Wind Power 101 - Refurbishment Projects, Community Relations, and the Big Beautiful Bill

What is the difference between refurbishment and repower of wind systems? How will the Big Beautiful Bill impact wind project construction and maintenance? How are wind power systems uniquely equipped to serve rural communities? In this discussion, NAES Renewables Vice President of Renewables Anne McBroom and Project Engineering Manager Frances Plourde speak with Bjorn Hedges, Plant Manager of the White Creek Wind I and Harvest Wind projects. 

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Transcript

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Welcome to Power Bank, sponsored by NACE Renewables, where big ideas, bold conversations, and unstoppable energy collide. We're your hosts, Ann mc Broome and Francis ppl, and we're diving headfirst into everything you need to know, want to hear, and can't stop talking about in renewable energy. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome to the Power Bank Podcast presented by NACE Renewables. My name is Frances ppl. I'm the project engineering manager on the NACE Renewables Special Projects Team. And we're really excited today to cover some topics relating to the wind industry. We've focused most of our. Previous podcast episodes on the solar photovoltaic industry, as that's where most of our team has the bulk of our expertise. But today we're speaking with Bjorn Hedges, who is the plant manager of the White Creek Wind One, and the Harvest Wind Projects. Who is going to be sharing a bit about the impacts of some of the new Trump administration policies, especially everything surrounding the big, beautiful bill how that will impact tax credits that have significant impact on the wind industry. With me today is my co-host Anne McBroom, who is the vice President of Renewables with NACE Renewables special projects, and she will also be sharing some of her background with the wind industry and specifically what the wind industry looked like during the first Trump administration. So thank you so much, Bjorn and Anne for being here with me today. All right. Thank you Francis. Thank you for the introduction. So a little bit of history of myself and the two sites that I manage. We're in South Central Washington State right along the Columbia River. The Columbia Gorge is known internationally, for its wind. Wind surfing has been a huge thing for decades and decades, especially in Hood River, which is just to the west of us. When wind turbine technology matured, it made sense. This wonderful wind asset that we have here made absolute sense to put wind turbines in. So I managed two sites. Both of'em are Siemens, 2.3 with the 93 meter swept diameter. White Creek Wind is the older, the two sites. It went commercial in 2007. Harvest wind Project came two years later. Pretty similar technology, A few advances, a few corrections in the two years that we see with harvest wind over White Creek, but pretty much the same turbines. So if you've done the math on that, they're getting fairly close to 20 year design life. That was the original design life for both turbine sites. White Creek, as it's an older site, has already gone through what's called a refurbishment project. Different levels of project that you can look at. I think a lot of sites are familiar with repower. One thing in this industry, probably yours too, France is. This technology is advancing fast and think about your laptop, your computer, your car. The amount of technology that has changed in that. And same thing with wind turbines. Yeah, the physics hasn't changed. You still so big of a swept area to get so many megawatts that hasn't changed. But the technology, how quickly the turbines can respond to changes in wind speed and direction has definitely changed Reliability as a constant goal of improving reliability. So a lot of the sites, as they as they get closer to that 20 year or beyond the PTC life of the project, we'll look at a repower and that's essentially changing the cells blades, maybe getting the. Bigger blades, but definitely getting newer technology. White Creek did something a little bit different than that. Rather than when doing a full repower, you did a refurbishment, a targeted refurbishment per turbine, based on what we thought were the weak points of the model. The turbines overall very high reliability. They run very well, but. There's some things that we can improve on. One of the benefits with NACE being on site, we've been on site since before commercial operations, so we have the entire history of the turbines. We know what those weak part points are. So one of the targets you mentioned PTCs, so to have a PTC funded project. The first thing you need to do is a valuation. So how much is that site worth in the future, that's not necessarily the value of the, well, how much is the tower worth? How much is it the cell worth? How much is that gearbox worth? It's more of how much can that site make money in the future? What are the costs versus the revenue? I definitely talked to an tax attorney on this. I'm a civil engineer, not a tax attorney, but my understanding of it is, how profitable that site can be in the future. And obviously every site's gonna have dynamics that make that number higher or lower, but the overall goal is what's the value of that asset. And to be PTC qualified, you need to do a four time spend on that. So the value of that asset when you're done with your project, whether it's a repower or refurbishment, the noon needs to be 80% of the final value of that project with the old or the original being 20%. Much easier to do with a repower when you're changing out a hole in a cell. Every component in there is new. Or blades. Your spend is quite a