This week Chris Sass is joined by Sarah Barber to discuss wind energy. Topic range from how researchers are using data to help drive the industry. Attracting students to wind energy and open projects they can participate in immediately.
This week Chris Sass is joined by Sarah Barber to discuss wind energy. Topic range from how researchers are using data to help drive the industry. Attracting students to wind energy and open projects they can participate in immediately.
welcome to insiders's guide energy I'm your host chris sass and today with me is Sarah Barber from up I'm sorry how do I introduce you because you're in this win win group in the.
02:44.82
Sarah Barber
All right.
02:57.20
Sarah Barber
Um, you have to say from the Eastern Switzerland university of applied sciences. But you could just say Switzerland and I can say the rest if you want.
03:03.90
chrissass
Okay, so okay, yeah, I'll do that. Okay I'm just gonna say Sarah Barbara and have you introduce self I got cheat. Okay ready. We're gonna take to welcome to insider' guide to energy I'm your host chris sass and today we're gonna talk win and with me is Sarah Barbara Sarah welcome to the podcast.
03:19.53
Sarah Barber
Hi. Thank you.
03:23.50
chrissass
Well, it's a pleasure to have you here? Um I think the logical beginning start is let's tell our audience who you are and what it is you do.
03:30.40
Sarah Barber
Yeah, so hi everyone my name's Sarah Barrber I lead the wind energy program at the Eastern Switzerland university of applied sciences which is a small university near to Zurich in Switzerland. I'm also um, founder and president of the swiss wind energy r and d network.
03:49.71
chrissass
All right? So you're doing quite a bit with wind. Um, so a small university in Switzerland and this other network. What's your passion. What? what's what's driving you to talk about wind today.
04:01.57
Sarah Barber
Yeah, so some people ask this question about wind energy in Switzerland because the wind energy market is very small in Switzerland so they're always quite surprised. There's some people's some activities going on in Switzerland so what we really focus on is using swiss innovation for the global market the global wind market is massive it's growing it needs more research and innovation in order to reach the install capacity required to reach net zero by 2030 and that's what really makes me drive drives me to to do what I'm doing I really think I can contribute to to the energy. Transition. So that's that's kind of the reason I'm doing it and the swiss wind energy r and d network I founded because I realized that Switzerland is a highly innovative country and there are many small research groups and organizations and startups who do loads of really. Interesting things for the wind energy market but also for other markets and I don't know the potential of of what they can do for the global market. So what I want to do is to bundle all these resources and get everybody together to actually develop real innovations. So the global market.
05:15.99
chrissass
In the swissate innovation. Ah okay I can't speak so guys cut that part out. So the the swiss innovation that's taking place in wind. Ah how. How is that I mean you know we're sitting here in Zurich we have a great institution e teja right here I think Luzerne's got another technical institution are these things that are taking place mostly around the universities or is this private sector that you're mostly working with.
05:43.80
Sarah Barber
Yeah, and it's both It's really both so there there's there's many activities at at Eth Zurich also at epofl in Lazanne and also then at the universities of applied sciences like you mentioned in Laterne but also in Zurich and my university in rappersville but then there's. Independent um organization of startups and and companies who are just coming up because they see they see the demand and they see they see. It's interesting. So it's kind of it's kind of combination of both but the whole point of the network is to bring these people together because for the. You know for the most innovative solutions. It's probably quite a good idea to combine um university research with with market insights or with real things that are going on in the market.
06:28.13
chrissass
And then what kind of innovation would we be finding here so I'm in energy here in Switzerland and when we first talked I asked I was one of those people that said seems like a challenging place to be in wind since it's a country that doesn't really like having wind because of it. We're tourist based economy for a lot of our economy. And so there's been a lot of pushback but is it software is development. Is there engineering developments what kind of developments have you seen so far or maybe give us an example or 2 is like taking place that's interesting in Switzerland.
06:56.19
Sarah Barber
Yeah I mean there's where to start. There's lots of things that are really interesting. Um, so the the focus of my group is is digitalization and with digitalization I mean using data to provide value to provide new business ideas and opportunities. So digitalization is one of the things which is also really really big in Switzerland that could be data analytics. It could be data storage solutions. It could be data platforms smart measurement technology. There's some examples of all of those things in in Switzerland. So so. Startups small companies research. But then there's all the things like structural health monitoring decision support systems. So how to help maintenance engineers actually make decisions then you get the whole topic of composite materials. So Switzerland's quite quite big on.
