GE Vernova – Bringing Good Things to Life in Australia

GE Vernova is making bold moves in Australia with their Cypress 6MW
workhorse turbine. With a renewed focus on power production and
reliability, GE Vernova's Nicholas McVey - ANZ Service Director
highlights all the changes with Joel and Allen. GE Vernova
Australia is looking for qualified technicians and electricians to
join their team. Contact Nicholas on LinkedIn at
linkedin.com/in/nicholas-mcvey-2802bb5b or via email at
Nicholas.McVey@ge.com. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly
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https://www.windaustralia.com Welcome to Uptime Spotlight. Shining
light on wind energy's brightest innovators. This is the progress
powering tomorrow.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime
Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along
with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're joined by Nicholas McVey,
Service Director at GE Vernova, where he leads operations and
maintenance for wind farms across Australia and New Zealand. With
over 15 years of experience in operations and commercial leadership
roles, Nicholas brings valuable insights on maximizing wind farm
performance and implementing strategic upgrades. Prior to his
current role, he served as Contract Performance Manager at GE
Vernova and has extensive experience in project management and
commercial operations. Nicholas, welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast Spotlight. We have a global audience that is listening to
this episode for sure. And I would like to know, and I think a lot
of people would like to know, what are some of the challenges you
have in Australia in regards to turbines and O& M? Because it
does seem like a relatively harsh environment. Nicholas
McVey: Look, of course Australia is a harsh environment. We're
very different environments. We've got and we call it down here the
tyranny of distance. So we've got a lot of different got wind farms
in a place called Broken Hill, which is, almost in the middle of
Australia. Extremely hot, extremely dry, lots of dust, sand. A lot
of challenges specific to that environment. We've also got a wind
farm in in the snowy mountains, we've got, one of the things about
Australia is that you've got every environment you can think of in
the one place. From an environment perspective, it's harsh. 
Joel Saxum: I know when I first heard actually Rosemary on the
podcast, talk about going to the snowy mountains. I was like,
there's not snow in Australia. What are you talking about? Cause
from a American, I didn't think that. And then she's yeah, of
course we, she's we have jungles, we have deserts, we have extreme
heat, we have snow, we have cold, we have all these things. And of
course, like you said, the size. So all of that from an O and M's
perspective, because Nicholas, that's what you do every day. You're
concentrated on. The operations and maintenance of GE's turbines
within Australia. That creates Logistical nightmares. It also
creates a lot of different problems, right? So if we're talking
about the turbines that are out in the dust there, it doesn't
matter what OEM it is. You're going to have leading edge erosion
issues, and you're going to have different things that pop up based
on that environment.  Allen Hall: So Nicholas, how big is
the organization you run in Australia? Because I think the sense of
scale would be helpful here. I know you're scattered all around
Australia and Australia is a gigantic country. There's a lot of
square miles in Australia. How many people do you have and how many
turbines are you trying to cover right now?  Nicholas
McVey: Yeah. We've got we've got 674 active turbines, over 12
sites. And and obviously Australia is growing exponentially at the
moment. We've got a pipeline to get to about a thousand in the next
five years. Obviously a big part of that it's our partnership with
Squadron and there's a lot of a lot of projects on the, on the
horizon. So yeah it's a big business. We've got the operations and
maintenance, we run a hybrid resource model. So we've got about 40
technicians on the ground and then we work with contractors. So
that's our kind of base resource. And then we have, we work with
contract partners on various things from annual maintenance Through
to our inspection regimes and our blade work, et cetera. So yeah,
no, it's a growing business.  Allen Hall: What size
turbines do you use in Australia? In the U S a lot of them are two
megawatt machines primarily, but in Europe, they tend to be much
larger. What's the focus in Australia?  Nicholas
McVey: So we have predominantly three X at the moment. So our
current fleet is mostly three X. We've got two Cypress sites. Okay.
And from going forward we're only selling Cypress in Australia.
We've got the two types of Cypress in Australia. We've got the the
six megawatt 158s and we have that there's a one called Bangon and
one called Marawara and another called Goita. So we've got three
sites with that model. And then going forward we're selling the
Mark two, if you will, Cypress, which is a six megawatt 164. And
that's our workhorse product. So that's our global workhorse
Cypress product that is being assembled and shipped from
Schenectady. And and it's a really exciting product. I was there
very recently and Schenectady got to see it on the factory floor.
And it's a really impressive machine and we're extremely excited to
have it here.  Joel Saxum: I think that's a really
exciting thing for that Australian market going forward. Cause when
you talk about it, like engineering is difficult. Engineering for
15 different models of turbines is 15 times harder, right? You have
all of those intricacies built in for all this little, that little
of that. So when you talk about, Hey, we're moving forward. We're
going to have one workhorse type machine. That's what we're going
to sell onto this market. It's, it gives you guys the ability as GE
service and operations. To really hone in on these are the exact
things we know this, you're going to know that machine in and out.
So that's the plan going forward. What do you see for the, like the
technicians? Are you guys going to be training and putting them
into some training abroad or training ahead of time before those
things get moving? What's the plan there?  Nicholas
McVey: Yeah, absolutely Joel, both, we're, we want to be
absolute experts in our product, right? That's where we're going.
We want to be GE, we are our GE technicians, the GE experts in a GE
product. And we appreciate that it's a flexible market and that our
customers are going to want. Differing types of O& M. So
they're going to want a full FSA, but some might want, self
performance and they may rely really heavily on our engineering and
product expertise while they perform, the farm themselves. Yeah. So
we're putting a lot of effort going forward into both local
training, but also, getting people over to the U S in particular to
do exactly what I just did, which is learn about the new Cyprus,
the differences between the old and the new Cyprus and also get on
the floor and see it being made. So that they can come back and be
absolute experts in this product.  Joel Saxum: So that
leads me to another question. A little bit ago we talked about
resourcing, right? Australia's an island. It's sometimes tough to
get resources there. And one of the most important resources in
anything is people. So how are you guys how are you attracting
technicians in and training them up? And what does that look like
from your chair?  Nicholas McVey: Yeah, no, it's a really
challenging area. In, in Australia, there's a, it's pretty well
documented that there's a significant shortage in electricians in
Australia. And I think there's something like 32, 000 needed by
2050 or something like that. It could be earlier than that, but but
there's a lot of electricians needed in Australia, not just for
wind but across the board. We're really and I guess we really want
to be a little bit different in the way that we, hire and and treat
our people, we want our technicians to be GE technicians. We want
them to be, really buy in and really want to be part of GE and see
where this company is going. So I guess on that point, we're really
moving away from an O& M perspective. We're really moving away
from the FIFO model. And and really investing in local talent and
that doesn't necessarily have to be wind talent. We're really
investing in the transition. We've had a lot of people over the
last sort of 12, 18 months that have come into wind straight out of
a mine. And and they've never seen a wind turbine before, but
they're. Really experienced electricians, got a really great safety
record, mature mature talent and we're just showing them the wind
industry and really grabbing onto that really amazing talent and
experience and then applying it to to, to turbines. We're finding
that is really working. Sure. It takes a little bit longer and, we,
we allow six months for somebody to get up to speed and get through
their training and get through their understanding of GE as well.
GE is, Vinnova is a. A company that is an extremely large company
with its own nuances and systems and and ways of working. So we've
got to get them into that as well. But no, we've seen some
fantastic results.