The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week Allen, Joel, and Phil discuss Bonfiglioli’s advanced servo motors featured in PES Wind magazine, China’s offshore wind dominance, and the economic challenges facing U.S. offshore projects. The Wind Farm of the Week is the 170MW English Farms facility in Iowa, the recipient of the Envision Platinum Award.

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Allen Hall: We’ve all had our rental car problems over the last couple of years, ever since COVID. It’s been as Joel put it, a crap show in rental car land. Over in Syracuse, which is not very far from me, I was just over there a few weeks ago now the employees at the Syracuse Airport Hertz location left their counter unattended, and they left about six hours early.

There’s a number of people that had landed in Syracuse and needed a car and there was no one at the counter. So what they decided to do is and about 20 of them decided to do this, they just took the keys that were available at the counter and then went on their way. And one of them was Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, was one of them that needed to be somewhere and didn’t have ability to get a car and just grabbed some keys and left.

Now, this created a lot of problems, right? Because all of a sudden these cars have disappeared. They don’t know who have them, and they were starting to look for them. And now they’re concerned that people that did this are concerned what’s Hertz going to do to us? But I think they felt like at the time, Joel, that What else am I gonna do?

If your employee’s left, I need to get a car, I gotta go.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s a Hertz problem. That’s the way I look at it. Technically, it’s probably theft, right? Like grand larceny or something like that. I don’t know if it’s larceny. Grand theft auto? Video games? GTA? Yeah but, it’s illegal when you look at it, right?

But I can understand being that I’ve been in that situation where you show up at 11 p. m., you’ve been traveling all day, and you’re like, Worst. Where’s my damn car? Like, where’s the dang car that I want to go? And I don’t know if there’s one person in that group who was the first mover, right?

There was a pioneer before the settlers. One person was like, screw it guys. Let’s go. I’m grabbing these keys. I don’t know who that is, but this, that’s I don’t know. There’s some cojones there.

Allen Hall: My recent experience with Hertz in Oklahoma was getting to the counter at about 1230 in the morning.

And there not being a single car there. And then I was the second one into the little office they have. And then another person came and another person came and then pretty soon there’s about 10 of us standing there and the Hertz employee who was attending the place and was trying to do the best that she possibly could said, I have two cars.

I’m picking you and you. Just pointed at people. Wow. Yeah, I got one. I never get that.

Philip Totaro: Allen, that’s like a Seinfeld episode right there. You guys know how to take a reservation, but you don’t know how to hold a reservation.

Allen Hall: I felt horrible because I was meeting Joel the next morning. I really needed this car.

We were going far off into Oklahoma, but there were all kinds of military people there that had things to do, too. Everybody had something to do. So they’re, Uber was their best friend at the moment, but man, The rental car situation is horrible.

Philip Totaro: Let me give you a hot tip. Because I’m gonna be doing this myself later this week when I fly into Houston and arrive at about 1245 AM.

I have a service called Zipcar. Which you can just automatically, use your phone and unlock the car and you don’t even need the keys. So I don’t have to worry about doing something Hertz style. I can just rock up to the car, get in and go. That’s pretty cool. Now, there are other services available, so that we don’t, just promote Zipcar, but I’ll tell you what, they have been pretty convenient.

I’ve been using that, actually, for a couple of years, and it’s, they also don’t charge you a deposit, and they cover your gas, so I’ll tell you what, folks. Zipcar might be the answer in the future. It’s either that or electric scooters, Phil. That’s the

Allen Hall: future.

The new PES Wind is out, and if you haven’t received it in the post, you can go to PESWind. com and read it online. Bunch of great articles. This magazine is really heavy. There’s a ton of articles in it. A lot of offshore discussions and technology in this particular area. issue and I’m an electrical person.

I’m reading the one from Bonfiglioli on the new servo motors that are made for offshore wind turbines. And when you say servo motors, I always think little tiny motors that are used in like radio control airplanes and drones and that sort of thing. But these are massive. These servo motors are used on up to 18 megawatt machines for yaw and pitch motors.

