Podcasts about ppas

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 10, 2026 27:45 Transcription Available

On this episode of the Renewable Roundup, host Russell Reading speaks with Mark Chappell, a PPA expert with Zeigo, about the UK's proposed voluntary wholesale contract for difference (CFD) and its potential to stabilise wholesale prices. They discuss how the CfD could affect corporate PPAs, market distortion risks, credit barriers for buyers, CPPA consultation feedback, and possible design changes that might support multi-buyer deals and standardisation in the market. With many details still undecided, the Russ and Mark highlight uncertainties and next steps for developers, suppliers, and corporate buyers as the UK PPA market evolves.

uk corporate russ wholesale market outlook ppa cfd ppas cppa mark chappell

Why Corporate Renewable Programs Are Outgrowing Spreadsheets and How Risk Management Unlocks True Value | Clay Bedwell, Associate Director of Platform & Partnerships, 3Degrees

Decarb Connect

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2026 16:02

Host: Tom Angus, Director of Conferences, Decarb ConnectGuest: Clay Bedwell, Associate Director of Platform and Partnerships, 3DegreesFor years, ambitious corporate renewable energy goals were built on simple targets and Excel spreadsheets. Today, those programs have expanded into complex portfolios spanning physical PPAs, virtual PPAs, spot RECs, green tariffs, and behind-the-meter solar across multiple jurisdictions. What was once a straightforward procurement task has quietly turned into a persistent drain on internal time, budget, and risk capacity.In this episode, Clay Bedwell outlines why software automation alone cannot solve modern portfolio friction, why customer revenue protection is redefining how organizations buy energy, and how sustainability teams can build a compelling case for portfolio risk management to skeptical CFOs.Key TakeawaysWhy corporate renewable portfolios have outgrown traditional spreadsheets.As organizations accumulate multiple contract types and counterparty arrangements, manual reconciliation becomes unmanageable. Escalating demands from internal stakeholders (spanning P&L impact queries from finance, audit preparation from sustainability, and target reporting from leadership) mean manual data aggregation is no longer operational.Customer revenue protection as a new driver for renewable allocation.Corporate buyers are no longer procuring renewable energy solely to meet internal target metrics. Using an example from the metals sector, Clay illustrates how commercial customers increasingly demand specific, audited renewable allocations before purchasing products. Demonstrating compliance at the customer level has transformed procurement into a tool for safeguarding revenue.The critical pairing of software platforms with human trading expertise.While software excels at routine PPA hygiene (such as invoice validation, production tracking, and contract management) it falls short during non-standard edge cases. Managing complex counterparty events, such as developer insolvencies or contract restructuring, requires direct market relationships and real-world trading experience alongside digital tools.How to frame the business case for skeptical CFOs.Repeatable financial value rarely comes from chasing quick, one-off PPA savings. Instead, the core ROI lies in portfolio risk management: stress-testing downside scenarios, evaluating long-term contract strips, and providing financial leadership with the confidence to scale programs responsibly as standards evolve.Navigating policy shifts and future-proofing buying strategies.With upcoming changes to the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard and GHG Protocol Scope 2 guidance, corporate buyers must shift from short-term compliance mindsets to long-term strategic planning. Early adopters are moving away from bloated PPA exposure toward structured portfolio risk models and 24/7 carbon-free energy tracking.LinksConnect with Tom Angus on LinkedIn and discover how to engage with the Decarb Connect community.Connect with Clay Bedwell on LinkedIn.Learn more about 3Degrees Meridian.Sign up for the Decarb Connect Newsletter: Industrial EdgeLearn more about Industrial Connect Group's global events and membership network.

On‑Site PPAs: Savings, Resilience, and the Business Case for Corporates

resilience savings pascal business case corporates rfps alight ppas

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2026 37:47 Transcription Available

Pascal Olin of Alight joins Russell Redding to dive into on‑site solar and behind‑the‑meter PPAs. They explain why on‑site solar plus storage can deliver bigger savings and resilience than offsite deals, outline key stakeholder, insurance and commercial risks, and share practical advice on structuring RFPs and scaling across multi‑site portfolios for faster deployment. What is onsite solar and why is it important? On-site solar is when a company installs solar panels directly at its facility, such as on a rooftop, parking canopy, or unused land, to generate its own renewable electricity. This allows the business to reduce energy costs, lower emissions, and increase energy independence by producing clean power where it's used. Be sure to listen to an episode earlier this year with Pascal and Russell as they discussed the growing value of on-site (behind‑the‑meter) solar and battery storage for corporates. Listen HERE: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/vjcx4rgbevft7ecw/RR_Week_33-_330_Pascal_ALIGHT8l3id.mp3

Pardalote Studies Australian Blade Erosion and Heat Fatigue

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2026 32:20

Rosemary Barnes, CEO and founder of Pardalote Consulting, joins to discuss their new grant-funded study of blade erosion and heat fatigue in Australia. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall 2025: Well, Rosemary, welcome back to the show. Rosemary Barnes: Thanks, Allen. Great to be here. For, it’s been a while since we did one of these one-on-one episodes, like a, yeah, a proper, proper guest. Allen Hall 2025: Well, this is kind of a celebratory episode because your company, Pardalote Consulting, has been awarded, uh, some funding from the Australian Capital Territory’s government for the Energy Innovation Fund. Rosemary Barnes: It’s a really good program that the ACT government has to try and get energy innovation In the state. It’s not a state actually, it’s technically a territory. Little more than just Canberra, the city. Uh, but there are actually quite a few, like, really interesting energy-related companies here, partly ’cause of the, the fund I think helps, but also just tracing back like, [00:01:00] uh, y- you know, in the 20-teens, Australia had a really conservative government that hated renewable energy, and the ACT government had a commitment at that time to 100%, um, 100% renewable electricity for the, the government. And that was one of the only programs that was resulting in a lot of, um, you know, clean energy projects being built, and one of the conditions that they put on that, uh, for people that would win PPAs with the ACT was that you had to have your headquarters in Canberra. So we’ve actually got quite a few, quite a few really cool, innovative companies out of here. Um, like Neoen’s headquarters here. Windlab, uh, yeah, was, was founded here and still has a lot of people here. Pardalote obviously, and you know, a few other companies as well. So despite it being a small city of like, I don’t know, maybe it’s up to 400,000 or something people by now, um, yeah, there is actually quite a lot going on here for energy. Allen Hall 2025: And the Energy Innovation Fund is funded by the wind and solar operators in the area, and your particular [00:02:00] effort has really global consequences. You’re focusing on two areas involving how wind turbines survive Australia, but more, uh, of relevance is to just really tough conditions which exist not just in Australia but around the world. What two areas are you going to focus on? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. So the two focus areas are leading edge erosion and high temperature fatigue, which we can probably get into the definitions of those in a minute. But basically my, um– what led me to wanna have a project like this was that when I moved back to Australia in 2021, I– and I started working in O&M, uh, I noticed that the wind turbines that I would look at, the blades that I would look at here behaved really differently to the ones that I worked with overseas. You know, es- especially with leading edge erosion, like often I would be doing a condition assessment of a, you know, a new wind farm. Um, might only have been operating for, you know, two years. That’s a pretty common time for people to get in and do a condition assessment [00:03:00] because their warranty period is about to end and they wanna, you know, make sure that everything is okay. Um, and I would just notice that often, like 90, 100% of blades would already have bad erosion after just a couple of years, which is super-duper fast. And then there are some tools available to check, um, like what kind of erosion are you likely to experience on your site. Like is it a higher severity erosion site or a, a low severity one? Um, and you basically, you know, the status quo globally is to just look at the annual rainfall, um, and the tip speed. And if you’ve got, you know, high for both of those, that’s a bad erosion site. And if you’ve got low for both of those, it’s a, a low erosion site. But when I plotted out the wind farms that I knew had really bad erosion problems onto, you know, a chart with those two axes, I just saw a random distribution of dots. You know? Like, this was not– uh, this had no predictive value for Australian wind farms. And so that led me to believe that, okay, um, you know, things are a bit [00:04:00] different here. Makes sense, you know, most of the knowledge that we have about how wind turbines operate, it’s been developed and validated mostly in Northern Europe. You know? Like it’s, it’s Denmark and the surrounding countries that had, like, the bulk of the early wind energy. First few decades of knowledge were, you know, were mostly there. Of course, there were some other, um, places that had wind turbines, but, you know, most of the The OEMs have been operating for decades, came from Denmark. And I know when I lived in Denmark, the rain there is very different to the rain in Australia. So in Denmark, it’s basically always raining, right? Like, it’s just… Like, even if it’s not raining, you’re still gonna get wet when you go outside ’cause it’s just, like, the air has this just amazing ability to just hold onto moisture. Um, but it’s very, very gentle. But, you know, over an entire year of most days having gentle rain, that adds up to a lot. Whereas in Australia, and especially if you go, like, north to Queensland, it rarely rains. It’s mostly just dry, and when it [00:05:00] does rain, it’s like a tap turns on, and I, I swear you will get bruised from the rain droplets hitting your skin. You know, they just have so much energy in them. So I think that that i- you know, when you look at just the overall rainfall, you really hide something important about how erosion, um, can progress. Then, um, there’s other places in Australia that have very different characteristics. Again, they don’t have that kind of really intense rain but, you know, some of those sites are also having really bad erosion. And so it just occurred to me, I did a lot of research, you know, into what’s going on and, you know, the academics are studying erosion a whole lot, and they’ve got, you know, a lot of standardized tests and, you know, products are developed according to these standardized tests. But the standardized tests don’t actually resemble reality, and especially they don’t resemble reality in Australia. And so my client started asking me, “Okay, you know, the products that we have are, are terrible. We have to replace them every couple of years. It’s, um, causing big problems with also [00:06:00] the amount of energy that you’re losing.” One of the types of, um, leading-edge erosion or leading-edge problems that we have in Australia is that the, the coatings tend to peel off and make these, like, big flakes which will just massively disrupt the airflow, can cause y- you know, at least a few percent AEP loss, and maybe up to five. And even worse than the AEP loss is the revenue loss because it affects it most at, you know, lower wind speeds. Um, you get a bigger hit than at rated wind speeds. So there’s a variety of problems going on with leading edges in Australia, which mean that I, I basically… My clients would ask, “What product should we put on to prevent having to, you know, constantly replace this?” ‘Cause it costs, like- you know, 30, $40,000 per turbine to replace the protection, not to mention, you know, one or two days of downtime. It’s expensive, and I basically, I didn’t have a good answer for them. What, what product should they put on? I don’t know. No, we, we don’t know. One, we don’t know what the [00:07:00] specific, um, characteristics are that are… what the specific local environment, local conditions are that are accelerating leading-edge erosion, one. And two, all of the products tend to be tested around this, you know, there’s this protocol that academics have come up with, and they’ve kind of like assumed that this is representative of how things behave in the field, and it’s– I don’t think it’s particularly true anyway, but it’s especially not true in Australia. There are a few companies that are testing to different standards. Um, definitely applaud them. But without knowing wha- what are the conditions truly like in Australia, uh, it’s really hard to advise, like, what kind of tests should you be demanding from a product you’re considering to be sure that you’re gonna put it on and not gonna be replacing it again in two years. Allen Hall 2025: Because that’s really the trouble in Australia is when you get offered products They have been tested generally in somewhere in Europe and maybe in the United States, and then when they go to [00:08:00] Australia, it’s really unknown as to how those products will do, which is a huge risk for the Australian wind market as to what to choose, how to choose, is it– what’s real in terms of test data. So now you’re gonna go out and do what? Are you gonna put sensors out by the wind farms? Are you gonna try to do more of a statistical summary of the actual environment around wind farms using existing data? What’s the approach here? Rosemary Barnes: It’s all of the above, but the part that is supported by the grant is that we’re gonna have enough money to be able to buy some scientific-grade sensors and put them on, um, a sample of Australian wind farms. So we’re gonna be looking at a lot more characteristics about the rain than simply is it raining now, you know, how many millimeters per hour. We’re also gonna be investigating, you know, every kind of characteristic of, of that, um, of that rain, um, including, yeah, like the, the energy that’s in it, for example. A, a bunch of stuff. I won’t get into every single [00:09:00] parameter. Um, and you know, other things as well, like measuring UV, solar radiation, um, particles, because, you know, in Australia we have a lot of dirt roads, which I know is very common in wind farms around the world, but Australian dirt roa- roads are always dry and dusty, like 99% of the time, so that’s one of the things that y- you know, maybe that’s causing a difference. Um, so basically putting sensors all over a bunch of wind turbines and then monitoring the erosion, um, a combination of some real-time monitoring and also looking at inspection, um, drone inspection images annually. We also have a- an option where we’ll just be using SCADA data and inspection images, so that’s like a lower cost version where we can combine that with the findings from the scientific-grade instrumented turbines to build up a picture of what types of conditions lead to accelerated erosion.[00:10:00] Allen Hall 2025: So the SCADA data will, will have some information inside of it, you think, that, uh, will correlate to the weather outside? Rosemary Barnes: It has some Additionally, we can look up, um, you know, just the weather data, like how many millimeters fell during which 15-minute interval throughout the day, what was the temperature. SCADA will tell us also what the temperature was, um, what the speed of the turbine was, so you can calculate the tip speed, ’cause that’s an important thing. Um, yeah, so it’s, it’s two, it’s two tiers of data collection. The scientific grade sensors, as you can imagine, are, are really expensive and y- you know, the, the grant project has contributed a, a lot of funding, um, but it’s not enough to put those, yeah, put a little mini lab on top of every turbine across Australia, obviously. So that we’re using s- doing selectively, and then we can increase the number of wind farms that are included in the study by just doing this, um, cheaper version of the SCADA [00:11:00] plus, uh, weather data that’s available. Allen Hall 2025: So what are some of the risks on the temperature side for all the high-temperature regions of Australia that have wind turbines? Clearly it’s generally warmer in Australia than it is in, in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. What kind of temperatures are we talking about on the ground? Rosemary Barnes: Uh, well, temperatures here can get pretty close to 50 degrees. Um, and if you’ve ever been inside a wind turbine blade on a, even a mildly hot day, you’ll know that the temperature inside a wind turbine, and especially inside the blade, is much hotter than what it is, uh, what the ambient temperature is. So this project is one– I’ve actually been talking about this project for, yeah, like over 10 years now. Ever since I started, I moved to Denmark, started working for a wind turbine manufacturer, I had done– I had just finished doing my PhD on composite materials, structural design, and analysis. So, um, yeah, very, very familiar with, [00:12:00] you know, how composite materials work and, in particular, the effect that temperature has on them. I mean, like most materials, when composites get warmer, they get softer, and that is really important for a w- a wind turbine blade. You know, if it gets, um, less stiff, then you’re gonna get a lot more strain, and that is going to affect your fatigue behavior. Y- you know, fatigue is just the application of a little bit of, a small amount of strain. It’s not gonna cause damage, but when you apply it millions, tens of millions of times, like you do in a, o- over a wind turbine’s operate, um, operating lifetime, then that builds up. And, you know, wind turbine blades are a very fatigue-driven design. Um, it’s one of the most important things to consider when you’re designing a wind turbine blade. And so when I got to Denmark and I learned how materials are qualified and how the qualification is treated in the certification process, I just realized it’s not particularly conservative, and also that some of the assumptions that are made that [00:13:00] wo- again, they worked really well in more moderate climates where wind turbines have had most of their developmental history. You know, it’s not such a big deal there if you test at room temperature. Your wind turbine blade is spending most of its operating lifetime at room temperature or below. It’s, it’s rarely, you know, above 30 degrees in Denmark and most of Northern Europe and, you know, also a lot of, um, a lot of America, not, not all of it But, um, in Australia it has just extended periods above that temperature and even exceeding the temperature where, you know, wind turbines have an operating limit and after that they will shut down. But the operating limits are based on ambient temperature. It’s not based on what’s the temperature in the laminate, which is what really matters for blade lifetime. So anyway, I’ve been obsessed, like honestly obsessed about this issue for 10 years. Talked about it with anybody who would listen . But then when I started working in O&M in [00:14:00] Australia and I started seeing some wind farms with an abnormal number of cracks early… again, early in their lifetime, you know, I think one of the wind farms I was looking at was maybe three years old or four at the time. I think it was three actually, and had a lot of cracks, and I looked at a few years in a row and it was more and more cracks every year and I’m like, “Oof, this really looks like end of life fatigue behavior.” A- actually it’s not, y- you know, there’s this concept of a bathtub curve where, um, when you’re looking at failures in components, in, in anything, not just in, um, wind turbine blades, but you know, like you’d start– it’s called a bathtub because, you know, when it starts operating, you’ll get quite a lot of failures. Anything big, any manufacturing defects or anything are gonna cause failures quite fast, and that kind of drops off over time as all of those, uh, get addressed. And then you have, you know, the bulk of your operating life, it’s like pretty low level, pretty, pretty constant for a long time and then as you get towards the end of the [00:15:00] life, you start to see failure rates rise up again. That’s your fatigue failures, your end of life fatigue failures. And so when I saw the same types of cracks more and more each year, I’m like, “This looks like, you know, the foot end of the bathtub, not the head end.” And, uh, it made me worried and I’ve now seen that across a few wind farms in Australia at, um, hotter places. There’s a few blade types that are more prone to it than others, but at this point it’s still a suspicion that that’s what’s going on. I mean, a suspicion backed by a lot of, a lot of theory and knowledge of how the certification process works. But this project now we’ve got some funding to actually go put some sensors onto wind turbines, actually learn what the temperatures are in the blades throughout the whole laminate, um, not just the, you know, on the outside surface or not just the ambient temperature, but actually, you know, develop a temperature gradient across the whole, um, the whole laminate in the blade shell. Um, and [00:16:00] then we’re going to be doing a bunch of modeling basically to look at what is the effect of these different temperatures that blades are really seeing and how much would we expect to… that to decrease a lifetime. And then we should also be able to say, you know, if you have this issue in your wind farm, you might be able to change your operation a little bit and extend your lifetime a lot. Because this one, it’s real– like, in contrast to leading edge erosion, leading edge erosion is just, it’s, you know, every wind turbine has it to a certain extent, and it, it’s always there, but it’s a relatively minor cost to fix it. You know, like it sounds like a lot, like 30, $40,000 per wind turbine, but, um, you know, compared to if you’ve got to replace every blade across your fleet because they’re all, you know, at the end of their life after five years, you know, that’s obviously shocking. And, you know, that’s a bad example, but even in a y- you know, like a less extreme example, maybe [00:17:00] after 15 years you have to do a, you know, a f- a fleet-wide campaign to strengthen blades or something. It’s, you know, m- many millions of dollars for that, and so it c- could make sense to be able to learn, okay, what, what hours of operation should we be avoiding? Additionally, because when it’s super-duper hot in Australia, usually you’ve got heaps of solar power and the electricity price is not that high. So I, I think that there– and I don’t, obviously, before we’ve done the project, I don’t know what the threshold is. But in both cases, we will be aiming to improve the knowledge of how you can operate to avoid these periods of accelerated damage. Allen Hall 2025: Do you think you’re seeing more fatigue-like damage due to the blades operating when it’s hot or not operating when it’s hot, with maybe less airflow around the blade and maybe less cooling going on is just a temperature soak At rest? [00:18:00] Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. It’s interesting because the temperature is higher if it’s not rotating, um, because you get a whole lot of, um, convective heat, heat transfer when the turbine is operating. So your temperatures are not gonna get as hot when operating as when they’re standing still. However, if it’s standing still, they’re only very lightly loaded. Like, yes, they’re gonna get, um, blown by, by gusts and, um, have a little bit of bending, but it’s, it’s very, very small compared to, uh, if it is y- you know, operational loads. Uh, assuming that you’re not in the middle of a s- a storm. But yeah, a storm probably doesn’t come with 50 degrees temperatures. Allen Hall 2025: And what part of the blade is susceptible to these higher temperatures? Is it the resin? Is it the fiberglass or carbon fiber? Or is it the, the glue, the bond joints? What part are you focused on? Rosemary Barnes: The resin is the main part that I’m focused on. It gl- it could be an issue for glue too, actually. I haven’t even looked into what the, um, yeah, temperature assumptions are with, with glue, with [00:19:00] bond lines. But the failures that I’m seeing in the field are not, are not bond line issues. It’s, it’s, um, a laminate problem. Allen Hall 2025: What about balsa and foam inside of the blade? Are they affected by the temperatures or are they pretty temperature stable? Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think they’re affected at these kinds of temperatures, no. They, they don’t really do much actually. The, the core materials, like it, it is very important that they’re, that they’re there, but their job is really to keep the fiberglass separated from its- itself to make it stiffer. So, um, yeah, that’s, that’s unlikely to be a, a major source of problems. Allen Hall 2025: So this study is gonna work over about three years, and you have a number of wind farms that are participating. Are you looking for more wind farms to participate in Australia? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we can, um, have as many as, as people want to join. We’ve got quite a good selection so far. Definitely can always welcome more. A, a bit limited in how many can get the really, um, good sensor [00:20:00]package, because the grant funding is a, you know, a certain amount, and that’s paying the bulk of those sensors. So, um, those spots are limited. So if anybody wants to really zone in on what is specifically causing erosion on their site, you know, if you know that you have got leading edge protection that is not good enough and you have to replace it soon, but you don’t know what to replace it with, then, you know, that would be the kind of wind farm that might want to consider, yeah, joining this and, um, you know, getting these sensors on their, um… We’re putting them on top of the nacelles, most of them. Um, yeah, so that would be a good match then. Um, and then, yeah, for the ones that are doing the SCADA data and, um, weather data- There’s not such a, a hard limit on how many we can have join like that. So yeah, we can have more, more like that. Allen Hall 2025: In the temperature fatigue effort, i- is that still looking for participants or are there particular wind turbine types or manufacturers that you’re [00:21:00] looking for to participate? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think, um, I, I mean yes, we can have more of those. That’s a simpler, a, a simpler issue as well. The sensors are not so expensive and, um, it’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s a simpler project to join that one. We only need, you know, a couple of turbines per site, so it won’t be such a, uh, an involved process to get everything up on into the turbines. And in terms of who might like to join that, I would say anybody that is in a really hot area where, you know, where they see a lot of days over 30 degrees, and if they see any days, you know, getting into the high 40s, then I would say that that’s worthwhile. Or even I have seen this issue in some milder sites, um, yeah, depending on the, on the blade type as well. It is more common with polyester resins. They have a, a lower op- uh, maximum operating temperature than epoxy resins. But then also just anybody that has noticed just, hey, [00:22:00] we’ve got a lot of cracks, and it seems like we’re getting more and more cracks every year, which to be honest, can be hard to keep track of if you’re… If you’ve got a full service agreement, uh, you know, an OEM managing your wind farm The early signs of this are gonna be category one and category two cracks. They’re not in exactly the same location. It’s, you know, it’s a tricky one. Normally, if you’re looking at a serial issue, then you’re going to have, uh, well, you know, your ideal pattern for a serial issue is the exact same thing happening over and over again. And so it is harder to pull this out. It also really would be very rare for it to be happening in the first two years or three years, whatever your serial defect liability period is. So it’s quite hard. But, um, another group of wind farms that might like to consider it is if you know that in, you know, a certain number of years you have to renegotiate your service agreement or, you know, it ends and you might have to take over yourself, then this’ll be a really good way for you to [00:23:00] understand, you know, have I got a ticking time bomb here? Um, because it’s not something that you’re gonna be aware of if you haven’t been, you know, doing some really, really in-depth shadow, shadow monitoring of your blades, you know, running your own inspections and looking at every single damage, not just category three, four, five, but lower ones. So yeah, I mean, there’s a, a wide variety of people that, that could be interested in joining. Allen Hall 2025: Are you expecting a number of manufacturers that make leading-edge protection or involved in resin creation, some– there’s a number of resin companies and a variety of resins that are used globally, sort of interchangeably at times. Are you expecting some of those companies to participate in this effort just to learn about the Australian environment? Rosemary Barnes: I think it would be a good opportunity to test out some products and see how they behave in the Australian context. I think that that would be a really good selling point, but I, I have to say that most of the companies doing that sort of thing that wanna enter Australia, they don’t [00:24:00] really consider… Like, from the perspective of wind farm owners in Australia, if you can’t show us wind farms in Australia where this has worked and, you know, show us a before or after, you know, the old LEP lasted Two years and our LEP is going on four years now with no damage. It, you know, unless you’ve got a before and after like that, you can tell us however many turbines that you’ve got installed around the world, but, um, we don’t consider it validated, y- you know? It’s not validated for Australian conditions yet. And I do have this same discussion over and over again with, you know, not just leading edge protection, but all kinds of, um, you know, manufacturers of whatever doodads that you put on to improve a, a wind turbine. It’s so different to Australia. Things break so fast. And I’m talking everything, you know, like vortex generators fall off and, um, yeah, like, uh, you know, bits of lightning protection systems fall off, seals just [00:25:00] crumble and disintegrate. Um, and it, you know, we’re very wary of, of new products. So I, I do– I mean, I’m thinking of it more from my client’s point of view than from the product manufacturer’s point of view. But one thing that I wanna get out of this pro- project is to be able to answer one of the most common questions that I get is, which is, what leading edge protection should I be putting on my turbine? And for now, I don’t know. I, I know a range of products that don’t work in Australia, and not much more than that. So, um, yeah. And it’s also, you know, Australia’s a very varied place with lots of different kinds of climate too. So it’s not gonna be like, you know, the product that works in Queensland is the same one that’s gonna work in Tasmania, which is the same one that’s gonna work in Western Australia. You know, um, so it, this project is gonna really pull out what are the site specific issues you’ve got at your site and what kinds of, um, you know, tests would we need to see a product um, perform in order to know that this [00:26:00] is gonna last on your site. Allen Hall 2025: W- what is the outcome of this project or these two projects? Are they gonna be reports or, uh, a, a continual monitoring system that’s designed for the Australian environment? How do you see this going? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, so one part of it is, um, developing a way to identify periods of accelerated damage and to know not to operate during that time. So we call it protective operation. Uh, so that would, uh, help you if, yeah, you’re trying to extend the life of something or increase the amount of time before you have to repair, then y- you know, that would be useful to have that knowledge. And it will be as simple as just an alert saying, “Hey, accelerated damage conditions. Consider, you know, if you wanna keep on operating.” And, you know, if the price of electricity is super high at that time, they may want to push through, and if it’s low, they probably won’t want to. So that’s one thing. Um, especially, you know, as wind turbines get to their, near the end of their life. I’ve got some clients whose wind farms only have, you know, [00:27:00] maybe five years operation left. They just simply don’t wanna repair their leading edge protection again. They just, they, they don’t wanna do that. So they would be happy to, you know, reduce operation a bit and have their turbine limp through to the end of the period. Y- you know, you want everything to wear out at once. You don’t want brand-new leading edge protection on a turbine that’s going to come down in a couple of years. Um, so, you know, that’s, that’s one part of it. And then the other thing is, you know, turbines earlier in their lifetime, how can we optimize the maintenance schedule with leading edge erosion? Um, so, you know, like it’s a lot cheaper to, uh, replace the LEP if you get– catch it early, but then you don’t wanna be catching it too early and replacing it, you know, constantly when you, you don’t need to. So, um, yeah, it, this, having this knowledge will enable a site-by-site operations and maintenance strategy with respect to leading edge protection. We also have some sites who are having trouble. They’ve got a full service agreement, and the OEM is [00:28:00] responsible for, um, doing the leading edge erosion repairs and protection replacement, but the owner is on the hook for paying for it. At the other end, we’ve got people with full service agreements where technically the, um, manufacturer is supposed to be doing the leading edge protection and paying for it, but they argue about what, when does it need to be done. Because, you know, um, the operator might think if there’s no structural risk, then we don’t need to be replacing it. And in the meantime, you’ve got turbines spinning around for years and years and years with, you know, these huge flakes of leading edge protection s- you know, causing the flow at the tip of the turbine to, to detach and to stall, and horrible aerodynamics, huge losses in power generation and revenue. And they’re having a big fight about, you know, is this necessary to do or not? And then, you know, they’re just gonna put the exact same product on again ’cause the [00:29:00] OEMs are re- all really, really wedded to their own particular brand. It’s like, “Well, last time we had this product and it was factory applied, it lasted one year before it s- it was worse than, you know, if it wasn’t there at all. Uh, we don’t really want you to put that one on again.” And so, you know, having the information that they need to be able to, you know, really bring data to these discussions and, you know, makes a, yeah, data not drama. That’s a, a good approach I think, um, for any kind of negotiation and especially in the case of leading edge erosion. And then for the high temperature fatigue part of the problem, aside from, you know, just wanting to know are your blades aging, should you be looking at remediation action or changing the operation, the other really big key thing is, uh, you might need to have a fight with y- your OEM about if this turbine has been designed and operated correctly. And so then having the data from this, um, project is going to give you the information that you need to come into that [00:30:00] argument with, again, the data not the drama. Um, and to, you know, in- increase your chances of succeeding in that kind of really tricky negotiation. Allen Hall 2025: So if you’re an OEM or a manufacturer of equipment, an ISP, an operator, pretty much all aspects of wind operations, you probably ought to be getting a hold of Pardalote Consulting and Rosemary to talk about the opportunity to participate in this study. How do people get ahold of you to, to do that? Rosemary Barnes: People can go to our website, pardaloteconsulting.com, and get in touch via the contact form there, or you can, uh, look me up on LinkedIn, Rosemary Barnes. That’s probably the easiest, fastest way to get ahold of me personally. Allen Hall 2025: Well, Rosemary, congratulations on the Energy Innovation Fund Awards and the new three-year effort. If you are interested in participating with Pardalote Consulting and working with Rosemary and her team [00:31:00] in Australia, reach out to her on LinkedIn and get that process started, because this report and the data from all this analysis that’ll happen over the next couple of years will be important to the wind industry. So you need to spend some time and get ahold of Rosemary and get this process started now. So Rosemary, congratulations. Uh, thanks for being back on the podcast, and looking forward to, uh, the next couple of years. It sh- should be exciting. Rosemary Barnes: Thanks so much, Allen.

