Nordex Installs 179 Meter Turbine, US Oil Prices Drop

On Uptime this week, we discuss Nordex's installation of a 179
meter hub-height wind turbine in Germany, the expected drop in oil
prices in the US, and the emerging "hushed hybrid" trend. Fill out
our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register
for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com
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things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather
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YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Nordex breaks records with their tallest
onshore wind turbine. Wall Street predicts conservative oil and gas
spending for 2025 and Australia prepares for the wind energy
O&M conference. This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. You're
listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by
BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be 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. Well, you
won't want to miss the Wind Energy O& M Australia event because
it's coming up soon, February 11th and 12th in Melbourne. And at
this point, Phil, there's like 65, 67 different companies
represented at this event. Yes, uh, we've got about 125 people
registered at this point and all our sponsors are on board. So a
big thank you to Tilt Renewables, GE Vernova, Winergy. Uh, warley
rig com. Skys specs and aons. That's gonna be quite a crowd. And,
and the, the panels I saw, if you go online to wind australia.com,
you can see all the different panels we're talking, leading edge
erosion, some lightning strikes, CMS. Pretty much anything to do
with wind turbines we're going to be discussing and because we'll
have all the experts there at one place It's the right time to get
your questions answered and even Rosemary is going to be talking on
a panel and hosting a panel A couple in fact, I've got leading edge
erosion and then end of life Considerations what to do at the end
of life of wind turbines. So looking forward to both of those And
Joel, you're hosting a panel on insurance, correct? Yeah, I was
actually speaking with some of the people that are going to be
involved in it today, and they're super excited about being able to
actually engage with the public that they don't get to, or they
engage with the wind industry that they don't normally get to. So
they want to share their messages in operational strategies and how
to deal with your insurers. Yeah, it's a really different crowd to
what, um, I typically see at Australian conferences or most, even
the international ones where it's much more about, I don't know,
finance and developing and, um, maybe politics a little bit,
community engagement, all important things. But, um, yeah, I'm
always, always missing the really technical stuff. And obviously
that's why we organized this conference, but it's, it's, It's been
good to see the kinds of attendees that have been registering, and
I think that we are gonna hit that brief of getting a, you know, a
really good technical discussion going about what are the problems
that we're facing in Australia and what are the solutions and, you
know, learning, um, all of us learning together. So, um, yeah, I'm
really excited for, it's only a few seats left. If you want to
attend Wind Energy o and m Australia, you need to go to wind
australia.com and click the button and register. Literally, there's
like a handful of seats left. Better do it now, and we'll see you
in Melbourne. Unlock your wind farm's best performance at Wind
Energy O& M Australia, February 11th to 12th in sunny
Melbourne. Join industry leaders as they share practical solutions
for maintenance, OEM relations, and asset management. Discover
strategies to cut costs, keep your assets running smoothly, and
drive long term success in today's competitive market. Register
today. and explore sponsorships at www. windaustralia. com. There's
a new workplace trend called hushed hybrid and it's gaining
attention where managers quietly allow their teams to work remotely
despite company policies requiring office attendance and I've seen
this up close. I didn't realize this was happening, but there is
like an underground black market for working at home. Now, research
shows that about 70 percent of UK managers are now practicing this
approach, uh, which is highlighting, uh, the return to office
mandates that a lot of people don't want to come back and the
managers really don't need them to come back, and so they're
negotiating on a person by person basis. And they're finding that
People quit less if they can work out of the house, maybe even just
a couple of days a week. Uh, and it's leading to more job
satisfaction. Now, before we started recording today, Rosie was
talking, uh, about a situation she's involved with, which is sort
of the opposite, they want you to not come into the office for
office Real estate reasons, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. My friend, my
friend, Brian, he, um, had an office, but there were not that many
people in there. They were allowed to work from home when they
wanted to anyway. But anyway, the company just saw that it was
underutilized. Didn't like how much they were spending and kicked
them out of their real office. Got them some coworking space. And
yeah, usually most people are just choosing to stay home because.
Coworking spaces are a bit of a pain. You know, you get
inconsiderate. Coworkers, except for they're not your coworkers, so
that you can't, you can't actually complain to them. It's a
different person every day. And. Yeah, so that, that's one example,
but I was also reflecting recently how, um, I work from home
mostly. I, I do have an office I can go to. Um, and I do sometimes,
I actually miss the office. I, I feel like I'm kind of like paused
in my career at the moment while I'm working so much from home, but
at the same time, I kind of need it while I've got a young kid and
just, yeah, always so much, so much stuff to do in so little time.
And I just thinking through, Yesterday, like I, um, I had to do
some research and I was watching YouTube while I was chopping
carrots. Um, I was removing my nail polish while I was
participating in a meeting. Um, I don't know, any number of things
like that. You can iron or fold laundry or, you know, lots of
things. If you've got work where it's mostly talking. really
convenient to be able to multitask like that. But I mean, I
personally miss having an office to go into or a workshop to go
into even better with, you know, physical things are happening and
you're seeing technologies. I don't feel like I'm going, like I'm,
you know, trading off the experiences that I've had in the first 20
years of my career, not getting a whole lot more right now. And I
would really. I'd like to change that at some point in the future.
Do you think, Joel, because of the return to office mandates that
are happening at the moment, do you think that they don't, the
companies don't want to pay for the real estate that they own, that
they're looking to cut costs because interest rates are not going
to come down, as I learned today? Uh, that they're gonna, they're
gonna start selling the properties, which I do see a number of
companies, large companies. getting rid of major properties and
telling everybody like work from the house. Yeah. If you, if I've
talked with a commercial real estate friend in Houston, uh, a
couple months back and they were talking about, it's a really weird
market because there's good stuff available. Um, and the prices,
you know, they want that premium for prices, but nobody's willing
to pay it. People are cutting back. And there was a couple of
things he talked about where during COVID they actually had.
Leaseholders approach them and say, Hey, we're breaking our lease.
Claiming COVID is force majeure in the contract to be able to try
to get, to be able to try to get out of it. And I don't know where
they ended up. I'm sure that lawyers talk to lawyers and that kind
of stuff, but yeah, it's, it's upended the commercial real estate
market big time. And right now you see, again, people trying to,
you don't see a whole lot of like, you know, baseless commercial
real estate going up. Maybe companies that are big that are
building their own facility. Yeah. But you're not seeing these
large rental spaces. And when you do see them, you're seeing for,
for lease, for lease, for lease, or, you know, for sale on the
bottom of it. So is the plan now for. People on wind, if they're in
the office right now, is to check the commercial listing to see if
that building is for sale and think, okay, I got to work from home.
Maybe now's the time to put my application in to go back, go back
to the house office. I think that the, you know, this is another
story of talking with another friend that works in the software
industry. They tracked through COVID. They actually had, like,
partial the way through COVID, they had increases in productivity
in their software engineers when they were working from home. Like
in, you know, in the double digits, 10, 12 percent were actually
getting more done than they were when they were coming into the
office because they're not hanging out BSing in the hallways. And I
think the other side of it, this hush, the hush hybrid working, if
you're a manager that needs, say, these software engineers or these
people or whoever it may be, And you're being, you have this top
down going, you need to, that, you know, they've got to be back in
the office. You don't want to have a mutiny on your hands. You
still need to get some stuff done. You don't want to lose team
members.