But there’s a lot of technology in them, a lot more than I thought guys when they’re talking about yaw some of the accuracy they have to have and moving these big, massive nacelles accurately is really critical.

Joel Saxum: I think the crazy thing here is that there’s so many components that you don’t think about within a wind turbine.

Like when you talk about what Bonfiglioli is bringing to the table here you’re talking about components that we’re just always Oh yeah, yaw motor, pitch motor. But when you dig into the technology of them and what really goes into them, it makes the turbine itself so much more complex, but they’re doing it in a great way.

So to be a supplier to an OEM like this, I think the OEM is, we have to realize they, they do. rely on a lot of sub suppliers all around the world to get things done. And so they turn to the experts, right? Like you want to turn to an expert for lightning protection. You call Allen Hall and myself.

You want to turn to an expert for asynchronous motors and yawn pitch drives and other things. You turn to Bonfiglioli. And it’s

Philip Totaro: important too, that. With how big offshore turbines are getting, that the reason that yaw and pitch is needs to be so precise now is you’ve got the potential to have a huge rotor imbalance if you’re off by even half a degree.

With, blades that are gonna weigh, close to 35 tons each and, a nacelle that probably weighs like 250 tons, if not more at this point for these large offshore machines rotor imbalance is one thing. Wake effect is also another thing where you have to have a certain level of precision in the yaw motor to be able to ensure that you’re directing the downflow from the turbine and the outwash from the turbine in the correct direction so that it’s not impacting, another turbine that’s, immediately behind it or adjacent.

Allen Hall: In the addition of a couple of sensors that they’re putting onto these motors and the electrical systems. To detect failures early is remarkable, because I think in the offshore case, you need to know, because there’s not people going up and down those turbines every day, like onshore and getting that early detection is a huge advantage.

The other thing I noticed about this, Joel, is the emphasis on weight, on reducing the weight of these servos, and my guess is offshore, if you have to replace one, The weight matters.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, big time. Because just think about this. When you bring the part to the turbine, you bring the part to the turbine.

That transition piece has usually a Davit crane, or we call a Davit crane on a vessel, but a Davit crane type on the, on, on the actual transition piece to get parts on, so you can’t have a thing that is, too heavy. 10 tons going up over there. Cause you’re never going to be able to get it up inside the turbine unless you do some have, have to get some crazy, offshore, like lift work style, lift platform, or bring in a specialized vessel.

You don’t want to do that. So you need to be able to have everything basically maneuverable or handle handleable. I don’t know if that’s a good word, but by the technicians on the deck. And if they can’t do it, then you have to bring in specialized equipment and everything offshore gets more complicated.

So when you talk about the, boron and neodymium magnets, and some of those rare earth metals are heavy.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So they’re beginning to use more aluminum and lighter weight metals. Plus all the environmental concerns of being offshore. Where you need to add a number of features to prevent corrosion and degradation over time, which is why they’re providing some of the sensors to detect that early.

It’s much more complicated than you think. We get used to being around two megawatt machines. We see those everywhere. Yaw and the pitch motors are pretty much ubiquitous, right? And they’re swapping them out on a regular basis. You really can’t do that offshore. That’s where Bonfiglioli comes in and makes a really cool product.

So if you haven’t seen this article, you need to go to PESWIN. com. And read it online or reach out and get a official paper copy. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future.

Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind. PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PESwind. com today. China is reinforced its position as the world leader in offshore wind power. Recent data shows they’ve connected about 39 gigawatts to the national grid as of the third quarter of this year.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective. China’s offshore wind capacity has grown from less than five gigawatts in 2018 to Now 39, which is a huge jump in about a little over five years. And now they now account for roughly 50 percent of the global offshore wind capacity. And as they have developed that marketplace I think they’re getting a little landlocked at the minute is what it seems like.