239. Space PPAs for satellites - Jul26

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2026 26:08 Transcription Available

Laurent and Gerard set out to explore one of the biggest ideas emerging alongside the excitement around the SpaceX IPO: datacenters in space. To refuel those satellites emerged the concept of an orbital grid where beams are directed to provide electricity to space crafts, like a gas station in space. It may sound like science fiction, but it is rapidly becoming a medium-term engineering challenge being tackled by some of the brightest minds of our generation. One of those pioneers is Andrew Rush, CEO of Star Catcher, a company building what will become the world's first orbital energy grid—a network of satellites capable of wirelessly transmitting power to other spacecraft on demand hundreds of kilometres away. Andrew is the man for the mission: he previously served on the Technology, Innovation and Engineering Committee of the NASA Advisory Council, helping advise NASA's Administrator, the Office of the Chief Technologist, and its Mission Directorates. Before founding Star Catcher, he successfully built and exited two leading space companies: Redwire and Made-In-Space. His vision is ambitious: create an "energy-as-a-service" platform for space. Rather than forcing every satellite to carry increasingly large solar arrays and batteries, spacecraft could draw power from a shared orbital network whenever they need it. If successful, this infrastructure could become as fundamental to the space economy as the electrical grid is on Earth. Investors are taking notice. Star Catcher has raised approximately $88 million to date, including a recent $65 million Series A led by B Capital, Shield Capital, and Cerberus Ventures. Andrew believes SpaceX's reusable rockets have dramatically reduced the cost of reaching orbit, unleashing an explosion in satellite deployment. The next major bottleneck, however, is no longer launch—it's power. Star Catcher aims to build the energy infrastructure that enables the next generation of space-based industries. In this conversation, we explore what's real, what's possible, and what's still myth when it comes to energy in space. We also discuss why technologies that once seemed decades away may arrive much sooner than most people expect. The future of the space economy isn't just about getting to orbit—it's about powering everything that comes next. Live long and prosper.

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Hybrid PPAs: Balancing Risk, Value, and Reliability in Today's Energy Market

The Asia Climate Finance Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2026 35:28 Transcription Available

In this episode Russell Reading interviews Leticia Hermida, Global Corporate PPA Director at Acciona Energy, about hybrid PPAs, contracts that combine generation technologies (most often solar PV and battery storage) to deliver more stable, predictable renewable energy to corporate buyers. They cover why hybrids are gaining traction, the role of storage duration, and how these structures manage price volatility and volume risk. Leticia explains common hybrid structures, regional trends (notably in Spain, Europe, the US and Chile), common misconceptions, and practical advice: define your objectives, assess value beyond headline price, and explore flexible PPA designs to meet decarbonization and risk-management goals.

europe energy market spain risk balancing chile hybrid reliability pv ppa ppas

Market design: Driving or derailing the transition?

Montel Weekly

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 23, 2026 30:20 Transcription Available

Europe's electricity system is changing fast. As renewables continue to reshape the power mix, new challenges are emerging; from negative pricing and falling pofitability to the increased need for flexibility, storage, long-term investment signals and the growing demands of AI-driven data centres.In this episode of the Plugged In Summer Series, host Richard speaks with market experts Cillian O'Donoghue of Eurelectric and Fabian Huneke of Agora to explore whether Europe's electricity market design is still fit for purpose.The discussion examines whether the current market framework is delivering the right incentives for investment, the role of contracts for difference (CFDs) and power purchase agreements (PPAs), the importance of forward market liquidity, and why flexibility (from batteries to demand response) will be critical to keeping the energy transition affordable and secure. The guests also discuss how Europe can accelerate grid development, respond to rising electricity demand from data centres, and ensure market reforms keep pace with a rapidly evolving power system.Is Europe's market design driving the clean energy transition; or at risk of holding it back? Host: Snjólfur Richard Sverrisson, Editor-in-Chief, Montel NewsGuests: Cillian O'Donoghue, Director, Policy, EurelecticFabian Huneke, Project Lead Energy Transition in the Power Sector, AgoraProducer: Alexandra Carlon Editor: Alexandra Carlon#PluggedInPodcast #EnergyTransition #ElectricityMarkets #MarketDesign #Renewables #PowerMarkets #EnergyPolicy #GridFlexibility #EnergyStorage #CfDs #PPAs #DataCentres #EuropeanEnergy #MontelNews#Datacentres

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Ep89 India's Net Zero: Commercial Reality or Clever PR? with Arun Kumar, Asia Research and Engagement

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 20, 2026 47:31 Transcription Available

Comments/ideas: ACFpod@outlook.comIs India's net zero push real, or just clever PR? Arun Kumar of Asia Research and Engagement joins the podcast to explain why the greenwashing era is ending and why decarbonisation now wins on cost, not sentiment. We dig into the hard-to-abate sectors, green steel and cement, alongside power, coal, renewables, carbon markets, corporate PPAs and how Indian banks are pricing climate transition risk. Essential listening for anyone in climate finance, energy transition and sustainable investment across India and the wider Asia Pacific.Ref.: Asia Research and Engagement Group, ARE's Asia Transition PlatformABOUT ARUN: Arun Kumar is a Strategic Advisor at Asia Research and Engagement (ARE), a Singapore-headquartered organisation whose collaborative platform connects institutional investors with large listed companies to accelerate the energy transition. His focus spans the highest market-cap companies in hard-to-abate sectors, Power, Cement, Steel and Automobiles, plus Banks and financial institutions. A recognised expert in India's power sector with over 30 years of experience, Arun brings deep expertise across power trading, management consulting and equity research. He has held senior positions at PTC India, HSBC, KPMG and CRISIL, advising investors, policymakers, regulators and corporates on critical aspects of the energy sector. His work spans Asia, the US, Europe and India. Arun holds a Master's in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and an MBA from IMI Delhi, plus an advanced certification in Cloud Computing, Data Analytics and Blockchain from IIT Madras.Recommendations:Climate Capitalism by Akshat Rathi: A Bloomberg journalist's ground-level account of how clean technologies, from China's electric cars and batteries to solar, wind and green steel, are becoming commercially viable and profitable. https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/akshat-rathi/climate-capitalism/9781529329957/ Value(s): Building a Better World for All by Mark Carney: The former Bank of England governor and current Canadian Prime Minister argues that finance and markets must be steered by human values rather than price alone. https://books.google.com/books/about/Value_s.html?id=Jz6XzQEACAAJHOST, PRODUCTION, ARTWORK: Joseph Jacobelli | MUSIC: Ep76 onward excerpts from Vivaldi's La Follia, played by Luca Jacobelli.

Why Renewables Are Changing How Power Gets Priced - Renewable Exchange

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2026 44:08

Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.They cover:Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.Want to see what future power prices look like right now? Head to Modo Energy and ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst — sign-up's free and takes seconds.Chapters00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies

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Why Renewables Are Changing How Power Gets Priced - Renewable Exchange

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2026 44:08

Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.They cover:Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.Want to see what future power prices look like right now? Head to Modo Energy and ask Ko, Modo Energy's AI analyst — sign-up's free and takes seconds.Transcript available here.Chapters00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies

covid-19 ceo founders head ai power europe uk ukraine impact expanding exchange ko ro renewables priced ppa rego cfd ppas

WindQuest Advisors on Repowering and Rising O&M Costs

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2026 24:42

Dan Fesenmeyer, Managing Partner at WindQuest Advisors, joins to discuss the repowering rush and the FAA permitting stall, rising O&M costs on larger turbines, tariff pass-throughs, and AI data center demand. 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! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: Dan, welcome back to the podcast. Dan Fesenmeyer: It’s great to be here. Great to see you again. Allen Hall: There is so much happening in your particular area. Your name pops up quite a bit within Weather Guard because, uh, we’re dealing with a lot of operators and- A number of times we’ll ask them, “Have you read your turbine supply agreement?” “No.” “Have you read your full service agreement?” “No.” “Well, maybe you should do that.” And then we say, “Have you talked to Dan? You should call Dan, ’cause he can help you understand what you have signed.” Mm-hmm. “Oh, that’s probably a good idea.” So now that you’re here, WindQuest Advisors, of course, obviously is your company. Mm-hmm. And you’re talking to a number of operators. The, the big hurdle at the minute, the nearest short-term hurdle, is repowering. There’s just a lot of [00:01:00] repowering efforts going on- Mm-hmm … trying to get turbines in, start a project. There’s a July 4th deadline and an end of the year deadline. There’s a couple deadlines after that. What are you seeing right now from operators i- in terms of repowering? What’s the effort happening? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, there was a ton of effort to start physical work. That window’s obviously closing- Allen Hall: Yes … Dan Fesenmeyer: very quickly, but it’s still open. Uh, and then once you’re past that window, my understanding is if you get your repower completed by the end of ’27, you didn’t really need to have started physical work. But I think most folks, start physical work is kind of the insurance piece of it- Allen Hall: Sure … Dan Fesenmeyer: if things take longer. Uh, another thing that’s popped up is obviously FAA and other permitting. Allen Hall: On the permitting side, from the federal’s, uh, standpoint, is that stopped? Or, or are projects able to continue putting turbines in the ground, or what’s the status? Dan Fesenmeyer: My- From what I’ve seen, I think on the opening session here at [00:02:00] ACP, it was said, they said that there’s, like, 130 projects that are- Allen Hall: At least … Dan Fesenmeyer: caught. Yes. And I’m, I’m involved with some of them, and I have a fairly small shop, and there’s just no FAA variances or permits or- They’re not issuing- … mitigation studies. Everything seems to have stopped. Allen Hall: So they’re not even reviewing the documentation that’s been submitted by the operators at all? Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s what it seems, yes. Yeah. Allen Hall: Is that legal? Uh, uh, usually those federal requirements have a timeline which they’re able to review those permits and get them approved or disapproved them. You’re s- Right … I think what I’m hearing is, what you’re saying is they’re not even looking at them. Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s correct. That’s what I’ve heard and seen. Allen Hall: Okay. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Yeah. Allen Hall: So what is an operator to do then? How does this, how do they meet some of these deadlines if they can’t get the permit? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I mean, it stalled a lot of projects ’cause of the associated risk with it. Although I’ve seen some, uh, you know, some repower folks think, “Well, you know, I’m just repair- repowering like for like, or I’m not changing much.” [00:03:00] But if your, if your rotor’s changing or pad location’s changing, you need to update those permits. Allen Hall: So the, the groups and the operators that are repowering the existing turbines are putting basically the same turbine in the same hole. Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, Allen Hall: I- Would that be okay? Dan Fesenmeyer: I would say originally- The initial push on repower was kind of your larger rotors- Sure … new drivetrain, et cetera. Yes. The market seemed to shift more towards, “Hey, let’s do smaller upgrades, component exchanges.” Allen Hall: Okay. Dan Fesenmeyer: Getting more towards the minimal investment, so to speak. Allen Hall: The 80% investment portion. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yes. Allen Hall: Right. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. And less about, you know, a big new machine head, for example. Allen Hall: Well, if that gets you through and gets you the, the, uh, tax credit started back up again, which is the whole point- Right … there would be a reason to do that. Dan Fesenmeyer: That’s right. Allen Hall: Is there a marketplace then for those components if you’re gonna repower a GE 1.5 machine, which there’s a lot of them- Mm-hmm in the United States? Are you seeing a big emphasis to go get a new gearbox, [00:04:00] to upgrade the blades- Yeah, and, and- … kind of Dan Fesenmeyer: thing? Or just do maybe a drivetrain and s- Okay … and leave the rotor or, or- Allen Hall: So do a gearbox and- Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Gear or just full drivetrain- Or generator … or yeah, s- things like that. And, um- Wow people are comfortable doing it, and then it’s e- it’s easier, obviously. Allen Hall: Sure. It’s faster. Dan Fesenmeyer: And faster, and you don’t necessarily have to touch permits or, yeah. Allen Hall: And is part of that repowering, I know one of the questions- Mm-hmm … that’s been bandied about quite a bit is, do I have to buy a, a new generator or a new gearbox, or is a refurbished gearbox enough to check the box in terms of upgrading or putting 80% of the value back into the turbine to qualify for those tax credits? Dan Fesenmeyer: I’m not a tax expert, but I’ve seen people do both. Allen Hall: Okay. Well, that’ll tell you. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Yeah. Allen Hall: They’ve obviously talked to- Right … tax advisors about that. Dan Fesenmeyer: It’s, it’s their level of risk and whether they have outside tax money or whether- … they’re kind of balance sheet or taking it themselves. It’s, it’s- Yeah … more of a risk profile that [00:05:00] everybody’s different on. Allen Hall: Okay. So that has changed the landscape quite a bit. So now it’s, once this window of opportunity passes by, we’re into brave new world. Mm-hmm. And operating turbines now not really 10 years, operating till end of life, which could be 20, 25 years. Have operators started thinking about that and starting to address some of the, the, especially the contracts around that? Are they starting to rethink contracts? Are they starting to approach full service agreements differently? Is, is the marketplace changing in the US? Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it, it, depending what you have and what you’re doing, whether you have an existing agreement or you need a new one, and whether it’s a renewal or if you’re doing, let’s say, a drivetrain or new machine head, then there’s usually a service contract that’s going to come with it- Sure ’cause it’s essentially a new machine. Largely a new machine. Largely, Allen Hall: yeah. Dan Fesenmeyer: But in the case of a gearbox, right, you’re probably out of your longterm O&M agreement anyway, and, uh, whether you’re… And you probably [00:06:00] have, you don’t have the unplanned coverage anymore. Right. So it’s really, you’re on, you’re kind of on your own risk. Allen Hall: Okay, so that’s the repower scenario. Mm-hmm. What’s happening new turbine-wise? It seems like the, a lot of the operators are choosing six megawatt, seven megawatt, eight megawatt machines tends to be the, the, the band of opportunity for a lot of operators. What are they working on right now in terms of, uh, TSAs, full service agreements? What are you seeing out on the landscape US-wise? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I think, um, the TSAs haven’t changed much. Allen Hall: Okay. Dan Fesenmeyer: But the- The, the scope and the risk has changed a bit, and the, the OEMs are, you know, holding their cards closer, and it’s hard to get to certain terms that– harder than it used to be. Allen Hall: So let’s, let’s talk about that for a minute because, uh, there’s been some recent reports speaking to the O&M costs for larger machines. And so the, the goal was if I went from a [00:07:00] two-megawatt machine to a six-megawatt machine, my O&M cost may be 3x because of the size of the turbine, but ideally they drop. That, uh, the same amount of effort into a larger, m- newer machine, uh, so, uh, my spend wouldn’t go up that much. In, in some places on the planet that I’ve seen feedback about that is that the O&M costs are not 3x, they’re 5x. So the, the cost to operate the turbine, the six and eight megawatt machines, is higher than it would be proportionally to a two-megawatt machine. I think operators are just trying to start to figure that out. Are the OEMs already knowledgeable of that fact and are s- trying- I, in, in- … to phrase the conversation I Dan Fesenmeyer: mean, in the pricing that you get from the OEMs for the full scope agreements, that’s largely in there already. Allen Hall: Yes. Dan Fesenmeyer: And I always tell people look at it on a dollar per kWh or dollar per megawatt hour- Ah … basis versus a dollar per turbine, and you- Sure … you’ll see a different number. Allen Hall: Different calculation done. Dan Fesenmeyer: Right. But [00:08:00] these, these larger machines, they need larger cranes. They need tall– Yeah, they have taller towers, so a different crane setup, and these components become very, very large. So- Everything gets harder … everything gets d- more difficult. In a basic sense, it’s still oil and gearbox and, you know, tho- tho- Right that kind of basic service. But when you get into major components and more major maintenance items, then it’s bigger, it can be harder. Allen Hall: So what does a operator think about that now that they have a little bit of experience? Obviously SunZia, which is a huge project, three and a half gigawatts, uh, a l- several hun- like around 900 turbines, all of them bigger turbines. It’s a r- for, uh, really the first real taste in America of larger turbines. What are the operators thinking about that, and how are they thinking about what sizes to go with in the future? Or, or, or do they not really have a choice? Like, GE offers six, Vestas offers six, Siemens will offer a six or a seven, [00:09:00] so those are your choices. They’re– You’re not able to get a two megawatt machine anymore. Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, I think, uh, it really comes down to your, your site. Okay. And the larger machines are generally better when you have land constraints or, uh, y- your, your wind resource varies very differently. Think of a ridgeline, and you only have a certain number of pads. But generally, it’s kind of a pad constraint to push you to the larger, and then your smaller, “smaller,” four and four to four and a half- … megawatt machines, those are still kind of the workhorses of, of the US, in my opinion. Their NCS better, they’re e- they’re lower cost, but you need more pads. So it’s always that trade-off of pads versus space, spacing, uh, and in the end, you just want to get the most AEP out of that site. Allen Hall: In terms of marketplace, are you seeing prices generally rise dollars per megawatt on [00:10:00] new turbines? ‘Cause the, at least the market indication is that, uh, some of the OEMs have- Real strength in the marketplace today. This is an, an OEM-strong market. They can set- Mm-hmm … prices now. There’s fewer players. China has been eliminated from a lot of lo- locales. Mm. So they don’t have the competition. That allows them to raise prices. Are you starting to see that flow down in some of the contracts, that, hey, the prices are going up? But, but i- inflation has been a big part of that, too. Well, Dan Fesenmeyer: yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s… And tariffs, right? The, uh, that, that’s the most interesting one right now, and you have to kind of peel apart what’s my pre-tariff price versus my post, and then what’s the exposure if these tariffs change? And- Allen Hall: Is that in the contracts now? Are they able to write contracts that tie them to what the tariffs could be, so your final price really depends on what the tariffs are today or tomorrow? Dan Fesenmeyer: It’s generally… Well, things have changed and, and things are always fluid, but, [00:11:00] but most recently it’s, “Well, here’s what the tariffs are today,” and when we either bring in the component or when the OEM’s actually paying that tariff, it’s kind of a pass-through Allen Hall: in essence. So they’re just handing you the, the bill for the tariff- Yeah … in a sense. Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, that- that’s it. And then you can maybe negotiate and do some things around that to share risk a little bit. Mm-hmm. But the basic premise is, you know, there’s transparency on here’s the countries and the tariff rates. If these change, that’s on the buyer. Allen Hall: So the OEMs are trying to address that in, in some form w- by moving production into the United States. Vestas has a large blade facility in Colorado. They’ve been expanding that over the last several months. They’ve been hiring quite a bit. Uh, GE with LM up in North Dakota and TPI, and all the discussions around TPI at the minute is to really bolster their supply chain. Uh, they’re trying to get away from the tariffs as much as they can. Are, [00:12:00] are you… You think you’re still gonna see more of that where a Siemens, a GE, a Vestas are gonna be investing more in the United States to avoid that tariff, or is it just impossible? Dan Fesenmeyer: I, I mean, I think you… What they’ve done, I… It seems to me, I’m not obviously an expert on that, but it- they’ve moved things where they can And to capture- Mm you know, where you already have capacity. But starting, yeah, building a new plant somewhere, I’m not sure how wise that is in the environment that we’re in. Allen Hall: Yeah, you saw a lot of plants that were proposed two, three years ago that have, were never built. It does seem like existing plants that were on site that were closed got reopened. Kansas, Iowa- Mm-hmm … some of those plants got- Mm-hmm … started over again, which is easier to do, which makes a lot of sense. So they’re going after the, the easiest things first still. We’re in that phase of we’re not gonna put a lot of money into the United States however. We’re gonna utilize what we have and maybe grow what we have. Dan Fesenmeyer: Right. Or, or similarly, you can move from, if you have more of a… All these supply [00:13:00] chains are global at this point. Allen Hall: Sure. Dan Fesenmeyer: But if you happen to have a factory in a country with a lower tariff and versus one that’s higher, maybe you move that. You’re not bringing it over to the US, but you’re moving from, let’s say, India to the UK. Allen Hall: Sure. So, so- Okay, so there, there’s a lot of sh- card shuffling going on- Yeah … to avoid tariffs. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah, and unfortunately then the tariffs change and- … perhaps you have to change back. And, and the other one, uh, that’s out there, obviously the Supreme Court had their ruling on tariffs, so folks are waiting for a Section 232, which is Allen Hall: still- Untouchable, in a sense? Uh- Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, it- people are just waiting for what, what will Section 232 be. And it’s been looming for months now. Allen Hall: Over a year. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yes. So, and, you know, we’re waiting, I guess. Allen Hall: Is the feeling about that in the industry, uh… I’ll, well, I’ll use a couple of good examples, I think, which, uh, offshore wind being a real stress point United States, and a lot of [00:14:00] the administration’s work to limit offshore development got stopped in the courts. So anything that was sort of building turbines, putting, had ships out, putting- Mm … uh, monopiles in, they never got stopped. They were delayed a couple of weeks, but they were never really stopped, and it feels like from the outside looking in, is that the courts are not gonna allow some of these, uh, movements by the administration to take effect. Is the industry in the United States seeing the tariffs and some of the more extreme things that are happening as temporary or, or are they being a little more cautious, saying, “Yes, offshore wind has won a, a number of lawsuits”? But we may not. And th- with the Department of War and 232 and all those events that are happening, what is the outcome there, and w- how are operators thinking about that? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I think we’re in a, in a market where if you have a project that can get built within this window- Allen Hall: Yeah … Dan Fesenmeyer: and [00:15:00] you’ve safe har- Like, those projects- And you’re, you’re just in … are desperately moving forward. Allen Hall: Okay. Dan Fesenmeyer: Then- ‘ Allen Hall: Cause the trend has been, if you can get it in the ground, they’re gonna let it be developed. They haven’t been able- Right … to stop anything halfway through. Well, Dan Fesenmeyer: other, like, the FA is a good example of it- Allen Hall: Sure … Dan Fesenmeyer: being stopped. But- Yeah … if you have a project that’s being built, you’re moving forward, and then projects that are outside the window, it’s more of a greenfield development view of, of life. And seems like some folks are selling p- assets, some folks are buying- A Allen Hall: lot of that … Dan Fesenmeyer: development assets. Allen Hall: Let’s go down that pathway for a minute because I did think- Yeah … that’s a very interesting piece to what’s happening in the United States at the minute. There’s a lot of transactions, big dollar transactions happening for wind- Mm-hmm on buying, selling portfolios, not just farms. It used to be farms. Right. We’ll sell a farm. Yeah. It was. We’ll swap farms, that kind of thing. Now it’s like, uh, would you like our whole portfolio, wind, solar, battery? Dan Fesenmeyer: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Is that playing into a lot of the decisions that are [00:16:00]happening on the ground right now, that a, a developer or an operator that has assets is saying, this is a prime time to sell. There’s a l- I have my tax credits already locked in. We’re golden here- Mm-hmm … for several years. The value is never gonna get higher. I need to get out. I- is that the marketplace today, is- Dan Fesenmeyer: I think for some. I mean- Yeah … everybody’s got different, uh, motivations, whether they wanna get into wind, get out of wind, greenfield versus repower. Uh, it, it’s, it’s really their view of the world and their risk profile moving forward, and whether this is a short-term play, long-term. Do we wanna get out of wind? Some people are essentially doing that. Uh, it’s, it’s across the board. Allen Hall: How’s AI data centers playing into this? What are you hearing? Dan Fesenmeyer: Oh, I mean, that’s what everybody talks about, AI and data centers, and the demand for power is there. And- The [00:17:00] issue that, that a lot of us see is wind and solar and battery can all help with that. Allen Hall: Sure. Dan Fesenmeyer: And if you want a gas turbine, that’s great, but my former colleagues at GE are gonna tell you it’s 2030- Yes … or later to get one, so what do you do between now and then? And you’re seeing prices go up, which makes these wind farms look pretty good. Power profile’s nice. Yes. Uh, but you still have hurdles to get, like the FAA, US Fish and Wildlife, all these other hurdles to, you know, that are slowing down wind and solar for that matter too. Allen Hall: Solar’s been slowed down for sure. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Allen Hall: Does that change, though, with the demand for power in AI data centers? And it does seem to be a priority in the United States to, to win this AI race. Mm-hmm. Does that loosen some of the reins on renewables to let them go, like just look the other way for a while, while they put a new solar field or wind farm in? Dan Fesenmeyer: It stands to reason that will happen. Haven’t really seen [00:18:00] it, unfortunately. But I wo- But I think it will, right? I mean, it, it, it, it almost has to at some point. Allen Hall: There’s a lot of pressure on Washington DC to let data centers start being developed and, and go. Dan Fesenmeyer: Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: But a- as you pointed out, gas turbines are hard to get, and they can’t scale up at the rate at which the demand is. Right. So your alternative is something really simple, quick and efficient, which would be wind and solar and a little bit of battery. Yeah. I- is that change in the thinking of operators and how they’re thinking about their assets, one, and two, what they’re thinking about in the future? Or are they trying to hook up with an- a- I mean- a Google, a Facebook, a- Yeah, I Dan Fesenmeyer: mean, the offtake’s- … SpaceX … there, and that’s generally, you know, it used to be utility PPAs. Then it turned- Right. … into hedge things and C&I. Yeah. And now it’s more, you have this, the data center offtake. Allen Hall: Is the data center offtake, thinking about it from a, a financial standpoint, which they’re probably not being tied to the grid. At [00:19:00] least a lot of these, or at least the talk is right now, is the not being connected to the grid to be sort of standalone, feeding a data center, and maybe a piece of fiber optic coming out of the data center. But that’s essentially it. Maybe some backup power on the grid just in case things go horribly wrong, but standalone power for data centers does make sense. It would, it would seem to lessen the requirements on wind and solar in terms of interacting with the federal government or the, the power company in a sense. Does that make wind and solar a little more viable because it’s not connected to the grid? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, I mean, it will be connected to the grid because when the wind stops blowing, the utility will usually, you know, or, and the sun stops sh- shining- Sure uh, the utility will kind of provide that power. That w- Or the gas turbines that they have would- Gas turbine will kick Allen Hall: in, right. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yes. Yeah. But, but generally speaking, you’re never truly off the grid, but it does speed things up with interconnection and, and, you know, your T&D [00:20:00] line is much shorter. Allen Hall: Right. Dan Fesenmeyer: Or not, you know- Much much, much shorter. Yeah. Depending where the, the resource is and versus the plant or the, the data center. Allen Hall: So what are the things that we don’t know in the industry that you’re in touch with that we should know? ‘Cause there, there must be a lot happening behind the scenes that we don’t hear out in public or in the common spaces of some of these conferences that are happening behind the scenes. What is, what is the status right now? What do you think the status is of wind? Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, it’s, I, I, I’m a big sailor, and sometimes the wind’s blowing hard- … you’re going fast, and sometimes you sail into what we call a hole- Yeah … and it’s just dead quiet. We’re not quite there yet, but, um, it, it’s kind of we’re going through a bit of a lull right now. And I think, I think what people don’t realize is the multiple roadblocks that the industry’s facing. In the past, we’ve had PTCs lapse, and the question is when and if it [00:21:00] will be renewed. Yeah. Now you have other roadblocks, you know, whether it’s, again, FAA, Fish and Wildlife, permitting, different localities. Some… And this goes back to the data center. A lot of local, you know, communities don’t want a data center. Allen Hall: Right. There’s a lot of- Dan Fesenmeyer: Right? And they’re like, “Well, wait a minute. My power prices as a citizen are gonna go up- True … because of it.” Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s true. We’ve already seen it. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Yeah. So, so there’s a lot of just new barriers that have come up. Allen Hall: Okay. That- Dan Fesenmeyer: But wind developers are an extremely resilient bunch, and- Allen Hall: This isn’t the first rodeo- Dan Fesenmeyer: Right … Allen Hall: where they’ve had these issues pop up- Yeah … and PTCs stop and other world forces affect the industry. What’s the outlook over the next three to five years, do you think? Different administration in a couple years, maybe different outlook, more demand on… for power, AI data centers. Is- it just gonna [00:22:00] overwhelm any resistance to wind and solar and battery? Dan Fesenmeyer: I mean, it, it, that’s kind of a crystal ball, but I think if these data centers start getting built out like people think they will, there’ll be demand for power. And, now we’re talking basic economics, Supply, demand. People need power, then power plants will get built and, whether it’s gas, wind, solar- Allen Hall: All of the above Dan Fesenmeyer: All of the above, right? And, and I think it will ultimately follow that. I think the, administration will let you know if there’s not enough power or power gets too expensive, something has to break and fill that gap Allen Hall: because- So let the economics play out a little bit. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah, right? Yeah. ‘Cause we’re, we’re voters, right? And- Sure … and, um, people vote often with their pocketbooks. Allen Hall: And wind and solar are cheap sources of energy, and they’re gonna come to the top of the list almost every time. Dan Fesenmeyer: Yeah. Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I agree with you. Uh, it’s good to see you again. We saw you a few months [00:23:00] ago at WOMA in Australia, and that was wonderful. And I tell a lot of the operators we talk to, “You better be talking to Dan and WindQuest Advisors because you really need to understand what your contracts say and the contract you’re signing, and you need to have a better sense of what’s happening, a little more broader speak in the United States and elsewhere- Mm-hmm and they should be talking to you.” So how do they call or how do they contact WindQuest Advisors to get started? Dan Fesenmeyer: Well, www.windquestadvisors.com or reach out to Allen and his team. You’re on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn as well- … both personally and my firm. And, um, ask a friend ’cause I have a, we have- … big networks that everybody… You know, it’s, it’s a small community here. It Allen Hall: is. Dan Fesenmeyer: Right? Allen Hall: It is. Dan Fesenmeyer: And, and people bounce around different firms and, but people stay connected, so, um, that’s a great way to find each other as well. Allen Hall: Yeah. Great to see you, Dan. Likewise. Thank you. Thanks for being on the podcast. And yeah, we’ll hopefully see you in Australia in a couple months. Dan Fesenmeyer: Looking forward to [00:24:00] it.

