The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

• ONYX Insight Acquires ELEVEN-I

  ONYX Insight has acquired UK-based ELEVEN-I, a company that specializes in advanced blade monitoring technology. The acquisition shows the wind industry's move towards supporting companies that can prevent expensive turbine breakdowns. 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! Twenty twenty-five has been a record-breaker for energy deals - over four hundred billion dollars in acquisitions, the highest in three years. But buried in all those massive oil and gas mergers is a quieter revolution happening in the wind fields of the world. It started in March last year when Macquarie Capital, the Australian investment giant, made a move that sent ripples through the wind industry. They acquired Onyx Insight, a British company that had been quietly revolutionizing how wind turbines are monitored. Onyx wasn't just another tech startup - they were monitoring seventeen thousand turbines across thirty countries, serving seven of the world's top ten wind operators. Macquarie knew what they were buying. This wasn't just about the technology - it was about the data. In the wind business, data is the new oil, and Onyx had been collecting it from turbines spinning from Texas to Tasmania. But Macquarie wasn't finished. A few days ago, Onyx announced they had acquired Eleven-i, a smaller British firm run by Bill Slatter. While Onyx could monitor most parts of a wind turbine, they had a critical blind spot: the blades themselves. Slatter had spent six years perfecting sensors that could detect blade problems weeks before they became catastrophes. His technology had successfully spotted a crack smaller than one meter, three weeks before the most sophisticated drones could see it. In an industry where a single blade failure can cost millions and shut down entire wind farms, that's pure gold. Here's what they don't tell you about the wind industry: it's not just about building bigger turbines anymore. As these giants grow longer than football fields and taller than skyscrapers, they're failing in ways nobody anticipated. Blade detachment, tower collapse, catastrophic gearbox failures - the list goes on. The smart money - and we're talking about some of the biggest infrastructure funds in the world - has figured out that the real value isn't in building more turbines. It's in keeping the ones already spinning from falling apart. The math is simple: artificial intelligence and data centers are driving electricity demand through the roof. The U.S. could see data centers consuming twelve percent of all electricity by twenty twenty-eight. That's staggering demand that can't wait for new power plants to be built. So investors are swarming companies that can squeeze more power out of existing infrastructure. Onyx, with its Macquarie backing, can now offer wind farm operators something they've never had: a complete picture of their turbine's health from the foundation to the blade tips. The Eleven-i acquisition fits perfectly into Macquarie's broader energy strategy. They've been on a buying spree - solar developers, waste management companies, renewable energy platforms. In Australia alone, they've completed sixty-five acquisitions across the energy sector. But here's the bigger picture: the wind industry is consolidating at breakneck speed. Just like oil and gas, where the top fifty companies have been whittled down to forty through mega-mergers, renewable energy is heading the same direction. The survivors won't be the companies that build the most turbines. They'll be the ones that can keep them spinning reliably for twenty, thirty,

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• We4Ce & CNC Onsite’s Re-FIT Blade Root Repair Goes Global

  Edo Kuipers from We4Ce and Søren Kellenberger from CNC Onsite discuss their Re-FIT blade root repair solution, which has been successfully implemented at a wind farm in Southeast Asia. The solution allows operators to keep blades onsite while repairing critical blade root bushing failures. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Ed0o and Soren, welcome to the program.  Edo Kuipers: Thank you very much. Thank you both. Allen Hall: We have some really exciting news from you, from the field, but first I, I want to start with the problem, which. A lot of operators have right now, which is this blade root, bushing it in or insert issue, which is really critical to blades and you're the creator of the device that's gonna save a lot of blades. You want to talk about what happens? When these blade root bushings fail?  Edo Kuipers: Uh, yeah. What we have seen is that it especially concerns, um, uh, polyester type of blades. And what we see is that, um, bushings and, and, and composites, they are not attached to each other anymore. And after a [00:01:00] while, blades are simply flying off. That's the, that's the whole, that's the whole problem. Of course. And now going back to the root cause, the root cause here is we are working with, with foes and. The fact is that if you're working with polyesters, they already have, um, at the, uh, uh, during the process, the curing process, they have already curing shrinkages. So we have already curing shrinkages, which means we have already initial micro flagging going on, on the interface between the bushing and, and, and, and the limited around it. And that reduces, that reduces the um, surface. Carrying area. And by doing so, because we have less area, surface area that can transfer the loads from the hub, um, from the blades to the hub, eh, we have limited amount of, of years on running. So we are reducing, uh, the, the amount of years [00:02:00] that the blades are on the, on the, on the turbine safely.  Joel Saxum: This problem is compounding right now simply because there's a lot of the global wind turbine fleet that's starting to age. Right. Like we, we, we went through a big push in, you know, the early two thousands, 2000 tens, 2000 twenties to now where, you know, if you look at the country of Spain, we hear that regularly, Alan is, Hey, we're getting to the end of life. We're close to the end of life. Then there's people saying, what is the remaining useful life? Where are we at? Um, and this is one of those issues where. It can develop rapidly, right? So if there's an issue, you can, if you catch it in time, great. You're good. But it can develop rapidly and that can lead to catastrophic losses. But I guess my, one of the questions I want to ask you, and you guys of course have done some commercial here. Uh, how many turbines do you think are affected by this globally affected by this root bushing issues?  Edo Kuipers: Oh, that's a good one. If I, if I talk a number of blades at the moment, we are more or less at a ball point figure about 30, [00:03:00] 40,000. Blades. Wow. Worldwide. So we see many us, we see many in South America and we see also in Southeast Asia, like India. And those blades are running, let's say from 10 years, 12 years, and some of them also after six years,  Allen Hall: and a lot of manufacturing. Uh, blades happens in multiple sites, right? So if you have a particular OEM wind turbine,

