Show notes
Allen and Yolanda discuss operational shifts driven by the IRA bill, focusing on the importance of long-term operational strategies, collaboration, and advanced monitoring solutions.
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Intro: [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 Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina, and I have.
Yolanda Padron in Austin, Texas, and Yolanda has been out at a site in West Texas last several days working out some strike tape installations because the, the blade season of Texas is so long and the repair season is so long. Everybody's really making work and, and maybe even spending a little more money than they thought they were gonna spend this year.
Just to get their turbines righted because it is for us at Weather Guard, it's still lightning season. There are a lot of storms and the amount [00:01:00] of rain in West Texas is crazy. Flooded roads, uh, on highways still days after rainstorms. That tells you that the amount of rain. It has been a little bit of an unusual year on the, on the wind production side because of the weather.
Right?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. It's, it's been high production for, for a lot of the, that area. It's definitely, it's, you start getting all of those drone inspections in and everything. Sometimes I think it's, it's worked out pretty great for some of the operators that maybe didn't have a lot of, uh, planning capabilities in the past.
So then they're able to come in and actually. Books, some teams to do work even, even though the traditional blade season has passed.
Allen Hall: Oh yeah. Is there gonna be a traditional blade season from here on out? And I think this is where a lot of operators are rethinking, uh, the changes to the IRA bill and the one big beautiful bill aspects is, you know, with the, with the production tax credits sort of waning and, and [00:02:00] wrapping up.
They are going to be putting more emphasis on o and m. And in fact, when we were at Skys specs forums, and I keep bringing this up 'cause it's such a monumental thing that we were at in Ann Arbor a couple weeks ago. The emphasis has moved from definitely from development to more of operations. But the, the level of complexity there has changed.
Even talking to operators today, and you and I talked to what, 3, 4, 5 different operators in one day. CMS is huge. You, you're seeing a, just a complete flip on CMS. Everybody's willing to try something, which is unique, right?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I think nobody loves being a Guinea pig, right? Nobody likes staying behind either.
And especially now that you really do need to make sure these blades don't just last you 10 years before you can repower. They, the team seem to really be focusing a lot more on long-term solutions rather than short term solutions. So it be that, you know, installing Light Lightning diverters be [00:03:00] that installing even just a, a long-term leading edge protection solution instead of a short-term one teams, she seemed to be really looking into.
What the overall opex impact is going to be in the very long term for as long as they can keep the site on, as long as they can keep the permits in, instead of having it be something where you can keep the cost low, low, low, low, low, and then you get another investment and you can repower, and then just keep the cost low, low, low, low, and barely keep the site running.
Allen Hall: We were one of the sites that had probably one of the highest production in, in terms of this particular operator's fleet, and, and you could actually see that when you were there. But it does come with a consequence, right? Is that when you run turbines as much as you can possibly maintain them, there is some wear and tear that will happen because of the rougher environments that they're in.
So in order to get that increased capacity factor. You're gonna have some issues you need to be thinking a little bit broader on. And right now, just because we've talked to so many [00:04:00] operators recently, I, I, what are you hearing for like the top three? What are, what are the top three things that operators are doing right now or going after and what should they be doing?
Yolanda Padron: I think something that the operator operators seem to be looking into right now. Mainly what are the main issues that's going on at my site, you know, and how can I quantify them? How can I make sure that whatever impact they have, I can get rid of it now or as soon as possible. Um, they're really looking into like what the ROI of a specific solution is.
Um, it like the short-term ROI of a specific solution and the long-term ROI, I think. We were talking about this the other day, right? And having how sometimes you, the pendulum swings a little more towards the financial right. And sometimes the pendulum swings a little bit more towards the engineering.
And I think right now we're, it seems like we're being caught in a, in a very strange place where [00:05:00] a lot of the, the engineering emphasis that maybe wasn't there as much in the past is starting to, to ramp up a little, because you, you need to have that. Information to be able to back up your, your financial, uh, decisions.
Allen Hall: Yeah. The, the business case is being made more and more by engineering and maybe engineering, just getting smarter about it for the longest time. Engineers in wind, in my opinion. Just watch it get from the outside. Would say, technically we need to fix these blades, or technically we need to go after these gear boxes.
Or technically we need to look at these aspects of the generators or inverters, whatever the, whatever the case may be for a particular site. Transformers, yeah, it's another one. But all of them were more of a technical thing like, yeah, we're not really getting our maximum out of this piece of equipment and here's how we make it better.
And the asset managers would really look at that a little. Sideways and say, well, okay, all that's great technically, but what does it mean to me dollar wise? Now, it seems [00:06:00] like there's a a lot more asset managers listening to engineering and engineering, translating technical speak into dollars. And I see the pendulum really swinging it back where the asset manager, which do still control the purse strings and rightly so, 'cause engineers are not the best place for that.
However, do, do you, don't you see that kind of shift to engineering having to look at the numbers and are starting to get the numbers from a variety of sources because they have more data to put together a business case and say, yes, if I spend a hundred thousand here, I'm gonna keep a million later.
That's a pretty good business case.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we mentioned that there's been a lot of layoffs everywhere. We've had a lot of cutting of engineering teams, so you have these people. Who have to really maximize the resources that they have and the time that they invest in specific issues.
Right? So if I have a hundred million dollars issue here and a [00:07:00] $5 million solution here, and then I have a. $1 million issue here with a $1 million solution over here, I'm going to start focusing on that $5 million solution.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Because it really comes down to production at the end of the day. Uh, I know we don't like to think of it that way, but tournaments need to run.
They need to run as long as they can and be as efficient as they can. So you're right. I think you think we're seeing a huge shift in, in that aspect. Here's, here's what I see in terms of. Where everybody is putting emphasis and we could tell, 'cause we do talk to the people who sell products in these areas.
Leading edge erosion, a lot of leading edge erosion salespeople going around the United States at the minute, I assume worldwide and offering their solutions and, and right now, Yolanda, I mean you see all this, what are your top two or three leading edge solutions that you're hearing about?
Yolanda Padron: I think the top solutions I'm hearing of onshore are the L Polytech [00:08:00] tape or role, uh, the Armor Edge, uh, and Han Tech Technos, the Pan on Solutions.
Allen Hall: Yeah, the Pan on Solutions seems to be the incumbent in, in ec uh, having more distribution this year through soccer More. Making great strides there. Uh, the, the shells, uh, are always, especially offshore, but onshore, they're, they're tending to get a little more traction than they have. And then the LI, I've run into a number of operators this year that were putting on the L from Polytech Tape, which is sort of a.
Onshore solution, uh, to erosion A lot of times in the states where there's dirt and debris around farms where it can be a little bit rough. Those three, all of those, so far I've heard, I've heard really good things from
Yolanda Padron: no, I've, I've heard things as, I've heard great things as well about those. I've seen great things in the field.
It, I've [00:09:00] seen, uh. People within the field really leaning towards one or the other depending on what exactly is in their farm. So a lot of these wind farms have have crop dusting right around there because.