07:44.67
chrissass
Is it this words.
07:49.23
Sarah Barber
On Composite materials and that's very important for for For example for rotor blades of wind turbines. Then you've got the entire area of electronic ah electronics or or let's say power electronics so led by companies like a B or Hitachche energy as they're called now then they they they develop. Massive components for for for wind turbines. Um the companies who develop Airborne Wind Energy I don't know whether um, you've you've heard of that. Do you know what? that is shall I so.
08:19.88
chrissass
So explain I'm I'm not sure what you're talking about on airborne.
08:24.66
Sarah Barber
Airborne Wind energy is this concept of um these flying flying wind turbines. So um, wind energy is is great. One of the difficulties with with standard 3 hree-bladed horizontal axis wind turbines is that they're quite quite expensive and so the idea of airborne is. Take away the material go much higher where you have a much higher wind speed and therefore reduce the costs of and um the cost of energy by flying up like an airplane. So the the basic concept is that the the airplane is attached to a um, ah. Ah, rope or tether and that is attached to a drum on the floor and the the plane flies it gets controlled it flies outwards using the wind. The rope gets longer and it wraps it what it it winds around this this um ground station and that actually. Produces electricity just through the the rotation and then when it gets to the top. It gets pulled back in with a low amount of drag. So the energy required to pull it back in is much lower than the energy generated from coming out and it keeps repeating like that. Um.
09:34.23
chrissass
So is there a commercial test to that yet has ah has that been done at scale yet.
09:37.00
Sarah Barber
Yeah there's there's many many companies in the world who are trying to develop different prototypes and the reason I mentioned it is because there's 2 at least 2 swiss startups involved and they are both working on prototypes nobody's actually. Proven the technology at scale yet. But many people are on the way it has also um, by the way has many challenges associated with it. So just think about air traffic control um or just controlling it so that it flies in the right place and doesn't crash. Um, it's quite. Quite a high challenge so I'm I'm not really I'm not really saying that this is the technology for the future. It's one of the interesting possibilities and it's just one of the things that Swiss Switzerland is involved in.
10:21.21
chrissass
It makes me think of the high speed sailing boats. There's a sailboat out Switzerland that breaks world speed records and they basically have a kite as opposed to a sail that drives the boat.
10:31.54
Sarah Barber
Yeah, the other thing connected to sailing by the way and an example that I could give of a swiss technology. We have a project together with eth where we're developing um pressure like smart pressure measurement systems using Mem sensors. For rotor blades and actually this idea was used originally on on sailing boats as well because it's kind of a similar thing. You've got something Moving. You've got quite a harsh harsh environment. You haven't got much space for lots of data acquisition equipment and so that's ah, that's that's just another example.
11:01.73
chrissass
So So you've got some interesting research going on so you've you've started this group and I know that when you and I were on a panel in the past you also talked about student engagement and getting students engaged so that seemed to be you're you're at a University So I think you're you're interested in helping students. But I've heard the passion come through and I've heard you speak before. So. How are you tying students into these initiatives.
11:22.49
Sarah Barber
Yeah I mean that is something that's that's that's really important and I think the project that I might have talked about before is is is Called. We do wind and so the the idea of the we do win project is not just to get to get students but it's just to get anybody. So regardless of of people's background what country they're coming from or you know where they where they work um to get them involved in solving the the biggest challenges of wind Energy. So The idea is is um, is that it's just a way of people. A way to allow companies to to get problem Solved. So imagine I'll give an example of a project project that we did so we were working together with Edp who's ah, who's a large Portuguese wind farm developer and operator and they had ah a challenge which was to develop a better.
12:01.93
chrissass
Um.
12:05.76
chrissass
Or.
