Nordex Outsells Vestas, GE Vernova Rebuilds Wind Team

0:00The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by Streck Tape, protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit Streck Tape.com and now your hosts. Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host Alan Hall. I'm here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead and you'll Laundah Pedrone. And it is another crazy week and wind energy. We should start off with G. E. Vernova because if you've been following your LinkedIn pages, you will see a number of new faces and even a couple of press releases. And if you do follow wind closely, you know that G. E. Vernova has been a little bit of a tailspin and that won't go on very long before they will try to write that ship. Well, here we go. G. E. Vernova is grabbing a bunch of talent, Claire McDonough, the chief financial officer who took Rivian, the truck maker, through its IPO recently and led its cost cutting push

1:06is leading an electric vehicle maker to become the CFO of G. E. Vernova. So not just wind, the whole kit and caboodle gas turbines and all the transformer businesses. And she'll start at the beginning of 2027. She replaces the retiring Ken Parks. And it sounds like Ken is going to stay on and help Scott Strazik as an advisor, which I'm sure he appreciates. But Claire is not the only new face there. Christie Hopkins, who spent more than 26 years at Seam's Energy and Seam's Gamesa has joined as executive director for Wind North America and New Units leading sales across US, Canada and Mexico. And then Geo Shadone, who has been in the podcast many times with 3S left, is leaving 3S left. That's a big hit. I'm sure. And he's coming back to GE where he started at many, many years ago as a technician and built the wind farm up side my front door when I lived in Massachusetts. He'll come back as global head of commercial services and a number of other repowers and

2:09a number of other things. So basically between Christie and Geo, it sounds like they're going to cover the planet for wind energy. This is a big change, everybody. Our concern was was GE going to shut down the wind division. Yalada, it looks like they're keeping it and reinforcing it with some really strong candidates. If they can hopefully get everything together and get at least the wind side back to where it once was or close to it, it could be a really good when for their operations sites. Their operational sites who currently don't really know what the forecast is going to be for their sites in 5, 10 years if GE just goes down. I was actually watching, there's this new creator, I don't know who they are, but some creator I've been watching Instagram reels from where they go through just, you know, like historical things but mostly related to business or government. One of the ones that he was talking about that I thought was interesting was about when

3:14engineering companies get a non-technical CEO in for the first time, like an MBA type and what they typically do. And I think the GE is usually like the just shining example of how to run businesses in that way. But the typical patent is, and he had some examples which I can't recall. So yeah, sorry, my anecdote will be fact free, but trust me, there are some data behind it. But it got the example of you. So the, you know, like a traditional engineering company like Boeing might be an example and GE even over would be another one. They build up their strength and dominance by investing a lot in R&D and all of the technical staff really care about the company and are all contributing to, you know, making sure that they continue to dominate technologically. And then if you get an MBA type manager in, the typical patent goes that they fire a bunch

4:14of people that were working in R&D. Like reduce the R&D spend massively, reduce the wages of all the technical people, technical people start to have less to say in how the company is managed. And in the short term, they get spectacular results from that, right? You know, profits go massively up if you stop investing in R&D for a few years. R&D takes quite a while to pay off. So you're not going to notice the pain. You're going to see the financial benefit immediately and not notice the pain for ages. And you know, without going into to, in depth analysis about the wind energy companies that are around today, I think if you look at the companies that are going well, you see that they are companies that continue to prioritize research and development and continue to prioritize the opinions of the technical people working for them. And I personally think that GE is maybe gone just a little bit too long with the MBA type way of running a company.

