Speaker 1: Hi, it's West Kosova. We're taking a break this week,
Speaker 1: so here's an episode you might have missed and an
Speaker 1: update on this story. Since the show aired, a number
Speaker 1: of planned offshore wind projects in the northeastern US have
Speaker 1: been put on hold or are in doubt, mostly because
Speaker 1: of rising costs, and that's also raised doubts about President
Speaker 1: Biden's goal of reaching thirty gigawatts of offshore wind power
Speaker 1: capacity by the end of this decade. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts project we talk about in this episode completed
Speaker 1: construction of its first wind turbine last month, and a
Speaker 1: developer of another big win project off the coast of
Speaker 1: Virginia says it's moving ahead with its project. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening. We'll be back on Monday with a
Speaker 1: new big take.
Speaker 2: Federal regulators made it official. Vineyard Wind will be the
Speaker 2: first large scale offshore wind energy project in the United States.
Speaker 2: This project will generate enough electricity for about four hundred
Speaker 2: thousand homes. The CEO of Vineyard Wind, Lars Peterson, says
Speaker 2: this new project will kickstart the industry. Vineyard will be
Speaker 2: the first to use a new turbine that stands more
Speaker 2: than eight hundred and fifty feet tall, with each of
Speaker 2: its three blades stretching more than the length of a
Speaker 2: football field.
Speaker 1: About fifteen miles south of Nantucket, off the coast of Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: a massive new wind farm is rising out of the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Ocean. The project is expected to start delivering electricity
Speaker 1: this fall. Those turbines will bring the Biden administration closer
Speaker 1: to its goal of the US generating thirty giglewatts of
Speaker 1: power from clean offshore wind by twenty thirty, but that
Speaker 1: goal won't be easy to reach. Building those super tall
Speaker 1: wind turbines is not cheap, and some projects have faltered.
Speaker 3: Costs have gone up, price of steel has gone up.
Speaker 3: Giant towers use a lot of steel. All of a sudden,
Speaker 3: the project's costs are higher than they expected.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg's will Wade. He got on a big boat
Speaker 1: to check out the wind farm, and a bit later
Speaker 1: I talked to Nick Schultz. He's a commercial diver working
Speaker 1: on this project, and I asked him what it's like
Speaker 1: to build a wind turbine in deep water.
Speaker 4: Most of our day is just making sure it all.
Speaker 5: Goes right, because you know, when you pick up something
Speaker 5: that weighs a million pounds. You got to have it
Speaker 5: as safe as you possibly can.
Speaker 1: I'm west Kosova today on the Big Take the answer.
Speaker 1: My friend is blowing it.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, will you went out to see this
Speaker 6: giant wind project.
Speaker 1: What was it like?
Speaker 3: It was really fun. I had to go to Cape
Speaker 3: Cod to the Like. All my coworkers were like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's a real hardship assignment.
Speaker 1: Well, journalism can be tough.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 3: We head at about two hours due south from Hyanas,
Speaker 3: out past Martha's vineyard, and then when we get there,
Speaker 3: there's six monopiles sticking out of the ocean. The monopile
Speaker 3: is the foundation that they're going to attach the turbines too.
Speaker 3: Eventually there's going to be sixty two turbines, so they'll
Speaker 3: have to do sixty two monopiles and then they go
Speaker 3: out and attach the turbine. So there were six of
Speaker 3: them there and they're sticking out of the ocean maybe
Speaker 3: fifty feet. But then a couple of miles away they've
Speaker 3: got the substation. That thing was just huge. They needed
Speaker 3: four monolpiles for that, and then they built the platform
Speaker 3: on top of that. It's a couple one hundred feet
Speaker 3: up and then the substation, and you know, when you're
Speaker 3: in the ocean, it's hard to see scale. So this
Speaker 3: thing is literally almost as big as a football field,
Speaker 3: just sitting on a platform in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 3: So all the turbines are going to be wired to
Speaker 3: the substation. The substation takes the electricity and it puts
Speaker 3: it on a big table and it sends it all
Speaker 3: the way to shore.
