The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes & Joel Saxum

Rosemary Barnes and Allen Hall review the latest employment data from the Airswift Global Energy Talent Index. 31% of survey respondents have been approached about a position with another company SIX TIMES OR MORE in the past year! That indicates a big boom in wind energy for technicians and site managers. However, oil and gas salaries and benefits continue to be a big draw out of wind.







The full report is available here - https://www.airswift.com/geti/















Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com







































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! 







Uptime 156 Bonus







Allen Hall: This is a special bonus episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, and I'm here with Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, the Global Energy Talent Index Report came out and it's a product of Air Swift. Air Swift is a company that finds talent for your company, and they do research into what's happening in renewables in terms of employees and what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they're getting paid, and who's moving in, who's moving out.







Allen Hall: So I, I took a kind of a deep dive in this report. I wanted to talk to you about it today and kind of get your thoughts because a lot of people in wind in particular have a lot to think about over the next. Because wind energy is expanding so quickly, there's a lot of opportunities and that's good, but it also creates a little bit of chaos.







Allen Hall: if you're looking for talent. So I'll throw some numbers at you. Okay. In, in terms of wind Farm project managers, what they make, A year in the, in the United States. The, the report actually gives it by country. I, I'm just talking United States here. It doesn't apply everywhere. Of course project managers in the US if they're permanent the average salary is $74,000, a little over $74,000 a year.







Allen Hall: If they're contract workers, it's about $525 a day. Wind turbine technicians permanent ones are getting paid about $57,000 a year, or if they're on contract about four, a little over $400 a day. Those are some good numbers. I, I think they've been going up recently. So at Wind Turine Tech making 58,000 thousand dollars is not bad.

Rosemary and Allen dig into the use of black paint on wind turbine blades to prevent bird strikes. Painting blades black is not a simple fix - there are structural concerns from Rosemary. Washington State and many other states are passing laws to abolish wind turbine blade disposal in landfills. Are old blades toxic? Philip Totaro of Intelstor joins the show to discuss BP's latest move out of onshore wind and solar and into offshore wind and green hydrogen.















Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com































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! 







Uptime 156







Allen Hall: Rosemary, your fully charged live event is happening this weekend, so when you listen to this podcast, it'll, it'll have been over, but that's a big event in Australia, isn't it ? 







Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I'm excited. It's the first one this year, but they've already locked in for next year as well, so I guess that the response was good.







Rosemary Barnes: So I'm looking forward to seeing how many people show up and yeah, and checking out all. All the stuff that they've got there. They, you can do like electric car test drives and other electric stuff like electrical lawn mowers and scooters and and other fun stuff like that. So it should be, should be a really good weekend.







Allen Hall: Well speaking as an electric lawnmower owner, battery powered lawnmower owner. They are fantastic. So I, I encourage everyone in Australia to buy a battery powered lawnmower is the, it is the most awesome thing because you don't have to mess with the gas change of oil, none of it. You, you charge it, you run it.







Allen Hall: It's brilliant. This week we have a, a number of stories about wind turbines have been a problem for birds, or at least thought to be a problem for birds. But a number of studies on offshore wind indicate that the birds. Avoid the wind turbines, which is great. And another study has popped out in regards to painting wind turbine blades and towers, sort of black and white and, and almost a checkup board pattern to help keep birds away.







Allen Hall: And it, it may work, but Rosemary has deep concern about the structural impacts to the blades. 

TUV Nord is employing drones and AI image recognition to inspect hybrid steel/concrete towers during the warranty period. Who will use them, what will they find, and how much will they save? Vineyard Wind will use Charles River Analytics' Awarion system to protect whales and other marine life. The system's algorithms were developed in part using videos taken on whale-watching tours. And in a move to de-risk its business, AEP sold $1.2B of renewables assets; IRG Acquisition Holdings will pick up a capacity of about 1,365MW. Joel explains why he sees more asset flipping in the future.







New standards in the US require turbines to be able to operate for at least one hour in extreme weather; the ruling is effective in four years. Everyone agrees it's too little too late, so what's the real solution? Wisconsin's Quilt Block Wind is our Wind Farm of the Week - listen to find out why.















Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com































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! 







Uptime 155







Allen Hall: We've reached 100,000 downloads of this podcast. That's a crazy number. That's amazing. That's amazing. And thanks to everybody out there who downloads and listens every week. Our, our faithful listeners have gotten us to that threshold. It's a, it's a huge number and we more and more people listening to uptime every week, and we appreciate everybody doing that.







This week's episode lot going on. 







Joel Saxum: T u v Nord does some drone inspections of concrete towers. We talked a little bit about what are they looking for, how can they look forward to more efficiently, you know, kind of following bit of our experience in the Blade World. And then also Charles Rivers Analytics.







So they've teamed up with Vineyard wind to work w. With some AI machine learning and some sensor packages, sonar on the, in the, in the water. And basically thermal cameras and color cameras on the top side to look for whales and fishing gear and some other things that keep the impact down during offshore wind farm activities in the east coast.







Allen Hall: Then we'll talk about AEP selling their renewables business to invent. And FE matches up with NERC to define extreme cold reliability standards to keep the l...

