brand new out of the factory, they still gotta do, dozens of repairs on a [00:17:00] blade before it’s ready to go out.
And people will also probably be surprised at, the extent of, repair that you can do and get a blade back up to its original design intent. So I would ask, anyone listening to this that has questions about those sorts of topics, let me know, and I’ll try my best to include that in the video.
‘Cause I think it’s a topic that’s not, super well understood.
Matthew Stead: Can I come along as well?
Rosemary Barnes: Nice, nice segue into me advertising. So this is our first one. We’ve got, we’ve got a few spots. I think that they’re gonna very easily fill, but we are planning to run them periodically. So yeah, you can get in touch and, let me know.
yeah. Anybody. You, Matt, I’ll send you over the, the information.
Yolanda Padron: That’s a really good idea, Rosie, ’cause I feel like a lot of people, you either have, a really robust, understanding of blades and a really good background on it, or you’re starting fresh. And when you’re starting fresh, it’s really difficult to know what exactly you’re [00:18:00] doing.
Or you know in theory, not until you go into the nitty-gritty or until you watch Rosie’s videos, do you then get a better understanding of everything that’s going on.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s, a fascinating topic. obviously that’s what I spend 90, 90%-plus of my time working on. yeah.
Blade damage and blade repairs. But there’s so much, there’s so much information that would be better off if it was shared, if everybody, knew a bit more about what, what was possible, what was normal, what’s best practice. Then I think that the, O&M for blades would go a lot more smoothly.
Allen Hall: We had Matt Sagala on the podcast this past week, and one of the items he was talking about, some of the basic fundamentals of repairs, the little checkpoints that need to be in place when you’re looking at a repair, and the photographs that come in a repair report and some of the details, how they get skipped.
And there should be more emphasis on some of the basics, and making sure that the photos show the different layers that have been ground, where each of the plies are. [00:19:00] Something simple like that, which in a lot of good blade reports. You don’t necessarily see in all of them and Rosie, if you’re training people up and showing them what the fundamentals are, that’d be really helpful in getting that information out where you can access- where it’s accessible, like on YouTube.
Rosemary Barnes: I’m always giving that, that feedback back, “Can you please at least show, an image of what it looked like before you started repairing?” Nobody ever does that, and it’s y- we have the inspection, the drone image, but, you don’t have… you had, you were right there. You had the opportunity to take the , photo from every, angle, because you wanna be able to recognize what does this damage look like the next time that we see it.
What’s it gonna look like in a drone image? And, yeah, be able to… sometimes you get in there and you think that you’re just gonna be repairing a couple of layers, and it turns out to a huge, thing. like I’ve seen repair , repairs come in that, hundreds of thousands or more, to do just one repair that was totally unexpected by the person who was paying the bill.[00:20:00]
the more information that you take about that repair, then the more possible it is for engineers like me to be able to, a- at least predict, okay, you’ve, you’re likely to have a big repair here, and plan for it.
Allen Hall: Trying to find someone doing blade repair correctly on YouTube is hard to find.
It really is. I s- you see people with grinders and things, and yeah, they’re working hard and they’re doing a job. But someone to actually walk through from beginning to end, and made it, and explained it as they did it, would be helpful to the industry. Tremendously helpful.
Yolanda Padron: Just to make sure that your budget’s right, for the year.
if you’re on the owner’s side, and then you think, “Oh, okay. Sure. this AI-based drone inspection told me that I need to tackle all of these, and I know that these are gonna cost me, I don’t know, X amount of dollars,” you can, take a, human pass through those images and make sure that, your expectations and your reality is, closer, just by [00:21:00] looking at Rosie’s videos.
So that’ll be, really exciting.
Allen Hall: Rosemary, how do people join in on your blade repair fun?
Rosemary Barnes: for, first of all, get in touch if you wanna do the course, especially in Australia. we could definitely organize one. In, the US coming up, piggyback off a- another event or somewhere else.
But also get in touch with me at pardaloteconsulting.com, and you can, yeah, send me a message through the contact form and let me know that you’re interested. Maybe spell pardalote,
Yolanda Padron: though, for people.
Rosemary Barnes: Pardaloteconsulting.com. P-A-R-D-A-L-O-T-E and then consulting.
Allen Hall: As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult.
That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality [00:22:00] content you need. Don’t miss out.
Visit peswind.com today. in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can get at peswind.com, there’s an article from Minerva Energy, ABJ Renewables, and Concept X where they have developed a product called WindView, which is an advanced inspection system using high-res optical capture with thermographic analysis for a full subsurface, inspection from rotor to tip.
the system detects defects as small as three to four millimeters, which is quite small, and a- analyzes the blade structures up to about 15 centimeters, which is quite deep, so that it does seem like a pretty useful inspection tool. as we all know, just the generic, visual drone inspection can give you an idea of what’s happening on the surface, but a lot of the structural issues are deeper [00:23:00]inside the blade, so thermal inspection combined with optical inspection can give insights into some places that otherwise go unseen.
