Omterra Rebrand, Goldwind Warns on Turbine Size

Siemens Gamesa rebrands as Omterra, Goldwind questions ever-bigger turbines, and MIT revisits the century-old Betz limit. 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! 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 your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with Rosemary Barnes, who is recovering from a very serious illness, Matthew Stead, who has been healthy pretty much all the Australian winter, and Yolanda Padron in sunny, hot Austin, Texas. Welcome, Rosemary Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. I am recovering from man flu, and I say man flu because it's just a cold, but I'm complaining a lot about it.  Allen Hall: there's gonna be a new name for Siemens Gamesa. So it was Siemens and then Gamesa's a separate company. They merged. Siemens Energy, uh, broke off from Siemens AG. So [00:01:00] that's a very well-known name, Siemens. It's-- Everybody knows Siemens at this point around the world. And the, the one family had, as a company, had s- label on everything, right? So it's, uh, Werner von Siemens started it 150 years ago. It's been a long time since Siemens was started, but it's everywhere. It's on turbines, transformers, and power plants around the world, and now they're changing their name, right? So when Siemens Energy broke off from Siemens AG, they, they had a limited time they could use that name, so they have rebranding themselves or are about to rebrand themselves, and I wanna pronounce this right, Omterra. O-M-T-E-R-R-A. Now, we did a little research on this, and I think it's Latin for all of the world. It's kind of a conjoined, uh, set of words, Latin words, kind of a, a schmear in a sense. So, uh, so the company that, you [00:02:00] know, that spun off in w- roughly 2020, if I remember this right, Matthew, does that sound right? It was roughly 2020 when Siemens Energy was established on its own. Uh, they're gonna be changing their name to Omterra. So instead of seeing, seeing Siemens Gamesa publications or Siemens Gamesa wind turbines, I guess they're gonna have this new name, Omterra. What do we all think? Matthew Stead: I think it's great. I think, and if you go back to, you know, GE Vernova, um, I, I thought Vernova was a bit weird for a while, but now it just rolls off the tongue and easy. It just makes so much sense. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm for it. I, I like it. I've already... You know, can already say it. It took a lot longer to say Vernova than it's taking to say Terra.  Rosemary Barnes: I think that it-- But it's not Vernova, it's GE Vernova, right? So everyone knows what it is. Whereas my understanding is it's not Siemens Omtera, it's just Omtera, which makes it sound like a new budget kind of [00:03:00] brandless, history-less, uh, company. So that's... Yeah, I'm no  branding expert, but I think that, uh, like they, they must have not been able to use the word Siemens at all, um, because otherwise you surely would, because it has a very... Outside of, you know, their blade issues and bearing issues of a couple of years ago, they do have a, like a solid engineering reputation across many fields, so you wouldn't probably intentionally divorce yourself entirely from that. So, um, yeah, I, I think it will take some getting used to for me Matthew Stead: but everyone remembers. I mean, it's not like-- The people in the wind industry know their heritage, they know their history, so I don't think it matters. I mean, you know, you know, they, they purchase the Senvion, you know, technologies or, you know, licenses in Europe. You know, y- y- you don't forget these things, so I don't think it matters. I think it's just a, it's a color, it's a, it's a label Yolanda Padron: I think it'll be fine. I just think that there will be a little [00:04:00] bit of confusion down the line as with everything, right? Like I've, I've been on the side of conversations where I have to explain like Siemens versus like SGRE on paper and it's like, oh, it's-- this is why th- there was that paper trail, uh, because people would think it was an absolutely different thing. Um, so I, I can totally see those conversations coming, coming to play in the future where someone thinks that Ontier is a completely different entity that maybe they changed OEMs or something, um, for a site. But nothing a little history lesson won't fix, I guess. Matthew Stead: You just want people talking about you Rosemary Barnes: Name change every year  Allen Hall: Change your name every year. Well, that's, that's one way to approach it. I w- always wonder what the boardroom looks like and sounds like when this discussion is going on, because Siemens, Siemens Energy is