Podcasts about EPC

Everyone has an opinion on whether being a landlord still pays off. Very few have the data to back it up... Richard Donnell, Zoopla's Executive Director - Research, is back on the show. Rob & Rob put the big question to him straight away, and his answer comes with a condition every landlord should hear. From there, he tests the headlines investors have been worrying about against the evidence. (02:12) Are landlords really heading for the exit, and who's buying the homes they sell? (04:00) Why so many investors now expect to buy a property that needs work (06:44) What the Renters' Rights Act has changed so far, and what it hasn't (08:33) Three quarters of landlords are over 60. So, who owns Britain's rental homes next? (11:43) Why housing will always feature in the wealth tax debate, and the signal that landlords still matter to the government (15:42) Is the average £10,000 EPC upgrade worth it, or is it time to sell? (18:21) The long-run link that still sets property apart from anything else Richard could invest in Links mentioned: Zoopla's rental estimate tool Enjoy the show? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts - it really helps others find us! Sign up for our free weekly newsletter, Property Pulse Find out more about Property Hub Invest

1 Peter Part 4: The Love Cascade1 Peter 1:22-2:3Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Our new life in Christ grows a sincere love

My co-host Ken Suzan and I are welcoming you to episode 179 of our podcast IP Fridays! Today's Interview guest is Peter Berg. If you don't know Peter, he is the Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and is also serving as the VPP president. We talk about the industry association of in-house practitioners VPP, politics, patent strategy at Infineon, litigation ready patents, NPEs, acquisitions, the German emloyees invention act and many more things. So stay with us for this very interesting interview. Before we jump into this interview, I have news for you! The USPTO has issued its first AI-related disciplinary action, published on August 27, 2026 in In re Brian E. Mitchell (Proceeding No. D2026-16) before the Office of Enrollment and Discipline. The underlying settlement was signed by the attorney on July 20, 2026 and by the OED Director on July 21, 2026, with final approval given on July 27, 2026 by Tricia Choe on behalf of USPTO Director John A. Squires. The action resulted in a public reprimand against California patent attorney Brian E. Mitchell after a generative AI tool produced a claim comparison chart containing fabricated citations to the patent’s internal file history. The case underscores that AI-generated hallucinations must be verified by a human before filing. InterDigital has escalated its patent dispute with Disney across three fronts within a month. On August 25, 2026, InterDigital filed two new actions at the Unified Patent Court: a preliminary injunction request at the Mannheim Local Division (UPC_CFI_3044/2026) and a main infringement action at the Düsseldorf Local Division (UPC_CFI_3043/2026), covering Germany, France and the Netherlands. Both target Disney+ Premium’s switch to the VP9 video codec, which InterDigital says still infringes patent EP 2 465 265, a patent the Mannheim division had already found valid and infringed in an earlier ruling that also branded Disney an unwilling licensee; the Düsseldorf action adds a second patent, EP 2 605 473, covering the Up Next continue-watching feature. On September 2, 2026, the Düsseldorf Local Division granted InterDigital an injunction against Disney covering Germany and the Netherlands over a separate patent protecting seamless playback continuation when switching between devices, upholding the patent’s validity in the same ruling. It was InterDigital’s third UPC injunction against Disney. Then, on September 15, 2026, InterDigital filed a damages claim for EUR 101.7 million against Disney at the Munich Regional Court I (case no. 7 O 8870/26), based on a November 2025 finding that Disney+ infringes InterDigital’s HDR video patent EP 2 132 923; the claim also covers viewers in 19 European countries served through a Frankfurt-based server location. For companies relying on codec or connectivity technology, the dispute is a reminder that switching to a different standard does not automatically avoid infringement if the asserted patent is drafted broadly enough. The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal ruled on September 3, 2026 in G 1/25 that a patent description only needs to be amended to match amended claims if a discrepancy between the two causes a requirement of the EPC, such as clarity, novelty or inventive step, not to be met. The EPO’s Board of Appeal 3.3.08 fully revoked Moderna’s key mRNA patent EP 3 590 949 following a two-day hearing that concluded in mid-September 2026, on the grounds that the claimed subject matter extended beyond the original application. The revocation removes the basis for Moderna’s earlier wins against BioNTech and Pfizer in Düsseldorf and London. On September 15, 2026, US sportswear maker New Balance filed a trademark suit against Decathlon’s US units, Decathlon America LLC and Decathlon USA LLC, in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts (case no. 1:26-cv-14235). New Balance argues that the K logo on its Kiprun running shoe line, when mirrored, reads unmistakably as an N and imitates the N mark it has used for roughly 50 years, claiming post-sale confusion. On September 8, 2026, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in Case C-298/23, Inter IKEA Systems v Vrijheidsfonds, on a referral from the Brussels Enterprise Court, that the owner of a well-known trademark can prohibit its use by a political party unless the party sets out the specific reasons why its freedom of expression outweighs the trademark owner’s interests. The case arose from the Vlaams Belang party’s 2022 campaign promoting a migration plan styled as IKEA assembly instructions. And now for the interview with Peter Berg! In this episode of IP Fridays I talk with Peter Berg. He is Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and President of VPP, the German association for in house IP professionals, since May 2025. Berg is an electrical engineer by training and leads a team at Infineon that manages a portfolio of more than 12,000 patent families, while the company simultaneously enforces its rights offensively in Germany, the US and China. That combination of hands on portfolio work and association leadership makes him one of the rare guests who can speak to both the operational detail of one of Europe’s largest patent portfolios and the political side of Germany’s IP landscape. The guest: Peter Berg and the VPP Peter Berg is an electrical engineer who became Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and, since May 2025, President of the VPP, the association representing in house patent professionals in Germany. His team manages a portfolio of more than 12,000 patent families while running an offensive enforcement program across Germany, the US and China. That mix of operational and political experience is exactly why I wanted him on the podcast. Germany’s national IP strategy: more than a promise on paper I asked Berg what has become of the national IP strategy promised in Germany’s coalition agreement, and what happens if it does not materialize during this legislative term. His answer was clear. The question is no longer whether the strategy will arrive, only how comprehensive it turns out to be. If it falls short of what industry needs, the profession will simply push for adjustments afterward. Berg names three levels that need attention. First, society as a whole, from kindergarten to retirement, needs to understand that intellectual property underpins our prosperity rather than being a line item in the accounts. Second, academia and professional education. Third, startups and the broader Mittelstand, where well funded structures are still missing. The German Patent and Trademark Office has an educational mandate but far too small a budget for it, and the regional patent information centers are underfunded as well. Berg makes a point that is easy to miss from outside Germany: the patent office reports to the Ministry of Justice rather than to an innovation focused ministry, even though its real purpose is to strengthen the economy. That three ministries, research, economy and justice, are now working on the strategy together strikes him as genuine progress. Litigation ready patents: how Infineon manages 12,000 patent families Infineon has roughly tripled its turnover since 2017 while keeping portfolio size largely stable. The answer, Berg says, is quality over quantity. Inventors pitch their ideas to a panel of senior technical experts and patent attorneys, and the process does not stop there. The draft itself is reviewed by multiple stakeholders, and once the notice of allowance arrives and the patent is granted, it goes through another review. The criteria stay consistent throughout: technology assessment, market size, detectability, circumventability and fit with Infineon’s own roadmap. Internal discipline alone does not make a patent litigation ready, though. That requires real experience with conflict, and most of that experience comes from the defensive side, where Infineon has plenty of practice finding weaknesses in patents asserted against it. Being on the offensive, Berg says, is a different level of learning entirely, whether in court or in licensing negotiations where the other side is not sure it would get a fair outcome if the case went to trial. In practice this also means systematic pruning. Internally Infineon calls the relevant phases US8 and US12, the years when annuity costs peak in the US portfolio, by far the most expensive part of the estate. Berg says his team knows every one of the more than 12,000 patent families in detail, and offensive enforcement is focused on the markets that matter most for electronic products: Germany, the US and China. An injunction at a trade show: national courts versus the UPC One concrete trigger for this conversation was an ex parte preliminary injunction Infineon obtained at a German trade show, without the defendant having filed a protective letter in advance. For Berg, enforcement at trade fairs is nothing new, it has been part of the playbook for years, now extended to venues outside Europe that Western companies have used less often in the past. His view on the UPC is nuanced. He credits the court with a strong start, good management and judges selected for quality rather than politics, and praises the body of case law it has built in a little over three years. On the other hand, some member states are still missing, a comprehensive body of case law takes time to develop, and costs do not fit every business case, especially where achievable damages barely justify the expense. Infineon in any case validates most European patents in only a handful of countries rather than dozens, so the practical difference between national and UPC enforcement is smaller than it might seem. For smaller cases the option to opt out and litigate nationally alongside UPC rights remains important, even though systematically double patenting is not something Infineon pursues for cost reasons. Four systems at once: coordinating cross border enforcement Infineon’s legal and patent departments have grown together over 25 years into a fully integrated international organization, with teams in Europe, North America and several Asian countries that, by Berg’s account, communicate on close to a weekly basis. Add to that a strong network of outside counsel. The commitment to management is not to shy away from any jurisdiction where the need arises. Berg is careful that patent attorneys do not spend their entire careers doing only litigation or only prosecution. Attorneys who rotate into a litigation team bring that experience back into their regular business support afterward, and that cycle in turn improves the quality of new filings. Litigation has become part of daily business, but never something a team slides into unprepared. Going on the offensive against a competitor requires planning several steps ahead. IP due diligence in practice: the Marvell Brightlane deal I found Berg’s answer on the Marvell Brightlane acquisition, Infineon’s 2.5 billion dollar deal for Marvell’s automotive Ethernet business that closed in August 2025, particularly revealing. In the semiconductor industry, he explains, IP is rarely primarily the patent portfolio. What matters more are frozen technologies and so called IP blocks, reusable design blocks that enable fast product development. Infineon almost never acquires a company because of its patents. Being a large, established player, its own portfolio is usually broad enough to secure a new technical area against incumbent competitors. The real work starts after signing. It means listening without being pushy, understanding the new colleagues’ processes and tools before deciding how to integrate the portfolio. Since none of Marvell’s IP staff joined Infineon in this deal, the team had to build up portfolio expertise using the acquired engineers and set up an operational patent committee, then plan which areas of the portfolio were already strong and where investment was still needed. The faster that integration decision gets made, Berg says, the better, because product development can never be allowed to stall because of an acquisition. The Cypress lesson: NPE exposure from legacy portfolios One risk many companies underestimate in acquisitions is patents an acquired business sold to a non practicing entity, or NPE, before the deal closed. That happened with Cypress Semiconductor in 2016, after its merger with Spansion left it with an oversized portfolio it did not need. Cypress sold around 2,000 patents to the NPE organization IP Value, and only a few years later Infineon acquired Cypress. Because the sale included a retained license for Cypress’s own business, Berg sees no exposure for Infineon from those specific patents today. The broader issue of NPE enforcement, though, remains real. Realistically there are many dozens of new cases a month, often directed at customers or the wider ecosystem rather than at chipmakers directly. Even when Infineon is not the target, it has to support its customers whenever its own technology is implicated. For the industry as a whole this consumes a great deal of resources without moving innovation forward, a point that comes up especially often at this time of year in Munich, when IP practitioners from around the world gather for meetings. Post quantum cryptography: patent density ahead of standardization In December 2024 Infineon became the first company to achieve a CC EAL6 certification in post quantum cryptography, one of the highest security certifications available. Berg describes two angles to the work. On one side, Infineon develops its own chipsets to enable quantum computing itself, already a real business rather than pure research. On the other side, customers across Infineon’s application fields need to be prepared for what he calls quantum day, the point at which powerful quantum computers become available, including to bad actors. Because that day may only be three to five years away, infrastructure needs to be built now so it can handle new cryptographic approaches. On standard essentiality he is measured rather than evasive. There are certainly patents in this field from Infineon and others, but security standards have historically leaned toward royalty free licensing rather than the large patent clusters seen in cellular communication from 2G through 5G. Whether that pattern repeats for post quantum cryptography, he cannot say, but Infineon is preparing for either outcome. Germany’s Employee Invention Act: opportunity or burden Asked whether Germany’s Employee Invention Act is an opportunity or a burden for the country’s innovation ecosystem, Berg does not hold back. With more than 30 years of experience, he estimates that 99 percent of all inventions are simply the regular work product of engineers in R&D, requiring no extra incentive at all. In countries without an equivalent law, employees are demonstrably just as innovative and just as willing to share their inventions with the company. His core objection is that invention does not equal innovation. Procurement, production, quality management and many other functions all contribute to a product’s success, not just the named inventors. That the inventor alone receives extra compensation while everyone else does not strikes Berg as unfair, especially since Infineon already rewards its top engineers appropriately regardless of statutory requirements. He calls the law a bureaucratic nightmare that should be abolished or at least radically simplified. Smaller organizations, he notes, often just ignore it or implement it badly, and every company Infineon has acquired with German operations has come with its own legacy mess to clean up. Artificial intelligence in day to day patent work at Infineon On AI, Berg describes three layers. The first is established tools: patent search, translation between the team’s main working languages, and, for about two years now, drafting replies to office actions. As with any tool, the benefit only shows up with repeated use at real volume, which is why Infineon works deliberately with outside counsel to broaden adoption across the team. The second layer is ongoing testing of new tools, limited mainly by the time available to evaluate them. The third is everyday office use. Since spring 2025, everyone from paralegals to attorneys has been able to use AI tools broadly within a secure environment. The bar stays the same throughout: if AI output is not at least as good as an attorney’s prior work, it is not worth using, or the cleanup afterward eats up any time saved. Where it does work, responses to standardization proposals, for instance, can be produced far faster. One question Berg expects to face next year, without yet having an answer: how should efficiency gains be split between the company and outside counsel once both sides benefit from AI? Three messages for the IP community I closed by asking Berg for the most important messages he would want to give our listeners, mostly IP professionals in companies and law firms. His first message: think about IP strategy from the end, starting with what needs to be asserted against whom and for what purpose in ten or twenty years, rather than letting today’s deadlines dictate everything. Only that kind of multi year plan, combined with a sound cost benefit ratio, produces genuinely litigation ready patents. His second message is again about artificial intelligence: anyone who has not started training with it yet risks missing the wave, and this is not a skill built overnight. His third message is aimed at anyone not yet connected to peers in the profession: use the associations and networks that already exist to build that exchange, a thought that ties neatly back to the VPP, where our conversation began. And here is the full transcript: Peter Berg: Hi, I’m Peter Berg, Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and President of VPP, the Association of In-house Patent Practitioners in Germany. And you are listening to IP Fridays. Rolf Claessen: Today’s interview guest is Peter Berg. If you don’t know Peter, he is an electrical engineer by training and is the Chief IP Counsel at Infineon Technologies and also serving as the VPP president. Thank you very much for being on IP Fridays. Peter Berg: My pleasure. Rolf Claessen: So first I want to talk about VPP. You succeeded Beat Weibel from Siemens as VPP president in May 2024 and have publicly called for Germany to finally deliver on the coalition agreement promise of the national IP strategy. So politics, what are the two or three most concrete things that strategy must contain? What happens if it doesn’t get done in this legislative period? Peter Berg: First of all, I think I need to correct you. It was May 2025, so not that long as a standing president. But if you mention national IP strategy, national means here for Germany. I think the question isn’t anymore whether or what happens if we don’t get that strategy. I think that is now on its way. The question is rather how good and comprehensive the national IP strategy will be, and if it’s just not enough from an industry perspective, I would say then we adjust afterwards. Of course, there is a big paper out from the BDI, the German Industry Association, published in 2024, and I need to focus on something which is really close to my heart. If you ask me the main content it should have, it is first of all better IP education, and I see there are kind of three levels. One is really society as such, so each and everybody from kindergarten to retirees, we need to acknowledge in the knowledge society that IP is central for our well-being. We have to respect the IP of others. We have to be proud to create IP, not just treat it as an entry in the accounts. Yeah, society at large. The second level is really academia and education in our professional environment. And finally, life is difficult for startups, people who want to create a new company, and small and medium-sized enterprises. There is good stuff out there. The German Patent and Trademark Office has a mandate to educate, but a very small budget to do so. In a federal country like Germany, there are local support systems, be it the chambers of commerce or the patent information centers. The structure is there, but it’s underfinanced, and Germany has to gear up on that one. So besides IP education, I believe solid national IP institutions are key. This is also a funding issue, be it headcount or technology. Think of the German Patent and Trademark Office, think of the courts, be it on the infringement side or the nullity side, so the Federal Patent Court. We need to back up nationally the European institutions, since we believe not every case is worth taking to the UPC, so for smaller cases we need a good national system as a backup. And government needs to have that in mind and not rely too much on European institutions alone. Finally, facilitate the IP transfer from universities and research institutions into industry. Right now it’s all about startups, et cetera, but that kind of IP transfer starts first of all with people leaving university, leaving those research institutions and joining industry, be it as staff or through research contracts. And finally, of course, startups are the area where Germany needs to catch up in particular. Perhaps I need to add for non-German listeners, there is a particularity in Germany in that the IP institutions, like the Patent and Trademark Office, report into the Ministry of Justice, although it’s an instrument for thriving innovation and building a solid economy. So it’s right now a totally new thing for this country that three ministries, research, economy and justice, are working together on this national IP strategy, with only recently some good progress. Rolf Claessen: You’ve said publicly that Infineon’s primary focus is patents that provide clear competitive advantages, and that for you it’s about litigation-ready patents. That’s a very specific phrase. How do you define it operationally, and how has the pruning of your more than 12,000-family portfolio changed in the last two years? Peter Berg: Yeah, I think that’s a process which lasted much more than two years, and it’s never over. This is work in progress. Thinking back to 2017, I joined Infineon, and the company has developed very nicely since. I think we roughly tripled turnover but kept the portfolio size roughly stable, despite acquisitions, despite that growth, also in R&D, et cetera. We’ve even been able to shrink costs since then, and I believe we’ve achieved our strategic goals, now with a good, or let’s say not yet good enough, cost-benefit ratio. And the answer to that equation is quality. Now, we as patent practitioners might call it differently, but at the end it comes down to the fact that, most likely for all companies and for practitioners who support companies in private practice, you need a collaboration platform. That means for Infineon, the inventors are key. They are involved in decision-making, so they pitch their invention to senior technical experts, my team members, and patent attorneys, and the quality of that expert panel makes a big difference. Then come repetitive reviews, not just once the decision to file is taken, but the draft itself is also reviewed by multiple stakeholders. Then we get the notice of allowance, the patent is granted, another review, and later on we try to apply consistent criteria: what’s the technology assessment, what’s the market size, is it detectable, is it easy to circumvent, et cetera, and does it fit with our own roadmap. And of course it would be nice if you could easily compare it with a competitor’s roadmap, or take the time to speculate on certain market changes which might be disruptive. And I believe if you apply that consistently over a sufficiently long period, you get patents you could call litigation-grade or litigation-ready. What is then missing, though, is real experience with conflicts against competitors and how the courts look at that. So the truth comes out once you go to court. On the defensive side, of course, we have tons of experience trying to find weaknesses in patents being asserted against Infineon, et cetera. But I think it’s another level of learning to be on the offensive, and that might play out in court, but it might also play out in licensing negotiations, where the other side is sufficiently unsure whether they would get an outcome they believe would be fair if they went to court with those patents. You asked me about the pruning of all this. So what is our approach there? There is a kind of forced pruning rate which we believe is necessary, to make it mandatory for everybody to identify the weakest patents in the respective portfolios. We focus on the years where costs are highest, what we internally call US8 and US12, since a big chunk of money needs to be spent on annuity payments for the US portfolio, which is the dominant one, and for the rest of the world it’s rather towards the end of the patents’ lifecycle. Now, having a good team, people who really like the technology and stay in charge for a long time, I could proudly say that my team knows every one of those 12,000 patent families well, and not just on the German or the US side, but really focuses on the jurisdictions with the biggest markets for electronic products. And there we see offensive litigation as a good choice, and that is Germany, the US and China. Rolf Claessen: Yes, talking about patent quality is really a hot topic right now, especially in industry and at the EPO, I guess, but that’s a topic for a different hour, probably. But talking about litigation-ready patents, you recently obtained possibly the first ex parte preliminary injunction at a German trade show in recent history, without a protective writ having been filed by the defendant. What does that show about your view on German national courts versus the UPC for this kind of enforcement? Peter Berg: I mean, first of all, litigation is not an end in itself, and in the markets a semiconductor company like Infineon operates in, a product might implement potentially hundreds or thousands of patents. So litigation itself doesn’t resolve all of that, but it has its place in our strategy execution. You’ll understand that I can’t get into specifics of any of the litigations you hinted at. But enforcement of trademarks, and I think you mentioned a patent case, trademarks and patents at trade fairs has been part of our activities for years, and sometimes you can catch somebody by surprise. It’s all about good preparation. But what I believe is more important is that we also prepare for venues so far less used by Western companies, be it China, et cetera. So being litigation-ready means looking into different venues. The UPC is certainly one of them, but there’s more beyond that. Enforcement for us is not only a German or European measure. I personally believe national courts and the UPC will both have a role to play in the future. There are pros and cons to each, which need to be evaluated case by case. I need to congratulate the UPC, which had a great start, good management, good communication about what they do, and a selection of judges based on quality, not politics. In a little more than three years, they’ve built up a pretty good body of case law. On the downside, some countries are still missing, building a really comprehensive body of case law will take time, and the cost side is still a concern, meaning that not every kind of business case reaches damages high enough to justify it, and there’s a certain risk that the case won’t be decided quickly by the court. In such situations, it might not make sense to go to the UPC. We have, I guess, quite a few companies in the electronics or mechanical engineering field where we don’t validate European patents in dozens of countries, maybe two, three, four, and over time it might be even fewer. So geographically, the difference between US, UPC and national enforcement isn’t that big. That’s why the alternative, and I mentioned this a bit at the beginning regarding the national IP strategy, needs to stay a good alternative. So the possibility to opt out and litigate nationally in lesser business cases remains, from my perspective, important, and we continue to use that as well. Rolf Claessen: Yes, and also the hurdle for double patenting has been lowered a little, so you can still have national patent rights in parallel with UPC patent rights. That’s also an advantage, probably. Peter Berg: Yeah, I think that was almost an invitation to say, you know, if you’re not sure whether the unitary patent is your choice, you can do both in parallel. True. But again, all we need to do is achieve our goals with a good cost-benefit ratio, so systematically double patenting is not really the way forward for us. Rolf Claessen: Right. Yeah, that was a very interesting insight about German national courts versus the UPC. But in fact you’re also litigating across borders, in many different countries, for example the US, Europe, Germany, and other countries, in China maybe. So what does coordinating enforcement across all these different systems simultaneously actually look like from the inside, and was it always the plan to have such complex litigation and enforcement systems, or did it evolve? What’s your take on this? Peter Berg: Yeah, at Infineon, our legal and patent departments, as we call them, have grown together over the last 25 years, roughly the age of our company, into an organization that doesn’t just have broad general legal or semiconductor application market expertise, for us that’s automotive, consumer goods, industrial and IoT, but is an organization that’s been tested by hundreds of assertions against us and our customers, and by negotiations with operating companies and NPEs. So that comes with experience. If I look now at our organization, not just my own team but legal in general, we have patent and legal teams in all the hotspots, and that’s grown in the last couple of years too. It’s Europe, of course North America, and various countries in Asia, and it’s a fully integrated international organization. We know each other and communicate, it feels like, on at least a weekly basis. Not to forget a good network of outside counsel to execute enforcement wherever strategic needs require it. That’s kind of our promise to management: we don’t shy away from any jurisdiction, if the need is there we can act and set up a team. Perhaps we’ve learned more on the defensive side, which we can now translate into offensive action. And I guess you’re somehow relating your question to a specific litigation against a Chinese competitor, and that’s not a litigation you kind of slide into. You need to plan a few steps ahead. Litigation has become part of our daily life, and the key moment is always, once it’s decided that this is going to happen, to set up a team for the new litigation. It starts to feel like a routine operation. The staffing depends of course on the technical area of the enforcement, the jurisdiction, and the workload of existing attorneys. And the good thing is that once we rotate patent attorneys into a litigation team, it’s great experience for them, that leads to expertise, and since we try not to over-specialize, so that people don’t only do litigation or only do prosecution, that experience from litigation is a great asset when they go back to supporting a certain business unit doing prosecution work. And coming back to your first question, that personal experience also helps in creating litigation-ready patents over time. Rolf Claessen: Yes, you’ve also acquired a couple of companies, and I have a question about a certain deal, especially the Marvell Brightlane acquisition and the IP due diligence. This $2.5 billion Brightlane deal closed in August 2025 and presumably transferred a substantial patent portfolio in the automotive, let’s say networking, technology field. How much of that big deal is really about buying IP, and how does a deal like that change your daily work in your IP function the day after closing? So once you’d signed the deal, did your daily life change? Peter Berg: It depends on the size of the deal. A couple of questions in there. Let me start with IP in the semiconductor industry, my industry, and that’s more than patents, trademarks and design rights. Speaking to practitioners and R&D colleagues, IP for them is rather frozen technologies and what we call IP blocks, design blocks which enable fast product designs that you can reuse. And if I take that as a basis, although each acquisition is different, IP plays a very big role because it should enable us to bring new products to market quickly, et cetera. Seldom does Infineon acquire a business because of its patent portfolio. Being a large, established player, our existing patent portfolio should be good enough to move into whatever technical area is of interest, and to make sure incumbent competitors couldn’t easily attack us when entering that field. Now, you mentioned the Marvell acquisition. We call it rather the Marvell automotive Ethernet acquisition. From Marvell’s perspective it was a smaller part of their business, which they sold to Infineon about a year ago. How should I say it, you get the assets but you get relatively little IP. So it’s more that you try to familiarize yourself with the assets and how they fit our business case, et cetera. Of course there is due diligence to get an idea and to make sure that everything that should belong to the business is transparent, but the more important part comes after the acquisition. Once the business is owned by Infineon, all the other functions handle their own areas of responsibility. For us, when it comes to IP rights, it’s about reaching out to the new colleagues, helping them for the first couple of days, but also leaving them alone, because there are so many changes they have to go through, and not being overly pushy. Understanding their current processes and tools, and their view of their own portfolio, is important at that point. So you hold back a little and see what they do and why they do it, sometimes you can learn from their best practices. But there comes a moment when we need to finally decide how to integrate the portfolio, and which of our processes and tools they have to adopt, and the faster you make that decision, the better. Since in the case of Marvell none of the IP staff joined us, the task was to build up a portfolio using the expertise of the senior engineers, get a good operational patent committee running, and develop a plan for which areas of the portfolio are good enough and which need to grow, in line with the growth of the business. It’s now more than a year ago, but that was an interesting time, and I doubt many people listening are aware of it, but a big thank you to everybody involved back in 2025. Rolf Claessen: From your answer I get that your job involved a lot of listening, basically, to the needs of the teams that joined your company, right? Peter Berg: At least as much talking as listening. Of course they want to know as well how we do things and what’s expected of them. So first of all it’s about reaching those people and making sure, and this is also a concern, that if everything changes for them, then perhaps the patenting process isn’t the most important thing. Product development is key, and making sure there’s no interruption so they can keep their timelines, et cetera. So being very mindful of that setting. But you’re right, it’s not just about telling them, it’s about listening to them and finding the right moment to switch. Rolf Claessen: Right, I have a very different question now, about NPEs, non-practicing entities, and exposure. I think some NPEs acquired patent families that trace back to Cypress, just before you bought it, or around the time of your acquisition. Are these patents, held by these NPEs, now a problem for Infineon? Peter Berg: That would be it, right? Actually, no, let me give some context first. Companies in distress, or with an overly large patent portfolio for their business, sometimes sell patents at a certain point in their history. Regarding Cypress Semiconductor, that happened around 2016, after they merged with a company called Spansion and ended up with a large combined portfolio they didn’t need. At that point Cypress teamed up with an NPE organization called IP Value and sold them around 2,000 patents, that’s public knowledge, and only a few years later Infineon acquired Cypress. So that was done by Cypress before it became an Infineon company. But good practice is, if you sell a patent, you retain a license for your own business, so in that sense I don’t feel any exposure from those patents. But of course this touches on the general topic of exposure to NPE enforcement, which is a concern in the electronics industry. Realistically, hundreds is perhaps too much, but many dozens of new cases a month, often against our customers or the wider ecosystem. But since it involves technology implemented in our products, even if the enforcement doesn’t target semiconductor players directly, we need to support our customers, and that is a kind of a load we need to help carry. But these are typically patents that somebody else sold to an NPE. You were also asking whether acquiring businesses brings new opportunities as well as new risk. I think that’s natural, and we shouldn’t shy away from that kind of risk. If we, like any other company, go for the big, high-margin, fast-growing businesses, the stakes are high in those areas, and you can’t complain if these also turn out to be litigious marketplaces, because many people want to be there. Around this time of year, since it’s Oktoberfest season here in Munich, many IP practitioners from around the world gather for meetings and share their view on the world. Everybody talks about AI, and NPEs try to acquire whatever patents are on the market that could be the basis of stronger or weaker infringement actions against that part of the industry. From an industry perspective, this consumes a lot of resources and doesn’t really help accelerate innovation in our space. Rolf Claessen: Good that you have a solution for the patent families that were acquired before you acquired Cypress. And now, turning to a very different topic, cryptography. You’re also working on quantum cryptography and post-quantum cryptography, a difficult word, and you, Infineon, were the first to obtain a certification, a really high certification in post-quantum cryptography, the so-called CC EAL6 certification, a very high certification in cryptography for our listeners, in December 2024. Now this field of technology is heading towards standardization. How patent-dense is Infineon’s patent stack in this field, and how are you thinking about the potential standard-essentiality of this new post-quantum cryptography technology, where maybe the American standards from the NIST institute become the infrastructure, or the standard? Peter Berg: It’s a big field with different components. We take the quantum challenge seriously at Infineon, but there are two elements to it. You spoke more about cryptography, but for us, as a semiconductor player, on one hand we want to enable quantum computing with our own chipsets, and we support two different technology streams there, it’s not just development, it’s already a real business. On the other hand, we need to educate and enable customers in the application fields we serve to prepare for that quantum day, the day quantum computing becomes available, and not only to the good guys. You need to think about this now, because it might be just three, four, five years away, you don’t know for sure. It means investing in infrastructure able to handle post-quantum cryptography and security in communications, because you need certain computing power and different ways of handling cryptography algorithms compared to today. Today’s approaches won’t be enough, you need better ones, and you mentioned one at the beginning, which Infineon has proposed. That’s not easy. If you invest in a core today, you’re investing in something like a power station, which stays connected to the internet for a long time, so you need infrastructure robust enough to handle post-quantum cryptography. Regarding the patent stack question, yes, certainly there are several patents in this field owned by Infineon, but also by others. In general, I believe, both in semiconductors and in security more broadly, this tends toward royalty-free licensing, and standard setting has in the past been marked by the avoidance of the big patent clusters we saw building up in cellular communication, from 2G through 5G. I don’t see that happening in the post-quantum cryptography field, but who knows, so we prepare for whatever scenario comes. Rolf Claessen: Let’s see if the Infineon patents end up in a big pool or something later on, and you get all these license fees. Peter Berg: I wouldn’t mind, yeah. Rolf Claessen: Let’s see. Right, now turning to another topic, maybe, for example US colleagues ask me a lot about the German employee invention law. It’s very different from other countries, especially the US. Do you see the German employee invention law rather as an opportunity or a burden for Germany’s innovation ecosystem? Peter Berg: As IP professionals in larger corporations in Germany, we’re so used to that law that we hardly challenge its usefulness. To your question, though, with more than 30 years of experience, I’d say that 99% of all inventions are made by engineers in R&D as part of their regular job, nothing extra on top, so they don’t need an extra motivation for it. And we see it in other countries too, where that kind of law doesn’t exist, and people are just as innovative and just as ready to share their inventions with us as an IP organization, with or without the law. So it doesn’t seem to fulfill the role some see as a competitive edge for Germany, and because of that inventor law, people just end up being more cautious, or more descriptive, about their work results. There are more reasons why I believe this is obsolete. Invention does not equal innovation. There are many other colleagues in a company, in procurement, production, quality management, et cetera, and all of them contribute to a product becoming a bestseller. It’s not a single person, and it’s not just one team’s result, and somehow it doesn’t feel fair that the inventor gets an additional bonus and the others don’t. In any case we’d give our top engineers a premium anyway, and we reward inventors in all other countries, with the law or without it, without any worldwide mandate for that kind of remuneration. So from a corporate perspective we don’t need a law to help us work out the benefits and share them with our top inventors. The law is a bureaucratic nightmare. It needs to be abandoned, or at least radically simplified. In smaller organizations, I guess it’s often just ignored or badly implemented. Believe me, every company we’ve acquired with operations in Germany has left us a bit of a heritage to clean up. Rolf Claessen: Yeah, I understand. Now for a different topic, AI, the use of AI. We as patent attorneys talk about this a lot, it’s a big topic, how to use AI, whether to use AI, and how to use AI in law firms. But can you tell us about the use of AI in the operations of your team? Peter Berg: Recently we discussed this and agreed on kind of three layers to it. First, good use of established AI tools. AI, in that sense, isn’t something that started three years ago with ChatGPT. It began with search, patent search, then translation, at least between the major languages like German and English, which most of my team masters, and then, I’d say about two years ago, drafting and replies to office actions. So there are established tools, and as with every tool, you need to use it repeatedly, at a certain volume, to really benefit from it. We try to work with the best of these established tools, driving wider adoption within the team and partnering with our law firms, since a substantial part of the legal work is done by our outside counsel. So this is a bit of a joint exercise. Second, there are constantly new tools coming up, which we try to test. There are many, so the time we have available to look into them is the limiting factor. I’d like to test more, because there might be a new frontrunner coming up that we should definitely try ourselves. But last, and certainly not least, we try to implement AI into everyday operations, into the office environment itself. The company made a good decision in spring to allow wide adoption of AI-specific tools in a secure environment, and that has opened up a lot of opportunities for everybody, paralegals and attorneys alike, and now it’s about fostering an open exchange on what’s possible and what’s not. And finally, since Infineon, like most corporations, doesn’t do everything in-house, there’s the question of what the benefits are that we can plan around, so that we get better quality. If the quality of the AI results isn’t as good as the attorney’s results before, then we shouldn’t use it, or we’d spend so much time cleaning it up afterwards that nobody could tell the difference. Second, we can now do things that weren’t possible before, because they were too tedious or took too long, or we get faster turnaround times, so we can respond more quickly to standardization proposals, what used to take many days we can now do in a few days, while still trusting the quality of the output. And only then comes what’s often discussed as efficiency gains, and the question that will probably be asked next year is how we split the pie: if both we and outside counsel benefit from using AI, what do we do with those benefits, how much stays with outside counsel, and how much should also benefit my budget? Rolf Claessen: But I clearly see the advantages of using AI, I’m using it myself, especially for cases like oppositions, where in earlier times you had to read through some 30 papers, patents and books, and now you can just ask the AI where you find a certain feature across those 30 documents. So it’s really useful in a lot of cases. Now my last question to you, and maybe the most important one, what do you think are the three most important messages you want to convey to our listeners, who are mostly IP professionals, both in-house and in law firms? Peter Berg: Do you want me to repeat things I said before, or can I think freely, in general? Free thinking, of course. Okay. Many of the things we spoke about now were about what to do next, and how to execute certain things, how to prepare. I believe that if you think about IP strategy, you think about it from the end: what do I need to assert, against whom, for what purpose, before building a portfolio of IP rights. So it’s not just about the deadlines you have today and tomorrow, which you somehow have to get through, but about taking a step back and thinking, what should this be good for in 10 or 20 years’ time. If you do that, it helps you get to litigation-grade patents and litigation readiness. We’re all busy, and there are so many things we need to do today and tomorrow, so it’s easily forgotten to look a little further down the road. So I’d say, think about a multi-year plan to achieve your goals, and there are hardly any moments, unless perhaps you’re one of the big AI platforms with unlimited resources, where that isn’t true. So plan for multiple years, but with a good cost-benefit ratio in mind. And I can’t really avoid mentioning AI here. It’s having a major impact on our operations. We’ve talked about it, we’ve tested it, but ramping it up is a different matter, and I think next year will be decisive. That’s really the full value chain, from interacting with our inventors to get better quality ideas, all the way to claim charting and negotiating, the bread-and-butter activities of patent attorneys, drafting office action replies is of course part of that too. I’m really keen to see that happen, and I’m trying to keep my team ahead of the wave. And I can only encourage everybody in our profession, if you don’t yet have a contact, team up with friends or colleagues in the profession, use the various associations that exist in our profession to network and discuss. The worst thing is to miss the train, and it takes time, this isn’t something you become good at overnight, so it needs time to train, and it’s good to start now. Rolf Claessen: Yes, that’s a very good point, and closing where we began, with the VPP, exchanging ideas among colleagues really is key, I think, important. Thank you very much for being on IP Fridays, on our podcast. That was really interesting, and I think our listeners can learn a lot from this interview. Thank you very much. Peter Berg: Don’t mention it, it was a pleasure talking to you, and for me it was also the first time doing this kind of podcast. Thank you. Rolf Claessen: Thank you