And Rosemary, as a blade expert, and Yolanda too, there’s a lot that happens inside of blades, and having a- an additional tool to inspect blades and to get more understanding of what’s happening underneath the paint service could be really useful.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’m always trying to recommend th- this. I haven’t got any clients that have actually used thermal imaging, to look for damages, but especially in, areas where you suspect that there are r- some repairs that haven’t been done correctly or you’re looking for early signs of a serial defect.
Y- like one of the weird things with the full service agreement, actually it’s probably true with, yeah, any kind of turbine sale, is there’s this serial defect liability period, and you’ve got to hit usually, a crazy high, stupid high number, like 20%, 30% of all your blades have to have the [00:24:00] same damage within it might be a two or three-year period, not, very long.
It’s better when it’s more like 20% in five years. That’s, enough time to actually catch things. But so one of the things that you’ve got to do is like you really want to catch things early in order to be able to, y- make a claim on that. And so this is one of the tools that people would have to catch things earlier, like it’s not yet visible, with a crack on the surface that– Or even, like even small cracks on the surface will fly under the radar as well because, they won’t be flagged in the inspection reports.
So if you’ve got a few of something that’s looks like it might be the same, it, and you’re still within your defect, your serial defect liability period, it’s definitely worth doing something, the, some kind of NDT, and this, is one of the good options it’s actually worth spending a whole lot of money to, to try and get that in because, like the numbers are, millions and millions of dollars, maybe tens, maybe hundreds, depending on, the extent of the problem.
So yeah, it’s always good [00:25:00] to be well aware of what your deadlines are and what tools are available, and this is one of the good ones.
Allen Hall: Yolanda, you think it’ll open up access to carbon pultrusion inspections on blades without actually cracking the blade open?
Yolanda Padron: Hopefully, yeah. in, internal inspections you can only go so far, right?
And Rosie, you have a lot more experience with this in action than I do. but yeah, so I, I think it’d be really interesting to see just what, what people can get done without actually happing- having to go and carving everything out, and without having to already start a s- a, a repair that maybe you don’t have the budget to do.
Allen Hall: If its speed is fast enough, I- thermal imaging can be slow at times, but from what I’ve seen, the, cameras have really improved over the last couple of years. If they have this down where you could really inspect blades quickly, it would be a tremendous help to have insights into [00:26:00] depth of damage, especially with c- I think carbon pultrusions are the one that we just don’t have a lot of oversight with, and it’s very difficult to inspect.
And so if you could actually see damage to the pultrusion ahead of time, that would be a, major advantage. I, can’t imagine the insurance companies wouldn’t love this system. S-
Matthew Stead: it’s interesting. Yeah, I’ve got a question. GE Vernova has a patent around some of this, technology. They’ve had it obviously for many years.
But, I know one of the challenges with the GE Vernova approach was that through the day, if you’ve got ambient temperatures, it was a bit hard to pick up, the actual damage. So at least for the GE, solution, it had to be done at dusk or, when the sun wasn’t out. So I don’t know the answer to that, but is that one of the technical challenges around, when it can actually be taken?
Do you need to take it when the sun’s not out?
Allen Hall: Yeah, I wonder that too I’ve– The way I’ve seen it is they try to catch it at sunrise or sunset where there’s [00:27:00] a thermal gradient on the blade. However, the thermal imaging cameras is, are, cameras are so much better than they used to be. it may be possible to just do it during the daytime.
Rosemary Barnes: I think the different companies are approaching it in different ways and, I’m sure that some of them can do it, like especially under direct sunlight, then that can be actually a really good way to get some, some heating. And then g- it relies– Mostly it’s relying on the fact that different materials heat up at different rates.
So as long as you’ve got some sort of change in, in temperature happening, then you should be able to see. Yeah, like obviously if there’s a big, crack or a delamination, there’s some air there that’s gonna heat up differently than the composite around it.
Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also like when cracks propagate, they are actually generating some heat at that site and you, can catch that too.
But, I’m, actually not on top of it enough to know how much it’s one or the other. I think it’s mostly about, when a blade heats up, air will heat up differently to, to composite and you’ll be able to see it. that’s my limited [00:28:00] understanding anyway. Something worth more of a deep dive.
I’m actually looking forward to some, hopefully some clients getting over the line to, doing some more of the, taking advantage of some of the NDT tests that are, available because it can just help you do such a better job of, management and huge risk redus- reductions too.
Allen Hall: So if you haven’t seen this quarter’s PES Wind, you can download it now at peswind.com.
That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review.
It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. For Rosie, Yolanda, and Matthew, I am Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:29:00] podcast.