bit more on a repower. Pretty easy to qualify for. Refurbishment a little tougher. First you need to have a evaluation that is low enough that you can do that. And if you do that and just from then on, it depends on that number of the scope of what you're gonna do with the refurbishment. For us, we definitely targeted generators. We've had a issue with a specific vendor of generator that we wanted to replace that with a different generator, OEM. We did some blade retrofits, and then we really got into the targeting of, certain turbines, maybe they're on a precipice of a cliff and they're subject to more turbulent winds. So we're gonna make the gas system more robust and, you know, pick your targets. Again, the benefit of NA's tools is we could go back and look by creek was 15 years old. At that time, we could really look at, okay, what are the things that we need to be concerned about? Main bearing replacements, get the big photo of the reports because you got cranes and the rotors down. Is that your biggest issue? And with us it wasn't. We can get down to the$10 contactor level of what is our biggest issue? What bails a very expensive turbine, 30 minutes after everybody left on a Friday afternoon. So having that kind of data really helped us make a targeted approach too. What we wanted to address to qualify for that PTC project. Thank you for that overview. I think that gives our audience a really wonderful introduction to you and what the NACE win team gets up to. It gives a really wonderful introduction to what the NACE Win team performs when you're on these sites. Can you maybe provide a little bit more context as to the difference between what you called a refurbishment and a repower? I think some people may think that those terms are synonymous, but with what you just said about the impact of the PTC on. Each of those different types of projects, it sounds like where you're coming from, they're slightly different. So can you give a general overview of what the difference is between those two project types? Yes. Actually, I would say there's four and I'm going to grab some information that's, provided by Siemens on this. And it's their sales information so I am able to share this information, but essentially four levels of what they call end of life strategies for wind sites. So the first one is everything. It's a full repowering. You complete decommissioning and replacement of turbine foundation. Likely these are gonna be bigger. It gives you every component is gonna have the latest technology. Requires much more significant investment and permitting than the others because this is essentially starting off with a new site. You may still have the collection system, the substation the other balance of plant assets like roads, but. Every portion of the wind turbine's gonna be replaced. I don't hear that one happening as often, but as this technology gets older, this is probably something we're gonna see more of in the future. And then it just goes down in scope from there. The next one would be a partial repowering. That's typically a newness cell, the rotor set, including the blades. You'd still use existing tower and foundation. But everything basically up top is gonna be replaced. And that's the majority of your drivetrain. So your main bearing, your gearbox, your generator everything that rotates is up there. And typically in the base of the towers, and this is platform specific, but that's likely will, where you'll have more your. Electronics, your controls, your converters. So you could look at replacing those at the same time. But the tower, the ladder, the foundation all remains from the original. So one of the negatives with that is if you're using the foundation, and you want bigger turbines, you may be creating wake situations and you're not moving the foundations. So that's definitely something to look at. If you're putting on a new nela, you're. Probably gonna look at longer blades. Is that generator gonna be at a higher capacity? If so, how are you gonna handle that with the existing collection system? Are you going to not replace all of them? There's a balancing act there because there's some constraints with collection system and wake effects and. Start getting a whole lot of regulations when you're changing your nameplate with NERC and your balancing authority. So quite a bit to that one, but this one is fairly popular. Moving down from the partial repowering would be like a overhaul type of a repowering. And there's different levels of this. You could look at, I mentioned the drive train. There's many years on some of these sites. Fatigue cycles are aggregating. So you could replace the entire drivetrain, main bearing, main shaft gearbox generator. Again, look at the converter down tower, so lesser cost. If you're not changing out the blades, then you're not initiating a lot of environmental permits that. Take a lot of time and expense to do. And then finally, another one that we don't necessarily see much of is a blade overhaul. Maybe you just want longer blades. Maybe you want to keep the same blades again, depending on your platform and what options there are with your OEM. Those are the four levels of. Doing a repower down to refurbishment from just doing the blades all the way up to a full turbine replacement. Thank you so much for that overview. I definitely learned a lot about wind turbine. Maintenance and long-term repair. So thank you so much for providing our audience with that bit of overview. So taking it back to our previous discussion about the PTCs, which is, the wind production tax credit. I know you mentioned that refurbishment and repower projects may interact with PTCs differently depending on what the overall estimated impact of that tax credit will