The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

You may have missed this fantastic with Loren Walton from NSK, so we’re sharing it again. He discusses the challenges of main shaft bearing failures in wind turbines and NSK’s Super-TF bearing technology as a durable solution. Loren also covers the limitations of previous diamond-like carbon coatings and how NSK’s advanced heat-treated steel can improve turbine longevity. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: With modern wind turbines growing larger and main shaft bearings failing prematurely. The industry needs innovative solutions rather than relying on yesterday’s technology. This week we speak with Loren Walton, manager of corporate accounts at NSK. NSK has developed super tough bearing technology, a special heat treated steel that creates a significantly harder surface without coatings delivering long lifespans and eliminating catastrophic failures in today’s larger wind turbines. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Loren, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Appreciate your time today. Loren, we brought you in the program because you’re an expert in bearings. You’re with NSK, A lot of knowledge, a lot of history there. First, I want to ask a real simple question because we’ve run into operators all across the United States and the world. Generally speaking, we just got back from Australia who are having problems with main shaft bearings. And maybe the first thing to do here is to describe what some of the problems are that operators are facing with the traditional main shaft bearings. Yeah. So Loren Walton: traditionally what we were saying was a whole lot of, I guess I’ll say combined loading, right? So it’s a, radio load that is, up and down and some axial thrust that’s coming in from the wind shear, right? So combining the weight of the main shaft, which is you’re taking up from that radio load with that wind shear. So then you end up having some combined loading where. The downed wind row is seeing a little bit more of load share than the upwind row. That’s getting through the lubricant regime, which is then creating some micro welding and shearing, any amount of metal, any steel. When it’s created, it’s going to have some disparities. I use my fingers as the disparities, right? So your roller, your raceway, or your raceway, your roller. There’s gonna be some welding and shearing that happens when that is under high pressure. And so your lubricant is supposed to create a little bit of a gap between those. When you don’t have that gap you end up with the welding and shearing, you end up with what we call peeling damage, and then that peeling basically goes over and over again, and you start having high levels of debris. Inside of the system. And then once that debris starts going all bets are off, right? ’cause you can’t really even model debris very linearly. It just goes into additional sping and then you end up, if you keep letting it run, you end up with a through crack inside of one of your components, which is typically your inner ring. ’cause it’s press fit on the shaft. Joel Saxum: And a important concept here as well is because main bearings are basically a sealed lubricant system. There isn’t filters on these, right? So like when you start to get debris moving around in the system, it stays there. It just, it’s not oh, let’s go change oil on this thing. And we remove the debris, we put a new filter on it, we’re good to go. It’s not, it’s just, it’s in that system now. If it, because it’s a closed loop basically, right? Correct. Yeah. So the grease shift is in there, Loren Walton: there is an opportunity for you to have, replenishment, right? So you can put new grease in so that old grease comes out. But even then, you’re reliant on gravity and whatever you can get out of the system. You’re hoping that as you put new grease in, old grease comes out. But depending on how long you’ve been running, it is very possible too that you might end up putting new grease in and new grease out, right? Because the old grease is so stuck in there. Is now hard to move. It’s very difficult to get that old grease to actually come out. So depending on, if you have maybe a auto lube system or something like that, it might be, you might be running that grease a little bit more consistently. Otherwise, yeah. You’re stuck with what you’re stuck with once that debris gets going. Allen Hall: So what you’re saying is as the weight of the shaft and the rotors, everything has gone up on basically two and a half megawatts seems to be that critical area. And above that, depending upon the bearing design, the coatings or the finishes combined with the lubricants, you can actually, or what is happening is we’re micro welding the bearings together because of the weight and the, just the the friction that’s between those two things that. I don’t think anybody from the technical side realizes it’s happening. It’s not something you think about in a bearing. That gets me into the next question of obviously the bearing manufacturers try to treat the bearings some way to prevent that from happening. It seems like diamond, like carbon coatings were the solution a couple of years ago. Why was that chosen? Why did that thought process happen? Is that something that was successful previously on smaller turbines and was this implemented on the larger turbines or what was the engineering behind that? Loren Walton: Yeah, so I started my career in the when generation space in bearings somewhere around 2011. And at that time, that was when. We were moving from the kilowatt class to the megawatt class turbines. And