Japan Backs Floating Wind, US Grid Sidelines Clean Energy

Japan and the UK sign a $12 billion floating wind deal for 5.9 GW, Muehlhan buys Coverwind Solutions in Spain, and US grid reform stalls as MISO, PJM, and SPP fast-track fossil resources over wind.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter 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 YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, just back from Japan, in Matthew’s stead. Yolanda Padron is on special assignment. Well, Rosemary, what happened in Japan? You, you spent a, a week touring the country and looking at, uh, some energy projects.

What did you learn? 

Rosemary Barnes: I was there for just five, five nights. I went over for an, um, an, a systems engineering conference by INCOSE. I was doing a keynote presentation there, and also spoke to some of their… They’ve got this program, an international programming for, like, upcoming leaders. Um, and yeah, it was funny, the topic that I chose for [00:01:00] that was how you can combine an online presence with a serious professional career.

Uh, ’cause, you know, like, a lot of the advice that you see about building an online presence is, like, totally compat- incompatible with being taken seriously in a, uh, you know, in a, a job like engineering. So that was pretty fun. And then on the last day, I was able to arrange a tour of a community. Like, we went to this village near Fukushima, and they, a- after the Fukushima, uh, or the earthquake that led to the Fukushima, uh, shutdown, that town, some power lines came down, and that, that village was without power for three months.

So in response to that, they’re like, “Community power for the win.” At this place, like, there was literally steam coming out of the ground just, you know, randomly. It’s an onsen town, so you know, like, it’s, um, it’s built around tourism for these hot baths. And so they put in a couple of geothermal power plants, small ones, and, um, also some hydropower.

But the reason why I wanted to go there was ’cause, you know, ge- [00:02:00]geothermal is such an obvious solution for Japan, for the energy, but they only have… .3% of their electricity is generated by geothermal currently. And, um, the main reason is that the onsen community in Japan is really opposed to it. They’ve lobbied against it because they’re worried that, um, you know, the onsen community needs heat to come out, hot water to come out of the ground, and geothermal takes hot water out of the ground, so they’re just worried that they’re incompatible.

Um, now I think the science says that that’s not really true, that the, there isn’t, they’re not the same resource and that one doesn’t affect the other. The wastewater from the geothermal is not really wastewater. It’s just water that is not as hot as it was when it came up. Um, that goes down then into the onsen because it’s a good temperature.

And then some of the even cooler water, about 21, 23 degrees, they’re using that to raise shrimp. 

Allen Hall: Well, just speaking of Japan, uh, the Japanese Prime Minister was just in the UK and a [00:03:00] big deal was signed between Japan and United Kingdom, £9 billion worth, which is about 12 billion US dollars, uh, to work together on 5.9 gigawatts of floating wind capacity in the UK, uh, across three different projects.

W- And the goal is to get some Japanese partners working with, uh, the UK companies involved with it to suss out how to do offshore wind. And as we all know, Japan is gonna, is headed there right now and is going to need a little bit of a primer on how to do it. And, and, well, they should because, uh, there’s been some really successful efforts in the UK and up north, Northern Europe.

Uh, so the, the goal of this is to, to get these projects underway and, and Japan’s committing all this money, which, uh, sure, it’s a nice boost to the UK at the moment. It gets a little turbulent over there if you’ve been watching the news. Rosemary [00:04:00] Tying back to your experience in Japan recently, is there a big push internally?

Do you see that internally in Japan for offshore wind and even offshore floating wind in Japan, or are they really prepping for it in country? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’d say I went over there thinking that Japan was, like, oddly not bothered about wind energy of any flavor. Um, ’cause, you know, like onshore wind, they’ve got problems because the good ri- wind resource is right on the ridges, and they’re getting just hammered by lightning, and they’ve got some, like, really interesting responses to how they think that they should manage that, that in my opinion are just gonna kill…

Like, you would never bother to have an onshore wind farm if these, um, regulations go ahead. So offshore they have got, um, a bit of a, an, a fixed bottom resource, and they’ve had several auction rounds geared towards that, but they’re, um, they haven’t gone well. I think that, like, people have promised… It, it’s a similar story to elsewhere in the world.