5:15And that, yeah, like that's really great for a little while, but it's not a long-term strategy. And I don't know how you pull back from it. I haven't seen any turnaround stories like that, but yeah, just some food for thought that that might be part of the reason why they're struggling. But I would say that because I'm an engineer and yeah, engineers hate to be managed by non-technical people. I'm going to get GEO's title right because he is responsible for a lot of GE over on the wind side. It will be global head of commercial services and repower GE over. So global repower, that's a huge area in services as we know is one of the profitable areas within GE over wind, very important position. And he's an engineer. That's good. I think that's the comeback, the comeback game. It definitely could be. Well the numbers ran for the first half of 2026 and Europe is having the best wind year ever. When Europe reported 8.8 gigawatts of new capacity installed in the first six months, up 30%

6:20from the same period last year. Jeremy alone put up more than 500 turbines. That's quite a few. But behind those numbers, there's another story that is unfolding, which is Nordex, the German turbine maker, is closing in on Vestus, the Danish wind turbine maker, in the onshore market. In August, Nordex booked more than twice the megawatts that Vestus did a Donsk bank. Analysts as Nordex has been quicker on its feet, picking up market share that left behind by Seams Gamasa and GE Vernova. Although Vestus is still way out in front in terms of total gigawatts that they're going to produce. This is an interesting shift, right? I mean, we've been looking at seeing this last year or so, where Nordex is picking up clients that were formerly GE Vernova or even like massively dedicated to GE Vernova or Seams Gamasa. It does seem like there's an opening there.

7:21So far, at least people we've talked to from the Weather Guard side will really like Nordex. They like the response to problems and questions and things that they hadn't seen out of other suppliers. Was this unexpected or is this sort of a natural outgrowth of where Nordex is headed? Is this one year of trend or has it been growing for a few? I think it's been growing for a couple. Isn't it one month? Yeah. One month? It's one month, but if you beat Vestus at all and you're Nordex, if you look think about four or five years ago and I've said Nordex had outsold Vestus and maybe it had happened, but it would just seem implausible. No, I mean, if it's several years then fair enough as a turn. I just say that because most of this capacity is offshore, right? And offshore projects are so lumpy. When you make a sale, you make a gigawatt sale.

8:22And so I think it's pretty hard to take a single year or even within a couple of years it could still be the same project. So that's one point. And then the other point is when you look at the breakdown of, what did you say, Europe put in 8.8 gigawatts and 3.4 over that was in Germany. I think European countries do tend to be a little bit protective of their own companies. So I mean, it's natural for everyone. It has some sort of preference, whether it's explicit encouragement or support or whether it's just like a warm fuzzy feeling that you have for a company that's from your country. I think that that possibly has nothing to do with it. So yeah, if I was Nordex, I would say this as encouraging and probably not just consider it a slam dunk from here, but something to grow on. I know traditionally German companies have had some trouble succeeding as much outside of Germany as within that. I think this is a good example of the last discussion we had about GE.

9:24I mean, you know, Nordex, Vestas, Simons, Gamaser are investing in their development, investing in their technology, improving the quality, Nordex in particular, in contrast to GE. So I think it's quite a bit of an example of what's going on. And don't think that Geoschaudown didn't notice from all his years at 3S, left watches go on because he had his feet on the ground, particularly United States, watching all the action in terms of sales for winterbinds. So this is going to be a competitive battle, maybe not in Germany too much in Rosemary. I think you're right. The Nordex is going to win a lot of the contracts in Germany and rightly so. But the rest of the world is going to be a competitive playground, at least for a little while. I do think that the competition we had in the wind industry in the 20 teens was an unhealthy kind of competition. It was purely price-based and it's got to be a combination of price and technology, so reliability and productivity.

10:25And I do think that it was nearly exclusively just price, price, price, price, price, with, you know, like when those reverse auctions came in and I think I personally think that we pushed the price below what the real price was of wind energy. If you look at the curve, you know, steep price reductions, it doesn't really follow the kind of like gentle, gentle even curve that you see in other technologies. I think it's a bit artificially accelerated through the 20 teens and then, yeah, when inflation hit and you couldn't rely on, yeah, price reductions and cheap capital to, you know, help you make money on projects then we saw costats arise, especially in Australia, you know, like the cost of wind energy has increased a lot here recently. So yeah, I do think that competition is good, but I do hope that it's going to be more based around the good technology these days. That is indicator though for Nordex, right, is that we've lined up, we're hearing that