Ekot 16:45 Svenska krav på Kinas utrikesminister att Gui Minhai ska släppas fri

Ekot

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2026 15:00

Ekots dagliga, längre sändningar med nyheter och fördjupning. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app.

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Decarbonizing Energy and Driving the No-Waste Future: GHG Protocol and SBTI v2 Drafts

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2026 24:45 Transcription Available

Host Russell Reading talks with Stephanie Moran, Energy & Sustainability Procurement Manager of Coveris, about upcoming changes to the GHG Protocol and SBTi v2 drafts, and what they mean for PPAs, hourly matching, additionality, and corporate reporting. They also discuss Coveris' no‑waste packaging vision and CO2 clean demonstration plant as examples of practical decarbonization. The episode highlights concerns that uncertainty, added complexity, and potential costs could slow corporate action and affect renewable deployment, while exploring possible market and policy outcomes as the final standards emerge.

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Hubert Put: Navigating Markets, Policy, and Leadership

InnoStation

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2026 42:38 Transcription Available

In this episode of InnoStation, we sit down with Hubert Put, Senior Energy Consultant at Montel and InnoEnergy Master+ graduate, to unpack what it actually takes to build a career across Europe's energy markets.Meryem and Hubert trace his path from a chemical engineering background and a thesis on biomass liquefaction to advising on wholesale markets, balancing markets, PPAs, and regulatory strategy — work that has taken him across Poland, Portugal, the UK, and Germany. The conversation moves from how energy markets actually function to the less visible forces shaping them: where policy and market design pull against each other, why connecting engineers, economists, policymakers, and investors is becoming a rare but critical skill, and what really separates good analysts from great ones.The episode also looks at leadership through the lens of InnoEnergy's Road to the C-Suite programme — what it gave Hubert, what he brought into it — and why he believes the energy transition's real bottleneck isn't technology (95% of it already exists) but the market design and governance choices that decide how it gets used.Tune in for a grounded look at how energy markets really work, and what it takes to grow from analyst to decision-maker in the energy transition.InnoStation Podcast:Instagram LinkedIn

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234. Engie, the remarkable turn around (live from Eurelectric Power Summit) - Jun26

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2026 27:27 Transcription Available

At the Eurelectric Power Summit 2026 in Helsinki, Laurent had the opportunity to sit down with Catherine MacGregor, CEO of ENGIE and Vice President of Eurelectric, for a wide-ranging discussion on the key issues shaping Europe's energy future. We began with the themes at the heart of Eurelectric's agenda this year: security of supply, affordability, competitiveness, and the challenges and opportunities created by the rapid growth of data centres. One of the most striking insights from our conversation was that Europe does not have an electrification technology problem — it has an electrification coordination problem. This was also the central conclusion of the report Power Couples: Enhancing Industrial Competitiveness through Electrification, launched by Eurelectric and Accenture at Power Summit 2026. The report finds that electrification projects rarely fail because technology is unavailable. Instead, they stall when power economics, grid access, infrastructure delivery, financing structures, and industrial investment timelines are not aligned.The proposed solution is a new delivery model: “Power Couples”, bringing together industrial players, utilities, technology providers and capital partners to accelerate deployment at scale. We also reflected on ENGIE's remarkable transformation under Catherine's leadership over the past five and a half years. The company's strategy has been defined by two parallel moves: more than €15 billion of divestments from fossil and legacy assets, alongside concentrated investments in renewables, networks, batteries, and regulated infrastructure — all while maintaining strong financial discipline, with net debt-to-EBITDA around 3. The results have been impressive. Since 2021, ENGIE has delivered the strongest risk-adjusted equity performance among major European utilities, combining substantial dividend distributions with significant share-price appreciation. With an annualised IRR of roughly 20.5% since January 2021, ENGIE has outperformed the net returns of many leading global infrastructure investors, effectively delivering private-equity-style returns with public-market liquidity. Our discussion also covered ENGIE's leadership in power purchase agreements (PPAs), its support for 24/7 Scope 2 accounting, the recent acquisition of UK Power Networks, progress in EV charging infrastructure, and its fully integrated strategy for data centre development. Finally, we explored ENGIE's investment plans for the years ahead and the broader structural shift underway across the energy system: the continued transition from molecules to electrons. Eurelectric Report: Power Couples https://www.eurelectric.org/publications/industrial-electrification-power-couples/

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Court Saves Wind Safe Harbor, Norway Pauses Utsira Nord

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2026 33:27

A federal court restores the 5% safe harbor for wind tax credits, Norway’s parliament pauses the 35 billion krone Utsira Nord floating wind program, and the crew digs into Australia’s battery boom and the looming blade technician shortage. 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! Uptime324 Matthew Stead: [00:00:00] 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 this edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m Allen Hall here with Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and Yolanda Padron. And our week starts off in the courtroom. And if you’ve been watching the news lately, there’s a pretty substantial IRS case involving large-scale wind and solar having to do with the, uh, production tax credit and, uh, investment tax credit at the same time on the safe harbor, 5% safe harbor rule. Uh, a federal judge handed the wind industry and solar industry a pretty substantial legal win that could reshape how the [00:01:00] projects qualify for tax credits. So a judge up in, uh, the District of Columbia vacated IRS Notice 2025-42. So if you remember that, uh, from a- about a year or so ago, uh, f- it found that the, that notice was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The notice, which was issued following a July 2025 executive order, had eliminated the 5% safe harbor for wind projects, uh, a provision developers have relied on since about 2013 to establish construction start dates without breaking ground. The court found the IRS failed to justify removing it, ignored industry comments, which I had read, and I agree with that, and gave no reason for treating wind differently f- than other clean energy technologies. So That his executive order came down and said, “Hey, we don’t like wind. [00:02:00] IRS, write a rule and make it hard for wind to get installed in the United States.” And so they dutifully did it, but a court is throwing it out. This has some pretty significant implications because if you hadn’t broken ground before this ruling, I think the– what was happening was be- if you hadn’t broken ground by July 4th, your project wouldn’t qualify for some tax credits. But now, if you have 5% safe harbor, you still are in the game, at least for now. Now, Wanda, that’s gonna make a big difference to asset managers and developers, won’t it? Yolanda Padron: Yeah, it’s really exciting. I think it opens up the, the playing field for, for some of these projects that might be a little bit behind schedule. Um, of course, a lot of teams had to change their plans and their pipeline when, um, you know, the big, beautiful bill passed and, I mean, it’s– of course, it adds a little bit of additional volatility, right, to, to wind and, and solar in the US, but it’s exciting to see at least things for, [00:03:00] for those of us that are in the wind and solar side, the, it’s a little, little bit of, of hope there. Allen Hall: And Matthew, uh, even in terms of opening up o-o-operations and, uh, getting contracts signed, this should make a big difference in sort of opening the floodgates a little bit. Although there is a short timeframe. We’re, we’re recording on, what, what is today? June 10th. So you have, in theory, less than 30 days before the July 4th deadline, but hopefully this stays. You think there’s a chance this just gets completely, uh, wiped out, the executive order and the IRS notice and- It’s back to what we remember for the, for the last, ooh, 12, 13 years? Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah. I’m, I’m, I’m hopeful, and I, I agree with Yolanda. I think you, you said it really well. Um, I think this is a, a glimmer of hope in, um, a sometimes gloomy, um, environment. So I think that’s great. In terms of going back to where it was, um, I mean, I guess my observation has been that, [00:04:00] you know, things in the US were a bit, um, distorted. You know, distorted through the, the PTC, um, and the whole repowering thing after 10 years is quite a distortion. So I think, um, you’re not necessarily going back to the good old days, um, might be the way, what will happen. Allen Hall: I think there is a lot of people actively trying to dig holes at the moment, and I, I’m sure they’re gonna continue to do that. Yolanda, do you th- you think anybody’s gonna stop and kinda say, “Oh, we have the 5% rule. We’re, we’re good”? Do you think, or you think they’re gonna still go ahead and really start construction and then just keep things continually moving on site? Yolanda Padron: I don’t think they, they can really stop, right? Because you, you don’t know if, if anything strange happens. A lot of people didn’t think the, a lot of the provisions in the big beautiful bill were gonna, were gonna see the light of day, and they did. Um, but it does, I really hope it brings at least a little bit of breathing room for some people. I know it’s, it must be… I mean, I have some friends in development, and they’re, they’re q- a little [00:05:00] bit stressed right now just with everything going on. Um, so, so I really hope for them at least they, you know, if, if they’re a little bit behind schedule, then it, it’ll be, it’ll still be fine. Allen Hall: Delamination and bondline failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. CIC-NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive 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[00:06:00] Norway’s Storting has voted to pause the 35 billion Norwegian krone support program for floating offshore wind at Utsira Nord. The Conservative Party secured a parliamentary majority for the external quality assurance review, a socioeconomic analysis, and a technology development assessment, all before the Storting will authorize any commitments. Equinor and Vårgrønn, along with EDF and Deepwind Offshore, each hold allocated 500-megawatt areas and were preparing to compete for that subsidy. Equinor says the project will continue for now. I think everybody is saying that at the moment. But, uh, Equinor cannot rule out consequences as framework uncertainty compounds in the already challenging nature of floating offshore wind development. So Utsira Nord is a massive project. So it’s, it’s about three and a half billion US dollars [00:07:00] to go do this. We had Mads Furuseth and Anders Naslund about a year or so ago, maybe a little bit longer, talking about the project and how big it was and how important it was that Norway did this for floating offshore wind. But with this, uh, recent change in the parliament of Norway, it does seem like they’re slowly going to try to kill it by putting in a number of, uh, reviews, which is how bureaucracies tend to kill things. Is put it under six, seven, eight reviews, different committees. They all take time to get together. They have to put out a report. It could be two, three years from now. At that point, the world has completely changed, and everybody’s moved on. Does that seem like the outcome here at the moment? Matthew Stead: Yes. Allen Hall: In my mind, there’s really two big areas for floating offshore, which UK, right? That there, there’s some massive projects there, Green Volt being one of them, and then there was Sue & Nord. So between the two, I feel like the, the UK one was going to [00:08:00] happen. The question whether the world was gonna move towards floating offshore wind was gonna happen up in Norway. If Norway decided to do it and could get it developed, and it has the capability to do it because, because they have that skill set, uh, right there in Norway. If they could do it in Norway, everybody in the world would learn from it and figure out how to do it. Does this really set back floating offshore wind globally? Matthew Stead: Yeah. I mean, going back to what I said before, and I, I’ll defer to Rosie on this as well, but, um, when I was at, at Blades Europe, um, one of the, one of my long-term contacts, um, y- was in floating wind, um, and had, um, left the industry. He basically said i- in his view that the offshore wind industry was slowly, um, in decline or slowly dying. Um, so I’m just wondering if this is just evolution of viability of offshore wind. Rosemary Barnes: Is offshore wind in decline? I think if you look globally, it’s, it’s not in decline. I, I haven’t looked in, in depth at the figures just based on what, you know, [00:09:00] headlines I’ve seen and podcasts I’ve heard, but I think that globally it’s still on the rise. It’s just that- It’s only in Europe that things are really moving with speed, right? Like, people were expecting heaps of growth in the US and now no- nobody expects that. Floating offshore wind, it’s… I th- I still think it’s too early to say. There are plenty of countries that don’t have any good energy options besides, um, floating offshore wind, like Japan. What their energy transition looks like is gonna depend a lot on their culture and what people think, ’cause, like, if you go through, like, the engineering solutions that Japan could have, the ones that make the most sense from an engineering point of view are not popular at all, are not politically viable. Like, Japan could easily have a subsea cable connecting it with, um, with China, for example, or Korea, but I don’t think anybody, anybody thinks that that will ever happen because, you know, politically it’s, it’s very far from being possible. What else could they have? Geothermal. They’ve got heaps of [00:10:00]geothermal resources, like really good traditional geothermal resources, but my understanding is that it’s super unpopular because their onsen, um, community doesn’t want it. Uh, my understanding is that they’re worried that if you put geothermal, um, if you exploit geothermal resources, then the onsens will not be hot anymore, and again, my limited research understanding is that it’s not true. It’s different resources. The two aren’t connected in any way. Um, and yeah, there’s actually a community geothermal, um, facility near Fukushima. I’m trying really hard to get over there, but I’m, I’ve got a roadblock at the moment because, uh, n- no one there speaks English, so I need to find somebody to, to come with me and, you know, I’ll have one, one day to try and get there on the fast train and back to Tokyo in, in a single day. So it’s, it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m gonna try. But anyway, so yeah, what have we… We’ve ruled out, like, subsea cables, ruled out geothermal. Floating wind is good. Allen Hall: Well, speaking of Fukushima, [00:11:00] there’s been a more recent push in Japan to start up some of the nuclear facilities. So after the tsunami, was that 2012, 2014 when that happened? It was a while ago. Uh, when the tsunami happened and h- had that, uh, nuclear accident, they, they s- shut down all the nuclear facilities in Japan, but it does seem like they’re trying to restart some of them And, and maybe it’s just the demand for energy and, and they’re trying to weigh that off with offshore wind or floating offshore wind. At what point, you know, which one do you choose? It has to be driven by cost and availability. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And so Fukushima, I just looked it up, it was 2011. Um, and yeah, so I mean, I think it is very fair that they had a reaction to that and they wanted to put the handbrake on nuclear at that time, or they did more than put the handbrake on, they did like a handbrake turn. Allen Hall: They shut it down. Rosemary Barnes: So, and it, you know, it’s gradually ramping up. I think that their target for nuclear now is to, to regain, um, 20% of their electricity from [00:12:00] nuclear by 2040, something like that. It was 30% prior to that incident. Um, so that will be part of it, but it’s not, um, it’s not all of it. And then even if you think of, uh, okay, so forget climate change, just, you know, we want, Japan just wants energy and they don’t care about climate change, you know, ’cause that, that, that could be true. What are their ch- choices for that? They import a whole bunch of… They, they import nearly all their energy. Everything that’s not nuclear basically is, is imported. Um, coal, but a lot of LNG, and, you know, that is not exactly an appealing prospect at the moment either. It’s not secure. Prices are very volatile. We’ve had, like, two fossil fuel shocks in the last, what, like four years or something like that, and how many more, how many more are we g- are we going to have? You know, like energy security is important, totally separate from climate change issues. So I don’t think we need to rely on Japan, like, you know, [00:13:00] steadfastly staying the course because their, their existing o- opportunities are not, are not great for fossil fuels either. Allen Hall: I don’t know what country’s gonna stay the course right now, really. Maybe the UK? Rosemary Barnes: Oh, I think it’s- Countries that have other reasons for going to renewables are the ones that are gonna stay the, stay the course. Um, and there are plenty of examples of countries where it just, it is by far the easiest, cheapest, fastest option to get more electricity. Um, you know, like all of Africa, for example, is, is facing that as a, uh, a better development path than trying to build big, um, fossil fuel power plants. But even that, you know, like in India, they’re making a huge transition, Pakistan, not to mention Australia, where now batteries are having more of an impact on electricity prices than gas is. So our electricity prices now finally are dropping, um, this year for the first time because of how many batteries have come on and are now, you [00:14:00]know… Like they’ve just flattened. The evening price peak used to be on average about, like, I think $400 or something dollars a megawatt hour, and now it’s like 100. In one year we had that, we had that change, yeah, just from the amount of batteries that have come on in the last year or two. Allen Hall: Why does that make such a big difference in the price of electricity, the battery aspect? Rosemary Barnes: Because, so the way that Australia… Australia’s electricity market is pretty similar to Texas, so if you understand that, then you can probably understand Australia’s. But, you know, at any five-minute interval, people, like, they know how much demand there’s going to be, and then people are bidding in how much they would supply electricity for in that five minutes, in real time as well. It’s not like day ahead or anything like that in Australia. The, like, last one they need is what everybody gets paid. So, like, solar power is gonna bid in at, like, you know, practically zero, um, or maybe negative prices actually if they’ve got power purchase agreements in place. And then, you know, wind a little bit more, and then coal, uh, you know, a, a bit [00:15:00] more than that, and then gas, the open cycle gas turbines, the peakers, they’re very expensive. They’re bidding in at 400, $400 a megawatt hour. If there’s enough batteries that that gas doesn’t need to bid in, then all of a sudden we don’t have the gas price that everybody has to pay. We have the battery price that everyone has to pay, and that is very, very cheap and will become cheaper as there’s more of them in the, in the system. So it’s like a threshold event. You, you know, um, even if you’re using only a tiny bit of gas, if you need any gas at all, even like, you know, one megawatt of gas, everybody gets paid the gas price. If you just get a little bit more battery in and you don’t need it anymore, bam, the price just falls. So that’s what we… We’ve passed that threshold now. Allen Hall: Isn’t that where the UK is trying to get, is to get past that threshold where renewables are that last addition to the grid and kick off peaker plants and some expensive other- fuel sources. That’s I, I [00:16:00] think where everybody’s gone because they have the same system where the, the last one in is what sets the price for everybody. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. The UK’s a little bit different because one, they’re connected to Europe, and two, they’ve got nuclear, so they do have that kind of base load. Allen Hall: Let’s go down the rabbit hole just for a second. So if the peaker plants don’t come on, that means that the battery electricity supplying the grid is pretty low in price. It seems like they are losing money on their investment in the battery That they were hoping the price would be higher. Because if the peaker plants are still going on, that would be a $400 price and they’re gonna come in at, like, 350, so that would make sense. It, it helps pay off the battery investment. But if they’re dropping the price down from 400 to 100, it would seem like the battery investment may not be a, a wise decision. Rosemary Barnes: For sure they’re making less money, but it was– they were making crazy profits for the first little, the first few, few years of, you know, grid-scale batteries. And even [00:17:00] home batteries, people were making a l- a lot of money off that, and it was crazy. Like, I’m on some, um, some Reddit subreddits about, uh, you know, people with home batteries and- Allen Hall: Slash battery? Rosemary Barnes: Matt probably is too. Matt’s a Beta G enthusiast, so I’m sure that he is just as excited as me. But anyway, so on one of these subreddits, you know, people used to talk about, “Oh, I made 100 bucks last night,” um, or, or whatever, you know, just a household. And now all the posts are complaining about there’s been no price spikes all year. You know, I thought that I was gonna make heaps of money off my battery, but people are really change- changing how they think of it. And now it’s like… And l- like I want– used to want to do this. I don’t have solar panels yet ’cause we need a new roof, and I’ve been waiting a few years to, one, live in a house that I own, and then two, get a freaking new roof. Um, and I thought I’m gonna just, like, cover it in solar panels, get a huge battery, and I’m gonna be an energy trader in my free time and make heaps of money, and now that is [00:18:00] not the strategy anymore. The strategy is to just reduce your bills to the m- the minimum that you can. Um, that’s basically, that’s basically it. So you are right that some of this arbitrage is, um, the opportunity’s over, and that it will be less, um, exciting for, uh, opportunity for people to put more, more batteries in. Matthew Stead: Just to add to that, through the middle of the day quite often there’s, uh, negative pricing. So if you’ve got a battery, you’re being paid to charge through the middle of the day. So that actually takes away some of the pain from having a lower, a lower price, um, during the peak. Rosemary Barnes: But the thing about negative prices is that you need coal power plants for them to be… Like, the only reason we have such pervasive negative prices is not because solar plants have PPAs that are, you know, make it worthwhile for them to generate even when the price is slightly negative. The real thing is that coal power plants don’t want to turn down below, I don’t know, yeah, like 20, 30% during the middle of the day. They have to be on if they want to make money in the evening, and that means that they bid in at, like, [00:19:00] negative 50, um, so that people– so that they can stay running. And that’s where the bulk of our negative prices come from. So As coal power plants close, those negative prices will go away. Um, and when they close, we should get some better evening price spikes again. So, you know, like nothing ever stays the same for long, which is why it is such a fascinating hobby to have, being interested in the electricity market, because it’s never the same from one year to another. You’ll never understand it, ’cause it’s never, it never stays the same long enough to really get your head around it. Allen Hall: You need other hobbies. You really do. Matthew Stead: A friend of mine works in trading, and, uh, he said, “As long as there’s volatility, there will be progress.” So much like what Rosie was saying is the more volatile it is, the more opportunity there is for people to come in, um, and change it. Allen Hall: I just don’t know how the battery thing plays out once that threshold is reached. When you have more batteries on the system and you knock down the price that [00:20:00] much, I think battery sales, industrial batteries really slow down because they’re all looking for that quick ROI And they’re not gonna get it. Rosemary Barnes: You have to wait for all of the coal to close before you would find out what’s the right amount of batteries to have in the, in the grid. Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, I totally agree there, yeah. Yolanda Padron: You’d still get, like in extreme weather events and stuff, you’d still get a big price spike, right, for all these batteries. Allen Hall: Back to Matt’s point, more volatility. Rosemary Barnes: If you want the market to respond, you need to give enough incentive to invest in assets so you’ll have enough when it’s needed. And because it’s really infrequent, then it has to be a super high price to, um, bring on enough investment. And will this system… The system has worked absolutely, you know, pretty well in Aus- Australia at least. Will it continue into the future with more variable prices and renewables? I, I don’t know, and the government is starting to do some things like, uh, you know, like a lot of [00:21:00] electricity markets have, um, not just energy markets but also capacity markets where you will pay a battery or a gas plant something to be on standby basically, um, so that if there is, um, if there’s a shortfall then they, then they have to respond. So in Western Australia they have that, but across the east of Australia th- they currently do not, do not have that. It’s energy only. Allen Hall: Really? How do you not have capacity payments? Rosemary Barnes: The majority of their profits are made in just a few hours a year when there are those price spikes, so that’s, that’s h- part of their business case. Allen Hall: I mean, there, there is arbitrage happening on the electricity grid. That’s not the best place to be arbitraging things because you will have players that won’t provide electricity just to drive up the price. Rosemary Barnes: Uh, and it happens in Australia too, but, um, you know, because batteries are such a distributed resource, it, it will become harder and harder to do that when, you know, the, um, the ownership of these batteries is, you know, households as well as, um, yeah, as well as [00:22:00] big companies. Matthew Stead: So offshore wind, I was talking to an OEM a, a little while ago and, uh, talking about blade repairs for offshore wind, you know, floating, floating wind. Um, so specifically floating wind. The OEM was extremely concerned about floating wind, um, because it makes it very, very, very hard to change blades. So the story was that if you’ve got an offshore floating platform, you’re basically gonna have to tow the wind turbine back to port to change a, a blade. Rosemary Barnes: They see that as a, as a pro, not a con though. Yeah. That, that’s because it’s very hard to… Like, it’s not only floating offshore wind where it’s very hard to remove a, a blade out at sea, like fixed bottom offshore wind, that’s incredibly expensive to remove a blade. So floating is like, well, you can just tow it back to shore and then you can do it all in the port. I, I, you’re looking skeptical, Matt, and I’m also skeptical about how it actually plays out. I know that, um, what was it? The, [00:23:00] the one- An EOL project off the coast of Scotland. I can’t remember what it’s called now. Like what, the first big one, the big wind farm, a floating offshore wind farm Allen Hall: HiWind Scotland Rosemary Barnes: They had a, a problem. I don’t know if it was a serial issue or also, like it’s the first big wind farm, and there might have been like some operating condition they weren’t aware of that caused some problems. They had to tow back everything to port, and they stayed there for months and months. So like maybe, maybe close to a year or over a year, I’m not sure. It was a really long time. And so, um, yeah. But then, you know, like what’s the alternative? If that had happened out at sea, it would’ve been more expensive. If, it still would’ve been shut down, not doing anything, and you would’ve had like helicopters out there every single day bringing teams and, um, you know, huge vessels with cranes and yeah. So like it’s, maintenance at sea is never good. Allen Hall: But the whole point of the HiWind project was to get some of these problems figured out, and one of them was just towing it back to port and [00:24:00] doing major repairs or component exchanges make sense. I think it’s a, it’s a lesson well learned, and we’ve moved on. I guess the question is, does offshore, floating offshore in particular, have much of a future if Norway’s not willing to do it? Matthew Stead: I think it’s a good comparison with, um, data centers in space. Rosemary Barnes: You know where else they’re planning to put data centers? Not just space and offshore, also like, um, underwater ones, like on the deep ocean floor, um, on the moon somewhat. Like there’s an actual company that is apparently developing a, a data center on the moon Allen Hall: 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 [00:25:00] miss out. Visit peswind.com today. Well, in this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, there are a number of great articles, and if you haven’t downloaded your copy, you should do that at peswind.com. There’s a good article from Global Blade Services USA, and it’s talking about the technician problem and how it’s not gonna, it solve itself, obviously. But Global Blade Service is putting some numbers to it. And Rosemary, this is really directed at you. Blades represent roughly 20% of the total, total turbine capital cost and are the leading driver of unplanned downtime. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, 40% of O&M. Allen Hall: Right, and 75% of all blade repairs are already handled outside OEM warranty. That number seems really high, but maybe after the warranty expires? Rosemary Barnes: Do you say 30% of, of repairs are repaired under warranty? That’s, uh, unexpectedly high from my point of view. [00:26:00] But, you know, how would I know? No one’s getting in touch with me if, you know, they’ve got a problem with their blades and it just got fixed under warranty. Then they’re not paying a consultant to come sort it out. I only, I’m, I’m only there when the warranty is nearly up or it’s already over. Allen Hall: So they, they’re saying that the, the ratio’s even gonna grow more towards out of warranty repairs. But the problem is having technicians. And the deeper problem is developing all those technicians in time as that need grows. Uh, reaching full structural repair competency takes a rope access technician eight to 10 years. A basket technician is five to seven, and a factory technician is four to five years, meaning the workforce, uh, the industry needs for the next decade has to start training now. I, I think we’re seeing this in full force. I- the issue is keeping good people in the industry as it fluctuates up and [00:27:00] down all the time and is very seasonal. Because there are really good rope technicians out there who know what they are doing, and it does take a, a minimum of three years to be competent. And then to be that lead person, it takes four or five solid. And to be, uh, the, the relied-upon person, especially for some of the more complicated repairs, it’s gonna be six, seven, eight years before you’re there. It’s just an exposure thing. Are we in a technician crisis? Rosemary Barnes: Crisis is maybe a little bit inflammatory, but, uh, we’re in a technician challenge Matthew Stead: But it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty basic topic, Allen, isn’t it? Like, um, you know, there’s more and more wind turbines, there have to be more and more technicians. It takes time to train. So, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s pretty much basic maths and, um, you know, it’s like te- you know, tradies to build houses. Um, you know, unless you’ve got the tradies, you can’t build houses in a cheap way. Yolanda Padron: Part of the issue is that, you know, say there’s [00:28:00] 10 technicians that are available in the area, right? Then you … maybe they work under two different companies, and then one company goes bankrupt, so then they all work with the same company. Another company pops up, or someone gets kicked off site from the OEM side, and then a month later they’re back with the third party. And then it’s just really difficult to keep track of kind of who’s still there and who’s not, because some people have the certifications and maybe they’re not really, really great at what they do, or other people have a lot of training and a lot of experience, and it’s just difficult to track exactly, you know, where they are now. I know that the, the strategy here oftentimes is you’ll find one person that you like and you kind of follow him around, or follow them around whatever company they’re, they’re with at the moment, and then just use that company. Matthew Stead: The other point I was going to make is that there’s also the seasonality, isn’t there? So you know, if you’ve got a great, a great technician, when it’s cold, they can’t earn cash from [00:29:00] repairing blades. Rosemary Barnes: Aren’t they hired as, like, seasonal workers in America and they just don’t get paid for part of the year? That’s not how it’s done here. I mean, I guess we don’t have the climate where you have to, like, totally shut down, so they’re not, like, sitting around getting paid for nothing. But, like, that’s a really unim- unappealing feature of the of the, um, field, isn’t it? If you’re deciding what you wanna, what kinda job you wanna do, you want one where you can get paid for 12 months out of the year, not just, I don’t know, like eight or whatever it is. Matthew Stead: I know there’s been a lot of discussion between, like, Australian US repair companies of, like, shipping technicians down here during the Northern Hemisphere winter and vice versa, and it gives, you know, chance of exploring the world. But, you know, if you’ve got kids and family, you’re not gonna necessarily wanna do that either. Rosemary Barnes: It’s such a tiring job, though. I don’t… Like, there’s, um, I think it’s fine if people do it for, like, a hard 10 years and then, um, yeah, move on to… Because you obviously learn a lot as a technician, so y- you know, like, there’s a lot of office jobs that you would be really good at [00:30:00] because you had that physical experience. But yeah, like, I, I do think that there’s heaps of young people that are traveling the world being wind turbine technicians. Yolanda Padron: At least in Texas, I know a lot of rural areas where they don’t necessarily have a lot of opportunities to get higher education, and so going to be a technician is a good route for them to then go into a larger part of the industry, um, to, to kinda get a head start there. Um, and they get a lot of really valuable skills, and oftentimes, like you said, Rosie, they’ll, they’ll get picked up by, um, by the owners or the OEMs or someone, um, because of their experience there. But it, but it is quite a bit of, of hard work and, and physical, physical labor. I climbed one tower and I was sore for two weeks, so really, really not my cup of tea. Rosemary Barnes: I’m always, like, so excited to, to be climbing towers ’cause I only do it, like, you know, sometimes no times in a year, sometimes twice a year. Um, yeah, so, like, I’m really excited to go climb, and it’s really cool the first day, and then the second day it’s like, “Oh, this harness is [00:31:00] so heavy. Am I really putting this on again? Oh my God.” Yeah, so it’s, uh, it’s ob- obviously you get used to it if you, um, if you do climb a lot. The last, uh, last site that I was at, a lot of the technicians were just climbing the ladders so that they wouldn’t have to, you know, go to the gym afterwards. So there’s a lift there, but they use the ladder because then they get their cardio for the day. So, you know, they’ve obviously got some surplus energy. Allen Hall: I think it is kind of a myth outside the US, uh, uh, seasonal workers, uh, at least in Europe, I haven’t seen a lot of seasonal workers. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, of course. But in the United States, there’s a lot of seasonal workers from construction and all kinds of other industries. People figure it out And it, it’s a lot more common than I think y- being an engineer you think it is, but there are a lot of seasonal workers. So being a, a wind technician is not a bad job. Rosemary Barnes: I guess they’re just getting [00:32:00] paid extra for the time that they’re working and they just know they’re used to budgeting to cover the few months off. Allen Hall: They have a winter job. They’ll, they have employment. They already have it lined up where when it gets cold outside, they have someplace else to go. Back into construction for a few months. They’re maybe driving a truck or doing other things that, that bring in income. They have it pretty well figured out. When– At least the technicians I’ve talked to seem to have a, a plan about it, and they’re not sitting by the television for six months. That’s not what’s happening. It, that there’s a lot of employment opportunities here in the States, and so they, they’re pretty nimble. So if you haven’t read this article or a number of our other great articles in PES Wind, you should go to peswind.com right now and download a copy today. 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 don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. [00:33:00] For Yolanda, Rosemary, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