Speaker 1: And so they have these platforms, these monopiles that the
Speaker 1: turbines will go on. And then how big are the
Speaker 1: turbines themselves going to be? I think we've all seen
Speaker 1: those things, you know, the big blades spinning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you've ever seen a wind turbine on land,
Speaker 3: you know it's big. But the ones they make for
Speaker 3: offshore they're even bigger. They're really big. So these are
Speaker 3: going to be about eight hundred and fifty feet tall.
Speaker 3: And I did a little math that works out almost
Speaker 3: exactly to the height of the Washington Monument with the
Speaker 3: Statue of Liberty stacked on top. This project's going to
Speaker 3: be sixty two of them. It's about eight hundred megawatts
Speaker 3: of capacity. That's going to be enough to power four
Speaker 3: hundred thousand homes in the region. It's a big project.
Speaker 1: And how long has this been under development.
Speaker 3: It's been under development for a long time. They got
Speaker 3: their initial power purchase agreement back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: So they're just now starting to put these turbines up.
Speaker 1: How long until this thing is up and running.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be complete in early twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: but they told me that the first ones that are
Speaker 3: going to be installed, they're going to be wiring up
Speaker 3: as soon as they can. They should be delivering electricity
Speaker 3: in October already delivering.
Speaker 1: Wow, that seems pretty soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really soon. This will be the first electricity
Speaker 3: from a large scale US offshore wind project. There are
Speaker 3: two other offshore wind projects in service in the United States,
Speaker 3: but they're really just test projects. One is near Block Island.
Speaker 3: It's just thirty megawatts with five turbines. That was the
Speaker 3: first one. And then there's another one down in Virginia.
Speaker 3: It only has two turbines. There was really just a
Speaker 3: demonstration project.
Speaker 1: So I imagine that people who like to use the
Speaker 1: beach and own property along the shoreline don't really want
Speaker 1: to look out and see giant turbine spinning. Can you
Speaker 1: see it from the shore.
Speaker 3: I mean they're big. You could see them from a while,
Speaker 3: but I'm told that you will not be able to
Speaker 3: see it from the shore.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about how we're trying to wean
Speaker 1: ourselves from natural gas, from coal, from other fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and move toward wind and solar. Why did it take
Speaker 1: so long for our project like this to get underwig.
Speaker 3: This has just been a slow moving industry in the
Speaker 3: United States, and certainly since this is the first big project,
Speaker 3: it's getting a lot of attention. They all have to
Speaker 3: go through a lot of environmental reviews. You've got to
Speaker 3: go through state and federal oversight, You've got to do
Speaker 3: all of those environmental impact studies. The fishermen had plenty
Speaker 3: to say about the topic. It takes a long time
Speaker 3: to get all of the approvals that you need.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole bunch of other projects also planned
Speaker 1: up and down the East coast. Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Offshore wind is a big component of the US's
Speaker 3: climate strategy, and there's about seventeen projects that are planned
Speaker 3: running all the way up from the mid Atlantic up
Speaker 3: to the Northeast. President Joe Biden has set a goal
Speaker 3: of having thirty gigawatts of offshore wind and service by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, so we'll see if we get there. But
Speaker 3: we're starting to hit some snags because this is such
Speaker 3: a slow moving industry. Vineyard Wind is under construction now,
Speaker 3: and there's another project almost in the same area, South
Speaker 3: Fork Wind. It's under construction now. They'll probably be finished faster,
Speaker 3: but they won't have electricity delivered as fast, or so
Speaker 3: they say, but South Fork Wind is much smaller. But
Speaker 3: after that, nothing else is under construction, and instead we've
Speaker 3: seen several projects trying to get out of their agreements,
Speaker 3: trying to cancel some of their contracts, trying to renegotiate
Speaker 3: their contracts. So here's the problem. The basic business model
Speaker 3: for an offshore wind project is you plan your project,
Speaker 3: then you have to get a PPA. That's a power
Speaker 3: purchase agreement. That means you've got someone on shore that's
Speaker 3: willing to buy the electricity and they're usually run for
Speaker 3: decades twenty twenty five years as standard. So you have
Speaker 3: a utility usually that says we'll buy your electricity at
Speaker 3: this price for this length of time. As a developer,
Speaker 3: once you have that, you're good to go. You take
Speaker 3: that to the bank, and the bank says, ah, this
Speaker 3: company we trust is promising to give you money. We'll
Speaker 3: loan you money. Now you've got the bank promising to
Speaker 3: loan you money. You can take that to your suppliers
Speaker 3: and say, we would like to buy one hundred wind turbines,
Speaker 3: and the bank is promising to loan us the money,
Speaker 3: and the suppliers say, all right, we're all good to go.