that was when we first started seeing a whole lot of main shaft bearing problems. And it is all the stuff that I just described, right? The micro welding the micro welding, macro micro pitting, leading the macro pitting, leading the sping, all that stuff, right? So that was something that was very prominent once you started going from that kilowatt class to that megawatt class and to combat that. DLC was introduced and the thought there was you have a dissimilar material. So what I just described is that, again, I’ll bring my disparities back that micro welding happening, that welding and shearing. That only happens because you have two of the same like materials. That doesn’t happen if you have a dissimilar material. So DLC di like carving. So what you have is an amorphous tsin carbide that you adhere to the surface of one of those components. So in this case, the roller is what you adhere, the amorphous tsin carbide too. So that was a game changer. That was huge, right? We went from a few years of life, maybe on average three to five. To I remember seeing a report where A DOC bearing came out after 10 years and still looked beautiful. It was, sorry I like bearing, so I use terminology like beautiful, right? That I don’t know if that I caught myself after I said the word beautiful for bearing, but that’s just, bear with me. So when we were doing inspections on some turbines that were greater than two megawatt we found. Some abnormalities, we’ll say, in some of our inspections, we didn’t expect to see certain things that we started to see. We started to see more issues on the inner ring instead of the outer ring, we started to see more issues on rollers than we had seen before. And these were on coating rollers, right? So somebody had already gone to the solution of DLC because it had worked before. And in this case, the customer we were working with. They actually shortened their life. They went from four years of operation to two years of operation on average when they were using a product that had the coating on it. So again, an abnormality, something that we weren’t used to seeing. So we did all of our investigations, all of the inspections that we normally run through. We saw that there was actually damage to the DLC. There was the DOC was being harmed. We saw that there was also subsurface wide edge area, wide edge cracking that was also in, in the inner ring and in the rollers. So then we saw that when you compare the uncoated to the coated, the once the DOC was harmed, now you have actually an accelerant to failure. It. It wasn’t that the DOC was wrong, there was nothing wrong with the DOC. But once it was harmed, you had an accelerant to failure. So instead of it lasting about four years, you’re saying it lasted two years. Joel Saxum: When you have starting to have a failure with DLC, what are the things that an operator should be looking for, whether it’s a, the DLC ones, because they’re very common right now. The, in the say the US fleet, there is a ton of DLC coded bearings out there. What are things that an operator should be looking for to see a failure before it turns into a really big problem? Loren Walton: Yeah, so you’ll primarily see some amount of vibration signatures in your rollers is what I’ve understood from some of the people that I’ve talked to. It’s really hard to see though, I think. I think that is still getting, like people are still getting better and better at identifying it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, what you have to do is see. If you have to look backward on your vibration to see, okay, this was the point because in a number of cases, you might look on Monday, let’s say you see it on vibration, you go do a physical inspection and the rollers look fine. Finding damage to DOC is not typically something that you can easily catch with the eye. When you’re doing a physical inspection, you’re limited on how many rollers you can check. You’re limited on. What you can actually see. There’s strong limitations there. I don’t fault anyone, if you’re, if you end up with a bearing that blows up because you had a catastrophic roller failure, that isn’t usually something that you can quickly catch unless have learned what the signature looks like from your vibration. For us, the way we see it is a little, we cheat, right? We have a scanning electron microscope. Where we can see the damage, we can see it almost looks like fractured glass. If you can think of when maybe something hits your windshield and it shatters, right? It looks like that for us under the microscope. So we can see the damage to the DLC, we can see where there’s maybe some sort of a slit or something like that on the coating. So that’s easy for us to find because we’re. Checking it after it’s already out. Joel Saxum: There was a certain time, right? It went from the kilowatt class, then we started putting DLC in and then we got a little bit bigger, and then the DLC started to fail. In between that one and two megawatt class, it worked really well. And maybe that’s the, is it the weight of the rotors or like why did it, why is it starting DLC starting to fail now in these larger rotors, in your opinion? Loren Walton: For as a bearing manufacturer? We have to adjust to whatever is thrown our way, right? So I, I don’t get to change anything about the application. I am told this is the application, this is what’s failing. Make it better, please. So that’s the constraint that I’m left. You play the car as you do, right? I can’t ask for a reshow. There’s a lot of investigation that’s happening. I think that there’s a number of different. Things that are happening. I think people were