12:16.68
Sarah Barber
Fault detection algorithm and we helped them post this challenge on a platform and they provided some data to to allow people to solve the challenge and what we did is in the we do win project. We actually just we got. The whole community together. So we got like 80 people from 28 different countries included students from Brazil and China and Lebanon quite a quite a few different countries and we got them together in different workshops to actually share this data and solve solve the problem together and so we ended up developing like 8 different different solutions to the problem that edp had and this really showed that you know bringing people together and getting them to work together actually brings new new solutions and so the idea is then to now to expand this so that students from all over the world. Can. Actually get access to companies like edp and get access to real data to real problems and I do think this is going to have a large impact on the on on the market because I've I mean I've heard from I work quite a lot with Brazil so I've heard quite a lot from brazilian students. You know they don't know how to even start you know they don't know where to what. What? what subject to even study in order to get up to speed on wind energy. They don't know who to talk to. They don't know what the what? The what? The real problems are so providing challenges like this is a really good way of of getting them involved. Yeah so this one was the was the called the edp fault detection challenge.
13:40.83
chrissass
And what what specifically was the challenge that they were trying to solve.
13:50.00
Sarah Barber
Um, so they were um, developing new algorithms for detecting faults using 10 minute average operating data from the winterbines.
13:57.57
chrissass
So this goes back to our conversation we had in a previous conversation about data and having access to data right? And so this is just a use case where there was some data and the value of having group think on the data is kind of what you're saying.
14:10.98
Sarah Barber
Exactly? Yeah, so the I mean the driver of that project was actually um, this whole digitalization topic I work quite a lot on digitalization and I've talked to many people internationally about the challenges of digitalization. 1 of the large challenges is is this kind of siloed thinking I mean it's probably It's probably also quite common in in other sectors I'm not quite sure but in wind energy. It's one of the big talking points that um, many companies you know they're kind of scared to share and they're very very silent in their thinking and so what we wanted to do is to try to provide a ah way to incentivize people to. Maybe share a little bit more or talk to each other or not quite be so scared of of sharing their data but instead of they don't have to share all their data. They can just share selected amount and they actually benefit from doing that and that was actually the main driver and the idea of this edp challenge was just to show that this actually this group thing as you say actually provides. Ah, benefit and now we're doing more projects so we're we're getting more data. We're getting more companies and getting more people involved and we're gradually building that up.
15:11.89
chrissass
So I guess when someone's going you mentioned students so we'll finish a little bit more on students and you you mentioned Brazil where you've talked to a number of students and that they don't really know how to get there and but you also talked about like material sciences I think you know data science I mean there's there's a bunch of different.
15:20.18
Sarah Barber
Um.
15:30.89
chrissass
Technologies there so in your University role. Do people take let's say a data science degree with a min and energy or like if if I wanted to go into wind right? and I don't want to be an installer if I if I actually want to go in and and do that I'm probably not studying wind or maybe I'm studying meteorology. You know something. But I think. And probably having a science background and then applying it towards the problems statement is that a safe How people get to win these days.
15:57.96
Sarah Barber
It's a really It's a really good question and it's really difficult to to answer that question. So one of the exciting things and challenging things about wind energy is that interdisciplinarity right? So you have all these different disciplines and it really is interdisciplinary so you have. But it's you don't just have engineering different types of engineering sciences like data sciences or or civil engineering or mechanical engineering but you also have loads of social sciences and humanities as well. So you know even like the people who are living near the wind turbine. Why are they scared of ah of wind turbine. Ultra infrasound even though it's been proven that it's not actually a problem. It's something about behavioral science and so you get all these behavioral science type type questions and you get as you said meteorology physics I mean it's basically physics um many many different different. Aspects even biology if you're if you're looking at offshore wind turbines and the the animals that are growing on the on the structures and the the question is how do you teach people about that. So you either you, you teach them the basics of engineering or physics or biology and then they as you said they then learn. With some use cases with some real examples or you do it the the way around you teach them everything they need to know for wind energy. Um, the current approach is definitely the first one but there is an argument to say that teaching maybe needs to be thought of in a different in a different way that there maybe are.
17:30.24
Sarah Barber
New courses for maybe not just for wind energy. But for renewable energy or climate change action or something which actually includes all these different disciplines because the difficulty is when you just teach individual disciplines separately is that it's very difficult for people then to. Switch switch between them or even to to think like ah it's very difficult for engineers to think like a social science is if they haven't been taught to do that from the beginning you know? So. There's an argument to say that teaching maybe needs to be developed more in a more interdisciplinary direction does that kind of make sense.
18:02.18
chrissass
But is that happening in Switzerland so you're in the academic situation here. So Switzerland now it tend to be more conservative traditional academic path from my experience of being here in Brookland is that. Where we're at or is is there innovation taking pace in in renewables and how how folks get and trained to be in the workforce.
