LiftOff Uptower Crane Success and TPI Composites Growth Plans

We hope you had a good Thanksgiving break! Allen and Phil dive into
offshore news with Netherlands-based LiftOff and their uptower
crane system. Recent successful MCE projects bode well for Liftoff
in 2025. Plus, TPI Composites announced their Q3 results. Turkey's
inflation pressure and a shift to more American-based manufacturing
is tamping the near-term growth. Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.comJoin
us at The Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference -
https://www.windaustralia.comLiftOff - https://liftoff-mce.com
Allen Hall: Phil, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving and a lot of
turkey. I did. Thank you. I hope you did too. I did. And one thing
that goes with all the tryptophan and that turkey is caffeine, so
you can fight off the tryptophan and watch your favorite football
team lose. And during this time, Duncan's been working, which is a
big coffee producer in the United States is trying to break world
records. And so they hooked up with Nick DiGiovanni to break the
Guinness World Record for the largest ice latte. And that ice latte
was in an 11 foot high Dunkin Cup with ice milk and espresso.
That's what a latte is, right? And it turns out that the Guinness
World Records confirmed that it was 276 gallons in that cup. And
the question is, what did they do with all that latte? That's a lot
of latte. Hopefully everybody drank Phil Totaro: that. You'd hate
to think they would waste it. Allen Hall: According to Duncan, they
served it To 300 employees at the corporate office in
Massachusetts. Now, if you do the math on that's roughly a gallon
of latte per employee. Phil Totaro: That's a lot. I know some
people that do drink a lot of coffee. I don't I guess I'm naturally
a brilliant, but like some people need that much, I don't know.
Holy cow, that's Allen Hall: a lot of coffee. This could be a lot
of sleepless nights in Massachusetts from all the Dunkin employees.
And productivity's gotta go way up. The latest P. E. S. Win
Magazine has a number of great articles in it, and if you haven't
PESWin. com and you can download it for free and read all the
articles in it. And one of the more interesting articles that I
thought was in this one is an article from Liftoff. And we've had
Elko May from Liftoff on the podcast previously. And Liftoff is an
offshoot of a podcast. arm of Liftworks, which is, Liftworks does
onshore wind, heavy lift, and crane work, using a unique process to
do that. And Liftoff is doing all the offshore work for Liftworks,
and Liftoff is based in the Netherlands with Elco, and it has done
a number of, a couple of amazing things this over the last couple
of months, really. They've done some crane technology work on fixed
bottom offshore winds, where instead of using jackup vessels to do
maintenance, they've got the system now to work, where they can
handle up to 9. 5 megawatt capacity turbines without using jackup
vessels. So they're using standard containers. on flat barges that
are moved around via tugs. Now, Phil, this makes a ton of sense to
me because the expensive part, as we always say on Offshore Wind,
is not really the turbine, it's the jackup vessels and all the
specialized ships you need to go do this work, and liftoff is
eliminating a lot of that and simplifying MCE for some of these
tournaments. Phil Totaro: Yeah. And what strikes me about this is
actually something slightly unrelated, which is Cattler just came
out with their quarterly report saying that the demand for their
services is huge right now. So maybe Liftoff helps alleviate some
of that burden much to the chagrin maybe of Cattler. But it's
great. They can take, a technology that was developed for onshore
and deploy it offshore. In, in that, you don't always have the same
obviously weather and site conditions. But the way in which the,
this liftoff system works is using this kind of gen hook, what they
call a gen hook. Which is a multi winch system that allows you to,
better balance a load. And I think that's probably one of the keys
to how they've been able to more rapidly deploy this offshore is
the fact that they have a winch system that allows for, whether
it's a gearbox swap out or even a, blade swap or some other uptower
component this is a system that, will allow you to avoid, not only
avoid using the vessels, but avoid using any kind of crane, other
than the onboard crane avoid using any other type of crane because
it, I don't even think this needs transition piece based support
cranes or anything like that, so this is fantastic and the fact
that they can just lift or lower things, off of or onto a barge.