looking for one smoking gun, but I think we’re more so standing in front of a brigade. I don’t think that there is one. I think there’s a bunch of them. That there’s things like, as the turbine gets larger now, the angles are changing on what is, what was the plane of where the bearing was sitting. The angles are now changing. You have the aspect of people are seeing that there’s more current that’s going through that, that they weren’t finding before. But even you can’t discount the part of the rotor size today. I think that there is still a multitude of different. Problems that we’re addressing, but the biggest one that I see is that we know that the DLC is being harmed. So we have to address that because that is the biggest, known right now. I think we have to be willing to change what was the mindset before that. DLC is the solution to everything. And we have to change that to, we have to come up with solutions that are agnostic to the coating that are just. Able to still combat that peeling damage without needing the coating to be the way to to solve it. Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s a really interesting way to look at it. At some point you just go, it doesn’t matter why it’s failing. We need to move on to some other technology and. NSK has a lot of bearing knowledge and treatments, and the one I’ve seen for main bearings more recent, most recently is what you guys call super tough. It’s not a coating, it’s a heat treatment, but it’s unique. Can you describe what that treatment is and why it is so effective in these two megawatt machines? Loren Walton: So super tough is a medium carbon base steel with varying alloy elements that gives it some different properties and then it’s heat treated. It’s a cargo nitrite, heat treatment that then leaves the surface significantly hard while having a a mediumly softer core. That’s a bunch of words. I’ll go into a little bit more of what that means. There’s different parts of why that is important, right? So we talked about peeling damage, we talked about the disparity contacts. We talked about some of that already. The important thing to think through on that is if you look at the matrix of the skin of a steel component, they’re made up of something called carbides. Carbides are basically the hard parts that the bearing runs on. If you have those carbides organized in a very fine and uniform dispersion, you now have uniform wear. If those are also very hard, they also now I guess push against each other in a stronger way as opposed to. Welding to each other like we described before. So a harder surface is harder to have a welding and shearing than a softer surface. Super tough. It leaves a significantly hard surface, harder than other I’ll call ’em competing. Technologies, whether it’s a through hard or a case car rise significantly harder than both of those. And we lead with super tough because of the peeling damage that it combats super tough. Was created originally four applications similar to main shaft, where it was slow speed. It was high low. There was the debris, but typically the debris was coming from the outside in. In the case of main shaft, typically the debris is created by its own bearing. The bearing is eating itself alive, right? It’s from the inside out. And yeah, super tough is got a number of different characteristics that we like. And to be honest for NSK, for material, that’s one of our core competencies. Super tough wasn’t the only option for us to choose, but it’s the one that made the most sense. We had a few other choices that we could have gone with. We have other materials that we use for slow speeds and high lows and applications like steel making and things like that. For the size of the shafts. For the operations, it made the most sense to use Super tough. Joel Saxum: This isn’t something that you engineered for win. This is something that you’ve adapted to win because you have a track record of using it in other places as well. What other, like from an NSK standpoint, what other kind of bearing applications do you use? Super tough in just to to understand. The track record of it, it was created for, Loren Walton: Like I said, steel making was one of the big places where we use the NSK as a Japanese company. Steel is manufactured heavily in Japan. Japan is known for steel. Other places where we would use it would be like paper mining, heavy industries basically, where we would use super tough wherever there was a situation where we needed a combination of. High loading and ability to combat any amount of debris that’s being put into the system. So it was introduced into wind, actually, I wanna say in gearbox because there was some other things that we saw that actually you could combat. Why X area and YX cracking. So actually I should probably take a step back and say from when we were doing our inspections and we saw that the DOC was being harmed, and I mentioned that we also saw a wide edge area and wide edge cracking inside of the inner ring and the rollers. Another reason that we used super tough as the way to combat was because we had already had success with using super tough to combat wide edge cracking. So when we started seeing it in main shaft, in addition to having the ability to combat the peeling damage. Also when we started seeing why that area in main shaft, another reason that it made sense to go away from just standard through hard, going into the super tough. And Allen Hall: as we talk to operators across the United States at the moment that have DLC throughout their turbines farms you get a lot of worried looks and. Until we had talked to you and to Corey MIT lighter, we