Technician-Base growth, Giant Vestas Turbine, In-tower data centers

An article about the benefits of being a wind technician is bringing attention to the industry! After some advice for getting into the industry, we discuss Vestas getting the green light on their GIANT new offshore turbine - the V236-15MW. Phil gives us the scoop on plans for the Port of Long Beach to drop nearly $5 billion on offshore wind real estate in California. Joel highlights an article in PES Wind about engineering firm Bardex bringing offshore oil and gas expertise to wind. And the team agrees that putting data centers inside wind turbine towers is an amazing idea. 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: It looks like McDonald's is going to connect up with Google to use AI in their restaurants to make the French fries hotter, and to make the ordering a lot easier. I don't know if you've been into McDonald's in the United States in the last couple of years, but you walk in. And there's almost no humans there, and they got these big touchscreen boards, and they are the most counterintuitive machines in the world. I would like to have a soda. I gotta press press. They make it really difficult. So evidently they're gonna put AI to use with Google to make that better. Pretty soon it'll be in Australia. Joel Saxum: It's not Mac It's not McDonald's there though, Allen. It's Macca's. Allen Hall: Is that what it is? Really? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it's roughly right. Maccas. Allen Hall: Of all the things we've seen AI being used for, I swear every day there's a new whiz bang thing that's going to save the world. But none of them seem really action oriented and touchable, right? You can, you're gonna see something from AI. Philip Totaro: Allen, I'm surprised it's not hydrogen powered. Joel Saxum: Hydrogen powered French fryers. Allen Hall: Maybe Google will put their servers in the bases of wind turbines to make everybody happy. How about that? There's a new article by Bloomberg News talking about wind turbine technicians, and that has generated a lot of noise on LinkedIn, on the web also. And the data in that article goes like this wind turbine technicians are projected to grow about 45%, not the technicians themselves, but the employment opportunities and it's faster than a lot of other occupations, obviously, because there's so much energy going into creating wind turbines across the United States onshore and offshore.