PPAs + Storage: The New Insurance for Corporate Renewables

europe corporate insurance storage renewables schneider electric ppas

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2026 30:00 Transcription Available

Host Russell Reading speaks with Craig Konz, Renewable Energy Carbon Advisory Manager from Schneider Electric about the emerging practice of adding battery storage to virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs). They cover financial and non-financial benefits including risk reduction, accounting effects, grid stability and potential revenue streams, as well as common deal structures seen in the U.S. and Europe. The conversation also explores developer perspectives, revenue-sharing models, forecasting challenges as storage proliferates, and a call for creative, win-win offers that evolve with markets and support grid resilience.

SMP 282: How Commercial Real Estate Became One of Solar's Biggest Opportunities

Solar Maverick Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2026 46:25

Episode Summary In this episode, Benoy Thanjan sits down with Victoria Stulgis, President of Black Bear Energy, to explore one of the most underrated opportunities in the solar industry: commercial real estate. Black Bear Energy acts as an owner's representative for institutional property owners, helping them deploy on-site solar and battery storage across their portfolios at scale. Victoria discusses Black Bear's recently published 2025 Real Estate Solar Leaderboards Report, a first-of-its-kind dataset tracking energized on-site solar across major U.S. real estate owners and managers. The numbers are eye-opening. Prologis leads with 309 MW deployed in the U.S. alone and more than 1 GW globally. Public Storage has quietly completed more than 1,100 projects totaling 111 MW. According to Morgan Stanley, there is still 326 GW of untapped solar capacity sitting on commercial rooftops across the country. The conversation gets into the real mechanics of how large REITs and institutional landlords are approaching solar today, why most deals are front-of-meter rooftop leases, what is driving community solar adoption in Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland, and what the ITC phase-out means for lease rates and deal economics going forward. Victoria also makes the case for why battery storage is the next major frontier for commercial real estate and what it will take for the capital markets to catch up. Biographies Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, a solar development and consulting firm, and a strategic advisor to multiple cleantech startups. Over his career, Benoy has developed more than 100 MW of solar projects across the U.S., helped launch the first residential solar tax equity funds at Tesla, and brokered $45 million in Renewable Energy Credit transactions. Prior to founding Reneu Energy, Benoy was the Environmental Commodities Trader in Tesla's Project Finance Group, where he managed one of the largest environmental commodities portfolios. He originated REC trades and co-developed a monetization and hedging strategy with senior leadership to enter the East Coast market. As Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners, Benoy crafted project finance solutions for commercial-scale solar portfolios. His role at Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund with 125 MW of U.S. renewable assets, involved evaluating investment opportunities and maximizing returns. He also played a key role in the sale of the firm's renewable portfolio. Earlier in his career, Benoy worked in Energy Structured Finance at Deloitte & Touche and Financial Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, following an internship on the trading floor at D.E. Shaw & Co., a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund. Benoy holds an MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from NYU Stern, where he was an Alumni Scholar. Victoria Stulgis Victoria Stulgis is the President of Black Bear Energy, where she oversees the company's growth and day-to-day operations following the departure of founder Drew Torbin at the end of 2025. She has been with Black Bear for more than nine years, joining in the company's early days and working her way up through client-facing roles. Before Black Bear, Victoria built her career at two nonprofits focused on market-based solutions to climate change. She started at The Carbon War Room, Sir Richard Branson's climate NGO, where she worked on decarbonizing the maritime shipping industry. After The Carbon War Room was acquired by Rocky Mountain Institute, Victoria shifted her focus to corporate virtual PPAs, working directly with Fortune 500 companies that were early adopters of large-scale clean energy procurement. RMI was also an original seed funder of Black Bear Energy, which is how she connected with Drew Torbin and eventually joined the team. Black Bear Energy is now owned by Legence, a Blackstone portfolio company that went public through an IPO in September 2025. Stay Connected Benoy Thanjan Email: https://www.reneuenergy.com Podcast: https://www.solarmaverickpodcast.com Victoria Stulgis Website: https://www.blackbearenergy.com 2025 Real Estate Solar Leaderboards Report: https://www.blackbearenergy.com Email: https://luma.com/jl734ggi Please Leave a 5-Star Review If you got value out of this episode, please take a minute to rate, review, and share the Solar Maverick Podcast. Every review helps more people in the clean energy community find the show and stay ahead of what is happening in solar, storage, and the energy transition. About Reneu Energy Reneu Energy provides expert consulting across solar and storage project development, financing, energy strategy, and environmental commodities. Our team helps clients originate, structure, and execute opportunities in community solar, commercial and industrial solar, utility-scale solar, and renewable energy credit markets. Email us at info@reneuenergy.com to learn more.

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Poland's PPA Surge: Why 2025 Was the Turning Point

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2026 20:00 Transcription Available

Russell Reading speaks with Mark Chappell about why Poland is emerging as a major market for corporate PPAs. They discuss the rapid growth in solar PV, successful offshore auction results, and the increasing role of battery storage (BESS) to manage grid impacts and price cannibalization. The episode also covers how Poland's coal-heavy grid makes renewable procurement there especially impactful for corporate decarbonization, ongoing grid and permitting challenges, and uncertainty around AIB membership and certificate transferability. Read the full white paper, "Will 2026 be the breakout year for the Polish PPA Market?": https://www.zeigo.com/2026/05/08/will-2026-be-the-breakout-year-for-the-polish-ppa-market/

poland surge turning point pv aib ppas mark chappell

AI, Audits & All-of-the-Above: Nashville Takeaways from Perspectives Impact

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2026 15:58

Russell Reading sits down with Drew Lewis, Head of Commercial at Zeigo, to recap Perspectives Impact in Nashville, where corporate sustainability leaders and solution providers gathered to discuss market shifts in renewables and decarbonization. Key themes included AI's growing influence on energy demand and procurement, evolving guidance around GHG accounting and Scope 2/SBTi, and the continued urgency (and complexity) of Scope 3 emissions and supplier data. Episode Timestamps: 1:30 — What is Perspectives Impact? Drew explains the purpose of Perspectives Impact: bringing corporate sustainability stakeholders together to track market dynamics, renewables strategy, and target-setting progress, with a regional focus for each event. 3:34 — AI + GHG Changes: The New Market Pressure Points The conversation highlights how AI is reshaping the landscape both as an efficiency tool and as a driver of data-center demand—raising questions about power costs, PPAs, and potential GHG protocol changes like 24/7 matching. 11:09 — From Boot Camp to Rooftop: Why These Events Matter Drew shares that the most energizing moments were the interactive renewable energy boot camp and the networking conversations—where attendees left motivated by practical ideas they could take home and apply.