Joel Saxum and Allen Hall review the latest info from the tower tip-over at the Pioneer Trail Wind Farm in Illinois. Keystone Tower Systems completes its first spiral welded tower for GE, and signs a big agreement for many more. The first monopile for Vineyard Wind is shipped from Germany to kick-off the build. SENSEWind developed a new method of assembling a wind turbine - could it be a game changer? The Netherlands is tracking submarines in their offshore wind farms, and our Wind Farm of the Week is Black Rock Wind Farm in West Virginia.







Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com































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! 







Uptime 154







Allen Hall: Joel, I'm working on six different time zones today, , and that's the way it's been for the last two or three weeks. All around the world. We're getting phone calls and Zoom calls Northern Hemisphere, Southern hemisphere. It, it, it does add up for a small business when you're dealing with so many time zones.







Joel Saxum: Oh, man. I was, I was thinking before when, before you hopped on here today and I was, we were talking, I was, I have talked through four. and I thought I was busy. And you're over here with six different times. Those under your belt. And then it's, it's not even dark yet. Yeah, 







Allen Hall: it's not dark. I, I still have time.







Australia will be calling here in a minute. . There you go. You're up to 







Joel Saxum: seven. Lucky number seven.







Allen Hall:  Number seven. There it is. I think I've set the record at least for this week. There you go. Well, we have a lot of wind energy news this week. The big win in America is that a wind tur been tipped over in Illinois.







While that's the, a big talking point, I'm not. But it is all the rage on LinkedIn, so we'll, we'll talk about it. More importantly Keystone and GE connect on the spiral steel towers, and that's something I have been waiting for, for uhno a year or two. And I'm just on Looker, but I think that's a really cool 







Joel Saxum: project.







We'll jump over since wind and we're gonna talk about this company coming outta the UK that is doing something. Okay. Basically a cli,

Joel and Allen deep dive into WHALES along the US East Coast. Does sonar scans at offshore wind sites affect whale behavior? The East Coast has an uptick in ship traffic - does ship density push up whale incidents?















Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com







































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! 







153 Bonus







Allen Hall: Welcome to a bonus episode of the Uptime Podcast. I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with Wind Power Lab's Joel Saxum. And Joel and I have been looking at some of the whale incidents in the whale deaths that have been occurring on the northeast of the United States.







Allen Hall: And it's raised a lot of issues along, along the East Coast, particularly with state and local governments that are concerned about these deaths, and there's a lot of finger pointing going on right now, Joel, in, in regards to what is causing these well deaths and are offshore wind turbine operations.







Allen Hall: Particularly the sonar scans that are happening at the moment, harming the whales. And, and the whales they're, they're most interested in and are most concerned about are Right Whales because there's about 350, 400 right whales left on the planet and we wanna make sure we continue to that species. So when we see a right whale end up on the shoreline, particularly down in New Jersey lately, it raises a lot of concern.







Joel Saxum: So, I mean, Allen we, you and I dug into a lot of the data and what the data tells us is that the majority, I think 58% we saw within US water were deaths of the right whales were due to fishing gear entanglement. And then the other large percentage of them was from vessel strikes. And there's a small percentage of them that they're, that, that are kind of mysteries.







Joel Saxum: We don't, we don't know. Right. But the majority of them is from, from fishing and it would be commercial fishing of course. And vessel strike. So they've put in, in 2008. A government agency, I can't remember which one, put in a, a law and had certain areas that they blocked out basically during certain seasons, they know where they're doing ca where calving is, they know where the whales are traveling to their feedin...

What's the most profitable way to manage a wind farm? Should you rely on OEM maintenance contracts, Independent Service Providers, or self-perform? Philip Totaro from IntelStor explains the data that show ISPs provide the best returns, and we consider the warranty and insurance implications. Allen, Joel and Rosemary also talk about Perceptual Robotics. The Greek company, flush with new investments, is evolving and heading to the US. Speaking of perceptive, ThayerMahan's sub-sea system incorporates AI algorithms and synthetic aperture sonar to inspect cables on the ocean floor. Joel says it's potentially much better than human monitors, but are there drawbacks? Other new technology we examine in this episode: how do new retrofit blade-heating systems from Borealis work? 







Longroad's Milford I & II are our wind farms of the week.The Utah farms are expecting AEP improvements of up to 4%, thanks largely to WindESCo's Swarm implementation.And as environmental concerns are impacting companies like SouthCoast Wind, an Uptime bonus episode considers new data on whale deaths. What have we learned?  







Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com







Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com







Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com







Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com































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! 







Uptime 153







Allen Hall: Well before we got on the podcast today, I was just looking through the news and noticing that an Irish guy had been attacked by a chicken and killed. So , you think that the only you know animals out there are trying to kill you? A polar bears, especially in the wintertime, but I guess we have to watch out for chickens now.







Allen Hall: Joel, did you see that? 







Joel Saxum: I thought you were gonna open up with MidAmerica pausing wind turbines cuz of the Siemens Gamesa blade coming down. But we went to chickens in Ireland. Does it, is it, was it on, was it on a wind farm or something, or, or why is it? 







Allen Hall: Well, it, it was near a wind farm, but the thing was that this chicken attacked his legs and like pierced his arteries and he bled out.







Allen Hall: So I'm like, seriously thinking about going to Chick-fil-A at night just for a little bit of payback . 







Joel Saxum: And, and making sure that you,