The state of wind energy in lockdown.

With many of us in wind energy in lockdown this weeks post speculates on where we’re heading.

 

So what is the state of wind energy in lockdown? So let’s get this out of the way the wind is still blowing, turbines are still turning and I have to say that most people I’m speaking with are continuing to operate, albeit under strict distancing guidelines. Of course a lot of us are classed as essential workers so we’ve had to adapt quickly to this situation. For STL USA in particular this has meant moving courses to an onsite format where we can but of course not every customer has access to a turbine or tower to conduct a training course.

On this note I’d like to give a major shout out to the guys at Cotech who’ve let us use their training facility in Houston whilst ours is shut.

The GWO have played their part by quickly developing a new partial online course for Basic Safety training refreshers. This course allows for 100% delivery online over the space of a few days via a virtual classroom format. The course is built around interaction and requires both instructors and technicians to demonstrate a series of actions within the curriculum as well as theory elements to gain the 6 month interim accreditation.

This is an exciting development for STL USA as we’ve been eagerly awaiting the launch of an online, blended course format to broaden our course offering across the USA. We’ve also spent some of our lockdown time accelerating our plans to bring the GWO ART course to the USA. This is something we’re particularly keen to have sit alongside our standard GWO safety training courses.

Our wider outlook for wind is still very positive despite the current lockdown. Wind energy is proving itself to be a cost effective source of energy generation and with numerous new developments in the pipeline including the major offshore farms we still believe well end 2020 in an upbeat mood.

The second half of the year will see us looking further afield from our traditional mid-West base in the “wind corridor”. The next stage of our growth will be focussed on the offshore market, our longer term goal is to begin delivering GWO Sea Survival from a strategically located training center by the end of 2020. This is about 4-6 months behind our initial plan but hey Covid-19 came along so we hope you’ll forgive us.

All that’s left for us to do is say a big thank you to all our people who have worked tirelessly during this difficult time, for our clients patience and to the wider wind community for hanging in there.

 

If you’d like to talk about how we can support you GWO training get in touch.

 

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Beat the GWO refresher backlog

You can beat the GWO refresher backlog with STL USA.

There’s a big GWO refresher backlog building right now. To tackle this we are building a roster of technicians who require GWO refresher training so we can manage course places and allocate these on the basis of those closest to their expiry dates.

 

Adding your technicians to the roster is very easy.

  1. Add you contact details
  2. Add your technicians and their certification expiry dates
  3. We will contact you to allocate a training place before certs lapse

 

You can join the roster here:

 

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March news round up

Welcome to the March news round up.

I promised myself i would write this news round up without mentioning the C-word, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible. Covid-19 has dominated March and looks set to have an impact on the wind sector for the next few months. We are lucky as a business to be able to continue, albeit on a reduced basis, training during this crisis. We’ve taken significant steps to mitigate risks for our trainers and course attendees during the outbreak. This has meant the closure of our training facilities and a move to 100% onsite training until we feel we it is 100% safe to reopen the centers.

March started so differently

At the very start of March we were packing up after attending the AWEA O&M conference in San Diego. It was a great conference, we met up with clients and connected with new potential clients across the week. The weather was great and we had a small opportunity to enjoy some of the Southern California coastline. What a difference 30 days make! We moved quickly to ensure we could react to our client needs but most importantly to ensure the safety of our people and our attendees.

Moving onsite

The big story of the last 30 days has been our transition to 100% GWO onsite training. We regularly run training courses for customers at their wind farms but we’ve never had to run 100% of our courses in this fashion. The safety advantages are obvious, less interaction between people and less travel for course attendees. As training centers have closed across the country demand has grown exponentially. A big thank you to all the STL USA team for stepping up as in many cases we’ve been the last resort for clients.

Looking ahead

One thing is for certain this outbreak won’t last forever. When we come out of the back of this there will be a number of challenges that we will have to cover. Firstly there’s going to be a major backlog of refresher training that will need to be completed, second it’s likely there will be a rush of new hires. These will likely have been postponed during the lockdown. It’s going to mean a lot of training is required in a short space of time. To tackle this we’re working with all our customers to create a schedule for refreshers starting in May, we’re committed to running these back to back for as long as required so nobody’s certs lapse. It’s important we do this as lapsed certs require the tech to complete a full training course, keeping them out of the field for a full 5 days. We are working on a way for you to log your techs and their expiry dates into a schedule so we can then provide you training options, more to follow…

 

Stay Safe Everyone.

 

In the meantime if you want to add technicians to our refresher schedule you can get in touch below.

 

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