head ai nashville takeaways perspectives scope audits ghg ppas sbti drew lewis

Record PPA Prices, GE Tries to Exit Vineyard

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2026 49:38

US wind PPA prices climb to $79.40/MWh as the IRA sunsets. Plus GE Vernova ordered to stay at Vineyard Wind, lessons from Spain’s blackout, and data centers straining the US grid. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com and now your hosts. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall here with Nikki Briggs, who is in North Carolina this week, and Yolanda Padron who is back from the exciting wedding and weekend in Mexico. Welcome back, Yolanda. Yolanda Padron: Thank you. Excited to be here, Allen Hall: uh, this week there’s a, there’s a lot going on and we’re gonna touch upon some of it. Uh, Rosemary is over in China this week and Matthew is actually at Wind Europe in Madrid. And so this is gonna be an American focused episode mostly, but it’s gonna have global implications. One of the key items is PPA prices in the United States and with the on sunsetting of the [00:01:00] IRA Bills, uh, tax credits, and the whole infrastructure there with the one big beautiful bill when it crushed the IRA bill. PPA Prices needed to come up well. That’s happening, right? So developers, uh, can’t live without some money to compensate for the roughly 26, 26 7 20 $7 in PPA prices that were compensated by the tax credits. But, uh, when purchase price agreements have hit the highest level since they begin tracking it at Wood Mac. The average wind PPA now stands at $79 and 40 cents per megawatt hour up 24% from just one year ago now, Yolanda, you and I were talking before we started recording today about how low some of those PPA prices were two years ago, three years ago. Some of them were almost single digits. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, yeah. Some of them were pretty low. I [00:02:00] remember 16, $19 EPA prices and then a couple years ago we were looking at those and thinking, oh no, I can’t believe we, we kept those prices and they’re so low and everything’s changed so much, and the prices grown so much, and that was two years ago and now it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s almost four times as much as, as what we had originally thought, which is. Not super great for those older projects, Allen Hall: obviously, uh, when they, if they do repower, the extent they’re gonna have to renegotiate the PPAs. Right. The, the landscape has changed quite a bit. So the, the question really is now are they gonna be able to renegotiate new PPAs when the existing PPA hopefully ends? You can’t, you can’t run turbines for free and will they repower. Or will they just try to extend the lifetime? I think it’s a lot of operators trying to figure that out right now. And that’s in light of installations. So Whim Mac also says that US wind installations are [00:03:00] on track to nearly double in 2026, uh, building towards 48 gigawatts of new capacity through 2030, which all makes sense, right? That the, the. Uh, everybody’s trying to get all their assets in the ground so they, they qualify for the, the tax credits. So there’s a big push. So 2026 and 2027 are gonna be pretty busy years. Uh, but the, the negotiations are still going on and we’re talking to operators. Nikki and I have been talking to operators this past week or the last couple of weeks, honestly. There is all kinds of negotiations going on for turbines right now and who can get turbines? Can they get ’em in time? Can they get ’em planted fast enough? Nikki, it is causing a lot of operators to spend a great deal of time doing planning that they otherwise wouldn’t have been working on two years ago. Nikki Briggs: Definitely. I mean, it seems kind of weird to me because it’s like a weird spot. It’s like, um, you know, we want more power and we need to do all these projects, [00:04:00] but then. The permitting process is just like a brick wall or something, you know? Um, like it just takes them so much more to get through, um, and get it moving. Allen Hall: Well, I, I think if you have an existing site, you’re gonna repower it. I mean, that’s probably the easiest thing to do if, if you can pull it off. The, the question is how big of a turbine are you gonna purchase? A lot of those turbines that are gonna get repowered are probably 1.5. To two megawatt machines. They’re going to move up to five or six megawatt machines, generally speaking. So they’re reducing the amount of turbines that are gonna be on site. But the, the amount of power that’s delivered usually is about the same, maybe a little bit more. Which, which, which strives the, which drives the, the equation of, Hey, what’s everybody gonna do in the next couple of years with the data centers. Having listened to the GE Renova financial report for Q1 that just came out as we’re earlier today. GE is trying to sell gas turbines like there’s no tomorrow. However, the weird thing about it was that they were [00:05:00] very nervous about locking in firm orders that a lot of the deposits they had for like 2029 or moving into 2030. So they had a, a discussion about GE Renova building gas turbines. They could do about 20 gigawatts a year, but they had like a 10 gigawatt hole. In 20 29, 20 30 of orders because the data centers are realizing, like to get a contractor to put a hole in the ground so you can put a data center in is taking more time than they thought. It’s not Silicon Valley where you can just type some software. And Yolanda, you’re kind of in the middle of this right now, being in Austin, Texas. Is the, the drive for data centers and the drive for power, what it was six months ago, is that landscape changed? Has everybody come back to reality? Like building physical projects takes time. Yolanda Padron: I think people are starting to get, get back to reality from the little bit that, that I’ve been, that. I privy to, uh, I do think that you mentioned the GE renova and [00:06:00] just kind of all the changes and everything. And I know in the past we’ve talked about, um, the fact that, you know, a lot of blade manufacturers have changed hands for wind and a lot of things are uncertain in general. Um, I think right now with the boom of people trying to repower and doing everything as quickly as possible and as safely as possible, it’s really important that everybody should. Try to get as much documentation on everything as possible, not just to, to protect yourselves, right? I mean, if there’s some sort of, I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re checking that the foundation on your turbine is perfect still, um, doing all the civil engineering studies that you need to do and making sure that, that everything’s fine, um, for, for the long term, right? If you’re not, you’re not planning on repowering again in five years. Um. But just to track everything. There’s so much movement right now and so much uncertainty that at the very least, so you know, what you’re dealing with, if and when you have an issue, [00:07:00] you know, five years down the line, like, oh, this is what happened and this is why, this is who I need to talk to, or this is how I’m going to solve this. Or, you know, it’s not a new problem. Um, because it’s just, there’s just so many, so many factors changing. All at once that it’s, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit daunting for everyone in this space. I don’t know if you guys feel the same way. Nikki Briggs: I have a separate question, um, which is, you know about these PPA pricing, if it’s going up, it continues to go up. Is the old adage about like green energy is the, is is the cheapest? Is that like out of the wind now? I mean, that’s not even. You can’t even apply that. Allen Hall: No, I think renewable energy, solar and wind are the lowest cost, fastest way to get power onto the grid. The, the, the question is, uh, will state and federal governments prohibit it? Because if you’re talking about the gas turbines, [00:08:00] which is not cheap, and you’re talking maybe the earliest is 20 30, 20 32. Uh, as when you be able to, to get something scale there. What else did there that you’re gonna build? Nuclear. Nuclear GE iss. Talking about nuclear small modular reactors again today. And they got a project going up in Canada, it sounded like that’s not vast either. So if you’re talking about speed and deployment, solar’s quick, right? You can just put ’em up and you can get wind turbines up pretty fast too. But anything that’s uh, gas turbine or god forbid, we start burning oil again to make electricity. Uh, I, I just don’t see it. This has implications obviously over in Europe too, right? So Wind Europe is this week, and it’s in Madrid, of course. And the Vesta, CEO, Henrik Anderson’s, uh, told the audience over in Europe that, uh, hey, there’s a lot of choices to be made [00:09:00] here the next couple of years, and it’s more important now than ever, uh, to. Think about renewables with the problems in the ous, straight of ous, sending prices higher. Does Europe want to be connected to a petroleum future? I think Europe has been struggling with that since obviously the Ukraine war started. So the, the problems in Iran are just gonna double down on that. The EU Energy Commissioner, uh, Dan Jorgenson, uh, called it out. Earlier this week and said it’s, this is not an energy crisis, it’s a fossil fuel crisis. So if we don’t have to rely on fossil fuel so much, then the energy crisis will hopefully come down in Europe. Uh, but one of the weird things about what’s happening and where Europe is, although Vestas and the EU energy Minister Commissioner are talking about fossil fuels and moving to electricity into more renewables, when [00:10:00] Europe is talking about, uh. Unfettered media posts that are, that there’s misinformation happening and, and how they’re going to deal with misinformation. That’s not their, to me it’s not their problem. Misinformation is not slowing down projects you, you have to deal with. Uh, obviously people are gonna oppose power plants, Tesla facilities, whatever’s going on in their neighborhood. The, there’s gonna be opposition to it. You have to learn how to deal with it. And I, I’m always shocked when, when a, a large organization, be it American Clean Power or, or Wind Europe or one of the many others, or complaining about misinformation, they’re in their information business. They need to be doing more work, laying the groundwork locally to deal with some of these issues. But it does feel like. Yolanda have seen this up close, uh, where there’s been sort of local disputes about, particularly wind, uh, that you, you need a little bit of help, right? [00:11:00] You can’t rely on the, the operator, owner operator to provide all the ammunition to, to, to fight off. Uh, you know, the, the generic Facebook posts about wind turbines killing birds or whatever they’re gonna post. Is, is there a, a, a future here where a a, a Wind Europe does a, an American clean power for that matter, do a better job of communicating why you would wanna have renewable energy in your backyard? Yolanda Padron: I think we just all need to just agree in general about what our approach is here. Right? Because we, I know there’s, we’ve talked about companies that really, really wanna do, you know, if, if you can. Produce X amount of money by creating wind power, then you’re, I’m gonna charge you X minus one. Right? Like, I’m gonna maximize my profits as much as possible. Um, and then there’s other people who are just really, really trying to, [00:12:00] to do with, deal with what they can. You know, they, you have 25-year-old projects that have been going on forever and ever. No one’s manufacturing them anymore. And people are still finding solutions to keep those alive. And then there’s, I know we talked about, I think it was Japan that was doing that really crazy work with these smaller turbines that, I mean, they already know what the issues with those turbines are. So just, just removing a lot of the factors going into something very experimental for, you know. We could all talk about the greater good, which is making sure that renewable energy is something that’s financially accessible. Right. I, I know we have a friend who’s been talking about it for a really long time and he said, you know, it shouldn’t be a thing of this is the right thing to do, should be a thing. This is the most cost effective thing to do, and I think he’s right. I think we should all just really try [00:13:00] to make sure that we work together. To make it the most cost effective way of producing energy, um, of solving all the problems that we can and not just, I mean, we can focus about competition later, right? If we really, really want to. Allen Hall: Let’s talk about the, the power demand for a minute. So, a number of states in the US have prohibited data centers altogether. I think the number I saw last was like 30 states have prohibited. Data centers main being the most recent one that I recall, where they just prohibited ’em in the state. That has to do with electricity prices. That the concern is if I have a couple of gigawatts being devoted to any, you know, uh, ai, Facebook, Google, uh, x, ai, any of those that my electricity rates are gonna go up and, and a lot of the states are putting blockades in essentially to prevent that from happening. That changes the landscape dramatically, right? [00:14:00] Where now, uh, if they were gonna put renewable energy in, in advance of ai, those projects are gonna die, obviously. Is there, is there a, a place where data centers, ai, electricity demand being increased, is met with renewables and some logic? Will that ever come to a place where everybody will be happy? Yolanda Padron: I mean, I think it can, in that case, I guess when Europe is correct in saying, you know, we need to stop the misinformation spread, right? But it’s also, I think it’s, it’s, it’s like one of those things where it’s like, it’s such a small part of the equation to make sure that the people who don’t exactly have a lot to do with the decisions that are being made. Legally, um, are on the same page. I think it’s more of, you know, the people who [00:15:00] are making these decisions need to come to an agreement on what’s, what’s best and what’s fiscally responsible for the area. Allen Hall: Would you wanna turn away? I, I think the thing about AI data centers and the issues that’s driving it, it’s once you have a AI data center up and running, there’s hardly anybody working there, so it doesn’t create jobs. A lot of times they don’t even have lights. Right? Why do you need lights? The computers don’t need lights. They’re just gonna sit there and run that. If it was bringing jobs, I think everybody would think differently about data centers. But because data centers don’t bring jobs, except in the power generation side, there’s not a big incentive for states to allow them. So I don’t see how this works. Right. At some point, somebody somewhere is gonna figure it out. That I’m gonna have to have a lot of excess electricity. Maybe it’s Norway and it has to be pretty cold again, Norway or Sweden, where I could put data centers and it, it may not even happen in the us. Is that what we’re, is [00:16:00] that what we’re gonna see? Nikki Briggs: I don’t know what we’re gonna see, but I’ve, I’ve heard that, um, aren’t they putting data centers in the, in the water now too underwater and like in the ocean and there’s talk about putting data centers in space and, you know, all kinds of things to, to find these different environments. But I think, um, with the. Increased demand and power that it’s gonna be all these data centers are gonna be taking. And as, um, we know AI is very exponential, right? So it’s, it’s growing exponentially in the use and, um, the adoption of it and the models are getting stronger and so it’s consuming a lot more energy, right? And so I feel like the switch back around to sustainability as, as, uh, like a core need of. Of the Earth is gonna have to, it’s gonna have to come back around for sustainability. I mean, because you can’t, you can’t just keep doing that. Allen Hall: I think the thing is, in, in Europe, they [00:17:00] obviously are interested in having some AI data centers, and that will be the, the growth plan of course, because they want to be able to compete with the rest of the world. So Europe will be in this mode of we need to create more electricity. But they want, at the same time, decouple from the Middle East and maybe even from the United States in terms of using, uh, petroleum based products to, to power their grid. I think that’s, that’s inevitable. So they’re gonna have to make a huge change in Europe. We’re, we’re looking at massive changes in the US who knows about China right now. Uh, what they’re planning to do besides pour money into everything, all the above strategy is what China seems to be doing. Does that then. If, especially, let’s just talk about the GE and over thing. So, Yolanda, I think this touches your point, which is GE and over win business is really not healthy. They lost about 300 plus million dollars in the first quarter, EBITDA wise, uh, compared to, uh, roughly a [00:18:00] year ago. It was like a hundred million dollars they lost. So the, the continued pain at GE Renova Wind. Uh, is maybe, which I thought was gonna flatline, it seems to be getting worse. All of a sudden. They think it’s gonna be better in the second half of the year. And maybe that’s true. Hopefully it is. But if you’re, if you’re talking about putting on more data centers, more electricity demand, just ’cause of population growth and your wind companies maybe besides vestus or not doing that well. Do we get there? Does, can we, can we do this? Can we actually turn this corner, make that turn, get onto, uh, more electricity, be able to compete against the world in AI and everything else, electricity wise. Is this gonna happen or is everybody gonna. Take a five year pause while they figure it out. Yolanda Padron: I just think that everybody’s just kind of running with their shoes untied, right? Like we’re all trying to race. Allen Hall: They’re running with scissors and the shoes untied. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, it is like it. I mean, eventually someone’s gonna have to [00:19:00] pause or trip Allen Hall: because you always wonder how serious some of these data center projects are because you hear the names like who? Uh, and the one that always gets me is, no, no offense to Stanford University, but. Lately, I’m hearing a lot of Stanford University graduates that are planning some massive power generation source of some sun type and just go, okay, no. Can we stop? Can we stop for a minute? No. Having a master’s degree from Stanford doesn’t know. You probably don’t know how to build a data center. Sorry. And you probably don’t know how to do distributed energy. You don’t. It’s just those are complicated and industrial things that take a lot of money and time and resources, so, no. So the, the reality of what is. Real that will be built, that’s gonna come due. I think there’s a lot of projects that were theoretical and grand and, uh, six months ago even are going to go kapoof, like pets.com. In 2001, it’s gonna be the same thing. Nikki Briggs: You’re dating yourself, Alan. Allen Hall: There was a time when. [00:20:00] When everybody was gonna be, be a internet billionaire, and one of ’em was pets.com, right? So pets.com was this pet store thing, and, and it was, they had a great URL of course, but as soon as, you know, there was any e you know, the, the, the, the, uh, planes hit the towers in New York City, poof, that thing was gone and they could sustain the, the economics of, um. The US at the moment, and when I think of Austin, I think all the tech bros are in Austin. Like you drive around Austin, you just see it. There’s a lot of smart people on the ground trying to do these grandiose things. Electricity generation is a hundred and twenty five, a hundred forty years old. That is an industrial process that is really hard to break into and you can’t AI your way into creating data centers. Does somebody realize that? And was the GE talk today? I’m gonna be the GE talk today, Yolanda, on the gas turbines. Obviously [00:21:00] they wanna take as many orders as they can or get place placeholder deposits in one of the GEs competitors is not even taking orders past 2030 ’cause they don’t think they’re real if they were real. I think everybody taking orders and I think they’re, they’re seeing the quality of that individual walking in the door trying to place, place that deposit and realize. They don’t know how to work EPC. Yolanda Padron: Have you seen, I know there’s, there’s been a lot of like memes right now about how the use of electricity in AI and data centers and it’s like, you know, we’ve increased exponentially, so we will continue increasing exponentially until the end of time. Allen Hall: Till the world explodes. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, I don’t think, I mean, to your point, like I, is it real like it. It could, it was sort of, um, it did grow a lot and it’s continuing to grow a lot. I just don’t know that it’s gonna be something where like everybody has a data center in their backyard, or everyone’s connected to a data center within a mile. You [00:22:00] know, Allen Hall: I think you’re a hundred percent right about that. So the realism is hitting the market, right? So as PPA prices increase and the realities of construction projects hits everybody, this is gonna slow down. Quite a bit. Yolanda Padron: I’m curious to see how long that’ll be before we overshoot it for the PPA prices. Allen Hall: Oh, you think, okay. That’s a, that’s a really good point because I, I was wondering that today, I’ve been telling people for two years now, as soon as they, uh, the tax credits sunset that PPA prices necessarily have to go up, they just have to go up the, the, the offshore wind PPA prices, were in the $150, uh, megawatt hour. Ballpark, uh, for a couple of projects off the coast in New York. I don’t know what they are in Europe at the minute. I, I should go look. I do actually do know. I should go back and look though. But the onshore prices are obviously much less, right? If you’re in the $80 per megawatt hour, although it does seem high, it is relatively [00:23:00] low compared to everything else you’re gonna be able to do. What, what are the choices you’re gonna do? What other, what other choices can you make? Yolanda Padron: What kind of structure are you gonna. Work with is if you’re increasing, increasing, increasing, and then eventually we’re gonna hit a plateau eventually, or like an almost plateau. But I highly doubt everyone’s gonna be able to forecast exactly when that is without overshooting it. Allen Hall: Yeah. I guess the question is how much is the overshoot. Is it a hundred dollars? Is it $120? Is it $150? Nikki Briggs: I have a question though, because are these AI data centers, are they meant to be running completely on wind power? Allen Hall: They in theory can’t. Right? Nikki Briggs: They need power 24 7. So Yolanda Padron: yeah, they need to have some sort of backup thing, so maybe even backup in the grid or something if it’s not something directly hitting it. A lot of projects are like co-located, so you might have wind and battery or wind solar battery or something. All together, Allen Hall: the XAI effort in Memphis, right? There’s, it is gas turbines, a bunch of gas turbines they’ve bought from [00:24:00] all over, but it has a pretty good best backup to provide stability to that. I think you’d have to do that, right? Nikki Briggs: You’d have to have a a, a failover plan or something. Yeah. Allen Hall: Having watched the internet and at different times of day, there’s nothing happening between like us time midnight and 6:00 AM. There is zero going on, and I always think does 24 7 AI data center need is so not gonna happen because when people are, if, if the data center is providing roughly national, or say it’s Europe, there’s, there’s, people are awake as a certain time of day and then they’re not. Right? So unless your data center’s gonna feed China, which it won’t, and Europe at the same time, or the US and Europe, it’s still, there’s just blocks of time where the. You just don’t need a lot of power. You just don’t need it. So the 24 7 demand, I think is not real Nikki Briggs: well, but they have to keep them cool. And you [00:25:00] know, I mean there’s like the environment inside of the data center has to be a certain, uh. Uh, specification, I guess. Right? One question that I, that I had come up here on the side, Alan, had you heard about the, uh, CEO from Vestas talking about the need for an energy union? Allen Hall: Yes, but this is not the first time it’s come up, uh, to, to try to, to gather everybody together. Ideally, if you’re thinking about the eu. Working together, and rarely does that happen, but if it were to happen, Vestas would be a huge winner in that. So would Siemens esa Honestly, the, the weird thing about all what’s happening in Madrid and at, when Europe at the moment is that sizzle’s back and they’re talking about doing projects in Europe and uh, I think a Donny is also talking about doing projects in Europe or providing turbines, right? So there’s. [00:26:00] Once Ming Yang was rejected in Scotland, which I thought was inevitable, I’ve always thought that the second place to go to get turbines that would compete with Avesta and Siemens is in India, and I do, because it’s an English speaking country, it does break down a lot of barriers. That’s for sure. And because obviously it was a, a, a British colony for a long time, there’s the relationship there. That would be it. It, I think something that makes, makes sense. So Vestus, who would obviously be the winner of all the offshore and maybe even some of the onshore projects in the UK may have competition. So although Vestas may be hoping for more of a energy block, which. Uh, could work, honestly. It could work and you could see a lot of wind and solar and batteries and hydro in, in Europe and obviously France with nuclear. I think [00:27:00] India has a really good shot at penetrating that market that would change the dynamics quite a bit. That would put pressure on Vestas to lower prices, no doubt. And so the, the, the dream scenario of Vestas is the only. OM standing in this huge demand market, which is all local to them. Uh, that may not actually turn out there. There could be some really rough patches here. If, uh, the so salons, a Donnies of the world, they can produce a five megawatt, six megawatt turbine. God knows if they could make a a 15 megawatt offshore turbine, that would put a tremendous amount of pressure on Vestus. Tremendous, and that would be harder to stop. I think from a a UK standpoint, very interesting times. Vestus is well suited to, to gain market share and is rapidly in the United States and a number of other countries, Australia being another, and Europe, but woo. Huh. The dream scenario never works out like you think it [00:28:00] will. It never does. 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 a new. Wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So there’s been more information come out about the, this Iberian blackout that happened about a year ago. And as the, the details are, uh, published and everybody has a chance to review them, uh, one, one person to check out is, um. Howard Pinrose at Motor Dock and his chaos in Caffeine podcast, which happens on the weekends because he provides some good summaries about some of the latest news from the Iberian Peninsula and the reports that are being published. [00:29:00] The Iberian blackout and the role of renewables is very interesting. The, the problem that they had was, uh. Instability. So it, the grid was just generally unstable and they had a transformer fail and that just cascaded where, uh, they were disconnected from the rest of Europe. So the Liberian peninsula was just automatically disconnected and that happened relatively quickly. One of the things that could have supported the grid, and I think you’re gonna see changes happening, and Howard Pinrose was just in Washington DC with American clean power pushing for this, which is. As Yolanda knows, solar and wind have sort of two moats. They can follow the grid and produce power and just kind of follow along. Or better yet, they can form the grid and support the grid and be a resource when things get wobbly on the grid. And Spain learn that lesson really [00:30:00] well about a year ago, and I think we’re gonna find that all those solar panels that disconnected and because you’re in a following mode, protect mode. If they had had ’em in a, a more, uh, command role into managing the grid, that maybe the Iberian peninsula may not have blacked out. Maybe parts of it had because they lost a transformer, but there may be a role for renewables in terms of grid stability. Doesn’t that seem odd? Because the story and the mis, maybe the misinformation that’s happening around the world is, well, if the wind turbine isn’t turning, it can’t help monitor the grid. It actually can, same thing for solar. Those inverters that sit on the grid are actually thinking and working and reacting. So they can actually provide a lot more, uh, stability to the grid than maybe be some other resources at, at a lot less cost. Is there a scenario where we start changing the rules about wind and solar where we, instead of them playing dumb, that they become smart [00:31:00] and provide more stability? Yolanda Padron: Well, it happens a lot I think in Texas, right? We have, like you, you dispatch wind when you need it and you dispatch solar when you need it. And there’s a whole, I mean, the whole market. Behind the scenes that it’s for people a lot smarter than I am. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, you, you get, like, you’ll see sometimes wind turbines that are pitched slightly so they won’t generate electricity when it’s not needed, or they’re just free flowing when, I mean, it’s, it’s not necessarily to produce a lot of electricity or, you know, sometimes you’ll say, oh, you know what, I need this much. Energy from you at this moment, and so Sure. Switch. I mean, it’s, it’s literally a click of a computer. You turn it on, make sure the, that it’s dispatching energy, and then once you need it to be cut off, it’s cut off. Especially if it’s a co-located site, it’s a lot easier to make sure that you are [00:32:00] actually giving all the energy that you need to give in any given moment. Allen Hall: Because a grid reacts very quickly when things go wrong in the grid. It happens in seconds, and the only thing they can respond in seconds. Is renewables, inverter based resources. That’s the only thing you can respond. You can’t spool up a synchronous condenser to stabilize your grid in a couple of seconds. You may need a couple of hours typically to get that going. Isn’t this where we’re going? It because of the digital age and everything is on off so fast. If I had a data center that, you know, it collapses pulling a gigawatt, man, you need to be react almost instantaneously to that. The only thing that can do it today if they chose to do it is wind, solar, and battery. That’s it. In the digital age, Yolanda Padron: I think it’s great. There was this one time, uh, a few years ago where, um, uh, a, a buddy who’s, who was a, a traitor for, you know, the, the, uh, energy markets in the [00:33:00] states. Um, he, he saw what was happening and he knew that he could. You know, he was controlling like wind, solar, and, and battery. And it was a co-located solar and battery site. And so he let them dispatch the solar for a bit and then he held off on the battery. And then the moment that he dispatched it was like he. Within like five minutes, it was $3,000. Something crazy like that. ’cause it was just like the mo, like he was just, everybody was amazed. Just the moment that he was like, amazing. Just like, well this is, this is why you do what, what you do. You know? Um, but yeah. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s a really, it’s a really interesting, interesting, for anybody that wants to read up on it. Like the, the market for that is really, really interesting. Nikki Briggs: It does sound really interesting and like, I’ve been thinking a little bit about, um. The, the role of wind and, and you know, in Colorado we have a lot of high wind and then we have this [00:34:00] wildfire danger as well because of the drought. And so what happens when it gets really, really windy is they turn off the power ’cause they don’t wanna start a fire, a wildfire. So, um, so you know, here you want the wind so that you can generate the power, but then you can’t give it. So how do you store that and how do you, you know, like how do you manage that, you know? It’s a, it’s a tricky situation. Yolanda Padron: Yeah. That’s where they’re co-locating. I think a lot of sites, there’s a lot of, I know there’s a wind farm in Arizona that’s really huge and they have a, a whole, they have a certain perimeter around it where they just really make sure that there’s nothing that can spread there. Like it’s, it’s just. Kind of barren land, so in case there is a wildfire or anything, ’cause it’s in a very dry area. Um, nothing will really happen to that in theory, you know, that has all the systems for the battery. Nikki Briggs: What if the, what if the electric transmission lines are what, you know, causes the fire [00:35:00] because of the wind? The wind is causing those to break or to fall down. The poles fall down and then they cause a spark. And then they cause a fire. That’s what happened in Colorado a long time ago, a couple years ago. Allen Hall: Same thing in California. Nikki Briggs: So in order to protect from that, there’s like, it’s super windy. So they turn off the power. Allen Hall: Does it make it right? Right. Well this, this comes back to the infrastructure of the United States and how old that it is, and if you pay attention as you drive across the US you’ll realize that some of the. Towers and some of the infrastructure that you see on the side of the road. Dang, you’re a hundred years old and it doesn’t get replaced. It was never meant to be replaced. Or maybe they thought we were gonna be living on Mars in a hundred years, but basically it’s the same. Technology. It’s a wire on a kind of suspended up there in the air, and the wind moves around and it’ll burn and it wears out. It just wears out, right? Eventually you’ll just wear through that stuff, and we’re seeing that [00:36:00] across the United States. You’re seeing it in Europe, you see it in Spain, in other places where the infrastructure has just has a lot of age on it until we decide to do something new and refurbish it, like we refurbish the roads all the time. Uh, we’re gonna have trouble. We just are gonna have trouble in the states. Yolanda Padron: Alan, as an electrical engineer, I do have a question. So would the forecasted generation needed by all these data centers and stuff, like with our current system, would we be okay with that? Or what kind of changes would we need to make just as a country in general? Allen Hall: I think the problem with. A large data center as you’re seeing some of them being built on the east coast right now is one, trying to keep them up and running. Two, the infrastructure that are feeding and it’s old, right? So the transformers and all that. The things that don’t move, that are just planted on a concrete pad [00:37:00] that’s seem like they, they would never age, age, had fail. Eventually. So when you put a big demand on existing infrastructure that’s kind of powering old light bulbs and um, motors and things that are old and that have very well-known patterns, and you start putting these, uh, basically big digital power sinks that go up and down in in power usage. The grid can’t take that. It just won’t be able to take it at scale. It’ll take it for a while and we’ll figure out a way because electrical engineers tend to be pretty sy um, at how to make miracles out of, uh, uh, uh, of questionable things. That’s how we, how we do that, that’s why we get paid so much. But the, the, the problem is, is that at some point it’s gonna break, right? And, and the, the electrical grid in the US and the people that support that. Internally, I think we’re getting a little bit worried about it [00:38:00] and trying to figure out what we can do to keep the grid up and running. It’s a huge problem, huge problem, because when the grid was built back in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, there were a lot less people, and somehow we managed to get to about 350 million people. All with the mobile phones and big screen TVs, and now electric vehicles and laptops, and blahdy, blahdy, blah. How this thing is still running is a miracle. It really is it. It obviously is Yolanda Padron: delamination and bottom line. Failures and blades are Allen Hall: difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep into the label materials. To find voids and cracks. Traditional inspections completely. Miss [00:39:00] C-I-C-N-D-T Maps. Every critical defect delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades back in service. So visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions. So G Renova was ordered by the courts just recently to stay at Vineyard Wind. Vineyard. Wind had. Filed a complaint that, um, GE was gonna leave the site, uh, off the coast of Massachusetts at the end of April. That obviously caused some concern with vineyard winds, so they went to court, sort of bypass the arbitration process. According GE went straight to court to get an injunction to prevent GE from moving on. Well, they have that injunction now, and GE has to stay on at least for about the next 60 days. If I read this right. Then there’s gonna be more court proceedings. GE is trying to get it back into arbitration where they can do some negotiation, but it’s all about big, big dollars.[00:40:00] The one thing that came out with Scott Straza, uh, Q1 discussion, which was uh, a phone call today, had to do with the completion of GE Ver Nova’s offshore wind projects, and when they could be complete. That includes sort of the doer bank projects in the uk, which I think are gonna wrap up sometime in 2027 to try to get those finished and vineyard wind, which they said was gonna be finished at the end of April. So from a GE Renova standpoint, I think they’re considering vineyard wind to be done at the end of the month and that’s gonna be their position. It was very odd. To hear the CEO of GE Renova talk about something that’s in litigation. ’cause usually that doesn’t happen. But if the company position is, Hey, we’re leaving at the end of April, we’ll see you a vineyard wind. That’s a problem. And let me explain a little bit of the details of this. GE Renova is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not that far away from vineyard wind, which [00:41:00] is also based in Massachusetts. So you have this corporate entity, which just. Opened an office in Cambridge. It’s really swanky place, not very far from where MIT and Harvard and all the, the elite universities are just outside of Boston. And then you have this vineyard wind project, which is important to the state of Massachusetts where they need that power to happen and they need it to be sustained and needed to run properly inside the state of Massachusetts. There must be huge discussions about this in the state government. Massive discussions about how these two entities have to work together for the next 20 years, and they are really at each other’s throats. That’s not the way you wanna start an offshore project. And Yolanda, you’ve been around some of these offshore projects. Is it always this tense between the OEM and the operator? Is, is this where all these projects end in some sort of disagreement and [00:42:00] separation? Yolanda Padron: No, I think, I mean, from my experience. There’s usually someone at some point, and it’s usually, I think, I mean the. The owner, but you’ll stop and say, okay, I need to work with this person. I need to work with this company for the next X amount of years. I need to make sure that they give me the proper documentation once I need it. I need to make sure that they’re doing things in good faith. You know, I mean, if I can’t, it’s not like the technicians have like a camera strapped onto them to, so you can monitor every single blade repair, right? Like you need to make sure that they’re doing things right. Um, and not just patching things up because. Because they’re mad at you. Uh, so, so, no, I think it’s, it’s a little bit crazy to me that no one’s yielding as much. Allen Hall: I think GEs position is we’re gonna give vineyard all the manuals and the equipment would be up and running. You can find somebody to run it. You, you, you think that’s possible On a brand new turbine that [00:43:00] is only one other places on the planet that’s being run, which is over in the uk. Are you gonna be able to find people if GE walks off? Yolanda Padron: I mean, even if you can find people, once GE walks off, it’s like you, you need to be able to train your technicians. You know, like all of these, all of these projects are you, you need to have them in constant supervision. You need to make sure that everything’s working smoothly and you can’t just afford, I don’t know if we’re being really optimistic, like a month of no one touching those turbines. That’s crazy. Like anybody in the wind world is even onshore. Could you imagine if we just walked off a site and just let the wind turbines just be for a month? Like that’s, I mean, I don’t know, I, I’m not super, super well versed in exactly what they’re getting, but are they getting any sort of, at least like technical support? Allen Hall: I don’t think so. No. Yeah, Yolanda Padron: no rock system, no. Nothing. Allen Hall: If it all works out like GE wants it to, [00:44:00] no. You get the manuals. You get a, a, a nice, uh. Card in the mail saying Thank you for your business. And that’s it. It, that’s, I think that’s where it’s going. Nikki Briggs: Doesn’t seem like a good way to, like, doesn’t seem like they’re stand standing behind their product or what they sold. Um, I mean, and it seems like there would be some downstream ramifications for other, other companies that want to buy ge. Allen Hall: They don’t wanna be in that business. I, I think that’s one of the discussion points that never comes up when the quarterly calls is. Is GE gonna remain in the wind business? Because I think the answer to it is maybe how could a lot, I mean, you said on the financial side of some of these, uh, wind farms and paid attention to the details. If you were losing a billion dollars a year, how long would you be in that business? Yolanda Padron: I mean, not very long. I think you’d have to change things to make it work. Um, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I think, [00:45:00] I think it’s one of those things where they’re trying to. Find exactly where they fit into this business, if they still fit in at all. Uh, I really hope they don’t fully back out because of everyone that’s in operations that has GE products out there that’s really gonna need that support. Uh, I think especially for a vineyard’s sake, at the very least that they’ve are doing, that vineyard is doing a better job than a lot of the operators I know at making sure that. Everything you need within operations has been asked for since development and construction. Um, I’m not super, super optimistic about that. Just because like everyone has so many things to do that you don’t like if you’re in development, you don’t always have time to think about. Oh yeah, I really hope they give me the repair manuals in case there’s a lightning strike on the blade at R 20. You know, like it’s just, um, so it’s just. It’s, [00:46:00] it’s just gonna, it’s gonna be a very interesting case study. Whatever they end up doing, I think it’s gonna be something that will be worth following a bit more closely. We’ve seen, there’s been projects where, you know, day one, the OEM just backs off, but that was at least. They knew that, you know, the, the owner knew it two years in advance, and so they tried to get as many people as possible. There were to, to get on those turbines. There were of course mishaps and stuff, um, and it was more of a financial than an engineering decision. Um, but when the decision was made, people knew about it and people had time to act. I mean, people having a week to find, I. Someone to, to, to take care of every single aspect of their site is a little bit insane. Especially, I mean, [00:47:00]with the history of veneer, right? Like, come on, they had a, they had a blade break, Allen Hall: right? There’s gotta be a lot of questions about the durability. There has to be Right. Even if, even if GEs figured it out, and I think they probably have, and then they’ve put a, a lot of money and time into resolving the issue. You still have to wonder. Is it right? And if you’re vineyard, I think that’s one of the questions is, is it right and could we operate it by ourselves without needing a lot of handholding from ge? Or paying GE more money than we already agreed to, which is probably what’s likely to happen, right? That GE iss gonna ask for more money if they can break the contract legally and renegotiate, that would be a smart move. I think they will try to do it. It’s unfortunate and it causes a lot of grief for a lot of people, but I think GE probably needs to renegotiate and probably Vineyard wants to renegotiate it too ’cause they both feel disgruntled at this point. Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and I think it’s really interesting ’cause we focus a lot on vineyard and just the [00:48:00] way that the OEM and the owner operated with each other just because it gets, it’s so close to such an important part of the country that gets so much PR all the time. It’s just, it kind of sets the mood for a lot of things that go on. So it’s, I mean, it’s not that we’re just picking a lot of vineyards, it’s just really, it’s a really important site just in general from where it is, right? It’s not like it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s a very important place that gets a lot of attention Allen Hall: that writes up another episode or the Uptime Wind Energy Podcasts. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn and don’t forget to subscribe. So if you never miss an episode, if you found any value in today’s conversation, I mean any value, please leave us a review. And those reviews, we actually. Take and use to help create the next episode. So send us your notes, send us your comments. Send us what you would like us to discuss. Because the wind energy marketplace and [00:49:00] development are changing so rapidly, it sometimes it’s, it’s faster than we can keep up with. So please send us your ideas. Uh, and anytime you have a chance, please like and subscribe because it really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show. So for Nikki and Yolanda, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