Join us for a timely conversation with Holly Lazzaro, chair of the newly formed Ad-Interim Committee on Digital Discipleship in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In this episode, we explore what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus in an increasingly digital world. Holly shares how the Presbytery of the East brought an overture to the 46th General Assembly that led to the creation of this important committee, tasked with developing a position paper to help the EPC think biblically about discipleship in the digital age.   The conversation tackles the polarized reactions people often have to artificial intelligence, and why the church needs a more nuanced, theologically grounded approach. Holly outlines seven ethical categories the church should consider, but also highlights positive ways churches can leverage technology—when it points people toward people, removes administrative friction from ministry, and becomes a subject of discipleship itself.   Resources:   Holly's Substack: https://formednotfed.substack.com/

Trends-journalist Dieter Landuyt gaat in gesprek met professor Erik Buyst, een van de grondleggers van het Vlaamse woningmarktonderzoek. Is wonen vandaag echt zoveel duurder geworden dan vroeger? Buyst plaatst vraagtekens bij de alarmkreten over de betaalbaarheid van woningen, maar is tegelijk bijzonder kritisch voor het huidige EPC-beleid en het verouderde systeem van het kadastraal inkomen. Trends is een podcastkanaal van de redactie van Trends.--- --- Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

1 Peter Part 3: The Elect Exile's Handbook1 Peter 1:13-21Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: We live with hope and holiness

Interview with Adam Kiley, CEO, Frontier EnergyOur previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/frontier-energy-asxfhe-federal-backing-transforms-outlook-for-wa-renewables-developer-6941Recording date: 15th September 2026Frontier Energy Limited (ASX:FHE) has reached the stage that most renewable energy developers never do: fully funded, fully contracted, and building. Stage One of its Waroona Renewable Energy Project in Western Australia comprises 132MW of solar generation and an 81.5MW, 6.9-hour battery storage system, at a total capital cost of A$310 million plus A$22 million contingency. A A$110 million equity raise has lifted institutional ownership on the register to around 30%, while Natixis CIB and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have signed an underwriting letter for up to A$280 million in credit-approved debt facilities. Financial close is targeted for October or November 2026, with first debt drawdown in the first quarter of 2027.The project's risk profile is unusually contained for its stage. Frontier used a free-issue contracting model, buying equipment directly from tier-one suppliers - LONGi, Trina, SMA, Nextracker - on fixed-price terms and supplying it to EPC contractor Monford, insulating the budget from input cost inflation. Long-lead items were ordered up to 12 months in advance, and a structured early-works process with the EPC surfaced scope gaps before financial close rather than during construction. Site mobilisation began in mid-September 2026, with peak construction workforce (around 200 people) expected from January 2027 and first revenue generation targeted for 2028.Revenue certainty is the other pillar of the investment case. Independent forecaster Aurora, engaged by the project's lenders, models average annual revenue of A$72.5 million over the first five years, of which A$32 million comes from fixed-price Reserve Capacity payments locked until 2032. The project has also been selected for the federal Capacity Investment Scheme, which - alongside Reserve Capacity - extends a revenue floor through to 2042, sharing 50% of any upside above an agreed ceiling with government. Against $10 million of forecast opex, that produces average EBITDA of A$62.5 million (an 86% margin), a post-tax IRR of approximately 20%, and average free cash flow of roughly A$35 million annually after debt servicing and tax in the first five years.Beyond Stage One, Frontier holds 830 hectares of freehold land in total and has development approval already in place for a similarly sized Stage Two (~130MW solar / ~80MW BESS), connected to Western Australia's largest 330kV transmission corridor. The state faces a structural supply gap - the market operator forecasts an additional 11.5 TWh of generation needed by 2031, rising to 18.3 TWh by 2036, as coal and gas capacity retires - compounded by fast-growing data centre demand, for which Frontier's uncommitted Stage One output and expandable substation design offer optionality.The key near-term catalysts are financial close on the debt package and execution of the CIS contract, both expected within weeks of the September 2026 interview. Longer term, the size of the opportunity depends on how quickly management can replicate Stage One's fixed-price, government-backed model for Stage Two and beyond.Learn more: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/frontier-energySign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com/subscribe

1 Peter Part 2: Exploring our salvation1 Peter 1:3-12Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Salvation is our daily lifeline

1 Peter Part 1: Faith in exile1 Peter 1:1-2Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: We are the elect exiles

Join us for this episode of In All Things as we continue our "Christians Beyond the Classroom" series on lifelong learning. Host Dean Weaver sits down with Richard Rieves, Regional Director of Church Planting for the EPC, to discuss how church planters are being equipped through the Incubator Training program.   Richard shares how the EPC has developed a comprehensive training system for church planters based on Tim Keller's Center Church, in partnership with Redeemer City to City. The Incubator courses take planters through a 6-8 month journey that emphasizes gospel renewal and contextualization, helping them develop a unique theological vision for their particular time and place.   Richard encourages listeners to not be afraid to learn new skills when God calls them into new things, emphasizing that we are all lifelong learners in following Jesus.   Resources:   Learn more about church planting at epcchurchplanting.com EPC website: epc.org "Why Plant Churches" by Tim Keller Future Church by Will Mancini

Proverbs Part 8: Best friends foreverProverbs 17:17, 18:24, 27:17Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: We can be actual friends with God

This summer our denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), wrestled with the challenging issue of same sex attraction - does God always remove sinful desires when a person comes to Christ? - and voted on the sensitive issue of whether or not a person who struggles with same-sex attraction without acting on it could be considered for ordination.Headlines coming out of the General Assembly implied that the EPC has compromised the biblical position on homosexuality, paving the way for ordaining homosexuals.Pastor David Henderson was at General Assembly and says, “Not true!”In this bonus episode, Communication Director Michelle Leichty and David discuss his time at General Assembly, what the EPC actually voted on, and where to go with your questions.Recorded on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, at Covenant.

