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The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

By: Allen Hall Rosemary Barnes Yolanda Padron & Matthew Stead
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Uptime is a renewable energy podcast focused on wind energy and energy storage technologies. Experts Allen Hall, Rosemary Barnes, Yolanda Padron, and Matthew Stead break down the latest research, tech, and policy.Copyright 2026, Weather Guard Lightning Tech Biological Sciences Earth Sciences Science
Episodes
  • NextEra Buys Dominion, China Outpaces Vestas

    NextEra Buys Dominion, China Outpaces Vestas
    May 26 2026
    NextEra’s $67B all-stock Dominion deal targets data center alley. Plus China’s top five each outpace Vestas, and 80% of Swedish wind producers ran at a loss. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! [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 Speaker 6: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with three other people, Matthew Stead, Rosemary Barnes, and, uh, Yolanda Padron down in Texas. Uh, we’re all getting ready to go to American Clean Power in Houston, Texas, where it will be practically 150 degrees and 99% humidity, and we’re all looking forward to those warm, wet days that we will spend It is very similar to New Orleans. New Orleans was also very warm and very humid. So there’s a trend going on here with American Clean Power, although we were up in Minneapolis not too long ago, uh, but I guess we were in Phoenix too, so we gotta find a middle ground, everybody. Can we go someplace like– [00:01:00] Rosemary says we should always go to the Maldives, Tahiti. I got a lot of requests from Tahiti from people. We never go there. We never go to Hawaii. Rosemary Barnes: I’ve suggested Hawaii so many times, and I’ve been told that Americans are not gonna be given permission from their manager to go to Hawaii. Speaker 6: It’s kinda like Las Vegas. Rosemary Barnes: Maybe one day we’ll make it to San Diego or something and get, um, beach adjacent facility And if your presentation is too boring, then everyone will be at the beach. So that will be how we ensure quality control of the speakers, which is a big problem at these events now, right? Like you can’t, um, there’s– It’s more like the norm is fairly boring sales pitches rather than informative discussion. Speaker 6: We used to have OMNS, when I say we, I mean the wind community used to have OMNS out in San Diego in Coronado at the Del Coronado is, I think that’s the hotel name. And the one time that I went, I think I’ve been [00:02:00] there, I would say one time, uh, everybody was outside on the, at the beach, basically on the patio. So they’re holding all these talks and discussions, and it’s… I’m looking around, it’s like me and five other people. Everybody else is out there next to the water. So they had a problem with that. So I guess what they figured, either make it really cold or make it really hot, so it forces everybody into the climate-controlled conditions of, uh, the, uh, auditorium to watch the speakers. Maybe that’s the, the plan. All right. Let’s, let’s, let’s talk about what happened with NextEra and Dominion because there’s going to be a huge merger. So if you thought utility business was boring, it’s not anymore. NextEra announced a sixty-seven billion dollar all-stock deal to acquire Dominion Energy, a move that would create the largest regulated electricity utility in the world by market cap. Uh, [00:03:00] the combined company would serve about ten million customers accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, where I’m based, and South Carolina with one hundred and ten gigawatts of generation across renewables, nuclear, and natural gas. Uh, but the real driver here is data centers, of course. Dominion sits in the heart of Virginia’s data center alley, where it has connected more than four hundred and fifty data centers, and NextEra is building thirty data center hubs through its NextEra Energy Resources subsidiary and has partnered with Google Cloud on paired generation campuses. So together, they would control about a hundred and thirty gigawatts of large load pipeline. And the question is whether the regulators will let it happen. And I think that’s, having watched some of the news articles over the last several days, uh, the news broke pretty much Sunday morning or late Saturday night that this was happening and [00:04:00] The first thing that came to mind, are the regulators going to let it happen? And the concern is going to be, and you can well imagine how this plays out, they’re going to drag Dominion and NextEra up to Washington, D.C. and berate them about how electricity rates cannot increase due to data centers. And if they don’t swear to that, then this merger won’t happen. That’s my interpretation of what’s about to happen. It may not, but how does this play out? How does everybody else on the team at Uptime see this play out? Matthew Stead: Seems ...
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    32 mins
  • EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy

    EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy
    May 28 2026
    Pete Andrews from EchoBolt joins to discuss ultrasonic bolt inspection, the Bolt Wave device, and blade stud defect detection. 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. Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here. Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah. Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00] You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world. Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe. Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then. Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators. Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on. Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems. So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces. Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well. Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on. The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts, Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely. Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people. If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor. So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving. By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly...
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    22 mins
  • Australia’s $17B Grid Expansion, Recycling Blades to Steel

    Australia’s $17B Grid Expansion, Recycling Blades to Steel
    May 25 2026
    Allen covers Suzlon hitting 2 GW in a single Indian state, Nabrawind’s crane-free turbine install in Namibia, Antora’s South Dakota thermal battery, Australia’s $17 billion grid expansion, and Shimizu recycling old turbine blades into steel. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update 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 Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! GOOD MORNING. The wind industry is not just getting bigger. It is getting smarter. And today … we have the proof. Let us start in India. SUZLON GROUP just crossed a milestone. Two gigawatts of wind orders … in a single Indian state. The latest deal … sixty-five turbines at three megawatts each for a company called SUNSURE ENERGY. SUNSURE is not a utility. It is an independent power producer building round-the-clock clean energy for data centers … electric vehicles … and heavy industry. Wind paired with solar and battery storage. Power that does not stop when the sun goes down. SUZLON is already building six hundred and sixty-four megawatts of additional commercial and industrial projects in the same region. And SUNSURE … backed by PARTNERS GROUP of Switzerland … has seven gigawatts in development across India with a target of ten gigawatts by two thousand thirty. That is not government-led. That is private capital chasing wind. Now … across the ocean to Africa. A Spanish company called NABRAWIND [NAH-brah-wind] just solved a problem that has plagued remote wind farms for years. How do you install a turbine when you cannot get a crane to the site? Their answer is a system called SKYLIFT. No heavy-lift cranes. None. A self-erecting tower combined with a blade installation tool they call the BLADERUNNER. They just put up a GOLDWIND six-megawatt turbine at a wind farm in NAMIBIA. And here is the part that changes the math. Traditional crane installation needs calm air. Six to eight meters per second. Maximum. NABRAWIND’s system works in fifteen meters per second sustained … with gusts up to twenty. That site blows hard. All the time. Which is exactly why they chose it. When complete … seven turbines … two hundred and thirty gigawatt-hours a year. About six percent of NAMIBIA’s entire electricity demand. NABRAWIND was acquired by Australia’s FORTESCUE last year as part of its industrial decarbonization push. So India is stacking private-sector wind orders. Africa is installing turbines without cranes. And in SOUTH DAKOTA … they are storing the wind itself. A California startup called ANTORA ENERGY just built a five-gigawatt-hour thermal battery at an ethanol plant in BIG STONE CITY. More than two hundred solid carbon blocks. When the wind blows at night and nobody needs the power … the blocks absorb cheap electricity and heat up. When the plant needs energy … the blocks release heat or generate electricity through special cells that capture light from superheated material. Think of it as a giant toaster oven battery. Full power expected by October. The plant’s president put it simply. Nobody has got a switch for the wind. It blows when it wants to blow. Now … down under. The AUSTRALIAN government just announced the biggest single expansion of its electricity grid. Nineteen renewable energy projects. Seven-point-eight gigawatts of generation. Seven-point-nine gigawatt-hours of battery storage. Seventeen billion dollars in private investment. Nineteen thousand construction jobs. Power for four million homes. Among the largest … RWE’s [arr-vay’s] THEODORE wind farm in QUEENSLAND. One-point-one gigawatts. Up to one hundred and seventy turbines. Three billion Australian dollars. RWE … the same company building offshore wind in England and Denmark … is now building onshore in AUSTRALIA. And the AUSTRALIAN government is not stopping. They just opened the next round of tenders. Another five gigawatts. Finally … JAPAN. Major contractor SHIMIZU [shee-MEE-zoo] CORPORATION has developed a way to recycle old wind turbine blades. Not into park benches. Not into landfill. Into steel. The blades are cut and crushed into a material that goes into electric furnaces to adjust the carbon content of steel … making it harder and stronger. JAPAN expects to replace one hundred to two hundred turbines a year by the two thousand thirties. That is two to three thousand tonnes of blade waste. Annually. SHIMIZU has built about twenty percent of the wind power facilities in JAPAN. They see this technology as a way to grow their entire wind energy business. So … let us step back. India stacks two gigawatts of private-sector wind orders. Africa installs turbines in gale-force winds … without a crane. ...
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    3 mins
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