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.



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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.



There's a lot of demand for it and some of the highlights from that article are wind turbine technicians can make about 80, 000 without a college degree but you have to be willing to travel. And there are wind turbines in 44 states at the moment and entry level roles are about 50, 000 plus overtime and travel pay.



And within about a year, it can get trained up enough to be working in the field. Now this has subsequently sent a lot of people to our Weather Guard website, because we have some information about being a wind turbine technician. So in the last 24 to 48 hours, I think I've seen 20 requests to be a wind turbine technician and where can they find some information?



And I want to highlight here while we're on the podcast Hey. Go to the job boards. Go to monster. com. Check out your local community college. Joel, you know this. That there are a lot of training programs and opportunities out there. You just need to look a little bit.



Joel Saxum: Yeah, we did look not too long ago, Allen and I,