Uh, people have, like, bid, like, [00:05:00] bid down to quite low prices and then not been able to deliver and pulled out. Mitsubishi just recently paid some, uh, some huge penalty for not going ahead with a, a project. There isn’t actually that much fixed bottom potential, um, for Japan. So, um, if they wanna have a significant amount of wind energy in their grid, which they should, because they’re, like, honestly it is probably the best or one of the couple of best options to provide big chunks of their electricity supply, then it needs to be floating.

Um, and the government is actually pushing on that. I thought they weren’t doing too much, but I did talk to someone from this group, Flora. It is a group that is, um, that, that is trying to form partnerships with other countries, but also with manufacturers to try and set the framework up so that it can, like, l- lay the groundwork for commercialization to happen without being prescriptive.

Flora is in there [00:06:00] to try and, you know, get the pieces in place to be able to allow, um, you know, uh, innovation and competition to happen much, much faster. 

Allen Hall: What’s the most complicated piece technically that needs to be solved before Japan can really move forward? Is it the money piece? I mean, um, um, I said technically, but I feel like there’s always this money aspect to it, which is important, but on the technology side, i- is it, is there any technology that remains to be solved or is it just the will to do it?

Rosemary Barnes: Basically in any engineering question, the answer is money, like, when you come down to it. So, like, it’s almost boring to say, yeah, it’s, it’s money. Floating offshore wind- Too hard, too niche for most people to consider it a mainstream thing, but it’s the legitimate, like, good contender for Japan. And you know what?

That presents opportunity. It can actually be good to have to do something hard. Um, and Japan has the opportunity to be the [00:07:00] country where, you know, it’s the country where floating wind makes the most sense, so they can be the ones, if they’re smart about it, they can be the ones where the smart technologies evolve.

There will at least be little niche things that they develop that will go on to succeed, and Japan really needs some new big manufacturing industry to… Like, their car industry is obviously, um, has been so important, the automotive manufacturing, and it’s declining now relative to China. Um, so I am also hopeful that they can, you know, build that up a bit more, but I don’t think that they’re going to, you know, topple China, so they are looking for new industries that will be the new…

Yeah, do for them what the auto industry did from, yeah, from the ’70s onwards. Actually, you know, like, you can tie it back in a nice loop back to the oil crisis in the ’70s because that’s when the world was like, “Oh, actually small, efficient cars are, are quite a smart idea.” And Japan had those because it was so [00:08:00] constrained in terms of, you know, the oil that it could bring in was expensive.

Not having their own fossil resources, they learned to conserve it, and then that turned out to be, you know, a big advantage for them. 

Allen Hall: Using the 1970s gas price crisis and the movement towards Japanese cars in the United States, I mean, timing is everything. And Japan was in, uh, Honda in particular, was in the United States.

I think Toyota was too, if I remember correctly. And when gas prices went through the roof, uh, yeah, they were very efficient cars, and not the most reliable at the moment, but obviously they’ve changed quite a bit and s- they are, particularly Honda and Toyota, are probably two of the more reliable blan- brands you can buy in the States today.

So things change, right? You’re just getting your foot in the door. But that, that break point is, is coming pretty soon, I would say, in, in terms of timing. I- is it the right time for Japan to move into floating offshore? It’s gonna be within the next couple of years, don’t you think, Rosie? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, yeah, def- [00:09:00] definitely.

Um, and yeah, I mean, I, it, it, it does frustrate me that any money is being spent on, um, hydrogen and ammonia imports. I, I would just rather that they just, just, just do the LNG until you figure out alternatives. 

Allen Hall: That makes more sense. 

Rosemary Barnes: Gas is better than… You know, like ammonia, for example, they’re locking in these coal power plants for additional years, making investments, um, you know, thinking that this is gonna be part of their future.

They’re gonna end up burning coal, y- you know? At least gas is flexible enough to support renewables, and so it can, you know, like speed the rollout of, of wind. And they do have a fair bit of solar too in Japan. Floating solar, actually. They invented that there, and have actually got quite, quite a lot of it.

Allen Hall: Gas is gonna be the answer short term. I think in the relationship between the United States and Japan has always been pretty solid since after World War II, that the United States would be willing partners to help Japan stand up any [00:10:00] technology, probably except for wind, which is just bizarre. 

Rosemary Barnes: One of your maybe, um, unexpected legacies in Japan was, I say you, I mean the USA, they’ve got, um, not just the, like, silly American power plug design where you’ve got, like, the parallel pins that just fall out, so they’ve got that.

