Indian Domestic Wind Regulation, German Offshore Bid

Allen, Joel and Phil discuss Germany's failed offshore wind
auction, India's new regulations for domestic wind turbine
components, and the need for renewable energy in the US to meet AI
data center demands. They also highlight Ohio's efforts to plug
abandoned oil and gas wells and feature Quebec's Rivière-du-Moulin
as the Wind Farm of the Week. 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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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: Well, welcome to the
Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Allen Hall from the Queen City,
Charlotte, North Carolina. Joel Saxum is down in Texas, and Phil
Totaro of IntelStor is in Cali. Phil, you had a tsunami alert just
recently. Did you see any waves in your neighborhood?  Phil
Totaro: No 'cause it didn't actually amount to anything. And
that's good, right?  Phil Totaro: It it, have you had
tsunami warnings like that in the past? Y yes. And actually more
serious ones from earthquakes that are smaller than the 8.8 that
was in Russia that caused this one. [00:01:00] Um, but
we've had earthquakes off the coast of. California where, you know,
they're like four point something or five something, and that
actually triggers a tsunami warning that's potentially more serious
because of the close proximity. Uh, so we actually developed, uh,
in California an early detection and warning system that is
triggered, um, you know, mobile phone, uh, alerts and updates based
on the, the detection of the P waves from an earthquake. 
Allen Hall: What's a P wave? Joel Saxum: P Wave is down,
ShearWave is left and right. So sheer wave would be moving this
way. P wave would be moving up and down.  Phil
Totaro: The P waves, um, are the first indication on, you
know, like for the US geological survey, they've got those things
that, you know, monitor the, the, um, vibration of the earth or
whatever it is that they're monitoring. Um, a P wave will be the
first thing triggered when there's an actual earthquake.
[00:02:00] That's the thing that happens fast, like super
fast, and they can detect it. Anyway, so we've de we've developed
an early warning system when, when we have issues and inclusive of,
uh, you know, tsunami warnings. But I'm, I'm kind of, you know, 300
feet up, so I have less to worry about.  Allen Hall: It's
a good place to be. Well, there's some offshore warnings off the
coast of Germany because, uh, they held their latest offshore wind
auction. And it was for about two and a half gigawatts of capacity
in about 180 square kilometers of water. And they didn't have any
bidders at all. Zero bidders and the industry from wind Europe to
the, uh, German Offshore Wind Association or, or saying like, yeah,
no one's gonna bid on these things because there's too much risk
and there's negative bidding, quote unquote negative bidding, which
means that you have to. Pay money for the
rights [00:03:00] to build out the wind farm and
everybody in at least Germany. And when Europe is saying that CFD
contract for difference is, is the way to go. And until Germany
switches over to a CFD model, you're gonna continue to have no
bidders. Now Phil, this is a big problem because Germany is
planning to develop a, a. Significant amount of offshore wind
gigawatts worth many gigawatts worth by 2030. Is there gonna be a
change into the German auction system? Will they move to A 
Phil Totaro: CFD? We certainly hope so, because what they've
been doing up to this point with, you know, trying to attract like
zero subsidy bids is clearly not working. Germany's economy
minister, uh, came out after the, the auction result and said, um,
well, we'll have to look at this and why that happened. Um, you
know, were the designed areas actually appropriate and did we.
Consider the potential risks for [00:04:00] developers?
Were they underestimated? Um, well, yes, they were, uh, first of
all, and there was nothing wrong with the design areas of the, you
know, the 10.1 and 10.2 that they were trying to auction off. It's
the fact that. You know, in a high interest rate environment,
nobody's gonna wanna make, uh, a zero subsidy bid on something
where they're not gonna necessarily be guaranteed the, the PPA that
they need. Um, and when you're not willing to, to guarantee them
the PPA in advance of the auction, that's, that's one part of it.
