Show notes
The crew discusses Vattenfall's ad featuring Samuel L. Jackson and explore NextEra Energy's strategies amid regulatory changes. They also highlight the importance of inspections and CMS and Rosemary's takeaway from an Australian wind conference.
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Speaker: [00:00:00] You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxu,, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast from the Queen City, Charlotte.
North Carolina. I have Phil Totaro in California, Joel Saxum's back in Texas, and Rosemary Barnes is here from the great country of Australia where Joel and Rosemary, along with Matthew Stead, will be rolling along the countryside visiting with. Wind turbine operators here soon, right
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the, the 11th through the 14th, uh, we're gonna be jumping down to Melbourne because of course that's, that's wind central for operators and, uh, ISPs in Australia.
And we're gonna be talking about all kinds of stuff with, uh, anybody that listen to us talk. So if you're listening here, uh, and you're in [00:01:00] Australia, connect up, uh, joel.saxo at uh, wg lightning.com. Uh, we'll get some meetings set 'cause we want to, we want to hear what issues are happening down there, right?
What can we help with? What can we solve? Of course, Alan and I on the lightning side here, Rosemary is an independent expert engineer for you name it, in turbines. Uh, and our friend Matthew Stat over at iLogic Ping in the CMS space. And amongst the three of us, we also have a huge network, right? So if we're, if we're, if we getting into conversation, getting a chance to chat, tell us what.
You got for problems and we'll help you solve 'em. So we'll be down there the 11th or the 14th of August. Uh, reach out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a lot happening in Australia at the minute. It's starting to come out a winter, getting into blade repair season that is, uh, about to fire up in Australia. A lot going on around the world.
And today is Wednesday when we're recording. And this is the day where Vattenfall released their Samuel L. Jackson. Add, it's about a minute long [00:02:00] and you see Samuel L out on the shoreline with a bag of what? Seaweed chips. Joel, is that what they are? Or crackers of some sort?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a hundred percent. I gotta be, I'll be a little bit, little honest with you.
I had some of those, not the same ones, not the Vattenfall ones, but I had some the other day just to try 'em out. They're not my flavor. I'm gonna be honest with you. Don't they just taste like sea salt? They taste like seaweed.
Speaker 2: That's what it is.
Speaker 3: I know, but they're, they're not that awesome.
Speaker 2: But these, uh, crackers were the output of the seaweed and all the things growing around the offshore wind turbines.
I, I assume it's just seaweed, right, Joel? It's not anything else but seaweed. There's no fish involved in that. It's kelp. But see, like kelp, so
Speaker 3: like offshore kelp farming is a complete industry. Right. It's just like offshore fish farming. They put these lines out, it grows on the lines, and then they pull it in and they harvest it.
This is a regular thing, however, having infrastructure out in the water, IE turbine foundations helps with all of these things. It's structure there that protects 'em from, um, [00:03:00] currents and it, and it's also things to hook lines too. So there's a. There's a symbiosis of offshore wind farms and the kelp farming community, and they're showcasing this in the VA Vattenfall ad, kind of showing the value add of turbines of outside of all of the decarbonization of the grid and things we're doing for renewable energies.
There's also things in the, uh, blue economy, blue economy is the term for like ocean.
Speaker 2: There was a lot blue with that ad and it had nothing to do with the ocean. We just played it for rosemary, the unedited version or the un bleep version. Rosemary, what did you think of that ad?
Speaker 4: I really liked the video and what made, what was most amusing to me was imagining the pitch meeting at, you know, like a, some boardroom in Sweden.
Somebody had to pitch that video. Not only selecting Samuel Jackson, I, it's not, doesn't immediately come to mind when I think of wind energy and yeah, I mean, people will have to watch a video for themselves to see why I think that's so funny. But definitely well [00:04:00] worth that minute or so of your life that that will take up.
Speaker 2: Well, is it, is it something that American Clean power should have done about six weeks ago? I just thought it was odd that Vattenfall was the one to pick up the baton and run with it instead of who, who we would normally think as being the thought leader in the United States. American clean power.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about a CP back when that was happening, and I, and I thought, what, what's, what's their response gonna be?
And their response was, we put out a statement. Okay. What does that do? Like, what's the point here? Like you're putting out a statement like, I, I don't know. What's that gonna accomplish? What are you gonna do with this? What is the action out of it? What is the, where are you, uh, standing up on a soapbox or like trying to get something changed?
Like, it, it does nothing for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I, I imagine a CP would be too worried about offending somebody with that ad. I, I would find it actually more surprising to come from them than, than from Sweden or, um, yeah, any other country. [00:05:00] But also, I don't know, I don't, uh, I don't see a lot of impact from a CP and maybe it's just, you know, obviously they're not my organization.
I'm not, I'm not in the us I'm not doing a lot of work in the US so, um, I'm probably out of the loop. But, you know, the events don't seem particularly, uh, I don't know, I don't come away energized like I do when I go to a lot of European events and our own events that we do in, in Melbourne. I was also at another really great one in Australia last week, uh, about renewables and agriculture, and that was fantastically energizing with a totally, uh, diverse group of people from all kinds of backgrounds, sharing ideas and actually, um, you know, like raising problems that need to be solved and figuring out the ideas to do it.
People sharing success stories. It was, you know, like a, it was a conference that is. Like, that's the reason why conferences should exist for that sort of thing. I met so many interesting people, some of [00:06:00] who I really want to get on the show to talk about things like, you know, what's it actually like to have a wind farm built in, um, built through your property or transmission.
Um, and then yeah, as well as. You know, there was a dairy farmer who had a couple of micro wind turbines on her site, uh, for example, along with lots of people with solar power and batteries. And, um, yeah, I even visited a, a piggery that's got biogas recovery and, uh, using that to power the, um, the pig sheds.
So it's kind of like circular. Um, so much cool
Speaker 3: stuff there. Did you refer to the pig farm as a piggery?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wanna make sure I got that correct.
Speaker 4: Is it
Speaker 3: what, not what do you call pig farms? What do you call pig farms? Pig farm. That you bring up. A good point there, because this, this happens to us in the states sometimes, like if you go to the same conferences, for the most part you see the same people at the same conferences.
You have a lot of the same conversations. It's of course great to catch up. I'm talking, I'm talking from the. From, you know, the, the, the, the commercial role. It's of course great [00:07:00] to catch up with people and have touch points and have your meetings 'cause everybody's in the same spot. But it's pretty rare anymore, like say in the wind industry, at least in the United States, that you go to an event and you leave there and you're like, oh, I got all these.
These new people to talk to and I got all this new information and like this new technology, this new innovation, like that doesn't happen that much. But I will, I'm gonna go back to what you said. When I go to win Europe and when I go to Hamburg, like I do leave those events feeling a little bit more like that because more it seems like more things, new people, new ideas, different ideas, different people.
Um, I don't know. I, I mean, Alan, do you feel the same way?
Speaker 2: I enjoyed the event up in Canada. I went about a year and a half ago, just because it was different. New people, new concepts, new ideas, different approaches. Hamburg was the same way. And the Australia event was very similar to that, just really different approaches to a difficult problem as an engineer.
I love to hear that. And Rosemary, [00:08:00] I know you like to pick up all those new technology pieces. Was there anything good on the technology front at that conference?
Speaker 4: Uh, there wasn't so much, uh, like new technology, but people using technology definitely. And just some, um, like annoying obstacles to using it well, but the most interesting thing for me and what I think that other.
Conferences can learn from. It's like you,