Power-Up: Siemens Accordion Nacelle, Vestas Yaw Control

This week Allen and Phil discuss Siemens Gamesa’s accordion nacelle idea, Vestas’s innovative yaw control system, LM Windpower’s LEP install tool, and a helpful beach relaxation invention. Visit https://www.intelstor.com/ to learn more about their IP Prism services.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and idasaurus Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future.

Hey Phil, the first thing on our list today is a unique patent idea from Siemens Gamesa. Which is for a wind turbine nacelle with movable sections to expand it out. Kind of like Louis Armstrong’s cheeks when he’s blowing that trumpet. It just pops out. And gives you a little more space to get some work done on the nacelles.

This is a pretty cool idea, even though I have, we’ve seen other versions of this, we haven’t seen an expandable version of this, others have tried something similar though, right?

Philip Totaro: Yeah, so this, Allen, this is basically what I’ve dubbed like the accordion nacelle, or bagpipe nacelle, I don’t know what you want to, how you want to label it, but the idea here is, and look, the bottom line is, I, to be blunt, I actually think this is a terrible patent, but it’s a clever idea, and I’ll explain what I mean by all that.

So, in the world of going and, capturing innovation, whatever industry you’re in, You want to be able to capture Patentable ideas on things that a you’re going to use and manufacture because then it’s it’s protecting your own business or you want to get patents on things that are actually things that a competitor might want to use And by having the patent, you basically blocked them from, from going down that technological path.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is this particular patent from Siemens Gamesa accomplishes that, because I don’t think that they’re gonna use this idea, and I don’t think that Competitors would necessarily use this idea. So, however What I do like about this is the, the inventiveness of the concept and the way that the engineers were thinking and doing the creative problem solving around a legitimate transportation related issue that we have in the industry.

So for those of you that aren’t familiar, there are certain transportation constraints that we’ve got in, in wind energy where, particularly if you’re trying to ship something, that has to fit underneath a bridge, overpass, or through a tunnel, You might have certain restrictions on things like the nacelle width and height, the blade root, the maximum chord of a blade, things like that, or even the tower diameter, and it creates certain technological challenges.

And so that’s actually why I flagged this idea to talk about today is because this is really great problem solving and very creative problem solving to say, look, We’ve got this challenge where in order to transport something, it’s got to fit within those constraints of being, approximately 4.

2 meters. Or less it’s about, what, 22, 23 feet or less for, for those of us on the, on the English system but the, the, there are different ways to skin a cat, basically Vestas has come up with this idea of having basically, cargo containers that are converted, or specifically manufactured, is probably the better way to say it, So that they can bolt on to the sides.

And they’re using that on their offshore machines, the V236. They’re actually also, if you haven’t noticed, they’re using it on the onshore 7 megawatt turbine as well. They actually have a nacelle with An extra kind of cargo container or shipping container sized thing. Bolted down at the right or left hand side of the nacelle.

To provide them additional space for all the up tower components. The hydraulic system, the cooling system. Pumps, motors, fans for lubrication systems. If they’ve got I don’t, well, they don’t have an up tower transformer anymore, but any of the other electrical cabinets or anything else that they need up tower, they’ve got to have some extra space.

So going again, going back to the Siemens Gamesa invention, is it a good patent? No, because I think, as I explained, it doesn’t really accomplish what you need a patent to accomplish. Is it a good, clever invention and, and technological solution and, and creative problem solving. Absolutely. And I, I encourage that and I applaud that.

So even though this idea might not get used, it’s, it’s still a very clever way to, to tackle a relevant industry challenge.

Allen Hall: Well, another industry challenge is leading edge protection and our friends at LM wind power have come up with some really simple tools, sort of ingenious tools to create those leading edge shells.

And if you’ve seen these protective devices, they’re kind of floppy, they’re not solid. And one of the critical pieces of that is to make sure that the trailing edge of that is cut cleanly and crisply. So you don’t create any kind of aerodynamic problems. Plus it makes it a little bit easier to install because you’re working along a straight line.

However, Phil, if you’ve ever tried to cut. Like a jelly or something that’s moving. It’s pretty hard to get a straight line and that’s what it’s like cutting those materials. You want to shift every time you apply some force to them. So this is a kind of an interesting concept to figure out how to basically trim something that’s pretty flexible.

