Third-Party Blade Replacements, Vestas Financial Trouble

As the number of wind turbines increases, the spare parts business
has room to grow. But would third-party blade replacement options
be technically or financially possible? Plus a review of Vestas'
quarter 2 financial call...the company posted a net loss of 156
million euros, widening from a 115 million euro loss from the same
period last year. Visit https://www.eologix-ping.com/en/ to learn
more about the EOLOGIX-PING lightning sensor. Register for the AMI
Wind Turbine Blades Event! 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
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
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: This is a world announcement. We've been begging for a low
cost lightning sensor to be installed on turbines that requires no
wiring and no maintenance, and we finally have it. And it's been
produced by our friends at EOLOGIX-PING. I have a sample right
here. It's quite lovely. It's small, it magnetizes to the turbine,
and it tells you if your turbine's been struck. Joel and I have
been using it for the last year or so, and it has been 100 percent
effective. So this new low cost sensor is being included with our
StrikeTape sales, so anytime we sell StrikeTape to our turbine, we
are including, we Weather Guard are paying to have a EOLOGIX-PING
Lightning Sensor installed so you can track how your turbine is
doing with StrikeTape. So this is what everybody's been clamoring
for. It is now here. And if you are interested in purchasing one of
these low cost lightning units, You gotta get a hold of
EOLOGIX-PING. Just go to https://www.eologix-ping.com/en/, or you
can just call Joel, (832) 593-2782. We have about a thousand units
that are ready to go, and now's the time to get it installed. Call
now. I'm Allen Hall and I'll be joined by the rest of the uptime
host. After these news headlines, Germany has announced results for
a 5.5 gigawatt offshore wind auction. Three North Sea sites were
awarded, RDE partnering with Total Energy secured two sites, while
asset manager Luxkara won the third. These wind farms are set to
become operational between 2029 and 2031. In the Belgian North Sea,
the world's first wind powered electric ship charging station has
been launched. Developed by Parkwind and MJR Power and Automation,
this station is connected to the Noble Wind Farm, 29 miles
offshore. The system can deliver up to 8 megawatts of power to
service vehicles, operating effectively in choppy seas. Parkwind
aims to deliver the first commercial offshore charging system by
early 2025. China's central bank is extending its low carbon
lending program to the end of 2027. This initiative provides
financial institutions with low cost loans to support corporate
carbon reduction efforts. China plans to promote battery powered
vehicles, energy efficient appliances, and eco friendly building
materials. The government aims to transition its economy to a
green, low carbon model by 2035. Increasing non fossil energy
consumption to about 25 percent by 2030. Vineyard Wind, America's
first large scale offshore wind farm, is resuming partial
construction following a turbine blade incident on July 13th. The
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has authorized tower
and nacelle installation, but blade installation and power
generation remain suspended. GE Vernova attributes the blade
failure to a manufacturing deviation of an adhesive bond line. GE
is employing high tech crawlers to inspect the existing wind
turbine blades at the Vineyard Wind site. The project also is
developing a new algorithm to use with existing blade sensors to
detect issues quicker. Vineyard Wind states that no blades will be
installed or used until thoroughly inspected. In Hull, England,
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has applied to expand its wind
turbine factory. The expansion includes a multipurpose
manufacturing building and a staff welfare building. This
development is expected to create 40 additional full time jobs,
bringing total site employment to over 1, 600 employees. The plan
includes using environmentally friendly air source heat pumps
instead of gas fired boilers. And Samsung Heavy Industries has
signed a preferred supplier agreement with Equinor for floating
foundations for the Firefly Bandabuli offshore wind farm in South
Korea. This agreement covers fabrication of floating substructures
and marshalling operations. The 800 megawatt project is set to be
operational in 2027. Located 70 kilometers off the Olsen coast.
This marks SHI's expansion from oil and gas into renewable energy.
And this project awaits selection into South Korea's upcoming
offshore wind auction. 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 Partello Consulting, Rosemary Barnes, CEO and
founder of Intel Store, Phil Tataro, and the Chief Commercial
Officer of WeatherGuard. Mark your calendars for AMI's Winter and
Blades Conference happening October 2nd and 3rd in historic Boston,
Massachusetts. This two day event, which is similar to the well
established edition in Europe, will bring together the whole blade
value chain to examine market outlook, innovations in blade
materials, design, manufacturing, testing, and lifecycle
management, with a special focus on the North American market. Gain
insights from experts from Vestas, Along with scientists and
engineers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory. Plan your trip to Boston this fall by
visiting the link in the show notes or just Google 2024 Blades
Boston. All right, so Joel and I have been on a number of jaunts
across the states and every place we go, we get asked, Do you know
where I can find X Blade? Because I need a couple. Joel Saxum: No,
we are getting asked this all the time and it doesn't matter what
platform it is. Some of them, of course, more than others, Hey, do
we need this? Do you have this? And the crazy thing is it's. It's
not just blades. It's all kinds of things associated with it. But
the most problem is blades. So people want to repower. There's
multiple options. I've seen some discourse on LinkedIn about this
and I've actually been through it myself as a, for projects. Hey,
we're going to do a repower. Okay. So our options are buying new
blades from the OEM. We can get secondhand blades in the market
that have already been built, that have been basically, safe Harbor
or dry store. We can try to rebuild the ones that are there and
maybe upgrade them. Like on our side. We've been called about this
many times for weather guard to do lightning protection upgrades as
a part of a program, right? They're gonna re, they're gonna redo
these blades. So they've done internal inspections, external
inspections, fix 'em up, put lightning protection upgrades on, put
arrow upgrades on other things like that. So that's an option. And
then the other option is. Scrapping the turbines that are there and
getting completely new ones. And then sometimes it's an adapter
plate on the tower and a, a Vestas to a GE or something of that
sort. But Phil you were talking to us a little bit off air before
this about an idea of a blade manufacturer repurposing some
facilities to Build some blades for this same exact purpose. Philip
Totaro: Exactly. And in particular for the asset owners or
operators that are not on an OEM long term service contract,
because what happens on that circumstance is the OEMs tend to lock
in their subcomponent suppliers, whether it's blades or bearings or
gear boxes or what have you. Those suppliers are locked into
supplying the OEM, then the OEM supplies, the customers. But what
if there were a third party option, which is, we talk about this
all the time, the similarities to the automotive sector or other
industries, where you can go to someone else That can either
reverse engineer what you need, or might be able to just build you
something from scratch that would be an upgrade to what you have,
and would still fit in, on the turban, in our case, on the turban.
As long as you had the rough bolt circle diameter to be able to,
figure out the size of the root and all that sort of thing, and as
long as you also had a rough sense of the arrow profile so that you
weren't going to introduce loads or anything that, that were going
to be too dissimilar to what the turbine was already used to
experiencing, could you use more modern manufacturing techniques
than that existed, 15 years ago, let's say to make a higher quality
blade that would be a replacement to the OEM supplied blade. And
the reason this came up is we've been contacted by a couple of
different customers who either want to sell blades, In that
fashion, like as a third party offering, or the other trend that's
recently come up is there's a lot of factories in particular in
China that are idle right now because they've migrated their
manufacturing capability from, two, three, and maybe even four
megawatt turbines. up to 5, megawatt turbines for onshore, and
they're literally, rather than repurposing those factories that
were used to make let's say, 37 to 53 or maybe 55 meter long
blades, they're literally letting those, some of those factories
sit idle. Instead of repurposing them for, they're literally just
building a new factory for building the, 60, 70, 80 meter long
blades. So there's potentially a market opportunity here.