Saving Birds with Paint, Blades in Landfills, BP Slowing Onshore Wind

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Rosemary and Allen dig into the use of black paint on wind turbine blades to prevent bird strikes. Painting blades black is not a simple fix - there are structural concerns from Rosemary. Washington State and many other states are passing laws to abolish wind turbine blade disposal in landfills. Are old blades toxic? Philip Totaro of Intelstor joins the show to discuss BP's latest move out of onshore wind and solar and into offshore wind and green hydrogen. 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 156 Allen Hall: Rosemary, your fully charged live event is happening this weekend, so when you listen to this podcast, it'll, it'll have been over, but that's a big event in Australia, isn't it ? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I'm excited. It's the first one this year, but they've already locked in for next year as well, so I guess that the response was good. Rosemary Barnes: So I'm looking forward to seeing how many people show up and yeah, and checking out all. All the stuff that they've got there. They, you can do like electric car test drives and other electric stuff like electrical lawn mowers and scooters and and other fun stuff like that. So it should be, should be a really good weekend. Allen Hall: Well speaking as an electric lawnmower owner, battery powered lawnmower owner. They are fantastic. So I, I encourage everyone in Australia to buy a battery powered lawnmower is the, it is the most awesome thing because you don't have to mess with the gas change of oil, none of it. You, you charge it, you run it. Allen Hall: It's brilliant. This week we have a, a number of stories about wind turbines have been a problem for birds, or at least thought to be a problem for birds. But a number of studies on offshore wind indicate that the birds. Avoid the wind turbines, which is great. And another study has popped out in regards to painting wind turbine blades and towers, sort of black and white and, and almost a checkup board pattern to help keep birds away. Allen Hall: And it, it may work, but Rosemary has deep concern about the structural impacts to the blades. Rosemary Barnes: Yep. And we're going to talk about wind turine blade recycling. If it makes sense to require that this that this happens, technologies are available to do it. Should we just do it? We're gonna talk about some of the trade-offs that you might not think of. Rosemary Barnes: It's not, not really the slam dunk that it sounds like. Allen Hall: Then we have Phil Totaro from Intelstor back to talk about BP's plan to reset its renewable business and focus on offshore wind and green hydrogen. And our wind Farm of the week is Bloom Wind in Southwest Kansas, so stay tuned for that. I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with our Australian Blade Guru Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: And this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Allen Hall: There has been a number of news articles in the press over the last couple of months looking at birds flying into offshore wind turbines and there, and there's been a number of research efforts to look into that. One of the research efforts was led by vain. And it looked at wind turbines offshore of Scotland in the North Sea. Allen Hall: And for two years they studied seabird behavior at the Aberdeen offshore wind farm.