Siemens Gamesa Cuts Jobs, Wind Worker Shortage, and Wind-Powered Ships

The team discusses the job cuts at Siemens Gamesa and the
challenges of finding skilled wind energy workers in the U.S. They
also touch on Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and MOL Drybulk's move to outfit
ships with wind propulsion technology from Anemoi Marine
Technologies to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. Sign up now
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Residents in Evan an English Town are complaining about the
noisy chickens. There was a flock about 100 feral chickens. Now,
Joel, down in Texas, you have feral hogs. They are everywhere. But
I have not seen feral chickens. Feral chickens are easier to get a
hold of. Joel Saxum: Then the feral hogs, I think, but the chickens
you got to watch out for because they can't survive in the heat by
themselves They got to Allen Hall: have some shade. Dude, do
chickens travel in packs like wolves? You know what I'm saying?
What is it? What does a feral chicken flock look like? Joel Saxum:
I don't know if it's the same they have the same goals as a flock
of wolves or a pack of wolves But they do travel in groups like
Allen Hall: turkeys it's this, it's something that happens down in
Australia too, Rosemaridia, feral chickens. It seems like a UK
event. Rosemary Barnes: No, we have native chickens. There's a lot
of native, they're just a native bird. That is a kind of chicken,
and yeah, they run around being chickens in the wild. Allen Hall:
It seems like the chickens are the most defenseless creatures on
the planet, right? And because one, they're so tasty, and two, they
have no defenses. Rosemary Barnes: They play chicken. Allen Hall:
Ah, the sage grouse is worse. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, the pheasant
is the stupidest animal, the stupidest bird, I think that's why I
always think it's yeah, like particularly lame when people go
hunting for pheasants, which I found out in Denmark that they're
not even native. They bring, they found a stupid pheasant. Stupid
easy to kill bird and then they restock it for all these people to
hunt. It's so sad. Joel Saxum: I once referred to pheasant hunting
in the United States as the bowling of hunting. Rosemary Barnes:
Like you could run up and grab one with your hands. They're so
dumb. Philip Totaro: No skill required. Allen Hall: Siemens Gamesa
is making some moves. They plan to cut 4, 100 jobs, according to
CEO Jochen Eichholz. In an internal letter to staff, so you can
find this news article pretty much anywhere at the moment because
it's really important the company aims to adapt to lower business
volumes, particularly in the 4X and 5X machines, which they
evidently are not selling and some reduced activity in non core
markets India being one of those evidently also, and they're trying
to streamline their portfolio, right? So despite the job cuts, I
cold stated that the goal is to maintain a stable workforce by
shifting jobs and hiring in other parts of the division. Now, Phil,
I assume this is wrapped around India, that the, they're going to
sell that factory in India. And then I still think they're going to
have some layoffs in Denmark and in Spain, but they're not, I'm not
being specific yet, but isn't this like the precursor to those
layoffs in the union factories that they need to give them advance
warning that this is coming and this letter is starting that
process? So I, I assume Spain and Denmark are going to be impacted
and India obviously is going to be sold. So what does this all mean
and where is Seamus Gamesa headed? Philip Totaro: Yeah first of
all, it's unfortunate that they're having to downsize this much,
but it's the net result of it taking so long for them to get back
to selling the four to five megawatt platform that had these played
quality issues. As far as where the company's going at this point,
they've already publicly stated they're going to focus more on core
markets, which is really what, frankly, a lot of companies have
been doing lately, the, but for them, that means Western Europe and
the U. S. And, but they've got to have products to sell. And, while
they're not generating revenue, workforce reductions are almost a
necessity. They're probably going to have, and already have, plants
that are close to, if not already idled. This is just the
unfortunate consequence of of all these product quality issues.
Joel Saxum: Question for you, Phil. The On your Intel store,
basically database, or you could, you guys watch the news. You see
basically everything that's going on. When was the last time you
saw a major Siemens Gamesa onshore sale of equipment? Of turbines.