be. Can you give a general overview of the difference between the production tax credit, the PTC and the investment tax credit ITC when it comes to wind projects and which aspects of. Wind projects, similar to what you just described, where those tax credits come into play and what some of the changes to those tax credits that we've seen recently may create impacts within any of those project types. Absolutely. So what you haven't heard me say yet is anything about harvest wind. I manage two sites and we are looking at the answer to your question. For harvest wind specifically, and everyone needs to do this, what is the best for your situation? How much are you gonna produce in generation in the future? How far out is that future? Are you gonna be producing for another 10 years, which is the PTC cap? Or do you need assistance with your initial investment if you want a lower initial capital project? So you need to look at all those nuances for your specific needs. But start off with the easiest one, the investments tax credit. Basically a 30% discount on the capital portion of your project. So that says, Hey, we need this now, we need to invest in this site because of, again, your needs. We don't quite have the funding or maybe you don't need the production tax credits. Harvest Wind is owned by public utilities. They don't need the production tax credits because they don't need the tax breaks, so. Do you need those PTCs or do you want the initial investment? And there is another one in the middle. But first talk about the PTCs. So as long as you qualify and there's, I learned a new term, oc foreign entities of concern. So there are some restrictions on where your parts can come from. And so as long as you meet all the requirements, obviously, hopefully with a big, beautiful bill, they're hoping that the parts are all domestic. Well, we're in a global economy. We're not gonna get all of the parts, sourced domestically. So you're going to target those restrictions on how much you can have imported from what countries, and especially not ones that are on that FOC list. Fully qualify for the PTCs at$27 and 50 cents a megawatt hour. There's some kickers for fully domestic, parts for us that would be targeting blades potentially because those are produced domestically. So there's some kickers with that. But basically$27 and 50 cents per megawatt hour. Paid out over 10 years. So the next question is, how much are you gonna produce over the next 10 years? And again, fortunately, NASSA Hass been here since commercial operations. We have a very good handle on forecasting generation for the near future 10 years lock in heaven in 10 years, but white Creek's now been here for 18. I have a pretty good idea on that. Harvest wind is in its 16th year, so have a pretty good handle on that. So that's ITCs versus PTCs. Do you need it now or are you gonna produce enough to make it. Make more sense, and again, all those fun terms and calculations and economics about future value versus net present value. I have to bring out the books from college and reread those and make sure I'm getting it right. But there is one in the middle. Again, if you don't need the tax breaks. You can produce a lot more than what you think you'd get off the 30% ITC support. Then you can look at investors that would be willing to buy, pay for the PTCs now at a discounted rate so you can get the money for that. Now to help lower your initial CapEx. They get the enjoyment of a discounted PTC rate over the next 10 years. So kind of a hybrid that, meets in the middle between the two. There's, additional issues with the changes to the PTC and ITC, and that's the accelerated sunset for wind and solar tax credits. Did you want to talk about that specifically? The 48 e section and the 45 y section of the PTC? With the big beautiful bill there, there is a sunset on this program. Couple different dates on this. I don't know when this is gonna air, but I'm guessing sometime after September 2nd if you have signed and started your project before this coming up Tuesday, because it's the 28th of August today. You're in good shape. You're safe Harvard. We are not in good shape. We will not have a contract signed by September 2nd. So there's a couple other dates that we are looking at. We don't have all the answers at. This is fairly new information. The Treasury Department just came out with some guidance not quite a week ago, and. Still some questions that need to be resolved from that more formal guidance. One of them is what does continued construction mean? Let me back up a little bit and first start talking about the dates. So July 3rd, 2026 is the next important date to, to remember. So if. You get your project started before then, basically one year after signing the bill, then you have four years to complete your PTC qualifying project as long as it's continuing construction. And that's the question that we're digging into now. I honestly don't know what continued construction means because we are at a fairly high elevation. It gets very cold. We get lots of snow. That's not when you wanna be doing craning operations or much for a capital project. Does that discontinue your construction, your improvement projects? We're looking at answers to that as we speak. We do have, in case that it does, we do have some. Certain scope items that we would specifically schedule for those winter months. Definitely not training operations, but there's work that we need to have done in the substation. There's work that we need to have that. I mentioned converters a couple times for good reason. There's some work that we need to do with our converters, so we would purposely schedule those for those winter months so we can continue. Construction schedule because