RWE Suspends US Offshore Work, Spanish Power Blackout

This week we discuss a $5 million investment in a wind worker
training center in Australia, challenges faced by RWE's US offshore
wind projects due to recent policy changes, and the recent power
blackout in Spain. Plus an article from PES Wind Magazine about
cybersecurity in wind energy. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is
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today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro,
and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Down in Victoria,
Australia. They're investing about 5 million Australian dollars to
establish a wind worker training center, which is focused on
developing technical skills for both onshore and offshore wind
energy roles. And the initiative is looking to create a skill
workforce pipeline for all the wind projects that are happening
down in Australia. This is a really unique. Program, uh, Rosemary,
just because Victoria is looking to have about 67,000 workers in
energy by 2040 and they think they need about
4,000, [00:01:00] uh, people to work construction for
onshore wind at about 2,500 data for offshore wind. That's a
sizable number of people, but Victoria is headed towards 95%
renewable generation by 2035. So you're gonna need to build a
workforce pretty quickly. $5 million for a training center is a
good first start. Is it enough though?  Rosemary
Barnes: Yeah, I mean, they need to have a first step I guess.
I mean, not that it's the first step, there's already a lot of, a
lot of workers in the state. Um, but I mean, for sure Victorian
needs more, needs more service technicians and yeah, a bunch of
other, other workers. I mean there's also still a lot of new wind
farms being built, so there's that as well. It's also not just
Victoria, you know, all around. Um, there was quite a lot of going
on in Queensland, although the future plans have, I think been, um.
Uh, toned down a lot because the government changed. Um, south
Australia also has, uh, still got, oh, it's got a lot of wind,
already got a lot of plans to build [00:02:00] more. Um,
and yeah, there's new renewable energy zones that are, you know,
hopefully coming on, maybe even offshore wind starting in the next
five years or so. So yeah, if you want to, you know, suddenly
expand your industry, then you do need to think a few years ahead.
Um, otherwise you're gonna end up. With a big, a big crunch.
Everyone wanting to build a project at the same time. And also, you
know, a lot of wind farms. Uh. Getting past that first, you know,
like the first few years where not too much maintenance is needed.
Um, there's a lot more things that can go wrong in the, you know,
middle to end of a wind farm's life. And we're seeing a lot of
that, especially in Victoria where they had most of the early wind
farms in Australia. So I definitely think it's timely and uh,
hopefully this one's successful. And, uh, yeah, we've got an
election coming up. Probably will have already happened by the time
this episode's released. We've got a federal election. There has
not been a whole lot of talk about renewable energy actually. Um,
and especially the jobs that are created by Renewal Energy,
especially wind, you know, like it's a, it's
a [00:03:00] downside of the technology that it needs
maintenance, but it's a real upside in terms of that, you know, a
lot of maintenance means a lot of maintenance jobs, and these are
good jobs. I hope that, yeah, by the time we have our next
election, people can, um, be talking a bit more about what we need
to really turbocharge the, um, rollout of renewables in Australia.
This will be a good  Joel Saxum: first step. I think
there's a couple interesting things about, interesting things about
that is right before we went down to Wind Australia, we were
talking to a lot of people involved in that industry and uh, I did
talk with an ISP that was a part of this. They were, uh, advising,
kind of like partnering with the university that's putting this
thing together because they noticed a, a gap, right? And one of the
gaps when we talking, like again, talking with some of the people
down there was. Uh, they want a workforce, right? They want people
in there, so, but you need people to transition over from other
jobs or come in because it's hard to have, because of local content
laws, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Rosemary, you can't really,
or [00:04:00] it's a lot easier to use local talent than
it is to bring other people in. You can't really just rely on a, a
migrant workforce or, you know, you can't bring people in from
Europe every year to do all the maintenance. You really kind of
need to have that local talent.  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I
mean, I don't think that Australia has particularly strong, um, we
don't have many local content laws at all. Um, but then in terms
of. Labor. Yeah. Like most countries, you just, not just anybody
can come in and just start working in Australia, you need
permission. And, um, you know, there's caps on the, the number of
visas of that kind that are allowed. Definitely. Um, there are
people coming over from Europe constantly to work here. It's a
long, it's a long way. Um, I don't think that it's so much about
the laws in Australia being unusual as it is just that sheer number
of people that are needed and the logistics of actually getting.
Enough people to make a meaningful difference. Um, coming over from
Europe, I, I mean, think about it. Would you want to
go [00:05:00] somewhere, um, for three months away from,
you know, your family and, uh, friends and act activities, anything
like that? Definitely in the longer term, much better too. Um,
yeah, develop, develop the workforce. And I mean, as much as, you
know, I, I love that the, um, wages are high in, in the industry
because, you know, I'm in the industry and I enjoy that. But, uh,
if we have a lot more workers, like enough workers, then the prices
will start to go down a bit more. And like the cost of labor, I. Is
a big thing in, um, you know, how much wind farms are spending, are
maintaining, uh, operating and maintaining their wind farms is, you
know, like it's a lot more than it is in other countries. And I
think that a lot of that is because of the high cost of labor here
for, for that specific type of role. But I mean, that also does
mean that right now, like if you get in early, that's a, a really,
really great industry to move into because you're probably going
to. More, it's very satisfying work as well. You, you know, like
it's, it's really good to, you know, there's a wind tur, a wind
turbine, [00:06:00] it was offline because, you know,
something was wrong and hey, I helped fix it. And now it's online
generating clean electricity. That's, I find that incredibly
satisfying to be part of that. It's really, you know, tangible
things. So I'm hopeful that, um, yeah, more training centers like
this that we will start to see the workforce expand, uh, quite
quickly.  Allen Hall: If you haven't opened the recent
edition of PES Win, you need to do that. You can visit ps win.com
and download the uh, the. Electronic version of the magazine or you
can put in a request, again a paper copy and you will want to get
that paper copy 'cause it is an elegant magazine full of
information. So this quarter there's an article from Cyber G and
Joel and I have been talking about cybersecurity to a lot of
operators all over the world. It is a huge topic right now and uh,
in that article it does go on to say like, 1% of the win assets
have. Adequate cybersecurity protection. And Joel, there are days
that question [00:07:00] that's even 1% on some of the
farms we've been around. And the SCADA systems are the open door,
uh, that needs to be closed. There's a lot going on in Europe, much
more in Europe than there is in the United States. The European
Union has that network and information system directive two, NIST
two. You hear people say, NIST two, I need a NIST two. Uh, that
requires that they have reports, cybersecurity incidents. Have some
transparency on what's happening. They actually can deal with it.
Uh, this cyber energy article is good and another alarm to the
industry, like, Hey, in times when things get a little slow. We
gotta clean up and, and take care of the, of some of these entry
points into these turbines and these wind  Joel
Saxum: farms. Well, I think that you like, like anything, you
follow the money, right? And if you watch the insurance markets,
you're starting to see cyber, cyber attack, cyber security
insurance being a new product that's coming into almost all of
these brokers. So that's the thing that's happening. It's a known
issue. Right. I [00:08:00] wanna highlight one of the
projects that's being done here in the United States is there is a
bank of turbines. If you have a product or a solution that you want
to test for cybersecurity, and they're testing SCADA systems, it's
in involved with one of the, uh, national labs. Very cool project.
Just get a hold of Alan and I, we can give you some details on
that. Um, but yeah, I mean, as cybersecurity goes, you're seeing
Europe, they're on the, you know, there. There's a, there's a
conflict happening right out their back door. So this may hit a
little bit closer to home to them, but we've had things hit our,
our grid as well here in the states in the last few years. So, um,
if you haven't addressed some of these things, I think it's,