Vattenfall Ad, NextEra’s US Wind Strategy

The crew discusses Vattenfall's ad featuring Samuel L. Jackson and
explore NextEra Energy's strategies amid regulatory changes. They
also highlight the importance of inspections and CMS and Rosemary's
takeaway from an Australian wind conference. 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 Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS
retrofit. Follow the show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Speaker: [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 Saxu,, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. 
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast from the
Queen City, Charlotte. North Carolina. I have Phil Totaro in
California, Joel Saxum's back in Texas, and Rosemary Barnes is here
from the great country of Australia where Joel and Rosemary, along
with Matthew Stead, will be rolling along the countryside visiting
with. Wind turbine operators here soon, right Speaker 3: Yeah,
so the, the 11th through the 14th, uh, we're gonna be jumping down
to Melbourne because of course that's, that's wind central for
operators and, uh, ISPs in Australia. And we're gonna be talking
about all kinds of stuff with, uh, anybody that listen to us talk.
So if you're listening here, uh, and you're
in [00:01:00] Australia, connect up, uh, joel.saxo at uh,
wg lightning.com. Uh, we'll get some meetings set 'cause we want
to, we want to hear what issues are happening down there, right?
What can we help with? What can we solve? Of course, Alan and I on
the lightning side here, Rosemary is an independent expert engineer
for you name it, in turbines. Uh, and our friend Matthew Stat over
at iLogic Ping in the CMS space. And amongst the three of us, we
also have a huge network, right? So if we're, if we're, if we
getting into conversation, getting a chance to chat, tell us what.
You got for problems and we'll help you solve 'em. So we'll be down
there the 11th or the 14th of August. Uh, reach out.  Speaker
2: Yeah, so there's a lot happening in Australia at the
minute. It's starting to come out a winter, getting into blade
repair season that is, uh, about to fire up in Australia. A lot
going on around the world. And today is Wednesday when we're
recording. And this is the day where Vattenfall released their
Samuel L. Jackson. Add, it's about a minute
long [00:02:00] and you see Samuel L out on the shoreline
with a bag of what? Seaweed chips. Joel, is that what they are? Or
crackers of some sort?  Speaker 3: Yeah, a hundred
percent. I gotta be, I'll be a little bit, little honest with you.
I had some of those, not the same ones, not the Vattenfall ones,
but I had some the other day just to try 'em out. They're not my
flavor. I'm gonna be honest with you. Don't they just taste like
sea salt? They taste like seaweed.  Speaker 2: That's
what it is.  Speaker 3: I know, but they're, they're not
that awesome.  Speaker 2: But these, uh, crackers were
the output of the seaweed and all the things growing around the
offshore wind turbines. I, I assume it's just seaweed, right, Joel?
It's not anything else but seaweed. There's no fish involved in
that. It's kelp. But see, like kelp, so  Speaker 3: like
offshore kelp farming is a complete industry. Right. It's just like
offshore fish farming. They put these lines out, it grows on the
lines, and then they pull it in and they harvest it. This is a
regular thing, however, having infrastructure out in the water, IE
turbine foundations helps with all of these things. It's structure
there that protects 'em from, um, [00:03:00] currents and
it, and it's also things to hook lines too. So there's a. There's a
symbiosis of offshore wind farms and the kelp farming community,
and they're showcasing this in the VA Vattenfall ad, kind of
showing the value add of turbines of outside of all of the
decarbonization of the grid and things we're doing for renewable
energies. There's also things in the, uh, blue economy, blue
economy is the term for like ocean.  Speaker 2: There was
a lot blue with that ad and it had nothing to do with the ocean. We
just played it for rosemary, the unedited version or the un bleep
version. Rosemary, what did you think of that ad?  Speaker
4: I really liked the video and what made, what was most
amusing to me was imagining the pitch meeting at, you know, like a,
some boardroom in Sweden. Somebody had to pitch that video. Not
only selecting Samuel Jackson, I, it's not, doesn't immediately
come to mind when I think of wind energy and yeah, I mean, people
will have to watch a video for themselves to see why I think that's
so funny. But definitely well [00:04:00] worth that
minute or so of your life that that will take up. Speaker
2: Well, is it, is it something that American Clean power
should have done about six weeks ago? I just thought it was odd
that Vattenfall was the one to pick up the baton and run with it
instead of who, who we would normally think as being the thought
leader in the United States. American clean power.  Speaker
3: I was thinking about a CP back when that was happening, and
I, and I thought, what, what's, what's their response gonna be? And
their response was, we put out a statement. Okay. What does that
do? Like, what's the point here? Like you're putting out a
statement like, I, I don't know. What's that gonna accomplish? What
are you gonna do with this? What is the action out of it? What is
the, where are you, uh, standing up on a soapbox or like trying to
get something changed? Like, it, it does nothing for me. 