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Mythos: Cybersecurity’s AlphaGo Moment #1862

Geek News Central

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 25, 2026 41:00 Transcription Available

In this episode, Ray Cochrane unpacks Anthropic’s Mythos model and the Treasury’s emergency meetings with Wall Street, then digs into Apple’s vibe-coding crackdown and a gaming-anxiety study that hit way too close to home. Also covered: Verge’s solid-state motorcycle, UBTech humanoid robot sales jumping 23-fold, Japan’s first osmotic power plant, Finland’s permanent nuclear waste vault, Ghostty landing in Ubuntu, Cloudflare’s EmDash CMS, and a Claude Code skill that talks like a caveman. – Want to start a podcast? It’s easy to get started! Sign up at Blubrry – Thinking of buying a Starlink? Use my link to support the show. Subscribe to the Newsletter. Email Ray if you want to get in touch! Like and Follow Geek News Central’s Facebook Page. Support my Show Sponsor: Best Godaddy Promo Codes Get 1Password Full Summary Cochrane opens the show by framing Anthropic’s new Mythos model as the AlphaGo moment for cybersecurity. From there, the episode moves through Apple’s pushback against AI-generated apps, a gaming anxiety study with a deeply personal hook, a series of “first to ship” energy and robotics wins out of Finland, China, and Japan, and several developer-tool stories that show how quickly the economics of software are shifting. Mythos, the Detection Ceiling, and Wall Street’s Emergency Response Anthropic’s Mythos model has Wall Street rattled. Operating autonomously, Mythos found and demonstrated the exploitation of a 27-year-old TCP SACK bug in OpenBSD, an operating system famous for being one of the most security-focused on the planet. Per Anthropic’s red team, over 99% of the vulnerabilities Mythos has identified remain unpatched. The researchers’ conclusion is blunt: “the moat in AI cybersecurity is the system, not the model.” The policy response moved fast. On April 7th, Treasury Secretary Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell pulled the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley into Treasury headquarters on short notice. All four banks are now testing Mythos internally. Treasury CIO Sam Corcos is also seeking direct access. Anthropic is gating distribution through Project Glasswing, a limited-access program with JPMorgan, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia. Cochrane comes down firmly behind Anthropic’s gated approach. Because a 5.1-billion-parameter open model can apparently recover the core analysis chain for the OpenBSD flaw, this capability is not locked behind Frontier Compute. He wants the critical infrastructure hardened before the public gets keys. However, he also notes the bigger lesson is about human wisdom: people offloading all their thinking to AI lose out on the wisdom that makes any of these tools genuinely useful. Apple Bans Vibe Coding Apps from the App Store Apple has been quietly pushing back against what people are calling “vibe coding” apps. Replit, Vibecode, and an app called Anything all run AI models on the phone and produce working software that runs inside the host app. Apple cites Guideline 2.5.2, in effect since 2017, which requires apps to be self-contained. Replit and Vibecode had their App Store updates blocked. Anything was pulled in late March, briefly restored on April 3rd, and then pulled the same day again. The forcing function is volume. App Store submissions jumped 84% in a single quarter as vibe coding tools flooded Apple’s review queue with AI-generated apps. Cochrane thinks Apple is justified, given the security issues swirling around the Vibe coding ecosystem. Even a beautiful diamond gets lost in a sea of sand, and that flood is exactly what Apple is trying to manage. The company behind Anything is now pivoting to iMessage, desktop, and Android. Playing Video Games to Win Is Linked to Higher Anxiety Cochrane gets personal on this one. Through high school and his early 20s, he was deeply addicted to League of Legends. His dad teased him about it constantly. In the last few years of that addiction, his body would go ice cold and shake every ranked match before. His partner identified it as a panic attack. The moment that happened, he quit. Today, he no longer shakes. The new study lines up with his experience. Researchers Kayleigh Watters and Mikael Rubin at Palo Alto University analyzed a publicly available database of 13,464 adult gamers, most of whom primarily played League of Legends. Players who game to win show higher generalized anxiety but actually play fewer hours, since performance pressure pushes them out. Players who game to relax show strong links between social anxiety avoidance and more hours played. The study appeared in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The headline framing of “playing to win makes you anxious” misses the point. The real finding is more interesting: gaming for avoidance and gaming for competition are both warning signs, for different reasons. Cochrane notes that the League of Legends community’s toxicity has been a running joke for years, and this study suggests the game’s structure may have been manufacturing the anxiety that fueled it. Sponsor: GoDaddy Economy hosting is $6.99/month, WordPress hosting is $12.99/month, and domains are $11.99. Both hosting plans include a free domain, professional email, and SSL certificate. Go to geeknewscentral.com/godaddy for the best pricing and to directly support this independent show. Verge Motorcycle: World’s First Production All-Solid-State Battery Cochrane filled his tank for $60 today, which made this story land especially hard. His mom has driven electric for years and patiently manages a 90-mile real-world range. The next-generation answer is already shipping. Verge Motorcycles, a Finnish company, is the first production vehicle of any kind with an all-solid-state battery. Their 2026 bikes ship in Q1 with a pack from Donut Lab, another Finnish outfit spun out of Verge. The numbers are bonkers. The pack delivers an energy density of 400 Wh/kg, roughly double that of current Tesla cells. It sustains 100kW charging, hits full charge in about 5 minutes in the lab and 12 minutes on the actual bike, and the long-range version covers 600 kilometers (about 370 miles) per charge. Toyota, QuantumScape, and Samsung SDI have all been telling us that solid-state is coming in 2027 to 2030. A Finnish motorcycle company shipping in Q1 2026 just embarrassed them all. UBTech Humanoid Robot Sales Jump 23-Fold UBTech dropped its 2025 annual earnings on April 1st. Humanoid robot revenue hit 820 million yuan, roughly $119 million USD, up 2,203% from 35.6 million yuan the year before. Unit sales went from 3 robots in 2024 to 1,079 in 2025. Shares jumped 14% on the announcement. The customer list is a real industrial deployment: BYD, Foxconn, Geely, FAW-Volkswagen, and Audi. The flagship is the Walker S2, with UBTech targeting 5,000 units in 2026 and 10,000 in 2027. Cochrane is honest about what this means. He does not think we are heading for an extinction event, but worker displacement is a real concern. The US has no universal income or universal healthcare. The people affected are not white-collar managers. They are everyday line workers who already make the least on the ladder. Work efficiency reportedly doubles when these robots arrive, which is a company-side win, but the humans they replace are not getting half a year of gardening leave to retrain. He invites the listener to take on this one directly. Japan Switches On Asia’s First Osmotic Power Plant In August 2025, Fukuoka’s Seawater Desalination Center quietly opened Asia’s first osmotic power facility. It generates about 880,000 kilowatt-hours per year, enough for roughly 220 homes. It is only the second operational osmotic plant in the world, after Mariager, Denmark, in 2023. Osmotic generation uses a salinity gradient: fresh water on one side of a membrane, salt water on the other, and the pressure difference spins a turbine. The clever part is what Fukuoka does with desalination brine. Instead of regular seawater, the plant uses concentrated brine left over from the desalination process. This amplifies the salt gradient and squeezes more energy out of the same membrane. The result is a closed-loop partnership: the desalination facility produces drinking water and leaves brine behind, the osmotic plant turns the brine into electricity, and that electricity runs the desalination facility. Every desalination plant on Earth produces brine, so if Fukuoka’s co-located model works, the same pattern could be replicated across hundreds of plants worldwide. Japan’s Luna Ring Solar Moon Proposal Goes Viral Again Shimizu Corporation’s Luna Ring concept is making the rounds again. The pitch: a 6,800-mile belt of solar panels around the Moon’s equator, beaming microwave power back to Earth. Project lead Tetsuji Yoshida has long argued that a full ring could eliminate fossil fuel dependence entirely. The proposal first surfaced in 2013, has no funding, no government endorsement, and no concrete cost estimate. Shimizu has not put any active development behind it. Cochrane finds the concept fun every time it resurfaces. However, this would have to be a worldwide effort in the truest sense, with treaties, a new generation of launch economics, and microwave power transmission at a scale nobody has demonstrated. Beaming the power back to Earth has always been one of the biggest practical holdbacks. The Luna Ring is inspirational, but not shipping. Finland’s Onkalo Nuclear Waste Vault Opens Finland’s Onkalo facility is the world’s first permanent deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel. Operated by Posiva, the facility is buried about 430 meters down in 1.9-billion-year-old bedrock. It is designed to hold up to 6,500 tons of spent fuel and operate until the 2120s. The construction costs about €1 billion, with operating and closure adding roughly €4 billion more before the program is done. The catch is that radioactivity remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned that the copper canisters will eventually corrode, with different scientific opinions on how fast. Geologic disposal remains “fraught with uncertainties,” and we have never validated an engineered system across a 100,000-year time frame. The bet is that the rock and copper outlast the radioactivity. Cochrane sees Onkalo as time-buying rather than a final answer. It is more of a bank holding spent fuel while science catches up. He prefers it to Japan’s ongoing approach of releasing tritium-treated water from Fukushima Daiichi into the Pacific, even though the dilution is well below WHO drinking water guidelines. Burying the waste in an insurmountable containment strikes him as the more honest answer to a problem nobody knows how to truly solve. Ghostty Terminal Lands in the Ubuntu Repos Ghostty 1.3.0 is now available in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS’s universe repository. The install is simply `sudo apt install ghostty`, no PPAs, no Snap, no Nix, no building from source. Ghostty was created by Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp. It is GPU-accelerated, uses native Swift on macOS and native GTK4 with libadwaita on Linux, and supports tabs, splits, profiles, ligatures, and the Kitty graphics protocol. Cochrane recently caught Hashimoto on a podcast, where he walked through his agentic coding workflow. Ghostty is being actively built using AI harnesses like Claude Code and Codex. Hashimoto told a story in which Codex fixed a six-month-old bug in 45 minutes, for a total API cost of $4.14. Personally, Cochrane uses WezTerm, but he is excited to see Ghostty become more widely available with a native UI rather than Electron. Borgo: Rethinking Go Using Rust Analytics India Magazine profiled Borgo, a programming language by developer Marco Sampellegrini (GitHub: alpacaaa). Borgo is statically typed with Rust-like syntax, but it compiles to Go and uses the Go runtime and garbage collector. It includes sum types (Option and Result), pattern matching, and full compatibility with existing Go packages. Notably, it removes Rust’s borrow checker and lifetimes entirely. Borgo is not new. It first appeared on Hacker News in 2023, with a RustLab talk in 2024. The 2026 angle is a renewed look at it through the lens of AI coding agents, since type-rich languages like Rust have been showing outsized productivity gains. Cochrane is a fan of Rust and stands by the borrow checker, but he enjoys these exploratory languages for what they reveal about what developers actually want. Caveman: A Claude Code Skill That Cuts 65% of Tokens Developer Julius Brussee built a Claude Code skill called Caveman that forces Claude to respond in stripped-down fragments. No articles, no “just,” no “really,” no pleasantries, no hedging. The tagline is “why use many token when few token do trick.” Across 10 real dev tasks, Caveman mode averaged 294 tokens per response, compared to 1,214 in normal mode. That is a 65% drop in output tokens. The project is MIT licensed with three intensity levels: lite, full, and ultra. Cochrane stumbled across the project online and shared it with a classmate who had been complaining about token costs. The classmate now insists that “the caveman is the only way to live.” Cochrane has not made the switch, but the bigger point lands. If a community plugin can cut 65% of tokens without correctness regressions, the labs are shipping verbose-by-default and charging users for the privilege. He suspects verbose output makes models feel more trustworthy, even when the token math says otherwise. Cloudflare Launches EmDash as a WordPress Successor Cloudflare released EmDash on April 9th, an open-source, MIT-licensed, TypeScript-based CMS pitched as the spiritual successor to WordPress. The big flex is that it was built in 60 days using AI coding agents. EmDash runs on Astro 6.0, either on Cloudflare’s edge platform or on a standard Node.js server. The plugin security model uses sandboxed Dynamic Workers with explicit permissions, addressing the architecture flaw that Cloudflare says causes 96% of WordPress vulnerabilities. Cochrane could not resist pointing out the irony of the name. The em dash has become the trademark giveaway that an AI was involved in writing. He has reservations about whether EmDash will succeed. WordPress is extremely hard to unseat, plenty of “WordPress killers” have come and gone, and the ecosystem is twenty-plus years deep. He is curious to see what comes next but not optimistic. Google Open-Sources the DESIGN.md Format Google Labs open-sourced the DESIGN.md format used by Stitch, their AI UI design tool. DESIGN.md is a declarative file capturing a project’s design system, colors, typography, and spacing in a way AI agents can read and apply. Cochrane has tried Stitch personally and finds it impressive at producing web designs. He has also seen DESIGN.md-style files already start appearing in repositories. He sees this kind of file becoming a new paradigm for agentic design, alongside robots.txt and llms.txt. However, he worries about a side effect. If everyone uses the same standardized format and the same AI tools, the web could become a homogeneous set of sites that all look the same. He is enthusiastic about the standardization but hopes designers continue to push for genuinely unique work. A 13-Liter PC With a Water Loop Built Into the Case Geeky Gadgets covered a build by “Visual Thinker”, a 13-liter mini-ITX case with custom SLA-printed water distribution plates built directly into the chassis. Instead of traditional soft tubing, plates channel coolant between the CPU and GPU blocks and are sealed with TPU and silicone molds. The case supports a full-size GPU and an SFX power supply. No thermal benchmarks, parts list, or pricing have been published. It is a one-off you cannot buy. Cochrane sees this as a sign of where PC building has gone in 2026. Modern mid-grade GPUs run nearly every recent game, so raw performance is no longer the differentiator. He likes seeing builders lean into design and craft rather than just stuffing the most powerful parts into a box. He admits he is the traditional type and built his own machine to maximize parts, but the design-first direction is a healthy evolution for the hobby. To close out the show, Cochrane recommends Pocket Casts as a podcast app. He finds it picks up new episodes very quickly. Big thanks to GoDaddy for over twenty years of keeping this show on the air, and a reminder that every promo code use is like writing a check to the show. The post Mythos: Cybersecurity’s AlphaGo Moment #1862 appeared first on Geek News Central.

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211. How Corporate Energy Buyers Are Reshaping the U.S. Grid: CEBA CEO Rich Powell on Data Centers, Nuclear, and Permitting Reform

The POWER Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2026 35:25

Corporate energy buyers have quietly become one of the most consequential forces shaping the U.S. electricity system. By the end of 2025, members of the Corporate Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) had procured more than 130 GW of carbon-free electricity in the U.S.—a footprint comparable to the combined generating capacity of California and Texas—and roughly double that globally. In this episode of The POWER Podcast, CEBA CEO Rich Powell joins POWER Executive Editor Aaron Larson for a wide-ranging conversation on how hyperscalers, manufacturers, retailers, and other large electricity users are responding to unprecedented demand growth and reshaping corporate procurement in the process. Topics covered include: • Why CEBA is "big tent" on clean technology, and how solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal, hydro, gas with carbon capture, and even fusion PPAs all figure into the mix • How AI-driven data center growth—and the chip fabs supplying them—are layering onto existing trends in electrification and internet expansion • The four-pronged nuclear revival: reactor restarts, license renewals, uprates, and advanced reactor bets on X-energy, Kairos, TerraPower, Oklo, and light-water SMRs • The Ratepayer Protection Pledge and how large buyers are addressing concerns that data centers push costs onto residential customers • Why ERCOT remains CEBA's "North Star" market, and how hybrid deals combining firm capacity with clean energy attributes are changing PPA structures • The rise of flexibility as a corporate procurement category, including demand-side management, on-site storage, and virtual power plants • How rising tariffs and supply chain inflation are squeezing solar, wind, and gas project economics • Powell's top policy ask: fundamental, legislatively codified reform of federal permitting and transmission planning A candid look at where the corporate clean energy market stands today—and what it will take to keep pace with the AI era.

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How Solar Really Saves You Money in South Jersey (with Garrett Hessinger of Solar Savings by Garrett)

The Bridgeton Beacon

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2026 29:22

Episode SummaryIn this Bridgeton Beacon episode, host Meg McCormick Hoerner, Esq. talks with South Jersey solar expert Garrett Hessinger, owner of Solar Savings by Garrett, about what solar really looks like for everyday homeowners and small businesses in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.Name: Garrett HessingerBusiness: Solar Savings by GarrettRole: Owner, residential and commercial solar advisorService area: New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, DelawaresolarsavingsbygarrettGarrett focuses on helping homeowners and small business owners understand their usage, assess their roofs and properties, and choose financing structures that actually reduce costs over time. He works primarily by referral and manages projects from bill review to installation, including roofing and tree work coordination where needed.Learn more or request a bill review:Website: https://solarsavingsbygarrett.comAs part of this episode, we highlight Solar Savings by Garrett's role in the Bridgeton Beacon AI Summary Authority pilot, where we work with trustworthy local experts (like Garrett) to show up as the credible, preferred option inside Google's new AI‑generated summaries at the top of search results.If you're a roofer, HVAC contractor, electrician, plumber, or similar home‑service professional in South Jersey who wants to:Be discovered as the trusted local choice when people search for your serviceTurn real‑world expertise and referrals into AI‑friendly authority signalsUnderstand how AI summaries and overviews are changing local searchUse the link in the show notes to learn more about joining our contractor AI summary pilot.1. Can I really save money with solar if I'm already struggling with my electric bill?Often yes, but it depends on your usage, roof, and local utility. Garrett builds a custom savings model using your past 12 months of usage and shows side‑by‑side projections for your current bill versus different solar options (ownership, lease, PPA) over 20–25 years.cbsnews+1youtube2. How many electric bills do I need to give Garrett for an accurate quote?Typically, just one recent bill is enough, as most utilities (Atlantic City Electric, JCP&L, PSE&G) show 12–24 months of usage in a chart on the back. That history lets Garrett design a system sized to your actual consumption, not guesses.3. What if my area is in a “restricted” or “blacked‑out” grid zone?Some parts of South Jersey are temporarily restricted from adding new solar because too much power is already being fed back into that segment of the grid. Garrett checks your address against the latest utility maps, explains your status, and can add you to a follow‑up list if your zone opens back up.4. Do I have to replace my roof before going solar?Not always, but roof age matters. Garrett's team evaluates your roof and often recommends bundling roofing and solar together when there are less than 10–15 good years left, to avoid paying for removal and re‑installation later.5. What's the difference between owning panels and doing a lease or PPA?With ownership, you pay for the system (often via loan or cash) and take on more responsibility for warranties and insurance, but you also receive all the long‑term savings. With leases and PPAs, you typically pay nothing upfront, get a lower monthly payment than your old electric bill, and shift most equipment and performance risk to the financier and installer.6. What happens when I sell my home with solar?In many cases, buyers simply assume the remaining term of the lease or PPA, or the owned system transfers with the property. Garrett shares real examples of helping clients coordinate this transfer so the new owners can enjoy the existing system and savings.

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Corporate PPAs in Transition: From Volume to Value in a Changing European Market

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 20, 2026 19:04 Transcription Available

On this episode of Renewable Roundup host Russell speaks with Lauren Stewart of Zeigo Network about corporate PPA trends across Europe from 2024–26. They discuss Spain's surge in solar PPAs, Germany and the Nordics' market dynamics, and cooling sentiment in 2025. The conversation highlights a shift toward better‑designed deals—hybrids, baseload and shaped profiles—with examples like Merlin Properties' long‑term solar deal and Airbus' baseload PPA with TotalEnergies. Lauren explains how developers and buyers are adapting and where the market may head next.

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Scaling Distributed Generation Beyond Community Solar with Bill Francis from New Energy Equity

Carbotnic

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2026 32:30

In this episode, James talks with Bill Francis, Vice President of Emerging Markets at New Energy Equity — a distributed solar developer that has spent over a decade building community solar programs across the country.Bill joined NEE at the end of 2025 after seven years at Engie, arriving right as the traditional community solar model is showing real strain. Programs are saturating. Development capital is tighter. The ITC safe harbor clock is ticking. His mandate: figure out what comes next — and build it. The case he makes in this episode is that the fundamentals for distributed energy are actually stronger than ever. The branding and program structure just need to change.Why community solar programs are hitting a wall — and the structures (feed-in tariffs, co-op PPAs, VPP tariffs) that could replace themThe ITC safe harbor cliff at end of 2027: why developers need a three-dimensional strategy on equipment timelines, permitting, and safe harbor right nowThe distributed storage opportunity: why half an acre beats 80 acres — and why electric co-ops are among the most motivated customers for standalone batteriesNEE's development DNA: why being judicious about when and how you de-risk assets matters more than ever when development capital is scarceA must-listen for distributed solar and storage developers thinking through market selection, capital discipline, and what the post-community solar era actually looks like.Paces helps developers find and evaluate the sites most suitable for renewable development. Interested in a call with James, CEO @ Paces?

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224. From Wind farms (yield) to Datacenters (growth) - Apr26

Sean White's Solar and Energy Storage Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2026 29:39 Transcription Available

Laurent and Gerard sit down with Paul O'Donnell, Partner at SchrodersGreencoat, a fund manager that has invested more than €13 billion and controls over 400 renewable energy assets across Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Paul has spent 17 years at Greencoat and became Partner in 2022, following Schroders' acquisition of the platform, which itself was acquired by Nuveen in 2026. Greencoat has a distinctive structure, as it manages listed vehicles—historically known as YieldCos—designed to provide stable dividends to investors through long-term infrastructure assets. The discussion begins with a deep dive into the evolution of the renewable energy sector over the past 10–15 years. The market has shifted from portfolios primarily backed by government-supported contracts to a more dynamic growth strategy built on active portfolio management, trading, power purchase agreements (PPAs) with hyperscalers, and the hybridisation of assets. A key milestone in this evolution has been the push toward vertical integration, illustrated by partnerships such as the Greencoat collaboration with CATL. The conversation also explores the growing convergence between energy investors and real estate or digital infrastructure investors, particularly in the financing of datacenters. Energy supply and cooling infrastructure are becoming increasingly critical components of data centre investment strategies. While off-grid solutions are sometimes feasible in the United States—typically involving off-grid power combined with on-grid gas—such options remain very limited in Europe.Datacenters geography is also evolving. First-generation facilities were typically located close to major load centres and urban demand hubs, whereas second-generation developments are moving further away from large cities to areas where land and power availability are more abundant. This shift is driving strong interest in brownfield sites, including former coal plants, steel mills, and refineries. The transition from a pure yield model to a growth-oriented strategy has been well received by the market, particularly after several years of lacklustre share price performance. This approach mirrors the playbook seen at Quinbrook and Intersect and is increasingly viewed as the winning strategy in the current market environment.

united states europe growth energy partner wind americas laurent gerard yield data centers intersect catl wind farms schroders nuveen ppas

Speed of Light Solar Sales with Tim Price and Trace Jenkins of SOLO LLC

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2026 24:18

At Intersolar San Diego, Tim Price (CRO) and Trace Jenkins (Senior Sales Engineer) of SOLO LLC discuss how modern solar software is transforming residential sales, from accurate system design and interactive proposals to integrated financing tools. They reflect on the evolution from early platforms like OnGrid to today's AI-driven solutions, highlighting how increased transparency and consumer awareness are shaping more informed buyers. The conversation also covers key industry shifts, including upcoming tax credit changes, the growing adoption of leases and PPAs, evolving pricing and commission structures, and the importance of getting to permit and design right the first time—alongside the expanding role of battery storage in residential solar. Topics Covered: SOLO = Speed of Light Operations Slack Mike Bishop OnGrid Pizza Bitcoin Solar Games EPC Installer TPO = Third Party Ownership Corporate Tax Credit TAM= Total Addressable Market Red line Flat Commission Rate .io = Indian Ocean Energy Storage Reach out with Tim Price and Tracey Jenkins here: LinkedIn Tim Price: www.linkedin.com/in/timpricepdx/ Trace Jenkins: www.linkedin.com/in/trace-jenkins-27059629b/ Website: www.gosolo.io/ Learn more at www.solarSEAN.com and be sure to get NABCEP certified by taking Sean's classes at www.heatspring.com/sean www.solarsean.com/40hress

ai solo sales solar jenkins speed of light ppas tim price nabcep

AI in Professional Services: From Fragmented Data to Strategic Intelligence with Marta Vizcaíno Martín

Silicon Valley Tech And AI With Gary Fowler

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2026 30:20

Join Marta Vizcaíno Martín, CEO and Founder of Tetrax, for a deep dive into the digital transformation of professional services. With over 17 years of experience as an M&A lawyer at top-tier international firms, Marta has navigated the most complex renewable energy transactions and Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) in the industry. In this episode, we explore how she is leveraging that expertise to build Tetrax—an AI-powered intelligence layer that detects, structures, and monitors risks across massive volumes of legal and technical data to accelerate energy transitions.