But they also have 110 volts. Like, where else in the world is, is, thinks that’s a good idea? I had, um, my little travel steamer I’d taken over there, hairdryer, useless. Absolutely useless. 

Allen Hall: That’s all you 

Matthew Stead: need. 

Rosemary Barnes: I blame you personally, Allen. I hold you personally responsible for my wrinkled clothing.

Allen Hall: Delamination and bondline failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. CIC NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive [00:11:00] test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss.

CIC NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service. So visit cicndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions

Well, the wind service sector is consolidating as we’ve all watched over the last year or two, and Mjolner Wind Service is one of the most aggressive buyers in the field. Uh, the Danish company has signed to acquire Cover Wind Solutions of Spain, including Cover Sun Solutions and Cover Renewable, with the deal expected to close by the end of June.

This is Mjolner’s 11th acquisition since 2023. Now, Cover Wind fills a geographic gap for Mjolner. Uh, they are [00:12:00] involved in Spain and France and, uh, already involved in covering the Nordics a little bit and Central Europe. So there’s a, a big play here, and, and decommissioning is really the, the story underneath of th- all this is on the decommissioning side.

Uh, Mjolner views turbine end-of-life services as an important future growth area, and obviously it is. Particularly in Spain, there’s been a lot of turbines that will be, uh, brought down and new turbines put up in the next 10 years, and Cover Wind gives Mjolner that ability. And as we all know, Mjolner just recently acquired our Canadian friends, AC883.

So yeah, they have been on quite the spin recently, and that’s not even Yeah, sl- a sliver of what’s happening on the consolidation effort, uh, we didn’t talk about last week, but we, we should have, which was Fairwind acquiring Rope Partner in the States. And Rope Partner is a [00:13:00] longtime blade repair company and has been seen for years, as long as I can remember honestly, as the go-to blade experts on complex repairs.

The, the, the most trained up, most, uh, technicians. On the technician side, they’re, they, they, they always had the highest trained people to what I remember, and also they would ta- tackle some of the most complex blade problems, and now they’re part of Fairwind. So there is movement, Matthew. A, a lot more than I thought there would be, because after COVID, a lot of companies just disappeared, but now it does seem like they’re being acquired, which is a, a good result, I guess.

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think there’s a strong opportunity, and, uh, and maybe the first point is that actually doing an M&A successfully is actually really hard. Um, I, I’ve personally been through two, uh, two M&As, um, and it is, it is really hard to get an M&A right. And so I think, you know, [00:14:00] these companies are showing that, um, you learn, you can do better, and, you know, it, it, it is hard.

So congratulations for them for achieving that. Um, but the second part I think is also, you know, the industry maturing, uh, gaining scale is also, you know, necessary and, you know, driving, you know, but– and these people should be able to drive their, you know, better margins and so forth through, through scale.

So, you know, I, I think, um, I think we had a bit of quick chat about it previously, but, um, this is, you know, a really good thing. 

Allen Hall: Does it change the way we think about, uh, independent service providers? 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s gonna continue. I mean, this is not the end of it. Um, you know, in– even in what we do, there’s been various, you know, mergers and acquisitions in, in our space or, and investments, you know, cross-investments.

So I, I just see this continuing. You know, like SkySpecs, um, you know, growing their, their CMS, um, business and their financial arm. Um, this is just gonna continue. 

Allen Hall: [00:15:00] Is it more activity, uh, related to the availability of AI? It’s– It does seem like that’s playing into some of the decisions that are being made on the mergers and acquisition in renewables, is you start to see more discussion of, hey, we’re going to, uh, apply new techniques, machine learning.

A lot of times you’ll see that, particularly in Europe, and then here in the States it’s almost all AI, where they’re- In order to have a, a very successful AI venture, you need to bring in the brainpower to feed that AI. And it does seem like there’s a lot of, of senior companies getting grabbed that could be part of a larger artificial intelligence play.

Matthew Stead: You remind me of the, um, the dotcom boom and bust. I don’t know. I’m, I’m a little bit more skeptical, um, on the value actions on the, on the AI side of things. 

Allen Hall: Really? 

Matthew Stead: It certainly… It’s a massive, um, massive, um, transformation for the industry, and you know, I mean, what I, what, what we can all do is, is massive.