18:22.93
Sarah Barber
I don't want to answer for the whole of Switzerland because I'm not I don't work at Eth and you know that's one of the the that's the largest one of the largest institutions isn't it. So I can't I can't really speak for Switzerland but I mean my university is quite. Innovative with different types of digital digital teaching methods. So I know for example, the engineers or the the environmental engineers in in my university. They they do learn about communication and they do learn about interdisciplinary methods. They do have projects on on interdisciplinary topics and it is coming. Um, but I think it could could definitely be pushed a little bit more. Let's say.
19:01.78
chrissass
So from the podcast point of view. We've seen the problem because we keep meeting amazing students that are master students, undergraduate students doctorate students and we started a whole future leaders program to help them get internships rotational graduate programs. Um, and and some of those companies you you worked at right? We we work closely with we we know those companies well that you it mentioned as examples. Um, but what what I've seen today working from where I sit is they go to an internship they get engaged or if they you know they they go in or they go through a rotational program or there's a. Formal program at these institutions to bring them in but typically most of them that I'm talking to are looking for like an engineering degree. You know whether you know or they're looking for. You know a business master's degree if they're going to the business side or what they tend to be looking for specific degrees and I think they're. They're indoctrinating that the students that have passions for energy into their their what they're doing is is my experience from where I sit is that consistent from what you're seeing.
20:01.68
Sarah Barber
Yeah I Guess so I mean there's still quite a traditional way of thinking I mean even I I think like that as Well. Sometimes you know I think shouldn't really be telling lots of people this on ah on a podcast I guess but I often think you know if you if you really want to be a working wind energy. Innovation and technology you really need to understand the basics of engineering when you need to be able to do maths I think and which kind of goes maybe slightly against this. What I said before about you need more of an interdisciplinary um training in order to be able to think about the way other people. You know other other different types of scientists or other different different people think so I I don't actually know really what?? what?? what? the answer is I think it kind of needs both? Um yeah, So it's kind of I see both sides is that. Good enough answer.
20:58.96
chrissass
It's It's an answer right? I don't think there's a right or or wrong I think it's just an opinion of where where we perceive we're at at the moment. So your organization that you're working with is it a startup right Now. Do you have members where where are you at with your wind organization have. Ah, apologize I can't remember the full title of the the the organization right now.
21:18.31
Sarah Barber
So I mean one of the organizations is the university which is just a university um, where I it's actually quite interesting because I came along to this university wanting to work in wind energy having had more than 10 years of experience in wind energy and i. I was trying to look for something in wind energy in Switzerland and there wasn't really anything because as we've said there's no there's no real market and I actually got up is it like a two day a week part-time position and some somebody offered me that for a year and said if you can if you can acquire some projects you can stay and now I lead a team of 6 to 8 scientists. Running many international projects and I'm I'm kind of hoping there to build up. Ah an innovation center in Switzerland and the other organization I talked about was the swiss wind energy r and d network which is just a network which I which I founded and it's got like it's got 190 members um, but I mean some of them are international quite a lot of them are international and also I have to say membership's free. So it's not very difficult to become a member but it's it's still ah, a decent community that we've built up of people who are who are interested in in swiss innovation. And then the third thing is this we do win project which is not actually an organization. It's just it's just a project and we we have on the weedoo wind ecosystem which is just the the place where everybody who's who signed up to take part in one of the challenges kind of collects and and can exchange information. We have.
22:49.30
Sarah Barber
250 people or something taking part actively in that from least 30 if not 35 different countries and yeah I mean I'm just trying to build build that all up and make sure what we're doing in our research projects is is really important. For for the industry and also really important just for for the world in general.
23:14.20
chrissass
So How much of the wind that's getting deployed So we've talked to folks that did like Acker wind Offshore. We've talked to some of the bigger names have been on the podcast. Um, how much of this is controlled by the manufacturer of of the turbines and the generation capabilities because. You know there's a few well-established players and then you've got a number of developers out there that are trying to do the development now I get that there's software and there's data and things you can do on the backend but how much is this is going to be controlled by the large incumbents that are already in place. Are we at a place there yet or is it still a wild west and there's a lot of opportunity to innovate and. Bring new technology at scale.