11:26people love Nordex even when they've had problems, at least they're active on trying to do something about it. Yeah, I agree, especially in the lately, it seems like there are a lot more open to hearing from their customers than they were in the past. I think that they did have a little bit of a cultural hurdle when they started picking up on a lot of the contracts compared to investors who was a lot more established in the United States. But yeah, I completely, completely agree with Rosie sentiments that competition could be really good. If it's done right, hopefully. We've learned enough as an industry to make sure that we're still double checking and double inspecting and doing everything that we need to do to make sure a site is properly maintained from the beginning instead of 10 years in. Well, the big news out of the UK is that BladeBug has been required by Nexus, which is a Perth Australia company, a kind of robotics company based in Perth.

12:31If you're not familiar with BladeBug, Chris Chaslack, Stacey Rivers and the gang have been developing that little steppy crawler. Looks like a bug, that's why it's called BladeBug. It's now doing IndyT and they've been using that tool to do some IndyT on blades. If I remember correctly, you were doing some down in offshore in France and then they had some work or potential work with a large OEM that needed some IndyT done. But now they're going to be working with Nexus, which I don't know a lot about, but the Australians on the show at least do. I believe that they have similar robot solutions that work in mining industry and that sort of thing that can autonomously do inspections and feed data back. So in that sense, it's pretty similar. However, the IndyT of wind turbine blades is not just like a device kind of, like it's

13:36an solution that a device alone will solve. There's just incredibly specific knowledge that's needed about composite materials, but not just about composite materials about specifically the ultrasound and how to interpret the results. An engineer needs to be involved looking at the data at least in real time for the first few blades that they would look at. If they have a whole fleet wide campaign, they might not need in real time an engineer to be there, but someone would have to review it later on. So it's not, my understanding is it is not close to being taken care of by AI. This particular thing, it's still very laborious by very technically experience. Like specific technical expertise is needed for it. That doesn't exist everywhere. Like I don't believe that there is an Australian with the specific knowledge that you would need to interpret the data, for example.

14:37So it's a team of engineers sitting in Denmark. Not that you can't develop the capability, but it's not a matter of taking someone off the street in a week later there interpreting this. You take an engineer who also has composite experience and then teach them the ultrasound on top of it or something like that. Nexus already had these robots and remote inspection capability. It would have been hard for them to just start doing that on winter buying blades because the composite's specific knowledge is the hard part. So in that sense, it does make sense that if that's an industry they wanted to get into that they would pair up with Bladebug who, you know, that's what they do. Well, Matthew, do you think they're taking the Bladebug technology and applying it to different industries, which would make sense to me? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, it makes complete sense developing hardware is hard and to have a bit more support and experience and that sounds perfect. And I'm not going to go anywhere near the actual NDT tech.

15:39Rosie, I'll leave that one with you. But the actual robotics and developing the hardware, it should be applicable to multiple industries like mining, wind, oil gas. There's a whole range of composites, which where this sort of tech is helpful. So, yeah, I think it's a wonderful thing and shout out to Chris and Stacey and they really should join us at MoMA 2027. Really, shouldn't they? I mean, now that they're a Australian company, they should really come out to Australia. Yeah, or at least someone from Nexus can. Yes, because Chris and Stacey are still going to be based in the UK, right? Yeah. So we'll get Chris and Stacey out to Australia. They can tell us all about Bladebug at MoMA 2027. 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 Strike Tape Lightning Deverter protects over 20,000 blades worldwide.

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17:48Well, when different blades have an end to life problem and we've discussed that on the podcast for the last couple of years, recycling can be problematic. Obviously, what do you do? Grind them up maybe, you bury them, but there's a lot of options. But the people at VW Blade technology think it's better to make the blades out of wood, so you don't have that problem at the end of life. And VW has made 63-foot blades from laminated veneer lumber using Nordic Spruce and computer-controlled milling. The idea is not really new. Of course, in the 1980s NASA worked with Michigan boatbuilders, the Guggen brothers on wood composite blades and those held up through like 8,000 hours of testing. So we know that wood works. It's a pretty effective natural material. But is it the right choice for winter blades, Rosemary?

