The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro

Rosemary interviews Ivar Knutsen, Senior VP of Technical and Supply Chain at Wind Catching Systems, to discuss their innovative floating offshore wind concept. Wind Catching's design features a grid of small wind turbines that benefit from the multirotor effect and enable easier installation and maintenance compared to traditional large offshore turbines. Wind Catching will also present at the Multi Rotor 2024 seminar June 12-13. You can find more information here: https://multirotor24.zohobackstage.eu/MR24.







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







Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to a special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Rosie Barnes, and I have today with me Ivar Knutsen who is the Senior Vice President for Technical and Supply Chain at Wind Catching. Thanks for joining us, Ivar.







Ivar Knutsen: Thank you for inviting us, Rosie.







Rosemary Barnes: Okay, so for those who don't know, I'm just gonna quickly start by summarizing what the concept of Wind Catching is.







So basically it's a grid of wind turbines that is floating offshore. So you've got a whole lot of small wind turbine turbines arranged in the grid, and they're benefiting from being close to together with the multirotor effect, which we'll get into later. And obviously there's also, more modularity all the.







Turbines are arranged in this grid so that they can all yaw at the same time to face a differing wind direction. And yeah I'll hand it over to you Eva to explain more about what the concept is and yeah, why you decided that this was a, an interesting company to get involved with.







Ivar Knutsen: It has become apparent to us that there are fundamental differences Between a bottom fixed and a floating wind turbine and they those differences are so big that you might need to Take a second look at that, you need to maybe consider a completely new approach to the design, but also to the operation.







So we find that multi rotors have three or four key benefits. One is that you're actually able to avoid. The infamous tow to port. If the turbines are sufficiently small, you can handle them offshore and perform a turbine replacement offshore without using a crane vessel. You just need to bring people aboard a unit as long as you have the right technology to, to do that.

In this episode, Petr Bartusek from Blade Platforms discusses how their truck-mounted platforms, capable of safely reaching over 100 meters, are transforming wind turbine blade repair access. With increased speed, skill utilization, and 24-hour shift capabilities, using Blade Platforms minimizes turbine downtime and maximizes efficiency in blade repair campaigns.







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 your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum, today, we're tackling a critical issue in the wind industry. Accessing wind turbine blades for repairs. And our guest is Petr Bartusek, commercial VP of Blade Platforms. And Blade Platforms is a truck mounted platform company based in Abilene, Texas.







And with wind turbines hubs reaching new heights, traditional repair access methods can be slow and inefficient. Blade Platforms solves this problem with a fleet of machines that can safely reach over 100 meters, allowing technicians to quickly and efficiently repair blades while minimizing turbine downtime.







Today, Petr will share how Blade Platforms is transforming blade repair access and discuss the future of this innovative company in the wind industry. Petr, welcome to the show.







Petr Bartusek: All right. Thanks for having me.







Allen Hall: So Joel and I happened to visit your facility in Abilene. And the reason we did was because of speed.







It comes down to quickness and our strike click take application where we're touching a lot of blades, we have to get up and down very quickly because we touched so many blades simultaneously, which is a common industry problem. If you're going to fix one blade pretty easy, you can use whatever method.







But when we're. At some farms that have a hundred, 200, 300 plus turbines, it becomes so slow and efficient that there has to be a new way to do it, a faster way to get on blade and to make repairs. And this is where we stopped. And Abilene met with your folks down there at Blade Platforms. It is impressive the speed at which you guys move and it has really changed the industry.







And we, Joel and I have been around a lot of parts of Texas and Oklahoma and we see Blade Platforms. And now we understand why, because you're really changing the industry.

The team discusses the job cuts at Siemens Gamesa and the challenges of finding skilled wind energy workers in the U.S. They also touch on Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and MOL Drybulk's move to outfit ships with wind propulsion technology from Anemoi Marine Technologies to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.







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: Residents in Evan an English Town are complaining about the noisy chickens. There was a flock about 100 feral chickens. Now, Joel, down in Texas, you have feral hogs. They are everywhere. But I have not seen feral chickens. Feral chickens are easier to get a hold of.







Joel Saxum: Then the feral hogs, I think, but the chickens you got to watch out for because they can't survive in the heat by themselves They got to







Allen Hall: have some shade.







Dude, do chickens travel in packs like wolves? You know what I'm saying? What is it? What does a feral chicken flock look like?







Joel Saxum: I don't know if it's the same they have the same goals as a flock of wolves or a pack of wolves But they do travel in groups like







Allen Hall: turkeys it's this, it's something that happens down in Australia too, Rosemaridia, feral chickens.







It seems like a UK event.







Rosemary Barnes: No, we have native chickens. There's a lot of native, they're just a native bird. That is a kind of chicken, and yeah, they run around being chickens in the wild.







Allen Hall: It seems like the chickens are the most defenseless creatures on the planet, right? And because one, they're so tasty, and two, they have no defenses.







Rosemary Barnes: They play chicken.







Allen Hall: Ah, the sage grouse is worse.







Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, the pheasant is the stupidest animal, the stupidest bird, I think that's why I always think it's yeah, like particularly lame when people go hunting for pheasants, which I found out in Denmark that they're not even native. They bring, they found a stupid pheasant.







Stupid easy to kill bird and then they restock it for all these people to hunt. It's so sad.







