The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast By cover art

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

By: Allen Hall Rosemary Barnes Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro
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  • Summary

  • Uptime is a renewable energy podcast focused on wind energy and energy storage technologies. Experts Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Joel Saxum and Phil Totaro break down the latest research, tech, and policy.
    Copyright 2024, Weather Guard Lightning Tech
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Episodes
  • PelaStar: Revolutionizing Floating Offshore Wind with Tension Leg Platforms

    PelaStar: Revolutionizing Floating Offshore Wind with Tension Leg Platforms
    May 2 2024
    We talk with Ben Ackers, CEO of PelaStar, a company revolutionizing the industry with their tension leg platform design. PelaStar's innovative technology provides stability for large wind turbines in deep water conditions, paving the way for cost-effective and efficient floating wind farms at scale. Visit https://pelastar.com/ for more info! 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. With the increasing demand for clean energy, offshore wind has become a crucial component in the global energy mix. However, many of the world's best wind resources are located in deep waters where traditional fixed bottom foundations are not feasible. And this is where PelaStar comes in. PelaStar is changing the floating offshore wind industry with their 10 leg platform design, which provides stability for large wind turbines in deep water conditions. Our guest today is Ben Ackers Chief Executive Officer at PelaStar. Ben brings a wealth of experience in the maritime industry to lead PelaStar's efforts in making floating offshore wind a reality on a large scale. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. There's a lot to talk about because with the recent auctions or the outlines of some offshore wind sites off the coast of Maine, and then obviously off the coast of California, floating wind is going to be huge in the United States, and it's already becoming something of an item over in Europe. You at PelaStar have been trying to answer some of the problems that we have with floating offshore wind and maybe you can just give us a little bit of background on PelaStar and what you're working on right now. Ben Ackers: Absolutely. First of all, PelaStar is, as you said, a tension leg platform which sets it apart from a lot of the platform technologies that you'll see that have been deployed in demonstration and pilot projects. We're really the next generation of technology that the industry needs to bring down the cost of energy for utility scale floating wind farms. We started developing PelaStar around 2009. The idea comes out of our parent company, Glosten, which is a naval architecture, marine engineering consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. We've been around for over 65 years. And as our engineers were looking at the challenge of how do we put turbines offshore? We evaluated the different archetypes of the time. Semi submersible spars. And ultimately landed on tension leg platform is what we thought would be the best way to bring down the price of energy in the long run by developing platforms that have the lowest mass and the least amount of motion to drive down capex and operating costs. Joel Saxum: So a quick question then there, we'll dive right into it is you highlighted what you believe the Or what in, it's physics, right? But what the tension leg platform has advantages over some of the other technologies that are out there, because like we, we talked about a little bit off air there's a lot of options and ideas and demonstrators and stuff, but nobody has really taken that the front runner, the pole position in the race for what's going to be built at scale in offshore floating. So that's The tension leg platform idea. What are the advantages of it over some of the others? Ben Ackers: Principally,
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    28 mins
  • Vestas’ Reality Check: Will States Heed “This is Not a Wind Farm”?