23:51.75
Sarah Barber
Um, so the for the wind turbine technology itself 3 Bladed Horizontal Axis wind turbines I don't think they're not going to get replaced by something else like the the opportunity for an entirely new. Way of creating electricity from wind is minimal like even this airborne wind energy stuff that I was talking about that's going to be if anything it's going to be a niche for locations where large components can't be can't be transported to or where people think that it looks nicer. it's it's going to it's going to be a niche so there's not going to be There's not going to be a change in the in in the major technology. there's the potential for component improvement so there's there's all offer let's say so asset management services improvement to reduce the costs There's a. Potential for solutions which help um, acceptance or improve deployment. You also have very many opportunities in the area of politics and and and policies and you know trying to actually get more wind farms implement. It's not an area that I know that much about. But I mean in Switzerland there's. Hundreds of projects being being planned all being blocked by this by the way, the system works so there's many. There's many opportunities um in and around the technology but the the main players and the main technology is not going to not going to be displaced.
25:24.35
chrissass
Ah, so so the the generation is probably set and so it goes back to what you said it's It's mostly the technology you you talked about sensors you've talked about software talked about data. So so that's where you think you're going to make the most strides is where you're focusing your time is that safe.
25:38.35
Sarah Barber
Yeah, definitely I'm finding some sort of like finding some sort of of of niche where real innovation can help to reduce the costs improve the efficiency improve the deployment. That's where.
25:39.21
chrissass
What I've heard so far.
25:58.70
Sarah Barber
That's where the space and I think when I say true Innovation. What I What I really see is like I mentioned this Siloed thinking siloed thinking doesn't just stop people from sharing day to it also does kind of slow down innovation. Um, you know because people are just showing their ideas with like-minded people and. It's kind of well known that that has us so has a certain value but is is Limited. So I Really think that the opportunity lies in went with people saying okay I truly do want to work with different disciplines and I do truly believe in in sharing ideas and. Yeah, that's why I see the potential which is why I'm doing what I'm doing.
26:39.76
chrissass
So so what makes what you do different so as a technologist right in an energy tech company. Um I get there's nuance to win. But why is what you're doing different than any renewable. Why? Why do I need a win special. Focus here in Switzerland as opposed to a renewable focus because you're going to still have storage. You're going to have capacity. You're going to have maintenance. You're gonna have all these things that I would also have with a pv park or I'd have with other things as well. So what? what makes wind unique in your passion right? Why why is when the thing that keeps you keeps you going.
27:12.70
Sarah Barber
Because wind energy energy just the best now. Okay so wind energy is um, pretty well proven to have the lowest C O 2 emissions over the entire lifecycle compared to any other technology I mean we maybe that some of you know that. Oh maybe you know it's it's um, it's not that easy to actually estimate the lifecycle c o 2 emissions because you know it depends if you have to take into account and recycling if you want to take them to cut manufacturing. You actually have to go to these factories and like measure the CO 2 emissions of all these different processes. So it's very difficult and it's very inaccurate but there's. Still many studies which sort of show average values with uncertainty bars which do show that wind energy is the lowest. So which means it's it's a very important solution for reducing co 2 emissions in the world. Um. But it's not just that. It's also I I really just like the way wind turbines look I just think it's they're really elegant and beautiful and you know we have if we want want to get electricity from our from our plugs reliably we have to do it somehow and I prefer to look at a load of wind turbines than than whatever anything else. Um. But 1 thing that it's really important for me to say is that often when I tell people you know I really like wind energy I work in wind energy I'm passionate about it. It doesn't mean that I think the world has got to be supplied by a hundred percent wind energy um and as people do as kind of assume that so I I do think that.
28:42.52
chrissass
No, but my question wasn't that Mike my question was so so we're we're both sitting in Switzerland today right? and so Switzerland has a limited number of wind production facilities I know I can think of 1 or 2 that I see when I drive around the country and that's about it. Um, and so I go okay but.
28:43.37
Sarah Barber
Yeah.
29:00.19
chrissass
Focusing on the the software or some of the elements and I get that there's unique. You know the the win. You know the forecasting's gonna be different and some of the ai stuff that I'm gonna need is gonna be unique to to to win because I I want to have good food forecasting and other things like that. That's probably gonna be unique. Um. But you know if a swiss organization focused on that it would seem just as valuable to me and I'm not I'm just thinking right? as it would be to be on all renewables because some of the things like you you have generation right? So you got forecastle but you know so solar you day and night or whatever or maybe gray times a year and you get less power or whatever.
