The wind industry is experiencing challenges and uncertainty once again this year. Between policy changes, supply chain cost increases & delays, and the effects of climate change, it has been a year of "stop and go" for renewable energy projects.
Because of this, innovation is the key to moving forward.
To plan for success, we have to:
- Rethink our strategies with after market solutions, supply chain usage, and custom fits and designs to our issues that we may not have used before. Innovation is key in a time like this.
- Learn from previous years' extreme weather patterns and plan for what could happen in the future.
- Ex. will we regret not purchasing a cold weather package for our wind sites in Texas? Our should we invest that money in our Canadian wind assets that regularly have frozen winters?
From an OEM perspective, customers expect faster development cycles. They also want to move away from standard products and services into custom solutions for their wind site issues.
- OEMs are now expected to be transparent in order to collaborate within the industry, which is something we are not used to.
- The industry is asked to do more with less, which creates a major focus on automation and digitalization.
- Collaboration is really what it going to take the energy transition to the next level with digitization across the renewable industry.
One area that the industry is really excelling is the growth and innovation from after-market/non-OEM solutions. The solutions in the industry are getting more creative. It is exciting to see how older assets are now able to come back to life. This is encouraging for owners and operators that are dealing with aging assets and repowering projects.
While waiting for supply chains to recover, Longroad is repowering a 205 MW onshore wind site in Utah, using WindESCo's Swarm solution to increase its site-wide annual energy production.
Additionally, "seeing progress in the North American offshore wind industry, partnerships between OEMs, new developments and auctions across the continent, and the impending supply chain growth is all really promising for renewables," said Pattern's Lead Performance Engineer, Johnny Napoli.
This month, WindESCo hosted a webinar featuring panelists with wind industry asset management, operations, and OEM backgrounds. Panelists from Longroad, Pattern, BP Wind, and Siemens Gamesa participated in an open discussion about the challenges and successes of the industry from the past year. To hear more about their insight on the topic and how they handle this year's challenges, watch the webinar.