did not have any suggestions. And now that we’re talking with you here NSK seems like an obvious choice. How do operators start to implement the super tough design into their turbines? What does that look like? Can they, how fast is a swap out? Do they need to do a lot of engineering ahead of time? What does that process look like? Loren Walton: Yeah, so the bearings that we’re offering are the same construction, right? So it’s a. Spherical roller bearing same IDOD. With that, the OEM design had it with it there shouldn’t be any sort of retrofitting or changing of anything required. Honestly, the biggest thing is I think for most people, understanding that we are making changes from the inside out is the biggest thing to understand, right? Because if we look at one shiny round object and another shiny round object. And one of them has black rollers and you say yeah, that one looks like it’s different. Or one has a change to contact angle. Yeah, that one looks like it’s different. It’s a little bit harder to see, yeah, we make some changes to the internal geometry, but you can’t see it. Or we made changes to the material and the heat treat, but you can’t see that. So we are, usually having to educate. What you are not seeing is what you’re getting from us, right? It’s all of the information, it’s all of the gathering, it’s all of the inspections. And then knowing that we can combat that with a different approach than what was used previously. So everything for installation is exactly Allen Hall: the same. Alright, so if an operator wants to start working with NSK, and it sounds like they probably should start talking to you, Loren, because you’re a wealth of information and you can help them out greatly speed up this process to get the DLC bearings off of their turbines and get running again before they have really big problems. How do they do that? How do they get ahold of you? You, Loren? How do they get ahold of NSK? Where should they go? Loren Walton: Yeah, so I guess I hope that they listen to this podcast and then we are visible, right? We attend all of the major events, right? I just came from presenting at the Drivetrain Reliability Collaborative LA this week week after next I’ll be at the operation Maintenance Safety conference for a CP. I’ll also be at Clean Power in Phoenix. I typically go to all three of those conferences every year. But it’s not just me, right? We also have a team of engineers and segment personnel that work and win. But if you’re specifically looking for me I guess I can give out my email address. It’s my, my last name Walton, W-A-O-T-O-N, and then my first initial L and that’s at. k.com. So Walton l@nskcorp.com. So you could email me at any time, always looking for the next science fair project to work on, and you need to go Allen Hall: to nsk.com and check out the website. There is a great deal of information about wind turbine bearing specifically. Really informative videos to go along with it. You can see the super tough coding and all the details there on the website, and you obviously you can connect with Loren on LinkedIn. He’s available there too, so reach out to Loren. Loren, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Learned a great deal today. We need you to come back and talk bearing some more. Loren Walton: Yes. Yes. Appreciate it.

Mark Hoppe, VP of Public Affairs & Business Development at SkySails Power, discusses their containerized airborne wind energy system. The innovative technology captures high-altitude winds with kite-based systems, producing up to 50% more yield than traditional turbines. Mark delves into the operational mechanics, deployment in remote and island nations, and future market expansion. 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! Allen Hall: With traditional wind turbines, limited by location and high material costs, the industry needs innovative solutions for clean energy in remote areas. This week we speak with Mark Hoppe at SkySails Power. SkySails has developed a containerized airborne wind energy system that captures high altitude winds with unique kite technology producing up to 50% more yield than conventional turbines while being deployable nearly anywhere on the planet. Stay tuned. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Mark, welcome to the podcast. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, thanks, man. Nice to be here. Allen Hall: I’ve been looking to talk to you for. Ooh, going on at least two years because I saw SkySails in Hamburg at the Hamburg Wind Energy Show, and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then, and the display was [00:01:00] good and the information was good. I just didn’t know how much effort had gone into it at that point. And, and we’re two years further along, obviously. The SkySails technology and the problem you’re solving is really fascinating because there’s a lot of places on the planet that could use wind energy, but a standard horizontal axis wind turbine is probably the not the right approach, and diesel ends up being the winner on a lot of these places. Mark Hoppe: That’s a problem. Definitely, definitely. So yeah, our technology solves a lot of these problems, but of course our technology is not just meant for these kind of places. So this is the entry point where we go in as, these places, they’ve faced a lot of issues when it comes to logistics, prices of the diesel because of the transport costs. That also includes in, in the diesel prices, which then makes the diesel even, even pricier. So, and due to, they have to spend a lot, a lot of money on the diesel. Then they have the issue that they don’t have [00:02:00] the money for social development, for example. ‘Cause they have to subsidize their power prices and all this comes along.  