    Vestas’ Reality Check: Will States Heed “This is Not a Wind Farm”?
    May 1 2024
    We discuss the new document from Vestas titled "This is Not a Wind Farm", which criticizes the U.S. approach to offshore wind development and proposes solutions. Allen, Joel and Phil analyze Vestas' suggestions and debate whether states will implement any of the proposed changes. 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with Joel Saxum and Phil Totaro, and we are discussing the new document from Vestas called This is Not a Wind Farm. And if you've gone to Vestas website and looked at the U. S. offshore wind tab, you can find this document. And you may want to follow along during this podcast because we want to dive into the details here. And remember that Vestas released this document during IPF. Basically the offshore wind energy symposium conference that happens in the United States this year down in New Orleans. And we felt like this document summarized some of the things that we have been feeling and seeing, but this is as proposed solutions. Now we may not agree on all those proposed solutions as we're going to discuss. But, at least they're putting out, they're putting their stake in the ground. They're saying these are the things that need to be done to move the U. S. into offshore wind quickly. Let me give a little bit of background here, and I'll list the items that Vestas has a problem with, or where the issues are. The key problem areas are, and remember that there's almost up to 50 gigawatts of offshore leases that are going to be proposed in the next couple of years. So in, from Vestas point of view, there's a lot of real estate for, and for turbines to be put into the water. So this is the perfect time to get these US projects moving. Now they list four to five. I broke them into five. Problem areas, and I want to go through the real quickly here. Number one, offshore bidders proposing projects are based on immature technology. So what Vestas is saying is that the turbines that are still on paper are being proposed for projects. Two there's a lack of focus on the supply chain readiness to ensure the timely project delivery. And generally what Vestas is talking about here is that if they choose a 20 megawatt turbine, all the supply chain has to be able to deliver a 20 megawatt turbine versus a 15 megawatt turbine in their case. State and local content mandates are leading to recent project cancellations along the East Coast. Four, long lead times between offtake awards and project execution. Is leading to speculative bidding behavior, which increases cost uncertainty in the supply chain. And number five, as I've outlined it, there's limited or no indexation adjustments within PPA. So once you lock in a PPA, you're stuck with it forever, regardless of interest rates, so there's no interest rate adjustment if interest rates goes up or down for that matter now. All right, guys. So here we go. This is where I think it's going to get a little contentious. There are four Vestas solutions here. Number one, prioritize the award of off take contracts to bidders that have selected turbine technology that is mature, tested, and commercially available to ensure on time project delivery and industry scalability. Now, Phil, this is oriented towards turbines that do not have type certification yet. I assume we would have been talking about the GE 18 megawatt,
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    36 mins
  • GE’s 15.5MW Offshore Cap, New York’s Canceled Projects, and Colorado’s Manufacturing Wins

    GE’s 15.5MW Offshore Cap, New York’s Canceled Projects, and Colorado’s Manufacturing Wins
    Apr 30 2024
    Allen, Joel and Phil discuss GE's decision to stop at 15.5MW for offshore turbines, the impact of cancelled New York offshore wind projects, challenges for Siemens Gamesa's rumored 21MW turbine, and Colorado attracting wind manufacturing jobs. 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Joel, we're getting close to American Clean Power up in Minneapolis. What are the warmer destinations in the states in May? Joel Saxum: Actually, the weather doesn't look like it's going to be too bad. It's going to be, it's going to be what sounds like I've been talking to some of my friends that they're, what you would expect is a traditional spring in Minnesota. Not snow, not 80 degrees. It looks like 65. So it'll be nice where you can wear a blazer and do your things and not sweat too much. Allen Hall: Is that a promise, Joel, or a wish? Joel Saxum: Weather in the Midwest, it's a wish. Bring flip flops and winter boots. Allen Hall: And Weather Guard will be with AC 883 at ACP. And so if you want to come talk to us, stop by, you'll see us wandering around the halls and making all kinds of noise and reporting, recording podcasts. If you have a company that's involved in wind energy and you want to be on the podcast, that's a good time to talk to us. Our podcast numbers have exploded. So there's a lot of listeners at the moment. And if you want to get your company out in the industry, heard of all around the world. We're a good way to do it. We're absolutely free. And we'd love to talk to you. The other thing that's happening which is I think going to create an earthquake up in Minnesota is that Phil is actually going to go to ACP. You can't believe the amount of leverage it took to get him out of sunny California and go to Minnesota in May. We worked on it for weeks. Joel Saxum: He'll be there though. Smiling. Philip Totaro: This is actually something I'm pretty excited and interested about this time though, because I've never had so much so many potential, partners and customers show up to an event before and so many existing ones as well, there's a lot of people that I'm going to have. It almost feels like we're back to before the pandemic, which is when I was, a lot more enthusiastic about going to these these events and trade shows. There was a lot more payback, frankly when you participated and that diminished a lot. For obvious reasons with the pandemic and whatnot, we weren't getting together in person. But it feels like they're starting hopefully to create an environment that is conducive to the industry flourishing and actually transacting some business. And so that's what's attracting me to, to participate in this thing. I hope that continues and, I'm happy at this point to dip my toe back in the water of participation. Joel Saxum: So if you're in Minnesota, be prepared for a hundred percent increase of people that grew up next to Rick James. Allen Hall: All right, over in New York State the offshore industry has been really hit, and this is due to the state's third solicitation, what they call a third round for offshore wind, and they aim to add four gigawatts offshore. Everybody goes back in time and remembers they had all the sort of the cancellations happened and they re bid everything at the end of last year. That got approved, there were three projects approved, Attentive Wind, Community Offshore Wind, and Excelsior Wind.
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    46 mins
Biological Sciences Earth Sciences
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