Wind Energy O&M Australia’s Success in Melbourne

For the first time ever, all the Uptime hosts are in the same
place! They discuss the fantastic outcome of the Wind Energy
O&M Australia conference last week, highlighting the amazing
presentations, attendees, and discussions. Keep an eye out for next
year's event! Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win
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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
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a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit BuildTurbines. com
today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro,
and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: For the first time ever, I think
all four of us on the podcast are in The same location at the same
time. Rosemary Barnes: If you include our amazing producer. So
Allen Hall: this is a unique time and we just finished wind energy,
O& M Australia. which was completely packed, insanely full, and
it was a day and a half of informative discussions, no sales talks
per Rosemary's strict instructions. Good call. To get the
information out to the industry and let everybody know what's
happening around the world? Is it, Australia is a really unique
place, Rosemary. There's a lot going on here. Rosemary Barnes:
Yeah, I think so. And the wind market is definitely unique. We've
got a few unique problems. We also, a little bit different to other
markets I've worked in, like in in Europe and in North America,
where there are a lot of engineers around who've worked on the
design and manufacturing side. We don't have those industries in
Australia. And there aren't as many people filtering through with
that deep technical knowledge. So it's taken us a bit longer to get
to the point where one, people realize that they need to have that
information. It's not enough to just have, a service agreement and
trust that they know what they're doing and that they're acting in
your best interest at every moment. And two, for people to begin
to, yeah, get that expertise. There was no shortage of, Expertise
on the panels. And yeah, my favorite thing about the conference was
hearing just conversations going on, just, overhearing people just
geeking out over some, really niche topic that they hadn't thought
of that they'd heard, someone mentioned on stage, a couple of
people connected who didn't know each other, and now they know that
they're got the same problem or one of them's got a solution and
one of them's got a problem. It's yeah, just exactly what I wanted
from the conference. Joel Saxum: I think one of the things I took
is this joke was told a few times, literally and figuratively on an
island here in Australia when it comes to wind energy knowledge,
right? So we tried to, when we put this conference together, we
tried bringing some expertise from around the world. Simply
because, it's hard to travel down here, right? That's just a simple
fact. It's geographically remote. So bringing that expertise in
here and And after we went through a bunch of things on stage, a
lot of people talking on the sides like, I didn't know this
solution existed. Like the Soren Kellenberger stuff from CNC
Onsite. I didn't know you could precision machine things up tower.
That was just like, to a lot of people that, that exists, right?
Lightning protection upgrades do exist. There's people that can do
it. There's things you can sense. Shadow monitoring of your fleet.
Even when you have an an FSA with an OEM. Oh, this is a great
concept. These are things that like in the States. In Europe, we've
been doing for quite a long time and these things are there, but
it's just not down here because it's a smaller market as well.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It's also hard for Australian Australians
that are working in the industry, can't all get over to those
international conferences. And to be honest, they're not always
great either. They're, often very sales pitchy and yeah, cover the
same topics over and over again, the kind of more lowest common
denominator stuff, rather than that really technical. Geeky stuff
that sometimes you just need . Phil Totaro: So I was fortunate
enough to moderate the operator panel where it's funny because we
all joked before the event that might be one of the more
contentious things that would come out of this is, the challenges
that are being faced by owners and operators with these full wrap
service contracts. But I was struck by the remarkable amount of,
maybe they were biting their tongue a little, but the remarkable
amount of collaboration that they were talking about and espousing
and saying, we, we want to be able to, we're a small market and we
need to be able to depend and rely on each other. And so we can't
burn bridges and we can't, do things to, to disrupt the the OEM
relationship. Even if we choose to, eventually rely on an
independent service provider. So that was very that was very
interesting. And it was a very free flowing dialogue. Not only in
that session, but throughout the whole day and a half. People
actually opened up. Which is one of the things we wanted with
developing the program. Was we wanted people to start talking. And
they did Joel Saxum: sometimes when you do a panel and you say,
Hey, can we get some questions from the audience? And you have to
like pry one out. Oh, I know Alan, you and I, when we're at
conferences, it's usually you and I, Hey, I got a question. We had
no shortage of that at every single panel. We were running around
with mics. Here's a question. We got a question over here. We've
got a comment over here. And I think the spirit of that culture,
Went through the whole event up until the second day when we're
doing roundtables. Joel Saxum: You were, I was in the back of a few
of them guiding some things. You were bouncing through, man,
there's conversations going on over here. Yeah. I know I was Joel
Saxum: in one I had there was like 30 people in there and nearly
half of them had different questions during the roundtables. So the
audience here the wind industry here in Australia, it's hungry for
knowledge. Phil Totaro: Absolutely. And actually that's one thing
that I didn't get a chance to say at the end was, We're all here
for you, not only the four of us, but the companies organizing the
event, anybody that came from the States we came or anywhere else
around the world, for that matter, we came because we are
interested in helping the Australian market grow. The whole thing
with us doing events is we're not event planners, as Rosie said at
the end of the session, but. We don't measure success based on, how
many pictures we get taken shaking hands with a politician. We
measure success based on how many megawatts go in the ground and
how efficiently you're able to operate them. So whether you need
Rosy's, technical expertise, whether you need lightning upgrades,
whether you need, CMS and sensor technology from eLogic's Ping, or,
any kind of strategy consulting or benchmarking that we can provide
at Intel Store. Ask us. Please rely on us. We're here to help you,
and we want to help you, and I will bear the 15 and a half hour
flight to come all the way back down here very gladly. One thing
Joel Saxum: we should touch on there too, as we said, the four of
us here, Matthew Stead and Thomas Schlegel from Eologics Ping.
They're not in this room right now, but they were key components of
putting this thing together. Of course, Ping is a Australian born
company. So the local connections here and all the way down to
where we should go eat. That was fantastic, but much, much more
than that. We wish those guys could be sitting here with us, but
everybody's got to travel. Allen Hall: Melbourne has been a great
city. I've been pleasantly surprised. I thought it was gonna be
really too hot, according to Rosemary. I Rosemary Barnes: think
it's gonna be 37 today, so you may still Allen Hall: get that wish.
We did enjoy walking along the river. The restaurants are
fantastic. There's just a buzz to the city, which you don't
necessarily see the United States at the minute. So everywhere we
walk, even this morning, there's just people. Happily walking down
the street and going to their offices and having coffee. And it's,
it is a lively city, which is enjoyable. You don't always see that
wherever you travel. So that was quite nice. And the, the piece I
pulled out of yesterday was the expertise that Australia has
developed, and I thought a lot of the things that Operational side
should be coming over to the United States, actually, particularly
on noise. I thought the session on noise was really informative
about how the operators deal with noise and how they try to address
it and how they deal with the neighbors. We don't have that. And we
just don't do that. No. At all. In the States. Rarely. And it is a
huge stumbling block. Yeah. But some of the approaches that Tilt
and some of the other companies that were represented were
surprisingly good. Thought out and were planned ahead. They weren't
just trying to be reactionary. They were proactive about noise.
Rosemary Barnes: I think it's cause I think Australia got hit
turbine syndrome thing. And Yeah. Yeah. I know that you had
problems with people thinking wind turbines made you sick in the
United States. Maybe it was as bad as here, but it was pretty
shocking here. Like even while I was doing my PhD, like just just
sitting in an office by myself running finite element analysis
models and publishing in academic papers,