four years, there's gonna be delays, there's gonna be a lot of assets that are looking at doing the same thing or not in competition with each other. When we're talking about a limited labor pool, a limited number of parts that we all are targeting. If there's a mad rush to all be going for those same levels of inventory, same assets that can sometimes mean delays. So I think you really need to think about that continuing construction. Maybe it's slow, but continuous. Again, we don't know the answer for sure, but that's the direction we're heading is schedule the low equipment. Focused equipment. No cranes, no. Outdoor heavy equipment, keep those scheduled for the better construction months inside stuff, technical stuff, maybe the more labor intensive stuff. Scheduling that for the winter. Just to have that box checked. The alternative to, one of the benefits I didn't really cover, I'm talking about repowering, full repowering versus partial versus refurb is. The less you do, the quicker you can complete the project. And that's the other goal is if we're complete by December 31st, 2027, we're fine. We are PTC qualified and have achieved construction before that sunset occurs. That's really interesting. I've been following some of the fallout from the big beautiful Bill with its impact on the renewables industry, specifically how it rolled back some of the incentives from the inflation reduction act to encourage more renewable energy manufacturing and installation here in the States. And some of the fallout of that has been a massive amount of new renewables projects that have been scrapped and that have been canceled because they aren't gonna be able to get the tax credits that they planned on just because no one's going to build if they can't guarantee that they're going to get the financial benefits that they had expected when they originally propose that project. You mentioned some of the issues relating to the supply chain and accessing resources. Where is the majority of the manufacturing for wind products, turbine engine materials, where is that manufacturing coming from and is that also susceptible to some of these new tariffs that we're seeing? Yeah, that's a big question. There's over 3,500 parts in each of our turbines. I honestly don't know where all 3,500, of those come. But, the big ones, again, I operate Siemens turbines, Siemens manufacturers, their own blades. They do that with their, with Air Forces. They do that domestically. They do that in Denmark as well. Another components which we're gonna have to look specifically at those, there's already been some ideas that we've scrapped, not the project, but specific items, that we've. We can't do with this project because that fi o tariffs is a discussion as well. That seems to be changing pretty frequently. That's pretty hard to pin down. But that will definitely impact, the cost of the project. But the main focus now is staying away from those entities of concern. Unfortunately for one of us was the three s lift. We would. We have a aging technician, group of technicians, and we love them and we love their years of knowledge. And eventually they're gonna be tired of climbing a 80 meter ladder and be looking for something else. We don't wanna lose that institutional knowledge that, that we've gained here. Our NA technicians on average have, I've been here say on average for 15 years. Kudos for nace. I don't think that's. Something that is very common in this industry. But eventually they're gonna be tired of climbing ladders. We are a very focused state on elevators. We cannot install elevators economically, because of the restrictions on who can install them, who can maintain and inspect them, and then the time-based. Maintenance requirements, replacement component requirements. It's just. We can't do elevators, we can do the three S lift, which is not considered an elevator, unfortunately. That is a component that is made from a country on the fiat that will not be part of this project. So, S one, for example, we're gonna look at all of them of, which ones, what are the tariffs for this component? What are the other restrictions if we do the PTC route, we wanna fully qualify for that and get those domestic kickers in place. That will obviously add up to a lot more money over a 10 year period., So more to come on that. Mentioning those dates. This was a someday in the future thought that has now all of a sudden been 80% of my, let's do this now. Let's get started. Before July. So the focus and the cadence of this is dramatically different than it was just three weeks ago. Yeah, it definitely feels like we're in a state in our industry where we are constantly checking the news and making sure to stay up to date on the newest information because so much of what we work with can change so quickly, especially as it relates to this administration and some of the new guidelines and rules that are coming down from them. I wanted to give Anne McBroom some time to discuss some of her observations from working in the renewables industry for the last several years, especially spending some time in the wind industry during the time of the last Trump administration. And, and I would be particularly interested in seeing, what, similarities and differences you see in how the Trump administration is treating the wind industry, both, back in the first administration and then now, and what lessons we can take from your previous experiences in knowing how to adjust to these new changes that are occurring as we speak. Sure. The, there's significant differences. The first time around, there really wasn't clarity on the ITC for wind. There was some language that was confusing and beyond, correct me if I'm wrong, but there was some language that. That