The future offers more service ports as more offshore wind farms are built, creating local job opportunities. In Klintholm Havn, Morten Skouboe is Vattenfall's head of site for Denmark's largest wind farm, and he provides an insight into what it takes to get one of the coveted jobs in the wind turbine industry.
Kriegers Flak will be three years old in the fall of 2024, and Morten Skouboe, who is from Falster himself, emphasizes the importance of the wind turbine technicians being from the local area.
- People should preferably not live more than an hour from here, as they work for 12 hours either in very cold or hot weather, says Morten Skouboe and clearly remembers that it was difficult to get local labor in the beginning:
- There was not a single local applicant back then.
However, that is something that has changed since then.
- 10 out of 27 technicians are local and from here on the island. I want people to be here as long as possible and preferably for the next 25 years, he says about the time the turbines are expected to run.
The qualified
The employed wind turbine technicians come from technical education.
- Most of our technicians typically come with an education as an auto mechanic, machinist, electrician or agricultural machine mechanic. We like that kind of thing, so we build some electricity on it if they are not already electricians, explains Morten Skouboe.
But other applications also come through the door.
- We also get applications from bakers and educators, but that requires at least a journeyman's certificate from a technical education, says Morten Skouboe and elaborates:
- When the economy is boiling, the market has been vacuumed for people. That is why there is a need.
Even when people with the right qualifications are found, the work where you work seven days a week for twelve hours at a time is not for everyone. And there is more that is not like an eight to four workplace.
- Not everyone likes to be on a wind turbine for eight to nine hours. I have also experienced two who stopped because of seasickness. You can't go around being seasick for six months or more, explains Morten Skouboe.
Wish: A wind engineering education
If there were a wind engineering education, it would be an opportunity to get local young people into the industry.
- There is a lack of a wind engineering education so that young people have a direct path into it. I have thought that if it were to become relevant for us, it could be a good idea that the apprenticeship was split 50-50 between a local company in Stege within electricity or hydraulics, says Morten Skouboe, who believes that this combination would be preferable, so that the apprentices could be at the local company about 15 km away in Møn's largest town.
The idea of a shared apprenticeship is also about part of the work being routine as a wind turbine technician.
- You shouldn't do a lot of service work, because it gets stuck. But troubleshooting is something else, and that's where the main part lies, he explains, about what a wind turbine technician should be able to do.
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