Um, the other part is that, you know, with uncertainty and, and
risk associated with, um, you know. Access to supply chain
components and things like that. Um, you know, you've got countries
like Germany and the EU in general saying that they wanna wean
themselves off of China and, and Chinese parts. Well, good luck
with that, first of all. Second, second. If you're gonna
domesticate everything that's [00:05:00]necessarily gonna
raise the cost. So you've gotta be in a position to, you know,
accept, uh, a higher price and, and give, you know, if you're the
government, you have to be able to give some kind of
certainty.  Joel Saxum: I'd love for someone from, from
that, uh, how do I say this? Like, not organization, but from that
area, from who's been involved in this to reach out to the podcast.
'cause uh, what I'd like to be a fly on the wall. 'cause this is
what I don't understand, Germany. Big wind market onshore, big wind
market, offshore, large player, and wind in general, right? Big
companies over there. We got RWE over there. That has done a lot of
offshore things like where was the consultation between the
government and trade groups, organizations, because you know, like
there should be a feedback mechanism in the early stages of
planning this that says, Hey, potential suitors, what do you think
about this process? Will it work? And I have to imagine that they
all emailed back and said. This isn't gonna work for me. Um, I
don't know though. Right? So I'd love to hear from someone involved
in that process to be able to kind of share
with [00:06:00] us this is how it went, because we've
watched it happen now time and time again. There was another one of
these not too long ago, Denmark had the one that was, had basically
zero subscribers, right? So, hey, governments, uh, you have a great
trade organization over there. Wind Europe, you have, um, a lot of
players local to you. It's not like you're trying to figure this
out, uh, blindly. Why not  Allen Hall: collaborate? Oh
yeah, that's totally true. We had just had MAD and Andres Nash on,
uh, who were talking about the Nord project up in Norway, and
that's going through a bidding process sort of starting now. It's
in September. It really gets serious. But even there, there's a
significant number of changes that are happening in companies that
are dropping out because they're raising the stakes and trying to
get companies that have a lot of offshore wind experience and not.
Bring somebody new into the game where they were gonna make
mistakes. They, they figure if you have developed a, was it 200
megawatts or 500 megawatts [00:07:00] Joel Offshore
already? It was some significant number. I think it was 500. 
Phil Totaro: I mean, if, if there was any way that they could
try and like, make this about like, we only wanna work with eor.
Like that's basically what they're trying to do. I mean, like, I
mean, you know, I mean, yeah, sure. But like if Simply Blue Group
comes in there and says that they wanna be able to develop if Stat
Craft who had previously been involved in that, was in there and
then pulled out because they weren't getting the, the, you know,
guarantees from the Norwegian government either. I mean, this is,
this is kind of the, the systematic. Uh, issue within Europe at the
moment anyway, because they're the ones talking about, well, we
wanna wean ourselves off of Russian gas. Well then do it. Like,
don't sit there and say, you can only do it if you're doing it
with, you know, 18,000 criteria in place. Like, make it easy for
the developers. Um, the money will flow, like investors will want
to plow money into, you know, the development of
these [00:08:00]projects, but get outta your own way and, and
make it happen.  Joel Saxum: It's kind of reminiscent to
me. I guess this is for our US listeners. I was reading an article
today about the, the, uh, no offense Phil, but the flight out of
California. It was the amount of people leaving there and there,
and it was a, it was a, it was a, uh, letter written from a CEO of
a development company that was saying basically like. It's the
hardest place in the United States to do business, and businesses
are leaving in droves. People are leaving in droves. It's like last
year, 920,000 people left the state of California like a net loss.
Wow. Yeah. It was crazy. Like there's 52, 50 5 million people
there. But to lose. Basically 2% of your population in one year.
That's crazy. But the reason being is, is it's the hardest place to
do business in the United States. There's barriers all the time.
There's, there's permitting issues, there's this, there's that. For
real estate development companies, taxes, all this stuff that makes
things difficult. Taxes is a big one. Right. But, but that's what
this, that's what this to me looks like over in the, the EU right
now is like you're making it difficult for people
to [00:09:00] do. And no wonder why people don't want to
do it.