Speaker 3: That's how it's supposed to work. What's happened here is
Speaker 3: these projects take a long time. So Vineyard Wind got
Speaker 3: its PPA in twenty eighteen. It lined up its bank,
Speaker 3: it's financing, it lined up its supply deals. It's good
Speaker 3: to go. Other projects that got their PPAs later they're
Speaker 3: encountering big problems with inflation. So they got their PPAs
Speaker 3: they started to line up their financing. When they went
Speaker 3: to line up supply deals, costs have gone up in
Speaker 3: the past twelve eighteen months. Price of steel has gone up.
Speaker 3: These giant towers use a lot of steel. The supply
Speaker 3: chain has gotten all bogged down. It takes longer to
Speaker 3: get there components that go into all the gears and
Speaker 3: the electronics. Those costs have gone up all of a
Speaker 3: sudden the project's costs are higher than they expected, and
Speaker 3: the developers are crunching the numbers and they're like, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, we promised to deliver electricity at this price.
Speaker 3: We can't deliver it at that price. Our costs have
Speaker 3: gone up. Now they're stuck. So we've seen a lot
Speaker 3: of projects that have gone back to the utilities, back
Speaker 3: to the States, and they're saying, we have a little
Speaker 3: problem here. We can't deliver the electricity that we promised
Speaker 3: to deliver, not at that price. Can we get out
Speaker 3: of that deal? And they're not getting a lot of
Speaker 3: sympathy at all. The utilities of the States are going, nah, no,
Speaker 3: you promised us that power. We want that power. So,
Speaker 3: for example, Avngrid, the developer Vineyard Wind, has another project
Speaker 3: right in the same area. It's even bigger. It's called
Speaker 3: Commonwealth Wind. It's going to be one point two gigawatts,
Speaker 3: so that's about fifty percent bigger. The Commonwealth Wind project
Speaker 3: agreed to pay a penalty to get out of that
Speaker 3: contract because it can't make money. They're going to try
Speaker 3: and rebid in a January auction and see if they
Speaker 3: can get a higher ppa. We'll see how that works
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 1: When you went to them and asked them about it,
Speaker 1: what did they have to say?
Speaker 3: They said that they're hoping to find a way forward
Speaker 3: with their projects.
Speaker 1: After the break the challenges of building more huge wind
Speaker 1: projects like this.
Speaker 7: When I think about climate change, I think jobs, almost
Speaker 7: one hundred wind turbines going up off the coast of
Speaker 7: Massachusetts Rhode Island, jobs manufacturing two thousand and five one
Speaker 7: hundred ton steel foundations that anchor these offshore wind farm
Speaker 7: to the seafloor.
Speaker 1: Will you mentioned before that President Biden has this goal
Speaker 1: of thirty gigawatts of wind power. Exactly what does that mean?
Speaker 1: A gigwatt sounds big, but what does that translate to.
Speaker 3: Well, it is big, it's a lot of power, but
Speaker 3: what it translates to it's harder to measure. So, for example,
Speaker 3: Vineyard wind is going to be eight hundred megawatts.
Speaker 1: A little side note here to help wrap our brains
Speaker 1: around this. There are one thousand megawatts in a gigawatt,
Speaker 1: So this eight hundred megawatt project is eighty percent of
Speaker 1: a gigawatt, and.