Someone said, Hey, we've contracted since Mesa for Philip Totaro:
They've been selling their direct drive, their legacy direct drive
turbines in Japan. There's been a number of projects there. They've
sold some of the 3 megawatt, 132 meter rotor turbines in different
markets, including Africa. But they haven't really been selling
anything. They were intending to sell the four to five megawatt
platform in the U. S. They've been selling some of the six megawatt
one seventies in Scandinavia and Brazil and offering it for sale in
Australia. But that's about it. You're, Joel, I guess to your
point, it's, it, but it's been kind of dribs and drabs of those
kind of sales. The, so for instance, the Direct Drive 4 megawatt
130 meter rotor that they sell in Japan, again, that's based on the
legacy Siemens design but that's also, selling like, Maybe a
maximum of about 20 units at a time for either new projects or
repowerings that are going on in Japan all the other markets where
they're selling turbines other than the six megawatt 170, where,
you know, again, throughout Scandinavia and Brazil, where they're
getting somewhat larger orders, most of the orders they're getting
for anything else is, in the hand, the handfuls, few, two, three
dozen of units. It's not big orders. Joel Saxum: Yeah, that's my
kind of the direction of the question. I guess it's a little bit
loaded, but you watch here in the U. S., right? And it's, you're
just not seeing it. The last time I saw, say Vesta secures order
for, X amount of V 150s or GE, Sol, like the big Sunzea project
and, and Alan, you and I talk regularly about seeing turbine blades
move around on the highways down here in Texas. I'm like, yeah, I
saw a bunch going this way. I saw a bunch going that way. None of
those blades are Siemens Kamesa blades. They're, they, like you
said earlier in the, this little section here, 4, 100 staff cuts,
that's got to happen at some point in time, just based on the lack
of sales performance. So coming, bringing, bringing in the troops
and have to cut some fat out. And then streamlining the portfolio
is a big one for me. We've heard GE say this as well. We're going
to cut down on so many, having, so many options and so many of
these and so many of that and get back to a. A core offering that's
easier to scale up, easier for the supply chains to manage, easier
to, for logistics. And should, in all reality, reduce some quality
issues and speed up the Allen Hall: So while they're losing jobs at
Siemens Gamesa, the latest report from the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory said that we need about 120, 000 workers in the
United States by 2030 if the current hiring and training trends
continue. The study by NREL found that wind energy firms are
experiencing increasing hiring difficulty for both entry level and
experienced positions compared to 2020. Which seems odd, Joel. The
top reasons cited include a lack of applicants, insufficient
experience among candidates and inadequate education and training.
Meanwhile, students and recent graduates interested in wind energy
careers report barriers, such as a lack of exposure to the industry
in coursework, uncertainty about available jobs and difficulty
finding opportunities in desired locations. So something is amiss.
If there are so many jobs. Available, but the students don't know
that they're there. Isn't that the point of NREL, maybe Department
of Energy and some others to try to connect them together? ACP? ACP
is, yeah, another one, and that's what happened? Joel Saxum:
There's a lot of, there's a lot of oddities around this too. So we
were at ACP back a month ago or so, something like that, three
weeks ago. And they had the collegiate win competition there. And
there was a massive turnout for that. There was A lot of college
teams I would say over 10 easily and that's, to get the funds
together and to put these projects on and do this, that's a big
undertaking for a university. So there's a lot of money involved
there. There was also a really cool section they had where You know
at most of these conferences you have e posters or you have the
poster kind of setup where people present projects and this And
that the other thing and there was a Section of that they had that
was just for students and there was a ton of them that were doing a
ton of students that I saw were doing capstone projects for the end
of their engineering degree or end of their environmental sciences
degree or whatnot about wind that weren't necessarily from wind
industry like focused You schools. And that was great to see. So
from that side, and I'm talking in two different, two different
lanes here, basically, but from that side on the engineering and
technical at the university level side, I saw a lot more,