Makes things a heck of a lot cheaper when you're talking about
doing, any kind of maintenance work, whether it's a fixed bottom or
a floating. I recall, didn't they Alan, didn't they test this at
the Kinkerton floating offshore wind farm in the UK? Allen Hall:
Yeah they did a floating platform Kinkerton. Generator exchange on
a Vestas turbine, a nine and a half megawatt Vestas turbine, which
is quite remarkable. Now, obviously floating turbines, everybody
from the engineering side says, if you have a problem, what are you
going to do? You're just going to tow it back to port and fix it.
Except that is also really expensive and it's a lot less expensive
to Do something on site from Liftoff and Liftoff was able to pull
that off to replace that nine and a half megawatt generator on that
floating platform. So it took them a while because they were trying
to navigate the weather, obviously, with this floating platform,
the up and down and all the crane motions and trying to keep
everything steady, but they did it. So even if it took a little bit
longer time to do it. It's shorter than hauling that whole platform
back to shore and trying to do the work there. This is remarkable.
This kind of technology, this kind of engineering is going to
change floating wind for sure because built into the cost model of
floating wind is dragging it back to port. Or using an expensive
jacket vessel on this floating platform, which is really
complicated. That's all built into the model. And if Liftoff can
change that financial model, maybe that'll help lower. The cost of
electricity from some of these floating platforms, which make it
much more enticing for operators and governments to go after. So
this is really good from Liftoff and Preston. Maybe we'll have Elko
May back on the podcast again, because he's a good person to talk
to. Yeah, but if you want to learn more about PES Wind and this
Liftoff process and Just go to PESWin. com and download the
article. It's a really good one. As busy wind energy professionals,
staying informed is crucial. And let's face it, difficult. That's
why the Uptime Podcast recommends PESWin Magazine. PESWin offers a
diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive
into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether
you're an industry veteran or new to WIND, PES WIND has the high
quality content you need. Don't miss out. Visit PESWIND. com today.
Allen Hall: Phil, we haven't talked about TPI in a little while but
their Q3 results were announced. And just to give you some
background here, sales for Q3 was about 380 million, which is about
2. 5 million. To 2.5% increase a little more than two and a half
percent year on year. And adjusted EBITDA was roughly 8 million
versus 200,000 a year ago. And the net loss this in Q3 was about
$38 million versus 43 million last year. Now, a couple of positive
things about GPI. 89 percent plant utilization, so their assets are
being worked pretty hard. And they have 10 production line
transitions complete, and the asking price for a blade increased to
about 200, 000 from 175, 000. So prices are going up a lot. On wood
turbine blades. Now, it's a little hard to gauge because also the
length of the blades are increasing, so Sizes are going up, yeah.
Exactly, so the weight of the blade is going up, so prices have to
go up with it. Now, a couple of strategic moves here. They are
reopening the plant that they had in Iowa for GE. And GE plans to
have TPI produced 2 megawatt blades there, which are very popular
in the repowering scenario. So a lot of older 1. 5 sites, Siemens,
Gamesis sites, are getting repowered with GE 2 megawatt turbines.
Great. And there's Also considering or in the process of acquiring
another plant in the United States, what they call a brownfield
plant to build more blades in the States. Now, not a lot of
discussion about who is asking for that. My guess is GE, but it
could be Nordex or it could be Bestos, honestly to see where that
goes. But all right, so they're moving some of their plants back
into the United States. And as you pointed out earlier, Phil, it's
probably a 45x tax implication. This is Phil Totaro: presumably to
in addition to taking advantage of the 45x manufacturing tax
credits, this is presumably intended to ward off the incoming
administrations implementation or proposed implementation of
tariffs on goods, particularly, renewable energy related goods
manufactured in Mexico, China, and Canada of which I suppose we do
import technology from all three markets, although Canada it's
just, Blades for GE for offshore turbines from their plant in
Gaspé. We don't get a lot of other components anymore. We used to
import some towers until, Arcosa and Broadwind complained about
that. So You know we're at a point now where, okay, companies,
including TPI, want to be able to take advantage and on behalf of
GE want to be able to take advantage of the 45X manufacturing tax
credits. Keep in mind that the reason why GE's on this is usually
in the supply contract, the bulk of that 45X tax credit benefit
goes to whoever's buying the blades. And even I've had word from,