Speaker 4: Yeah. I, I imagine a CP would be too worried about
offending somebody with that ad. I, I would find it actually more
surprising to come from them than, than from Sweden or, um, yeah,
any other country. [00:05:00] But also, I don't know, I
don't, uh, I don't see a lot of impact from a CP and maybe it's
just, you know, obviously they're not my organization. I'm not, I'm
not in the us I'm not doing a lot of work in the US so, um, I'm
probably out of the loop. But, you know, the events don't seem
particularly, uh, I don't know, I don't come away energized like I
do when I go to a lot of European events and our own events that we
do in, in Melbourne. I was also at another really great one in
Australia last week, uh, about renewables and agriculture, and that
was fantastically energizing with a totally, uh, diverse group of
people from all kinds of backgrounds, sharing ideas and actually,
um, you know, like raising problems that need to be solved and
figuring out the ideas to do it. People sharing success stories. It
was, you know, like a, it was a conference that is. Like, that's
the reason why conferences should exist for that sort of thing. I
met so many interesting people, some of [00:06:00] who I
really want to get on the show to talk about things like, you know,
what's it actually like to have a wind farm built in, um, built
through your property or transmission. Um, and then yeah, as well
as. You know, there was a dairy farmer who had a couple of micro
wind turbines on her site, uh, for example, along with lots of
people with solar power and batteries. And, um, yeah, I even
visited a, a piggery that's got biogas recovery and, uh, using that
to power the, um, the pig sheds. So it's kind of like circular. Um,
so much cool  Speaker 3: stuff there. Did you refer to
the pig farm as a piggery?  Speaker 4: Yeah. 
Speaker 3: I wanna make sure I got that correct.  Speaker
4: Is it  Speaker 3: what, not what do you call pig
farms? What do you call pig farms? Pig farm. That you bring up. A
good point there, because this, this happens to us in the states
sometimes, like if you go to the same conferences, for the most
part you see the same people at the same conferences. You have a
lot of the same conversations. It's of course great to catch up.
I'm talking, I'm talking from the. From, you know, the, the, the,
the commercial role. It's of course great [00:07:00] to
catch up with people and have touch points and have your meetings
'cause everybody's in the same spot. But it's pretty rare anymore,
like say in the wind industry, at least in the United States, that
you go to an event and you leave there and you're like, oh, I got
all these. These new people to talk to and I got all this new
information and like this new technology, this new innovation, like
that doesn't happen that much. But I will, I'm gonna go back to
what you said. When I go to win Europe and when I go to Hamburg,
like I do leave those events feeling a little bit more like that
because more it seems like more things, new people, new ideas,
different ideas, different people. Um, I don't know. I, I mean,
Alan, do you feel the same way?  Speaker 2: I enjoyed the
event up in Canada. I went about a year and a half ago, just
because it was different. New people, new concepts, new ideas,
different approaches. Hamburg was the same way. And the Australia
event was very similar to that, just really different approaches to
a difficult problem as an engineer. I love to hear that. And
Rosemary, [00:08:00] I know you like to pick up all those
new technology pieces. Was there anything good on the technology
front at that conference?  Speaker 4: Uh, there wasn't so
much, uh, like new technology, but people using technology
definitely. And just some, um, like annoying obstacles to using it
well, but the most interesting thing for me and what I think that
other. Conferences can learn from. It's like you,