[00:16:00] But, um, my former employer, a consulting business, bought a AI company for a billion dollars, and I, I, I just can’t see the value. So, um, anyway, I’m, I’m a bit skeptical about valuations and AI, and, um, I’m not as bullish as many people are. 

Allen Hall: Really? Uh, because it does seem like more recently, the shift has been from the number of engineers you have in your company times a million dollars a head, that’s the way it was, uh, not that long ago.

And now it does turn into how many senior people you have, that’s the multiplier. Because they’re trying to take that knowledge and all that data resource that you have, like at a, a rope partner where they’ve prepared really complex problems for years. That data set is amazing if you could get your fingers on it.

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah, yeah. And I, you know, I completely agree with you, but I just think it’s being oversold and overcooked and overbaked. 

Allen Hall: I see it as growing instead of it declining. I don’t think it’s cooling off. I think we’re just at the precipice of [00:17:00] it. As we get better at using some of these AI tools, if we’re gonna build data centers in space, ’cause that’s gonna be the, the linchpin to all this, is if it gets to data centers in space, then we can leverage massive data sets and learn something from them and get better.

Matthew Stead: I love change, but, um, I, I think that’s ri- ridiculous, to be honest. Um, I know we’ve spoken about it a number of times, but data centers in space just seems stupid to me. But, but yeah, going back to your original point, Alan, um, yeah, we, we can definitely do better with you know, more insights around our data and getting more out of our data.

I mean, data is the new oil. You know, we’ve been saying that for the last 10 years. Um, yeah, I’m, I’m full, I’m fully on board with that, but I’m just a little bit of a, a little bit of a negative Nancy on, um, some of these overhype 

Allen Hall: The line to connect a new wind project to the U.S. grid has been one of the industry’s most stubborn bottlenecks.

And a new report from Advanced Energy [00:18:00] United drafted by Grid Strategies and the Brattle Group finds that seven major U.S. grid operators have made progress, at least some, on generator interconnection reform since FERC Order 2023 took effect. So that was the order that said we need to fix this interconnect queue problem.

There are just too many people in line and we need to give some ranking to them. But progress on paper has not yet translated into projects moving through the queue faster. And a newer problem is emerging. Fast track interconnection policies at MISO, PJM, and SPP are directing limited system headroom towards, drum roll, utility-affiliated and fossil-heavy resources at the expense of independent clean energy developers.

So the game is being rigged a little bit at the moment where they want to push forward [00:19:00] gas and other fossil fuel type generation in front of solar and wind, which are less costly and quicker to get up and running. This can’t last long, right? E- eventually the people living in, uh, MISO, PJM, and SPP are gonna have a little bit of a revolt on how power prices are gonna bump up accordingly.

Matthew Stead: There’s been numerous other attempts to stifle wind, um, and those numerous other attempts, uh, tend to be overwritten and, uh, ruled out and thrown out in courts. And, um, it, it just seems like this is, well, if that didn’t work, we’ll, we’ll try something else. 

Allen Hall: It’s a delay tactic. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah, exactly. Then becomes another one.

Well, you know, just wait for that one to be thrown out. 

Allen Hall: I don’t know who said the famous saying, time is money, but time is money, and if you can [00:20:00] delay a project from happening, it costs money to sit on the sidelines and you’re, you’re paying interest on a loan or your investors are getting upset because they’re not seeing the returns.

So the easy game in most situations like this is just to drive the schedule to the right, even if it’s by a couple of months. It’s expensive. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. If there’s two things I wish I didn’t know about, the first one is telecommunications and how rubbish it is. I just wish I didn’t, wish I didn’t know about telecommunications and the need for cellular and satellite and blah, blah, blah.

I wish I didn’t know about that. The other one I wish I didn’t know about, because I wish it wasn’t a problem, was just grid connections and grid and networks. 

Allen Hall: How bad it is. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Rosie, if you can jump in, but you know, the New South Wales-South Australian Interconnector Grid, um, is just being energized now.

I don’t know if it’s one or two years late. Um- And they’re trying to recover a billion dollars from the general [00:21:00] public 

Rosemary Barnes: Is it only a billion? I thought it, when I looked at the stats, um, it was like near tripling of the, of the project cost 

Matthew Stead: My understanding is the government screwed it up or the, uh, the, the operator screwed it up in terms of the transmission lines, and then want, wants to claim it back from the general public ’cause they, they screwed up.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s a weird thing ’cause you, you know, it’s like, I think it’s like this everywhere in the world that the, yeah, transmission companies or network companies, they get a regulated rate of return on their, on their project, so they invest. But then it’s like what’s that rate of return for? It’s not money for nothing, right?

