Bonus: New GE Vernova Leadership Changes Course

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

GE Vernova is changing course to reduce complexity and costs of its wind turbines. What are the effects on the US and international wind turbine markets? Will simplifying the product line bring GE Vernova to profitability in 2023? Phil Totaro of Intelstor.com joins the podcast to hash through the details. 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 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 157 Bonus Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime podcast. This is a bonus episode, and I have Phil Totaro here from Entel Store. Welcome back Phil. Thanks. Y. We are here to talk about GE Renova and GE had a recent investor meeting and GE is essentially two divisions at the moment. GE Aerospace. GE Power, which includes the renewables business and of, of all the businesses that remain within GE until they split up at the end of this year. The, the aerospace is pretty profitable. The renewables business is one of those sore points. So the Renew renewable business, if you look back in 2022, lost a little over $2 billion. And that was mostly blamed on some warranty claims and complicated turbine designs that really hurt them when they got out in the field. That is something that GE is looking to change right now, and that investor relations meeting, they got to the point of saying, by the third quarter of 2023, GE renewables, GE Renova will be profitable. And that hasn't happened in about eight quarter. Did you watch that meeting, Phil? Did you see some of the interaction there? Phil Totaro: I did Allen, and it was, it was interesting. So there's, there's kind of a couple takeaways that I had. One is they're obviously quite serious about wanting and frankly needing to turn things around because they're getting so much investor pressure. The other thing is some of the changes that they've already made and some of the announcements they've already. Definitely underscore a sea change in their approach. I think in the past, you know, if, if we look back to their most profitable time in, in renewables, for instance after the acquisition of the Enron Wind and Taka assets they went on a tear between 2005 and 2012 ish. Where. O obviously dominated the US market, but they did so with, you know, what they've even referred to as their workhorse product. And, you know, from about 20 14, 20 15 onwards they spent a few years unfortunately I think you know, their, their management just allowed. , you know, their middle management to spread themselves a little too thin, chasing a lot of, you know, potential opportunities and products and services and a lot of things that, that got them away from a core unified focus. and I think that's what they're really trying to do now with, you know, again, bringing back Vic Bait for instance. And some of the other changes that they're talking about making, this is all geared towards getting back to that, you know, the good old days, so to speak. The, the profitable times when, you know, they had unity of purpose Allen Hall: and with ab bait coming back into that sort of leadership role for onshore, right? So he. Taking over the onshore business and there's the head of GE Vernova. It's gonna be doing the offshore piece, but let's just talk onshore for a minute cuz onshore is where GE has been really successful in the past. They have a lot of issues at the moment. Not only do they have turbine issues, design issues,