They had a meeting a couple of days ago now. where 30 Chinese companies signed a collaboration agreement. And we had seen this just recently about pricing on onshore turbines, where they decided to set the minimum prices so they would compete with each other below that level. And they’re trying to get collaboration in terms of technology.

And China’s Three Gorges Corporation is spearheading this effort into some research areas. And it looks like they’re focused on deep sea power transmission, and also control systems. For the cables, maybe there’s some technology that they have to develop because of the depth of the waters, is what it sounds like.

And they’re working with petrochemical companies to develop some advanced materials. And they, as China usually does, it works with the universities to Get some of the technology together, but they’ve also identified, Phil, 74, what they call little giants that are enterprises across the supply chain.

And these are really specialized companies working on all areas of the offshore wind turbine supply chain. But it does seem like there’s a lot of players. So 74 companies supplying offshore wind components in China does seem like a lot. And they must be competing against one another. Does seem like China.

government wise is trying to consolidate, maybe not have so many expenditures into offshore wind on its own, that the companies need to stabilize themselves and work together instead of getting constant funding from the government. That indicates some weakness, I think, in the offshore wind market, right?

Philip Totaro: Potentially, yeah. So just to also be clear, China actually has a rather substantial amount of relatively shallow water near shore that they can still exploit throughout their their eastern coastline in particular. I, why they’d be looking at deep water stuff, it’s, it’s probably just R& D or else to try and, prepare themselves for foreign markets that they’re looking to go into, like the partnership they want to get in Italy to do floating.

They want to look at markets like Australia or Brazil. Although again, Brazil’s got relatively shallow waters until you start going much further offshore, at which point you could exploit a lot of deep water floating. Um, there’s still Sites out there for them to exploit.

There are, as you mentioned, Ellen, a number of companies that are participating in the market as far as the supply chain goes. And it the interesting thing about the Chinese subsidies is that they, as long as they’re gross domestic product, their GDP and their economy basically keeps growing, then they can afford to keep providing the subsidies that they do to all these different companies.

Companies, whether they’re independent power producers supply chain companies in particular. That, that get money for the supply of components as well as the, discounts on, on raw materials.

Joel Saxum: Phil, can I ask you a question on this one? Because this is what speaks to me.

So I think we got a good view of what they’re trying to do here, but in the United States, wouldn’t a meeting like this be like covered under antitrust laws? If you look at, if you’re trying to look at like monopolization of an industry or control, government control of it, how does someone, like, how does the US or the, or the EU react to what looks like to us unfair business practices on the other side?

Philip Totaro: Welcome to communism, Joel. It’s China. They’re doing what they’re doing. And as long as it’s within their own market, nobody’s really got a say in it except for, like a world trade organization. Thing, which even if we filed a complaint or anybody filed a complaint, it’s going to take seven to ten years to even investigate and then adjudicate it.

Good luck with that. So the reality of it though is, so yes you’re correct in that this does seem, anti monopolistic. However they’re also You have to also realize like how China works as far as like these guys have meetings all the time. So pick any one independent power producer in China.

Every other week, they have a meeting with an OEM that was, originated by and sanctioned by China. The Chinese government and whatever province in China that they’re in, the provincial governor is usually, or somebody from his or her, office is usually participating in that meeting and facilitating that meeting.

So these guys have meetings like this all the time. Not with 30, all 30, whatever, and 74 companies and all this sort of thing. So that’s a bit, This is a bit of a special circumstance. It is, but it’s also, they’re realizing that they’re at maybe an inflection point with costs and, in their own domestic market, their desire to expand globally and how they’re going to have to work together to be able to go facilitate that again, mostly in, they obviously have expansion plans into Europe that they desire to pursue.

But even the participation in certain auctions in places like Denmark, there, there was an energy minister who came out in Denmark this week and said, you know what, we have tools, quote unquote, tools at our disposal to, to preclude the Chinese from controlling any auctions that we that we undertake.