I believe many found confusing in the ITC regarding wind and what its, what its requirements were to qualify for the ETC. And I think that slowed wind down for quite a bit over time on new starts anyway, new start construction, and that's where my experience, in wind derives from is in new construction. So my perspective on these projects really has developed over time as I've watched the wind industry boom to bust. There was a time where we were building, hundreds of megawatts at a time and then all of a sudden it just stalled. And what I've seen is, this time around is, there's domestic content thresholds, that rise 45% in 2025, 50% in 26, 50 5% in 2027 and onward. There's lower thresholds for offshore from what I understand, but, there's stricter scrutiny on beginning the construction. As you mentioned, Bjorn. There's, the legacy IRA, pre 2025 projects, large, that are largely unaffected by this because the projects began before January 1st, 2020, 25. And they may still be relying on that IRC section from 40 section 45 and 48, that are not subject to these new constraints. So there's a lot of dynamic to this. And what I'm seeing is in the industry segment that I'm in now is, which for wind is repower. And in these repower events, we've started bidding on several projects that have already been scrapped. They can't make the deadlines. There's constraints on procurement. There's just it, there's just way too many complexities and the projects are just being scrapped. However, the few that have survived for us, we're doing basically collection line. Transformer setting, MV terms, things like that in the underground space. So what we're looking at and what I'm encountering with the new clients is that we're all looking at these mitigation strategies because of these complexities with wind and the ITCs and the PTCs, and they're, the companies are. Accelerating construction starts to meet deadlines like the aim for construction before July four, as you mentioned, July 3rd, July 4th, 2026 to take advantage of the one year safe harbor and preserve that eligibility and through 2027. So there's that placed in service deadline. There's development of documentation to now support beginning of construction via physical work at 5%, of cost incursion. Which has given the expected tightening of these standards. Strengthening our supply chain and compliance. This is a huge mitigation strategy in my mind because it ensures high domestic content to meet rising thresholds of that 40. Five to 55%. There's the fiac, which you mentioned, and that's a whole nother aspect of this for the supply chain. And then there's prioritizing refurbishment and hybrid projects. I'm seeing that as full steam ahead. They're adding energy storage to it. Zero emissions tech, like geothermal, hydro remain eligible. Under a more favorable timeline. These hedge against the phase out of wind and solar credits while still receiving, favorable incentives. Are you seeing this same strategy? These begin construction early starts strengthening the supply chain, focusing on storage rather than non win tech or just adding storage to win. Are you starting to see more of that? Bjorn, the projects that I see. Right now, it's like for harvest wind, that's just in the thought phase at this point, but the ones that I'm seeing are the ones that you mentioned earlier that have been going for some time. And those are typically the partial repower within cell and blade change outs. So I've seen, I think that was more to do with the sunset of power purchase agreements that those sites had, that they were typically 20 year power purchase agreements and so they didn't wanna touch the turbines. So coincidence there maybe a little bit and luck that expiration of those PPAs would trigger a repower. Right when this came in and they're sitting great as far as timing. They're ahead of it. I think there's another nuance here that is really going to focus any remaining projects into just a refurbishment. And I alluded to it a little bit earlier about permitting. Longer blades, obviously newness cells full repowers. Are obviously going to trigger environmental permitting that will include federal permits that have all been suspended. So if you are in an area that would trigger, for example, an incidental intake permit, you're not gonna get one. At least not in this presidential term. Those things can change, but at this point, I assume that those permits are gonna be suspended throughout this presidential term. So if you can't get that permit, you can't get longer blades, you can't swap out in the cells. So you're really gonna be focused just on refurbishment of what you have. Yeah, I think that's where we're headed because the big beautiful bill, it's really disrupted the P-T-C-I-T-C landscape for wind projects, accelerating timelines, increasing compliance burdens, and reducing predictability. So couple that with the ongoing Trump era regulatory and tariff driven headwinds. They're halting projects, investor retrenchment, tariffs. I think the US wind industry faces a complex, high stakes landscape going forward. And, it's requiring rigorous compliance planning. You mentioned permitting, there's slowdowns. The projects on federal lands, waters, for offshore now require personal approval by interior secretary. There's a lot of complexities to it and it's really disheartening because wind has a lot of potential and the land. From what? On the projects I've worked on, I've built numerous facilities on farmlands for cattle and we build them and the cattle are just back out grazing, they can't use the land for anything else, especially in places like, let's say Lamar, Colorado, it's rocky terrain. It's really cattle country, so the land can't be used for, a high