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• Taiwan Offshore Cable Damage & Japan’s Floating Wind Center

  The crew discusses Husum Wind, Arthwind's blade consulting work featured in PES Wind, and a major cable damage incident at Taiwan's Greater Changhua offshore wind project. They also cover Japan's plans for a national floating wind test center, Australia's offshore wind development struggles, and feature Scotland's Moray West wind farm 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 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 Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with Joel Saxum up in the great state of Wisconsin. Phil Totaro is in California, and Rosemary Barnes is here, but she's in a vehicle in Australia somewhere. But there has been a tremendous amount of news over the last couple of days, and I think we should talk about some of them. Uh, I guess it's, it's a where the group would like to go. This week, guys, you know, we've been talking about the administration for the last several weeks and about administration out, uh, the latest is with, uh, the administration in [00:01:00]court about Empire Wind. Do you want to even talk about that stuff this week or do you wanna move on to some things? A little happier? Let's do happier. Alan. I think we should, we need some different news. I feel the same way, Joel, you know, uh, when this podcast comes out, everybody's, everybody's gonna be in Husam, Germany having a great time, uh, talking wind energy, particularly in Europe. And it sounds like that event is gonna be bonkers from what I can tell on LinkedIn.  Joel Saxum: Yeah. The, I mean, HU is only second to Hamburg right in, in Germany there. Everybody that I go, they enjoy it. Husam is like the, the. Correct me if I'm wrong, Phil, but I think it was like the first place they had onshore wind in a big way in Germany. Phil Totaro: Yes. So it's vestus, um, put up a factory there, uh, and was selling wind turbines to farmers. It's also where they used to do, the reason that it's there is they used to do an agriculture. Um, event and then they used to invite some of the wind guys. This is going back to like the, you know, late eighties, early nineties. [00:02:00] They used to invite the wind guys, or the wind guys used to show up to try and sell turbines at this agriculture event. The amount of people interested in wind got to such an extent that they started doing a separate wind event. Um, and it got. Before they started the separation with the, the Wind Energy Hamburg, um, event, they, uh, that got to a point, I mean, I remember being there in what, 2015 or 2016 when it had to have been. 30,000 people in a field in Huso. You know, I, my best memory of it, I think was when, uh, well it was eon at the time, but, uh, they had a guy running around, passing out hot dogs. And I had a eon hotdog.  Joel Saxum: Phil, I wanted to share with you. This was a Deutsche Wind Technique show, San Antonio a CP. They had margaritas with the Deutsche Wind Technique logo in the margarita, like foam, the foam on top of the margarita once, and they were passing those out at an event. I thought that was spot on.  Phil Totaro: The hot dogs [00:03:00] are not branded in any way, although that would've been a good idea to like, you know, stamp the button or something.  Joel Saxum: What,

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• Denmark & Germany Share Offshore Wind Power