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The muscle we forgot: SMRs, hyperscalers, and why this nuclear renaissance might actually be different

The Interchange

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 56:03

Why nuclear has never been project financed and how that might finally be about to change.Every nuclear plant ever built has ultimately been backstopped by taxpayers or ratepayers. Not because the technology doesn't work, but because nobody has ever cracked the construction cost and schedule problem well enough to convince a bank to finance it without government support. Bridget van Dorsten is joined by Jake Jurewicz, Co-founder and CEO of Blue Energy, to explore why that has been so hard and what a credible path to fixing it might actually look like.Jake walks through the root cause of nuclear's cost overrun problem and it is not the reactor. The reactor equipment itself represents around 7% of total project costs. The real problem is what Jake calls nuclear construction overhead: the cost of mobilizing, training, and retaining the 10,000 or so skilled workers needed to build these plants in the field, the way we have been building them for 70 years, essentially the same way you would build a castle.The episode then turns to what Blue Energy is doing differently. By intentionally selecting sites accessible by barge and contracting existing oil and gas fabrication yards and shipyards to build large pre-assembled modules offsite, Blue Energy aims to bring fixed-price contracts into nuclear for the first time, the same contracting structure that made offshore wind and LNG bankable. Jake explains why that single shift changes everything for project financing.Bridget and Jake also work through the demand side of the equation: why hyperscalers are becoming the crucial beachhead market for new nuclear, what binding PPAs from investment-grade counterparties actually signal versus announcements, and why the restarts and uprates, while valuable, only go so far.The conversation also covers Blue Energy's first announced project at the Port of Victoria in Texas, a 1.5 gigawatt nuclear-powered AI data centre co-located with a gas-to-nuclear conversion, designed to accelerate commercial operation and reduce cost of capital even without government loan support. Jake explains the mechanics of why firing the balance of plant with gas first before switching to nuclear steam is not a compromise but a genuine financing innovation.Finally, Jake offers a view of what signals actually matter when separating the nuclear renaissance from the noise: binding PPAs, large balance sheets standing behind fixed-price contracts, and projects moving through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rather than staying at the prototype stage.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Danish Renewables Push in Australia, Nearthlab Does Defense

efter jonna ppas fredrik sj

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2026 37:19

Denmark’s royal trade mission brings 54 companies to Australia’s renewables market. Plus the UK opens CFD allocation round eight for up to 18 offshore wind farms, and wind tech startups weigh focus against diversification into defense. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Strike Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit strike tape.com And now your hosts. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m here with Yolanda Padron, Rosemary Barnes at Matthews Stead, and we start off. On the Danish trip to Australia, 54 Danish companies traveled to Australia alongside King Frederick II and Queen Mary. Uh, over the past week, most work in the renewable energy and green construction businesses that traveled along several signed agreements during the trip. Denmark sees Australia as a growth market, and Rosemary is tied to royalty here. Loosely that Queen Mary is actually from Tasmania, much like Rosemary. [00:01:00] So there is possibly a line to the throne, the Danish throne for Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: My dad’s from Tasmania. I, I live in Canberra, but I was, the whole five years I was living in Denmark, I kept waiting for Princess. She was Princess Mary at that point, but Princess Mary to get in touch with her phone number, catch up. You know, Australians have moved to Denmark. Never happened. And now I see that they’ve come to Australia. And do you think that Mary reached out and got in touch with me? No, she didn’t. So I continue, continue to be disappointed in, in Queen Mary. Matthew Stead: Maybe she’s waiting for you, Rosie. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, she could be waiting for me to reach out. That’s true. Allen Hall: But I clearly, Australia is a growth market. Denmark sees it. I know there’s been a number of Danish companies in Australia over the last two, three years, or con companies from all over the world have been down to Australia, realizing that the growth of renewables is gonna be big because Australia is targeting 82% renewables by 2030. Uh, and right now it’s about 50% renewables, which is [00:02:00] remarkable by the way, that connection to Denmark. Is only going to grow, especially with the relationship with Queen Mary to the area. What are some of the growth areas that Denmark can walk into in Australia right now, Matthew? Matthew Stead: I mean, obviously the proposed offshore wind is a, is a big thing. So, um, once that gets up and running, obviously the Danish technology will come in there. Um, but, but also, you know, through vest have been here forever. Uh, Siemens, gaa, you know, there’s a strong Danish connection there. Um, so. Yeah, I, I think it’s already, already, already really strong. And, um, obviously having the, the queen, the Danish queen, um, yeah. Ties in with all of that. Allen Hall: Is it a reciprocal agreement that Australians can do work in Denmark? Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think, it’s not any sort of like free trade agreement, is it? It’s just some individual, I dunno how much we’ve, we’ve got to [00:03:00]teach Denmark, although there are some good Australian technologies, like maybe not building wind turbines themselves, but there are some good technologies like here, logic’s Ping, uh, Australian developed the ping part of it anyway. And then also, you know, I think some, some future manufacturing methods, uh, doing some exciting things here in Australia. Also, it’s not that hard to move to Denmark if you, um, like when I moved there, all I needed to get a Visa was a, a job offer. That was a certain, I, I don’t think it, I don’t, I don’t remember exactly if it was the type of job or if it was the salary, but you know, like you’re not gonna get a job offer. Like working part-time at a bar isn’t gonna be enough to get you a, a working visa in Denmark. But certainly. Any engineers, um, you can, if you get a good engineering position offered to you in Denmark, it’s not hard for the company to make that happen. So I don’t know that we need, we don’t, we don’t really need it made that much easier for us [00:04:00] to get over there. Allen Hall: Is it difficult to get a work permit in Australia if you’re from Denmark? Rosemary Barnes: Yes and no. It’s not like I would so love to be hiring my XLM colleagues to come. I know that I’d moved to Australia too. Some of them, it’s, it’s not super duper easy. Um. It’s not impossible. And uh, if people are young enough, it’s a bit easier. But, um, it’s, it’s definitely possible, but it’s not, it’s not straightforward. It’s quite expensive and lengthy process. Matthew Stead: You know, if they can fund a fund, um, themselves with a couple of million dollars, that’ll make it easier. Rosemary Barnes: It’s definitely beyond my capabilities as a small company of like four, four people to be able to, um, sponsor someone. But I have had, um, actually. Most, maybe. Yeah. Every single employee actually that I’ve had has been, has non, not an Australian citizen, but they’ve all had visas for other reasons. You know, either because they came over with a partner who, um, was an unskilled working visa or because they did a master’s [00:05:00] here and then got a, um, a, yeah, after that got permanent residency through the, you know, the, there’s a pretty established pathway after studying to be able to get permanent residency. Definitely appreciate that there is so much, um, international talent that’s willing to come to Australia, but just yeah, unfortunately any, any random skilled person, you, it’s not, it’s not easy for a small company to bring them over. Matthew Stead: Rosie, would you recommend Australians to go to Denmark to learn about the wind industry and then, and come back again like you did? Rosemary Barnes: I recommend that they do that in 2016 when I did it. Um, so everyone who’s got a time machine. Hop, hop in, hop in your time machine and go, go do that. I mean, it’s, uh, I was looking back through, um, photos, uh, of my time there recently and was just, uh, like thinking about how much work I did and the amount of time that I spent like in, in production is like I got in my. Four years that I was working for lm, I had at least 10 years worth of experience. And I mean there were [00:06:00] some long, long weeks, but I’m not sure that Denmark’s the right place now because for LM there’s nearly no engineering left in Denmark and certainly not doing the cool, new, exciting technologies that they were while I was there. So that’s not the go Vestas is still doing a fair bit. But you know, we talked recently about the Vestas CO wanting to, wanting to move somewhere with more favorable. Taxation of CEOs salaries. So, you know, maybe that’s not continuing. So I definitely recommend moving to another part of the world early on in your career while you’ve still got enough energy to, to, to like really, really hard work. Um, but I dunno that Denmark is, is the right place anymore. There’s not that much manufacturing left Now. Based on your experience in both Denmark and Australia, how likely do you think that any of these companies that are coming in. To Australia will do any r and d with data from Australia for all of these wind technologies that they’re bringing. Rosemary Barnes: I, I think that there’s some interest in that. I haven’t heard [00:07:00] Danish companies specifically. I have heard a few little inklings of US companies who are interested and I think that that makes a lot of sense because the US was a much more attractive environment for wind energy technologies until a couple of years ago. So there’s a lot of companies that got partway and now are frustrated and I think that Australia seems quite attractive to them. So that’s where I’ve heard people interested, maybe British as well. Um, the Denmark Danish companies would do well. Like any company, um, that’s trying to develop a technology related to wind energy would, um, do really well to come try and develop in Australia because, you know, like, um, we’re so short staffed or like for expert staff. Things are really spread out. Costs are very high. Um, things wear out faster. Like we just have more operational problems here. So, you know, when you’re putting a business case together, you need to, um, you know, an environment where you are. The alternative of just doing everything manually is [00:08:00]far more expensive here, and it takes far longer so you can get a much more positive business case, um, in Australia, like earlier than you could somewhere else. So I think that that makes it really. Really like perfect place to develop technologies. Um, yeah, but I don’t think everybody realizes that yet. But I do see some, some people starting to, Matthew Stead: and I’m adding to what you’re saying, Rosie, when I first started in wind, um, back in 2012, um, I got great reception from Denmark. Actually, I probably got the most. Positive responses to my outreach from Denmark. So, um, I, at that point in time, you know, it is a little bit before 2016, but, um, um, um, I, you know, I found really positive engagement and willingness to be open to new technologies. So that was my experience Allen Hall: as Wind energy professionals. Staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine. [00:09:00] 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 PES wind.com today. The UK government announced contracts for difference allocation round eight, which will open in July of this year. This follows AR seven in January, which secured 8.4 gigawatts of offshore wind. The largest UK CFD procurement ever and renewable UK says up to 18 offshore wind farms could compete for this AR eight round now. The amount of wind going in offshore in the UK is astonishing. Uh, AR eight. I haven’t seen any numbers yet of what they think the total gigawatts will be, but it has to be somewhere around the eight range just to keep up with the [00:10:00] expected rate, uh, to meet their environmental targets and electricity targets in the uk. This is changing the way wind is developed in Europe, especially with the UK changing its tariffs and eliminating tariffs on wind turbine parts and components that come into the country. That is going to really improve the economics of wind turbines in the uk. Plus turn out a lot of European countries and companies to to feed the UK energy goals. Is this the right move in, in terms of the government approach? Because a lot of, uh, other auctions that have happened up in Germany all the way up into Scandinavia have not had such success as this recent UK round. Is their model just a little bit different? And maybe the UK approach is, is the winning method with the the CFDs. Rosemary Barnes: We have some in Australia too. The A [00:11:00] CT Australian Capital Territory where I live has the same thing and, um, for at least several years. Recently, I think most years recently we’ve had our electricity prices in Canberra have been reduced while in the rest of Australia they’ve gone up. It doesn’t always happen that way. Um, it depends on, yeah, how expensive. Electricity was compared to normal. But you know, like when the gas, uh, shock was happening and pushing up electricity prices everywhere, it didn’t affect Canberra very much because we already have PPAs for a hundred percent of our electricity from clean sources. So, Allen Hall: but isn’t that the goal at the end of the day to get. Some levelized pricing, which is the allocation rounds are doing, is they’re getting levelized pricing over a fixed period, so you know what your electricity is going to cost you. None of this up and down, like with the gas market in the United States and elsewhere. Rosemary Barnes: My understanding is that it’s the most crucial aspect of that is certainty, so that new projects can get financing.[00:12:00] It’s not actually about it being a, like, whether it’s a subsidy or a payment is not as important as, like, it’s not that that renewable electricity is too expensive and the government needs to subsidize it. It’s that the bank needs to know how, how much you’re gonna get for the electricity that you generate, um, in order to fuel Okay, to lend it to you. And I mean, you can understand why, like, think about. As, um, batteries enter the electricity grid, you, you know, the pricing, the market movements throughout a day are really starting to change. We used to have, you know, like big spikes in price every evening as a lot of gas generators came on. ’cause they’re expensive to run. But now we’re needing less and less of that as we add more batteries. And, you know, people know these. Trends are generally happening, but not exactly. So how can you forecast what your revenue is going to be? Um, if you’re lending billions of dollars to a project, then you want to know that your person you’re lending to is gonna be able to, to pay you back, which they, they can’t if the revenue goes through the floor. So, yeah, my [00:13:00] understanding is that’s, that’s what it’s really for, is to provide the certainty. It’s, it’s like a bit outdated to refer to it as a subsidy. Um, ’cause it’s not always a subsidy. Sometimes it’s the opposite. But what’s really needed is like knowing how much you’re gonna get for the product that you are delivering. I think it makes sense. I just think that like if there’s all this, all the changes that are coming down the pipeline for the uk, it’s a little bit difficult to actually pinpoint where that price is gonna be. Like a sweet spot for all parties involved. Um. Which I think is something that we saw on the PPA side a lot in the US a few years ago. Rosemary Barnes: They had issues in the UK as well, like a couple of auctions ago. Um, they set the price way too low and I mean, they were told leading up to it, no one can deliver a project at this cost and then nobody bid. And it was, it was a real shame because, you know, like it set them back on, you know, that there’s no projects entered the pipeline, um, in that year as a result. But it’s also what’s interesting to [00:14:00] me is that it’s a different price for different. Types of project. So, you know, onshore wind has a, a different safety price than a, um, offshore wind. And fixed offshore wind has a very different price from floating offshore. Solar’s different. They also have special, uh, price for tidal energy. And that to me is a really interesting thing because who is looking at the UK’s energy mix and saying, yep, title energy needs to be part of this, and we we’re happy to pay, you know, 2, 3, 4 times whatever it is, more. For that than for offshore wind. It’s, um, that, that’s interesting to me. How, how they’ve come up with, with the Yeah, like how the mix is going to look. I mean, they don’t control it precisely. It’s not like they say we are gonna have exactly this many gigawatts for offshore wind and exactly this many gigawatts for solar farms. But they do have, um, different prices and different technologies that are targeted. Matthew Stead: Seems like it really relates really well to the energy [00:15:00]security as well. You know, an extra eight gigawatt here, extra eight gigawatt there. I mean, that can only help with energy security, which is obviously a massive topic. I’m not sure how the newspapers has been coping in the last week or so in the us but over here it’s all about rationing of fuel. It’s all about queues at the pump. So energy security is, is definitely a huge topic. Rosemary Barnes: You wanna know where there isn’t a queue. In my driveway when I plug my car into the, the outlet in my garage. It’s been a really, really fun time to be a smug EV owner. I’ve been, um, reveling in it. Yeah. Really, really, really enjoying, uh. And Joan, but I also do think like it’s gonna last, like we, because we still talk about the oil crisis in the 1970s, right? Like that, uh, we, uh, people overreacted and then reverted for the most part pretty quickly after that. With Denmark being one exception, they, they went all in on when consistently after that. Um, but [00:16:00] you know, like this, even if it’s only a few weeks long, this little shock is going to. Make people think, okay, oh, I was super worried that I might have to spend 20 minutes refueling on a road trip instead of 10 minutes. Um, but actually remember that time when I couldn’t even get petrol at all and I had to spend yeah, like half an hour lining up because everyone was freaking out and. Uh, I wasn’t sure if I was even gonna be able to get to work the next week because the Australian government only thinks we need 30 days worth of, um, of oil in reserve. Uh, I, I think that it’s, it’s got to help EV sales and then. The EV sales is only one part of it because you need then also, you know, security of electricity generation. And I mean, in Australia we’ve got our own coal, so we’re not, um, probably ever going to be able to not generate electricity. But, um, renewables is a, is a huge part of that as well, being able to, you know, have cheap, cheap electricity all the time. So I, I do think that. It, it’s got to be, you [00:17:00] know, helping some of these technologies move, move ahead a little bit faster now. Matthew Stead: Yeah, and I also heard that, uh, the UK is sort of patting themselves on the bat for, uh, actually, you know, transitioning and, you know, securing their own, um, energy supply and not being as reliant as some other countries on imports of, of energy. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had so many opportunities to learn that lesson over the last few years. Right. So. Anybody that just, um, relaxes after this and says, yep, okay, we’re all good. To go back to relying a hundred percent on, on gas is, you know, like, really. Really going to big lengths to nod to not futureproof themselves from the next one. I do. Do we could, would anybody believe that this is the last time that we’re gonna see, uh, a shock like this? I mean, it will happen definitely. Again, Matthew Stead: rather embarrassing, but actually currently I own approximately six EVs. Allen Hall: It sounds like a lot. Matthew, Rosemary Barnes: you’ll have people beating down your door. Share. Share the love around. We need, it Allen Hall: should give taxi rides. [00:18:00] Ubers Matthew Stead: in 2026. I wanna sell, I wanna sell three of them. So this is just. I’m just so happy. Rosemary Barnes: So message ’em on LinkedIn if you need an ev. Now we’re running classified ads in the uptime When new podcast Allen Hall: are they? BMW electrified? BMWs Matthew Stead: no one’s. One’s BMW. Um, another one is, uh, Austin 10. From 1947, Allen Hall: this is an ad. Matthew Stead: The other one’s in Nissan Leaf, uh, NISO leaf with about 16,000 Ks on the clock. Rosemary Barnes: But the first two you converted yourself. Matthew Stead: Yeah, Allen Hall: we can reach out to Matthew on LinkedIn and he will sell you an electric vehicle. He’s in Adelaide and there’s plenty of people listening to the podcast in Adelaide and all around Australia. Honestly, he, he will deliver. If asked, so Matthew Stead, S-T-E-A-D on LinkedIn. Matthew Stead: The BMW that I converted is a 2 0 2, um, from 19 in the the seventies. And, uh, actually BMW um, converted the same car to an electric vehicle for the Munich [00:19:00] Olympics. So yeah, all I did was, um, recreated what. BMW had done back in 1972. Allen Hall: Delamination and bottomline. Failures and blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production. C-I-C-N-D-T are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their non-destructive test technology penetrates deep to blade materials to find voids and cracks. Traditional inspections, completely. Miss C-I-C-N-D-T Maps. Every critical defect delivers actionable reports and provides support to get your blades. Back in service, so visit cic ndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions. Well, south Korean Drone Company Earth Lab built its vision AI [00:20:00]through wind turbine inspections, and I’ve seen hundreds of those in the states. A $10 million defense export deal in 2025 shifted revenue from 80% inspections to. A much larger defense share. Now they have a, a pretty sizable deal, obviously in the Middle East right now, where they’re using their drone technology to be involved in the defense sector. And North Lab I think got driven to that just because, uh, some of their business in the United States didn’t turn out properly the way they expected it to, although they had. Really great technology. In every conference I would attend with Ner lab, like, uh, and they would explain what they were doing. At one point, they were probably three or four years ahead on the, doing your own drone inspections with the little drone and you just buy their software and it would just, it would go up and take pictures of your wind turbine. Didn’t need a separate [00:21:00] pilot. It, it made all things a lot simpler, but that did never seem to catch on. But the technology is there and North Lab does have good engineering teams to develop drone technology. One of the things about this article, which I, I saw the other day, is that North Labs is thinking about their technology in a broader sense. That they’re not just focused on wind turbine inspections. And we see companies that are only tied to wind quite often. The struggle when wind slows down like it’s doing right now, where an Earth Lab is thinking about the problem a little bit differently and saying, I have this technology. It solves a bunch of problems. Maybe we ought to explore those other problem areas and see if we could generate some revenue. And clearly they have. Is that good advice for the wind industry in terms of technology companies is not to just focus on wind, but to think about solutions for adjacent industries? Does that just broaden the portfolio enough where? It keeps your, [00:22:00] it keeps your company viable for longer periods of time. Matthew Stead: This is a huge topic for us because, um, you know, our technologies can be applied to, you know, rail mining defense, you know, so we’ve, we’ve got sensors which can instrument a whole range of things. Like, you know, we can listen for a conveyor belt when it’s failing. We can measure the ice. On the platform next to a railway line, we can measure ice on an aircraft. Um, you know, with our sensors we can do so much. Um, and um, what we’ve decided is that we need to really conquer. Wind in a nice way, as in, you know, actually help the wind industry first. So we really need to, um, you know, focus there. But, you know, we, we’ve all always been sort of dragged into other industries. Um, but, you know, I think being a technology startup is all about focus. Um, but, you know, revenue is hard. Um, you know, gaining traction is hard. The industry [00:23:00] is hard. Um, so I can see why it might be attractive to, to look at other, other verticals. Um, yeah, so it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a reality of a technology startup, unfortunately, that you need to look for other applications for your tech. And, and the other thing is, you know, obviously if we can sell our sensors. Into say, mining or, or rail or whatever. Then it can lower the cost and then, you know, that benefits wind as well. Allen Hall: Well, there’s other technology developments can happen in those other industries you could bring into wind makes both avenues possible. Yeah. A lot of industries are gonna benefit from the technology that has been evolved from wind turbines growth into other industries. But it works both ways and it just adds complexity to the business. But to me it’s complexity you have to take on. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I’ve worked with a bunch of startups through my career and I’m trying to think of even one that hasn’t had a defense project at some point. It’s very, very common for development, like, um, [00:24:00]technologies that are in development. Is a very appealing avenue to get funds because, you know, defense spends a lot of, a lot of money on developing new technologies. I’m sure that’s true in every country, not just Australia. Um, and they’re also prepared to, like, if you’ve got a capability that they want, they are like, you don’t, it’s not so commercially cutthroat, you know, like they are prepared to pay a lot for something that, um, has unique capabilities. So I do see that that is incredibly attractive to startups, but I really like what Matt said when he said that as a startup you’ve gotta stay focused because that is what the startups that I have worked with in the past nine, outta 10 of them have done the opposite. They’re just like trying to grab any grant that they think that they could possibly, you know, um, apply for. Then they win it and then now all of a sudden they’ve got a project in a direction that is not. Taking them to their actual business. It’s, you know, it’s not step on the way towards their bus achieving their business goals. Um, and it’s like, [00:25:00] what is the startup for? Are you trying to commercialize a technology or find out if, if it’s not possible and stop? Or are you trying to just keep on working on this as long as possible? And I think that, like, honestly, nine outta 10 of the startups that I’ve worked with, it’s the the latter where they just want to keep on doing cool stuff. Then yeah. Grabbing any, any grant that you can to continue working on that. And a lot of them are defense. Um, makes a lot of sense. But I, I do think that, you know, you’ve got to be goal oriented, keep your eyes on the prize and, um, yeah, like Matt said, say focus if you wanna succeed as a startup, Allen Hall: you think that’s a difference between grants and actual business? I agree with you, Rosemary. When you get hooked into a grant that has a particular outcome and you tend to deviate from what the market. Once, because you’re not listening to the market when you’re going through this grant process, but if you’re in a second business area, it may make sense just because you have a customer, you’re learning from that experience. A lot of things between wind and the other industries are similar in [00:26:00]terms of the way they’re structured, the demands, the expectations, the. It’s, it’s close. Rosemary Barnes: Grants are amazing when it’s the right grant, and you shouldn’t choose a grant for the sake of getting the money. You should choose it because it helps you achieve something that you wanted to achieve anyway. Um, I think that that’s what you’ve gotta, gotta consider. Um, and yeah, definitely don’t turn down free money if it’s available to help you, you know, get to where you need to get, but don’t deviate on. A bunch of side quests just because you can get funding for that. Matthew Stead: I think half the battle is that, uh, half the challenge of commercialization is actually the industry. So half, half the challenge is the technology and r and d and making stuff, but the other half is actually knowing the industry, knowing how to price it, knowing the people, knowing where to sell it, you know, knowing the return on investment. So every time you go into a new market, you might think, oh yeah, I’ll just reapply what I’ve already learned. But that’s, that’s. Definitely not true. So your rail is completely different from [00:27:00] wind. Um, in terms of the actual market, the tech, the tech might be the same, the same for, you know, aerospace. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I see that a lot with companies that are trying to take a, a technology that they have from another area and try and bring it into wind. And people are always shocked at. At how different, um, wind energy is. I mean, in terms of the physical operating environment, that’s a, a shock for most companies to start with. It’s like, like in several aspects, it wouldn’t be a more harsh operating environment than, you know, sticking something in or on a wind turbine blade and expecting it to last without maintenance for 20, 30 years. Um, but then also just the way that the, the market works. But it’s interesting that you say 50 50, it’s half about the technology. Do you reckon it’s even half? I, I have come to believe that the technology is like, yeah, like really understanding the problem is and, and knowing that there is a need for a solution. Is the vast majority of the way there, there are so many good engineers in the world that they will find, find the solution if they know exactly what problem they should be solving. [00:28:00] I, I reckon it’s less than 50%. I don’t know about 10%, but, um, certainly I don’t think it’s 50 50. Matthew Stead: Yeah. Maybe it depends on what, what stage of development it is and, you know, what, what maturity level you’re at, perhaps. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, your company started. From a, um, you, you didn’t just think, Hey, I want, you know, I know a lot about noise. I wonder what technology I can develop with this. You, you started from, Hey, we’ve got a, a, a problem that, uh, I don’t wanna, you know, um, tell your origin story for you, but you started with a, a problem and a potential solution and then, you know, went from there. Right? So, Matthew Stead: yeah, Bre, you know, I, I think B would be happy for me to say his name, Bre, basically throughout a challenge saying. But, you know, technicians can hear, um, blade damage. So, you know, it should be really simple and easy to make a machine to do the same as what a human can do. Rosemary Barnes: And it was simple and easy, right? Matthew Stead: Ah, yeah. It was so easy. Look, look at all that, all that gray hair. Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s the trouble, right? Is that [00:29:00] if you want to be tied to an industry, hopefully you hit it during a peak time. Because there are ebbs and flows to every economy about every seven years. There’s always something cataclysmic that happens. You just don’t wanna be in that down cycle. You want to be in the upcycle and have something ready to go. When the upcycle hits, you’ll see a lot of businesses do that. In the aerospace, you see it quite a bit that they’ll kind of go dormant and then when they feel like the, the economy is going to boom, they’ll ramp up operations real quick and, and try to make their money while the kidding is good. Then slow it down when it’s not. They have taken a, a more longer term perspective on it. Large businesses can do that. ’cause usually they’re stockpiling cash to, to manage that. Small businesses don’t usually have the cash flow to get over those, uh, lean times. And that’s the trouble. I, I think a lot of companies that I know, in fact. Rosemary and I are working on a project and a couple of names of companies that were in [00:30:00] Wind two, three years ago popped up and I thought they had such great technology and the business model was right. It just hit a rough patch. That’s all it was, and that if you revive that technology a year from now, it would still be applicable. You could still sell that product. It’s just trying to manage the cash flow. It’s hard because I, and back to Rosemary’s point. How much of it is the technology? Uh, and I, I say 10%, and I think that’s roughly right from my experience. A lot of it is everything else. Managing the books, managing your risks, people, uh, all that manufacturing, right, all quality, all every, all that’s involved. And it’s, unless you do it, you don’t realize it. It’s hard to see it unless you’re on the inside. You know, the inside. You think every minute is some other. Major calamity that you have to manage. If you don’t manage it right, you may not make it out the other [00:31:00] side. That’s what small businesses are all about. But it’s, that’s what makes it so hard. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I know that at Parlo we’re spending a lot more effort on understanding the problems that people need solved, um, rather than developing solutions, which has been a bit of a tough thing for me to. Kind of, uh, stick to because, uh, you know, I’m an engineer. I’ve developed products my whole career and that I, I love tinkering and, you know, like making things work and doing things that haven’t been done before. But I, I, I do think that there is a real, real need for, um, understanding the problem really well, understanding, um, what solutions are available and, and fitting them together. I think that that is actually a really, um, a, a really needed part of the, you know, the whole wind energy ecosystem. Allen Hall: We had a listener reach out from Japan, Sini Kajima, who was a city counselor in one of the cities, in obviously in Japan, who was a regular listener and. He wrote in [00:32:00] about some of the wind turbine installations that are going on in sort of northern western Japan. They’ve installed some eight megawatt turbines about a mile, 1.6 kilometers offshore, and that’s creating a lot of concern for the local residents there. Those are big turbines, and they’re talking about using 15 megawatt turbines to do something similar and. As, uh, advocate for, uh, the, the city he’s advocating, uh, a 10 kilometer minimum setback in the national diet in Japan. You’re gonna see a lot more of this come up, I think. And the pictures that was sent along with it is pretty, um, eye-opening in that you got this really big turbine, really close to shore. Are we going to put setbacks [00:33:00] in as, uh, a regulation or law in some of these territories, like especially Northern Japan where there is great wind resources, amazing wind resources, but at the same time, there’s a lot of people who live there that will like to have some view of the ocean, not just turbines in the water right off the coastline. This is not just a Japanese problem, but it does seem to be a, a big problem ’cause of the, the way the Continental shelf is around Japan, it drops up pretty quick. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, exactly. It’s not a specific Japanese problem, and I mean, in most cases there’s development approvals and people have plenty of opportunity to express their displeasure at where turbines are cited. But for Japan, it wouldn’t be as simple as saying, okay, we just increase the offset dis distance by a little bit because you increase the, I’m assuming these turbines are cited already as far out as they can be while still being fixed bottom. And if you wanted to push them further away, then you move to floating and you double or triple the cost, [00:34:00] which Japan is looking into floating offshore wind a lot. Um, but Japan. Has no, has no easy options. I mean, Japan likes electricity as much as every other country does. They don’t want to rely on nuclear as much as they have been, which is, you know, probably, at least to a certain extent, understandable. They don’t have great solar resources. I mean, they have some, um, and they could do more. They don’t have good onshore wind opportunities. They have geothermal potential, but they don’t like that so much because their, um, NAL hot springs are, you know, a very important tourism industry and very important culturally. So they’re worried about doing anything that would mess that up. The offshore wind solution, this particular environment haven’t seen, it doesn’t sound like the best situated project, but take any other option that they’ve got for generating electricity in Japan and it has. Probably equal disadvantages. I just think that they have a, a hard problem and [00:35:00] have to choose which compromise they wanna make. Allen Hall: Mr. Kuma brings up a couple of points here that. There’s about 150 residents that are at risk of insomnia from the wind turbine noise, and they’re concerned about the migratory zones for protected wildlife. In this case, geese about five kilometers offshore. Rosemary Barnes: Then there might be birds that are affected, and if they are, they can use technologies to spot the birds. Stop the turbines. Like there’s, there’s, you know. Dozens of success stories, um, related to birds and wind turbines. That’s, that’s a solved problem. The noise, I mean, how far away are they? Matt’s the noise expert. Like how, how far away from a wind turbine do you have to be before you can even hear it over the wind noise? Matthew Stead: Uh, the wind turbine noise is not gonna be an issue. Allen Hall: So then it comes down to sight lines. And Japan has some of the most beautiful coastline in the world. Rosemary Barnes: I mean, I’m not gonna tell someone that they should, like looking at wind turbines, like I would also rather not look at a wind turbine if I could be looking at an ocean view or a mountain view or whatever. But any energy project would [00:36:00] be nicer if it wasn’t there in the first place. Like, you know, there’s not like a beautiful coal power plant to look at. There’s not a beautiful transmission line to look at. There’s not a beautiful petrol pump, um, to look at. Like, none of none. None of these things are like beautiful technologies that we enjoy interacting with on our daily lives, but we prefer to, you know, have the trade off of having that infrastructure. And trade off for the, the benefits that it brings. And, um, you know, there’s, in that sense, there’s nothing different about renewable energy technologies. It’s different, different trade offs, but they’re always gonna be there. 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 Linked. And don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. And if you’ve found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show for Rosie, Yolanda and Matthew, I’m Alan Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:37:00] Podcast.