18:49First of all, want to start by challenging your framing that winter-bind blades have an end of life problem. It's not true anymore than anything that we make has an end of life problem. I think I've come up with a bit of framing because I have to come. Go ahead. For a while, I was sounding like quite anti-recycling and I don't think that's quite right. You did. You said we should bury them. That's what you said. But I think the right way to look at it is not, you know, like what do we do with winter-bind blades at the end of life? The right thing to do is to say, okay, do we have a problem with too much landfill? Is this a problem that as a society we need to tackle? In that case, let's solve that. And do we start with something that makes up a fraction of a percent of landfill mass and doesn't contain anything toxic in it? Or do we start with some of the, you know, some of the more significant contributors to landfill? So that I think is a better, I want to talk about every time we have to talk about winter-bind blade end of life. I want to reframe that to be what do we do about landfill in general.

19:50There is a mine or a quarry in Australia that is being rehabilitated with landfill going into the mine to fill it. And the, so it's industrial companies that are sending their, their waste to this facility and paying a premium to do it in this ecological way, you know, like better environmental outputs because it's rehabilitating a mindset, right? Losing in a hole and then presumably they'll put dirt and grass over the top of it. However, the liner is leaking and like they are at leak-chate, you know, the rainwater goes through all the garbage we call it bin juice in Australia. The bin juice leaks into the water system and you know, actually is getting into drinking water in some cases. So I would suggest you know, like that's not a great environmental outcome, obviously. But if they would fill that with winter-bind blades instead, they are very inert. If the liner leaks and you've just filled your quarry with winter-bind blade waste, well then no real issue.

20:51You're not going to have any water quality problems as a result. So it's funny to me because if you did fill a quarry with winter-bind blade waste, there would be massive outrage of the photos of it, would be all over the news and people would be just like so upset about it. But when it's another kind of waste, that's like an environmental, environmentally sustainable like warm and fuzzy green thing to do. So I just think that, yeah, there's this huge, huge contrast. That's the end of my rant. I'll pass over to somebody else to talk about the actual question that Alan asked. Actually, a few of, when we were in Melbourne researching the WOMA conference and agenda items, actually this topic came up a few times. So while I completely hear what you're saying, Rosie, but there is still interest in the industry for doing better. And so there is the desire for knowledge exchange on this topic. So I think you're right, Rosie, but at the same time, we can also do better.

21:53It's the problem that they're looking to solve the repowering situation where you can't get a bleed because it's 20, 25 years old. And knowing that the EU has provided Vlidon Blade technologies about 50 million euros to build a factory down in Spain, and we know Spain is going to go through that repowering process over the next 10-ish years. You think there's a possibility that they're just going to produce, quote unquote, new blades for existing turbines, whether we're not going to start over, like we have done historically in the States. Does that make the more viable project? Why not? And also you know, some of the other technologies like fabric, fabric, come, supported, and other other technologies. Why not? Why not? It would make sense. So just because you can't get blades that are 20, 25 years old, the molds are gone, the

22:53people are gone, the factories are gone. And if you just need a replacement blade, it does seem like you could wood a one out of wood and get it up and running. Maybe Yelena can add something here because if you've got a 25-year-old wind farm, how much are you really willing to spend on replacing all the blades across the sheet? Oh, no. These blades are cheap though. Well, I know financially, even if you're going, I've seen sites in Europe, they try to make it last just close to the 50-year lease that they can. Right, so they'll replace what they need to just to make sure that they can at least get some money out of it. But it's... That's not a question. Yeah, we almost go back into that. I know we talk about it a lot, but just that we changed so many things and now we want to get this new thing to work and then before fixing all the other problems. I feel like it's just going to bring so many more issues. There's a really interesting engineering with Rosie video too.