a big company, and there had to be outsourcing of this to probably several marketing firms, mostly [00:05:00] in Germany, I'm guessing. And they came back with a bunch of pitches, and eventually they picked one. But boardrooms are probably not the place to pick a name. And I always think like, "Oh, you just had such a opportunity to do something really cool or really impressive." Allen Hall: Well, we'll see how it goes with Omterra. The, it's gonna be, I'm sure, a huge marketing effort, and you'll probably see commercials for it during the Super Bowl. Developers are [00:06:00] eyeing Britain's next big renewables auction and have been waiting to learn the rules and most importantly, the price. Well, this week the UK government delivered both. It confirmed a package of changes to the CFD scheme ahead of allocation round eight, aimed at simplifying the process and keeping good projects from being tripped up by some paperwork. So AR7 was super successful, and they're hopefully gonna have a, a great allocation round eight. Uh, unchanged from last round, here are some pieces to it. AR7 brought in 15 gigawatts of, of new capacity, uh, well below the ceilings, and the government is betting that that's stability from AR7's gonna exist for AR8, so they're keeping the pricing limits the same. And let me give you some of the numbers here. So everything's in 2024 prices, just so we have a baseline here. It, 113 pounds per megawatt hour [00:07:00] for fixed bottom offshore wind, 271 pounds for floating offshore wind. That's, uh, pounds per megawatt. And then 92 pounds per megawatt for onshore wind, and s- 75 pounds per megawatt for solar. So 271 pounds per megawatt hour in 2044 dollars is, you know, you're probably talking, what, 290 pounds per megawatt hour. That's a really good strike price or ceiling to allow, uh, some more floating wind into the UK waters Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, the UK have this newly signed agreement with Japan, right, to, to progress development of that technology. I feel like I, I haven't looked up any numbers to back this up, but I feel like the gap between fixed bottom and floating is narrowing. It's barely more than double now, which, um, yeah, I think is not that bad considering how little development there has been for floating offshore wind compared to fixed bottom. So [00:08:00] yeah, I think that it is an interesting technology to develop. I, I know with the, um, auction rounds and 'cause it's a government thing, it's easy to think, "Oh, why are you spending any money on anything other than the cheapest one?" Because y- you know, like, it, it feels weird that the government would play, you know, when they're purchasing power for their grid, that they would do any more than trying to just get, you know, bulk power at the cheapest price possible whilst ensuring, you know, reliability. Um, but in the previous or the previous, the one-- last one or the one before that, they had quite a few tidal projects announced that certainly, you know, an expensive and not mature technology. But I think that you can't say the same thing about floating offshore wind. I think that it is on a, like a good, a good development trajectory, and there are certainly places on Earth where floating offshore is one of the most appealing technologies. You know, if you think of through to 2030s, 2040s, there's plenty of places where, um, you know, slightly higher [00:09:00] price paid for floating offshore wind will still be worth it because they have so few other options available. So it makes sense as an industry to in- invest in capabilities there.  Matthew Stead: think it's a really interesting method. It seems to be really successful, the contract for di-difference approach. So, um, I'm, I'm surprised that it's not adopted more widely, um, in other locations,  Rosemary Barnes: it is around a bit. I would like to see it, like, in, in Australia, we are, we are developing some new wind projects, but not as fast as we need to, to, you know, hit our upcoming targets. And I think, like, while the government is doing some things to help move or help incentivize developers, it's not working that well, and maybe CFD would be a, you know, a bit of a better way to, like, just actually guarantee that these projects are gonna go ahead. ​ Allen Hall: Australia has a shipping problem. there's been a concern at state-owned transport hubs are becoming less supportive of [00:10:00] wind energy projects with ACEN Renewables saying that they will now have to truck a large transformer from a wind project or for a wind project in northern New South Wales from the Port of Adelaide. That's not necessarily close. And h- they also said that the Port of Brisbane has