SkySpecs Supports European Wind Growth

Allen and Joel sit down with Michael McQueenie, Head of Sales for
SkySpecs in Europe at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. They discuss the
booming European wind energy market, SkySpecs' role in asset
management, and their expansion into solar farm operations. Sign up
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on
Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast Spotlight. I have Joel Saxum with me. I'm Allen Hall, the
host, and we are here with Michael McQueenie head of sales for
SkySpecs over in Europe. Michael, welcome to the show. 
Michael McQueenie: Thanks for having me.  Allen
Hall: We are at SkySpecs customer Form 2025 and it has been a
blowout event, so many operators from all over learning and
exchanging information about how they operate their assets. We
wanted to have you on today because you're our reference to Europe
and what is happening with SkySpecs in Europe. America and Europe
are on different pathways at the moment. What is that status right
now in Europe? What are people calling you for today?  Michael
McQueenie: the, European market is really booming. we get
calls from customers to support [00:01:00] with internal
inspections, external inspections as we always have for, nearly a
decade now. We are seeing a lot more, discussions around the,
enablement services that we can offer. how did, how do we bring a
blade engineer and how do we bring a CMS engineer into support and
give us, give us more of an insight on the data that we have or, or
the data that Skys fix are producing. things are evolving. and,
it's a buoyant offshore industry at the moment.  Allen
Hall: yeah, there's like thousands of turbines going up right
now. it used to be when you thought of. Deployment. Unlike Germany,
for example, it'd be three turbines on the hillside.  Michael
McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Now we're talking
about in the uk have hundreds of turbines hitting the water.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: And that's
change of scale has driven a lot of operators realize I need
expertise in blades, I need expertise in CMS. I need an expert in
gearbox, but I don't necessarily need them full time.  Michael
McQueenie: Yeah.  Allen Hall: Skys spec. Can you
help me?  Michael McQueenie: the
projects [00:02:00] are, they're fewer projects, but
they're, the scale of these projects are massive. the scale of the
turbine scale of the projects and the impact the projects can have
on, the country, as a whole is, is massive. So yeah, it's, it is a.
It's a, it is a great time to be in Europe and to see the growth.
it's been, coming for a long time. I've worked with consultancies
who are looking at feasibility studies, in offshore, and onshore.
But the, the growth has been. Just, it's just around the corner.
And I do feel like now with some of these big projects that they're
installing, and yeah, just given the size of the turbines, it's
it's massive.  Joel Saxum: one of the things I want to, I
think there's an important context here is that we're talking,
we're sitting in Ann Arbor, right? we're in the us You're over in
Europe. I worked for a Danish company for a while and it was always
like this seven hour delay. Kinda can I get the in, can I get the
support? Can they get the support? Can we work? How do we work back
and forth? Sometimes it was cool because you'd send an email at two
o'clock and when you woke up in the morning [00:03:00] it
was done. That was awesome. But also there was these delays. Now
this is the interesting thing here is, and Skys facts. This morning
we listened to Cheryl. always a great presentation. Yeah. the head
of the TEI blade stuff here. She was delivering some insights, but
with her was Thomas. Thomas is in Europe. And you have CMS experts
in Europe. You have the local talent that's over there that can
work with these operators on their timelines, on their regular day
stuff. They're not waiting as, and what I'm trying to get to is, is
SkySpecs is not a Ann Arbor company. Skyspace is a global company
in a big way. And so this, so thinking like, oh, this is an
American company, w. Will we use someone that's more local no. No.
Skyspace is a local European company as well.  Michael
McQueenie: Yeah, and we've got the SMEs over there. it's not
just Cheryl, who's a fantastic en engineer. Having your at your,
disposal, Thomas is phenomenal. customers are seeing real value in
integrating him into their team, being the
SME [00:04:00] for them, as you, as we said before. Being
able to turn 'em off, on and off as required. Don't, you've not got
that the FTE cost right. to bring in an SME that, that needs to,
support you with a, with an individual component of your, asset.