29:24.31
Sarah Barber
If.
29:35.55
Sarah Barber
Um, yeah.
29:38.88
chrissass
Um, you you you have maintenance prediction and and things like that that you're going to have through when parking and more so for let's say a floating or an offshore wind where where it's more cost you know or where I'm more worried about costs because every time I just send a boat out to go work on it and stuff like that. My costs are extremely high so maintaining offshore wind. Um, but none of these things jumped to me as Switzerland so you know I was interested when we first talked because it's like yeah, just a very strange place to do it. But then you're saying there's a whole cluster of industry that can benefit from this thing you have 100 and plus organizations that are are in your organization here and you've said you've got students that want to be in wind. From Switzerland so I'm just trying to figure out the pieces of you know if you're successful if I go Sarah 5 years from now you know what's what's the greatest thing you guys achieved. You know what is it your hope to achieve um because you know that's kind of where I'm going.
30:29.90
Sarah Barber
Yeah, um, so just a couple of things. What I want to achieve is not necessarily limited to Swiss Wind energy what I want to achieve is I want to get swiss innovation used to make a difference to the world. But just relateing to what you were saying about connections with pv for example, it's true that a company who is developing Ai methods for analysis of wind data also should be doing it for pv for example, like there's actually no. Reason why they shouldn't and all the companies who and swissones who do offer that do also work in Pv and and at the same with composite materials. You're not going to have a swiss company just developing materials for rotor blades. You're probably going to have. Company developing materials for many other different applications and 1 of them is is wind energy and that also maybe is what you're also kind of hinting at is that does offer many technology transfer possibilities and additional value for Switzerland because. It's actually one of the things that I'm trying to when I'm trying to get funding from the swiss wind energy at randdnetwork it's one of the things I tried to say as well imagine if you get um you get all these all these companies from the global wind energy market basically telling you their difficulties and showing with sharing with you their difficulties.
31:57.25
Sarah Barber
And then all these swiss companies are working collaboratively also with international companies on solutions surely a reasonable amount of what they're developing and what they're doing can be applied to other things so it could be applied to all the monitoring stuff could be applied to bridges or. To to cars or drones or anything and so there ends up being quite um, quite a large technology transfer opportunity kind of going in all directions which is kind of one of the aspects I Guess that's just one of the properties of interdisciplinarity.
32:35.70
chrissass
All right? and then is if if if I'm one of our audience members who's sitting in North America listening to this where where does the value proposition cross. So um, you know if I'm an energy or renewable projects or doing things or I'm a student in North America whatever level of of audience member. Is there a value to your organization to have you. You mentioned you had some international members would they be reaching out to be engaged in some of your meetings or conversations.
33:00.54
Sarah Barber
Yeah I mean the the let's take the weed do wind project. That's it's not It's not supposed to have any borders actually the whole point is to break down borders. So I mean the only difficulty is sometimes a time difference but we tried to have our webinars and in the afternoon where people in the us can also take part but I mean. The whole idea is that people from any other country can and should get involved because we want a diverse range of people with different backgrounds and different experiences to to be part of this group group think um, if that's relevant. If if a Us organization is interested in wind energy deployment in Switzerland or not is not actually particularly relevant in that in that application.
33:50.90
chrissass
Okay, so so the we do win project. You said you you have a number of projects going on to it's a project. it's it's it's not an entity as such um and you take data and solve problems. You gave 1 use case. So what would be a use case. What would an american some american company or. Canadian or you know even off the Scotland or somewhere else right? somewhere where there's wind energy. What would they be looking to do so they bring data to your project and then you would do some sort of work on the data to give them some sort of results or how does that work.
34:19.93
Sarah Barber
Yeah I mean it could be it. It can be anything and it doesn't it can be country specific but it doesn't have to be um and so it could be something along the lines of improving fault detection like we've done before but it could just also be um, performance. Analysis so I've just recently submitted a paper which is trying to summarize the different um performance analysis techniques that are currently available in the literature and this is literally wind farm owner operators just looking at their everyday data and trying to assess. How well is my winter been performing. Do I need to make any changes to improve it is there any and any problems that the methods which exist are very that they not really summarized or or benchmarked or compared anywhere. So one of the things that we could do on weo wind which you're also planning to do is to offer some sort of comparison. Possibility where we take um some some data and we then invite people to to test their different methods and then we do a ranking or comparison where where people can submit and then keep improving their their methods and I think a company looking to enhance the way they do performance analysis.
