China Barred Vestas Software, Ørsted Buys Chinese Monopiles

Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen says China barred Vestas from monitoring its own turbines. Plus Ørsted takes heat for Chinese monopiles, India’s blade design gap, and tents that beat weather delays. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s "Engineering with Rosie" Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 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 Allen Hall, here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron, and we're getting ready for WOMA 2027. WOMA in Australia will be in its third year, and we're going to be at the Pullman East Melbourne. It's the same location, but the name of the hotel has changed. We'll be there March 3rd through the 5th. We've heard from a number of OEMs, which is really great, but there's one in particular that hasn't registered yet, which is GE Vernova. We thought they'd be first in line. That was my bet, that GE Vernova would have been signed up and ready to go. But there's a latecomer to this party. Rosemary, how do we get GE Vernova to show up to WOMA?Rosemary Barnes: I don't know. I don't have so many links to the company as I used to, and I don't always have the best luck getting in touch with my old colleagues. I guess they're busy, because there's not so many of them left there now. We have so, so many turbines here, and our asset managers are really engaged on all of the technical issues. They really want to understand what technologies are available, both for new projects that are coming up and for operations. The operations teams are getting involved more and more in purchasing decisions. Their opinions are being asked for. The Australian wind industry is a lot different than it was five years ago. People didn't know so much, and I think they relied on the OEMs' word for what we need in Australia and what's available. Whereas now, asset owners know what we need and what kind of problems we have, and they're really looking for technical information about solutions. The companies that are at the event to provide that information are the ones people are going to feel positively about. So I would recommend getting there to everybody, not just GE, but all OEMs from any part of the world. Not just Western ones, but Chinese ones too would be really great to see.Allen Hall: And Matthew, if GE Vernova wanted to register for WOMA 2027, what would they do?Matthew Stead: They would very easily go to WOMA2027.com and register. It's that easy. That's all they have to do.Allen Hall: And we'll stop talking about it.Matthew Stead: On the agenda, there is a specific session that OEMs are attending, and the intention is that the OEMs can have a good, open discussion about what's going on in OEM land and get familiar with the audience. Then they can get questions answered right there on the floor, which is really, really important for the customers. Most all the operators in Australia and the surrounding areas will be at WOMA 2027, so it's a good opportunity to talk to your customer base.Allen Hall: That's why we're recommending all the OEMs show up this year. Hopefully GE Vernova does it.Vestas CEO on China and EuropeAllen Hall: And speaking of OEMs, Vestas is in a bit of a unique spot, because the CEO of Vestas, Henrik Andersen, had an article in Fortune magazine. And I thought, that's unusual. Why is he in Fortune magazine? Well, it's a little bit of a life story, growing up as a kid and dreaming of wind turbines. I guess that's a thing in Denmark. But he says that Europe must shed its naivety. Rosemary, five years ago, Chinese authorities barred Vestas from monitoring or running its own software on turbines in China. And now Andersen is asking why Chinese software and turbines should be welcome on Europe's grid. That's a really great question. Well, I have heard it, but I haven't seen it written down anywhere that Vestas got cut off from its own turbines. This was a couple of years ago, when China passed a number of laws about data security and was not going to let a lot of data out of China. At the same time, they put security measures in place where Chinese companies operating outside of China would have to store the data in China. This obviously creates a unique condition for companies like Vestas or Siemens Gamesa, where they're trying to sell components into China, but they can't operate them. And now China wants to come into Europe and do the reverse. Is it hypocrisy? Is it a security threat? What are we thinking, and how should the Europeans really approach this problem?Rosemary Barnes: I think it's interesting timing to announce it now. Well, it's not really interesting, it's obvious why it would be announced now, because obviously Vestas benefits if Europe decides not to allow any Chinese manufacturer data to leave the country, or to be used in the first place, like they've done, I think, with inverters and some other equipment. So that's kind of obvious. I'm assuming it's true, and I would imagine that it is, because it's a bit risky to publish something like that if it's a lie. But I think the more interesting question is, why haven't they said it for the last five years, if this has been going on that long? The only likely explanation I can think of is that five years ago, they didn't want to risk their relationship with China. They were still planning on selling a bunch of turbines within China. And by now, they realize that's totally hopeless, so they don't care about the Chinese market anymore. It doesn't matter if they piss off China. They're going after the rest of the world. So it makes sense from that point of view. But it is a big secret to have kept for five years, kept out of print, as far as I'm aware. I don't know if I'd heard that that was the case, but I've certainly had conversations with people like, do you really think China allows the reverse of this situation? So I think people assumed it was the case. Maybe there were some people that knew. But it's not been publicized in print the way that it has now.Ørsted and Chinese MonopilesAllen Hall: And Yolanda, Ørsted's getting caught in the crossfire here, because Ørsted is buying some monopiles and cables from China. The CEO of Ørsted is getting caught between the unions and the groups that are proponents of European employment, saying, hey, if we don't want Chinese turbines, why are you buying Chinese components? I think the answer has been that it's less expensive, but the Ørsted CEO is getting a lot of flak about that, at least in the press. Is that just a trade-off, like it's just cheaper to buy the components and we want to have some relations with China, which Ørsted probably does, and it's just trying to smooth everything out? Or is this going to turn into something much larger, which it does feel like is happening at the moment?Yolanda Padron: I think Ørsted's in a strange position, but it's important to remember that yes, Ørsted does obviously have Danish roots, but it's a global company. They have their assets and a lot of customers almost everywhere, and a lot of employees that they need to pay. So they need to make some money. They can't just have everything be 100% Danish if that's not going to be the most cost-effective or the most efficient solution for any components they're buying.Matthew Stead: I was just going to add that I was looking at the Chinese market in terms of monitoring wind turbines, and it was basically too hard, because our business model is to send data to the cloud, and we were not allowed to send any data out of China back to our system. We would have had to completely re-engineer everything. That was about three years ago. So I can absolutely confirm that it's very difficult to get data out of China.Allen Hall: Well, China's reach extends to a lot of places, including India. Next, a Gurit executive says Indian blade makers lean on Chinese designs, maybe a little bit too much. We'll be back in a moment.Allen Hall: Are you overspending on lightning repairs? Most operators are, because solving lightning damage is complicated. Weather Guard Lightning Tech helps operators reduce lightning damage. Our innovative StrikeTape lightning diverter protects over 20,000 blades worldwide. Now, StrikeTape Ultra installs faster than ever. StrikeTape Ultra cures up tower in just 15 minutes, even in cold weather. Visit WeatherGuardWind.com to schedule a call.India's Blade IndustryAllen Hall: Longer blades are bringing new problems, and Jesper Sloth of materials supplier Gurit says India is behind on many of the fixes. This is a pretty extensive article with Jesper giving his thoughts on what's happening in India. He's saying many Indian blades still use glass spar caps and simple lightning protection systems, and not much in terms of leading edge protection. A lot of those designs are originating from China, and Sloth is saying those designs are typically a few generations behind, which makes local improvements in Indian materials hard to qualify, and makes it hard to get blades designed to European or American standards. It may take a little while for India to stand up a truly scaled, advanced wind turbine industry. This is a little controversial, because I know India is very proud of what they've done so far, and honestly, they're way ahead of a lot of other countries in the wind business. But there are places where I think everybody around the world could use some cross-pollination on what's happening in another part of the world to advance their wind turbines. I wouldn't say India is unique in that. Would you, Matthew?Matthew Stead: Yeah, I was just wondering whether the Indian turbines hav