It’s for them, you know, like taking on some risk and y- you know, some sorts of things are, are built into that. Um, but it’s kind of like if you, you get that amount approved and then you stuff up your project management so it drags out and takes a lot of money, then you’re also gonna be compensated additionally for having done a bad job with your project [00:22:00] management.

The kinds of delays are not unforeseeable. You know, like I’ve been a project manager in my past. You don’t just make your best case scenario and then kind of just assume that that’s, um, how much it will cost and not, y- you know, not come up with, um, contingency plans for if, uh, if predictable things happen.

It’s not, there’s no like black swan events in here. It’s just, um, you know, things that happen every now and then. And it is one of those like key principles of like delivering on big projects, um, that Ben Slibbert, you know, in that, that book, um, How Big Things Get Done, he goes over and over and over again that you need to keep your project as short as possible ’cause the longer it is, the more like surprises you’ll have along the way and it will cost more.

And I just don’t think that they, like they need to go read that book and then do a better job with their project planning and scenarios. 

Allen Hall: You know who’s read that book clearly is, I, I’ll bring up the name, I know it’s gonna cause controversy, [00:23:00] Elon. 

Rosemary Barnes: I knew you were gonna say that. 

Allen Hall: Well, you know why I say that?

Because there was an interview with him and I was skimming through some nonsense and then this little interview popped up, and he was talking about how quickly they need to get things rolling. And it’s like one year you’re getting s- first year you’re getting started, second year you’re just growing like crazy, and third year is infinity.

And the only way that makes sense is that you’re just pouring every resource on this problem to shorten the schedule That’s it 

Rosemary Barnes: You, you do. You have, you have to do the, the, you know, the parts of your project where surprises are gonna happen. Like you can… There are surprises and you know, don’t know what they, they are gonna be.

However, you can guarantee that there will be surprises. Like you, you know going into a years-long project that several things are gonna happen that are, you know, gonna surprise you. And so you can plan for that. And the best planning that you can do is to make sure that once you start actually, you, you know, you’re gonna spend time in planning to, um, get it right, but once you actually start [00:24:00] the phase of your project where delays cost money, then you, you just plan as, do everything you can to keep that as short as possible, and it will be, it’ll be cheaper.

Even if it sounds more expensive, oh, we’ve gotta, you know, pay crews overtime to, you know, do a night shift or something like that, um, you know, you need to consider, consider that because the, there will be delays and they cost. And it’s just, like at this point, maybe 100 years ago you could get away with being surprised by that, but y- you know, like project management has come far enough now that we know, we know this.

It’s just basics. 

Allen Hall: But infrastructure projects are tough because they don’t see the revenue on the backside that much sooner. It’s sort of a very flat 3% growth industry Unlike a lot of other things 

Rosemary Barnes: But that’s it, like just to contain costs, you have to have a small project. 

Allen Hall: They will, but they’ve always historically gotten paid for those overruns and continue to make their 3%.

If there was some sort… Back to Matthew’s point, if there was some sort of, uh, [00:25:00] disincentive to be late, they would hurry, maybe even spend a little bit of their own money, but there would have to be some massive upside, which is the problem, right? They can’t have a massive upside. 

Rosemary Barnes: But that’s why I’m s- I’m saying that the situation where costs blow out and they still get…

Like, they get… They make more money by having done a bad job because it costs more. You know, like that is not, it’s not okay. 

Allen Hall: Is it more money or just paying the bills that they had when they were building the thing? 

Rosemary Barnes: It depends how much we let them get away with, but their preference is to make, just be, “Oh, we could never have known that there would be a flood.”

It’s like, okay, yeah, like, was it like a 1 in 50 years flood or something? So yeah, on average, that particular event wasn’t gonna happen, but there’s probably, you know, like 20 different categories of 1 in 50 year things that could have happened, and if your project lasts for five years, you’re gonna have a few of those.

You just are. You know? It’s not, it’s not bad luck. It’s just like, just normal statistical variation [00:26:00] that y- Yeah, so I, I, I really think it’s important to, um, to not just say, “Oh. Oh, poor you,” ’cause it’s, it always sounds like a sob story. “Oh, a flood. Who could have known?” 