23:54I think that people should pull up about what is this thing? Engineering with Rosie? It's really great. It's down in YouTube. It's a really great YouTube channel. I enjoy it a lot. It's a 10 out of 10 actually in our household before I met Rosie, I would listen to the engineering with Rosie and so I said something the other day and I was like Rosie blah blah blah and my husband Manuel goes, engineering with Rosie? I was like, yeah. Oh no. So great. Great. Great. I don't think anybody wants to check out that video. Oh, that's kind of your under. My latest video is on winter by Blade Repair, which I thought was going to be very niche, and it's been my most popular first day of a release ever. Yeah, but you're in front of the door. I'm direct wind services. He's interviewed in the video and he mentioned some of the real repairs that they've worked on and sometimes they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a Blade Repair because

24:57that's cheaper than getting another Blade in that end of life. So I think that if you can make one-offs, then I think that your price point can be quite high for a new Blade at the end of life. But I don't think that if you extend that across a whole wind farm, I find it hard to believe that someone with a 25-year-old wind farm is going to want to buy all new Blades for their whole fleet. So I think that would really, like this success of this product is probably going to rely more on how flexible they are, what's their minimum order quantity. I think that that will help them. There's an easy niche for them to feel if they can just make a few one-offs. And that you're able to just swap in. Well, last week, actually two weeks ago when you're hearing this podcast, I was wandering around the house after returning back from Melbourne, Australia, where I hung out with Matthew and Rosemary for a couple of days for a woman of 2027. And I had sudden chest pain.

25:58And it was like nothing else. You should clarify, it was at the house. And I said, it's time to go to the hospital. Turns out I was having a heart attack. I'm 58 and pretty good shape. See doctors regularly have things monitored the whole bit. And on the ambulance ride over, it's kind of a shock. They're like, hey, we really have an heart attack here. Now I live in a place where we're maybe a couple of miles from a heart hospital. So I was one of the fortunate ones because we rolled up into the heart hospital. The ambulance workers handed me straight to the heart surgeon and they put a catheter in me. Look at these splits. So when the time that I started feeling chest pains to the time that catheter was installed in my heart was about an hour, which is in terms of heart health, great. So I was one of the fortunate ones. Now heart failure and heart attacks happen to a lot of people.

27:04If you have heart problems, get to the hospital. Do not play with them. As getting older male, it's pretty conclusive that if you have chest pains, something is seriously wrong and you need it not to lay it. You need to get on the horn, get off the emergency services, get to the hospital and get that taken care of. If you're an older woman like Rosemary is, the pains are a little bit different. You tend to be like you're feeling like you're having the flu or not feeling well and a lot of women die from heart attacks because they just don't have that immense chest pain that meant to have. So Rosie, keep that in mind as you get older. So I am fine. I am under the good care of doctors. I'm actually wearing a little device that monitors my heart 24-7 and will shock me back to life if I decide to pass out. So that's fun as an electrical engineer and get a play around with high voltage capacitors

28:08attached to my body. But it's not fun if you can avoid it. So just know I will not be at Hamburg and I'm telling people I won't be at Win Energy Hamburg, which is a real disappointment because I was looking forward to that. A couple of people from Weathergarve will be there, Nikki and Rachel will be going and Rosemary will be there and Matthew will be there. So it'll be a full crew of representatives there. So I'll miss everybody in Hamburg. But I just want everybody to know that you're hearing a lot of stuff and I'm fine. In the doctor's saying I'm going to have a very long extended life now to the much to much of my, should grant of my wife. But hey, that's the way it goes. So that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Win Energy Podcast. If today's discussion sparked any questions or ideas we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn. If you do not subscribe to the show, please subscribe so you'd never miss an episode. For Rosie, Matthew and Yolanda, I'm Alan Hall. And we'll see you here next week on The Uptime Win Energy Podcast.