production farming. It's just great for cattle. So we put up some wind turbines, add to the grid, have the cattle graze and everybody's happy. So, to forego these wonderful projects that add so much to the community for production, especially in communities where, they are on the edge of blackouts and the demand is so high in these hot summers, it just doesn't make sense to me. And I try to wrap my mind around it and I read as much as I possibly can, and I sit back every time and think, what is the administration thinking and causing this kind of chaos in an industry that's only trying to provide clean energy. A lot of great points there, Ann. Couple my biased, my opinion, thoughts related to what you just said. So I site's a little different. The motivations are a little different. Wind turbines are big. They're out in the middle of the field. You either love them or you hate'em. They add either add to the landscape or you think that the landscape has been destroyed by, I'm very biased on that. I think they look great out there. But, one of the things that you mentioned with the farmland is something else I also see is farming communities, farming families. They have kids, generations grow older. The older generation is gonna hand over the operation to most likely multiple kids, and then splitting up that farm into 2, 3, 4 is no longer economically viable. All right, we can't keep the farm going. How are we gonna split up this asset? And what I personally see is the land being developed. So they sell off the land to a developer. There's roads, there's houses. There's permanent disturbances to this landscape, so you might not like the look of a turbine in this field, outside of town. But in my, again, very opinionated biased angle on this, is that wind farm eventually will go away. Whether that's 30 years or 40, I don't know yet. We're looking at 30 right now. During that time, that farmer has not sold that property. It's a great asset for them. They love us here because, the lease payments are continuing for them and we're good neighbors with them. And so they like us. We like them. So whenever they end of that life for that site is up, you're gonna have a decommissioning plan. Typically, that means you're going down minus three feet. And so the wind turbines are gone minus three feet. The land is restored. I don't know of a better way that would guarantee that land is gonna be as pristine as it can be 30 years in the future than having a wind farm on that property. A lot of discussion on the wildlife for that. Then yes, there's issues I can confidently say that our commuting vehicles to the site are worse than what the wind turbines are for our site for avian species. The rest of the wildlife, we have transformers here, we have fiberglass blades. We are concerned about hunting. So we've really restrict hunting and the wildlife has learned from that. This is like a wildlife refuge here. It's a fun place to work and see all different kinds of wildlife that were not in the numbers that they were 20 years ago. We had a wildfire that came through two Julys ago and it came through fast. It traveled 10 miles in about two hours. And if it wasn't for our roads or crane pads, that wildlife would've been completely wiped out. There's definitely some benefits to wind farms that wouldn't be the case if we hadn't been here again, I apologize. That's my very biased, opinion on that. One other point that you brought up, we're basically saying, full repower, partial repower, not likely, unless you've already been working on this for some time. If I were to sum up very short summary of what I do is what can I do to keep these turbines running at a high level? Of reliability for the longest time possible. Okay. Make these machines run great for a long time. So again, another biased opinion is the full repowers. The partial repowers bugg me a little bit of, Hey, let's just swap them with new. It's one of the reasons why I got into this industry is to. Make things run better longer so they don't end up in the landfill or get scrapped, go to the scrap metal piles. So I am a big fan of the refurbishment. We know the strengths of the turbines. We know the weaknesses. Okay, let's focus on the weaknesses. The rest, we know it's good because we've been maintaining it at a high level for the last 18 or 16 years for harvest. I wanted to engage with you and Francis about the path that we're taking in, assisting in the repowers that we're doing and what your thoughts are and a viable path forward for us because we see it as, we're contributing to repowers and providing these services. And we think that a strong path forward for wind in the renewable space is the repower. Because so many of the projects are being scrapped, these repowers contribute to a strong wind presence, a continued strong wind presence, which adds to your sentiment earlier about, how the land remains within the families and how the turbines can be rehabilitated, refurbished, and we can continue to provide quality renewable to the grid. And it also helps the farmers because I've found in the construction that I've done, I've built wind farms in cattle country. So these wind turbines, as you said, the payments help these families create a better wealth base for the future generations. And so if these wind turbines, if this bill impacts. The industry as we're seeing it already, is these repowers will help sustain it until we can get past this obstacle and, our services are, we'll send a team out and we'll pull that 4,000 feet a day and get collection line in and set the transformers, do the terms put on the FA lights, and assist in these projects. And we do it. In a way that the EPCs are appreciative because we do it lean, we do it quick, and we help them get their deadlines and meet the requirements of, of their agreements. So if we can continue to do that, we can continue to contribute to the lifeblood that wind has relied on, the wind industry has relied on for so long, and do you see that path as viable going forward, or do you think that we're going to hit more obstacles regarding the repower space? You've mentioned a couple times, lower quality farms grazing only. Those are natural fits for a wind cycle. Obviously you have to have transmission, and wind and whatnot as well, but it's economically natural that, wind turbines are going to require large leased amounts of acres, 20, 40,000 acres if you are looking at high yielding farmland. It's gonna be much more expensive. So naturally you're going to fall into, all right, this is a subsistence farm. They need us, we need them. And it's a natural occurring relationship there. So that works very well. You mentioned the refurbishment projects. Is that going to, be enough? I don't know what the, none of us know what the future is, Ann, for. For what the requirements it, it does seem like restrictions have always become increasing, never decreasing. When we started in commercial operations in 2007, we forecasted our wind and wind was not really a big blip on, we have a lot of hydro up here and we've got nuclear up here. We were just a blip on the grid. And you mentioned the tremendous growth, previous to that. And so I think it's human nature. If one's good, let's put in 10,000, and all of a sudden we became a pretty big blip on our balancing authorities screen. It didn't take long for things like curtailments and a whole bunch of business practices from the balancing authority that were not in any of our models because they literally did not exist. Moving forward, more things like that. The requirement for a DLS to shut off aviation lights when there's no aircraft present. Again, these sites are gonna be. Typically remote and probably not a lot of air traffic and light pollution has become a topic. And so why have the aviation lights on when there's no aircraft? And so that is a new requirement for the wind industry that didn't exist in Washington state two years ago. Incidental take permits. There's a very significant change in that, that's about a year old for general permits versus specific and different tiers of that specific permit that, that existed, but not as it exists today for that. Again, that part has been suspended, but it's still there, and eventually, someday that, that will not be suspended. The next one is cybersecurity and the inverter based resource, requirements that NERC is coming out. And one of your other questions is what NACE can provide. Another big one is NERC support the NACE nerc. Program is very well known., They're excellent. The big ones that we're focused on right now are PRC 28, 29, and 30. 28 is a requirement next year, 2026 for capturing disturbances on the grid. Maybe you're a new site and you're already set up for that. Great. Good for you. We're not, we're hear the term legacy. I don't know if I like legacy, but, the technology is not the same in 2007 as it is today. We don't have those devices in the substation to capture at the frequency that PRC 20 eight's requiring. PRC 29 is the frequency response. So how did your site respond to this degree disturbance? Again, you're recording it under PRC 28, but here's the requirements for how you need to respond to that. And in PRC 30, we can't respond as you want and, explain why and go from there. That one's a little further out, but this is where NACE can, another place that maybe you typically don't think about are these NERC requirements. And. That's a long answer to are things gonna become more complicated? More complex? Yes. I think that's always been the case for any technology over time. Talk about sims and fossil fuel. I think we are a pretty robust and pretty mature industry that can figure this stuff out. There's a very. Very good sharing of information between different companies, in the same industry and makes, this as an example of we can help each other out and what did you do with this? And NACE can be a valuable asset'cause and that,'cause we've been doing it for a long time. Wonderful. Thank you so much for that, Bjorn. It was wonderful to get an overview of what you do and what the NACE wind management team does in operating these plants. I've learned so much about some of the differences between how the wind industry is impacted by some of these new changes compared to what we've seen on the photovoltaic side, and then just hearing about some of the unique aspects of the wind industry that really make it a great option for some of these communities. And then learning from you and Ann about how the NACE power plant operations side as well as us at NACE renewables can both provide services and help to developers and site owners in. Managing these sites, in pursuing refurbishments and repower initiatives. So thank you so much for your time, Bjorn. We're really grateful to have had you on the podcast and you definitely taught me so much, and I'm sure our listeners as well will be so interested in hearing all of this. So thank you again for being here. And thank you all for tuning into the Power Bank podcast. If you have a question for us or for Bjorn, please send us an email at power bank@nace.com and we will look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of The Power Bank, sponsored by NACE Renewables. If you have any questions regarding the topic of our discussion today, or you would like to reach out to us about special projects for photovoltaic sites, we would absolutely love to talk with you. You can send us an email at Power bank@nace.com. Thank you and keep powering on.