Can desire to have a global presence all they want, but as long as they’re doing whatever they’re doing in their own backyard, we’re not gonna have a whole lot to say about it.

Allen Hall: Does the American election just change the whole dynamic? So now the meetings are coming together because the, obviously the United States is not really an offshore market there, but a Trump administration putting pressure on Europe is going to essentially keep China out of European offshore, I would guess, would be a lot of reluctance to do that.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. The big T word hanging out there, right? Tariffs.

Allen Hall: Does that really, does that change the way that, that China is dealing with the market internally? Certainly, going back to your GDP point. If GDP is at risk, are they trying to do preventative measures to consolidate, be more efficient because the tariffs are coming and they know they’re coming?

That industry is trying to grow really quickly and they can’t in the midst of tariffs.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, keep it. So keep in mind, the tariffs would only apply in the following ways to China. So there are a handful of Chinese jacket and monopile fabricators that have some Western contracts in Germany, UK. I think even France, one of the one of the project developments in France, if I believe has some I think it’s Dalian if I, if memory serves but anyway, it doesn’t matter.

And then the second thing, so foundations is one thing where tariffs would be applicable. The second thing is Chinese fabricated vessels that are then going to be. Reflagged, for a Norwegian or a Dutch or some other kind of, or Belgian, vessel owner and operator that would potentially impact the, but again we’re talking about a couple of different things here is one is those would be tariffs that would have to be enacted by the European Commission.

Whether or not it happens at the urging of the Trump the, incoming Trump administration is a whole other conversation, but that’s the sort of thing that, you can enact those kinds of tariffs, but then, You’re forcing all the vessel owners and operators to go to Brazil or South Korea or, some other place to get vessels.

And the whole reason they go buy from China is because it’s cheap. So this is always the conundrum we talk about is you can complain about China if you want, but you also have to stop buying their cheap goods, because it sounds hypocritical to me that you keep going back to China, buying their cheap goods, and then complaining about how you don’t like everything in China and how they’re taking over the world.

Stop helping them take over the world, and then they won’t.

Allen Hall: I think this goes back to Joel’s point from several weeks ago, which is, I think the amount of Chinese components in a wind turbine is north of 40%. Roughly, so putting pressure on Europe to reduce the amount of Chinese created components, or even components that are made in China by European or American companies, that’s going to really slow down that trade effort that China has an advantage of at the minute.

That changes the dynamic, right Joel?

Joel Saxum: The trouble here is, it’s back to Phil’s point too, is we’re trying to make wind energy affordable to get this energy transition going and if that, that higher percentage of components coming from China is in even a western OEM turbine. What are we doing here?

You’re trying to keep them out, but you’re only basically trying to keep them out by, just because of the nameplate, because the rest of the components are, it’s like when we did like tariffs to bring manufacturing good tariff story, Japanese trucks, we wanted to keep trucks in the United States, so we put tariffs on them, so they ended up bringing, Toyota ended up bringing plants into the United States.

Great. Toyota is actually the most heavily manufactured truck in America. It’s not Ford. It’s not GM. Yeah, Ford is mostly Mexico. Toyota is the most, is the highest percentage.

Allen Hall: But wait. Let’s talk to that tariff story just for a minute. Didn’t Ford announce that they were going to build a factory in Mexico and stop as soon as they finished?

Felt like Trump was gonna be able to impose some tariffs on them and said you can build a factory you want But you’re not gonna make vehicles down there. They’re not coming across the border to America, right? So

Joel Saxum: because I just put 25 percent tariff on them and now it doesn’t make any sense,

Allen Hall: right? So even American companies that want to get out of America can’t get out of America because of the threat of a tariff So it works both

Philip Totaro: ways.