Joel Saxum: I once referred to pheasant hunting in the United States as the bowling of hunting.







Rosemary Barnes: Like you could run up and grab one with your hands. They're so dumb.







Philip Totaro: No skill required.

Invenergy enters the Spanish offshore wind market with a planned 552 MW floating wind farm. Iberdrola considers selling US renewable assets to fund its Avangrid acquisition. Tata Power secures a major loan to finance clean energy projects in India, while National Grid divests US assets to focus on UK decarbonization.







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: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your NewsFlash. NewsFlash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com.







Invenergy has announced its entry into the spanish offshore wind market with the proposed oh boy floating wind farm the planned capacity 552 megawatt site Is will be the furthest site away from the shoreline of spain if approved it will power over 600 thousand Spanish households. Wow, Phil the construction of the offshore floating wind farm is estimated to take between eight and ten years with Invenergy prioritizing local hiring and procurement through the project's development.







So this is a really neat project by Invenergy, Phil.







Philip Totaro: Yeah, it's interesting too, because the Spanish are trying to get an offshore market going. There's, something like 40 plus gigawatts of projects that have been kind of tentatively proposed for different tenders that they're supposed to have in Spain, but they haven't actually gotten a framework in place for how any kind of You know, subsidies are going to work.







And I think power offtake may also still be a bit of a challenge there as far as the infrastructure needed to be able to support this much capacity. But the fact that, I mean, this is, and we've talked before about the fact that Invenergy is not exactly a U. S. company. They're, it's Canadian majority owned company as far as their, their parent investor, but let's say they're, the first occasion where I can recall a North American based company anyway, is venturing off into the European offshore wind market.







So this is pretty interesting and, and an exciting play for them.







Joel Saxum: One of the nice things here is that, that northwest corner of Spain. Good deep water port as well. So, the area's gonna be primed and ready for it. There's some demand locally there.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum speak with Brandon McKelvain and Jeremy McKelvain from Safety Technology USA (STL) to discuss their trailblazing WindStart program. They visited STL's impressive training facilities in Abilene, Texas and discovered how the organization is addressing the critical shortage of wind technicians through hands-on, industry-focused education.







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 your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. The U. S. wind industry needs to train thousands of new wind turbine technicians in the coming years to meet our ambitious goals for wind energy deployment. And today we're joined by Brandon McKelvain training manager at Safety Technology USA.







Better known as STL. Also, Jeremy McKelvain who is the WindStart program manager at Safety Technology USA. Safety Technology USA, which is commonly called STL for short, is a leading wind technician training organization that provides industry standard accredited courses. Their goal is to help build the wind workforce.







of the future by training safer, more competent entry level and intermediate technicians. Joel and I visited the Safety Technology USA training facilities in Abilene, Texas recently. So if you haven't been to Abilene, you should visit their facility. It's pretty impressive. There we met with Brandon, and we're really impressed by the level of training equipment and the variety of training programs.







So Brandon, Jeremy, welcome to the program.







Brandon McKelvain: Yeah, thank you, Allen.







Allen Hall: We need thousands of wind technicians. And right now, especially in West Texas, where you guys are there's a huge demand for technicians that are trained and are knowledgeable in the wind industry. And, one of the, one of the programs you have To do that is the wind start program.







And I want to start there because I want to everybody understand what is the wind start program. And if you want to get into wind, why would you choose that program?







Jeremy McKelvain: What we do is we go out to career fairs trade schools, community college. advertise WindStart. Yes, it is STL or safety technology but it's a program for it.







We get them interested and tell them what we offer through our WindStart program at saf...

Phil Totaro, CEO of IntelStor, dives deep into the latest trends and data surrounding onshore wind turbine blade operations and maintenance costs. He discusses the strategies and innovations being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce downtime, and drive down costs.







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 your host, Allen Hall. As the wind energy industry continues to grow and mature, the focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency has never Been more important. Operations and maintenance costs can account for a significant portion of the total cost of energy production, making it a critical area of concern for wind farm operators and energy users alike.







In this episode, Phil Totaro, CEO and founder of IntelStor, will share the latest data and trends related to Onshore Wind Turbine Blade Operations and maintenance costs, which everybody's wondering about is going to provide some valuable insights into the current state of the blade industry and how we manage blades.







You also discussed some of the strategies, innovations being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce downtime, and ultimately. Drive down costs, so whether you're a wind farm operator, an energy user, or just simply interested in the future of renewable energy, this is an episode you won't want to miss.







Welcome again. Thanks, Allen. Thanks for having me. So the IntelStor report you just published, and there's some news about it on LinkedIn, is really fascinating because Joel and I have been wandering around Oklahoma and Texas and other parts of the country looking at blades. And there is a lot of concern.







About the costs associated with damaged blades and how to forecast that and how to appropriately budget for them, particularly in terms of all the new types of blades that are being introduced, the bigger generators, the three megawatts, the four megawatts, the six megawatt machines versus the one and a half and two megawatts that we're kind of used to it becomes really a guessing game for a lot of operators because they don't have a sense of How much is it going to cost me to operate this turbine, and how do I manage that, and how do I appropriately schedule my technicians?







Like, how many technicians do I need for a season? These are subjects that come up all the time, and, and if you've been around anywhere in Canada or the United States over the last year,