Joel and Allen discuss their Texas and Oklahoma wind farm tour, finding tight budgets and lack of technicians are causing operators major struggles. Then the team discusses whether Inflation Reduction Act incentives are effectively driving more clean electricity generation or creating misaligned incentives for hydrogen over expanding wind power.



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



Philip Totaro: Joel wants to do a billboard. In Texas to advertise Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and StrikeTape. That's a pretty good idea, but I got a better one. What if you did a TV ad, or like a, an ad you could post up on LinkedIn, but recreate the episode from the Twilight Zone, Terror at 20, 000 Feet, but instead of there being like a little monster on the airplane wing that William Shatner is all scared of, how about it's just like lightning strikes that get, diverted by strike tape and then, but you recreate the ethos.



And then nothing happens.



Allen Hall: It could be good. William Shatner is still alive. He's like 92. Yeah, he, I'm sure we could sign him up



Philip Totaro: to do that.



I'm telling you. This is actually, this is why I had the idea because his production company contacted me about six or seven years ago and they wanted me to do an infomercial with him.



And it was actually fairly reasonable price. So we should talk off air and look into this.



That's a thing. Why didn't you do



Joel Saxum: that? If we could get William Shatner to do a strike dig commercial. Come on. Phil, how much was it? Was it four figures? Three figures?



Three figures, that's what I'm talking about.



We spent a lot on barbecue this week.



We're trying to recover.



Allen Hall: Joel and I have been down in Oklahoma and Texas going to a variety of wind farms and meeting with the O& M folks, the site supervisors, just to see what's top of mind there. Really great discussions. Some of the best discussions about Wind energy I've had in the last couple of years because everybody's so frank about it and Joel maybe you can give top of mind what some of your insights were.



What are we chopped liver?



Joel Saxum: No. Just so we're clear, the conversation with you guys are great as well. We're, I don't know. I'm not discounting those.



Yeah, no, but you're not running a wind farm, Phil.



Not yet.



So if you take this whole thing as a loop it into one big ball. So Allen and I did this tour.



Allen is still on the tour. I'm back at home. But. We talk with these, you walk in the door at an O& M building, you're in Texas and Oklahoma, they welcome us in. If the door is open, someone's there, come on in, let's chat. And people are willing to, I think part of it is, some of the wind farms we visited, they're in the middle of nowhere, so they're not getting a whole lot of visitors.



So when they see some people in general, they're like, oh this is cool, people. But of course, we're out there, we are visiting wind farms we know have lightning troubles, WeatherGuard, lightning tech, strike tape product, we can help with that. But the, one of the overreaching goals is just to go out there and talk with people.



We want to see what's going on in the industry. What are they, what are the problems are running into daily from technicians to. Today we heard about bats and then we, pitch bearings and blade issues and only so much budget to do so many repairs. And we've, some wind farms,