The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast cover art

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

By: Allen Hall Rosemary Barnes Joel Saxum & Phil Totaro
Listen for free

  • 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
    Show More Show Less
Episodes
  • AEM Lightning Expert on Severe Weather Risks for Wind Farms

    AEM Lightning Expert on Severe Weather Risks for Wind Farms
    May 16 2024
    This episode features an insightful discussion with Dr. Elizabeth DiGangi, a Lightning Scientist at AEM, who shares her expertise on severe weather patterns, the findings of the AEM 2023 United States Lightning Report, and the potential impact of storms on wind turbines. Dr. DiGangi provides valuable insights into the formation of tornadoes, hail, and lightning, as well as the measures wind farm operators can take to mitigate risks associated with severe weather. Reach out at https://aem.eco/contact-us/ ! 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 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, your go to podcast for the latest insights and discussions on the wind energy industry. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. The U. S. Heartland has recently experienced a series of severe weather events, including violent tornadoes, intense lightning strikes, and large hail. These extreme conditions pose significant challenges to the wind energy industry, as wind turbines are particularly vulnerable to the forces of nature. We are thrilled to have with us a very special guest, Dr. Elizabeth DiGangi a Lightning Scientist at AEM, and AEM is based in Germantown, Maryland. Dr. DiGangi holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to our discussion. In this episode, Dr. Daganji will share her insights on the recent severe weather patterns, the findings of the AEM 2023 United States lightning report, and the potential impact of these storms can have on wind turbines. She will also discuss the measures wind farm operators can take to mitigate the risks associated with severe weather and ensure the longevity and efficiency of their turbines. Turbines, whether you're a wind energy professional, a meteorology enthusiast, or simply interested in the intersection of weather and renewable energy. This episode promises to be both informative and engaging. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities presented by severe weather with the wind energy industry with Dr. Elizabeth DiGangi from AEM, Dr. DiGangi. Welcome. Dr. Elizabeth DiGangi: Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Allen Hall: You've come at a really good time in a sense and also a really bad time is that there's been so much Horrible weather in the middle of the united states where most of the wind energy is created tornado after tornado and the storm chasers Have been putting a lot of that up on youtube and some of them saw 10 11 tornadoes in an afternoon It looks like movies What drives the quantity of tornadoes, like we just saw is that something special about the storm, or is it just a confluence of independent actions? Dr. Elizabeth DiGangi: It's something special about the storm environment. Whether or not okay, so to start with, the type of storm that produces a tornado has to have, in almost every case unless you're getting little, like dust devil equivalents, a storm that is producing a tornado has a rotating updraft. So the air that goes in and up that's feeding the storm, spins while it goes up. And that helps the storm achieve what we call a quasi steady state. Like it almost behaves like a spinning solid. If you had a cylinder that you were just twirling. There's like a similar kind of analogous physics going on. And that helps these storms persist for a long time.
    Show More Show Less
    38 mins
  • Blade Aerodynamics and AEP with PowerCurve

