Vestas Stops at 15MW, Lightning and Lasers, Wind Turbine Collapses Push Insurers

Why stop at 15MW when you can make 18MW turbines? That's a good question to ask Vestas. In the 150th Uptime podcast (wow!), Allen, Joel and Rosemary discuss the CEO's surprising announcement and the market demands, risks, and potentially sneaky corporate strategy behind the scenes. Also in this show, we consider how those 115M blades will hold up at RWE's Thor wind farm, which will be Denmark's largest offshore development. And on Mt. Santis, researchers have shown that "massive" lasers can protect wind turbines from lightning. Is it scalable, and if so, does it make sense? Meanwhile, in Oklahoma and Colorado, two turbines toppled and the internet raced for the best headline - but we want to know how OEMs, insurers, and asset owners will respond. Can they work together to keep wind energy moving forward? Finally, don't miss a special bonus episode highlighting some surprises places to find US Wind Technicians. Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com Wind Power Lab - https://windpowerlab.com Weather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.com Intelstor - https://www.intelstor.com PES Wind Article - https://pes.eu.com/exclusive-article/driven-by-data-2/ 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!  Uptime 150 Allen Hall: We have a special double bonus episode this week. So now you're gonna get this great episode, your weekly episode. We have a a, a bonus coming behind this, so it's a super great week for uptime. We're gonna talk about R W B E, selecting Siemens sch MEA for the Thor Wind Farm. Now isn't that the coolest name for a wind farm? Thor. Now, why does America have some cool offshore wind turbine names? Rosemary  Rosemary Barnes: and then we're gonna talk about ve who are claiming that they're going to stop at 15 megawatts for their offshore wind turbine, whilst at the same time Ming Yang is already pushing out to 18 megawatts.  Joel Saxum: So in, in Switzerland we're gonna visit some of later laser-guided lightning. We've seen this floater on LinkedIn quite a bit where they're firing lasers to, to get lightning to track down the laser.