Show notes
A blade has failed at the Vineyard Wind Farm off the coast of Nantucket--what will the fallout be? How is GE responding? Will this effect the US Presidential Election? Plus a warning about electrostatic eliminators and mid-blade lightning protection: they don't work. And Mechanix Wear's TRACK (Trial Research and Collaboration Kit) program offers on-site assessments to identify specific hand protection needs for employees. NextEra's Walleye Wind Farm in Minnesota is our wind farm of the week!
Visit AMI's website to book a spot at the Wind Turbine Blades conference!
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: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm AllenHall, and I'll be bringing you this week's top stories in the wind energy sector. Siemens Gamesa has secured a 1. 2 billion euro line of green guarantees from the Spanish government and major banks. This support comes at a crucial time for the wind energy subsidiary of Siemens Energy, which has been grappling with financial challenges.
The Spanish export credit insurance company and a banking syndicate led by BBVA and BNP Paribas are backing this initiative. The Spanish state is providing a 50 percent guarantee, up to 600 million euros. Sharing the risk with the guarantor banks. This line of guarantees is designed to support Siemens Gamesa's projects in technical guarantees, allowing the company to execute its substantial order backlog of 40 billion euros in the wind business.
We now turn our attention to the competitive landscape in the U. S. offshore wind market. Siemens Gamesa is currently leading the pack with a commanding 57 percent share of the order pipeline for offshore wind projects that have already selected a supplier. This translates to six projects with a capacity of Denmark's Vestas follows in second place with a 32 percent share, while U.
S. based GE Vernova rounds out the top three with 11 percent. Shifting gears to labor news, approximately 300 workers at a Siemens Gamesa wind turbine factory in Hull, England, Are being balloted for a potential strike. The dispute centers around a pay offer that the Unite Union claims amounts to a real terms pay cut.
The union warns that a strike could cause significant disruption to production. The Unite Union argues that the workers' pay has fallen in real terms since 2018, due to below inflation increases and a performance related bonus scheme. The hull factory specializes in constructing 108 meter long blades.
In technology advancements, Orsted has successfully tested a new lower noise installation method for offshore wind foundations in Germany. The groundbreaking technology could revolutionize the way offshore wind foundations are installed. The new method, tested at Goda Wind III Offshore Wind Farm, uses a patented jetting technology attached to the monopile.
This allows the foundation to sink into the seabed, replacing conventional installation methods such as pile driving. The result is a substantial decrease in underwater noise levels, with a reduction of 34 decibels compared to most commonly used installation methods. This installation not only enhances marine life protection, but also has the potential to make installations more efficient and cost effective.
On the equipment front, German company Emitech is launching a new wind turbine blade turning unit designed to facilitate easier on site service and maintenance. This innovative unit allows a rotor blade to be pitched on the ground around its longitudinal axis, enabling smooth and continuous rotation for repairs.
For The company believes this technology could save millions in service costs by allowing most repairs to be carried out directly at a wind turbine site, eliminating significant logistics efforts. Emtec plans to debut this new technology at the Wind Energy Hamburg event this September. Lastly, we have a developing story from Texas, where Senator John Cornyn has called for the Pentagon to shut down a wind farm linked to a Chinese billionaire, citing national security concerns.
The wind farm located in Val Verde County was initially blocked due to fears of potential espionage given the owner's ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Although the rights to develop the Blue Hills Wind Farm We're sold to a Spanish energy firm last year. Senator Cornyn believes there still may be Chinese involvement in the project.
He has requested an urgent investigation, emphasizing the potential threat to a nearby Air Force Base. That's this week's top news stories. After the break, I will be joined by my co host, renewable energy expert and founder of Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes. CEO and founder of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum.
I guess this is a consumer alert. We, Joel and I have seen a lot of lightning products being offered to wind turbine operators. And if you're not a lightning expert or haven't been around the business about 30 years, like I have it's hard to gauge what's real and what's not. There has been, more recently some companies selling electrostatic eliminators, basically devices that, in theory, would suck all the charge out of the cloud, preventing lightning from hitting your wind turbine.
Those don't work. They're very serious. They're very serious. It's, it's a dangerous situation, everybody. Those devices don't work. They've been tried on multiple, multiple occasions and all around the world. They don't change the equation. If lightning is coming down from the sky It's coming down from the sky.
What it hits is random. And if you're the tallest object out there, you got a pretty good chance of being hit regardless of what device is on it. That's the first one. The second one I've seen advice more recently where someone's doing a repair, say halfway up the blade, three quarters up the blade.
And they want to put some lightning protection on that area. Again, that can be a big mistake. If it's not tied to the lightning protection system, a lot of times where there's damage on a blade, the lightning protection system. Is, is not around there. There's no receptor or any place to ground to.
Putting some sort of lightning protection device in the middle of a blade is going to encourage lightning to strike there again. And let's just be aware of that, everybody. And you don't have to take advice from weather guard Joel or me. We're here. You can call us. We would love to help. But I understand you want to get a second opinion.
Go get it and get somebody who actually has worked in wind or worked on aircraft for a long time. And knows what works and what doesn't, and has a good sense about it. Cause you can get yourself into a world of hurt, playing around with lightning and wind turbines. Very expensive.
Philip Totaro: Allen, let me ask the, the supposedly dumb question here.
Aren't, when you put something two thirds of the way up the length of the blade, and it's not connected to the receptor and conductor, et cetera, And you're ionizing the air around that area, that's what you're saying is necessarily going to result in additional strikes in that area.
Allen Hall: Yeah, that, that material you add is going to connect the down conductor through the blade to the lightning on the outside.
So it's going to create another puncture, probably where you've just repaired it. And it's just going to be horrible. And, and that's, that's a dilemma, right? So just putting lightning, lightning protection on a blade seems simple. It is not, you need to get good advice from people who've done this out in service and have a track record like us at WeatherGuard, right?
So just be, just be aware because we've run into this quite often recently in the United States because there's been so many lightning strikes and so many damaged turbines that every operator is reaching out just to try to get some information. We at the Uptime Podcast try to bring you a lot of good information on all kinds of subjects.
Lightning being one of them. So if you run into difficulty, feel free to reach out to Joel, reach out to me, and we can get you pointed in the right direction. Mark your calendars for AMI's Winter in 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, We'll 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 America 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. Off the coast of Martha's Vineyard at the Vineyard Wind offshore wind site GE had a problem.
One of the new wind turbines there had a blade bust and parts of that blade hit the water. Now, this happened on a Saturday, so there was, obviously, people were around that area and saw the debris, the ship, boats and things, saw the debris in the water and started posting images on Facebook and on Twitter about it, and the Coast Guard cordoned off an area and Vineyard Wind has been working to, to find out what's going on, but today, which is Tuesday,