Show notes
This week we go on a deep dive on offshore wind in the US--what's the status of projects that have been approved? Why do approvals for new sites seem to be slowing down? Is there enough manufacturing capacity to meet the transition goals? What can be done to boost wind energy growth?
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Allen Hall: All right, Joel, it's baseball season, and it's actually playoff baseball season. Did you have a bunch of money on the Brewers already?
Joel Saxum: I don't bet on my own teams, but I love them. And my heart got ripped out of my chest last night watching that damn game. Because it was, if you didn't follow, it was 0 0 going into the seventh.
We hit two back to back home runs, and the Brewers, everybody in Wisconsin was riding high, and then we had four runs rung up on us in the ninth. So there goes our playoff run. And I was looking forward to being able to josh back and forth with our weather guard, lightning tech COO about her Philly fanatic fandom.
But we won't get to see them in the playoffs.
Allen Hall: Well, it is fall in America, and that's when the baseball playoffs start and college football kicks off. So everything, food wise, changes. The pumpkin spice is out, Joel. Not a fan. God, please. No one's a fan of pumpkin spice? Pumpkin spice French toast, I'm a fan of, but that's the only thing.
That's not bad. What about squash and cranberries? I mean, you gotta like one of those.
Philip Totaro: Cranberry, I'll take cranberries.
Joel Saxum: Cranberries up from northern Wisconsin, right? I grew up next to a cranberry bog.
Allen Hall: Alright, this is something everybody can agree upon. Maple syrup. Two cheers for maple syrup. Sure, why not.
Joel Saxum: You're from northern New York, Phil! They do maples. There's that syrup country. Sure. But I'm also not 12 years old eating a stack of pancakes anymore.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Hall, and I'll be joined by my Uptime co host. After these news headlines, in a bold move, Spain's Acciona Energy has unveiled plans for a massive 3 gigawatt wind farm in Western Australia. The project, named Bellwether, aims to install 400 turbines, each with a capacity of 6.
2 megawatts. Once operational, it could become the largest onshore wind farm outside of China, significantly boosting Australia's renewable energy capacity. Shifting to technology advancements, Weidmüller USA has introduced BoltControl, an innovative monitoring system for wind turbine blades. This system detects broken bolts in the blade root, potentially preventing costly damage and reducing downtime.
The technology promises to enhance safety and efficiency in wind farm operations. In South Korea, Unison has achieved a milestone by developing the country's largest offshore wind turbine. The 10 megawatt direct drive turbine represents a significant leap in Korea's wind energy capabilities. For Unison plans to begin performance tests in October of this year, with commercialization expected by early 2026.
GE Vernova has secured five new agreements in Spain, further solidifying its presence in the European wind market. The company will supply a total of 16 turbines for wind farms in Castilla, León, each with a capacity of 6. 1 megawatts. Additionally, GE Vernova will repower a wind farm in Catalonia and supply turbines for a new project in Andalusia.
Lastly, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has postponed the Oregon Offshore Wind Energy Auction. Due to insufficient bidder interest, this delay highlights the challenges facing offshore wind development in certain regions. BOEM plans to continue collaborating with stakeholders to support ongoing engagement processes and develop a strategic roadmap for offshore wind in Oregon.
That's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be joined by my co host, CEO and founder of IntelStore, Phil Totaro, And the Chief Commercial Officer of Weather Guard, Joel Sexson. Dealing with damaged blades? Don't let slower pairs keep your turbines down. Blade platforms get you back up and running fast.
Blade Platform's truck mounted platforms reach up to 100 meters, allowing for a quick setup, improved safety, and efficient repairs. Book soon to secure your spot and experience a difference in blade access, speed, and efficiency. Visit BladePlatforms. com and get started today. Well, as offshore wind is really slowing down on the West Coast, particularly in Oregon, there's been a number of changes on the East Coast around New York.
Massachusetts Rhode Island where the ownership is changing hands pretty rapidly. And some projects have been kicked down the road a little bit to allow the developers to get everything in, in, in place before. They start pounding monopiles in the ocean bottom. But there, Phil, there's been a number of more financial transactions than there has been putting monopiles in.
A lot of financial companies have entered into the marketplace. A lot of power companies, state owned power companies for essentially are pulling out of offshore wind. That has changed the dynamic quite a bit. And you're getting more outside players, non U. S. players into the U. S. offshore market.
What is the, sort of, the current status of that? And Joel, sort of, what does that look like in terms of growth? Is it really going to stagnate? Or what do you see out in the In the ocean there from all the ship activity.
Joel Saxum: Well, I know like, Alan, you and I we kind of regularly watch that marine traffic.
com. I, and I every couple of weeks I'm flipping up looking at like the TGS or foresee offshore maps and just kind of peeking around what's happening. But we know right now, of course, Block Island, steel in the water. She's been there for a while. That one's always going to be there and running.
But as far as all these other wind farms we've been talking about for the last few years, active steel in the water, we have Vineyard Wind, which is Avangrid, right? And we also have South Fork, which is Orsted. And these are off the coast of Massachusetts. Rhode Island here, but South Fork is small, right?
Like Block Island, it's like five turbines. South Fork, I think there's a dozen turbines there in the water. Vineyard Wind, of course, a little bit bigger, but they had, the blade issues. So they slowed down and they paused on that one. And outside of those wind farms, as far as I know, the only other one that has steel in the water is the CVOW, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.
Down off the coast of Virginia. So Phil, am I right or wrong there? Those are the only ones with steel in the water.
Philip Totaro: Yeah. The, so there's some kind of early stage development activity still happening for a lot of the stuff that's obviously not gone through tendering yet, the stuff that has gone through Boehm.
Consent is not quite as much as, everyone has hoped and to go back to the beginning of this Alan mentioned that, Oregon's not really moving forward which is unfortunate, but it's just reflective of the times. So we're, whereas we were going through. A phase where we were having a lot of auctions.
Now, BOEM is kind of slowing down the process of having these auctions and trying to take the projects that are, quote unquote shovel ready and getting them, approved as much as they can. That said, there, there is still kind of a need and an opportunity for offshore wind and his interest rates will hopefully continue to come down.
It opens the door for a more profitable project where, if you remember back, what, three years ago, even, we had projects with PPAs that were being executed for like 77, hour. That's relatively competitive with, some of the legacy onshore wind or solar projects in some of these same states where we would be doing the offshore wind offtake.
So. Offshore wind will make some sense moving forward. It's really not going quite as quick as we would like, of course. But it looks like BOEM has at this point shifted their approach from doing more auctions to doing more consents and approvals of projects that have already been tendered.
Presumably to get the ball rolling on BOEM. Once this project's been approved by everybody, including the government, makes it a lot harder to be undone by any kind of future regime change in, the presidency and whoever's in control of Boehm.
Joel Saxum: So, Phil, one of the things that we talked about this slow down, not going as fast as we wanted to these things.
One of the positive things that I'm actually hearing from, my connections within the WIM network is that it's allowing the ISPs a little bit of time to catch up. So we're allow, we're being able to get more people trained. There's been some, some shifting, some gears and people working offshore and some things going on.
We've launched our first SOV, our first Jones Act compliant SOV. There's another, I think there's another two of those being built right now in different places around the country, but it's giving, we went really hard and fast at it and there was all these kinds of issues and now we're backing off, slowing down a little bit.
And like the pendulum has kind of swung the other way. It seems like the from a supply chain standpoint, and maybe not a supply chain as far as hardware, but a supply chain as far as services and those kinds of things. As a unit,