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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Auteur(s): Allen Hall Rosemary Barnes Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro
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 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 Science Sciences biologiques Sciences de la Terre
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  • Morten Handberg Decodes Blade Damage Categories

    Morten Handberg Decodes Blade Damage Categories
    Dec 11 2025
    Morten Handberg, Principal Consultant at Wind Power LAB, returns to discuss blade damage categorization. From transverse cracks and leading edge erosion to carbon spar cap repairs, he explains what severity levels really mean for operators and why the industry still lacks a universal standard. 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. Morten, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back again. Boy, we have a lot to discuss and today we’re gonna focus on categorization of damage, which is a super hot topic across the industry. What does a cat five mean? What does a category three mean? What does a category 5.9 I’ve I’ve seen that more recently. Why do these defect categories matter? Morten Handberg: Well, it matters a lot because it really tells you as, uh, either an OEM or as an operator, how should you respond to your current blade issue. So you need to have some kind of categorization about what the defect type is and what the severity is. The severity will tell you something about the repairability and [00:01:00] also something about the part of the blade that is affected. The type of the defect tells you something about what is the origin From an operational point of view, it doesn’t make as much sense in a way because you really just wanna know, can this be repaired or not? You know? And you know, what does it need to repair? That’s what you need, what you really need to focus on as an operator, whether it’s then del elimination, erosion, peeling. Uh, transverse cracks, it’ll all come down to repairs. It does matter for you because it will tell you an underlying, you know, are there reason why I’m keep seeing all these damages? So that’s why you need to know the category as well. But purely operational. You just need to know what is the severity side know, what does it take to repair it? Allen Hall: So as the operator, a lot of times they’re getting information from different service providers or even the OEM. They’re getting multiple inputs on what a damage is in terms of a category. Are we getting a lot of conflicting information about this? Because the complaint from [00:02:00] I hear from operators is the OE EMM says this is a category four. The ISP says is a category five. Who am I to believe right Morten Handberg: now? Well, there is a lot of, a bit different opinions of that. It almost becomes a religious issue question at some point, but it, it really dives down to that, you know, there is no real standardization in the wind industry. And we’ve been discussing this, uh, I wanna say decades, probably not that much, but at least for the past 11 years I’ve been, been hearing this discussion come up. Uh, so it’s, it’s something this was just been struggling with, but it also comes down to that. Each OEM have their own origin. Uh, so that also means that they have trended something from aeronautics, from ship building industry, from, you know, uh, from, from some other composite related industry, or maybe not even composite related. And that means that they are building their own, uh, their own truth about what the different defects are. There is a lot of correlation between them, but there is still a lot of, lot of tweaks [00:03:00] and definitions in between and different nomenclature. That does add a a lot of confusion. Allen Hall: Okay, Morten Handberg: so Allen Hall: that explains, I mean, because there isn’t an industry standard at the moment. There is talk of an industry standard, but it does seem like from watching from the outside, that Europe generally has one, or operators specifically have one. Uh, EPRI’s been working on one for a little while. Maybe the IEC is working on one, but there isn’t like a universal standard today. Morten Handberg: There is not a universal standard. I mean, a lot of, a lot of OEMs or service providers will, will, will claim that they have the standard, they have the definition in wind power lab. We have our own. That we have derived from the industry and in, in general. But there is not an, uh, an industry agreed standard that everyone adheres to. That much is true. You could say in Europe, a lot of owners have come together, uh, in the Blade Forum, and they have derived, there’s a standard within that. Um, uh, and with a lot of success, they’d written, the [00:04:00] Blade Hamburg I think was very helpful because it was operator driven, um, approach. ...