In this episode of In All Things, we explore theological education and a partnership between Knox Theological Seminary and the EPC designed to equip commissioned pastors for effective ministry. Scott Manor, President of Knox Theological Seminary, joins the conversation to discuss what theological education should really accomplish. Scott explains that the goal isn't just accumulating knowledge, but truly knowing God and being equipped for ministry. The centerpiece of the conversation is the Knox Commissioned Pastor Program, created in collaboration with the EPC to meet a critical need. With 64% of EPC congregations having under 100 members, many smaller churches struggle to afford a full-time seminary-trained pastor. This program offers a pathway for ruling elders, faithful church members, and those approaching retirement to step into commissioned pastor roles without years of full-time seminary study. Whether you're considering commissioned pastor ministry or simply want to grow as a disciple of Jesus, this training equips you to serve your local church more effectively—as a ruling elder, Sunday school teacher, youth advisor, or church leader. Resources: Knowing God by J.I. Packer: https://www.ivpress.com/knowing-god?srsltid=AfmBOopRbh8hgl9S2pABE5ZJfueTq-jNP7OaoeS3nwkCcjAKfVmh4GiJ Knox Commissioned Pastor Program: discipleship.knoxseminary.edu Knox Theological Seminary: knoxseminary.edu EPC's Effective Biblical Leadership team: epconnect.org

Staar je blind op commissiepercentages? Ik leg je uit waarom de EPC (Earnings per Click) het belangrijkste getal is voor elke affiliate. In deze aflevering leer je hoe je dit cijfer berekent en waarom het essentieel is voor het vergelijken van verschillende programma's en het verhogen van je verdiensten.Wat we bespreken:Het belang van EPCEPC berekenen en interpreterenCijfers als een ui afpellenTake-aways:Stop met blind staren op commissiepercentages, aangezien deze weinig zeggen over de werkelijke winstgevendheid.Bereken je EPC door je verdiende commissie in een periode te delen door het aantal klikken in diezelfde periode.Vergelijk effectief tussen verschillende affiliate netwerken door gebruik te maken van de EPC als universele meeteenheid.Analyseer cijfers als een ui; begin bij de EPC en pel de laagjes af (conversieratio, verkeersbronnen) om de kern te begrijpen.Test continu met verschillende adverteerders om te ontdekken wat echt werkt voor jouw specifieke doelgroep.Volg mij:Instagram: @affiliatebloggernlWebsite: Affiliateblogger.nl

Proverbs Part 7: Anger managementProverbs 14:17 and 29, 15:1 and 18Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Christ's followers must control their temper

We are excited to welcome back guest preacher Katie Piquette, as she continues our summer series with Psalm 44. Katie is a teaching elder in the EPC and a chaplain at the VA Hospital.

This episode of In All Things is brought to you by World Outreach, one of the EPC's four Gospel Priorities. World Outreach reflects our commitment to the Great Commission and to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ across cultures and around the world. Through missionaries, global partnerships, and opportunities like the Kairos course, the EPC is equipping every believer to discover their place in God's mission. Learn more about how you and your church can participate in God's work around the world at epcwo.org  

Solar construction has always depended on experienced crews adapting to whatever the jobsite throws at them. But what happens when the industry needs to build more projects than its best crews can possibly cover?Cody Houser has spent much of his career on the other side of that problem. Before becoming Director of EPC and Constructability at FTC Solar, he spent eight years running his own construction company, driving piles, building trackers, managing crews as large as 250 people, and experimenting with automated pile driving years before today's wave of solar robotics.His argument for automation starts with something more fundamental than replacing labor: predictability.Robotics can give EPCs a more reliable baseline for daily production. But Cody also explains why the opportunity starts upstream, with trackers and construction workflows designed to make installation simpler and more repeatable, whether the work is performed by humans today or increasingly automated tomorrow. FTC says its Pioneer tracker is already producing 15% faster mechanical installation by human crews, an example Cody uses to show how constructability can translate directly into EPC economics.This conversation explores the shrinking pool of experienced field labor, safety, constructability, AI, and what Cody believes the increasingly autonomous solar jobsite could look like over the next decade.The bigger question isn't what robots can do. It's what happens when we design solar construction around greater consistency from the start.Are there other technologies you've scouted on the frontlines of the Clean Energy Revolution that you think we should be covering here on SunCast?Hit us up - team@suncast.me with your feedback & recommendations.If you want to connect with today's guest, you'll find links to their contact info in the show notes on the blog at https://suncast.media/episodes/.Our Platinum Presenting Sponsor for SunCast is CPS America!You can learn more about all the sponsors who help make this show free for you at www.suncast.media/sponsors.Remember, you can always find resources, learn more about today's guest and explore recommendations, book links, and more than 950 other founder stories and startup advice at www.suncast.media.We'd love if you'd leave us a 5 ⭐ rating & review and it's never been easier: https://www.ratethispodcast.com/suncastSubscribe to Valence, our weekly LinkedIn Newsletter, and learn the elements of compelling storytelling: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/valence-content-that-connects-7145928995363049472/You can connect with me, Nico Johnson, on:Twitter - https://www.twitter.com/nicomeoLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickalus

Vestas doubles second quarter profit and adds €4.7 billion in market value overnight. Plus EnBW finishes He Dreiht after a V236 blade break, the UK blocks Ming Yang’s Scottish factory, and India rules turbines are movable goods. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. 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, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us will be in Melbourne Australia talking to a number of operators and interested parties about WOMA 2027. Matthew, where will we be the couple of days we’re in Melbourne? Matthew Stead: So, um, first of all, we’ve got the Pullman, uh, East Melbourne, which is, uh, where the venue will be for, for 2027. Um, so that’ll be our home base. Um, we’ve got around about eight meetings planned already. So what we’re doing is we’re talking to the operators and a few other industry, um, players about [00:01:00] what we need to talk about, how we’re gonna move the industry forward in Australia. Uh, so it’s gonna be jam-packed, but there’s a little bit of time left on the Friday afternoon if there’s any late-minute, um, people that wanna get in contact and catch up with us, um, for next Thursday, Friday, or actually Friday. Uh, so yeah, it’s gonna be a, a jam-packed time. I think we’re gonna be tired, too many coffees, and talking to all the key, all the key operators, uh, about what they wanna hear about and how we can move the, the industry forward. Allen Hall: And if someone wants to put an input into the WOMA panel about what will be discussed at WOMA 2027, Matthew, how would they do that? How do they get ahold of you?  Matthew Stead: Well, we have a wonderful website, and that’s got all the details you could ever want. Um, you can also register on the website, so please register. Otherwise, um, I’m sure we’re gonna be a sellout this year for sure. So woma2027.com.  Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna add that when people talk to [00:02:00] me about the event, they always say how they love that the topics are so relevant, and the reason why that they’re so relevant is because we make sure to go around to operators and find out what are the issues that they’re really dealing with. So anybody that’s thinking of attending, even if you can’t, you know, meet us up, meet up with us in Melbourne, get in touch and tell us what are the, yeah, what are the topics that you’re struggling with that you’re not, um, you’re having trouble finding enough information, having trouble finding the people that can help you. And y- yeah, like we take all of that information, and that’s how we come up with our agenda each year. And yeah, I mean, for us, that’s the, the main thing is that this has to be really relevant, up-to-date information for the industry, and we need your help to make sure it stays that way. I  Matthew Stead: mean, that’s what we’ve done the last two years, so this is– we’re just repeating the formula, um, listening to the operators and getting the good topics and the good speakers. Allen Hall: Well, Vestas has had a good quarter. Uh, the, for the last couple of years, honestly, s- [00:03:00] Vestas has been really thin on margins. There was questions about it continuing on. Rising costs mostly, uh, supply chains, especially during COVID, were bad. Uh, and, uh, but for the most part, the shareholders stayed attached. Well, that story is changing rapidly. The world’s largest turbine maker posted second quarter operating profits of $400- €46 million, more than double what the analysts had expected, and it’s raised its full-year margin guidance alongside half-year results for the first time in a decade. The shares climbed about 20% in Copenhagen, adding roughly €4.7 billion of market value in a single session. Now, the chief executive, uh, Henrik Andersen, ha- put it plainly to, uh, uh, in a couple of news sources that something much bigger is happening and Vestas is gonna be the, the leader in wind. That’s how I read it, that everybody [00:04:00]at Vestas was super happy with the, the change in direction and things were moving up steadily. But a 20% jump in a day is remarkable. You don’t see that in large industrial businesses like wind energy. Matthew, this has real implications on what happens next for Vestas because success like this usually means more orders.  Matthew Stead: Yeah, I wonder what’s going on under the hood there. Um, I mean, Vestas is a quality company, although, although can I just do a quick segue? How many turbines were installed in Denmark in the last, uh, two years? Like last year and the year before?  Allen Hall: I don’t know. How many?  Matthew Stead: I believe it was eight turbines installed onshore in Denmark last year, and the year before it was 12. So, you know, maybe, maybe Vestas needs to focus on their own backyard a little bit as well. Allen Hall: I’m not sure there’s a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, onshore.  Matthew Stead: How can you ever be full? I mean, there’s always, um, [00:05:00] uh, you know, um, you know, resiting or, um, you know, upgrades and-  Rosemary Barnes: You know what? Allen and I are probably gonna get some time in Jutland, uh, later this year, um, and that area and the old wind turbines there was actually the inspiration for my whole YouTube channel. It just, ’cause there’s, you know, there’s turbines there from, the earliest one is, um, from the ’70s and still going. I think it’s one and a half megawatts, actually huge for, for that time. Um, and it was like community made, um, at Tvind. But anyway, I’m interested to revisit the site and have a look and see are these, you know, all these old turbines still there. It’s only, like six years since I went through and did the experience but for the most part, they don’t seem to be yet pulling down the, the small old ones and putting up big ones. There’s a lot of, a lot of them are community owned. Um, and yeah, I mean, Danish people love wind turbines, but there’s only so many that you can have onshore. Like, people are happy to live near them by, you know, the standards of people in other countries, but you don’t want [00:06:00] one in your literal backyard. I think that there is, there, there is a, a limit to how many more onshore wind turbines that you can get in that area and offshore expansion is the more likely way to go. Um, and also I think it’s, it’s, it’s good to recognize that if you have a domestic only or a domestic first strategy, that will only get you so far and then you have to expand, and I think Denmark did that really well. I think Germany a little bit less. I think that Enercon were a bit surprised, um, by their strategy. It, uh, they had a real hard time anyway when they had to transition away from mostly Germany to getting overseas. And obviously, like if you look at China, they have most of their installations are in China. They are trying so hard to get outside of China because it’s not, like even a market as big as China, it’s got decades to go before it will be full. Um, you can still recognize that that’s not your, like long-term strategy for growth has to involve expansion, I think.  Allen Hall: I think Vestas, regardless of what happens in Denmark, is making a play for the United States. That seems to be [00:07:00] where a significant effort is happening at the moment and on offshore. Their– Vestas seems very excited about the offshore opportunities. Of course, there’s a ton of wind turbines gonna be installed in the UK and, and all around Northern Europe. Offshore, the opportunities to buy turbines, there’s only a couple that you could get today. Uh, uh, the GE Vernova offerings I, I don’t think are gonna fit the mold, and I don’t know if GE’s even actively selling. So their competitor realistically is Siemens Gamesa, which does seem like the smaller player at the minute versus Vestas, which is heavily pushing the V236 and will fill order books like crazy, I think, uh, just based upon the, the history they’ve had and everybody knowing who they are. So Also on the move in Australia, right? Vestas is huge in Australia right now.  Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s really good that their, um, yeah, finances, uh, are [00:08:00] looking a bit better ’cause it’s been funny. Like, I tried early on in my wind career to invest in, you know, wind turbine manufacturers knowing that there would be immense growth, and I was right. There, there was immense growth. Not that that was so hard to figure out that there would be, but it did not lead to any kind of, um, return on, on anything, you know. Like, that did not keep pace with the just general market. Um, so I, I stopped trying to, stopped trying to invest to that. But it has been really, really hard for the companies to, you know, raise money or y- you know, do any of the things that they need to do because they’ve always, like, they’re growing, growing, growing, but finances has been so tight that it has been a real constraint on the amount of engineering that they could do, and I really hope that Vestas are gonna take this opportunity that they’ve got compared to, you know, a lot of the other manufacturers. Vestas do have really strong, um, innovation and, yeah, engineering capabilities for doing– you know, developing new technologies and improving them, and I really hope that they’re taking this opportunity to build that up. There are a lot [00:09:00] of very good engineers with a lot of experience in the industry in that area that are working in other fields at the moment because, you know, there’s been a lot of contraction in Denmark. So I don’t know, it seems like a really good time to hire back some of that really in-depth knowledge and, yeah, get a- get ahead of, you know, some of the future quality problems. We’re going through such a hard time at the moment from the fast development that happened in the 20-teens when there wasn’t a whole lot of money around. We’re dealing with quality problems now, so, you know, maybe we can get ahead and not have the next round of them if we can invest in just a lot more, uh, engineering capacity.  Allen Hall: When you have success like Vestas has, usually the upper level management and some of the executive team starts getting pilfered, that they’ll get offers to repeat that success at another company, and it sounds like that process has started already. There’s a couple of executives that have recently departing or are in the midst of departing from Vestas. [00:10:00] I would see that continuing f- at least for the next six months, uh, because everybody wants to repeat that, right? If you can get a 20% increase in your valuation overnight, uh, I can, I can list a number of companies, regardless of industry, that would love to participate. Even in a 5% increase, that would be remarkable. So, um, Vestas is gonna have a hard time holding onto this. That’s just the nature of the business where things are successful, people will wander. And Rosemary, I, I think they’re– And Yolanda In, in my book, Vestas should sort of s-stand down and just make quality products. I’m not sure you sh-should tinker too much at the time being and just make the good stuff better. That seems like a way to really increase profits.  Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, solving a lot of the issues that– And, and that’s not just a Vestas exclusive thing, right? All of these OEMs have some sort of issue that maybe– I know Rosie’s touched a lot on, on it, where [00:11:00] you build this version A and then version B solves one of the small little issues, but now it creates another little problem, and then you have version C, and then everything just kinda has its own niche little issue, um, that really expands over time. So if they could solidify what they already have in, in a, in a model that, that would help them just even keep a lot of their customers, I think that’d be great, and it would help, certainly help them, um, not continuously, like, rotate around the customers, ’cause it almost feels like, at least in the States, right, you, you get GE to be really, really strong and have a huge market share, and then GE starts focusing more on gas turbines, so then they all go onto Vestas, and then they all go onto Ontara now. Um, and then just, you know, just kind of everybody starts cycling through them because they just kind of want something that’s better quality than what they’re getting in the long haul.  Matthew Stead: Allen, you, you talked about you think there’s something big under the hood. I think you, you [00:12:00] thought that maybe Vestas was angling towards something or being quite bullish. Do you think that they might take over GE Vernova?  Allen Hall: I don’t think they’re gonna grab Vernova, and I don’t think Vernova is for sale at the minute, but I wonder if Siemens Gamesa is, or Nordex. I mean, Nordex has done terrific the last couple of quarters and is making inroads in places that I didn’t think possible three, four years ago. Uh, the European marketplace is be- becoming really unique in that sense that there’s a lot of money being put out. But is there a sole perfect solution for Europe? Not at the minute, ’cause you got two competitors there, and then China trying to, to work its way in. Will the Europeans come together and form something more united, even if it’s just a partnership, a loose partnership, versus letting China on the shores? We’ll see. 64 of the largest machines that Vestas has builds are standing off the German coast, but one blade is missing a [00:13:00] piece. We’ll talk about that when we come back. Speaker: Are you overspending on lightning repairs? Most operators are because solving lightning damage is complicated. Weather Guard Lightning Tech helps operators reduce lightning damage. Our innovative StrikeTape lightning diverter protects over twenty thousand blades worldwide. Now, StrikeTape Ultra installs faster than ever. StrikeTape Ultra cures uptower in just fifteen minutes, even in cold weather. Visit weatherguardwind.com to schedule a call. Allen Hall: Well, Germany’s largest offshore wind farm is now fully installed, and EnBW confirmed this, uh, past week that all 64 of the Vestas V236 15-megawatt turbines are s- standing at the He Dreiht wind farm about 85 kilometers northwest of Borkum. Uh, 960 megawatts, [00:14:00] 2.4 billion euros invested. Man, these offshore projects are expensive to get installed. Uh, so it’s power for roughly 1.1 million households, and there’s no state subsidy behind any of it. And so this is a little bit of a u- unique situation. Uh, th- well, the one footnote about the wind farm is they had a V236 blade break and fall into the North Sea, and they had fished it out and I think I passed along s- pictures that I saw online of, uh, one of the police boats pulling the shear web out of the water I don’t know what to think anymore about some of these offshore blade issues. Obviously, Vestas is very conscientious about it and will be doing RCAs and engineering reviews and all the above to go identify what the problem is. But it does just lead to a little bit of a pause of do– what is going on for some of these offshore [00:15:00] wind blade installations or, or whatever’s causing these blades to break? Do we have a good handle on it? Yolanda, is– are we following up on all the design details so that we can prevent these things in the future?  Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’d, I’d hope you’d be following up on the design, right? Like, and, um, but I think there is still a little bit of a disconnect from, from what we’ve seen, and again, not just Vestas exclusive, um, between the people who are designing and the people who are manufacturing, the people who are in operations, right? So, uh- The, from what we’ve heard, uh, this could have potentially been a, um, partially because of a transportation issue, which is what happens a lot in onshore. It’s a lot more common than we would like it to be. Um, and so that even goes beyond what would go on in the design studio and what would go on in the manufacturing and what would [00:16:00] go on even just for the people that are running the site, right? So, so some sort of, um, in between, uh, EPC error. Um, but yeah, I just think that, like in a lot of industries, there should be a lot more communication between all of these teams on the lower level, so that way a lot of these problems can, can be avoided.  Allen Hall: I’m wondering if it’s actually an issue on the, the testing side. And, uh, the one question that just popped up, and we saw from the ORE Catapult, uh, survey that’s being conducted at the moment, and if you haven’t participated in that, you just visit ORE Catapult and answer some of the survey questions. But torsion on a blade, which is very difficult to test for, and it really isn’t tested for today, but does happen during the move and the transportation of these big offshore blades. Is it one area that we need to do a little more work in or maybe spend some more time focusing on it to see what is happening as blades are [00:17:00]moved?  Rosemary Barnes: The thing about te- torsion is that it is much more significant as blades get longer. I can’t, I can’t remember the equation off the top of my head, which is, um, bothering me. But I think it scales with, like, the fourth power or something of, of length. And so whilst it was always a bit of a problem, it’s much more of a problem as it gets, as blades get bigger. I mean, they’ve never, like, fully tested a blade, and there was always a lot of reliance on, hey, y- you know, like we’ve tested certain things that is possible to test in a test facility on the ground. But they also rely on their decades of experience of how blades actually behave in the field. But, you know, remember, that’s a real lagging, lagging indicator because y- you know, their decades of experience is mostly with lots smaller blades. Now, blades are really different because they’re longer and different effects are, are taking over. It’s not just, uh, torsion, but it’s also the laminates get much thicker, and then y- you know, you, you have issues with the way that they’re curing, [00:18:00] and there’s a lot more just space for, um, defects to be present in a really thick laminate All of those things add up. Oh, yeah, then add in addition, like new materials, carbon fiber is new, and then new ways of producing it, you know, pultrusions, um, all kinds of different materials like balsa’s being replaced with foams and, um, like, you know, 10 times that number of what sounds like a small innovation, but all of these things have the potential for damage and don’t have a really long track record in the field to be able to kind of calibrate. We do need to remember that, like, when you do something new, things are gonna break, uh, sometimes, they’re gonna fail sometimes. If they don’t, then you’re definitely being too conservative, and your product is costing more than it should, and nobody wants more expensive wind energy, right?  Matthew Stead: Rosie, Rosie, I, I know you’re doing some, some excellent work on, um, industry studies around erosion and temperature and so forth. Um, I just wanted to let a little secret out of the bag that, um, in the future there will also be some [00:19:00] other studies on torsion and blade twist and blade dynamics. So, um, just a few things are in, in train at the moment, which I can’t share, share, but, uh, watch this space around better understanding blade twist. Allen Hall: The Hydride wind farm runs on European turbines, but the next one might not. Two governments with two very different answers on who gets to build Europe’s wind fleet. 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 test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss. CIC NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable [00:20:00] 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, two countries and two decisions, one question. In Scotland, the UK government blocked plans for the Chinese manufacturer Mingyang to build a turbine factory, uh, near Inverness on national security grounds. 1.5 billion pounds of investment, up to about 1,500 jobs. And First Minister John Swinney has asked the new prime minister to reconsider. And the UK energy secretary minister called that request irresponsible. Meanwhile, up in Denmark, Vattenfall has just won two offshore wind farms and will not say whether it will buy European turbines. Danish suppliers are not taking that quietly. So [00:21:00] the Scotland question about the Mingyang factory is at least being discussed again with the new prime minister in the UK. It does seem like there’s a lot to do and get the government formed and make all this stuff happen. But I don’t see a Burnham administration changing the outcome for Mingyang, but I could be wrong. At the, the same time, Vestas is pushing for a more Eurocentric focus and to really keep out the Chinese. Uh, something has to give here pretty soon.  Matthew Stead: I actually think Mingyang should, um, set up a factory in Scotland. I, I mean, what’s wrong with that? I mean, uh, why is that a security issue?  Rosemary Barnes: Set up the factory and put the, like, whatever you’re worried about, put protections in place for it, require it to be a local joint venture or whatever. You know, we’ve seen the blueprint in many of what used to be, you know, less rich countries. That’s how they, you know, got a head start on some of these technologies. It’s not like, I don’t think that China [00:22:00] has a head start on wind, wind turbine technology, but they certainly have different ways of doing things that, um, yeah, we could, we could learn from. But I think across the board, wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, whatever, let them set up factories, put the rules in place that mean that your country benefits from it and you’re getting the, you know, the information transfer.  Yolanda Padron: Do you think that’ll, like, impulse a lot of these more established European companies to maybe start fixing some of the issues that they’ve known about for, for a while, um, particularly regarding the blades and everything that we’ve talked about earlier? Like, there’s enough competition there, so maybe they need to start looking a little bit more deeply into their problems.  Allen Hall: Do we think that Chinese operations have been out front, forward, honest, I’ll even use, about their blade issues?  Rosemary Barnes: No, but this is a good way to find out, isn’t it?  Allen Hall: Governments decide who is allowed to build a turbine after a discussion on Scotland. Uh, but, but [00:23:00] occasionally, a court decides what a turbine legally is. India has just settled that question, and the reasoning should be of interest to anybody who ships machines across a border right after this. 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. A tax fight in India has produced a definition every turbine supplier should read. Is a wind turbine bolted to a concrete foundation movable goods, or is it immovable property? State tax authorities argued immovable, which would have [00:24:00] taxed erection and commissioning contracts at 18% instead of 5%. The Andhra Pradesh, uh, High Court disagreed, and on the 12th of August, the Supreme Court declined to interfere. The reasoning rests on something this whole industry takes for granted. A turbine can be taken down, moved, and put back up. So a turbine is a movable object, and it has less taxation. Bonus. So this is a really interesting discussion that’s happening in India because it’s probably symptomatic of things we’re seeing elsewhere across the world about taxation for wind turbines, right? That, um, if there’s a way to tax a wind turbine, we’re gonna try to do it. This is a unique way, uh, that happens in India where depending on if it’s permanent or movable, the tax rates are different. I, I guess that would apply to a lot of components inside a wind turbine too, Matthew, don’t you? Like the, the generator, the, the big heavy things, [00:25:00] gearbox, generator, blades, rotors, tower sections, would be taxed at a, a lesser rate. Matthew Stead: I agree with the court case that it’s all movable and, uh, you can actually buy turbines on the secondhand market, can’t you? I mean, if I wanted to buy, yeah, whatever, whatever, I could buy one and, and put it up in my backyard if I had a bigger backyard. Um, so yeah, I vote for movable. I vote for lower taxes. Yolanda Padron: The way that it would work a lot of times in the US is, I mean, it’s, you pay, the company itself pays a lot less than they would’ve over time, right? Just by pure, the, the regular kind of tax laws. Um, but the community, there’d be just direct donations to the community, so then they’d get, uh, like money would actually come into the community where the turbines were being built instead of just distributed around the state, which I mean, in a state as big as Texas, it gets, um, but easier for that c- um, that county to get a lot more, uh, funding than they would typically get if it was [00:26:00] through a big enough area. Um, but yeah, no, I agr- I completely agree with you guys that, that this should be a movable good. I mean, how many times have we seen, uh, even just a blade, um, that it looks like it’s, uh, just a, a failed blade that they have to go in and replace, and then they take it out, fix it, and then just bring it back to the same site or take it to another site across the country. And, and to that point, like if you were to h- judge it as something that’s immovable, would then any blade replacement just not be taxed? Because then it’s, you’re moving that one component and two, but it’s essentially the same turbine. Like, I don’t know how that all would make sense.  Allen Hall: I think the Uptime Supreme Court agrees with the Indian Supreme Court that wind turbines are movable, and that’s good. Well, 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. [00:27:00] 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 the show. And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosa, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall. We’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Proverbs Part 5: Givers and takersProverbs 11:23-28Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Cultivate a generous nature for Christ