Allen Hall: Who could have known it rains? 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I mean, I, I don’t know.

Like, I often talk about how people don’t know what, um, engineers do, and we don’t get enough res- respect for, for what we do, and people don’t get it. But I think project managers is, if anything, worse. People don’t respect project management as a, um, a, I don’t know, is it a profession? But, you know, as an ex- ex- field of expertise and don’t, don’t know how much of a difference it makes to have a good one, and also that it is not that hard to be a good project manager.

You just have to actually do it. 

Matthew Stead: Can I make a suggestion that actually is the reverse of Darwin theory? We’ve got to come up with a name, but you know, the dumber you are, the more money you make. Also, for the record, um, Elon does have a lot of, um, philosophies and approaches which I do support. The efficiency, automating things after you’ve done them manually, only [00:27:00] doing the bare minimum, you know, all those sorts of things, doing things fast.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, there’s a lot, a lot of good product development and engineering that you can learn from Elon, and you do not have to take the, like, weird personal stuff along with it. You are able to pick and choose which aspects you, you learn from. 

Allen Hall: But it does take a specific kind of person to weather that storm.

If you wanna play in that sandbox, y- you better be ready because it’ll be hard and fast and not very forgiving. So you just have to know that going in, which can be great, and it can be a great experience, uh, for a lot of engineers, but it isn’t for everyone. 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 [00:28:00]industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out.

Visit peswind.com today. In this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can download at peswind.com, there’s an article from TGS 4C about vessel traffic around offshore wind farms. And this is kind of interesting bec- because they looked at some major wind farms off the coast of the UK, Dogger Bank B, Dogger Bank C, and Sofia.

Uh, and obviously there’s a lot of marine traffic around those, but you don’t really realize the scale and how, uh, it affects the, the traffic on the water. The– When they had looked at these three wind farms, they realized, uh, they had about 860, uh, transits in 2021 around that area, and that went to more than 20,000 by [00:29:00] 2025.

So the amount of economic and commercial activity that was happening around those wind farms exploded. And when you have that many ships in the water, it does change the nature of that area and also how other ships transit through the area, around that area. Uh, it’s an interesting piece because if you look at where those wind farms are, Matthew, th- that’s kind of a narrow stretch in there where there is a lot of ship traffic already.

So y- you create this, uh, artificial barrier for some of the ship traffic, and you’re trying to understand how that is affecting the flow in and out. But I think the, the bigger piece is you can tell how well a development is progressing on offshore wind by looking at the ships and who’s where and when.

Matthew Stead: I think this is interesting topic. Um, I, I– To be honest, I don’t completely get it. Can you explain it to me? 

Allen Hall: If I’m an investor in these projects, if I’m the government, if [00:30:00] I’m the, uh, the power company that’s gonna handle the power coming off these sites, I really need to know how it’s going. And the way that I look at it in the States when I look at offshore projects here, ’cause we could do something very similar, who’s out on, on the ocean?

Where are they? What tower are they at? How many towers are running? You can kinda tell that. Are they, are they just doing surveys or are they laying cable? Or is there something more active happening? And where are the ships from? Are they installation vessels? Are they driving monopiles? What’s going on out in the water?

It does give you a really good sense where they are in the project. Kind of back to Rosemary’s point on, on managing big projects, you– schedule is everything You can tell. You can really tell. 

Matthew Stead: Thinking about it a different way. So it’s a bit more like shadow monitoring. So it’s just a way of, it’s a way of independently monitoring and checking progress, making sure that there’s transparency as to what’s going on.

Allen Hall: I think there’s a lot of [00:31:00] value in that data set. And as, uh, more operators start to use that data set and more companies start to use that data set globally, uh, they’re gonna be doing offshore projects, I think, differently in, in terms of efficiency. They- they’re learning as they go. 

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Isn’t that one of the classical, um, sort of mathematical problems about how to optimize, uh, courier deliveries?

We’ve gotta talk about quantum computing at some point too, so. 

Allen Hall: We probably should. But for right now, I need everybody to go to peswind.com and download this quarter’s magazine. A lot of good articles in there, and it’s a great free download. Tons to learn. Go to peswind.com. That wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover this [00:32:00] show. For Matthew and Rosemary, I am Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.