Yeah. Blades are a huge problem. The industry's seeing that as
they're getting bigger, the problems are getting bigger. but yeah,
having, a local presence in Europe is, massive. my inbox is full
from, all the US. Inquiries and issues, during the night, just like
you're saying. Yeah. And I wake up to dozens of emails with,
requirements on inbox and my to-do list is full. But the, but the
reality is yeah, we're, grown in Europe. we are. Our real solid
presence in Europe and we've, seen massive growth this year. 
Joel Saxum: I think it, it's part of the value chain there.
Touching on the Thomas and Cheryl. Right. So in SkySpecs over this
week, we've been talking more and more about the, how you guys like
to specifically work within a workflow. And that workflow being we
have [00:05:00]inspections, we're in the platform now we're in
horizon, bam. And we can enable the tech enabled services, which is
those SMEs which you have inside. The company and then rolling that
forward to the repair vendor management, which is happening in a
big way in the States. Yesterday I saw a number, $13 million in
repairs managed by the Sky Spec team. That's huge. And, that same
capability. And we're just talking blazes right now, like we
haven't even touched on CMS performance monitoring, financial asset
monitoring. That same concept is, is replica replicate in the EU as
well.  Michael McQueenie: No, it absolutely is, Our
customers have got problems, we can help them with the problems.
Thomas is, as you said, we work in workflows and Thomas is, is
looking to support customers with how they, touch their data as few
times as they possibly can. How do we get from A to B and how does
a customer understand what their problems are and how they fix the
problems? And sometimes an [00:06:00]SME is the, way to fix
that. Thomas has provide, provided huge value to our customers. The
design of workflows in Horizon is the, essence. It exists just to
try and get from A to B and, and try and drive insights and then
next steps. And I think that's the important part, being, this is
the action to  Joel Saxum: get  Michael
McQueenie: to the, we've got the data, we understand what the
data's telling us. here's an insight, but actually what is the
follow up? And, Thomas is designing that follow up for our
customers and providing the support.  Allen Hall: and
just a little bit comparison between the United States and Europe,
when we still talk to anybody in the United States about a turbine.
Almost always, it's a two megawatt, one and a half megawatt
turbine, right? Occasionally a four. Sometimes someone says 
Joel Saxum: yesterday like, oh, that's a three megawatt 
Allen Hall: turbine. Whoa, what's big? And in Europe, three
megawatts was like years ago, particularly offshore that,
everything's 6, 8, 10.  Michael McQueenie: Yeah. 
Allen Hall: Plus  Michael McQueenie: 3.6 was the
common [00:07:00] turbine. Five, eight.  Allen
Hall: Yeah.  Michael McQueenie: Years ago, that was,
what everyone was working on. And, they're a very reliable turbine.
It's, there was a reason why there were so many of them installed
at that time. but nowadays, we're helping OEMs with 50 megawatt
turbines.  Allen Hall: and I think that's the, thing that
we just don't see in the states is a turbine that's 15 megawatts is
down for a day. Is so much more expensive and particularly offshore
and the expenses go astronomical compared to onshore. Yeah, and
Michael, I always see your position of you're there to save.
Millions of pounds or millions, of euros all the time because a
shutdown there is huge.  Joel Saxum: Yeah.  Allen
Hall: And because the grids are changing so much in Europe
where they're becoming more solar and wind dependent and coal is
going to change away. And  Joel Saxum: triage. 
Allen Hall: Yeah. The triage bit, is that the SkySpecs is in
that position to really help a lot our operators out.
You're [00:08:00] providing the insights and the guidance
and the knowledge that. An operator probably doesn't have, because
they don't have the staff to go do it. It's a And can you enlighten
us like what that is because we just don't see a lot of that here.
Michael McQueenie: Yeah. I think there's a good reason you
don't see that this was, we are just providing data to some of
these, transactions. Whether it's a due diligence, inspection, or
an end of warranty. We are just providing the insights for the
customers to. Make their own decisions. Um, so it's not a SkySpecs
decision. We are just providing insights to, to allow them to make
a, smart, educated, data-driven decision.  Joel Saxum: I
think that's important, concept too. 'cause like here,