Proverbs Part 6: Navigating the currents of conversationProverbs 12:13-23Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Use your words wisely

In this episode of In All Things, Michael Davis wraps up our fall updates with an overview of the upcoming committee meetings within the EPC, highlighting their roles, key decisions, and future initiatives. This episode is perfect for church leaders and members interested in understanding how these committees support EPC church ministry and governance. To learn more about the various committees of the General Assembly, visit epconnect.org/committees

Episode Summary On this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, Benoy Thanjan speaks with Jacob Yang, a clean energy marketing and communications professional who has worked across the solar, energy storage and climate tech industries. Benoy and Jacob discuss how marketing in renewable energy has evolved, some of the biggest mistakes clean energy companies make when communicating with customers, and why thought leadership and personal branding are becoming increasingly important. They also explore the growing importance of LinkedIn as a business development platform, how executives can build authentic brands without constantly selling, and why sharing knowledge consistently can create opportunities long before someone becomes a customer. Jacob also shares his perspective on careers in clean energy, the skills that will become increasingly valuable, and how the industry may evolve over the next decade.   Biographies Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, a solar development and consulting firm, and the host of the Solar Maverick Podcast. He also serves as a strategic advisor to multiple cleantech startups. Over his career, Benoy has developed more than 100 MW of solar projects across the United States, advised on more than 1 GW of energy projects worldwide, helped launch some of the first residential solar tax equity funds at Tesla, and brokered approximately $50 million in renewable energy credit transactions. Before founding Reneu Energy, Benoy worked in Tesla's Project Finance Group as an environmental commodities trader, where he managed one of the company's largest environmental commodities portfolios. He originated renewable energy credit transactions and worked with senior leadership to develop monetization and hedging strategies supporting the company's expansion into East Coast markets. Benoy also served as Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners, a solar and energy storage construction company, where he developed project finance solutions for commercial-scale solar portfolios. At Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund with approximately 125 MW of U.S. renewable energy assets, he evaluated investment opportunities, supported portfolio strategy, and played a key role in the sale of the firm's renewable energy portfolio. Earlier in his career, Benoy worked in Energy Structured Finance at Deloitte & Touche and in Financial Advisory Services at Ernst & Young. He also completed an internship on the trading floor at D. E. Shaw & Co., a global investment and technology development firm. Benoy holds an MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Economics from the NYU Stern School of Business, where he was an Alumni Scholar.   Guest Information Jacob Yang is the founder and CEO of Amp Your Story and a clean energy marketing professional with more than 10 years of marketing experience and approximately seven years of experience working in clean energy. Earlier in his career, Jacob worked at a marketing agency where his clients included utility-scale EPC companies in the Midwest and several cleantech startups. Today, he works with cleantech companies around the world as a fractional CMO. Jacob also created a free online clean energy marketing community designed to encourage collaboration, professional growth, knowledge sharing, and new voices within the industry. The community helps marketers navigate challenges ranging from clean energy policy and industry volatility to AI, emerging marketing technologies, career development, and demonstrating marketing ROI. Through his thought leadership, Jacob focuses heavily on personal branding, LinkedIn, demand generation, paid advertising, AI, and helping clean energy professionals become more effective marketers. He is also developing a clean energy LinkedIn course designed to share these strategies with a broader audience.   Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: info@reneuenergy.com  LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com Website: https://www.solarmaverickpodcast.com/   Jacob Yang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobjuancarlosyang/   Website: https://cleanenergymarketer.com   Jacob Yang interview about Linkedin strategies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dnDOdlpLZU Sponsor This episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast is brought to you by Reneu Energy. Reneu Energy works with companies and organizations on renewable energy strategy, project development, owner's representation, project finance, renewable energy credits, and market advisory services. To learn more, visit: https://www.reneuenergy.com Listen and Subscribe Subscribe to the Solar Maverick Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating and review. It helps more people discover conversations with the leaders shaping the future of solar, storage, and the energy transition.  

AI isn't just a software story, it's a power story, a controls story, and a “how do we actually build this stuff” story. After the EPC show in Houston, I sit down with Dennis Ganson from Schneider Electric to unpack what's changing in industrial automation and energy, and how you can stay useful as the pace picks up.Dennis shares his career path from West Point and the US Army into GE Energy, field service, project leadership, and strategic sales, eventually landing in process automation. We talk about what he leads at Schneider Electric across the Foxboro and Triconex world, and why process automation and discrete automation are different in practice even when customers need both. If you've ever felt boxed into one niche, this conversation makes the case for learning laterally and building a strong technical network.We also dig into what we heard at EPC: data center buildouts, utility constraints, gas turbine bottlenecks, and the craft labor shortage that no spreadsheet can wish away. Then we bring it back to technology, how modern control systems unlock more plant data, why that changes predictive maintenance and optimization, and what “software-defined automation” and truly open architecture can mean when supply chains get messy.If you're navigating DCS vs PLC decisions, tracking AI infrastructure demand, or just trying to understand where automation is headed next, you'll leave with clearer mental models and better questions to ask. Subscribe, share this with a friend in controls or energy, and leave a review telling us what topic you want us to chase next.Support the show_________________________________________________________________

In this episode of In All Things, Michael Davis returns as a guest host and sits down with Gabriel de Guia, Executive Director of World Outreach. Michael and Gabriel discuss the exciting developments and strategic initiatives within the EPC's global outreach efforts, and explore recent achievements, upcoming events, and the importance of prayer and collaboration in advancing the gospel worldwide. To donate to the matching grant fund, click here. To learn more about how you can pray and get involved, click here.

Industrial Talk is onsite at PowerGen and talking to Luis J Garcia de Rozas, CEO of Guascor Energy about "Flexible, scalable generation solutions". Luis J. Garcia de Rozas, CEO of Guascor Energy, discussed the company's operations and market position. Guascor specializes in gas and diesel engines, capable of running on various fuels including natural gas, biogas, and synthetic gas. The company, with 210-220 employees, manufactures engines in Spain and provides after-sales services globally. Garcia highlighted the company's financial success, achieving an EBDA of 8 million in 2025, and its strategic focus on power generation, particularly for data centers. The company is adapting to meet the increasing demand for reliable power solutions, emphasizing flexibility and customization in their offerings. Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress Announcement Scott introduces the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress, emphasizing its importance for cybersecurity professionals.The event is scheduled for November 3-5 in Barcelona, with networking opportunities and expert discussions.Scott mentions their own participation and broadcasting at the event.Contact information and details about the event are available on Industrial Talk. Introduction to Industrial Talk Podcast The podcast focuses on industry professionals and their contributions to various sectors.Scott reiterates the podcast's purpose of celebrating industry heroes and their innovations.The podcast is broadcasting live from PowerGen in San Antonio, Texas. Meeting Luis J. Garcia de Rozas Scott introduces Luis J. Garcia de Rozas, highlighting his role and background in the energy sector.Luis shares his recent arrival in Spain and his journey from Madrid to San Antonio.Scott expresses admiration for Spain and its people, mentioning a personal connection to the Basque region.Luis talks about the company's factory in the Basque region and its unique features. Luis's Background and Company Overview Luis provides a brief history of his career in the energy sector, mentioning his recent role as CEO.The company was previously part of the Siemens Group but was acquired by Mutales, a German private equity firm.The company achieved significant financial success in 2025, with an EBDA of 8 million and a closed debt.Luis discusses the current market demand for power generation solutions and the company's position to meet this demand. Company's Product Offerings and Market Position The company specializes in gas and diesel engines, capable of running on various gases including natural gas, biogas, and synthetic gas.They have three facilities in the Basque region: one for engine manufacturing, one for assembly, and one for R&D.The R&D center tests different gases to adapt engines to various fuel conditions.Luis shares insights on the challenges and solutions for using biogas and synthetic gas in engines. Challenges and Solutions in Biogas and Syngas Scott recalls past challenges with biogas and its impact on power generation assets.Luis explains the company's approach to using biogas and syngas, including adapting combustion systems.The company uses scrubbers and filters to clean gases and protect engines from harmful residues.Luis highlights the importance of maintaining the methane number in gases for efficient combustion. Company's Market Focus and Vertical Integration The company focuses on power generation, with a significant portion of its market being IPPs, EPC companies, and utility companies.They also serve niche markets for special gases like biogas and syngas.The company is vertically integrated, handling engineering, design, and product development in-house.They provide after-sales services, including parts and maintenance, through a network of partners and distributors. Impact of Data Centers on the Market Luis discusses the significant impact of data centers on the power generation market.Data centers are demanding large amounts of power and setting long-term contracts, changing the traditional customer base.The market is shifting from traditional IPPs to data center developers, creating new challenges and opportunities.The company is adapting to these changes by negotiating long-term production slots and modifying factory capabilities. Future Prospects and Contact Information Luis shares the company's plans to increase production capacity to meet growing demand.The company is focusing on delivering reliable and efficient solutions to meet the needs of data centers and other customers.Scott asks for Luis's contact information for listeners interested in connecting with the company.Luis provides his contact details and LinkedIn profile, encouraging listeners to reach out for further discussions. Closing Remarks and Call to Action Scott thanks Luis for the insightful conversation and highlights the importance of connecting with industry professionals.The podcast aims to help industry professionals succeed by sharing their stories and solutions.Scott encourages listeners to attend events like PowerGen and connect with experts like Luis.The podcast concludes with a call to action for listeners to reach out and tell their own stories. If interested in being on the Industrial Talk show, simply contact us and let's have a quick conversation. Finally, get your exclusive free access to the Industrial Academy and a series on “Why You Need To Podcast” for Greater Success in 2026. All links designed for keeping you current in this rapidly changing Industrial Market. Learn! Grow! Enjoy! LUIS JAVIER GARCIA de ROZAS' CONTACT INFORMATION: Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luis-javier-garc%C3%ADa-de-rozas-a83b9615/ Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/guascorenergy/ Company Website: https://guascor-energy.com/ PODCAST VIDEO: https://youtu.be/-FooIzaWQm8 THE STRATEGIC REASON "WHY YOU NEED TO PODCAST": OTHER GREAT INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES: NEOM: https://www.neom.com/en-us Hexagon: https://hexagon.com/ Arduino: https://www.arduino.cc/ Fictiv: https://www.fictiv.com/ Hitachi Vantara: https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/home.html Industrial Marketing Solutions:  https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-marketing/ Industrial Academy: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial-academy/ Industrial Dojo: https://industrialtalk.com/industrial_dojo/ We the 15: https://www.wethe15.org/ YOUR INDUSTRIAL DIGITAL TOOLBOX: LifterLMS: Get One Month Free for $1 – https://lifterlms.com/ Active Campaign: Active Campaign Link Social Jukebox: https://www.socialjukebox.com/ Business Beatitude the Book Do you desire a more joy-filled, deeply-enduring sense of accomplishment and success? Live your business the way you want to live with the BUSINESS BEATITUDES...The Bridge connecting sacrifice to success. YOU NEED THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES! TAP INTO YOUR INDUSTRIAL SOUL, RESERVE YOUR COPY NOW! BE BOLD. BE BRAVE. DARE GREATLY AND CHANGE THE WORLD. GET THE BUSINESS BEATITUDES!

Proverbs Part 4: TrustfallProverbs 3:1-6Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Trust in God to go full speed forward

Proverbs Part 3: Scorched by sex appealProverbs 6:23-33Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Stay sexually faithful in mind and body

Today we are pleased to be led by Rachel Pies in, our Psalms for the Summer series, Psalm 137. Rachel is a part of our community at Valley Hope and serves as the Dean of Spiritual Formation at Montreat College as well as being a teaching elder in the EPC.