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    29 min
  • German Bird Study Finds 99% Avoid Turbines, SunZia Progress

    German Bird Study Finds 99% Avoid Turbines, SunZia Progress
    Dec 9 2025
    Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss a German study finding 99.8% of birds avoid wind turbines, challenging long-standing collision risk models. They also cover Pattern Energy’s SunZia project nearing completion as the Western Hemisphere’s largest renewable project, lightning monitoring strategies for large-scale wind farms, and offshore flange alignment technology. Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia 2026!Learn more about CICNDTDownload the latest issue of PES Wind Magazine 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! 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 host. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall in the queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where a cold front is just blown through, but we’re not nearly as cold as Joel was up in Wisconsin, Joel, you had a bunch of snow, which is really the first big storm of the season. Joel Saxum: Yeah, the crazy thing here was the Wind Energy Podcast. So since that storm I, we, we got up in northern Wisconsin, 18 inches of snow, and then we drove down on last Saturday after US Thanksgiving through Iowa, there’s another 18 inches of snow in Des Moines. I talked to a more than one operator that had icing and snow issues at their wind farms all through the northern Midwest of these states. So from [00:01:00] North Dakota. All the way down to Nebraska, Northern Missouri, over into Indiana. There was a ton of turbines that were iced up and or snowed in from that storm, Allen Hall: and Rosemary was in warm Australia with other icing knowledge or de-icing knowledge while the US has been suffering. Rosemary Barnes: But you know, on the first day of summer here, a couple of days ago, it was minus one here overnight. So. Um, yeah, it’s, uh, unseasonable and then tomorrow it’ll be 35. Allen Hall: The smartest one of us all has been Yolanda, down in Austin, Texas, where it doesn’t get cold. Yolanda Padron: Never. It’s so nice. It’s raining today and that’s about it. Traffic’s going crazy. Joel Saxum: Rain is welcome for us, isn’t it though, Yolanda? Yolanda Padron: It’s sweet. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does. Very rainy for like 24 hours. Allen Hall: We’ve been saving a story for a couple of weeks until Rosemary is back and it has to do with birds and a year long study over [00:02:00] in Germany. And as we know, one of the most persistent arguments against wind energy has been the risk to birds and permitting and operation shutdowns have been the norm, uh, based on models and predicted collision risks. Well. A new study comes, has just come out that says, what if the models are all wrong? And the new German study suggests that they may be wrong. The Federal Association of Offshore Wind Energy, known by its German acronym, BWO Commission Research to examine. Actual collision risk at a coastal wind farm in Northern Germany. The study was conducted by Biocon Consult, a German research and consulting firm, and funded by eight major offshore wind operators, including Sted, Vattenfall, RWE, and E, roa, and. Rosemary using some of the newer technology. They were able to track bird movements with radar [00:03:00] and AI and stereo vision cameras to, to watch birds move through and around, uh, some of these wind farms. And it analyzed more than 4 million bird movements and over 18 months, and they searched for collision victims and what they found was pretty striking more than 99.8% of both day migrating and night migrating birds. Avoided the turbines entirely. The study found no correlation between migration intensity and collision rates. And BD and BWO says The combination of radar and AI based cameras represents a methodological breakthrough. Uh, that can keep turbines moving even when birds are in transit. This is pretty shocking news, honestly, Rosemary, I, I haven’t seen a lot of long-term studies about bird movements where they really had a lot of technology involved to, besides binoculars, to, to look at bird movement. The [00:04:00] 99.8% of the migrating birds are going around The turbines. No, the turbines are there. That’s. Really new information. Rosemary Barnes: I think. I mean, if you never heard anything about wind turbines and birds, I don’t think you’d be shocked like that. Birds mostly fly around obstacles. That’s probably an...