Jonna Henningsson mördade kärleksrivalen – vill släppas fri

Krimrummet

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2026 40:14

Som 24-åring dömdes Jonna Henningsson till livstids fängelse för det brutala och uppmärksammade styckmordet på sin kärleksrival. Efter att nu ha avtjänat mer än tio år av sitt straff ansöker hon om att få det tidsbestämt.I det här avsnittet hörs Jonna Henningsson med egna ord berätta om skulden, livet på anstalten och drömmarna om en framtid i frihet.Programledare: Kim MalmgrenGäst: Fredrik Sjöshult, kriminalkrönikör ExpressenProducent: Anna Westman SwantessonAnsvarig utgivare: Klas Granström, Expressen AB

Place-Based Energy Transitions: Who Decides and Who Benefits in a Clean Energy Future

People Places Planet Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2026 59:50

What does a truly just energy transition look like — and who gets to define it? In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios sits down with Nadia Ahmad (Barry University School of Law) and Danielle Stokes (University of Richmond School of Law), collaborators on the Just Energy Transitions and Place (JET Place) project, a multi-institutional research initiative examining how place, land use law, and community governance shape who bears the burdens and who captures the benefits of America's shift to clean energy. Drawing on fieldwork across Florida, Louisiana, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, they make the case that decarbonization without redistribution isn't a just transition at all.From federalism and zoning conflicts to power purchase agreements, IRA rollbacks, and the structural barriers facing marginalized communities, this conversation surfaces the deeply human stakes behind every permitting decision and planning process — and explores what it looks like when communities successfully reclaim agency in the energy future being built around them.The conversation also zeroes in on Florida as a potentially cautionary case: a state with extraordinary solar potential but a regulatory environment defined by vertically integrated utilities, restricted third-party PPAs, and legislation that threatens to ban net zero targets at every level of government.What "Just Energy Transition" Really Means: Decarbonization and Distribution (4:50)Navigating the Regulatory Landscape: Federal, State, and Local Authority (8:10)Just Energy Transitions and Place (21:39)Why Place-Centered Energy Planning Is Essential to Energy Justice (27:12)Florida: A Placed-based Case Study of Energy Governance Challenges (41:38)Concluding Thoughts: Policy Instability, IRA Rollbacks, and Reasons for Hope (50:07) ★ Support this podcast ★

Why Europe's PPA Market Isn't Keeping Pace, and What Must Change

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 16, 2026 24:20 Transcription Available

Host Russell interviews Killian Daly, Executive Director at EnergyTag, on the widening gap between Europe's renewable targets and the projects being developed, and how corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) can help bridge it. They cover market challenges like falling capture value, the case for firmed/hybrid PPAs with storage, government guarantees and aggregation, and how standardization and hourly matching rules could reshape corporate procurement and scale renewable investment. LinkedIn Post referenced in this episode: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/killianpdaly_european-parliement-ppas-and-cfd-summary-activity-7429916724591755264-l8aG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAR-uP0B7ANn1mHKV5ACTMdmtRkrBF9SRw0

Why Everyone's Buying in ERCOT: A Candid Look at Corporate PPAs

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 9, 2026 27:43 Transcription Available

This episode of Renewable Roundup explores North American corporate PPA trends in 2025. Russell Reading talks with Ethan Cox, a Zeigo Renewable Developer Account Manager, about the dominance of ERCOT (Texas) capturing around 50% of corporate PPA megawatts, the sharp decline in wind deals to about 6.5%, and the factors driving those shifts—land availability, regulatory and permitting hurdles, tariffs, and tax-credit changes. They also discuss the outsized influence of hyperscalers (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon), which accounted for the majority of corporate PPAs, how non-hyperscalers chase the best-priced deals often in ERCOT, and how potential GHG protocol guidance could push buyers to source closer to load. The episode closes with observations on pricing trends, the recent “gold rush” for projects before policy changes, and uncertainty around future price impacts as tax credits and regulations evolve.

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Italy's carbon reform and the ETS decree

Montel Weekly

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 5, 2026 39:40

Italy has launched one of the most controversial proposals in the European energy market in years.In a bid to lower electricity prices and boost the competitiveness of Italian industry, the government has proposed shifting the cost of carbon emissions from gas-fired power plants to consumers. Supporters say the move could reduce wholesale power prices and ease pressure on businesses facing high energy costs.But critics warn it could undermine the foundations of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS); the cornerstone of Europe's climate policy.In this episode, Richard speaks with international experts about why carbon prices have been falling, what Italy's proposed reforms could mean for the power market, and the potential impact on renewable investment and corporate PPAs. They also discuss whether the proposal could distort electricity markets across Europe and the legal challenges the European Commission may raise.Host: Richard Sverrisson - Editor-in-Chief, Montel NewsGuests: Hæge Fjellheim, Head of Carbon Analysis at VeytGaia Stigliani, Senior Principal at AFRY Management ConsultingLorenzo Parola, Managing Partner at Parola AssociatiEnza Tedesco - Montel NewsEditor: Oscar BirkProducer: Alex Carlon#EnergyMarkets #EUETS #EnergyTransition #CarbonMarkets #ClimatePolicy #EnergyPolicy #RenewableEnergy #EnergyTrading #EnergyEconomics #EuropeanEnergy #CleanEnergy #Decarbonisation #EnergyPodcast

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The Rise of Big Batteries in Australia's Energy Markets - Neoen

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2026 51:47

Australia has built one of the world's most competitive battery storage markets — and it got there faster than almost anywhere else on the planet. What started as an experiment in South Australia in 2017 has grown into a mature, multi-gigawatt industry that is now redefining what grid-scale batteries can do.In this episode of Transmission, host Wendel Hortop sits down with Jérémie Yvon, Head of Energy Management at Neoen Australia, to explore how one of the country's largest renewable energy companies is navigating the rapidly evolving battery landscape across both the National Electricity Market (NEM) and the Western Australian Electricity Market (WEM). They cover the maturation of the Australian battery market, how Neoen structures battery revenue across two very different market designs, the rise of virtual batteries and firm renewable PPAs, long-duration storage investment, and why Jérémie believes battery oversupply is a credible - and under appreciated - risk.You can watch or listen to new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.Transmission is a Modo Energy production. Your host is Wendel Hortop - Head of AustraliaModo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage understand the market — and make the most out of their assets. Want all the latest power market news? Sign up for our free Weekly Dispatch newsletter:https://bit.ly/TheWeeklyDispatchChapters0:00 Introduction — the hospital generator analogy1:45 Guest intro: Jérémie Yvon and Neoen Australia4:30 NEM vs WEM: how battery economics differ8:30 Hornsdale: from proof of concept to system services11:30 NEM design — volatility and five-minute trading14:00 WEM design — capacity market mechanics17:00 Revenue compression in ancillary services20:30 How Neoen builds optimisation capabilities in-house23:00 Battery + wind firming: delivering baseload renewables25:30 Virtual battery products explained29:00 Risk management for firm products32:00 Solar cannibalisation and price suppression38:00 Long-duration storage pipeline44:00 Rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) services47:00 Are batteries now the cheapest system service provider?50:00 Contrarian view: what the market is getting wrong51:39 Wrap-upModo Energy | modoenergy.com

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The Rise of Big Batteries in Australia's Energy Markets - Neoen

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2026 51:47

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NPM Interconnections (EUR) – Episode 182: Kai Rintala | Taaleri Energia

New Project Media

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2026 39:30

This week, Taaleri Energia managing director Kai Rintala joins NPM Europe editor Peter Kneller on the podcast to discuss the benefits of geographical diversification, the legwork that goes into securing PPAs, and the positive long-term outlook for European power demand.NPM is a leading data, intelligence & events company providing business development led coverage of the US & European power, storage & data center markets for the development, finance, M&A and corporate community.Download our mobile app.

215. PPAs, FPAs, IPPs, Flex and Capture rates: new paradigms - Feb26

Bitcoiners - Live From Bitcoin Beach

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2026 27:35 Transcription Available

Luca Pedretti, Co-Founder, Pexapark, returns to discuss how volatility, market design, and new contract structures are transforming power markets and renewable economics. What begins with PPA pricing quickly evolves into a broader conversation about where value is now created in the clean energy system.We start with the growing importance of IFRS 13 fair value accounting. In increasingly volatile markets, long-term forecasts are no longer sufficient. Market-implied PPA prices are moving faster than fundamentals and are becoming a key signal for future capture rates and risk, forcing investors to reassess how renewable assets are valued.The discussion then turns to Flexibility Purchase Agreements (FPAs), including tolls and floors for batteries. FPAs reflect a fundamental shift from generation toward flexibility and optimisation, as renewable-heavy systems face cannibalisation, negative prices, and widening price spreads.With clean sources now accounting for nearly half of EU power generation, these side effects are becoming structural. Solar capture rates have dropped sharply in markets such as Germany, negative prices now occur in thousands of hours across Europe, and curtailment and balancing costs are rising. Batteries have become the system's primary response.We also explore how the buyer landscape is shifting. Hyperscalers and data centres are increasingly driving private PPAs, utilities are regaining relevance through trading and optimisation, and stand-alone renewable PPAs are showing signs of saturation. Despite this, capital deployment across clean energy continues to grow, signalling a reallocation of value rather than a slowdown.The conversation concludes with a look ahead. Many renewable assets financed under merchant assumptions are now misaligned with today's pricing reality. Battery tolls and floors are scaling quickly, consolidation among IPPs is accelerating, and capture rates remain unstable. The open question remains whether any buyers are willing to pay a green premium for co-located and hybrid projects in a market where flexibility has become central to value creation.Link to Pexapark reportsIPPs:https://go.pexapark.com/next-gen-ipp-playbookRenewables Market Outlook 2026 - The Big Repricing: How volatility and BESS reshape clean energy markets (PPAs and FPAs): https://go.pexapark.com/market-outlook-2026

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Bukele's Blind Spot: Insane Bitcoin Mining Tech That Can Turn El Salvador Trash Into Digital Gold | Dusan Matuska

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 31, 2026 49:32 Transcription Available

Mike Peterson sits down with Dusan Matuska to unpack Bitcoin adoption in India while UPI dominates daily payments. They discuss why Bitcoiners call UPI “governmental lightning,” what that suggests about transaction monitoring, and how self-custody becomes a defining decision for anyone who cares about privacy and control.Dusan Matuska explains how a circular economy forms through local Bitcoin trade, merchant acceptance, and community trust. He shares why non-KYC habits and small networks matter, and how these patterns can scale through educators who know how to communicate without losing people.Dusan then gets specific about sustainable mining, including why miners move, how electricity price increases can erase margins, and why Amity shifted from Paraguay to Ethiopia. This section stays focused on operations, contracts, and the kinds of constraints that reshape mining strategy overnight.The most disruptive threat is waste-to-energy Bitcoin mining in Uganda. They dig into plasma gasification, syngas quality, feedstock consistency, and the economics behind waste reduction when municipalities do not pay. The conversation also hits the grid problem and why mining can act as a buyer of last resort when excess power has no market.Dusan closes by connecting adoption to education through an educator academy built on soft skills training. They talk about analogies, objection handling, and teaching frameworks that make Bitcoin understandable in normal conversations. Subscribe, share, and comment with the point you disagreed with most, then tell us whether you would rather run miners on surplus power or drink bone broth for seven days.-Bitcoin Beach TeamConnect and Learn more about Dusan Matuska:X: https://x.com/dusan_matuskaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dusanmatuska-bitcoinWebsite: https://www.dusanmatuska.com/AmityAge (His Company): https://www.amityage.com/Support and follow Bitcoin Beach:X: https://www.twitter.com/BitcoinBeach IG: https://www.instagram.com/bitcoinbeach_sv TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@livefrombitcoinbeach Web: https://www.bitcoinbeach.com Browse through this quick guide to learn more about the episode:00:00 Intro06:40 What is India's UPI system? Why do Bitcoiners call it “governmental lightning”?12:55 Can Bitcoin mining work in India? What is stranded energy for Bitcoin mining?19:30 Why did Bitcoin miners leave Paraguay? Why did Bitcoin miners move to Ethiopia?26:10 Why did Ethiopia raise electricity prices for bitcoin miners? How do PPAs affect Bitcoin mining profits?33:05 Can waste-to-energy power Bitcoin mining in Uganda? Is waste-to-energy bitcoin mining sustainable?40:45 What is plasma gasification? Can syngas from waste power Bitcoin mining?47:20 Why can't Uganda sell waste-to-energy power to the grid? Why is Bitcoin mining the buyer of last resort?Live From Bitcoin Beach

Solar Isn't Breaking the Grid. Our Grid Is Breaking Solar.

Climate 21

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2026 43:21 Transcription Available

Send me a messageEurope doesn't have a clean energy problem. It has a grid problem.Solar is cheap. Batteries are scaling. Demand is exploding. The system in the middle is cracking.In this episode, I'm joined by Rob Stait, Managing Director of Alight's behind-the-meter business, to unpack why the energy transition is now being held back less by technology and more by infrastructure, regulation, and outdated thinking. Alight develops and owns onsite solar and battery systems for large energy users across Europe, using long-term PPAs to lock in savings, cut emissions, and build resilience.We dig into why waiting for cheaper solar or batteries is often the wrong call, and why businesses that move early gain a structural advantage. You'll hear how behind-the-meter solar and battery storage bypass grid bottlenecks entirely, why blaming renewables for blackouts misses the real issue, and how decentralised generation is reshaping energy security, affordability, and decarbonisation all at once.We also explore the uncomfortable reality facing Europe's grids, the growing role of data centres and electrification, and why microgrids are starting to look less like an edge case and more like the logical endgame of the energy transition. This is a grounded conversation about climate tech that works, emissions reduction that scales, and why net zero will be built through economics as much as policy.

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SMP 258: US Residential Solar Outlook 2026: The Return of Leases and the Rise of Storage

Solar Maverick Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2026 44:50

In this episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, host Benoy Thanjan is joined by returning guest and co-host Nate Jovanelly, CEO and Founder of Sunraise Capital, for a deep dive into the US Residential Solar Outlook for 2026. With major policy changes, the elimination of Section 25D for homeowners, and a rapid shift back to third-party ownership models, the residential solar market is undergoing one of the biggest transformations in its history. Benoy and Nate break down what changed in 2025, how the Big Beautiful Bill reshaped the market, and what installers, investors, and homeowners need to understand heading into 2026. They explore the return of leases and PPAs, the growing importance of energy storage, the impact of FEOC and domestic content requirements, rising equipment complexity, and how customer acquisition is evolving. Nate also shares candid insights from building Sunraise Capital over the past two and a half years and offers advice for clean energy entrepreneurs navigating turbulent times. Notable Quotes * “The only constant in solar is change.” * “Leases are back, and they're back for a reason.” * “Complexity is becoming the moat in residential solar.” * “Solar is still sold, not bought, and that has to change.” * “The companies that survive this period are going to thrive.” Why This Episode Matters The residential solar industry is entering a new era. With homeowner tax credits gone, equipment rules tightening, and storage becoming mainstream, 2026 will separate the adaptable companies from the rest. This conversation provides real-world perspective from the front lines and cuts through the noise to explain what is actually happening in the market. About the Solar Maverick Podcast The Solar Maverick Podcast is a leading clean energy podcast hosted by Benoy Thanjan, Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy. The show features in-depth conversations with industry leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers shaping the future of solar, storage, and the global energy transition. Biographies Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy, solar developer and consulting firm, and a strategic advisor to multiple cleantech startups. Over his career, Benoy has developed over 100 MWs of solar projects across the U.S., helped launch the first residential solar tax equity funds at Tesla, and brokered $45 million in Renewable Energy Credits (“REC”) transactions. Prior to founding Reneu Energy, Benoy was the Environmental Commodities Trader in Tesla's Project Finance Group, where he managed one of the largest environmental commodities portfolios. He originated REC trades and co-developed a monetization and hedging strategy with senior leadership to enter the East Coast market. As Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners, Benoy crafted project finance solutions for commercial-scale solar portfolios. His role at Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund with 125 MWs of U.S. renewable assets, involved evaluating investment opportunities and maximizing returns. He also played a key role in the sale of the firm's renewable portfolio. Earlier in his career, Benoy worked in Energy Structured Finance at Deloitte & Touche and Financial Advisory Services at Ernst & Young, following an internship on the trading floor at D.E. Shaw & Co., a multi billion dollar hedge fund. Benoy holds an MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from NYU Stern, where he was an Alumni Scholar. Nathan Jovanelly Nate is the CEO and Founder of SunRaise Capital's mission is to provide affordable and accessible renewable energy options to homeowners, while reducing carbon footprints and creating a sustainable future for generations to come. They achieve their mission by partnering with industry leading solar installers to provide our customers with the best possible solar experience at competitive rates. As the CEO of an innovative residential solar lease company, he spearheads strategic initiatives aimed at harmonizing the objectives of our funding partners, installation teams, and homeowners. With a relentless focus on alignment, he cultivates collaborative relationships to ensure mutual success and satisfaction across all stakeholders. Through innovative leadership and a commitment to transparency, he drives sustainable growth while delivering exceptional value to our investors, installers, and customers alike. Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: info@reneuenergy.com LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com Website: https://www.solarmaverickpodcast.com/ Nathan Jovanelly SunRaise Capital Website: https://www.sunraisecapital.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natejov/ Email: nate@sunraise.com Nate's other interviews on the Solar Maverick Podcast SMP 228: After the Big Beautiful Bill: What's Next for US Residential Solar? https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-228-after-the-big-beautiful-bill-what-s-next-for-us-residential-solar/ SMP 205: Revolutionizing Solar Finance: How SunRaise Capital Attracts Investors to Residential Solar Projects? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/smp-205-revolutionizing-solar-finance-how-sunraise/id1441876259?i=1000702871242 SMP 194: 2025 Solar Outlook https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-194-2025-solar-outlook/ SMP 176: REplus takeaways https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-176-replus-takeaways/ SMP 166: Residential Solar Trends https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-166-residential-solar-trends/ SMP 150: How SunRaise Capital is innovating residential solar financing? https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-150-how-sunraise-capital-is-innovating-residential-solar-financing/ Solar Maverick Episode 147: RE+ Takeaways https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-147-re-conference-takeaways/ Solar Maverick Episode 139: Opportunities and Challenges with the PJM Solar Market https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14GHBkqcqo Solar Maverick Episode 134: 2023 Solar Predictions https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-134-2023-solar-predictations/ SMP 131: How Technology and Software are innovating the Solar Industry? https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-131-how-technology-and-software-is-innovating-the-solar-industry/ SMP 100: US Residential Solar, Storage, and Electric Vehicle Trends https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-100-us-residential-solar-storage-and-electric-vehicles-trends/ SMP 74: Impact on COVID-19 on Residential Solar https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/smp-74-impacts-of-covid-19-on-residential-solar/id1441876259?i=1000475840259 SMP 58: Residential Solar Financing and Other Interesting Topics https://podcasts.apple.com/tc/podcast/smp-58-residential-solar-financing-other-interesting/id1441876259?i=1000459212910 SMP 20: The Solar Intrapreneur Story: How Nate helped IGS become one of the biggest solar asset owners in the US https://podcasts.apple.com/tc/podcast/smp-20-solar-intrapreneur-story-how-nate-helped-igs/id1441876259?i=1000432329129 Please provide 5 star reviews If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share the Solar Maverick Podcast so more people can learn how to accelerate the clean energy transition. Reneu Energy Reneu Energy provides expert consulting across solar and storage project development, financing, energy strategy, and environmental commodities. Our team helps clients originate, structure, and execute opportunities in community solar, C&I, utility-scale, and renewable energy credit markets. Email us at info@reneuenergy.com to learn more.

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The art of origination: Offtake and risk in GB's energy market with Josh Brown (SSE)

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2026 50:34

Want the latest news, analysis, and price indices from power markets around the globe - delivered to your inbox, every week?Sign up for the Weekly Dispatch - Modo Energy's unmissable newsletter.https://bit.ly/TheWeeklyDispatchNavigating the energy transition requires more than just building assets; it requires a deep understanding of how to price risk in a market that is fundamentally cannibalising itself as it grows.The transition to a renewables dominated energy system requires expert commercial strategy, especially in the volatile realm of battery storage and renewable certificate. Ed Porter is joined by Josh Brown - Operations Team Manager at SSE plc to explore what the front office operations of a major utility look like in practice and what navigating market saturation in batteries and the management of third-party assets using financing tools like tolls and Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).Key topics covered: •How utility origination teams manage the commercial complexity of battery assets in a fundamentally "self-cannibalizing" market?•What internal process are required to negotiate and approve complex, high-risk contracts such as tolls.• Is the energy sector prepared for the disruptive market shift from annual REGO matching to a 24/7 hourly certification system?• How commercial teams are structuring PPAs between developers and offtakers.• Whether Contracts for Difference (CFD) rules are creating significant exposure for large offtakers.About our guestJosh Brown is the Origination Team Manager at SSE, working within the Energy Markets division, managing market-facing power and gas positions for both SSE's own extensive asset base and third-party clients. He specialises in navigating the complexities of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for solar, wind, and hydro, alongside structured battery optimisation products and the management of green certificate trading (including REGOs and ROCs) for the entire group. Connect with Josh here https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-brown-4a8b0336/?originalSubdomain=ukSSE is a leading clean energy utility with a major presence across Great Britain and Ireland. The group is active across the entire energy value chain, including renewable and thermal generation, electricity networks, and supply. SSE has contracted over 2 GW of batteries and 3 GW of CfD-backed assets in the last two years alone for more information, head to their website. https://www.sse.com/About Modo EnergyModo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage understand the market — and make the most out of their assets.All episodes of Transmission are available to watch or listen to on the Modo Energy site. To stay up to date with our analysis, research, data visualisations, live events, and conversations, follow us on LinkedIn. Explore The Energy Academy, our bite-sized video series explaining how power markets work.

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The art of origination: Offtake and risk in GB's energy market with Josh Brown (SSE)