But this is also why, this goes back to my argument about China, is that, look, there are ways in which we could leverage them. Specifically, why not trade, the import of a certain amount of goods in exchange for access to more raw materials from China, they control still more than 90 percent of the refining and manufacturing capability for permanent magnets that we use in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Let’s get access to more of that in exchange for giving them access to more Western markets. And at least that way we get something out of it and it helps us take advantage of reducing cost even though we’re doing the production here or in Europe, it at least allows us to, to take advantage of leveraging something from China rather than just tariffing the crap out of them until they end up doing a similar thing where they’re gonna, Chinese companies have also looked at They’re probably not going to be able to get their wind turbine factories set up in time because presumably once the Trump administration comes in, they would try and block that.

But there’s already a lot of work that’s being done. Some companies that are looking to produce batteries, Chinese and other Asian companies looking to produce batteries and solar panels in the United States because they want to be able to avoid the tariffs.

Joel Saxum: I think that, I think an a possibility here, cause I was talking with a friend of mine about this is if the big pain point, I think for Western countries.

The US, Europe, any of the above that are, hair up on the back of the neck about anything China, is it needs to be whatever goods we get from them, bring them on as long as they’re not electronically connected. It’s the DJI drone story, right? DJI drones are not allowed to fly for the Department of Defense because that data can electronically be transmitted back to the Chinese government.

If you want to quell people’s fears about things in China, because you don’t want to have, I understand this, not wanting to have a complete. Chinese turbine on our grid because then it’s an order issue of national security and energy security if they could shut it down remotely or something of that sort.

So make it so it’s agricultural, right? Make it blades, make it steel, make it a bearing, make it something that’s heavy and metal that’s not electronically connected. And then that quells some of the, the fears, I think.

Allen Hall: It could. I think the contrast to what’s happening in the United States at the minute is really eye opening, right?

There’s been more recent analysis of the U. S. offshore market by Intel Store and many others, but it looks like the offshore in the United States the prices are going to be headed towards 230 per megawatt hour. That is really high.

Joel Saxum: That’s a game, that’s a showstopper.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s three to four times of an onshore wind facility.

And that’s forcing the hand of BP and Equinor and GE and a number of players. So the, I think the estimate right now for the total amount of gigawatts installed offshore in the U S is about 15, 12 to 15, I think by 2030, I see it differing numbers bouncing around. And obviously with the Trump administration coming in, there’s a lot of concern by Trump.

The state I’m in right now, Massachusetts, where Massachusetts is really concerned about all the money they poured into offshore wind. Same thing for Connecticut because of the ports and infrastructure in New York’s going through the same effort. So there’s really campaigns going on from the states to to say, Hey, we got all these jobs, we just created all this infrastructure, we’re ready to go for offshore wind, don’t cut it because you’re going to kill jobs.

I, I, and I’m trying to get a sense from you guys is, do you think that’s a very effective argument for the incoming administration or are there better arguments to be had?

Philip Totaro: I think it’s an interesting thing because normally if somebody’s trying to get elected a second time, you can play the jobs card and be like, look, we’re, we control a lot of votes and those votes aren’t going to go your direction if you don’t help us preserve these jobs.

But now That you’ve got a second term for a president, he doesn’t have to care anymore, and as evidenced by a number of the cabinet picks that he’s making, he’s trying to ram through, loyalists that are gonna do what he wants done. At the end of the day and potentially to the benefit of, things like permitting because while they’re making permitting easier for oil and gas, they might also be making permitting easier for renewables, by the way.

But it’s still, again, we’ve, how many times have we talked about the, interest rate environment in this market? And what I mentioned last week on the show about how, whenever you get into a period of high interest rates that are sustained and you start lowering interest rates, you’re almost always going to start inducing a recession because corporations are going to look at those interest rate reductions as an opportunity to get more margin and more leverage.

That’s when they start laying off a lot more people and cycling through trying to hire in cheaper labor. And so that usually, that, that kind of economic scenario usually precipitates a dramatic lowering of interest rates down, back down to the levels that we saw, prior to COVID basically when we were, we were really grinding out a lot of Greenfield project developments, both onshore wind, solar, and we were starting to get, offshore, remember back to the good old days when they were bidding 70 bucks, not 230.

