HeliService USA: Efficient Offshore Wind Transportation

Allen and Joel speak with Michael Tosi, founder and CEO of
HeliService USA, which is providing helicopter transportation for
the offshore wind industry. HeliService USA provides efficient,
safe, and environmentally-friendly transport for technicians and
equipment to offshore wind farms, providing an advantage over
marine vessels. With the highest safety standards,
cost-effectiveness, and speed, HeliService is making offshore wind
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host,
Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. As offshore wind
continues to develop in the U. S., transportation of technicians
and equipment is becoming a big issue for developers and operators
to tackle. HeliService USA provides helicopter transportation and
support services for the offshore wind industry in the U. S. Based
in Rhode Island, the company is utilizing the unique capabilities
of helicopters to deliver personnel, cargo, and equipment. and
conduct maintenance operations efficiently. Our guest is Michael
Tosi, founder and CEO of HeliService USA. Michael is a helicopter
pilot and also served in the U S air force. Michael, welcome to the
show. Michael Tosi: Thank you, Allen. Really appreciate you having
me today and look forward to chatting more. Allen Hall: You're in a
really busy place right now because the pace of construction on U.
S. offshore projects has really picked up. And you're flying
technicians back and forth. How many flights are you conducting
right now a week? Michael Tosi: So it, it varies. There's two big
scopes that we cover. So the first scope we cover is actually the
construction of the wind farm. For the construction of the wind
farm, we're typically flying offshore workers who are going to be
on vessels for, two, three, four, five, six weeks, depending on
what their shift schedule is. So that involves flying out to an
installation vessel, a heavy lift vessel S. O. V. potentially,
depositing those passengers we usually bring folks back to the
other direction. And so those flights go on per vessel, sometimes
once a week, twice a week, per vessel in the field. And now, of
course, because they have several turbines up, more than several at
this stage we're also helping with operations and maintenance even
prior to the wind farms being completed. We are actually going to
be commissioning flights as well. To certain turbines. I think
that's the first time at least that I'm familiar with that
certainly has probably occurred in Europe. But at least from what
our customers tell us that some of the first times they've used
helicopters for commissioning were as well on the turbine. It can
be a bit cyclical on the demand, depending on when the vessels are
here or not. But just for some numbers, I think it's a good thing.
We've been in operation for about a year and transported over 6,
000 people offshore during that time. To my knowledge, I think we
transported certainly more than any other with just 16 folks
offshore. So it's been a busy year. Joel Saxum: Let me ask you a
question, Michael. What does it look like for a technician that's
going to go Fly out to a turbine for work. Do they arrive at your
facility with all their gear ready to go? And five minutes later,
they're in a helicopter or how, what does that look like? Michael
Tosi: It's a pretty quick process. It's a little bit different for
the folks who go offshore to construction vessels. They're they use
helicopters, not necessarily less, but there's less flights. So a
technician may go out every single day of his hitch. So if he has a
14 day schedule, you may go offshore with the helicopter 14 times
out 14 times back. Plus sometimes intra field work, so turbine to
turbine, or SOV to turbine, you name it. So they may do, in a 14
day span, they could do over 30 flights, over 40 flights, depending
on how you look at it. So they get very accustomed to working with
our crews. I don't want to say they're part of the crew, they're
not technically part of the crew, but a lot of rapport builds up
between our hoist operators, our pilots, the technicians, because
they're working with them intimately every single day which is
pretty neat. So when they show up Especially for the folks who fly
with us all the time, who've been breathed and are ready, they have
to watch a briefing video, but really, they just throw on their
harness do the briefing video, which is a legality at that point,
because of course, they've seen that many times before, but by FAA
regulation, they have to watch it, get that video, head out to the
helicopter, and they're airborne pretty quick, so from the start of
their day to, on a turbine is an hour or mass. You're talking a
second team, an hour and 20 minutes or less to get them offshore.
So it is extraordinarily quick from the point where they take off
to the turbine depending on the project for at least the ones we
serve now is about 13 minutes. So it's an astonishingly quick. Can
you, and if you're on the helicopter, that goes really fast. Allen
Hall: And the big question, obviously, between CTVs and helicopters
that always comes up is emissions and emissions are a big topic in
the wind industry at the moment. Are helicopters more efficient
from an emission standpoint than ship transports? Michael Tosi:
Drastically it's not one of those things in the margins. It's not
single digit percentages. You're talking to orders of magnitude.
The easiest way to think about it is assume exactly the same fuel
burn rate, which is not necessarily the case. But assuming the
exact same fuel burn rate, you're taking 8 to 10 times as longer to
do the same exact transportation. So even if we burn twice, which
we don't, depending on the CTV, my understanding is we burn the
same or less per hour of operation. And that CTV is out there
potentially 24 7, certainly 12 hours that it's running. Whereas for
us, 13 minutes out, 13 minutes back. At the end of the day you're
talking collectively that helicopter rarely is going to fly for
more than a couple hours a day. Certainly not 12 depending on the
busyness. So overall drastically more efficient. We expect to see
as they start getting worked into bids and proposals, having to
account for your missions and your O& M means is that
helicopters will start to see a massive step up. Allen Hall: There
are some other training besides throwing your harness on that has
to happen. So you can go offshore. You want to describe what some
of that is? Michael Tosi: Yeah, certainly. So one of the biggest
concerns that we see from folks who aren't familiar with helicopter
operations, helicopter hoist operations, it looks pretty dramatic.
And you think military, you think search and rescue, you think
Coast Guard. What they do and what I've done in the military and
what I continue to do part time in the Air Guard as a search and
rescue pilot is drastically different than this kind of hoisting.
This is, I don't want to say vanilla per se, but it's intended to
be repeatable. It's intended to be done. One of our customers
looked across their entire fleet. All of their operators do 20, 000
plus waste a year without incident. So it's designed to work
incredibly well and incredibly safely. And it does have the highest
safety record or none in terms of access means to a turbine. That
includes SOVs, Amplements, and CTVs. And with that, though, it is
not tremendously complex to train a technician. Even if they've
never seen a helicopter before, they require one day of underwater
egress training. So that's if lord forbid, a helicopter were ever
to ditch, how to get out of it from being upside down, anyone who's
ever worked in the Gulf. It's probably done that before. Some
people love it, some people hate it. I will say that. Generally, 80
percent of the class thinks it's one of the coolest things they've
done. 20 percent never want to see that thing ever again. It can
break either way, depending on your familiarity and comfort in
water. I really enjoy it. The only thing I don't enjoy is my
sinuses after being upside down in a pool all day. So that's about
one day. Very easy class to get through. Again, there's almost no
attrition in that. The next thing you need is a one day hoist
course. So you come to our facility you go through the hoist
course. You spend about three to four hours in the classroom. Then
you go out and we hoisted the aircraft in the hangar. So on level
ground, basically, without an airborne. We then go out to a nice
open area. So like a little grassy field or a taxiway, you do our
voice there about three per. And then we go to, we have a little
mock turban. It sounds very fancy. It's really a context container
with a turban, a nacelle basket or a hoist basket welded onto it.
Pretty basic, but it does the job really. Accurately simulates the
turbine and that's another maybe four hours. So you're talking two
days to become a hoist trained and qualified technician, at least
in terms of helicopter operations. It was very basic. Allen Hall: I
had the privilege of visiting your facility in Rhode Island and
watching that training happen. It is impressive. And the
consistency of which you move people around and drop them on top of
the simulated turbine top. That is amazing to see because it would
just as an outsider,