Philip Totaro: Yeah. So this, this is a, it’s a relatively simple innovation in terms of, it’s just basically a kind of like a table almost with a little, circular saw, at least that’s how they’ve conceptualized it in the, in the, the patent application they’ve got. But what’s clever about it, in addition to what you just mentioned, Allen, it’s, it’s necessary to be able to shape the the leading edge protection strips so that it.

conforms to the shape of the blade and doesn’t adversely impact the, the aerodynamic profile on, on the blade. And so you need to be able to cut a pretty precise straight line or curved line that doesn’t have any of these, sharp ridges or anything or waves to it. That, that would otherwise impact the that, that aero performance.

So this is one where it’s a pretty simple and straightforward innovation. We believe by the way, that this is actually in production that this is an invention that we think is, TRL, eight or nine, basically, if you’re not familiar with technology readiness levels or TRLs, that’s basically a measure from one up until nine.

About the technological maturity. So we’re going to be referring to, to this with some of the inventions we talk about. This one we think is actually being used in some of the the Ellen factories or potentially some of their subcontractors that are, that are making some of these leading edge parts for them.

So this is a, this is a very clever way of being able to accomplish something that provides both leading edge protection and ensures aero performance.

Allen Hall: And as we move on to the electrical world, we have a concept from Vestas, which deals with the yaw control. And on an electrically driven yaw system, you got two, two elements.

Basic elements, you have a motor or series of motors, and you have a series of brakes. Pretty straightforward. However, that if the turbine is connected to the grid and the grid frequency or voltage fluctuates, you can get some really strange results. One of them being is that you damage the brakes or drag the brakes, as they say, and create yourself an expensive repair to keep going out and fixing because the voltage on a wind turbine, sometimes depending on the time of day and where you are, That’s fluctuate a great deal.

Philip Totaro: Yes, this one’s actually kind of fascinating because I had never really seen a company Conceptualize a yaw control Strategy like this. So it basically if you read through this this patent what they’re talking about is trying to use the detection circuit for whatever the grid voltage is and And use that as an input to the yaw control system, whether you’re continuing a yaw action or clamping on the, the brake.

And the reason that I think Vestas came up with this is we’ve heard some feedback from folks in the field, that even though you may have yaw brakes that are segmented and so you could unbolt a section of it if, a piece of it got worn out. And that, that was an innovation that, that somebody came up with a long time ago.

And that was a very clever one. But in order to prevent excessive wear, as you mentioned, Allen, on the, on the yaw brakes and on the, in the calipers themselves because those are, those are expensive parts and we know there’s been supply chain issues in the industry and, and it can be hard to get access to some of these replacement parts sometimes.

So this is a pretty clever way of using the control system to ensure that the brakes don’t drag or clamp. And hold and cause spalling or any other type of thing that, that might happen from, from having the brakes clamped on to an excessive degree. So measuring the, the grid voltage and determining the grid fluctuations as an input to your yaw control system was actually a pretty unique thing.

And so that, that’s kudos to, to Vestas for. Coming up with something pretty clever that I think solves a real world challenge.

Allen Hall: Well, here’s a real world challenge, Bill. When you, when you go out to the beach and you want to take a quick nap, I always bring a pillow, but the problem with that is you fall asleep and then you just get sunburned.

You’re, you’re roasted like a raisin, right? So, it’s not the greatest situation. So somebody’s come up with a really unique patent here, and this is our fun patent of the week. Where they have attached an umbrella to a pillow, and this got approved. This is actual intellectual property, Phil. Yes,

Philip Totaro: it is.

But just like I mentioned with Siemens, the question, Allen, is do we actually need a patent on something like this? I mean, maybe, if Joel were here, he would probably say, you know what, that’s a product I’d like to have. But, is this something that actually needs a patent? I’m not so sure. But we find some of these patents sometimes that we just have to talk about because they’re a little bit preposterous.

And we, we question whether or not the patent office is is really all there when they’re, when they’re approving these sometimes. I think this pillow with an umbrella attached falls into that category, Allen.

Allen Hall: I don’t, Bill, I’ve gone through this patent very thoroughly, and there is one piece of this patent which makes complete sense to me.

Inside this little umbrella tube, There’s an open and you can unscrew it and you can put your keys and your loose change in this to secure it so you won’t lose your keys at the beach. I mean, how many times you lost your keys at the beach?

Philip Totaro: Well, that, that is a real world challenge, but I’ll tell you if there are, insidious characters out there at the beach, I think the guy with a pillow that’s got an umbrella attached is probably target number one for, for having something, having something stolen.

They’re probably going to get your keys anyway.