Speaker 3: They say that's going to be enough for four hundred
Speaker 3: thousand homes in the area. So keep in mind it's
Speaker 3: in New England, because a gigawatt of power in New
Speaker 3: England isn't the same as a gigawatt of power in Texas.
Speaker 3: Way is that Texas is really hot. They use a
Speaker 3: lot of air conditioning. That's a lot of electricity, So
Speaker 3: a gigawatt there won't go as far as a gigawatt
Speaker 3: in Maine, where they don't need as much electricity.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that powering an air conditioner is
Speaker 1: more than powering a light bulb exactly.
Speaker 3: Plus you have to think about what kind of electricity
Speaker 3: it comes from. One of my standard measures is a
Speaker 3: nuclear power plant, a big conventional nuclear power plan. Most
Speaker 3: people can probably just imagine what it looks like. Those
Speaker 3: are about a gigawatt each, but they run night and day,
Speaker 3: twenty four to seven, almost three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 3: days a year. A gigawatt of wind power they're not
Speaker 3: going to run twenty four to seven. The best winds
Speaker 3: are usually at night. So a gigawatt of nuclear will
Speaker 3: go further than a gigawat of wind.
Speaker 1: Just because it's operating twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 3: Because it runs around the clock.
Speaker 1: They're placing these giant turbines out in the Northeast.
Speaker 3: Why there, The US Northeast is one of the two
Speaker 3: best places in the world for offshore wind power, And
Speaker 3: there's two reasons for that. One, the winds are strong
Speaker 3: and consistent. And two, and this is really important, the
Speaker 3: water's not very deep. Vineyard Wind's going to be in
Speaker 3: about thirty to fifty meters of water. It's like one
Speaker 3: hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. That is not
Speaker 3: a huge engineering challenge. When you go off to California,
Speaker 3: for example, off the whole West coast, the water offshore
Speaker 3: gets real deep, real fast. So you couldn't build an
Speaker 3: offshore wind turbin like that in a thousand feet of water.
Speaker 1: So what are they going to do about that? Is
Speaker 1: there a solution to that?
Speaker 3: Yes, they're experimenting with floating wind farms, so they won't
Speaker 3: be on monopiles that are bolted to the bottom of
Speaker 3: the ocean. They're going to be literally these floating platforms
Speaker 3: with a wind turbine attached to it, and they're going
Speaker 3: to anchor them at the bottom. It's an experimental technology,
Speaker 3: but they say it's a lot easier to do because
Speaker 3: you can build it on shore and then tow it
Speaker 3: out to sea. So that should be faster and cheaper,
Speaker 3: but it's still new and unproven.
Speaker 1: And those things aren't going to be bobbing in the water.
Speaker 3: They will bomb in the water, but they have counterweights
Speaker 3: on the bottom, so they'll bob down and bob back up.
Speaker 1: And the turbines will always stay straight up and down.
Speaker 3: They'll move around a little bit, but not so much
Speaker 3: that they don't work.
Speaker 1: Europe has been building these wind farms for a long time.
Speaker 1: They're way ahead of the US.
Speaker 3: Why are they, Oh, it's really simple. They don't have
Speaker 3: as much space. Europe's not as big as the United States.
Speaker 3: If you drive across the country, you're going to see
Speaker 3: so much wind farms out in the middle of the country.
Speaker 3: In Iowa, Nebraska, they've got tons of space and it's
Speaker 3: really windy there. Europe is much especially Western Europe, it's
Speaker 3: much more dense. They don't have as much space. They
Speaker 3: had to go offshore. There's another reason why offshore wind
Speaker 3: to the US, especially on the East coast, is a
Speaker 3: good idea. It's close to where the people are. All
Speaker 3: those wind farms in Iowa, very far from New York City,
Speaker 3: where there's so many people that need electricity, and.
Speaker 1: So then you have to run all those lines further.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need thousands of miles of transmission lines in
Speaker 3: this country. It's actually a huge problem for the renewable
Speaker 3: energy transition.