So what we have as a solution for that problem is that we have a containerized wind power system. It’s so-called airborne wind energy system which uses the high altitude wind, which is more powerful. So we fly in heights between two and 400 meters, sometimes even higher. It depends on the width direction and everything.  And due to that we can use the higher wind and then produce 50% more yield than the typical wind turbine at the same size. So that’s crazy. Allen Hall: Yes, that’s, that’s really good. I think the technology and the approach is innovative. So the, the solution to get rid of all the dependence on diesel and some of these electric grids that are very unreliable is to put in basically electric [00:03:00] generation through a, a kite in the sense the technology seems. Relatively simple, but I’ve looked at this up close. There’s actually a lot of technology here because the system itself is really containerized. It’s like dropping a diesel generator on site somewhere, but except it’s a kite. Instead, you wanna explain basically how the system operates and what someone would see if they’re watching it work? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. So basically we, we always divide it into two subsystems more or less. So we have the ground station, which is a container. It’s a 30 feet container, so you can ship everywhere and just need one truck to to, to actually transport it somewhere. So this is really easy. And then you have the flying system. And the flying system at the ground station, they’re connected via the start and landing mass. And the start and landing mast, so in, in the front of the start and landing mast, you have the kites. So when the start and landing mast goes up, [00:04:00] the in floating wind unfolds the kite and then the, the, the wind takes the kite upwards. And underneath the kite you have a robota, you can call it, we call it the control po.  It’s, you can compare it to a paraglide pilot more or less. And there you have an autopilot who steers to the whole system. Then what does is, I don’t know, have you, have you ever been kite surfing before? Allen Hall: Yeah, I’ve seen it, yes. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so, so when you have kite surfing, you, you try to fly your kite in, in the so-called power zone, ’cause you have the wind window, so in the middle of it you have the power zone there, you have the most force and the autopilot does the same. So it actually tries to fly inside the power zone all the time. So you have a lot of force on the, on the tether. And when the tether is unwind from the, from the winch inside the ground station, the rotational energy is converted into electricity, [00:05:00] and then you have 800 meter long tether on the drum. And then when, when the 800 meters gone all the way out, the autopilot takes back the kite in nose dive, so it actually pitches the kite and then it falls down from the sky, and then it has, yeah, nearly no force. Then the generator X as a motor wheels in the, the tether again. And then when the autopilot is at a hundred meter, it starts all over.  So you can compare it to a yo-yo, you know. Allen Hall: That’s a very good analogy. So the kite deploys out several hundred meters, 800 meters. Providing energy because of that pull force, turning a generator. And then in, when it reaches this extended length, it basically simplifies itself, lowers the drag, comes back in and repeats it. So does, does that create continuous power then, or how does it handle the, the inward time in terms of. Power production? Is there a battery involved? What does that [00:06:00] look like? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so we always deliver our system in different configurations. So a little bit depends on this site conditions. So of course you can use it off-grid. So what we would do then is we always deliver. So our system comes in a 30 feet container, and then you have another smaller container where you have a grid converter or a battery pack inside. And then so what we do with this solution is that we can always comply to the grid code but also of course can deliver an off grid system. So you can either store the energy produced or use it direct or grid connect the whole system and then feed it into the grid. So that’s, that’s up to our customers on this side. Joel Saxum: I think that one of the important things here to think about, like in the beginning of this conversation of how this thing looks, how it operates in the field, is that it [00:07:00] is modularized, right? Like you’ve guys have taken the smart approach of putting this in a container because a lot of the places that this technology can be used can be on demand. Hey, I, in my mind, I’m thinking disaster response. I’m thinking military uses, remote microgrids. Like we have, we’ve had on the podcast before Hatch. Hatch works with a lot of First Nations up in Canada where they’re in these really remote places. It’s hard to get infrastructure in there, but if you can bring this in on a truck, great. Right, so there’s a lot of places around the world, and I know this is, that’s just one use case, right? These remote, these Caribbean islands, like Allen was saying. Diesel generators, but they’re paying exorbitant amounts of cost for fuel. So this thing, this and, and the fact that you can switch over to different grids right. So different her hertz ratings and voltages coming out. Really important. So where have you guys been able to deploy the system so far? Mark Hoppe: So, so [00:08:00] far, and, and so far we have been installing systems. So we have one system in, in northern Germany, which is our research development side also.  