Mingyang Ocean X Deep Dive, NASCAR VIP Contest

The Uptime team does a deep dive on the Mingyang Ocean X offshore
turbine, exploring it's engineering features and possible effect on
the offshore wind turbine market. Plus, you can wind two free
NASCAR VIP tickets with Kyle Weatherman by entering at
https://weatherguardwind.com/contest/! Sign up now for Uptime Tech
News, our weekly email 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 show
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Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Before we start the show, we have an announcement. Our
favorite NASCAR driver Kyle Weatherman has two VIP tickets to the
Hollywood Casino 400 NASCAR Xfinity race, and you can win these
tickets. The race is held at the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City,
Kansas. On September 28th, which is a Saturday, VIP tickets include
premium access to the race, the pit area and the garage. You can
watch the race on pit road and hang out with Kyle Weatherman and
the DGM racing team. You will need to provide your own
transportation to and from the race but it'll be a great event. In
order to enter this contest you need to visit weatherguardwind.com
slash contest where you can enter. I'm Allen Hall and I'll be
joined by the rest of the Uptime hosts after these news headlines.
The UK's latest renewable auction has given a significant boost to
the offshore wind sector. With a record budget of 1. 5 billion
pounds, the auction awarded contracts to 131 wind, solar, and tidal
projects, capable of generating almost 10 gigawatts of capacity.
Notable winners include Orsted's Hornsea 4 project in Iberdrola's
East Anglia two, and three projects. However, analysts note that
this still falls short of the capacity needed to meet the country's
target of 60 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. The UK has reached
a significant milestone in wind power generation capacity. The
country has surpassed the 30 gigawatt mark of combined offshore and
onshore wind installations. This milestone was achieved with the
commissioning of SSE Renewable's 443 megawatt Viking Wind Farm. in
Shetland this past June. According to Renewable UK, the UK's
current wind capacity can meet the annual power demand of over 26
million homes and reduce carbon emissions by more than 35 million
tons per year. In Sweden, Vattenfall has decided to pause the
development of the Swedish Krikers Flak offshore wind power project
due to unfavorable investment conditions. This project, located
about 30 kilometers south of Trollberg, was estimated to generate
2. 7 terawatt hours of fossil free electricity annually. Fattenfall
cited the lack of a reasonable connection point to the national
grid offshore as a key factor in this decision. U. S. wind energy
investment has seen a significant boost in the first half of 2024,
according to Bloomberg NEF's Renewable Energy Investment Tracker.
While solar investment fell by 12 percent to 26. 5 billion, wind
projects secured 12 billion in funding. This surge has contributed
to a 63 percent increase in total renewable energy investment in
the U. S. Orsted, the Danish company developing Rhode Island's
first commercial offshore wind project, has announced plans to
expand its presence in the Ocean State. The company will open a new
engineering, procurement, and construction hub in Providence,
relocating to a 17, 000 square foot office building. Orsted also
plans to double its existing 100 person workforce in Rhode Island
in the coming years. Over in New Jersey, the leading light wind
project is facing challenges. The company has requested a pause
from the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities through late December
due to difficulties in securing a turbine blade manufacturer. This
setback follows Orsted's decision to scrap two offshore wind farms
in New Jersey last year, citing financial infeasibility. Western
Australia has declared a new offshore wind zone off the coast of
Bunbury, but with significant modifications. The area has been
reduced by half to 4, 000 square kilometers and pushed further
offshore, now starting at least 30 kilometers from the coast. This
change aims to address concerns from local communities,
particularly recreational fishers. The zone has the potential to
support 11. 4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity, enough to power
the entire main grid's current demands. And in New Mexico, they're
set to grow. to see two new massive wind projects on state land.
EDF Renewable's Silver Stallion project in Grant County will
generate 400 megawatts, while Energex Renewable Energy's project in
Hidalgo County will produce 150 megawatts. These projects are
expected to bring over 146 million in revenue for land
beneficiaries, primarily public schools. The projects will likely
take about three to five years to become fully operational. And
that's this week's top news stories. After the break, I'll be
joined by my co host, Renewable Energy Expert and founder of
Pardalote Consulting, Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Intel
Store, Phil Totaro, and the Chief Commercial Officer of
WeatherGuard, Jules Sexum. Lightning is an act of God, but
lightning damage is not. Actually, it's very predictable and very
preventable. Strike Tape is a lightning protection system upgrade
for wind turbines made by WeatherGuard. It dramatically improves
the effectiveness of the factory LPS, so you can stop worrying
about lightning damage. Visit weatherguardwind. com to learn more,
read a case study, and schedule a call today. Allen Hall: We
haven't talked about this item. For a number of weeks and I know it
keeps popping up. So I thought this is a good time to discuss it,
which is the Mingyang OceanX the V turbine has two 8. 3 megawatt
nacelles on a V shaped floating platform. And what this means for
the industry as we've been discussing for a number of weeks, months
at this point as turban sizes get bigger and bigger, they seem to
have more problems that are almost unrecoverable at some level,
particularly when they're out in the ocean and this Ming Yang
approach seems to simplify it because they're using two smaller,
simpler turbans that are just bolted together. And I want to get
Rosie's opinion on this. Thanks. Just to understand, is this a good
idea and is it making energy cheaper by this approach? Rosemary
Barnes: I like the, it's called a multi rotor concept when you have
two or more rotors on the same tower. And I quite like it for a few
reasons. So one of the advantages is there's like a slight
aerodynamic advantage from putting rotors close together. But I
think the bigger advantage is that you can have the smaller rotor,
which is, like a more reliable design. That's better known, we've
been making rotors of that size, like an eight megawatt rotor is a
lot more yeah, like well known and I'm a lot more experienced
making that size rotor than there is of a 16 megawatt one. So you
can expect better reliability. It's a lot easier, to get a factory
that can make components of that size you would expect less defects
and less like dire consequences if you stuff something up a little
bit. And you can get that, but at the same time, get the advantage
of having fewer electrical connections, fewer turbines to like
fewer sites to visit, to do maintenance. That sort of thing. So it
is a best of a both world type thing. Minyang aren't the first ones
to do it. Vestas like quite a few years ago now, like maybe five or
more years ago, they had a multi rotor design that I think had four
rotors on the one tower. And they made one, tested a concept
turbine and got some interesting results, but found that it wasn't
necessarily yeah, like a economically viable at that time, I think
that theirs was for onshore. And then there's other like new
concepts like wind catching and yeah, a few other lesser known ones
that are also like looking into that. So yeah, I do think that,
like going bigger and bigger with rotors is causing a lot of
problems. Seems like I even see that onshore as well as offshore.
And so I think that the multi rotor concept is like a really good
chance to try to get the best of both worlds with the both big and
small kind of. Joel Saxum: There's some interesting parts of this
thing though, too, being that it is for offshore floating because
again, we're in the, we're in the early stages of offshore floating
when there's not really a whole lot out there for, utility scale,
large installments at all. So you have a, they've integrated some
other. Cool marine stuff that's been done before but into this new
concept. So there is a, on the back of this thing, it's a single
point mooring system. Like in the oil and gas world. We use it on
an FPSO, which is like a big floating production facility. So you
take a big thing and you just mow it on one point so that it can
actually wind vein around as the prevailing wind direction changes
the whole floating. mechanism changes instead of just like we're
used to with the pit, the turbine yawing itself. They also put in
some weight saving stuff here, some weight and ease of construction
savings, as far as not having to have for a 16 megawatt tower,
which would be this thing would be a massive piece of steel, very
heavy, huge bearings, all kinds of different things. What they
ended up, what they were able to do here is to put small, smaller
steel Basically,