Wind Operations is Changing Across the US

Allen and Yolanda discuss operational shifts driven by the IRA
bill, focusing on the importance of long-term operational
strategies, collaboration, and advanced monitoring solutions. Sign
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wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape
Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show
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Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening
to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build
turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy
Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here's your hosts,
Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. 
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm
your host, Allen Hall in the Queen city of Charlotte, North
Carolina, and I have. Yolanda Padron in Austin, Texas, and Yolanda
has been out at a site in West Texas last several days working out
some strike tape installations because the, the blade season of
Texas is so long and the repair season is so long. Everybody's
really making work and, and maybe even spending a little more money
than they thought they were gonna spend this year. Just to get
their turbines righted because it is for us at Weather Guard, it's
still lightning season. There are a lot of storms and the
amount [00:01:00] of rain in West Texas is crazy. Flooded
roads, uh, on highways still days after rainstorms. That tells you
that the amount of rain. It has been a little bit of an unusual
year on the, on the wind production side because of the weather.
Right?  Yolanda Padron: Yeah. It's, it's been high
production for, for a lot of the, that area. It's definitely, it's,
you start getting all of those drone inspections in and everything.
Sometimes I think it's, it's worked out pretty great for some of
the operators that maybe didn't have a lot of, uh, planning
capabilities in the past. So then they're able to come in and
actually. Books, some teams to do work even, even though the
traditional blade season has passed.  Allen Hall: Oh
yeah. Is there gonna be a traditional blade season from here on
out? And I think this is where a lot of operators are rethinking,
uh, the changes to the IRA bill and the one big beautiful bill
aspects is, you know, with the, with the production tax credits
sort of waning and, and [00:02:00] wrapping up. They are
going to be putting more emphasis on o and m. And in fact, when we
were at Skys specs forums, and I keep bringing this up 'cause it's
such a monumental thing that we were at in Ann Arbor a couple weeks
ago. The emphasis has moved from definitely from development to
more of operations. But the, the level of complexity there has
changed. Even talking to operators today, and you and I talked to
what, 3, 4, 5 different operators in one day. CMS is huge. You,
you're seeing a, just a complete flip on CMS. Everybody's willing
to try something, which is unique, right?  Yolanda
Padron: Yeah. I think nobody loves being a Guinea pig, right?
Nobody likes staying behind either. And especially now that you
really do need to make sure these blades don't just last you 10
years before you can repower. They, the team seem to really be
focusing a lot more on long-term solutions rather than short term
solutions. So it be that, you know, installing Light Lightning
diverters be [00:03:00] that installing even just a, a
long-term leading edge protection solution instead of a short-term
one teams, she seemed to be really looking into. What the overall
opex impact is going to be in the very long term for as long as
they can keep the site on, as long as they can keep the permits in,
instead of having it be something where you can keep the cost low,
low, low, low, low, and then you get another investment and you can
repower, and then just keep the cost low, low, low, low, and barely
keep the site running. Allen Hall: We were one of the sites
that had probably one of the highest production in, in terms of
this particular operator's fleet, and, and you could actually see
that when you were there. But it does come with a consequence,
right? Is that when you run turbines as much as you can possibly
maintain them, there is some wear and tear that will happen because
of the rougher environments that they're in. So in order to get
that increased capacity factor. You're gonna have some issues you
need to be thinking a little bit broader on. And right now, just
because we've talked to so many [00:04:00] operators
recently, I, I, what are you hearing for like the top three? What
are, what are the top three things that operators are doing right
now or going after and what should they be doing? Yolanda
Padron: I think something that the operator operators seem to
be looking into right now. Mainly what are the main issues that's
going on at my site, you know, and how can I quantify them? How can
I make sure that whatever impact they have, I can get rid of it now
or as soon as possible. Um, they're really looking into like what
the ROI of a specific solution is. Um, it like the short-term ROI
of a specific solution and the long-term ROI, I think. We were
talking about this the other day, right? And having how sometimes
you, the pendulum swings a little more towards the financial right.
And sometimes the pendulum swings a little bit more towards the
engineering. And I think right now we're, it seems like we're being
caught in a, in a very strange place where [00:05:00] a
lot of the, the engineering emphasis that maybe wasn't there as
much in the past is starting to, to ramp up a little, because you,
you need to have that. Information to be able to back up your, your
financial, uh, decisions. Allen Hall: Yeah. The, the business
case is being made more and more by engineering and maybe
engineering, just getting smarter about it for the longest time.
Engineers in wind, in my opinion. Just watch it get from the
outside. Would say, technically we need to fix these blades, or
technically we need to go after these gear boxes. Or technically we
need to look at these aspects of the generators or inverters,
whatever the, whatever the case may be for a particular site.
Transformers, yeah, it's another one. But all of them were more of
a technical thing like, yeah, we're not really getting our maximum
out of this piece of equipment and here's how we make it better.
And the asset managers would really look at that a little. Sideways
and say, well, okay, all that's great technically, but what does it
mean to me dollar wise? Now, it seems [00:06:00] like
there's a a lot more asset managers listening to engineering and
engineering, translating technical speak into dollars. And I see
the pendulum really swinging it back where the asset manager, which
do still control the purse strings and rightly so, 'cause engineers
are not the best place for that. However, do, do you, don't you see
that kind of shift to engineering having to look at the numbers and
are starting to get the numbers from a variety of sources because
they have more data to put together a business case and say, yes,
if I spend a hundred thousand here, I'm gonna keep a million later.
That's a pretty good business case.  Yolanda
Padron: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we mentioned
that there's been a lot of layoffs everywhere. We've had a lot of
cutting of engineering teams, so you have these people. Who have to
really maximize the resources that they have and the time that they
invest in specific issues. Right? So if I have a hundred million
dollars issue here and a [00:07:00] $5 million solution
here, and then I have a. $1 million issue here with a $1 million
solution over here, I'm going to start focusing on that $5 million
solution.  Allen Hall: Yeah. Because it really comes down
to production at the end of the day. Uh, I know we don't like to
think of it that way, but tournaments need to run. They need to run
as long as they can and be as efficient as they can. So you're
right. I think you think we're seeing a huge shift in, in that
aspect. Here's, here's what I see in terms of. Where everybody is
putting emphasis and we could tell, 'cause we do talk to the people
who sell products in these areas. Leading edge erosion, a lot of
leading edge erosion salespeople going around the United States at
the minute, I assume worldwide and offering their solutions and,
and right now, Yolanda, I mean you see all this, what are your top
two or three leading edge solutions that you're hearing
about?  Yolanda Padron: I think the top solutions I'm
hearing of onshore are the L Polytech [00:08:00] tape or
role, uh, the Armor Edge, uh, and Han Tech Technos, the Pan on
Solutions. Allen Hall: Yeah, the Pan on Solutions seems to be
the incumbent in, in ec uh, having more distribution this year
through soccer More. Making great strides there. Uh, the, the
shells, uh, are always, especially offshore, but onshore, they're,
they're tending to get a little more traction than they have. And
then the LI, I've run into a number of operators this year that
were putting on the L from Polytech Tape, which is sort of a.
Onshore solution, uh, to erosion A lot of times in the states where
there's dirt and debris around farms where it can be a little bit
rough. Those three, all of those, so far I've heard, I've heard
really good things from  Yolanda Padron: no, I've, I've
heard things as, I've heard great things as well about those. I've
seen great things in the field. It, I've [00:09:00] seen,
uh. People within the field really leaning towards one or the other
depending on what exactly is in their farm. So a lot of these wind
farms have have crop dusting right around there because.