  An offshore wind farm near the island of Bornholm, Denmark shows how international energy sharing creates global energy progress. 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! There's a little Danish island in the Baltic Sea that's about to make history. And it all started with a handshake worth seven billion euros. Bornholm. Population: forty thousand souls. About the size of Tulsa, Oklahoma. For eight hundred years, this island has watched the tides of war and peace wash over Northern Europe. But last week, Bornholm became the center of the most ambitious energy project in human history. Here's what just happened. The European Commission signed the largest energy grant in EU history. Six hundred forty five million euros. Seven hundred fifty six million dollars. All for one little island. But that's just the beginning. Siemens Energy just won the contract to build four massive converter stations. Two on Bornholm. One on Zealand. One in Germany. The job? Converting three gigawatts of offshore wind power into electricity that can flow between countries. Think about that. Three gigawatts. That's enough power for four and a half million homes. And the cables to carry all that electricity? NKT, a Danish company, just signed a six hundred fifty million euro contract. They'll lay two hundred kilometers of underwater cable. That's one hundred twenty four miles of electrical cord running beneath the Baltic Sea. But here's where this story gets remarkable. The cable won't be laid by just any ship. It'll be installed by the NKT Eleonora. A cable laying vessel currently under construction. When it launches in twenty twenty seven, it'll be one of the most advanced ships in the world. Powered by renewable energy. Built specifically for this project. They're not just connecting countries. They're connecting the future. Thomas Egebo, the Danish project leader, says this is about more than electricity. Quote: We are taking a big step towards a future where offshore wind from the Baltic Sea will supply electricity to millions of consumers. End quote. But let me tell you what makes this story truly extraordinary. This isn't about one country getting richer. This is about sharing power. Literally. When Denmark has too much wind, Germany gets the surplus. When Germany needs more electricity, Denmark shares theirs. Two gigawatts flow to Germany. One point two gigawatts stay in Denmark. It's like having the perfect neighbor. The kind who loans you sugar when you're out, except the sugar is enough electricity to power Berlin. The construction timeline reads like something from science fiction. Construction begins in twenty twenty eight. The island goes operational in twenty thirty. By then, Bornholm will be the electrical heart of Northern Europe. But here's the part that will give you goosebumps. This project started during the pandemic. June twenty twenty. When the world was falling apart, when nations were closing borders, one hundred seventy one out of one hundred seventy nine Danish parliamentarians voted yes. Democrats and conservatives. Liberals and traditionalists. They all agreed on one thing: the future belongs to cooperation. Stefan Kapferer, the German project leader, calls this efficient offshore cross linking between all countries bordering the North and Baltic Seas. Translation: It's the birth of a European electrical network. One that shares power, shares security, and shares prosperity. The wind turbines will be built fifteen kilometers offshore. That's about nine miles from Bornholm's coast.

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• Wildlife Acoustics’ SMART System Protects Bats

  Mona Doss from Wildlife Acoustics discusses how wind operators can address bat conservation and regulatory risks with their SMART System. Their technology uses acoustically triggered curtailment to protect bats while maximizing wind energy production. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow. Allen Hall: let's get started with the challenge facing Wind operators today. the Tricolored bat is in serious trouble and it's creating regulatory risks for the wind industry. Can you walk us through what's happening and why this matters for wind operators?  Mona Doss: It matters because last fall, the US Fish and Wildlife introduced some, voluntary wooded guidelines for the tri-colored bat. this, particular bat species population has, declined and is, primarily being affected by two factors. one being, something called, white nose that's affecting many back. Species across, north America. But the other is for some reason the tricolor bats. And [00:01:00] we're still looking at a lot of bat researchers, and I'll leave that to the bat biologist to address more specifically. but they are, being affected very much by, wood turbine mortality. So it's gonna be a balance between trying to address back conservation as well as the needs for energy production, which we all want from a, wind farm.  Allen Hall: And the white nose fungus is a really deadly disease for the tricolor bats. I, I've seen numbers upwards of 90%, mortality rate, when that fungus, affects them. And that fungus is pretty much exists where they live. it's something hard to, stop.  Mona Doss: Yeah, there's been a lot of great research by, various universities and VE Conservation International here in North America, trying to understand the nature of the fungus. And, how there might be possibilities to, treat, bats that are exposed to that fungus. All of that at this point is still very experimental. but that fungus has wa out many, [00:02:00] bat ber macular of various species. You might have had bat ber macular that had tens of thousands of bats that are literally just down to a few dozen. Joel Saxum: That's extreme. That's, that's like wiping out entire populations, entire ecosystems.  Mona Doss: It's very extreme. so there's been a lot of monitoring for the progress of this fungus. It was first founded in New York a few years ago. It's been slowly migrating, towards the west. so you've got the fungus affecting the bats and you've got, the demand for more clean energy, with wind farms that are also contributing to bat mortality. And these poor bat species are suffering from both sides at the moment.  Allen Hall: It's very serious. Mona, what are the consequences for wind operators who don't proactively address this sort of dual threat to the. White nose syndrome, wind turbines, and fungus. obviously they're gonna be asking wind turbine operators to do something. What does that look like?  Mona Doss: Yeah. right now, [00:03:00] when the, wind farm operators are going in front of environmental regulators to, get their permitting all approved, there's a negotiation that's occurring between balancing the bat species protect protection based on maybe pre-construction, present servings for bats. And the need for energy production. But as more and more bat species get listed as their populations are declining and they become species of concern, you're gonna have an increase in, what's called blanket curtailment.

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