Vestas’ Reality Check: Will States Heed “This is Not a Wind Farm”?

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

We discuss the new document from Vestas titled "This is Not a Wind Farm", which criticizes the U.S. approach to offshore wind development and proposes solutions. Allen, Joel and Phil analyze Vestas' suggestions and debate whether states will implement any of the proposed changes. 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall. I'm here with Joel Saxum and Phil Totaro, and we are discussing the new document from Vestas called This is Not a Wind Farm. And if you've gone to Vestas website and looked at the U. S. offshore wind tab, you can find this document. And you may want to follow along during this podcast because we want to dive into the details here. And remember that Vestas released this document during IPF. Basically the offshore wind energy symposium conference that happens in the United States this year down in New Orleans. And we felt like this document summarized some of the things that we have been feeling and seeing, but this is as proposed solutions. Now we may not agree on all those proposed solutions as we're going to discuss. But, at least they're putting out, they're putting their stake in the ground. They're saying these are the things that need to be done to move the U. S. into offshore wind quickly. Let me give a little bit of background here, and I'll list the items that Vestas has a problem with, or where the issues are. The key problem areas are, and remember that there's almost up to 50 gigawatts of offshore leases that are going to be proposed in the next couple of years. So in, from Vestas point of view, there's a lot of real estate for, and for turbines to be put into the water. So this is the perfect time to get these US projects moving. Now they list four to five. I broke them into five. Problem areas, and I want to go through the real quickly here. Number one, offshore bidders proposing projects are based on immature technology. So what Vestas is saying is that the turbines that are still on paper are being proposed for projects. Two there's a lack of focus on the supply chain readiness to ensure the timely project delivery. And generally what Vestas is talking about here is that if they choose a 20 megawatt turbine, all the supply chain has to be able to deliver a 20 megawatt turbine versus a 15 megawatt turbine in their case. State and local content mandates are leading to recent project cancellations along the East Coast. Four, long lead times between offtake awards and project execution. Is leading to speculative bidding behavior, which increases cost uncertainty in the supply chain. And number five, as I've outlined it, there's limited or no indexation adjustments within PPA. So once you lock in a PPA, you're stuck with it forever, regardless of interest rates, so there's no interest rate adjustment if interest rates goes up or down for that matter now. All right, guys. So here we go. This is where I think it's going to get a little contentious. There are four Vestas solutions here. Number one, prioritize the award of off take contracts to bidders that have selected turbine technology that is mature, tested, and commercially available to ensure on time project delivery and industry scalability. Now, Phil, this is oriented towards turbines that do not have type certification yet. I assume we would have been talking about the GE 18 megawatt,