In this episode of I All Things, Assistant Stated Clerk Michael Davis sits down and walks us through the recent initiatives of the EPC's gospel priorities, as well as upcoming events that aim to strengthen church leadership, health, and planting efforts across the denomination. To learn more about the EPC's gospel priorities and how you can get involved, visit www.epconnect.org  

How much money is enough to make starting up safe? Vivek Sinha thought he knew: ₹50 lakh in the bank. The day he hit it, he quit.Vivek is the founder of Emversity, which trains people for the jobs India actually has in healthcare, hospitality, EPC and manufacturing. Homeschooled till eight in a Bihar village surrounded by three rivers, he built Buildzar, lost ₹50 lakh, and spent nine years compounding skills at Mobikwik, OYO and Unacademy before starting again in a sector everyone had written off.In this episode, Avnish and Vivek take on, 1. Where did you get the confidence to do this?2. Why didn't it work? What did you think going in that didn't play out?3. Should I drop out and work full time on my startup?" 4. How do I find the right co-founder?5. How can we secure investment in a stigmatized sector despite proven traction?"6. What stays with you: build it for the right reasons Chapters 00:00 Introduction02:00 Flood village to NIT: growing up in Bihar06:00 First startup & why it failed: market timing11:00 MobiKwik: 0 to 20 lakh merchants in 6 months16:00 OYO & Unacademy: the lessons that compounded22:00 The 9-year gap: how he killed bad ideas early28:00 Should you drop out of college?34:00 How many co-founders — and going solo40:00 Building in a stigmatised, out-of-favour sector48:00 What Mversity does + closing advice

GE Vernova posts a record quarter as gas and grid surge while wind orders drop 40%. Plus Envision grid-connects its first AI turbine for Fortescue. Visit https://woma2027.com/ to register speaking and sponsorship interest! 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! If you haven’t visited woma2027.com, you should do so right now because we are putting together all of the, uh, events at WOMA 2027, which is March 3rd through 5th in Melbourne at the Pullman, Matthew, Pullman East? Pullman East Melbourne. And it’s packed full. Our, in fact, actually, we have so many people applying to attend the event, we’re getting a little nervous on if the size of the venue is not large enough, and we, we have a lot of people already chime in wanting to be sponsors, which is great. But I wanna talk about what you will experience at WOMA. We’ve done it for two years now, and the feedback has been great. And Yolanda, you’ve been to the one just this past February, and participated in panels and saw some of the, uh, workshops and was involved in a lot of WOMA 2026. What are you expecting in 2027, and what did you think of 2026? Yolanda Padron: I thought [00:01:00] 2026 was great. I loved seeing everybody there. Uh, got to meet a lot of new people. It was, it was sweet. There was a lot of r- people returning from WOMA 2025, um, and a lot of new people that were told that that was the event to be at to learn about wind, which was really, really nice to hear. Uh, something that I loved, especially since we’ve been through quite a few conferences since then and before then, was just the fact that, like, you’re, you’re just talking about problems and just talking about solutions, and you’re talking about real stories, and it’s nothing that’s super, super public. You know, like, you, you can have real conversations with real people. I know during a panel I mentioned a, a solution to an issue that I had seen that was kind of niche, and then, uh, like three minutes later, like I had had some people come up to me and we all talked about the problem that we saw and then [00:02:00]talked about their problem, and it was really similar, and obviously in a totally different continent. And it was, it was good to, to be able to have those conversations that you usually wouldn’t have elsewhere, especially if everything’s just really, really public and just big and you’re having a lot of people sell at you, and it’s, it’s just something that we’ve really shied away from. What, what was your favorite part of it? Matthew Stead: I, I think, um, it was really the fact that it was a a technical, useful, helpful conference rather than having some rando talking about things that they’re told to talk to you about  Allen Hall: It’s real answers from real problem solvers. And everybody’s gonna be in Melbourne on the 3rd through the 5th of March 2027. If you’re interested in attending, you need to go to woma2027.com. If you’re interested in sponsoring, it’s also woma2027.com. There’s limited [00:03:00]sponsorship left, so if you wanna do something, you better get in quick. And if you wanna attend the event, and I suggest that you do, that you visit woma2027.com and get registered today 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 Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. It’s been a busy day as we record because GE just announced its second quarter earnings and a bunch of things about the business. They had an investor call early, early, early on the East Coast, and even earlier for those on the West Coast of the US, and it was a very good quarter for GE, but a really lopsided one. Uh, GE Vernova reported second quarter orders of [00:04:00] $24.2 billion, up 88% with a backlog that has now climbed to $176 billion. Free cash came in at $5.1 billion. Man, $5.1 billion is a lot of cash, everybody, which is more than the company generated in all of last year. So they made more in one quarter in cash than made in all of last year, and management is raising its full year guidance, but the strength is coming from gas power and the electric grid, not from wind. The wind segment saw orders fall 40% and revenue slip 10%, and the company still expects wind to lose about $400 million this year. Although in the investor call, they did say that the forecast for wind in Q3 and maybe even Q4 was to be essentially break even on the EBITDA scale. So that’s a, a, a good number. It does seem like GE is being more [00:05:00] aggressive on pricing and selective on the projects they are choosing to participate with. Repowers was way down, if I remember correctly. Uh, they are not doing a lot of that at the moment. So there is a slowdown they’re seeing in wind, but they’re more than making up for it in gas turbines and electrification. Orders for gas turbines are out to ’30, ’31, and I think they’re gonna close out all of ’30, ’31, um, book orders for gas turbines here shortly. So if you want a gas turbine, Matthew, you’re gonna have to get in line because your GE has a long list of, of clients in front of them. What does this mean for wind? When I hear the discussion where GE is focused on gas and electrification because of the huge cash flow that comes in their door- Does that mean a good positive things for wind because they have the cash to kinda hang around wind? Or is it gonna be set aside for other [00:06:00] more profitable business segments? I  Matthew Stead: mean, GE’s had a number of setbacks over the years. Um, you know, we know, we know all about them. We’ve been talking about them, you know, multiple times. But, you know, they’ve gotta just wait it out, don’t they? Um, you know, wind is not gonna go away, so they just need to wait it out, get their problems out of the way, get their cash flow in, build the order books again, just wait for things to improve. Um, I, I think one thing I just wanna pull out, the Sands Ear, i- isn’t that a massive achievement?  Allen Hall: It is. It’s, it’s a colossal engineering achievement on its own. Forget about just delivering and manufacturing all those turbines and getting them installed. And that’s a pattern energy project, and Fairwind I think was involved with that in terms of project development, EPC items. It’s huge. It’s gigantic. But it may be the last one we see in the United States for a while.  Matthew Stead: And but Vineyard, you know, they’ve gotta resolve that, don’t they? We’ve spoken about that before. Get that one out the way, clear out the decks and, yeah. That’ll come good.  Allen Hall: Rosemary, of our former GE [00:07:00] employees, I guess we have two of them here. I’m one. Not of wind, but of another division. What’s your thoughts on GE Vernova at the minute?  Rosemary Barnes: These days I see them through the O&M lens. That’s how I work with them, is when my clients need support for all their wind farms and It’s just, it’s just never enough. It’s not a GE-specific thing. Uh, you know, across Australia, anybody with a full service agreement does not… Uh, the, the company performing that agreement just gives the impression that they just do not have enough, um, uh, enough people. Y- you know? It’s just, just hands or maybe it’s budget. Uh, I guess it, it’s both at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I see some good things like their, the pace of new technologies has slowed and they’re consolidating, which was needed, but it’s just hard to imagine that it’s even gonna be enough considering how many fewer blade engineers that they’ve got now. Like, how are they, [00:08:00] how are they going to get the, you know, the issues with the platforms that they are, uh, pushing, how are they gonna get all that under control with so many fewer engineers? And will they ever be able to, you know, go back to innovating a- again when they’ve lost so much of their, you know, institutional knowledge? Allen Hall: Two things they did not mention during the phone call today or in any of the documents that I saw was TPI Composites and that EPC has acquired that and is now operating the factories, uh, making GE blades. And LM Wind Power was not discussed either, although LM Wind Power has been integrated into the overall financials of the company, so it’s not a standalone financial entity like it was last year. So you can’t really r- read the tea leaves of what’s happening at LM, but nobody talked about or even asked on the investor call what was happening on the wind side. They were very interested in gas turbines and what the order rate was going to be, and GE was concerned [00:09:00] on their side, saying that they’re trying to ramp up production to make more gas turbines, but there’s limitations to how much they can do. Rosemary Barnes: I guess that’s the s- the zeitgeist now, right? Or it’s the, I don’t know, like, it’s, it’s a sign of the times. Everyone’s obsessed with data centers, and for some reason, data centers are obsessed with gas turbines, um, even though, like, it’s not a fast solution to, uh, y- you know, to, to anything. So I don’t… You know, I’m not saying that building a, you know, a wind farm or solar farms, batteries, those are not without challenges. But I really don’t think that the, yeah, gas turbine challenge is so much easier than the, um, yeah, than the renewables challenges. It’s a bit weird to me how everyone has just kind of latched onto, “Oh, you need new power, then it needs to be gas.” It’s just a bit weird to me.  Allen Hall: GE was predicting a peak of orders in gas turbines to happen sometime in 2026. They, they think that the demand curve is gonna trend downward because everybody is already in [00:10:00] line essentially, and it’s five years out, so not many other people are gonna join that line to make it seven, eight years out That also indicates that sort of the d- the demand for gas turbines may be waning a little bit, or there’s just a backlog, they just can’t produce more. Is that going to then maybe finally open up the best solar wind discussion for AI data centers?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I wonder if it’s partly because y- you know, in a lot of cases… So people wanna build data centers, and then those data centers need power. You can’t just plug into the grid in an easy, timely manner. So then now they’ve gotta BYO their own power, and in fact, in Australia they’ve just announced a, a policy where you will have to… You can bring your own power, and it will have to be renewable, actually, in Australia. So, um, at least that’s, at least that’s a win for, you know, generation source.  Allen Hall: Yeah. The, the AI data center discussion and gas turbines in the United States has more recently been focused [00:11:00] on, on the AI data centers that use those gas turbines, and the number of gas turbines that they’re choosing, and that they’re choosing gas turbines that fall under some sort of EPA threshold on size. And what is happening, and which, uh, SpaceX has done and some others have done, is they go underneath that threshold on the size of the gas turbines, and then they, you know, and they daisy chain them together, right? So you, you… Instead of having one massive, I don’t know, two-megawatt generator of some sort, you have a bunch of 200 kilowatts, and you just stack them all together. And the concern is, is that are some of these data centers violating EPA, the… If not the actual rule or the intent of the rule in terms of emissions, and it’s causing a little bit of a stink. It’s, it’s raised enough of, uh, the noise floor about it that you’re, you’re hearing it on podcasts, you’re hearing people involved in AI data ce- [00:12:00] data centers push back on it saying, “It’s all legal. It’s all legal.” So it’s gonna come to a head pretty quickly in the United States.  Rosemary Barnes: It was some real, like, real sketchy loophole finding, right? Like, I can’t remember the exact wording, but you’re not supposed to be able to just chuck in a diesel generator or a gas turbine in without any kind of planning, right? But they found a loophole where it’s like, okay, well, you know, it’s just like a truck except for that there’s no truck, and so it was called, like- off-road or non-road use or something. And it’s just, like, clearly not the, um, the meaning of the, of the law, right? The spirit of the law had, like, obviously been broken. In Australia we have a saying, the pub test. It doesn’t pass the pub test. Like, if you said that to someone in a pub, then they would be like, “What the hell is that? That is not right.” They have closed the loophole. However, I think that they also kind of quietly just allowed them to keep the ones that they had or had planned or something, so [00:13:00] it’s, like, overall by far not ideal. But I think that it’s just, like, you can, you can do that for a single site, but it’s obviously, like, the more that you do ridiculous stuff like that, that you lose the community ac- acceptance, which they barely had and definitely don’t really have anymore. Um, and secondly, yeah, like people, uh, people close the loophole and they respond. It’s, it’s much better, and we see it with wind as well. Like, yeah, you can do things technically by the law, but if you wanna have a, you know, sustainable, uh, industry through the years, through the decades, you actually have to kind of, you know, think, “What happens if I do y- push to the furthest extent of the law, um, to get away with whatever I can?” What’s gonna happen is regulation is gonna come down on you and you’ll lose the ability to kind of self-regulate.  Allen Hall: We’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back we’ll meet a wind turbine that runs on artificial intelligence, Rosie.[00:14:00] 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 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 In the red dirt of Western Australia, a mining company and a Chinese turbine maker are trying something new. Envision Energy says it has grid connected its first [00:15:00] artificial intelligence wind turbine prototype for Fortescue’s Nullagine Wind Project in Pilbara. The full project will use 17 of Envision’s EN182 turbines, each rated for 7.8 megawatts and built to handle mining sites, desert heat, and tough grid rules. The turbines- The turbines pair a self-erecting tower from Nabler Wind with a hub standing an astonishing 188 meters tall. Behind it all sits Envision’s Energy Foundation Model software that company calls the world’s largest physical AI system. The goal is to swap diesel and gas for wind across the mine’s fleet and processing sites. So this is an effort by Fortescue to power mining operations with electricity. It’s a pretty ex- exciting [00:16:00] project if you’re watching. The Envision artificial intelligence piece is an aspect that I didn’t know much about, and I still am trying to gather more information on, because there’s not a ton of info about what AI means in terms of a physical system. And maybe Rosie, you know a little bit more, or Yolande, you can brief us on what this really is.  Rosemary Barnes: We just need to start with a pronunciation lesson, Allen. Sorry.  Matthew Stead: Not Pilbara, Pilbara. Pilbara.  Rosemary Barnes: I, I don’t actually… I hadn’t heard that part about AI and that it doesn’t… I, I don’t know. It’s, it’s such a buzzword that it might not mean anything, you know. However, there’s so many cool aspects to that project that aren’t related to AI. Um, yeah, the tower height, the tower erection technology. I’m interested to hear that they have taken the heat of the environment into [00:17:00] consideration, ’cause that’s one of the, my obsessions actually, as long as I’ve been working on wind turbines, and ever since I found out how, you know, the materials qualification and certification process works, that it just doesn’t take into account the really high temperatures. That’s one of the projects that Padlo has going on at the moment, is, um, putting sensors on some turbines to, like, look into that more. Um, yeah, because we do see in Australia a lot of sites have, you know, even within a few years, they might have 20 years of operation left, but we already see a whole lot of cracks that look suspiciously like end of, end of life fatigue cracks on them. So yeah, we are looking into that more, and it’s very interesting to hear that Envision have taken the heat into consideration. I hope it includes the blade structure as well as just, you know, other turbine components, electronics, and that sort of thing.  Allen Hall: It does sound like they’re pairing batteries or BESS with wind turbines, where the BESS is located at the base of the turbine. That would make sense in [00:18:00] Australia, particularly around where mines are, because it tends to be very remote, and storing electricity would make sense. The Discussions I’ve seen on YouTube deal with more on the energy trading side, that the wind turbine stores energy, of course, and it does it very efficiently into the best system, and then the AI system sits on top of that to help arbitrage the energy that’s stored in the battery to make more money. Not a bad way of doing it, but it does lead to a ton of questions about national security, the use of AI, the, uh, and how this is all going to integrate together from a asset manager side. Yolande, I know in the United States we have a lot of restrictions about the technology that is in wind turbines and the, and the firewalls that exist there, where you, you can’t even plug into a wind turbine without having a lot of approvals. Is AI coming in wind [00:19:00] turbines in the US and the rest of the world, or is this mostly a Western Australia event?  Yolanda Padron: We talked a little bit about a trading company a couple episodes ago, right? And that was a… It sounded like it’s, it’s coming. Um, I, when I first read the article that we’re talking about for Fortescue, I thought this was more of, like, a SCADA self-learning AI type thing, where, like It, it kind of learns from the, from itself, and then maybe it, it tells you you’re more likely to be seeing some sort of blade issue that wasn’t shown before  Rosemary Barnes: I heard, um, Andrew Forrest speak at a smart energy conference earlier this year, and he was talking about not for, um, not for wind, but for the solar and battery projects that they’ve already got there. He called it a self-healing grid, and AI was the technology that enabled that. And so he, [00:20:00] he was saying, and I can’t remember the, the details specifically either, but when there was a, a disturbance, something that would’ve caused the, you know, without the AI, um, you know, layer looking after everything, a fault that would’ve shut the whole site down was able to self, self-heal with no interruption to supply. Um, and that that was the kind of AI that, uh, they were talking about. I believe that the new wind farm addition to that is the same sort of thing, where they’re looking at, you know, a very complex system with… I mean, they don’t have energy prices to deal with, uh, in that case because it’s self-contained. They’re not conne- connected to any external grid. Um, but you know, they’ve got wind, they’ve got solar, they’ve got, uh, so obviously weather conditions related to those two going on. They’ve got batteries, they’ve got, you know, yeah, the, um, availability of every single different… of probably many [00:21:00] thousands of different components in that system that, um, y- you know, you need to make sure that if there’s a failure or when there’s a failure in any one or combination of those things, that you’re always going to be able to reroute around that and kind of heal itself. So it probably does include some of, of what you were saying, Yolanda, but I think when they say this is the biggest physical AI, like, I think that that might be a little bit of a meaningless term because y- you know, like, there’s AI… It, it could be like… I, I don’t know. It, like, what, what does that mean? Like, if you have AI that is, um, you know, playing some role in controlling America’s electricity grids, then that would be the biggest, the biggest one, even if it was, you know, like a tiny little, playing a tiny role. I, I, I don’t know what that specifically means and… Is it bad marketing ’cause it’s just confusing and makes you assume that it’s, um, just meaningless buzzword cool [00:22:00]sounding thing  Allen Hall: It’s probably genius marketing because they attach AI to whatever the product is. So we have AI lightning diverters at Weather Guard. EOLOGIX-PING has AI CMS, and Partload has whatever Partload does, AI-Partload. So that’s the smart move, th- uh, because it does seem to raise the value  Rosemary Barnes: But you know what? Partload is anti-AI because 90% of our work is you get, you know, drone inspections, and they use AI, and then it w- and it works really, w- it works really… I’d never wanna make it sound like it is bad technology because, you know, the status quo before we had drones with using AI was to just not inspect your blades. So, you know, like, we’re doing much better than that now. But everything that we do is where AI was not able to do it or AI did it wrong. So y- you know, um, like I- we use AI in that everything that comes into us is AI. Allen Hall: Well, if the same AI [00:23:00] technology that is reviewing blade images is being applied inside of a wind turbine, what do you see as a likely outcome there, Rosemary?  Rosemary Barnes: Well, it’s not, I mean, it’s not the, it’s not the same. And like I said, uh, it’s very easy for me to be like, “Oh, AI, you know, makes all these mistakes,” but it, I only see the mistakes. I don’t see the 90%-plus of correctly categorized things. I don’t, they’re not relevant to me. Um- Uh, but I think for controlling a complex system, like it, it is… That, that’s a really great application. I mean, I think it’s like with any like super hyped up technology, it’s like really useful in a few things, and that’s what leads to the hype, and then people start to just wanna apply it everywhere. It becomes the, you know, like when the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Like, that’s where we’re at. Like AI is this, um, is this hammer that we’ve got, and everyone wants to solve every problem with it. And I do it myself, you know. Like I hate writing LinkedIn posts, and so I’ll work with, with Claude or, um, I [00:24:00] use NotebookLM as well to, you know, I draft my LinkedIn post. And you’re like, “Well, th- no, that sucks. Do this, do this, do this.” And then, you know, like half an hour later, you’re like, okay, I could very easily have written my own post in less time, and I could… I, I try again and again because I just, I, uh, you know, hate that kind of writing so much. But yeah, I think that like economy-wide, that’s the problem, that everyone is just trying to whack every problem with AI regardless of whether it’s the right one. Allen Hall: Okay, so there’s gonna be products that are gonna incorporate AI or have AI somewhere hyphenated in the name of the product. What products should not be using AI right now?  Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think there’s… Uh, I wanna add to the… You know, go back a few steps. That calling this the largest, you know, physical AI device is complete rubbish really. That’s stupid, really. It’s like, like, like what you said, Rosie. It’s like putting an AI machine on a road, and then it becomes the world’s largest AI infrastructure. I mean, that was, that was pretty stupid, um, [00:25:00] really. And that, that’s just marketing. My, my view is if you can’t explain what it does, you shouldn’t be using the word AI So in marketing, you know, you can’t just say, “Oh, it’s AI ’cause I don’t understand what it does.” You should actually be able to explain, “This is what this product does, and this is why it does it, and we use AI to help make that occur in a smart way.” Rather than just being randomly talking about, um, AI solving all of these complex issues and not actually knowing how it’s done is rubbish.  Rosemary Barnes: To answer your question, Allen, I think AI shouldn’t be used for most creative stuff. Like video, um, creation, everybody hates it, and companies keep on pushing it, and it sucks. And I think also it’s kind of… It, it makes people so angry, I think it’s gonna backfire if it hasn’t already for most, [00:26:00] most people that are using it. Um, yeah, so that would be one thing. And also, uh, you shouldn’t use too much AI for, like, I see it heaps on LinkedIn now, and it’s, it’s kind of… Like, at the first time you use AI, you’re like, “Whoa, th- this is pretty, pretty good. Like, this is something, you know, like I could… That’s very similar to the stuff that I, yeah, used to post on LinkedIn or the infographics that I used to make.” But the issue is that, like, it looks that way the first time, but then once you use it a bit and you can recognize that it’s AI, then you see it everywhere and it, it turns you, really turns you off whoever’s put it out there. And so, like, there’s so much on LinkedIn now where it’s, like, just AI-generated things. It’s… Even if, you know, like, if an expert has created it and edited it afterwards and made sure that the output is accurate, then I wouldn’t call it AI slop. But it is also, like, it’s always too [00:27:00] wordy. It’s, um, you know, it’s just like the style is just clearly e- the h- if the point is that you’re trying to express, “I’m an expert. These are my expert opinions. I know what I’m talking about,” AI is not doing that for you. Like, you write your post or create your graphic with AI, it’s just not doing that for you. So I think that that is another example of where people shouldn’t be using AI.  Allen Hall: 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 the show. And please, please, please don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosie, Yolande, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:28:00] podcast.

