Sales vs. Engineering: Tension in Wind Turbine Development

In this episode, Allen, Joel, Phil, and Rosemary discuss new German
legislation to streamline wind permitting, the economics of
floating offshore wind in France, and Iberdrola's increased
investments in offshore wind. They also delve into how the U.S.
Production Tax Credit has impacted wind farm maintenance practices
and explore the industry-wide challenges that arose when sales
teams overpromised on turbine capabilities, creating tension with
the engineering realities. 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
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Down in Kyle, Texas... Joel Saxum: That's by me! Allen Hall:
It's near Joel. That's why I'm bringing it up. They were trying to
break a world record for the largest gathering of people with one
name and despite having 706 Kyles they missed The bar because the
crown is held by a town in Bosnia. They had 2, 300 people named
Ivan together in 2017, but it seems a lot easier to do quite
honestly. Having a lot of people named Kyle and Kyle, Texas, that's
got to be relatively hard, Joel, because there's not, we know Kyle
Weatherman, right? So we have a Kyle. We know, I know a couple of
other Kyles, but I don't think I could get 2, 300 Kyles in a two
town in Texas. Joel Saxum: I think we could do this one. We go to
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. And see how many fills we can get.
Allen Hall: Oooooh. Joel Saxum: It has to be on the groundhog day.
Allen Hall: Phil, has that been tried? Philip Totaro: I, to my
knowledge, it has not been tried. I have never heard of this. I'm
befuddled by these what constitutes a Guinness World Record now?
Shouldn't we be striving for things that are, like, advancing
society, rather than, hey, can we get 8, 000 people with the same
name in a fricking single town. I don't know. What are we doing?
What are we doing? Allen Hall: I'm not with Phil. This is fun. We
should do more of this. See, here's the problem with this whole
thing in Kyle, Texas is that they chose the 416th ranked name. You
got to pick something in the top 10. Well, Joel, the German
government has agreed to speed up authorizations for wind turbines
and industrial plants. The new law aims to enable faster
construction through digitalization, And reducing bureaucratic
hurdles. Plants affected include wind turbines, metal mills,
foundries, waste disposal, and hydrogen production facilities. And
I think Rosemary would be against the hydrogen production facility,
but the change is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks and.
Renewable energy plants will get special priority for faster
approval under the coalition agreement. So that has been one of the
big holdups in Germany in terms of wind deployment. They don't have
the space to put up a thousand turbines, right? So you're getting
turbines spread around the country a good bit. And every little
province town has had restrictions, right? And they've been trying
to remove those restrictions. Piece by piece. This is a big move
for Germany, I think, Joel. Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you look at the
way it's this, these things are rolling out in developments
worldwide, right? So the ACP and the developers and people have
been complaining about permit restrictions and let's get this thing
streamlined, let's get this, able to put more Megawatts in the
ground for renewable energy production. Everybody on the U S has
been screaming about that. They've been screaming about it at wind.
Europe has been doing it for a few years, right? All the way up to
now, the OEM saying Hey, like government, stop stepping on our own
feet here. Let's streamline some of these processes. I know we,
Allen, you and I have complained about it in, in private, where we
heard the U S was it last year, they said that they, Put 80, 000
new IRS agents. And we're like, can we just have 10, 000 of them to
streamline some projects for us in the renewable energy space? And
this is right in the face of the European union and even like in
the UK. A lot of hair on the back of people's necks being raised
about the possibility of some Chinese competition coming in if
Germany is able to do this and some of the other EU countries start
to follow suit about easy, not necessarily easing restrictions, but
just streamlining the processes to get these things built. It's
going to be better for the whole entire renewable energy transition
because we're going to be able to get things in the ground. We're
going to be able to get it quicker instead of being held up. I know
I saw something. A few years ago where they were talking about like
an onshore wind farm. I think it might have been Germany taking
seven years or nine years from, like plan to actually having a
tower in the ground. That's ridiculous. Philip Totaro: This is
obviously good news if they're actually going to follow through
this time and speed things up. There have been a lot of permitting
changes that have been promised over the years. The good news is
this seems to have been done in conjunction with the European
Commission. To not just fix the issue in Germany and the red tape
there but, Italy's had severe problems you've even run into, issues
throughout some of the other countries in Europe. The reality of it
is that any time you remove red tape, it's usually a good thing.
And it's something that we've been calling for as an industry For a
long time. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It's like the pendulum swinging,
right? When things first started, you were one way, and now we're
coming back and finding an equilibrium that makes sense for having
things done properly, but also getting them done. Allen Hall: Over
in France, they had a big announcement for offshore wind. Bewa and
Alicio Consortium won the French floating wind auction with a price
of 86 euros per megawatt hour, which is a decent price. It's
actually much lower than what's happening in the states at the
minute. The word of capacity was 270 megawatts with 10 participants
bidding. It is a huge milestone fill for Europe on the floating
wind side. Now, there's going to be more, right? There's a lot more
in the pipeline for France? Philip Totaro: Yes, this is also the
cheapest power offtake agreement that anyone's ever struck globally
for floating offshore. So in spite of the fact that it's, I think
it's what, 86, 45 Euro per megawatt hour, that's About 94 U. S.
dollars. That, that's competitive, very competitive. And the funny
thing is, we've We've studied this at Intel Store, and we've come
to the conclusion that at scale you, you actually see floating
offshore being cheaper than fixed bottom in a lot of cases. And,
the reality is that we have to get to, sufficient scale with
floating offshore wind so that we don't have to see these fits and
starts with that kind of segment of the industry anymore. So this
is exciting. Again, as you mentioned, it's only 270 megawatts, so
it's a baby step. It's a good first step to start getting more.
France definitely wants to do more of these. They've got something
like, 500 gigawatts worth of offshore wind resource, I believe, so
500, 600 gigawatts. The more they can start exploiting that in both
the Atlantic and the Med that's gonna be great. Allen Hall: Are
they gonna be Vestas or GE turbines? Philip Totaro: Eh let's put it
this way. Some of these pilot projects in France have already had
some Vestas, some Siemens Gamesa, they were, there were a few
projects that were actually supposed to use GE Haliad turbines the
original Haliad the, 6 megawatt platform and they switched. Because
of availability and other things. It's probably, all, I think all
three of them are contenders. I definitely don't see the Chinese
actually getting involved in any of these kinds of tenders, at
least not. To a serious degree, the it's interesting because
they're there and they're supposedly offering turbines and
undercutting the market and all this insidious stuff. But in
reality, it's really just the independent power producers in Europe
trying to use the Chinese as negotiating leverage to get a better
price out of, the likes of Festus that's probably, Those three
Western companies are probably going to be where the turbines are
coming from. Allen Hall: Does the 94 a megawatt hour drive other
countries to push the prices down for offshore electricity? Philip
Totaro: Not necessarily because what's going on in France at the
moment is they've got, um, there's pretty high prices onshore for
regardless of fuel type or power generation source. So the fact
that they can do a cheap offshore project where, you know they're
going to use the power close to the load centers with these, with
these sites that, that they were in Eliseo of one in this tender
that's likely to end up resulting in some economies of scale being
achieved in France. You could probably also, if Spain ever decides
to get their act together with their floating offshore wind market
or their offshore wind market in general they'd probably have some
pretty cheap prices in Spain as well. But it's not necessarily
something where the entire rest of the world is going to say, Oh,
that's the price floor or the ceiling or whatever. And we've got
to, come in underneath it. I think that's, we're still a ways off
yet on achieving meaningful scale with a utility scale, floating
offshore installations around the world to say that everybody's
going to be down at that that kind of a price level.