What Operators Want to Hear at WOMA 2027

Two days of operator meetings in Melbourne shape the WOMA 2027 agenda, from performance upgrades and cable faults to foundations and bolts.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with Matthew Stead and Rosemary Barnes. And Rosemary, where are we?

Rosemary Barnes: We're in Melbourne, and we have been visiting future attendees and sponsors and people interested in, in the event to see what topics that we should be talking about.

What are the hot topics of the moment?

Allen Hall: Which is a very interesting two days, Matthew, in that, uh, we h- did meet with a number of operators based in Australia, but, uh, they're also very worldly. They have talked to companies all over about operations and, and maintenance, and there are some really eye-opening topics- Mm

that will be- Mm ... at WOMA 2027 this year.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. The thing that was interesting for me was [00:01:00]that actually the topics have changed each year. So, um, they're evolving and the industry's continuing to, to do better, and so that, that was really interesting. Performance upgrades was probably one of the big areas of, of new interest, I think.

I think we heard with the pressure on pricing, uh, the market and so forth, you know, that, that 1% or 2% now is becoming more important. Um, so I think, uh, upgrades will definitely feature quite a lot. Um, balance of plant was also a big topic. Um, you just can't ig- ignore the, um, transmission, you can't ignore the transformers, you can't ignore, uh, condensers and all these sorts of things, so yeah.

Rosemary Barnes: Cables.

Matthew Stead: Cables.

Rosemary Barnes: Terminations. Terminations of cables. Specifically raised several times.

Allen Hall: Yep. Yeah. It's all about being more efficient, uh, getting more production, and then with the PPA prices, uh, that are changing-

Matthew Stead: Mm ...

Allen Hall: rapidly, uh, everybody is paying more attention to the bottom line.

Matthew Stead: Mm, mm.

Allen Hall: Absolutely. There, there's less cash running around, uh, chasing new development.

It's [00:02:00] more of a focus on making sure your, at least your existing assets are performing as, as well as they can be- Mm ... which then opens up the, uh, Pandora's box of opportunity. Mm. Because there are 1%'s all around a wind turbine. More specifically, uh, all the drive train issues, the blade issues, the generator issues, and even going into the substation.

Mm. I, I was really shocked on BOP e- the, the one topic that came up, uh, yesterday and today was buried cables. Mm. Like-

Matthew Stead: Faults ...

Allen Hall: faults.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Junctions. Finding- Yeah ... finding faults and what to do about them. Yeah. Yeah. But I think in addition to just wanting more revenue, I think people have, are getting more sophisticated about what actually matters and then the finances.

You know, everyone's focused so much on availability, and now people- Mm ... are like, okay, yeah, like once you're at a certain level of availability, gets harder and harder to get more. And actually, you know, not all availability is equal. Is good. It, it [00:03:00] depends. Yeah. Yeah, like you wanna, um, you wanna focus on how much you're generating at the times when electricity prices are high specifically, which usually means during lower wind speed periods.

Yeah. Which is actually good because that matches really well with what is actually possible. It's, it's hard to get more power out of the turbine if it's at, you know, its rated power, then you're not g- More efficiency is not gonna get you any more, um, power output, whereas lower in the power curve-