Proverbs Part 2: Beware the ambush!Proverbs 1:8-19Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Guard against the world's ambush

Power generation is changing fast. As utilities struggle with interconnection delays and growing electricity demand, businesses are looking for faster, more reliable ways to secure power.In this episode of Clean Power Hour, Tim Montague sits down with Walt Jordan, Chief Revenue Officer at dGEN Energy Partners, to explore one of the least talked-about emerging technologies in distributed energy: linear generators.Unlike traditional generators, linear generators have no crankshaft, no spark plugs, no engine oil, and very few moving parts. They are designed to operate continuously, and they run on multiple fuel sources, including natural gas, propane, hydrogen, ammonia, and biogas. Combined with solar, battery storage, and microgrids, they may offer commercial and industrial facilities a new path to reliable, behind-the-meter power that can lower their LCOE.The conversation also explores why dGEN  Energy is combining roofing, solar, battery storage, and distributed generation into integrated energy solutions that help businesses reduce costs, improve resilience, and avoid lengthy utility interconnection delays.Whether you work in commercial solar, microgrids, energy storage, EPC development, or distributed energy resources, this episode offers valuable insights into important technology options.In this episode, you'll learn:• What a linear generator is and how it differs from diesel generators• Why dGEN Energy believes linear generators can complement solar and battery storage• How the technology operates without spark plugs, oil, or traditional engine components• The fuels linear generators can use, including hydrogen, propane, natural gas, ammonia, and biogas• How behind-the-meter generation is helping businesses overcome utility interconnection delays and rising energy costs• Why "speed to power" is becoming a competitive advantage• How commercial roofing and solar can be combined into a single engineered capital project• Where batteries, microgrids, and linear generators work together• The emissions profile and efficiency of modern linear generators• Real-world commercial and industrial applications for distributed generation• What EPCs, facility owners, and developers should know before adopting this technologyAs utilities struggle to keep pace with growing electricity demand and interconnection delays continue to slow new projects, businesses are being forced to rethink how they generate and manage power. This conversation with Walt Jordan explores why linear generators are emerging as a compelling option alongside solar, battery storage, and microgrids, especially for commercial and industrial facilities that cannot afford to wait years for grid upgrades.Whether linear generators become a mainstream technology or remain a specialized solution, the bigger story is clear. Speed to power, energy resilience, and flexible distributed generation are becoming just as important as the cost of electricity itself. Connect with Walt Jordan:Walt Jordan | LinkedIn Website: https://dGEN energy.com Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

On SBC, PCA, and EPC assemblies

She's been in the news more often in the last year than at any other time of her 12 year stint on Winnipeg city council, and in Episode 28 you'll hear directly from Councillor Cindy Gilroy about the key issues heading into her re-election campaign.In Part 1, Gilroy reviews initiatives undertaken to preserve infrastructure and restore parks and trees in her Daniel McIntyre ward. 11.00- Marty Gold compares her success in saving amenities for the West End with the destruction of Happyland Pool in the St. Boniface neighborhood. "You're raising a very big challenge that all inner-city wards have ... we don't really balance it out," saying she is "always terrified of what could happen to Sherbrook Pool."17.25 Part 2- Gilroy describes her fight to ensure Sherbrook Pool is properly staffed and that the area is made safer for users, including adding cameras and staff. She advocates hiring locals as they 'get' the community, and wants to help establish programming to train kids to become lifeguards.As to homelessness and addictions, "that is something that has impacted residents and businesses in my ward," and she explains why she supports a managed encampment that city leaders refused to consider. "I cannot understand the rationale for leaving things the way they are... You are correct marty, we would see a reduction in the (emergency) services required... I do think there is room for the province to be part of the discussion."If services were delivered there and "not in neighborhoods where it's affecting families (it would be) much safer than wehave it now." Gilroy also believes overdose deaths would be reduced. 25.30 - Gilroy is asked about the NDP provincial government refusing to provide space on provincial property for homeless women and addicts at risk of exploitation in encampments. She called for law enforcement to arrest the perps.“They need to be in jail. If you are exploiting somebody, if you're raping somebody, they're not in an encampment- I want them in jail, that's the reality… if you're doing something so blatantly violent towards other people, you need to be in jail and kept in jail.” 31.00- In regards to the recent police blitz on open drug use, which included her ward, Gilroy supported it, stating “I have seen very blatant” outdoor drug dealing, and “my business owners are threatening to shut their doors because they feel unsafe.” Importantly, she noted that “sometimes, it was because theywere arrested” that addicts sought treatment and recovered. While Mayor Gillingham directed citizens to complain tothe Police Board after police chief Gene Bowers bowed to the demands of social service agencies to back off the crackdown, “I don't feel as a councillor, I have a say… It's a frustrating system in terms of what I can and can not do as an elected official.”Gilroy explains how the NDP's “Your Way Home” strategyprevents the city from removing encampments and move people along, and a lack of coordination between departments.37.45 Part 3 - We went into overtime to get Cindy Gilroy's views on issues like - The Arlington Bridge controversy after former Councillor Terry Wachniak tried to blow the whistle on potential risks to the public purse -"he has concerns that are valid." - The new restrictions on valuable public input to council, including that "5 minutes is not enough" and being denied the chance to respond to dubious 'verbal reports' by the bureaucrats. - "Dealing with the 'Strong Mayor' model that is not equitable" is Gilroy's solution, as "people who are not on EPC do not have the access to information." - (At 50.40) on the city nearing its borrowing limit: "I 100% think it's dire and we need to prioritize looking at these big massive projects when there's no need"- The "unbearable" effects of the disastrous WinnipegTransit roll-out and routing buses onto narrow residential roads: "I've used the system, they aren't being whiners." ****To support our reporting- martygoldlive@gmail.com

What does it take to turn next-generation solar technology into a bankable commercial product?Swift Solar is closing the U.S. heterojunction and perovskite tandem solar cell gap. Dr. Gunter Erfurt, managing director at Swift Solar and former Meyer Burger CEO, joins Tim Montague and John Weaver to explain why U.S. module capacity sits near 50 gigawatts while domestic cell capacity trails at 5 gigawatts.Following Swift Solar's acquisition of Meyer Burger's technology, intellectual property, manufacturing equipment, and engineering team, Dr. Erfurt shares how the company plans to accelerate U.S. solar manufacturing while preparing for the future of perovskite tandem solar cells. John Weaver presses Erfurt throughout on tariffs and real project pricing, drawing on his own current commercial bid.The conversation explores why heterojunction (HJT) technology is the ideal foundation for perovskites, why bankability matters as much as efficiency, and how domestic solar manufacturing can strengthen energy security and supply chain resilience.Whether you're a solar developer, EPC, utility professional, investor, policymaker, or clean energy enthusiast, this episode offers valuable insights into where the solar industry is heading over the next decade.In this episode, you'll learn:Why Swift Solar acquired Meyer Burger's manufacturing assets and IPHow heterojunction technology supports the future of perovskite tandem solar cellsWhy Swift Solar plans to commercialize HJT modules before launching tandem productsThe importance of reliability, bankability, and long-term module performanceWhy glass-glass solar modules outperform traditional glass-backsheet designsHow domestic U.S. solar manufacturing is evolving, and why module capacity still outpaces cell capacity by a factor of tenThe challenges of scaling advanced solar cell manufacturingWhy the utility scale market is Swift Solar's primary focusHow electrification is expected to triple or quadruple global electricity demand, and why Tim and Dr. Erfurt believe solar, wind, and batteries scale faster than nuclear to meet itJohn Weaver's pushback on tariffs, grounded in real project pricing, and Dr. Erfurt's counter on how the IRA tax credit shaped domestic manufacturing growthWhat the next five years could look like for solar manufacturing and clean energyAs electrification accelerates and global electricity demand climbs toward a projected tripling or quadrupling in the coming decades, the solar industry faces real pressure to build technology that is efficient, reliable, and ready to scale. This conversation with Dr. Gunter Erfurt, joined by Tim Montague and John Weaver, offers a behind-the-scenes look at what it actually takes to move breakthrough innovations from the research lab into commercial production. From heterojunction technology and perovskite tandem cells to domestic manufacturing, bankability, and long-term reliability, this episode provides valuable insight into the engineering and business decisions that will shape the next generation of solar. Connect with Dr. Gunter Erfurt on LinkedIn.https://www.linkedin.com/in/gunter-erfurt-55103850?originalSubdomain=de Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

Proverbs Part 1: The beginning of wisdomProverbs 1:1-7Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: You have to humble yourself to receive God's wisdom

God and David vs Satan and Goliathfeat. Gaelen Negus

Feeling overwhelmed by podcasting advice, creator conferences, and too many decisions? This conversation shows how Empowered Podcasting Conference 3 (EPC3) is being built to help podcasters overwhelmed by information overload find more simplicity, stronger connections, and a real sense of community.In this episode, I hand the conversation over to the Podcasting Morning Show team for a behind-the-scenes look at Empowered Podcasting Conference 3. Joining me are Jason Cercone, Rich Perry, Ralph Estep, and members of the podcasting community as we discuss the origins of EPC, the lessons learned from the first two conferences, the challenges of planning an intimate event, and why independent podcasters need spaces where they can feel supported, connected, and inspired instead of overwhelmed.Episode Highlights:[10:19] Why Creators Need EPC[16:20] The EPC Origin Story[18:44] Early Risks and First Wins[21:04] Lessons from the EPC2 Stress Test[26:53] Partners and Event Roles[31:37] The Virtual Tickets Debate[35:07] Building Year-Round Sponsorships[40:30] Community and Networking Matter Most[47:36] Intimacy vs. Conference Growth[50:53] How Speakers Are Selected[55:29] Volunteers Wanted!Links & Resources:Join us at Empowered Podcasting August 21-23:https://empoweredpodcasting.com (20% off with code: EPCMARC20)Connect with Jason Cercone:https://www.bombtrackmedia.com/Connect with Rich Perry:https://richperry.com/Feature Your Podcast on the Podcasting Morning Show:https://PodcastingMorningShow.com/spotlightThe Podcasting Morning Show:⁠⁠www.podcastingmorningshow.com⁠⁠Ways to Watch or Listen:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.podcastingmorningshow.com/joinus/Meet the Cast and Crew:⁠⁠https://podcastingmorningshow.com/people⁠⁠Join The Empowered Podcasting Facebook Group:⁠⁠www.facebook.com/groups/empoweredpodcasting⁠⁠⁠Book A Free Call With Marc:https://calendly.com/ironickmedia/freestrategycallApplication To Submit Your Show For Evaluation:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://podcastingmorningshow.com/eval⁠⁠Powered by⁠⁠⁠ ⁠iRonickMedia.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠ ⁠ContentCreatorsAccountant.com⁠⁠Send in your mailbag questions:⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.podcastingmorningshow.com/contact/⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠marc@ironickmedia.com⁠Want to be a guest on The Podcasting Morning Show? Send me a message on PodMatch, here:https://podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1729879899384520035bad21b

Whoever you ask, you are likely find broad agreement that the world needs more energy infrastructure. Whether you are worried about ensuring secure supplies, powering new data centres, or cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the answer is most often going to be investing in new assets: power plants, transmission lines, factories, pipelines, ports… the list goes on. But all too often, getting big projects built is painfully slow, expensive and unpredictable. It is particularly difficult in high-income countries, and perhaps in the US most of all.For this episode, host Ed Crooks and regular guest Dr. Melissa Lott are joined by Craig Albert, the President and COO of Bechtel, one of the world's biggest engineering and construction companies. Together, they discuss the critical problems that get in the way of infrastructure projects, and what businesses and governments can do to get past them.First off, Craig acknowledges that the problems in the system all reflect good intentions. Communities, safety, the environment and local impacts all deserve scrutiny. The problem, especially in the US, is that the process used to take all those factors into account when approving large projects is slow, fragmented and uncertain. The result is that it pushes up costs, delays revenue, creates financing risk, and ultimately slows progress towards energy security and a lower-carbon energy system.The conversation digs into the role of trust and certainty in decision-making. Once a project has been assessed and approved, how do you stop it from being endlessly revisited? Craig argues that some aspects of the US system create particular difficulties. Other developed countries have shown that infrastructure projects can be brought in on time and on budget. Craig cites the Western Sydney International Airport project, which moved from site selection to full construction approval in just two and a half years. In the US, he says, the same process could easily take eight to ten.The discussion then turns to nuclear power, and the lessons from the two new AP1000 reactors built at the Vogtle plant in Georgia. Craig calls Southern Company and Georgia Power “national heroes” for taking on the first greenfield US nuclear project in decades, but he is candid about what went wrong. His biggest takeaway is the importance of deeply integrated EPC: engineering, procurement and construction working as one system from the start. He also stresses the need for earlier investment in workforce training, stronger supply-chain visibility and better sequencing to reduce costly reworks.From there, Ed and Melissa widen the lens to look at other energy sectors. Craig explains why the US LNG industry offers a more hopeful model of projects delivered without huge cost overruns and multi-year delays. In that industry the construction companies are building repeated, standardised projects, with integrated delivery, and a relentless focus on finding and fixing bottlenecks. Bechtel has delivered dozens of LNG trains, he says, all on schedule and within budget, while still improving speed from one project to the next. Similar lessons apply in solar, where scale, automation and better execution are helping push installation rates sharply higher.But policy and project design are only part of the story. Craig argues that workforce is the other great constraint. If every new power plant, grid upgrade, semiconductor fab and airport ultimately depends on skilled craft labour, then the US has to start treating those jobs with the respect they deserve. Restoring the status of skilled trades is not just a cultural issue. It is essential to the country's ability to build, Craig says. The closing message is both practical and cautionary: if the US wants more energy security, more electricity for AI and data centres, and faster progress on decarbonisation, it has to get much better at building. That means fixing permitting, reducing project uncertainty, investing earlier in supply chains, and treating skilled labour as a strategic asset, rather than an afterthought.This episode of Energy Gang is brought to you by ENGIE, the smarter energy supplier. ENGIE doesn't just provide the power to run your business — they supply the energy to move it forward, with reliable, flexible solutions built for what's next. Learn more at engieresources.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jobs report out a day early and a little soft. New revelation  about data-center capacity smack tech shares. June ends on an upbeat note – July is very interesting so far. Our guest, Peter Schiff of Echelon Wealth Partners . NEW! DOWNLOAD THE AI GENERATED SHOW NOTES (Guest Segment) Peter Schiff began his investment career as a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman Brothers in 1987. A financial professional for over twenty years, he joined Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. (EPC) in 1996 and has served as its President since January 2000. Peter Schiff is a widely recognized economic and financial analyst and has appeared frequently on Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, CNN, and other financial and political news outlets. Peter is a highly recommended broker by many leading financial newsletters and investment advisory services and achieved national notoriety in 2008 as being one of the few economists to have accurately forecast the financial crisis well in advance. Between 2004 and 2006 he had made numerous high-profile statements predicting the bursting of the real estate bubble, significant declines in national real estate prices, the collapse of the mortgage market and the banking sector, the bankruptcy and bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Peter has authored several best-selling books including Crash Proof, Crash Proof 2.0, How and Economy Grows and Why it Crashes, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, and The Real Crash. He also served as an economic advisor to the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign. Check Out EuroPacific Asset Management Follow @andrewhorowitz Check this out and find out more at: http://www.interactivebrokers.com/ Looking for style diversification? More information on the TDI Managed Growth Strategy – HERE Stocks mentioned in this episode: (GLD), (SLV), (BTCUSD), (GOOG), (MU), (INTC), (META), (ORCL)

Creation Outside Genesis Part 9: Creation 2.0Romans 8:19-23 and Hebrews 1:10-12 and Revelation 21:1-5 Rev. Justin OlivettiMain idea: Jesus will continue to create forever

A single design error on a commercial solar project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix. Scott Wyssling and Catherine Kelso of Wyssling Consulting explain what quality design actually looks like, why AI cannot replace a licensed engineer reviewing plans, and how battery integration really fits into commercial solar today.In this episode, Tim Montague sits down with Scott Wyssling, founder and principal at Wyssling Consulting, and Catherine Kelso, Director of Commercial Design and electrical engineer at the firm. Wyssling provides structural and electrical engineering and design for residential and commercial solar and storage projects across the United States. With 75 employees and an engineer-owned, engineer-led structure, the firm has built its reputation on quality control, fast turnaround, and a refusal to treat the PE seal as a formality.With the ITC safe harbor deadline pushing a construction boom through 2027, the pressure to move fast is real. Scott's point is direct: speed without engineering integrity creates liability that lands on the EPC and installer, not just the firm that signed the plans.What you'll learn in this conversation:Why a single design error on a commercial project can cost $60,000 to $70,000 to fix, and how $3,000 to $4,000 in better upfront engineering eliminates that risk entirely.How Wyssling's QAQC process actually works, including internal peer reviews and a 20% audit of already-delivered projects, and why that sets a different standard than automated or outsourced design.Why Catherine Kelso says battery integration is simpler than most EPCs expect, whether you're retrofitting storage onto an existing system or designing it in from day one, and what to watch for when choosing a manufacturer.Scott Wyssling's direct case against letting AI replace hands-on engineering review, and why a licensed PE needs eyes on the actual roof, the actual photos, and the actual electrical equipment.How 15 to 20 year old solar farms are creating a new engineering challenge as 600-volt inverters age out in a market now built around 1,000 and 1,500-volt equipment, and why this only grows from here.Quality control gets treated as optional right up until a six-figure correction lands on your desk. This episode gives you concrete criteria for telling a serious engineering partner from a shortcut operation before you sign anything.Connect with Guests Website: https://www.wysslingconsulting.com/Scott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wyssling-5b2aa77/Catherine LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-kelso-pe-997b014a/ Support the showConnect with Tim  Clean Power Hour  Clean Power Hour on YouTubeTim on TwitterTim on LinkedIn Email tim@cleanpowerhour.com Review Clean Power Hour on Apple PodcastsThe Clean Power Hour is produced by the Clean Power Consulting Group and created by Tim Montague. Contact us by email:  CleanPowerHour@gmail.comCorporate sponsors who share our mission to speed the energy transition are invited to check out https://www.cleanpowerhour.com/support/The Clean Power Hour is brought to you by CPS America, maker of North America's number one 3-phase string inverter, with over 6GW shipped in the US. With a focus on commercial and utility-scale solar and energy storage, the company partners with customers to provide unparalleled performance and service. The CPS America product lineup includes 3-phase string inverters from 25kW to 275kW, exceptional data communication and controls, and energy storage solutions designed for seamless integration with CPS America systems.  Learn more at www.chintpowersystems.com

In this episode, Michael Rhodes claims the gospel is inherently political, and "the Lord reigns" was never just a private comfort but a statement about who actually runs the world. We name the two instincts that keep so many of us stuck: retreating into a safe bubble or chasing the halls of power, and why a more holistic approach is necessary. And we get practical: city council meetings, speed bumps, a libertarian business owner whose whole politics quietly rearranged once he started hiring single moms. In a moment when faith and politics have collapsed into the culture war, this feels like a third way, or a faithful way - a politics you can practice this week, on your own street, as a small taste of the beauty of the Kingdom of God.Michael J. Rhodes (PhD, Trinity College / University of Aberdeen) is lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of several books, including Reimagining Biblical Politics, Just Discipleship, Formative Feasting,and Practicing the King's Economy (with Robby Holt and Brian Fikkert). Rhodes (an ordained EPC pastor) and his family currently live in South Auckland, where they are part of an intentional community engaged in Christian community development.Michael's Book:Reimagining Biblical PoliticsConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.comGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeSupport the podcast and the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below Support the show

Recorded live at New York Tech Week, Karl and Erum sit down with Brenton Alexander (CTO at Roebling) to unpack one of the biggest bottlenecks in scaling “biology as technology”: figuring out what it really takes to design and finance physical infrastructure. Brenton walks through how Roebling uses AI alongside deterministic engineering models (physics/thermodynamics) to accelerate early facility design, generate capex/opex estimates with uncertainty ranges (not false precision), and help teams run scenarios fast—so founders, investors, and operators can make better go/no-go decisions earlier, reduce wasteful iteration across siloed teams, and focus human expertise where it matters most.Grow Everything brings the bioeconomy to life. Hosts Karl Schmieder and Erum Azeez Khan share stories and interview the leaders and influencers changing the world by growing everything. Biology is the oldest technology. And it can be engineered. What are we growing?Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.messaginglab.com/groweverything⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Chapters:(00:00:00) Welcome to Grow Everything Live at NY Tech Week(00:02:10) The “infrastructure gap”: why feasibility work is slow and expensive(00:03:05) What Roebling does: accelerating the path from R&D to final investment decision(00:05:05) Live demo setup: building a yeast-based fermentation facility for a red bio-dye(00:07:15) What the platform decides (and why inputs matter): equipment, DSP, and cost drivers(00:10:00) “Why not just use Claude?” Deterministic models + AI tooling for defensible results(00:14:30) Handling uncertainty: ranges, distributions, and Monte Carlo-style scenario runs(00:18:40) What changes for engineers/consultants: shifting effort from manual work to judgment(00:23:10) Reading the outputs: capex/opex, IRR, and the “tornado chart” of uncertainty drivers(00:28:10) Audience Q&A: logistics/customer delivery, AI's impact on costs, review fatigue, and assumptions(00:29:30) Long-term direction: more fidelity, narrower bounds, EPC-ready handoff(00:30:05) Audience Q&A begins(00:30:30) Q1: logistics + customer delivery costs (not just “at the gate”)(00:32:55) Q2: how AI changes operating cost assumptions over time(00:34:15) Q3: review fatigue—how to structure checks and triage what matters(00:36:10) Q4: what did the model assume for “colorant”? (and why specificity matters)(00:38:15) Wrap-up + thank-yousLinks and Resources:RoeblingRoebling Early Access ProgramBrentan AlexandarEdward Shenderovich65. Scaling Cells, Dreaming Big: The Biomanufacturing Cloud with Synonym's Edward Shenderovich166. The Great Reformulation: Joshua Lachter Rethinks How We Make Everything at Scale172. Generating Needles in Haystacks: Elise de Reus Designs Proteins with CradleBioInnovations Events - For 25% off use code: Grow EverythingTopics Covered:Roebling, bioprocess modeling, techno-economic analysis, fermentation economics, food dyes, bio-based ingredients, process engineering, AI for biomanufacturing, scale-up planning, regulatory considerations, industrial engineering AI.Have a question or comment? Message us here:Text or Call (804) 505-5553⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ / ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Grow Everything⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by: Nihilore Production by: Amplafy Media

On the eve of Ward Church's denomination's annual gathering, Rev. Sean Carroll reflects on the heart of the EPC motto—“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity”—through Romans 14. He clarifies the difference between core gospel convictions and faithful disagreements, grounding the church in the authority of Scripture while calling believers to humility in areas where interpretations differ. This message invites us to hold firmly to the truths that define our faith—such as the person and work of Jesus—while extending grace and freedom to others in non-essential matters. With pastoral clarity, he reminds us that Christian maturity is not just about being right, but about reflecting Christ in how we relate to one another. As we live within the tension of conviction and compassion, the church becomes a witness to the gospel through its love. May we be a people who embody truth with tenderness, so that our unity and love point others to Jesus.

