China’s Offshore Dominance and U.S. Market Reactions

This week Allen, Joel, and Phil discuss Bonfiglioli's advanced
servo motors featured in PES Wind magazine, China's offshore wind
dominance, and the economic challenges facing U.S. offshore
projects. The Wind Farm of the Week is the 170MW English Farms
facility in Iowa, the recipient of the Envision Platinum Award.
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https://www.windaustralia.com Allen Hall: We've all had our rental
car problems over the last couple of years, ever since COVID. It's
been as Joel put it, a crap show in rental car land. Over in
Syracuse, which is not very far from me, I was just over there a
few weeks ago now the employees at the Syracuse Airport Hertz
location left their counter unattended, and they left about six
hours early. There's a number of people that had landed in Syracuse
and needed a car and there was no one at the counter. So what they
decided to do is and about 20 of them decided to do this, they just
took the keys that were available at the counter and then went on
their way. And one of them was Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, was one
of them that needed to be somewhere and didn't have ability to get
a car and just grabbed some keys and left. Now, this created a lot
of problems, right? Because all of a sudden these cars have
disappeared. They don't know who have them, and they were starting
to look for them. And now they're concerned that people that did
this are concerned what's Hertz going to do to us? But I think they
felt like at the time, Joel, that What else am I gonna do? If your
employee's left, I need to get a car, I gotta go. Joel Saxum: Yeah,
that's a Hertz problem. That's the way I look at it. Technically,
it's probably theft, right? Like grand larceny or something like
that. I don't know if it's larceny. Grand theft auto? Video games?
GTA? Yeah but, it's illegal when you look at it, right? But I can
understand being that I've been in that situation where you show up
at 11 p. m., you've been traveling all day, and you're like, Worst.
Where's my damn car? Like, where's the dang car that I want to go?
And I don't know if there's one person in that group who was the
first mover, right? There was a pioneer before the settlers. One
person was like, screw it guys. Let's go. I'm grabbing these keys.
I don't know who that is, but this, that's I don't know. There's
some cojones there. Allen Hall: My recent experience with Hertz in
Oklahoma was getting to the counter at about 1230 in the morning.
And there not being a single car there. And then I was the second
one into the little office they have. And then another person came
and another person came and then pretty soon there's about 10 of us
standing there and the Hertz employee who was attending the place
and was trying to do the best that she possibly could said, I have
two cars. I'm picking you and you. Just pointed at people. Wow.
Yeah, I got one. I never get that. Philip Totaro: Allen, that's
like a Seinfeld episode right there. You guys know how to take a
reservation, but you don't know how to hold a reservation. Allen
Hall: I felt horrible because I was meeting Joel the next morning.
I really needed this car. We were going far off into Oklahoma, but
there were all kinds of military people there that had things to
do, too. Everybody had something to do. So they're, Uber was their
best friend at the moment, but man, The rental car situation is
horrible. Philip Totaro: Let me give you a hot tip. Because I'm
gonna be doing this myself later this week when I fly into Houston
and arrive at about 1245 AM. I have a service called Zipcar. Which
you can just automatically, use your phone and unlock the car and
you don't even need the keys. So I don't have to worry about doing
something Hertz style. I can just rock up to the car, get in and
go. That's pretty cool. Now, there are other services available, so
that we don't, just promote Zipcar, but I'll tell you what, they
have been pretty convenient. I've been using that, actually, for a
couple of years, and it's, they also don't charge you a deposit,
and they cover your gas, so I'll tell you what, folks. Zipcar might
be the answer in the future. It's either that or electric scooters,
Phil. That's the Allen Hall: future. The new PES Wind is out, and
if you haven't received it in the post, you can go to PESWind. com
and read it online. Bunch of great articles. This magazine is
really heavy. There's a ton of articles in it. A lot of offshore
discussions and technology in this particular area. issue and I'm
an electrical person. I'm reading the one from Bonfiglioli on the
new servo motors that are made for offshore wind turbines. And when
you say servo motors, I always think little tiny motors that are
used in like radio control airplanes and drones and that sort of
thing. But these are massive. These servo motors are used on up to
18 megawatt machines for yaw and pitch motors. But there's a lot of
technology in them, a lot more than I thought guys when they're
talking about yaw some of the accuracy they have to have and moving
these big, massive nacelles accurately is really critical. Joel
Saxum: I think the crazy thing here is that there's so many
components that you don't think about within a wind turbine. Like
when you talk about what Bonfiglioli is bringing to the table here
you're talking about components that we're just always Oh yeah, yaw
motor, pitch motor. But when you dig into the technology of them
and what really goes into them, it makes the turbine itself so much
more complex, but they're doing it in a great way. So to be a
supplier to an OEM like this, I think the OEM is, we have to
realize they, they do. rely on a lot of sub suppliers all around
the world to get things done. And so they turn to the experts,
right? Like you want to turn to an expert for lightning protection.
You call Allen Hall and myself. You want to turn to an expert for
asynchronous motors and yawn pitch drives and other things. You
turn to Bonfiglioli. And it's Philip Totaro: important too, that.
With how big offshore turbines are getting, that the reason that
yaw and pitch is needs to be so precise now is you've got the
potential to have a huge rotor imbalance if you're off by even half
a degree. With, blades that are gonna weigh, close to 35 tons each
and, a nacelle that probably weighs like 250 tons, if not more at
this point for these large offshore machines rotor imbalance is one
thing. Wake effect is also another thing where you have to have a
certain level of precision in the yaw motor to be able to ensure
that you're directing the downflow from the turbine and the outwash
from the turbine in the correct direction so that it's not
impacting, another turbine that's, immediately behind it or
adjacent. Allen Hall: In the addition of a couple of sensors that
they're putting onto these motors and the electrical systems. To
detect failures early is remarkable, because I think in the
offshore case, you need to know, because there's not people going
up and down those turbines every day, like onshore and getting that
early detection is a huge advantage. The other thing I noticed
about this, Joel, is the emphasis on weight, on reducing the weight
of these servos, and my guess is offshore, if you have to replace
one, The weight matters. Joel Saxum: Yeah, big time. Because just
think about this. When you bring the part to the turbine, you bring
the part to the turbine. That transition piece has usually a Davit
crane, or we call a Davit crane on a vessel, but a Davit crane type
on the, on, on the actual transition piece to get parts on, so you
can't have a thing that is, too heavy. 10 tons going up over there.
Cause you're never going to be able to get it up inside the turbine
unless you do some have, have to get some crazy, offshore, like
lift work style, lift platform, or bring in a specialized vessel.
You don't want to do that. So you need to be able to have
everything basically maneuverable or handle handleable. I don't
know if that's a good word, but by the technicians on the deck. And
if they can't do it, then you have to bring in specialized
equipment and everything offshore gets more complicated. So when
you talk about the, boron and neodymium magnets, and some of those
rare earth metals are heavy. Allen Hall: Yeah. So they're beginning
to use more aluminum and lighter weight metals. Plus all the
environmental concerns of being offshore. Where you need to add a
number of features to prevent corrosion and degradation over time,
which is why they're providing some of the sensors to detect that
early. It's much more complicated than you think. We get used to
being around two megawatt machines. We see those everywhere. Yaw
and the pitch motors are pretty much ubiquitous, right? And they're
swapping them out on a regular basis. You really can't do that
offshore. That's where Bonfiglioli comes in and makes a really cool
product. So if you haven't seen this article, you need to go to
PESWIN. com. And read it online or reach out and get a official
paper copy. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is
crucial and let's face it difficult. That's why the Uptime Podcast
recommends PES Wind magazine.