Show notes
Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! We discuss China's new 20MW floating turbine by CRRC, and Nordex's patent application for modular blade assembly. Plus HeliService USA's offshore ambulance service and the recent construction delays at Atlantic Shores and Vineyard Wind.
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!
Allen Hall: Our next SkySpecs webinar, if you missed the last one, about lightning protection and how to use SkySpecs, drone imaging and data, and the EOLOGIX-PING Lightning sensor to help yourself on the lightning side. You can actually watch that on the SkySpecs. Just go to SkySpecs and you can see that webinar.
It's free. All this stuff is free. It's all great stuff. All you need to do is register. You can get all this information. The next one is coming up on June 25th, 11:00 AM Eastern Time. And this next, webinar is gonna have Liam McGrath from RWE, who's a blade engineer there, and Tom Brady from SkySpecs, who handles all the cool drone technologies.
So if you haven't met Tom, you need to go to this webinar and find out what's going on. And Michael McQueenie from SkySpecs. It's the rule. Subject is when should you be scheduling your drone inspections and you shouldn't be doing it in the spring. That's really important. If you wanna save some money on your operational aspects, your [00:01:00] o and m budget, you need to be thinking about how to get your inspections done, when to get your inspections done, and what tools are available to you at different times a year.
So there's optimal times to get your drones inspected and there's suboptimal times. Suboptimal times is like March. Don't do it, then do it the previous fall. and so Joel will be there. I will be there. Don't miss it. It is June 25th. 11:00 AM and you can sign up in the show notes below.
Speaker 2: You're 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. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I have Joel Saxo along and Rosemary Barnes from Australia and I've. Just been digging through all the news over the last several days.
Really disappointing news to the United States, but over [00:02:00] in China. TRRC has unveiled a 20 megawatt floating wind turbine, and it's, has a rotor diameter of 260 meters, which is not really outrageous. The CRRC press release, which is a little outrageous, let, me read you some of this, and it's called The Key Hung.
wind turbine, the key Hung, integrates multiple innovative control technologies offering four core advantages. High intelligence system, modularization, full chain collaboration. And Joel, don't we all want that? And exceptional stability. It incorporates various intelligent controls, sensing and detection technologies that design further enhances the unit's flexibility and efficiency by modularizing key system interfaces and structural components.
So there are a lot of words in this press release, but they don't say, actually say anything at all. So that's why we have Rosemary here to suss
Joel Saxum: out.
Allen Hall: What is happening with CRRC and a [00:03:00] 20 megawatt floating turbine? Is it really needed, Rosemary?
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think I've made my thoughts clear about the, like bigger, kind of pursuit of, offshore wind turbines.
And I think that a lot of it is about prestige to be the, first with the biggest. and so I guess that this is the, first with the biggest, floating offshore wind turbine. I, yeah, I don't think that we're really ready for, that with floating offshore wind. Floating offshore wind is still in the period where we're trying to figure out what are the really important design requirements.
How are we gonna deal with some special, issues that floating offshore wind finds. So if you combine all of that with floating offshore wind, or there's all the, like the, yeah, the floating platform, the mooring mechanisms, control systems, any weird aerodynamics that are happening because of slight tilting or whatever.
There's all that sort of stuff. It's still being, learned about. [00:04:00] And at the same time, you're gonna combine that with all of the really huge blade, really huge turbine problems. I, think that. It's a little bit crazy if this is intended as, being a commercial offering, it's probably not, it's probably a learning exercise and a publicity exercise more than that.
And, maybe from that point of view, like if you go into it trying to learn everything that you can about what would happen if we, eventually go this big, then I guess that there's some value in that. but yeah, I, don't think that we're ready for, just rolling out thousands of these off the end of a production line.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you, I'm of course not an expert in Chinese maritime, GE geology. Sorry. But, there's not a whole lot of super deep water right off of the Chinese coast. The Chinese coast is all 200 meters, like in every place that you'd put like a max step in every place that you'd put a wind turbine.
So if this was to be built for a, a [00:05:00] larger. Rollout. Where is it to sell to? Brazil? Oh, Brazil. Sure. Brazil. That would make sense. That could be right. but I don't think, like if, China has very ambitious wind goals. And of course if you watch the. Any kind of news, you can see them rolling out large wind farms, left and right, onshore, offshore, all kinds of stuff.
But I don't think they actually need the floating technology to be honest with you. So it might just be a show of force.
Rosemary Barnes: And also depths of 200 meters, that is challenging or maybe that's, I think that exceeds the current, maximum depth of fixed bottom, you could get there, but it, uses heaps of steel, the fixed, bottom, Yeah, design compared to what we assume that floating is gonna eventually achieve it. It should use less steel. But it's funny because that's one constraint that probably China of all countries doesn't really have because they have this, like glut of, steel in China or they're winding down with their, their construction.
[00:06:00] industry. So they have an oversupply of steel. a lot of countries are experiencing China, selling their steel, into those countries at really cheap prices as tariffs around the, world, not, just from the us. and in fact, the US tariffs on Chinese steel predate the Trump administration.
yeah, I, think that. Steel is one thing that China doesn't have a huge short supply of. I would agree with you that this probably isn't primarily aimed at their own domestic market. It's probably more to do with the fact that China has dominance in, every, or at least nearly every energy technology at the moment.
And looking forward if floating offshore wind is gonna grow, then they probably wanna maintain, wanna be dominant in that as well. But I think the main markets that you see talked about for floating offshore wind, yeah, South Korea and Japan, some other, places around that area where they don't [00:07:00] have a lot of good, renewable resources they can exploit.
And then there's quite a lot of interest in Europe as well, probably as much because they're just, really aggressive with their, renewable plans in general.
Joel Saxum: Just to highlight the difference between Western countries and how China operates. One of the things they brag about in this press release is the fact that CRCC, the China Railway Construction Corporation, that single entity is saying, we have a complete wind power equipment supply chain, as in we don't need anybody else.
We've got it all solved ourself, and that's. Very unique 'cause you're just simply not gonna have that el elsewhere in the world. now can they execute on that? I don't know. But it's an interesting, it's an interesting take
Allen Hall: and talking of offshore, if you haven't received your latest PES Wind Magazine, the new edition is out and on the cover is hella service, USA, talking about their ambulance service that they're offering on the east [00:08:00]coast of the United States.
And we were up there a couple of months ago when we met with everybody. Michael to Paul Russo, Dr. Kenneth Williams, who was with Brown University and had done all their ambulance work there. And obviously Sophie Crane. If you don't know Sophie, you're missing out. She's, she's really good, with, hella service USA, but they're offering an ambulance service.
And the thing that Joel, that blew our mind when we were there, and if you can read about it in the article, it says there's essentially two helicopters that service. The northeast of the United States from the US Coast Guard. So if you flip over your kayak in the ocean, rosemary off the, the coast, New Jersey, it may be a while, it may be several hours where someone can, help you and the US Coast Guard is just gonna pick up your carcass and take it and leave it at the front door of the hospital.
They are not skilled to provide any role paramedic services at all [00:09:00]besides just first aid care. but hella service USA is, it's a completely different model and it's, it is still shocking. At Rosemary, we were talking about. Australia, how those helicopters everywhere off the coast of Australia.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. any nice day when you could be at the beach in any part of the country, even where I go is the South coast and a lot of people there.
and yeah,