In this episode, we speak with Elvis Ebikade, Director of Strategic Market Development at Bioleum Corporation, about why the Global South should be producing SAF rather than just exporting raw feedstocks, how renewable fuels are becoming an energy security play, the technical challenge of getting aromatics into SAF, and what actually separates a bankable SAF project from a good-looking spreadsheet.Ebikade discusses:The case for Africa and Southeast Asia as SAF producers, not just feedstock suppliersWhy exporting feedstocks and reimporting SAF adds a carbon intensity penalty that undermines the product's core valueFeedstock diversity in Africa: HEFA, alcohol-to-jet, woody biomass, and e-fuelsThe energy security reframe: why renewable fuels change who sits at the tableExport vs book-and-claim: why there's no single model for Global South SAFWhat Bioleum is building: lignin-to-aromatics, cellulosic ethanol, and the Hexas Biomass acquisitionWhy most SAF today still needs to be blended with fossil jet fuel before it can be used to power aircraftWhat makes a SAF project bankable: feedstock, offtake, EPC, and a credible path to cost parityThe gap between financial models and operational realityIf you LOVED this episode, you'll also love the conversation we had with Meg Gentle, Executive Director at HIF Global, about how synthetic fuels and waste-based pathways could reshape the economics of sustainable aviation fuel. Check it out here. Learn more about the innovators who are navigating the industry's challenges to make sustainable aviation a reality, in our new book ‘Sustainability in the Air: Volume 2'. Click here to learn more.Feel free to reach out via email to podcast@simpliflying.com. For more content on sustainable aviation, visit our website green.simpliflying.com and join the movement. It's about time.Links & More:Bioleum Corporation Why the Global South could produce aviation's cheapest sustainable fuels - SimpliFlyingThe six-times markup that convinced a Kenyan entrepreneur to make his own SAF - SimpliFlying Could Cameroon become Central Africa's SAF gateway? - SimpliFlying The country that banned petrol cars is now betting on SAF - SimpliFlyingHexas: A sustainable solution to the food vs. fuel debate - SimpliFlying

