Masdar acquires stake in Dogger Bank South wind farm, Statkraft invests in Norwegian renewables, Siemens Energy secures credit line to support wind turbine subsidiary.



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: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com.



Masdar, an Abu Dhabi based renewable energy company, has completed its acquisition of a 49 percent stake in the 3 gigawatt Dogger Bank South offshore wind project in the UK. The project, located more than 100 kilometers off the northeastern coast of England, will be one of the world's largest offshore wind farms.



Masdar and RWE signed an agreement to collaborate the 11 billion pound project at COP 28 in the UAE last December, that the two companies will work together to develop and operate the wind farm with construction potentially starting at the end of 2025. The first 800 megawatts of electricity are expected to come online in 2029 with full commissioning by the end of 2031.



Now, Phil, this is becoming more routine. where the large operators like RWE are selling off a significant portion, almost 50 percent of these projects to raise revenue for the next project. Masdar, on the other hand, seems to be becoming very aggressive in the renewable space.



Philip Totaro: Yes, and actually what was interesting is you mentioned that this was announced back at COP28.



One of the things that we never got a chance to talk about on the show before Is the fact that Masdar at that time announced something like close to a hundred billion dollars worth of investment that they were going to be making in, multiple projects in, I, I want to say something like 21 different countries including, far flung places like Uzbekistan and wherever, but this is part of a deliberate strategy on their part to start putting more money behind renewable projects because they're seeing returns that are good enough, especially on, an RWE built and operated project.



This is the sort of thing that good operators can do is they can attract capital to come in and help them, provide that mechanism to invest in new greenfield or repowering projects. So it's a great business model. And again the clever operators and the operators who have a robust and healthy portfolio projects, they are the ones that are able to attract that investment.



Joel Saxum: Yeah. Masdar, it's a good move. And in my opinion, you start to see, like we've been talking a lot of this big infrastructure, big money investing in infrastructure, specifically energy infrastructure, a lot different than some of that other Middle Eastern big money spent like Saudi Arabia, buying golf leagues, building cities and things like that in the desert.



But Masdar they are in, even in the United States onshore, they own parts of four different wind farms all of them in Texas. So they're spreading their money around, Globally.



Allen Hall: Statkraft, the Norwegian state owned energy company, plans to invest up to 6. 3 billion in Norwegian hydro and wind power projects.



The company's annual report for 2023 showed a decrease in revenue and profits compared to t...