Nordex Crypto Theft, Goldwind Turbine Asbestos

Allen covers positive developments like EDF’s 261 MW Serra das Almas wind farm in Brazil, Ørsted’s offshore progress in the US, and Shell’s hydrogen deal in Germany. Then the troubling stories: a Nordex technical manager caught mining cryptocurrency inside turbines, and the discovery of asbestos in Goldwind turbine brake pads across multiple Australian wind farms.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The wind industry is having quite a week. Some stories are blowing in the right direction. Others… well… you’ll see.

Let’s start with the good news.

In Brazil… EDF power solutions just powered up the Serra das Almas wind farm. Two hundred sixty-one megawatts. Fifty-eight Danish Vestas turbines spinning in Bahia state. Six hundred thousand homes… now running on wind.

Up in the United States… Ørsted is making waves with two offshore wind projects. Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind. Cable installation is underway. Offshore substations are being commissioned. By next year… more than sixteen hundred megawatts will be flowing into Connecticut… Rhode Island… and New York.

Over in Germany… Shell is turning wind into hydrogen. They’ve signed a five-year power deal with Nordsee One. Starting in two thousand twenty-seven… offshore wind will feed a one hundred megawatt electrolyzer. Clean electricity making clean fuel. To power everything from trucks to chemical plants.

But now… the other stories.

In the Netherlands… a technical manager at Nordex wind farms thought he’d found the perfect side hustle. He had the keys. He had the access. He had giant wind turbines spinning out free electricity twenty-four hours a day.

And he had a plan.

Between August and November of two thousand twenty-two… the man installed three cryptocurrency mining rigs at the Gieterveen wind farm. He plugged them straight into a Nordex router. Inside a substation.

Then he drove to Waardpolder. Another wind farm. He climbed inside the turbines. And he hid two Helium network nodes. Connected them to Nordex’s internal network.

Month after month… while the turbines spun… his crypto wallet grew.

Nobody noticed. Why would they? He was the technical manager. He belonged there.

But then… Nordex got hit with something much worse. A ransomware attack. The Conti cybercrime crew. The company was scrambling. Investigating their networks. Looking for breaches.

That’s when they found his mining rigs.

The courts heard the case earlier this month. The prosecutor was not amused. This wasn’t just theft. This was a man who’d been trusted with critical infrastructure. Giant turbines. Automated systems. Industrial networks.

The prosecutor wanted two hundred forty hours of community service.

But the judges saw something else. A first-