Speaker 1: Are there any precautions they have to take they're building
Speaker 1: these things in the ocean, there's a lot of wildlife
Speaker 1: all around them.
Speaker 3: Well, they're really concerned about whales. They don't want the
Speaker 3: construction to disrupt the whales. Everybody loves the whales. I'm
Speaker 3: out on the boat and that's really beautiful, and I
Speaker 3: was thinking, Wow, I hope we get to see some whales,
Speaker 3: and the people in the project, I hope we don't
Speaker 3: see whales. So if we see whales, we have to
Speaker 3: stop work.
Speaker 1: So I actually have to pause the project as they
Speaker 1: see wheel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no construction allowed when there's whales in the area.
Speaker 1: So how much is this big project going to cost?
Speaker 3: A vineyard wing that's about four billion dollars, and that
Speaker 3: substation was like almost a quarter of it. It was
Speaker 3: like nine hundred million dollars for that.
Speaker 1: Will you mention that there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: projects in the works up and down the East coast.
Speaker 1: What about in those big open spaces in the middle
Speaker 1: of the country. Are we going to start to see
Speaker 1: more and more wind farms across America?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, there's still plenty of wind farms under development
Speaker 3: all across the country. Wind and solar, Solar takes up
Speaker 3: a lot of space too. They're all key components of
Speaker 3: the green energy transition that the US is trying to pursue.
Speaker 3: They're even planning one in the Great Lakes Icebreaker wind
Speaker 3: in Lake Erie near Cleveland.
Speaker 1: And how long do they think it'll take for Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's goal of thirty gigawatts of wind power to be real?
Speaker 3: Well, the target's twenty thirty. We'll see if we get there.
Speaker 3: In terms of the projects that are delayed right now,
Speaker 3: I don't think that they're going to be killed. I
Speaker 3: think there's enough desire. I think there's enough interest from
Speaker 3: the governments and from state governments in having this clean energy.
Speaker 3: I think they're going to find a way forward, but
Speaker 3: it's going to take some time to work through.
Speaker 1: This Will thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Happy to be here when we come back. What is
Speaker 1: like to go to work on the ocean floor?
Speaker 4: My name's Nick Schultz.
Speaker 5: I'm a member of pile Driver's local Union fifty six.
Speaker 5: I'm a commercial diver and pile driver, and I do
Speaker 5: all kinds of marine construction.
Speaker 1: So, Nick, you've worked on some of these big offshore
Speaker 1: wind projects. Your work in the water is on the
Speaker 1: kind of the infrastructure that goes beneath these giant turbines. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's really what's been happening right now as they're
Speaker 1: preparing to start putting up the first of them. Can
Speaker 1: you describe what that work is like. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: out in the middle of the water and you're putting
Speaker 1: in these really big structures to hold giant turbines.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the foundations themselves, that's our kind of work. What
Speaker 5: we do here at the pile drivers We do the
Speaker 5: big monopiles, and those are enormous. They like thirty feet
Speaker 5: around in four inch thick steel and it takes them
Speaker 5: like almost a whole day to get one in.
Speaker 4: But there's so much stuff we do in the water.
Speaker 5: Recently, I started doing what's called a big bubble curtain,
Speaker 5: and that's like to reduce sound noises for the animal
Speaker 5: life in the area. It's really like an I've never
Speaker 5: seen it before, never even done it before, and it's
Speaker 5: like one of the neater things we do because they
Speaker 5: do acoustical readings.
Speaker 1: So a bubble curtain what exactly is that.
Speaker 5: It's a giant hose that they lay around the perimeter
Speaker 5: of the pile they're driving and they pump a large
Speaker 5: amount of air through it and it creates a continuous
Speaker 5: wall of air bubbles to the surface and it reduces
Speaker 5: the noise from the driving of the pile because it
Speaker 5: starts off at like one hundred and sixty decibels and
Speaker 5: with the bubble curtain, they can get it down closer
Speaker 5: to under one hundred.
Speaker 1: And that's when they're trying to put down the foundation
Speaker 1: by basically just pounding it into the ocean floor.