[powerpresss] My co-host Ken Suzan and I are welcoming you to episode 175 of our podcast IP Fridays! Today's interview guest is Bruce Dearling, patent attorney and partner at Hepworth Browne in the UK, and we talk about how non-technical features must be considered when assessing inventive step of patents at least according to recent decisions of the UK supreme court and the Unified Patent Court. Profile of Bruce Dearling UK Supreme Court Emotional Perception AI Limited UPC Abbot vs Sinocare But before we jump into this interesting interview, I have news for you: On May 20, 2026, the Swiss Federal Council adopted the fully revised Patent Ordinance, which will enter into force on January 1, 2027, together with the revised Patent Act. In the future, the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property will prepare a mandatory search report for each application; applicants can choose between a partially examined version and a full examination that assesses novelty and inventive step. The full examination costs an additional 300 Swiss francs, and renewal fees will increase by a total of eight percent over the 20-year term. On May 19, 2026, Asus entered into a licensing agreement with the Wi-Fi multimode patent pool managed by Sisvel, thereby ending all ongoing infringement proceedings. Sisvel bundles standard-essential patents in the pool from, among others, Atlantia, ETRI, and Mitsubishi Electric. On May 18, 2026, the UPC Local Chamber in Düsseldorf rejected Align Technology's application for a preliminary injunction against its Chinese competitor Angelalign. Angelalign may continue to sell its clear aligners within the UPC jurisdiction. Our partners Dirk Schulz, Ulrich Storz, and Wanze Zhang, together with Arnold Ruess, successfully represented Angelalign. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced midweek that, since October of last year, it has invalidated or is seeking to invalidate approximately 10,500 trademark applications and registrations in eleven administrative orders. Reasons include forged attorney signatures and the fabrication of non-existent filing requirements. This stems from ongoing abuse of the U.S. trademark system, primarily by non-U.S. applicants, which can lead to conflicts with validly registered trademarks for legitimate businesses. On May 12, 2026, the British Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision that would have required Nokia to grant interim licenses for video coding patents. The court found that Nokia's license offer to the Taiwanese manufacturers Acer and Asus had already been made on RAND terms. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a brief in the ongoing Corteva v. Inari litigation, expressing antitrust concerns regarding certain patent practices in the field of plant breeding. This marks the first time the agency has actively intervened in a biopharmaceutical patent dispute with implications for seed innovations. Episode 175 of the IP Fridays podcast was a conversation I will not forget quickly. My guest Bruce Dearling, partner at Hepworth Brown in the UK and a patent attorney for 36 years, took a case through every level of the British court system up to the Supreme Court and, in doing so, fundamentally changed patent law for AI inventions in the UK. The case is called Emotional Perception, and its effects reach well beyond British borders. Below I summarize the key points from our conversation. The full episode is available at IP Fridays. A. What Is the Emotional Perception Case About? The underlying invention concerns artificial neural networks. Specifically, it relates to a method of closing what is called the semantic gap at the output of a neural network. That sounds abstract, but the idea is straightforward: a neural network always produces an output that does not fully correspond to what a human would actually expect or feel. Closing that gap brings the system closer to human perception and human expectations. Bruce Dearling drafted this application himself and filed it at the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The Office rejected it as excluded subject matter, characterizing it as essentially a computer program as such. The legal basis for that rejection was the Aerotel decision from 2006. The case then went to the High Court, which found in favor of the applicant. The Court of Appeal reversed that decision. Then the UK Supreme Court stepped in and changed everything. B. The Aerotel Test and Its Flaws Since 2006, the Aerotel test had been the standard British method for assessing whether an invention falls within the excluded categories under patent law. It was a four-step approach: construe the claim, identify the actual contribution the invention makes to human knowledge, ask whether that contribution falls solely within excluded subject matter, and finally check whether the contribution is technical in nature. The problem Dearling described in our conversation is that Aerotel reverses the logical order of the analysis. You start with the contribution and only then ask about the exclusions under Article 52 EPC. The UK Supreme Court described Aerotel in its judgment as “unsound law” and overturned it. The EPO’s Technical Boards of Appeal had previously called Aerotel “disingenuous,” which at the time led to a public dispute between the British courts and the Boards. With the Emotional Perception ruling, that conflict has now been resolved in favor of harmonization with the EPO. C. What the UK Supreme Court Decided The Supreme Court made two central findings. First, the exclusion of computer programs “as such” is overcome as soon as a claim includes any piece of hardware. It does not matter whether that is a processor, a memory module, or any other component. The threshold is deliberately low. Dearling described this as the “any hardware” approach, which aligns fully with the EPO’s position following G1/19. Second, and in Dearling’s assessment the more important finding: when assessing inventive step, the invention must be considered as a whole. The Court introduced what it called an “intermediate step,” an analytical stage in which the interactions between all features of a claim are examined before the question of inventive step is addressed. Non-technical features cannot simply be struck out if they contribute to the overall technical effect of the invention. D. Inventive Step: The Intermediate Step This is the heart of the judgment. In EPO practice, Dearling said, it happens regularly that examiners strike through features they consider non-technical and thereby fail to assess the invention’s inventive step correctly. A recent Technical Board of Appeal decision, T 1249/22, already criticized this approach: a claim directed at a technical solution to a problem can be patentable even if the underlying problem is non-technical in nature. Dearling recalled a remark made by a Board of Appeal member at a hearing he attended years ago: “We understand that examining divisions can operate with a degree of mental laziness and that it’s too easy to throw too many things out of the basket when considering the issues of inventive step.” That quote stayed with him because it names a structural problem that the intermediate step now addresses directly. The British method for assessing inventive step is the Pozzoli test, which differs from the EPO’s problem-solution approach. The Supreme Court explicitly retained Pozzoli because the problem-solution approach, in its view, is structurally infected with hindsight reasoning: you already know the invention, you work backwards to formulate an objective technical problem, and then you ask whether it would have been obvious for the skilled person to arrive at precisely that solution. Dearling sees this as a source of unfairness toward genuine inventions. E. Alignment with the Unified Patent Court In April 2025, the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court issued a decision in Abbott v. Sinocare (APP_000000901/2025, judgment of 17 April 2025). Dearling pointed out that this decision uses language and reasoning strikingly similar to the UK Supreme Court’s Emotional Perception ruling of February 2025. That is significant because the UPC is bound neither by UK courts nor by the EPO. The overlap suggests voluntary convergence. Dearling reported a conversation with a person close to the EPO, whom he did not name, who used the word “permissive” to describe the UK Supreme Court’s approach and indicated that the EPO might move toward it. Whether and how quickly that happens remains to be seen. What is clear is that the UPC, as the new European patent court, is setting its own standards, and the question of how to handle non-technical features in inventive step assessment is now being asked at multiple levels simultaneously. F. Implications for the EPO and Practice The EPO is not directly bound by the ruling. It is an administrative body, not a court. Dearling is nonetheless optimistic that change is coming. On one hand, external pressure is building: when the UK Supreme Court and the UPC articulate similar principles, convergence becomes hard to resist. On the other hand, Article 27.1 TRIPS requires all contracting states to make patents available in all fields of technology. Examiners routinely striking non-technical features from AI claims and rejecting them on that basis sits uncomfortably with that obligation. For the underlying application in the Emotional Perception case, the ruling has a pointed consequence. The Supreme Court did not grant the patent itself; it referred the matter back to the UKIPO for reconsideration under the intermediate step. The Office’s subsequent response was, in Dearling’s words, unconvincing. He suspects the Office is attempting to reintroduce the Aerotel test through the back door. As a last resort, he has not excluded a judicial review, a procedure that does not simply challenge the substantive decision but holds the Comptroller General of Patents to account for whether the Office is deliberately circumventing the Supreme Court’s direction on the intermediate step. That is, as Dearling put it, “a nuclear option,” but one he would not rule out if the evidence in the file already suggests the Office is in contempt of court. There is also an international dimension. Singapore’s Intellectual Property Office launched a public consultation shortly after the ruling, asking whether Singapore should adopt the Emotional Perception approach into national law. That is British soft power operating in real time within the Commonwealth. G. Three Takeaways for Patent Practitioners At the end of our conversation I asked Bruce Dearling to distill the most important practical points. His first takeaway: make sure the claim contains hardware. This applies not only to UK and European applications but is simply good drafting hygiene. Without hardware in the claim, the application remains exposed. The second takeaway concerns the description. Anyone filing an AI invention needs to explain clearly which function is achieved by which piece of hardware, circuit, or software. Not as boilerplate, but as a complete technical account that describes the real-world effects. Dearling’s experience is that practitioners who write the claim first and fill in the description afterward run into trouble. The third takeaway emerged from the conversation itself: how the EPO assesses inventive step for AI inventions is not a settled question. It is worth following the development of UPC case law and any shifts in EPO practice closely. Anyone advising on AI patent applications today needs to know these arguments. H. Conclusion The UK Supreme Court’s Emotional Perception ruling is not a British footnote. It has declared the Aerotel test dead, introduced the intermediate step that brings non-technical features back into the inventive step analysis, and set off a convergence movement that is already visible at the UPC and still pending at the EPO. For everyone working in AI patent practice, whether in prosecution, examination, or counseling, this ruling is required reading. Rolf Claessen: Our interview guest on IP Fridays podcast is Bruce Dearling. He has been in the IP field and a patent attorney for 36 years and is partner at Hepworth Brown in the UK. Thank you very much for being on the podcast. Bruce Dearling: My pleasure, Rolf. Thank you for inviting me. Rolf Claessen: All right. We just met at the INTA annual meeting in London. And you talked about the UK Supreme Court case where you were involved. And the core questions were whether non-technical features would be considered when assessing inventive step of patents. Can you briefly summarize this case? Bruce Dearling: It’s a bit more than that. It started — I actually wrote the case. And I prosecuted it through the patent office. The patent office rejected the case for being excluded subject matter. So pretty much the excluded subject matter provisions in the UK are nearly identical. They’re as near as practical to the language of the EPC, so those of the European Patent Office — Article 52.2. But again, they apply as such. The actual technology relates to artificial neural networks. And the invention related to a very clever way of what is termed closing the semantic gap at the output of the neural network. So that means that in a neural network, there is always a discrepancy between the output of the neural network in terms of what it’s telling you you should be thinking essentially, and what reality is. So if you can close the semantic gap, then you align the neural network or the artificial intelligence system to better reflect human knowledge or human reactions and human expectations. So that’s really what the invention is about. There’s no point in going into too much detail with it — that’s the way it is. It’s very clever. So the UKIPO rejected this because they said it was essentially a computer program excluded from patentability as such. And they used a decision which is called Aerotel, which has been around since 2006. And that decision has caused considerable consternation and tension between the EPO Technical Boards of Appeal and the UK courts. Aerotel was described as being essentially disingenuous by the EPO Technical Board of Appeal. And the UK courts pushed back and said, you don’t know what you’re talking about. So that’s where it fell apart. So that’s where they rejected it for essentially being a computer program as such, possibly with a bit of business methods thrown in as well. But let’s leave that for the time being. So the case then went to the High Court and at the High Court, we won. The judge said, actually, it’s not a computer program. Neural networks aren’t computers. They’re not programs themselves. There’s more to them than that. And the invention as claimed is not excluded from patentability as such. The UKIPO obviously weren’t very happy about that because they liked their Aerotel case and so they appealed it. And they appealed it on several grounds, including a new one, which was that it was a mathematical method. The Court of Appeal decided that the UKIPO was right and that we were wrong, so we lost the case. So we then went to the Supreme Court. Well, actually, they denied us an ability to go to the Supreme Court. The court said no appeal. We went — actually, no, I think there is a bigger issue here — because we realized, or I realized at that point, that the work that we were doing was much broader than this. It requires real consideration of what an invention is at a fundamental level. So not only exclusions, but how inventive step is applied. And these issues were built into the case from the very beginning. And they sort of — I wouldn’t say crept up on the court as we went through — but they became more and more prominent to the extent that ultimately, when we made an application to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court went, yeah, we’ve got some issues here. We want to hear the full arguments on why this is not excluded from patentability, why Aerotel is potentially bad and how we more or less try to align ourselves with the European Patent Office. So that’s essentially what happened. And the Supreme Court hearing was last July. It took them the thick end of eight months to come out with a decision, which was issued in early February, at which point the entire legal landscape in the UK changed because they said we were right. The Patent Office doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Aerotel is bad. It’s unsound. That’s what they described it as — unsound law. It needs to be removed and we’re going to harmonize with the European Patent Office. So before I — I’m just going on a bit of a rant here, standing on my soapbox telling you what you already know. But the Aerotel test essentially was — it was a four-step test, past tense. So you firstly had to construe the claim. That’s pretty straightforward. Then you actually had to identify the actual contribution. This is what they said — identify the contribution. Really in this aspect, you’re asking what, as a matter of substance rather than form, the inventor has added to human knowledge. So that’s what they said the contribution was. And then they said, the next step in Aerotel was to ask, well, does that contribution fall solely within the excluded subject matter field or realm? And then they said, well, if you get through that question, then you check the actual contribution or the alleged contribution to see whether it’s technical in nature. So that’s the Aerotel test as it was. And what the Supreme Court in their unanimous final decision said was that Aerotel at best jumbles up the order. It reverses the logical order of the analysis by starting with the contributions and then addressing the Article 52 exclusions. And then finally it goes back to what the technical nature of the invention is about. So they really went, no, we don’t like any of this stuff. It’s bad, it’s stupid, it puts the cart before the horse. So, in the intervening period between finding the case and actually seeing it progress all the way to the Supreme Court, we obviously had the G1/19 decision from the EPO Enlarged Board. And they basically said that they are going to validate any hardware as the approach. And that’s essentially what the UK also went with. The UK Supreme Court said we’re going to say that the threshold of patentability — or the exclusion to patentability — is simply overcome by the inclusion in a claim of any piece of hardware, whether it’s a processor or a piece of memory or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Any hardware makes the invention a technical invention. So it’s a really low threshold to consider. And they then went, well, actually, if we now align and harmonize with the European Patent Office sensibly, then we need to look at how we assess inventive step, which is the other thing that we raised with the Supreme Court. In fact, we probably raised it at other times and in all the other instances as well, but it came to a head at the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court then also went a bit further and said, well, actually, whilst we do like the global approach to assessing inventive step for all fields of technology — whether it’s chemistry or biotech or electronics or software or AI — we use a test called Pozzoli. So that isn’t problem-solution. We don’t like problem-solution. We think it’s not codified in the European Patent Office. It’s just a mechanism that the EPO has come up with to try to objectively assess inventive step. We don’t particularly think that’s appropriate. We like our approach called Pozzoli. That’s it. So we’re going to say with Pozzoli, however, in order to actually understand — particularly in the context of mixed inventions having technical and non-technical features — it’s necessary for the examiner to undertake the so-called intermediate step, where you have to look at the interactions between features within a claim. The invention is defined by the claim. That’s what the act says. That’s what everyone understands. It’s the invention defined by the claim. So you look at the claim features and then you have to understand the interactions that take place. And even if they are between technical and non-technical features, if they bring about an overall technical effect when you consider the invention as a whole, then your claim should be good and you can assess it for classical inventive step. So that’s really where we’re at. There’s a lot to unpack there already. It’s probably a podcast in its own right, but that’s the positive history of where we’re at. And I can keep going if you wish me to for a second and talk about why I think this is — we’ll just contrast it quickly with the problem-solution approach at the EPO and COMVIK. So for inventions in the computer-implemented field, they use COMVIK and the problem-solution approach. The Supreme Court said, as I said, they don’t like problem-solution. I think the problem-solution issue is that it is also inherently pre-baked with hindsight because you have to look at the invention and then step back and exclude those features which are common. And then you formulate a problem based on the function that the claim achieves. And then you’re asking whether or not it would be obvious for a skilled person to arrive at the claimed invention, having been given that hindsight-developed problem. So COMVIK is not great by any means. And we know from a practical perspective that examiners are only too willing to look at a claim and simply line through features which they believe are non-technical, whereas they don’t actually look at the interaction of those features in the context of the claim as a whole. There is also a decision — very recent one actually, about a year ago — T 1249/22, where the Technical Board of Appeal told the examiners and the examining division, you cannot do this. It’s okay to have a claim directed towards an invention in a non-technical field, as long as the invention is directed to a technical solution of that problem. I think it’s paragraphs 11 and 12 or 10 of that decision that are worth looking at. But they’re saying that in all fields of technology, it doesn’t matter as long as the technical solution is about technology — therefore, you should be able to obtain a patent as long as there is a realistic and appropriate technical effect. Be careful actually, Bruce — I don’t mean technical contribution, I mean technical effect. There’s a reason for that distinction. Rolf Claessen: The non-technical features are nevertheless used to assess inventive step in the UK now after this decision, right? Bruce Dearling: Yes, that is the intermediate step. The decision says you must look at the invention as a whole. It’s the important thing. There are a couple of issues that arise out of this. The first one is that you have to provide context for the invention. The Supreme Court never provided any specific guidance about how we deal with the intermediate step or what the exact test is, which is in some respects fine. It seems to be fairly clear that you just have to engage your gray matter — your neurons — to work out what is going on in the real world. And once you work out what’s going on in the real world, what the benefits are, then you look at whether or not the actual implementation of the invention fundamentally has a technical flavor to it, which is not just coding, not just simple coding, but it does something smarter. There’s a real technical impetus. There’s a technical effect. Now that actually brings me onto something I’ve postulated or said. I think the intermediate step will follow something like what I’ve termed the holistic character test, which essentially is: work out what’s going on in the real world. Then once you’ve worked out what’s actually being achieved, what the benefits are, what the invention’s concerned with, then you ask the question, how am I achieving it technically? And how is there a technical effect? How does the technical effect arise? That brings out a couple of issues. The first one is that it’s actually about the word “contribution” because it depends on how the word is used. So if you look at head note one in COMVIK, it uses the word “contribute” — how the non-technical feature contributes to the invention. So that’s an additive inclusive concept. The UK IPO historically, and arguably at the moment today whilst they’re trying to retrain their 400 examiners — which this has caused them to have to do — their idea of contribution is this backward-looking concept. So technical contribution and technical effect, I think — although we mix them up and interchange them — are distinct. Technical contribution: you’re looking backwards. Technical effect is what you look at when you look forward into what’s going on. So this is subtle — it’s really subtle, but it’s important. And once you realize that you are actually looking for the technical effects, then you’re on much safer ground. It’s much more objective in terms of the assessment. This might be somewhat contentious, because it’s the way I’m looking at this, but I’ve been working on this a long, long time and thinking about it for probably decades, worryingly so. So technical contribution and technical effects are probably not the same, where they are interchangeably used to mean the same thing within existing decisions. Rolf Claessen: And in the beginning you said, now that Aerotel is dead basically, it’s more harmonized with the EPO’s approach. But what I take from the discussion now is that maybe — especially in view of the problem-solution approach — it’s not fully harmonized with the EPO’s approach at the moment, right? Or did the UK Supreme Court get something wrong, or was that a desired outcome from your point of view that this is not so completely harmonized with the EPO? Bruce Dearling: Well, the EPO — the any-hardware solution is fully harmonized, no doubt. So it’s now a question of inventive step under Article 56 or Section 3 of the Act. The EPC nowhere mandates the use of problem-solution. And we know that there are many different ways of actually assessing inventive step, including the concrete elaboration test from last year and problem-of-invention approaches. So there are numerous ways of assessing inventive step. So the UK says, “Pozzoli — we like Pozzoli.” Interestingly, I had a discussion with someone I probably can’t mention. They’re saying that the UK approach may actually be more permissive now. It might even influence how the EPO operates. So they may move away from COMVIK towards more of a Pozzoli approach, which basically says this: You identify the notion of the skilled person — step one. You identify the common general knowledge of that skilled person — step one B. You identify the inventive concept of the claim in question, where you construe it if you can’t work out what it is. You then identify what the differences are. And then you ask the question, is it obvious to the skilled person, given knowledge of the common general knowledge? This is entirely not artificial because, as I said beforehand, when you look at problem-solution, you are formulating a problem by backtracking from what the claimed invention is to a situation where you say, well, these are the common features and I’m going to project a problem to try and solve. Now that is already tainted with hindsight reasoning. It’s not safe, it’s not thoroughly objective. There is an inherent problem with this which sees good inventions cast by the wayside. Although it’s a preferred mechanism, it’s not fully baked. There are situations where examiners are inherently lazy, or they just simply use something like the requirements specification argument, which is just factual. It just demonstrates that they can’t be bothered to actually argue it properly or think about what the invention is. Sorry to any examiners listening to this, but this is just my personal view, that sometimes there are problems. I’m reminded of a quote from an EPI hearing I was at a long time ago, where the Legal Board of Appeal member said: “We understand that examining divisions can operate with a degree of mental laziness and that it’s too easy to throw too many things out of the basket when considering the issues of inventive step.” Now that one has stayed with me because you think — did someone just say that? And the answer is yes, they did. But it just goes to show that there is some tension between the TBA and the examining divisions, and they don’t always get it right. Rolf Claessen: So there might be a small difference now between the UKIPO’s future approach of assessing inventive step and the EPO? Bruce Dearling: Yeah, it might do. But the other interesting thing here — and thank you for pointing this out, I hadn’t entirely caught up with it, I’ve been traveling beforehand and I missed some of the UPC case law. So the UPC case law — in, was it — yeah, we talked about that. Rolf Claessen: Yeah. There was a decision in April, Abbott versus Sinocare. Bruce Dearling: Yeah, 901 of 2025. So a Court of Appeal decision from the UPC. It was APP_000000901, I believe, 2025. Decision 17th of April, hearing 27th of March. The UPC is not bound by — it’s a court. The European Patent Office is not a court, it’s an agency that administers and looks after the administrative rule of law. So the fact that this decision came out from the UK Supreme Court in February, and you see almost identical language used in the UPC decision, suggests that there is some alignment here, or some convergence in thought. Now, whilst the UPC decision also references G1/19 and uses problem-solution, there is enough — you’ve got to bear in mind that high-level courts do look at each other’s decisions. And this is really a question of influence and the desire to converge. So the fact that they’ve done this at this time is quite interesting. Again, I can’t quote someone directly from the EPO, although I would love to. They were saying — at a very high level — and they used the words “converge UPC practice towards UK Supreme Court practice on interpretation of the law.” So this may actually be happening in real time. Again, it would be wrong to actually refer to anyone by name, but it’s an observation that when I looked at the case, I can see why this is going ahead. And I can see why the judiciaries — they want to maintain independent judicial controls. They won’t reference the UK Supreme Court decision, not least because we’re not in the UPC. But if you look at the arguments in sections 106 and 107 of the UK Supreme Court’s Emotional Perception decision and head note one, you go — wow, this is very close. Rolf Claessen: Very close and nearly identical wording. Yeah. And the UPC also now uses non-technical features for assessing inventive step. Is that a problem for the EPO that has historically been aggressive in throwing out non-technical features for inventive step analysis? Bruce Dearling: Well, I think they really need to get to the situation — I don’t know — this holistic character test that I’m sort of proposing, where you really have to think about what the invention is achieving, and then look at how it’s technically being achieved. And then if you look at that again in the context of that other decision I mentioned — T 1249/22 — it says something like, in the case of an invention that amounts to a technical implementation of a non-technical method, provided the non-technical method does not contribute to the technical character of the invention. The board validated the approach of identifying the non-technical method and then goes through and says it’s patentable. There are decisions like this which suggest that examining divisions have to give it a bit more thought, because the Technical Board will realize that to satisfy the WTO requirements — which pretty much everyone is bound by — Article 27.1 TRIPS, which requires that you protect all fields of technology. And that means whether it’s data processing or business methods, because business methods can be patentable so long as they are implemented on a technical basis. That essentially seems to be what T 1249/22 is saying, although it doesn’t explicitly say “allowing business methods.” The exclusion is only “as such.” So does this decision, in combination with the Supreme Court case and the movement of the UPC, say: well, actually, let’s look at this properly? It requires objective assessments, not just superficial “let’s strike through that feature because I don’t like it, it looks non-technical.” Rolf Claessen: So are you hopeful that the EPO is adjusting and will reshape their case law in view of the UPC decision and the UK Supreme Court decision? Bruce Dearling: It’s a bit unfortunate that the corresponding UK case at the EPO was dropped by the applicants, because it was heading towards an examination hearing at the examining division. It would have gone to the TBA, and I’m sure it would then have gone from the TBA to the Enlarged Board. I’m pretty sure that’s the case. There is another case from the same client which will probably argue the same thing because the specs are almost identical. It’s just lagged in time. So is it going to change? I hope so, because I think the EPO have got it wrong — more often than not in this field. Well, maybe not more often than not — they get it wrong more times than they should do. Would I like to see it changed? Yes, I would, because I want the examiners to actually think about the technology as opposed to just — oh, it’s not — I don’t want to engage the gray matter. That serves no one. That doesn’t serve technology. That doesn’t serve industry. These patent rights are there for a reason. They are property rights. I’m referring to the award of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Economics — they are a core driver for society’s development. So the 2025 Nobel Prize was for something called creative destruction — the replacement of old technology with new — and it’s based on the patent paradigm. So all this stuff is coming to a head now. It’s just a question of how quickly the EPO actually catch up, and maybe they have something to catch up on. It’s just understanding that the examiners have to start to think. As I said, we’ve got the issues at the UKIPO where they’re going to have to retrain 400 examiners. Rolf Claessen: Yeah, right. Bruce Dearling: The Emotional Perception case wasn’t granted by the Supreme Court. They referred it back to the patent office for consideration under the intermediate step. So the patent office produced a response that I would describe as — I’d say arguably — not well reasoned, which I’ve filed the response to, which basically says you don’t really know what you’re talking about. What really worries me a bit is that I think they’re trying to introduce the Aerotel case through the back door. It’s backsliding. It’s a mechanism for trying to apply it in a different way or a different context, which would be wrong. I think they believe that the applicant will appeal this if they get a bad decision — they will appeal it back to the courts again via the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court route. I say maybe not. I say maybe the client will file what they call a judicial review, which is a nuclear option. That’s when you actually hold the Comptroller General of Patents to account and get full discovery of whether or not there’s internal documentation showing that they are deliberately circumventing the direction of the Supreme Court on the intermediate step. This is basically holding them to account and saying: if you’re not applying the intermediate step appropriately, you are in contempt of the law. So judicial review is a really serious thing to do, but it’s certainly something I would not exclude from consideration. We’ll see what happens. It’s not saying we’re just going to go through the courts and make them decide on this. We’re going to say you’re wrong. And there’s already enough evidence in the files to suggest that they are probably in contempt of court and they’re not applying the intermediate step appropriately. They may not know any better at the moment — they need to be guided — but the consequences for them are potentially severe. Rolf Claessen: I have another question for you. You were the instructing attorney — do you think the decision was perfect? What argument that you made was the most underappreciated by the court? And where do you think the judgment got it wrong, or was it all perfect? Bruce Dearling: No, it got 90% or 95% correct. The intermediate step is right. That’s the most important thing in the decision — it’s the intermediate step. The any-hardware thing — that’s logical, that makes some sense — but if people say “if the any-hardware rule is the important bit,” no it isn’t. It’s the intermediate step. That’s the important thing. Where do they go wrong? I think they went wrong because — and you’ve got to bear in mind that unlike German courts, I’ve got to be careful about how I express this — generally, as I understand it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the judiciary in Germany on patent cases are generally more technically able. They’re normally technically qualified. I look at the Supreme Court justices and the Court of Appeal justices — we had one who was a humanities undergrad, one was a chemist. Good luck with trying to argue complex artificial neural network technologies, which are difficult even for me to understand. And I’ve been working in the field. They’re hard to understand. They require real understanding, real appreciation. They could say, well, actually we don’t need to look at the technology — but frankly, if you’re looking at the statutes and exclusions to patentability and asking what a computer program is, then you need to understand what these technical terms really are. And if you can’t, then the judgment is potentially flawed. Their finding that the neural network is a computer program is, I think, technically obtuse. You know that the Singaporean government — the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore — released about six weeks ago a consultation note to the Singaporean profession and population, asking: is the Emotional Perception case right, and do we need to adopt it into Singaporean national law? So this is direct soft power from the UK Supreme Court changing Commonwealth legislation and statutes. We’ll see what happens. But from what I’ve seen of a draft response from the attorneys, they’re saying essentially: we agree any hardware is right, the intermediate step is right. The assessment of the neural network as a computer program is wrong, or it just doesn’t make any sense. And I’ve made the same comments before in SIPA, in the relevant round in March. There’s a disconnect. I mean, it’s like they equate a computer program with being able to be run on an analog computer. Now, an analog computer has no central processing unit. An analog computer just has resistors and transistors and capacitors. So if they’re saying that an analog computer can run a program — that’s essentially what they’re saying in part of the judgment. Where is the program in an analog computer? And if they’re saying it’s in the values of the resistors and the capacitors, then that has implications for any circuit we’ve got — it’s potentially a computer program — which is just madness, because it doesn’t sit well with the legislation and decisions we’ve looked at over the last 50 years. This is a real problem. It may be a storm in a teacup because you can overcome the objections by having any hardware, but it’s an argument they shouldn’t have been making. It seems to be abstract legal argumentation which has little credibility in my personal view, although it’s now law. It may be that someone can take that, have an argument with the Supreme Court, get them to fix this. The other thing is the EPO looks at a neural network as a mathematical method, and the UK now says it’s a computer program. Neither is right. The EPO is wrong as well. If you look at the actual decision which they regularly quote — the Vicom case — if you actually read the claim and look at the case, you see that it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense. A neural network has applied mathematics in it. It can be based on a computer program because it’s required to set up the learning objectives and the loss function. Mathematical processes — it tweaks the weighting factors of neurons over the course of the training epochs. But at the end of the day, if the function performed by the neural network is new and it’s directed towards a technical implementation which is technically relevant, then it shouldn’t fail for being a mathematical method. And I think the EPO guidelines actually say that. Even recommendations — the UK court said that a recommendation is not technical. Well, actually it is, because it’s data processing, and you’ve got to work out how does the data processing work to provide an improved recommendation? Again, it goes back to the T 1249/22 decision. There’s a whole raft of these things which are left not entirely resolved. There’s enough here to keep someone busy for a few more years. Rolf Claessen: Right. So I have a question for you now that we’ve talked about the decision of the UK Supreme Court and the UPC — the Unified Patent Court — with very, very similar wording. What do you say are the three most important takeaways for patent practitioners in the US, in Europe, in the UK, before the EPO? Are there any things that you really want patent practitioners to take away from our discussion here? Bruce Dearling: Yeah, okay. So first: make sure the claim has some structure in it. You need to have any hardware. That’s number one — in terms of claim drafting. In terms of the description, you really have to understand what the invention is about. And you’ve got to make sure that you explain what function is achieved by what piece of hardware, kit or software. And if you do that — don’t nickel-and-dime this by writing the claim first — I would suggest that you run into problems. You need to understand what the invention is about. And you need to make sure that the description is complete and full to describe the functionality and the effects that are achieved in the real world. And if you can do that, then you’re on a much sounder basis — much, much stronger. There’s a much stronger foundation for this. So that’s two things. Is there a third one? That’s me being a bit cheeky, but I suppose I know what’s going on. Rolf Claessen: Yeah, but maybe the third takeaway is that maybe the EPO will rethink the way — at least how AI inventions are assessed for inventive step. Bruce Dearling: Well, as I said to you before, it could be that that’s the case. I don’t want to repeat myself again. The word “permissive” was used in a conversation I had with respect to the UK Supreme Court approach. COMVIK fundamentally still breaks with me and has done for years, because the way it’s set up and the way it’s applied distorts fundamentally what the invention is about. And until such time as that distortion is removed, there is a problem of objectivity versus subjectivity. And I think that’s really what the EPO has to grapple with. It’s not an easy thing to deal with, but maybe there are things going on. Bruce Dearling: It’s not an easy thing to deal with. I don’t know who’s going to argue it. It would have been useful for me to still have the original case up and running at the EPO because these arguments would have been fleshed out. I’m pretty sure they would have been referred to the Enlarged Board. We would have got it resolved. So it’s whether or not I can now work this into the existing case to try and get the examining division to — well, they will refuse, I suspect. And then it’ll go to the TBA. And then the TBA will have to look at this, hopefully with the referrals to the Enlarged Board. And then that fixes the problem on a national and international basis. Rolf Claessen: Yeah. Let’s see. [Laughs] Bruce Dearling: No, we don’t know. I mean, you might have a different view. What do you think? Do you think COMVIK is fundamentally right or fundamentally wrong? Rolf Claessen: Well, I’m not so much into AI inventions. I’m a chemist and I usually deal with chemistry inventions. But from the discussion that we had, I think that the EPO might rethink their position. I don’t know. Let’s see. Let’s hope so. Bruce Dearling: Well, they liked it. They liked problem-solution. It’s been with us for 25 years. It suggests that it’s a compromise. It’s not mandated by the European Patent Convention — that’s the point. It’s something they think works. And these things only work until such time as someone comes along and says, actually, you’re wrong, and this is the reason. Rolf Claessen: Let’s see if they choose a different route at least for AI inventions. So Bruce, thank you very much for your insight and for talking about the case that you were involved in with the UK Supreme Court. Where could people reach you if they have more questions about this field — basically patents, AI protection in the UK and Europe — and if they want to ask you more questions about this case? Bruce Dearling: Sure. Through the Hepworth Brown website or my LinkedIn profile, I suppose. The Hepworth Brown website has an email link. I’m trying to post things on it as well to try and provide a bit more context. But if people have fundamental questions on this stuff, then I’m happy to try and answer them. I suppose that I can be considered to be quite knowledgeable in the area. Rolf Claessen: Right. Certainly more than I am. [Laughing] Bruce Dearling: So I was fortunate. As a consequence of the work I’m doing, I was appointed last year to the WIPO Standing Committee on Patents and Privacy. That was discussed for the issues of where WIPO goes and what the direction of the problems are that we have in high-tech areas. So there seems to be some degree of understanding that I might know what I’m talking about. I think I probably do. Rolf Claessen: Thank you, Bruce. Thank you very much for being on IP Fridays. Bruce Dearling: My pleasure. Thank you very much, Rolf.

Haroon Inam is Co-founder and CEO of DG Matrix, a company that makes the world's most compact Power Router, aggregating distributed energy for GenAI datacenters, microgrids, fleet electrification, and associated systems. As AI workloads drive unprecedented electricity demand and legacy grid infrastructure struggles to keep pace, DG Matrix has commercialized the world's first multi-port solid-state transformer to meet the energy needs. In this episode, Inam explains why transformer bottlenecks, distributed generation, and 800V DC architectures are reshaping the future of power delivery for AI infrastructure. He discusses DG Matrix's product strategy, manufacturing scale-up plans, and the role of software-defined power systems in next-generation data centers. Finally, Inam shares his take on the future of distributed microgrids and “cellular power” and how to scale power electronics manufacturing. DG Matrix recently closed a $60 million Series A led by Engine Ventures that MCJ is proud to have participated in.  Episode recorded on May 13, 2026 (Published on May 26, 2026) In this episode, we cover:  (00:00) Overview of DG Matrix  (01:41) Introducing the Founders: Haroon Inam and Dr. Bhattacharya (05:25) How traditional grid architecture became constrained for AI workloads (09:57) Solid-state transformers (SST), multi-port systems and voltage classes (12:18) Why early SST efforts struggled economically (13:13) How DG Matrix's multi-port architecture works (16:48) Comparing DG Matrix hardware footprint to legacy power systems (20:08) Transformer shortages and data center infrastructure bottlenecks (24:27) DG Matrix's medium-voltage and low-voltage product strategies (27:55) Product rebranding and current commercial deployments (30:45) Partnerships with EPC firms, battery providers, and turbine manufacturers (34:27) Manufacturing scale-up plan and hyperscaling production (36:36) Supply chain strategy to avoid rare earth dependencies (38:16) Reliability engineering and software-defined power systems (43:47) DG Matrix's go-to-market and hybrid hardware/software business model (46:36) The vision for distributed “cellular power” (48:14) Utilities, microgrids, and the future of interconnected distributed infrastructure Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at info@mcj.vc.Connect with MCJ:Cody Simms on LinkedInVisit mcj.vcSubscribe to the MCJ Newsletter*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant