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Wind farm concierge explains all.
Natural Power's wind farm technical manager Phil Martin discusses the finer points of Black Sheep beer, the daily commute through the kitchen and the art of being a concierge to a wind turbine.
Who is "Phil Martin" and where did he come from?
I have asked myself the same question many times, but the general consensus seems to be that I hail from Darlington in North East England. I've never left the North East as it is a fantastic part of the country that feeds my main vices of mountain biking, rock climbing and Black Sheep beer! Fortunately everyone thinks the North East is a smog ridden blot on the map, so not many folk venture up here-that suits me just fine as it just means there is more space to enjoy my pastimes!
What did you do before joining Natural Power?
As one of the younger members of NP, my career path has been fairly short. I left school at 16 to join an apprenticeship scheme with Fujitsu, a microchip manufacturer. I was never much of an academic and didn't fancy more education. Much to my disappointment, I was promptly catapulted into an ONC, then an HNC in Mechatronics, before been offered the opportunity of doing a degree in Instrumentation and Control Engineering. Unfortunately though, six years through my employment and a year through my degree, I was made redundant when the plant was shutdown in 1998 due to a global glut of memory chips. I resumed employment shortly after with Honeywell Controls as an Instrumentation Field Engineer. I gained a lot of experience in a number of plants ranging from aircraft manufacturing to sweet production at Trebor Bassett (great factory shop!). Five years later, I finished my degree and fancied a change- that's when I found Natural Power.
When did you join Natural Power?
Longer ago than it feels - December 2004.
Why did you join Natural Power?
I saw Natural Power as a great opportunity to join an exciting new industry. After my interview at the Greenhouse, I just hoped I'd be offered the job, as Natural Power appeared to be a great place to work, set in a fantastic location and everyone was so friendly.
What services do you provide as a Natural Power Site Manger?
Being a Wind Farm Technical Manager is a bit like being a concierge! It is my job to oversee every aspect of the wind farm, from ensuring the facilities at site are kept clean and tidy, to performing public visits, to providing High Voltage network operation. I doubt if anyone comes to this job with all the required skills, as there are so many things I could be called upon to do.
Best and worst things about the job?
The worst things are being called out at 3 am to attend a wind farm burglar alarm activation only to find an extremely large spider prowling about!
The good things- working from home is fantastic, the five minute commute via the kitchen is great and I've almost forgotten what a traffic jam looks like. I enjoy being outdoors in the fresh air - it certainly beats being stuck inside a stuffy office! Climbing the turbines is just like a very easy rock climb, so that keeps my fitness up. I get a fantastic truck to travel around in and there never seems to be a new gadget far away!
What's a typical day for you?
I usually start around 8am or sooner if I have to travel a long way or if the phone rings. If I have to drive a long way, such as to the Out Newton Wind Farm which is a 260 mile round trip, I'll often be on the road by about half seven. The first job every day (including weekends) is to log into each of the 4 wind farms that I manage to make sure that everything is as it should be. If there are any outstanding faults or turbine stoppages, these are brought to the attention of the maintenance teams at site to resolve. The daily reports are then filled in and submitted to the relevant personnel. Once the daily chores are out of the way, I'll either head out to one of my sites or perform administration tasks at home such as report or procedure writing. I try and wrap up my day by about 5pm by logging into each of the sites again to check that all is well. Although if technicians don't finish working on site until later on, I can't officially finish until they have logged back out of the site with me. Once work is out of the way, I often head out on my mountain bike to forget about the day, before hitting the sack and getting up to do it all over again.
Meet us on the road
In keeping with our ongoing commitment to technical innovation and industry-wide participation, Natural Power have presented at and participated in a number of recent high-profile wind energy events and networks.
VindKraftNet
Oisin Brady, CFD expert and Senior Business Manager of our office in Strasbourg, France, has been a regular participant in the Danish VindKraftNet, a network of industry experts which is focussed on advancing and sharing knowledge on wind resource analysis tools and methods. Oisin has recently presented papers to the VindKraftNet group on the use of advanced CFD in wind energy applications and tools and methods for the evaluation of wind farms in forestry.
TPWind Technology Platform
Neil Douglas, Associate Director of the Technical Group in Natural Power, has been contributing to TP Wind Technology Platform, an EU funded project to define wind energy research and development priorities out to 2030. Neil sits on the Wind Resource group of TPWind.
EWEC 2008, Brussels
At the recent European Wind Energy Conference in Brussels, Natural Power presented a number of poster papers. Principal amongst these poster presentations was an in-depth study of the impact of forestry and complex terrain on turbine performance in an operational wind farm. This included a detailed SCADA data review to define turbine performance issues, Ventos CFD wind flow modelling to quantify adverse wind flow conditions and model forestry management scenarios and ZephIR laser anemometry data collection to allow full-rotor disk wind turbine specific data to be collected and to allow the CFD model to be tuned.
Natural Power were also co-authors of a poster by MeteoTest of Switzerland that presented a study into the performance of laser anemometry in complex terrain and the behaviour of the Bora-Bora winds in the mountains of Bosnia.
Irish Wind Energy Association 2008
Natural Power had a strong presence at the recent IWEA annual spring event in Dublin, with an exhibition stand and staff members from our development, technical, construction and asset management groups in attendance. Neil Douglas presented to the conference on the subject of Technical Challenges in Optimal Offshore Wind Farm Design in a session on the potential for offshore wind in Irish waters.
Speaking after the IWEA conference, Neil remarked
"The Irish government is firmly focussed on both onshore and offshore wind as key elements in delivering it's national renewable energy ambitions. The onshore market continues to go from strength to strength. The potential offshore resource is vast, and the market conditions required for its exploitation are emerging. It was very encouraging to see a strong focus on this sector at the conference. It was a pleasure as always to meet up with many of our Irish clients, and to be asked to share our experience in the offshore sector with the other delegates."
Please contact us for copies of these papers / presentations at sayhello@naturalpower.com
Natural Power will be at a number of other events this year including:
WINDPOWER 2008 in Houston, Texas - Stand 753 on the 1st - 6th June 2008
BWEA Offshore in London - Stand 25 on the 4th June 2008
It would be great to see you at any of these events - please do get in touch if you think you will be attending and have anything to discuss.
Natural Power Strengthens Staff Development Structures
It is an oft-quoted cliche that the most important part of any organisation are the people. With the recent appointment of Natural Power's first dedicated human resources advisor, we look at the background and ethos of training and development within the company.
It's not an obvious or easy transition for any company to develop from a one-person start-up, working out of the founder's bedroom, into global wind energy consultancy and services business employing over 70 people. Natural Power has achieved this within the 12 years since its inception and now retains a core of expertise of personnel with professional qualifications in fields ranging from ecology, wind engineering, construction engineering, chartered surveying, project development and management accounting.
The acquisition of knowledge and continual learning are fundamental to the ethos of the company, which has fostered a working culture where staff development is automatically supported. As Stuart Hall, company director and founder puts it:
"Even in the early days when wind energy was a very small industry, we recognised that a key success factor for any consultancy business is that they have advanced knowledge and experience to offer its clients. We have therefore always actively supported training and development of staff members, as the benefits to the organisation make the investment more than worthwhile."
When the company and industry was in its infancy the company used innovative ways to support and develop staff members. For example, Natural Power would always provide close mentorship of new staff members who joined. In addition, the company insist on using open plan offices, where information can be freely exchanged and personal interaction is commonplace. Early on it was found that personal development can be greatly enhanced in such an environment where new staff members can learn a lot simply by observing more experienced personnel in action or even by 'eavesdropping' on conversations around them. These are strategies that encouraged throughout all the Natural Power businesses to this day. Giles Dearden, Head of Development explains the benefits.
"We found that the by providing effective mentorship of staff, and providing an environment where information is exchanged and discussion promoted, staff development is enhanced. In my own section, this has allowed people with diverse backgrounds, such as microbiology and engineering, to be integrated successfully as project development managers."
But as the company has expanded, opportunities for formal training and accreditation programmes have become more commonplace and several staff members have benefitted from specific and targeted training programmes. Within the wind engineering department, Natural Power has more accredited WASP analysts outside of the Risoe laboratory than any other company. Within the operations team, Natural Power have also supported several staff members to achieve high voltage switching training compliant with utility industry standards.
Fortunately the dynamic, growing renewables industry means that opportunities for personal development outside of any formal training programmes are rarely hard to find. Natural Power encourages employees to attend conferences and industry forums. Inter company transfers are also encouraged where there are benefits to the business, and with growing offices in France, Chile, Canada, Wales, Ireland and England several staff members have already taken secondments abroad, or within different work departments.
Natural Power also support professional development and recently supported two employees as they gained Chartered Engineering (CEng) status, to add to the 20 or so employees who are already accredited members of Professional Institutions.
The future for staff development within Natural Power is set to strengthen with the appointment of the human resources advisor Iseult Smyth, CIPD qualified and a graduate of human resources and industrial relations, who has previously worked within Centrica Energy and more recently, Napier University. Iseult will ensure that staff development across the Natural Power group continues to remain a core focus of the business as the company expands further. As she explains herself,
"The continued expansion and growth that Natural Power experiences make it a very exciting time to be joining as HR Advisor. Day-to-day I will deal with all HR operations and be the first point of contact for all the staff and I aim to continue to build upon the stimulating, rewarding and supportive work environment that all the staff of Natural Power enjoy, ensuring we remain a success and an employer of choice."
If you feel your career could grow within Natural Power then why not check our job pages on www.naturalpower.com/jobs or email us at work@naturalpower.com
Natural Power - top of the roost(er)
An overview of Natural Power's growth in France
Following the acquisition of Ventec in April 2007, Natural Power has been busy expanding its office at the heart of the mainland, in Strasbourg. Natural Power France now counts seven full-time team members providing advanced wind resource studies across Europe and beyond.
The French wind market lives on hope and determination. Despite administrative complexities and a government whose commitment to wind energy has yet to be fully stated, France now has over 2700 MW of wind power (by end 2007), overtaking the UK in terms of installed capacity. Over 6500 MW of further permits have been issued, much of which is expected to be built over the next three years.
For long the French wind industry operated under a law, since reformed albeit with other restrictions, which limited the size of projects to 12 MW. This made it difficult to benefit from industry-wide economies of scale, and led to a fragmented development sector.
Nonetheless, supply-side restrictions have pushed the cost of permitted projects up to swingeing levels. Development companies have changed hands as the sector has undergone rapid consolidation, with most of the large players moving in to acquire operating assets and development pipelines. There are now few independent mid-sized developers left.
Natural Power has taken a very active role throughout the evolution of the French market by providing full project Due Diligence services. Often our advanced tools - our natural powertools™ - Ventos®, Melogale™ and ZephIR®, are applied to reduce risk for investors seeking to acquire projects in sometimes marginal wind conditions. In addition Natural Power assists French companies looking to expand to overseas markets.
Strasbourg hosts Natural Power's advanced wind flow services, namely Ventos, the industry's best validated CFD model. Specialist engineers are committed to solving issues for our clients on the most challenging sites, to reduce uncertainty, understand project underperformance, and plan wind farms in the most difficult conditions. Such conditions are becoming more and more routine.
It is also from here that we serve the Turkish and Central European markets in which an increasing amount of our activity is based. In 2007, Natural Power together with our partner in Ankara, Re-consult, was involved in over 2.5 GW of site design and Due Diligence services in Turkey, much of which was leading up to EMRA's (the Turkish electricity regulator) open door for project submissions. We have also been involved as Owner's Engineer in Romania, and as wind consultants on various projects in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Located at the very centre of Strasbourg looking out over the pedestrian streets, our office remains true to Natural Power's values. Thanks to its location, all our team is able commute on foot, by bicycle or by tram. We would be delighted to meet you at our office should you wish to discuss the many ways we can work together to help achieve your goals.
Natural Power announce partnership with LatWind to offer new services in Chile
Natural Power Consultants, a leading international renewable energy consultancy, announced today that it has signed an agreement with Latwind to offer new combined services to the wind industry in Chile. This announcement follows a period of strong growth within Natural Power, movements in to new markets and the acquisition of new products and services such as the exclusive licences to the ZephIR® laser anemometer technology and VENTOS® advanced CFD wind flow modelling code.
This partnership will allow clients in Chile and Latin America as a whole to benefit from Natural Power's wealth of experience and expertise gained across Europe and North America, whilst maintaining and growing LatWind's local office staffed with skilled wind engineers.
Commenting on the partnership, Stuart Hall, Director of Natural Power said: "South America has fantastic wind energy potential. We believe that together with LatWind we have the tools, experience and local presence to help realise this potential at the lowest project risk for our clients".
LatWind, who were established in 2006, work with clients including local and foreign companies, as well as governmental institutions who want to develop renewable sources of energy in Chile.
Alexander von Pescatore, Director of LatWind welcomed the partnership and added: "This is an excellent opportunity to combine specialised local forces with the great know-how being transferred by Natural Power. Counting on such a sophisticated backup will strengthen greatly our presence in Latin America".