    Blade Aerodynamics and AEP with PowerCurve
    May 15 2024
    Allen sat down with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve, at ACP in Minneapolis to discuss the importance of aerodynamic blade optimizations and upgrades during wind turbine repowering. PowerCurve's AeroVista tool can help operators address leading-edge erosion and suboptimal blade designs to mitigate aerodynamic losses. 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, and I am at ACP 2024 in Minneapolis with Nicholas Gaudern the CTO of PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is based in Denmark, and they are aerodynamic blade experts. And Nicolas background is with Vestas, and now he's a freelancer, so to speak, at PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is where WeatherGuard goes for aerodynamic help. Yes, and a lot of other operators around the world reach out to power curve. So we thought it'd be a good time to talk to Nicholas because of all the repower activity in the United States and aerodynamic upgrades that should be happening on the ground. Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. Yeah. Allen Hall: That, that the opportunities being passed by, which is a total mistake, absolutely total mistake. And Nicholas, welcome to the program. And I want to walk through that. Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks for having me back Allen. It's really nice to talk to you again and and another show. So always good. Allen Hall: So in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, all over the United States, the IRA bill is kicking in and there's a lot of repowering happening at the moment. And when I talk to operators about lightning protection, they're like, yeah, absolutely. We need to put additional lightning protection on because we know from the previous blades that they were not great. And we've heard rumors that these blades are not great. Our new blades are not great. So for lightning protection, that's pretty easy, but they also don't they don't think about the aerodynamic aspects. Nicholas Gaudern: No not necessarily. And I think it's it risks being a really big missed opportunity. Yes. Because whenever you've got a blade on the ground, that is obviously an easier time to be doing any upgrade work, repair work, enhancement, whatever you want to do. So when you've got a blade on the ground, you should absolutely be considering the optimization potential, the aerodynamic optimization potential. So when you're repowering, you may think that you have the latest and greatest blade. It's very unlikely that you do. The blade may have been designed many years ago. And even if it is more recent, we haven't come across a single blade that we can optimize, not a single one. And that's not because the OEMs are doing a bad job. It's just that they have a lot of different constraints. That can be time pressure, it can be cost, it can be materials, whatever. It maybe means they haven't spent as much time as they could have done on squeezing every last bit of aerodynamic performance out. Which is fine. Maybe, the business case for them doesn't support that. But for the operator, it absolutely does. Because if you can get another half percent, one percent, two percent AEP over the lifetime of that product, That's a hugely powerful lever to pull. Allen Hall: Because the blades, let's just choose a 2X machine. Sure. Which there's a lot of 2X machines going in the United States at the moment. Those 2X blades were designed pre pandemic. Yep. Most likely.
    Show More Show Less
    21 mins
  • U.S. Politics Holds Back Offshore Wind, TPI Creates 3D-Printed Blade Tooling

    U.S. Politics Holds Back Offshore Wind, TPI Creates 3D-Printed Blade Tooling
    May 14 2024
    Allen, Rosemary, and Phil discuss the state of wind energy development and the potential impact of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. They also cover TPI Composites' partnership with the University of Maine and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to utilize 3D printing technology for producing wind turbine blade tooling. 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: Alright, did you see this the situation in Colorado where someone who was just released from jail tries to steal a pickup truck? Or, I don't know what you call it in Australia. What do they call it in Australia? It's not a pickup truck. A ute. A ute. A utility vehicle. But! This thief. Rosemary got into the truck and realized it has a clutch. It's got a third pedal. It didn't know what to do. They got re arrested that they tried to put the, tried to drive the truck, didn't know what to do. Got it in neutral and the truck rolled down the road and hit a fire hydrant. But, Rosemary in the United States, Clutch, a manual transmission vehicle is like non existent anymore. You get to, it is very hard to purchase one. I don't know about Australia. You still have clutch cars? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I know. Even when I lived in America and it was 20 years ago now, and there was nothing but automatics in America and in Australia, it's mostly manuals. It's also a point of pride. Like I don't imagine there would be many hardened. Hardened criminals in Australian jails that wouldn't know how to drive a manual. That would just be like really, it would feel really pathetic to them. But it is something that I have thought about because obviously electric cars don't need gearboxes. Like my son he's one now by the time he learns to drive, it'll be all electric cars. And certainly we're only going to have electric cars. And. He, yeah, he'll never learn to drive a manual unless I will most likely really have to go out of my way to find some classic car to, to teach him in and why he won't need that skill. Philip Totaro: It's going to be like the inverse of Mad Max. It's like you're going to have to search for petrol. Rosemary Barnes: There should be actually an energy transition version of Mad Max because now that we know about solar power and and wind energy, like a lot of the premise of Mad Max doesn't really, it's, it wasn't really future proofed, right? If we had, if we did descend into a Mad Max dystopia tomorrow, I think that energy wouldn't be the big problem. It would be other stuff. Philip Totaro: It's going to happen in November anyway, don't worry. Allen Hall: GE Vernova reported a wider than expected loss in its first quarter post spinoff results. The company's win segment saw a significant 40 percent decline. Phil, this is a problem. 40 percent decline in orders, primarily due to lower demand for onshore equipment as North America customers continue to navigate the permitting process or permit process for their projects. And this decline obviously was offset by GE Vernova's power segment, which experienced a 6 percent jump in sales. So the wind side is getting hammered because they can't get permits. And everybody's struggling and interconnects is with other Problem I assume, Phil, this is driving sales, not only at GE, but also at Vestas, right? That they're having sales problems because the interconnect, the grid, there's no interconnects. And then the permit process has gotten a lot longer.
    Show More Show Less
    46 mins
Biological Sciences Earth Sciences
Show More Show Less

What listeners say about The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
No Reviews are Available