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    33 min
  • Australia Loses Offshore Project, Ecowende Moves Forward

    Australia Loses Offshore Project, Ecowende Moves Forward
    Dec 8 2025
    Allen covers Ecowende’s first monopile installation in the Netherlands, designed to be the most ecological offshore wind farm ever built. Plus Ireland’s offshore potential proves far smaller than hoped, Australia cancels its third offshore project in recent months, LiveLink Aerospace solves radar clutter in Scotland, GE Vernova secures a Romanian turbine deal, and Canadian tariffs threaten BC Hydro wind development. 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! If you want to see the future of offshore wind… look to the Netherlands.Off the Dutch coast near IJmuiden… about fifty-threekilometers out to sea… something special is rising from the waves.They call it ECOWENDE.VAN OORD’s installation vessel BOREAS just planted the firstmonopile there on December third. Fifty-one more will follow. And whencomplete… this seven hundred sixty megawatt wind farm will become… themost ecological offshore wind project ever built.Why most ecological?The monopiles come in two sizes. Research shows taller turbines givebirds more room to fly safely between the blades. Some turbines will sportred blades… to make them even more visible to passing flocks. The seabedgets eco-friendly scour protection. And those massive VESTAS fifteen-megawatt turbines? They will sit atop foundations built by SIFand SMULDERS.Power for the Netherlands by end of twenty-twenty-six.Meanwhile… across the North Sea in Scotland…At ABERDEEN Offshore Wind Farm… LIVELINK AEROSPACE just solveda problem that has plagued the industry for years.You see… wind turbines create radar clutter. Their spinning blades confusemilitary and civilian radar systems alike. But LIVELINK’s Air IntelligenceSystem… mounted on the nacelle… eliminates that clutterwithout emitting any signals of its own.The UK’s Department for Energy Security funded the test through the onebillion pound Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.BEN KEENE of LIVELINK says the technology unlocks offshore wind’s fullpotential… while strengthening national security. Clean energy AND defense. Together.But not every nation is celebrating.IRELAND just discovered… its offshore wind dreams may be smaller thanhoped.Energy Minister DARRAGH O’BRIEN receivedconfidential maps this spring. The assessment initially found potential forforty-eight gigawatts offshore.The realistic number?Between three and eighteen gigawatts.Deep waters. Shipwrecks. Arms dumps. Undersea cables. Protectedhabitats. All these stand in the way.The Irish government had targeted five gigawatts by twenty-thirty. Theyface fines of up to twenty billion euros if they miss their climate goals.Social Democrats spokeswoman JENNIFER WHITMORE says she issurprised detailed mapping took this long.Four years from the deadline… and they are only now learning which siteswill not work.Down Under… the news is worse.AGL Energy just cancelled GIPPSLAND SKIES… a two-and-a-half gigawattoffshore wind project in Victoria, Australia.That makes three offshore wind farms scrapped in recent months offAustralia’s south coast. German company RWE abandonedits two-gigawatt KENT project in October. BLUEFLOAT ENERGY droppedGIPPSLAND DAWN in July. AGL says it will focus on onshore wind… batteries… and pumped hydroinstead.But there is bright news from Eastern Europe.GE VERNOVA just signed a deal with GREENVOLT POWER to supplyforty-two turbines for the GURBANESTI wind farm inROMANIA.Each turbine… six-point-one megawatts. Combined with another recentproject… these two farms will bring five hundred megawatts online…powering more than one hundred ten thousand Romanian homes.Turbines start arriving in twenty-twenty-six.And in British Columbia… Premier DAVID EBY has a fight on hishands.A twenty-five percent tariff on imported wind towers threatens BC HYDRO’selectricity supply.PATRICIA LIGHTBURN of the Canadian Renewable Energy Associationsays the tariff could derail projects already announced. BC HYDRO iscounting on those wind farms to close an impending power gap.Canada’s Energy Regulator expects wind to fill seventy percent ofrenewable demand growth through twenty-thirty.The tariff? Nobody saw it coming.Now… for those of you heading to Edinburgh this week…The UK Offshore Wind Supply Chain Spotlight takes place Thursday. JOEL SAXUM and I will be there… meeting with innovating companies andentrepreneurs who are building the future of this industry.If you are attending… come say hello. We’d love to hear from youAnd that is the state of the wind energy industry on December 8, 2025.Join us tomorrow for the Uptime Wind Energy Pocast.
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    3 min
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