So that’s the reality is projects aren’t going to get built to 230. As a PPA and with CapEx being as high as it is right now, because of you’re still facing certain raw material challenges and shortages in specific components for onshore and offshore wind. I think until and unless these interest rates drop and everybody starts pouring money back into renewable project development.

That’s the offshore wind is going to kill itself without any extra help from the Trump administration.

Allen Hall: Yeah, I wonder if that’s the approach, honestly, is that the administration will have to do very little.

Joel Saxum: They’ll leave it to the states are already stepping on their own toes and tripping over their own shoelaces trying to get, trying to get these things accomplished.

If I was the Trump administration, I’d just back off and let them continue to mess up.

Allen Hall: One of the odd things that’s happened in Massachusetts and a couple other states is the amount of angst that’s going on in press conferences where the governor of Massachusetts is not very well seen, typically. You hardly hear from her, in my opinion, and she lives somewhere around me, is from my area.

You didn’t always hear that much until recently, then all of a sudden we’re up in arms and we’re going to protest and fight and all the things that they want to do. That’s not going to help you right now. If just being quiet a little bit and letting it, let’s see what plays out for another 60 days.

We’re 60 days away from anything really happening as we record. Do we panic right now? I’m not sure that we panic right now. I think offshore wind is going to happen based on economics, like Phil’s been saying for months. It’s either economics, is it going to work or it’s not going to work. And what happens going forward is, based on that.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. In the wind world, if you look at all of the different intelligence agencies, we’ll call them, the Intel stores of the world, they’re all saying the same thing. They’re like, it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s not going to it’s not going to be like January 21st, all wind development gets shut down.

Allen, you wrote an article yourself about it on the the educated opinions that you have and educate the knowledge that you have around the space. I think that again, calm down a little bit. When things get moving here, it will continue on. I think in a better economic environment, you’re going to see Development happen onshore as well.

Here’s anecdotal information. I have a friend right now that just relocated and he’s looking for, he’s a civil engineer, construction engineer type cap, large capital projects. And he’s looking in the renewables industry for a project manager jobs. And he’s got a whole load of them. He’s Hey, do you know these companies?

And he sent me a whole list. And these are all active job opportunities with Altig, and all these other big engineering companies that are part of these developments. So they’re gearing, I think that if you, we know the writing on the wall type thing, those companies are still having demand to try to get things done.

They’re hiring project managers right now. So that’s what’s happening. Follow the money.

Allen Hall: If you look at PES Win Magazine, it’s full of offshore. Full of it. The future will be there. The economics are coming, but the future is there. I’m with you, Joel. There’s still a lot more

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Joel Saxum: But the wind farm of the week is the English Farms wind farm owned by Alliant Energy. It’s east of Des Moines, about an hour or so in Iowa. It began operation in March of 2019, has a nameplate capacity of 170 megawatts on this wind farm, 69 turbines. So in 2019, when this these wind, this wind farm came on board, the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, ISI, gave this one and another of Alliant Wind Energy’s, or Alliant Energy’s wind farms, Upland Prairie respectively, are the recipients of the Envisioned Platinum Award for Sustainable Infrastructure.

Of Audio To earn the Envision Platinum Award, a project must demonstrate it delivers a heightened range of environmental, social, and economic benefits to the host and affected communities. We talk about when I do Wind Farm of the Week, when we talk about it here on the podcast, we always talk about local tax benefits, landowner payments.

Same thing here, 47 million in local tax benefits. Approximately 12 million dollars in local payments to landowners. This project here with 69 turbines owned by Alliant Energy in Eastern Central Iowa is the wind farm of the week. English Farms Wind Farm.

Allen Hall: That’s going to do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

Thanks for listening and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe to Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.