Speaker 5: They use a massive hammer that generates close to two
Speaker 5: million pounds of forest with each blow. They're trying to
Speaker 5: reduce the sound to protect the wildlife in the area.
Speaker 1: And that's what they're using to stabilize these giant platforms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the initial foundation that these sit on, and
Speaker 5: they're massive and they go into the ground probably.
Speaker 4: One hundred twenty feet one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 1: What are they there for? Like, why are they trying
Speaker 1: to reduce the sound.
Speaker 5: In water, sound travels like four and a half times
Speaker 5: faster than in the air, and when the sound hits
Speaker 5: the air bubbles it slows it down.
Speaker 4: So they usually put one.
Speaker 5: Or two of these curtains around to lessen the sound
Speaker 5: for in case there's any animals or wildlife in the area.
Speaker 5: It doesn't damage anything. I mean, they have a pretty
Speaker 5: strict protocol. They run where we're not allowed to work
Speaker 5: at all if they're and within a certain perimeter if
Speaker 5: they spot a whale, like, all work is stopped till
Speaker 5: the whale leaves the area for at least an hour
Speaker 5: or more before they let you continue working.
Speaker 1: Does that happen a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some days it's really frustrating because you get all
Speaker 5: set up to go and then you can't do anything
Speaker 5: for half the day.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what it's like to put one of
Speaker 1: these giant piles down.
Speaker 5: The one ship on Vineyard Wind one it is the Orion.
Speaker 5: It's like nine hundred feet long. It has a massive crane.
Speaker 5: They put one of these big piles into like a cradle.
Speaker 5: They stand it up with this giant cradle, and then
Speaker 5: they set it on the seabed and they let it
Speaker 5: settle out, and then they swing the crane over and
Speaker 5: they put their giant hammer that then smashes it into
Speaker 5: the ground.
Speaker 1: So once you have those piles down, then what happens.
Speaker 5: They have to put a cage in that has sacrificial annos.
Speaker 4: To keep it from rotting.
Speaker 1: Most people, like me, I have no idea what a
Speaker 1: sacrificial anode is.
Speaker 5: What is that They attach something that's like aluminum gives up.
Speaker 5: It rots away faster than the steel wheel, so the
Speaker 5: aluminum goes away before the steel does, so it protects
Speaker 5: that part of it, so it keeps it from rusting
Speaker 5: and rotting. They aluminum will disappear before the steel disappears.
Speaker 5: And then they put a transition piece on which is
Speaker 5: eighty seven to ninety feet tall, and that's the piece
Speaker 5: that gets it up to like a working platform. And
Speaker 5: then there's another section that goes up in the air
Speaker 5: that the turbine sits on. That's another like two hundred
Speaker 5: feet tall, and then the turbine sits on top of that,
Speaker 5: and then they put the blades on.
Speaker 4: After there's a lot to it.
Speaker 1: And what's this work like?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: When you're doing it, can you describe just what it's
Speaker 1: like to work in that environment. I imagine it's pretty unusual.
Speaker 1: Like most people jobs are way different than this job.
Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, the hardest part is being away from
Speaker 5: everybody because you go to work for four to ten
Speaker 5: weeks and just.
Speaker 4: Not being home to do your normal things.
Speaker 5: Or you know, like I have a wife and kids,
Speaker 5: I have a single mother at home while I'm at work,
Speaker 5: and that's probably the hardest part.
Speaker 1: I imagine a large part of your job just must
Speaker 1: be troubleshooting what sorts of stuff can go wrong.
Speaker 5: Well, most of our day is just making sure it
Speaker 5: all goes right, because you know, when you pick up
Speaker 5: something that weighs a million pounds, you've got to have
Speaker 5: it as safe as you possibly can. You got to
Speaker 5: look at everything a couple of times. You know, it's
Speaker 5: not like, you know, I drop a two by four
Speaker 5: building a shed, I might, you know, bruise my toe
Speaker 5: you drop something this big, I don't want to know
Speaker 5: what happens.
