Vestas Maintains High Prices, Masdar Enters Chinese Market, New Jersey Creates Green Bank, Hellenic Cables Plans Maryland Factory

New Jersey has created the New Jersey Green Bank to support the
state's clean energy projects. Hellenic Cables Americas has been
allocated a $58 million tax credit for its planned cable factory in
Baltimore, Maryland. Vestas decides not to lower prices in order to
turn a profit. Masdar is planning a possible entry into the Chinese
renewable energy market. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech.
And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro,
and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And
this is your NewsFlash. NewsFlash is brought to you by our friends
at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates
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The New Jersey Economic Development Authority Board has created the
New Jersey Green Bank to support the state's clean energy
transition. The Green Bank will use various financial tools such as
debt and credit enhancements to invest and attract private capital
for New Jersey's clean energy sector. The bank will focus on
projects, technologies, and companies that support the state's
climate goals. Particularly in areas like zero emission
transportation, building decarbonization and resiliency, and clean
energy generation and storage like wind energy. Phil, this is
unique for the United States where a separate state has created a
bank to fund renewable projects. Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is
really interesting and compelling that other states have tried
employing other forms of investment vehicles to try and park money
into project development, but this is a pretty unique thing where
they're going to specifically focus on clean energy. And, do it
with it sounds like the help of federal funding that they've been
able to obtain. This is going to be great for offshore wind and
battery storage technology, I think, deployed throughout the state
of New Jersey. All in all I think this is a win. Joel Saxum: Yeah,
I like the in the press conference here, they state each investment
made by the NJGB must demonstrate benefits for New Jersey. Great,
it's their state, it's their money. But, this is the part I like.
It must be new, rather than refinance and reduce greenhouse
combustion greenhouse gas emissions or other pollutants. So it has
to have, measurable effect for helping the climate out. And it must
be new, so it's putting new things out there. And I know like New
Jersey right now is actually pretty heavy on doing quite a few
solar installations as well. A lot of good things coming there. I
would like to see other states put this into place. Allen Hall:
Helena Cable Americas, a subsidiary of Synergy Holdings. has been
allocated a 58 million tax credit for its planned cable factory in,
of all places, Baltimore, Maryland. The company intends to build a
300 FID, that will manufacture subsea and underground cables for
offshore wind and power grid applications. Helena Cable America
successfully applied to the Department of Energy and received an
allocation letter from the IRS granting its request for a
qualifying advanced energy project transferable tax credit, or as
we call it IRA 48C. Now Phil, the IRA 48C, we haven't experienced a
lot of that yet. Helena Cable's is one of the early entries there.
What do you think so far? Philip Totaro: So this is great. And
actually Hellenic wasn't the only company to get this. LS Cable and
System from Korea also got, I think it was 99 million on top of
this. So for both companies, really fantastic news. And the fact
that they're leveraging the 48C, so just to be clear too the 45X
manufacturing tax credits are really geared towards the wind
turbine component of the system. manufacturers. The 48C is
something that technically you can still qualify for if you're a
wind turbine manufacturer, but it's probably more lucrative to go
for the 45X. So it's leaving more 48C funds available for companies
that aren't explicitly manufacturing wind turbine components, but
they are manufacturing something that is going to help facilitate
offshore wind project development like cables, inter array and
export cables. So this is fantastic news for Hellenic. It's
fantastic news for LS Cable and System. And great to see these
companies taking advantage of and the federal government playing
ball and giving them the opportunity to, create jobs and create
factories here in, in the U. S. Joel Saxum: Big focus there, Phil,
I would like to say, in Baltimore, focusing on jobs, right? That
area is, could use some, for sure. An odd twist on this one in the
next eight weeks, they're looking to close on the property
acquisition there on Wagner's Point, because, of course, if you're
an offshore cables facility. You need to be able to pull up cable
vessels to the facility and load the cable onto the vessels and
then go off shore. However, the property that they're looking at is
upstream, behind the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which is currently
In the water. So that may put a little bit of a wrinkle into their
plans. Allen Hall: Vestas will be holding on to recent price gains
rather than passing on savings to customers in order to bolster
earnings. The wind turbine industry is focusing on turning a profit
and not passing on costs cuts to customers as the sector needs to
grow significantly to meet government goals for limiting climate
change. Vestas chairman Andres Runevard states that wind power is
already competitive and cheap enough, so there is no need. Need to
lower prices. Now, despite raising prices, Vestas has had a record
number of new orders last year and with the industry broadly in
recovery, there seems to be a little pressure from competition to
shrink the margins. Rudevide believes that the wind industry should
focus on ensuring that all players behave responsibly as there is
no longer pressure from the competition cost of energy perspective
of fossil fuels. Now, Phil, this is a unique perspective from the
Vestas chairman. Do you think it'll hold, that they can continue to
keep prices up in the long term or short term? Philip Totaro: I
think Anders said the quiet part out loud. Normally you don't tell
people that you're gonna, I keep charging them a high price and
hold on to margins but, good on them if they're able to actually
get away with it. The reality is that even though the Chinese have
put price pressure on the Western OEMs in certain markets in most,
Western markets, certainly the U. S., Western Europe, et cetera
prices have gone up mostly because of, the interest rate and
inflation thing that we've talked about before on the show, but
also raw material costs and the fact that raw material costs are
stabilizing inflation has stabilized now and Project CapEx also is
still right around about 1. million a megawatt at this point on
average. So you're seeing everything get to get to a point where
it's stable. So the fact that Vestas has the opportunity to try and
hold on to a little more margin, great for them. But eventually
they're going to have a margin squeeze put on them by not only
Chinese competitors, but also other Western OEMs. And the
developers are always out to find the best possible deal they can.
So they're going to find ways of leveraging. Whether it's
threatening to, to do businesses with the Chinese OEMs or, some
other mechanism, I'm sure that the developers are going to try and,
claw back some of that some of that margin that Vestas is trying to
hold on to. Joel Saxum: I think in the back of the mind of every
one of these Western OEMs is, when is the next problem going to pop
up? Vestas is not immune from this. A couple years ago, they paid
out hundreds of millions of dollars in on some settlements to
developers based on some issues that the turbines had. You're
seeing Siemens go through it now. GE's had their issues.
Everybody's had their issues at some point in time with serial
defects or some of these other things. If you have the chance to
put a little bit more cash in the coffers just in case something
pops up in the future, my bet would be just to do it. Allen Hall:
Abu Dhabi clean energy company Masdar is planning a possible entry
into China, the world's largest renewable energy market, as part of
its goal to reach a renewable energy capacity of 100 gigawatts by
2030. Masdar's chief operating officer believes that any serious
investor ignoring China is Committing a quote very strategic
mistake master is active in 40 countries and aims to expand its
capacity From about 20 gigawatts currently to at least 100
gigawatts by the end of the decade Phil this has global
implications Masdar is trying to change the world on the way it
operates in regards to energy, operating in the UK, which they are
doing, and operating in China simultaneously has to raise some
concerns, right? Philip Totaro: This is earth shattering news. If
they actually go through with it, keep in mind that right now,
China has something like 38 plus gigawatts of offshore wind already
operational and more to come. And Mazda has obviously been a pretty
big investor in offshore, but also other renewables. Solar wind.
You think about, the solar and energy storage capacity that, that
China's trying to add, that is, that's huge news. This, plus the
other aspect of this,