35:33.51
Sarah Barber
Might find that interesting and useful.
35:36.30
chrissass
How how from a ah wind farm development. How accurate are the initial estimates of of energy produced to what they build How how how close does that tend to be Do you do you have exposure to that kind of information.
35:47.26
Sarah Barber
Yeah I mean this this question is a very funny question because nobody really knows and this actually this is one of the most. This is one of the most interesting topics in wind energy in my opinion so you have this difficulty that. When you're planning a wind farm. You do a windows sauce assessment and you come up with ah an estimation for how much energy it's going to produce right? and then as a company who's developing a project. You usually have to get 3 independent assessments and then you have to take an average or somehow. Combined the 3 and then you have to produce this this bankable wind resource assessment when if you want to get investors and this is standardized the way you're supposed to do this but the standard leaves room for many many different methods and also much improvement. But anyway so you have this you have this this number. And then you build a wind farm you probably sell it to someone else. It might get sold again at some point along the lines and then somebody runs operates the wind farm and they're getting a certain amount of energy per month per year. Whatever and actually nobody cares about this comparison or. People care, but they don't have the data because it's confidential and um, it's a massive gap so somebody from nt from the national energy renewable energy laboratories in the Us quite recently produced a really exciting study which I can only recommend reading a.
37:19.34
Sarah Barber
Actually collecting data from quite a few I'm not quite quite sure how many but quite a few um wind farm owner operators in the us and actually for the first time doing a proper thorough comparison obviously anonymous and everything of before. And after and they discovered some biases but there is ah there's a large gap because this is like 1 study that's been done and it's not a thing that the industry really knows the answer to so this would be another thing that we do win might be able to solve if. Companies would share their data which they probably won't um would be due to do some sort of benchmarking process on on on the wind resource assessment.
38:05.60
chrissass
Got it Well cool. Well I think we're bumping up against time here. So um, it's been Enlightening. It's been fun to that to see a little bit of what's going On. It's interesting like I said to talk to you because we've already talked before and some other wind. In conversations and I knew that it would be interesting to hear what's happening here and some of the innovation that you're seeing, Um, it seems like the we do win project be something that transcends borders right out the gate. So That's a pretty easy one but it also sounds like your other organizations other than the university where you may get students from anywhere also Transcends Borders. Um.
38:19.46
Sarah Barber
She.
38:37.65
chrissass
I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It's it's been a pleasure to have you as our guest. Thank you so much and for our audience you've just enjoyed another episode of insider's guide to energy if you enjoyed this content. You want to find out more. Don't forget to subscribe follow us on Linkedin follow us on Youtube follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
38:41.80
Sarah Barber
Thank you too.
38:56.82
chrissass
And don't forget to add comments because we will answer your comments as well. We look forward to speaking to you again next week bye now all right? So the last thing I'm going to ask for you for a promotion is we generally have our guests do a 1 or 2 sentence tagline.
39:07.22
Sarah Barber
Um.
39:12.76
chrissass
So basically you would say your name like I would say I'm Chris sas founder fiedectu and I listen insiders guide to energy podcast because we use that to help promote the the events. So if you could do that before I shut the recording off that be greatly appreciate appreciated insider guide the energy podcast. Yeah.
39:15.47
Sarah Barber
The.
39:24.90
Sarah Barber
But a second so it's called in. It's called inside I'm just gonna write that down this I don't do it wrong it. So what? So I'm saying my name what I do and I.
39:34.28
chrissass
Yeah, just say hi this is Chris Sas from fiactis and when I want to listen to a podcast ill listen to insider guide to energy podcast or whatever you want, whatever your variant of that is and you can do more than 1 take because it's it's recording is free. So I'll just be quiet and let you do it.
39:51.31
Sarah Barber
Um, and my name Sarah Valva I lead the wind energy program at the Eastern Switzerland university of applied sciences and I'm the president and the founder of the swiss wind energy r and d network and I love listening to the insider's guide to energy podcast.
40:04.17
chrissass
Perfect. So I'm going to hit stop.