Speaker 1: Well, I imagine you must have some pretty strict safety protocols.
Speaker 4: We do. We do.
Speaker 5: We go through one hundred and eighty hours of train
Speaker 5: on top of the training we already have.
Speaker 4: We do a lot of.
Speaker 1: And what is that training? What do you have to do,
Speaker 1: Like what's an example of the sort of safety training
Speaker 1: you have to do.
Speaker 5: We do like a see survival training that the Global
Speaker 5: Window Organization puts on, a forty hour rigging course, another
Speaker 5: twenty four hour rigging course. We got to be CPR
Speaker 5: to the helicopter egress training, which is people find fascinating
Speaker 5: because they turn a helicopter upside down with us in
Speaker 5: it and drop it in the water and we have
Speaker 5: to escape it.
Speaker 1: As part of the training, they ditch a helicopter in
Speaker 1: the ocean and you have to get out of it.
Speaker 5: They have like a training center that they have like
Speaker 5: a car body of the helicopter that they do in
Speaker 5: a pool and safety divers.
Speaker 4: But they do teach you how if your helicopter crashes, how.
Speaker 1: To get out of it, because that's how you get
Speaker 1: to and from the site.
Speaker 5: Yeah, at times we have to fly in and out,
Speaker 5: whether like if the ship can't make port and they
Speaker 5: have to do crew change, they'll change us out via helicopter.
Speaker 1: You said that you spend weeks away. How long do
Speaker 1: you get off after you complete a shift.
Speaker 5: Some of the boats are on six weeks on six
Speaker 5: weeks off. Some of them are four weeks on, four
Speaker 5: weeks off. But it's all subject to change on schedule,
Speaker 5: like sometimes it's give or take, but that's generally like
Speaker 5: your regular rotation. We work twelve hours a day, sometimes
Speaker 5: longer every day.
Speaker 4: There's no real days off. There's always something to do.
Speaker 1: You talked a bit about the safety training, but how
Speaker 1: do you learn how to do this work? Did you
Speaker 1: have to go to school for this?
Speaker 5: Through my union, we have an apprenticeship program. This is
Speaker 5: a few of our members that haven't gone, but almost
Speaker 5: all of them have gone to it.
Speaker 4: It's a four year training period.
Speaker 5: I also went to dive school. I'm a certified commercial diver.
Speaker 5: That took me like six months also, so I've probably
Speaker 5: spent four or five years training myself on top of
Speaker 5: all our upgrades and what not. We get on top
Speaker 5: of it for specific projects like the wind farms.
Speaker 1: Do you use diving in your work?
Speaker 5: Yes, we have to do some work underwater, some underwater excavating.
Speaker 5: What's that like the First time I did it, it
Speaker 5: was a little scary because I was brand new, probably
Speaker 5: like ten twelve years ago. That's what I started doing
Speaker 5: was submarine cable work.
Speaker 1: When you go into the water, now, are you still
Speaker 1: a little bit?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Now, no, I'm pretty confident. But when I was new,
Speaker 5: you go twenty thirty one hundred feet under the surface.
Speaker 4: Of the water, and it's a little nerve wracking to
Speaker 4: be in with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine, how'd you decide to get into this work?
Speaker 4: When I was younger, I was.
Speaker 5: I worked as a driller for a little while, and
Speaker 5: I had met some commercial divers. When the housing crash
Speaker 5: around two thousand and eight started, I was having trouble
Speaker 5: finding decent employment there for a year or two, and
Speaker 5: I remember the divers telling me that they made pretty
Speaker 5: good money all the time, and I was like, well,
Speaker 5: there's water everywhere and old bridges around this country.
Speaker 4: I'm sure that will keep me employed for a long time.
Speaker 4: And then once I got to it, it was the
Speaker 4: variety of jobs. I like. I probably have seven jobs
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 1: What's best part of your job?
Speaker 4: I like what I do.
Speaker 5: It's big, it's neat, not a lot of people get
Speaker 5: to do it.
Speaker 4: It's always an adventure. Nick.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for taking the
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