Australia’s $17B Grid Expansion, Recycling Blades to Steel

Allen covers Suzlon hitting 2 GW in a single Indian state, Nabrawind&#8217;s crane-free turbine install in Namibia, Antora&#8217;s South Dakota thermal battery, Australia&#8217;s $17 billion grid expansion, and Shimizu recycling old turbine blades into steel. 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&#8217;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&#8217; YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! GOOD MORNING. The wind industry is not just getting bigger. It is getting smarter. And today &#8230; we have the proof. Let us start in India. SUZLON GROUP just crossed a milestone. Two gigawatts of wind orders &#8230; in a single Indian state. The latest deal &#8230; sixty-five turbines at three megawatts each for a company called SUNSURE ENERGY. SUNSURE is not a utility. It is an independent power producer building round-the-clock clean energy for data centers &#8230; electric vehicles &#8230; and heavy industry. Wind paired with solar and battery storage. Power that does not stop when the sun goes down. SUZLON is already building six hundred and sixty-four megawatts of additional commercial and industrial projects in the same region. And SUNSURE &#8230; backed by PARTNERS GROUP of Switzerland &#8230; has seven gigawatts in development across India with a target of ten gigawatts by two thousand thirty. That is not government-led. That is private capital chasing wind. Now &#8230; across the ocean to Africa. A Spanish company called NABRAWIND [NAH-brah-wind] just solved a problem that has plagued remote wind farms for years. How do you install a turbine when&#160;you cannot&#160;get a crane to the site? Their answer is a system called SKYLIFT. No heavy-lift cranes. None. A self-erecting tower combined with a blade installation tool they call the BLADERUNNER. They just put up a GOLDWIND six-megawatt turbine at a wind farm in NAMIBIA. And here is the part that changes the math. Traditional crane installation needs calm air. Six to eight meters per second. Maximum. NABRAWIND&#8217;s system works in fifteen meters per second sustained &#8230; with gusts up to twenty. That site blows hard. All the time. Which is exactly why they&#160;chose&#160;it. When complete &#8230; seven turbines &#8230; two hundred and thirty gigawatt-hours a year. About six percent of NAMIBIA&#8217;s entire electricity demand. NABRAWIND was acquired by Australia&#8217;s FORTESCUE last year as part of its industrial decarbonization push. <p class="wp-block-paragraph