Ex-Ørsted Employees in Demand, CIP Orders Goldwind Turbines

CIP taps Goldwind for an Australian wind project even as Europe fights Chinese turbines. Plus, Alfanar's $100 million bet on Senvion, and where laid-off Ørsted staff are landing.

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Episode Transcript The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape — protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts.Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes and Yolanda Padron. And top of the week is Rosemary’s been out and about looking at wind turbines in Australia, and I would like to hear some of the details about that, Rosemary. What did you see out in the wilderness?Rosemary Barnes: You might have to settle for generalities rather than details.Allen Hall: Okay.Rosemary Barnes: I don’t know what’s going on with Australian wind turbines at the moment, but there have been a lot of problems — a lot of lightning damage and a lot of serial defects. That’s the category I’ve been looking at recently. It’s a wide variety, looking at a lot of Australia-specific, or not even Australia-specific, but just local problems. Certain wind farms are getting the same kind of problem over and over again — some of them I’ve never seen anywhere else before. I check in with people like you and other international friends who do similar kinds of work, and some of these damages are just like — everyone’s like, “Well, what is that? I wouldn’t have even believed that was possible.” So that always keeps it really interesting. The last couple of days I’ve spent crawling around inside some blades, getting covered in fiberglass — very reminiscent of my time in the factory, when I used to just be itchy for weeks or months in a row. My hot tip for that: you’ve got to feel the sensation, but it doesn’t bother you. It’s not itching, it’s just zen — zen out, and you can handle being itchy for days in a row.Allen Hall: It’s sort of the hot sauce analogy. Hot sauce is really not burning you, but it just feels like it is, so if you can think it away, it’s just fine. Similar thing. And you’re headed to Denmark and then to Germany pretty soon, right?Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I’m so sad that you’re not going to be able to come, because I’ve got some really cool tours lined up and cool meetings.Allen Hall: Me too.Rosemary Barnes: So yeah, I’ll have more to report back. But definitely anybody who’s going to be at Hamburg — if you’re in Denmark and have something you want to show, feel free to get in touch. I don’t know what that might be. I’ve got some plans currently — it’s pretty jam-packed, itinerary so far, but looking forward. I always love going over.Allen Hall: Well, when you’re in Denmark, you should go by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Rosie, because they have an Australian project, and the turbines are coming from China. The Gawarra Bayya site is a 408 megawatt project, and CIP has confirmed to Finnos that Goldwind will supply the machines. That lands smack in the middle of the fight between a lot of countries that would like to use Chinese suppliers and the EU Commission, which is really prohibiting it at the moment.So in a sense, we have CIP — a Danish company that’s been pretty much avoiding any sort of Chinese wind turbines in the EU — but once they come out of the EU, they’re perfectly comfortable using Chinese wind turbines in Australia. It does seem like a real contradiction there. And my first thought was, well, Scotland has raised their hand and said, “What the heck — why is it okay for this Danish company to buy Chinese wind turbines and put them in Australia if they’re so afraid of all the technology that’s inside them, and may