And that one has also been grid connected now for five years. More or less and also been operating since then, but we use it for short durations in our the research development cycle. Then we have another system which has been installed Mauritius for now, also two and a half, three years, something.  Also grid connection, which has been operated all the time because of duration tests. So we actually get some figures about, okay, how last. How lasting are materials and what do we need to do to make them even last longer? So we learned a lot in the, in the past years on that. And now we take all this into our product development cycles, and now we have another two systems [00:09:00] which are now being delivered to Taiwan. So the next installations will be in Taiwan, and then. We have some projects going on in the Philippines, Cape Words Hawaii. So all, all of these like island states and island nations, they, they, we were really active in these spaces right now. French Polynesia is also really interesting so far remote places. And all these island states, they have a bigger issue. They have a really big issue ’cause they’re feeling the, the climate crisis first. So they need to solve it. And also, and, and also what, what we are look also looking into, which is a really interesting market, is the Caribbean.  Because there you have the same issues. You have hurricane region. So what they have to do is that they have to rebuild more or less the whole infrastructure every five to 10 years because everything has been destroyed. So they can’t even install any wind turbines because they’ve just been blown away. And [00:10:00] in Mauritius we have proven that our system actually is feasible to withstand a typhoon many times. Joel Saxum: Well, and these are good places to do installs too, I suppose from a business perspective. You get to go to the Caribbean, French Polynesia, like that. That sounds amazing. So one, one of the questions I’d ask you is kind of reviewing your technology here. Do you, do you have a special kind of parachute material and a tether material that you guys use because it’s, you know, it’s long duration. In my mind, I think a parachute is, you know, down, repack put away. But this thing is gonna be out there for a long time. So throughout these great that you guys have had five year tests and it, you know, a two, three year test, have you developed those…or how have those technologies developed? Mark Hoppe: So well, it has developed a lot and, and there’s still a lot to do. So because we still do a lot of material tests and now we extend them by far what we have done [00:11:00] before. So when you look at the materials, what we use now is for the tether we use Dyneema which is even used in, in, in shooting rests, I think. And, and it’s like it’s. It’s, it’s better than steel. So it, it’s makes you made for a lot of force. And, and so you can think of, so we, we use a 40 millimeter tether. diameter 40 millimeter. And it, it, it withdraw. It’s, it’s made for I think six tons design load. And and yeah, so, so it withstands a lot.  Then what we use for the kites it’s actually the same kind of materials which we use in sailing, nowadays. And also what they do in development. When you look at the, the sales nowadays also, especially for the performance sail, you know, for the races, what they use there. This is these kind of materials we also [00:12:00] kind of use and also will extend because they are made to last for a lot of force, but they’re in light and all what we need.  And then for example, what we have done now, so we just bought the biggest tether bending machine in the world to actually do the tether testing and to extend all this knowledge, you know, because this is really important, you know, it’s also for the safetyness of our system because everything is built around the tether. Well, Allen Hall: Dyneema is the right choice there. That material has been proven over and over and over again in aerospace and in sailing. It is an extremely tough material. Yeah, and you’re only using the, a line that’s about a 10th of an inch wide diameter. That’s actually really small, but it does make sense because that’s the right choice. Now, in terms of operational aspects one of the things I get ask about SkySails, well, how many hours a day [00:13:00] does it operate? Is it up there 24 hours a day? Is it up there five hours a day? What do you typically see in some of these installations? Mark Hoppe: Our systems, they, so. Like looking over a year. I think it, it, it’s, it’s good to compare also the different technologies when you look at how many operational hours you have over one year.  And there you always call it full-load hours that you can have over one year. So if you have installed one megawatt then you have 5,000 full-load hours, and then you have 5,000 megawatt hours a yield per year. It’s pretty easy. So, and one year has 8,700 something hours, I think. So and our system has up to 5,000, full-load hours, depending on the size. Allen Hall: That’s a lot. Joel Saxum: That’s a, that’s a high capacity factor. Yeah. That’s higher than a, like a horizontal access. Yeah. Mark Hoppe: Yeah. So if you, for example, compare a coal-fire plan t they have [00:14:00] coal power, power plant, they have ’cause of the service cycles and everything like this. You have 4,500 full-load hours if you have a offshore winter turbine buying Europe. Depending on the site, 4,000 full-load hours. So what we do is we have offshore wind on onshore sites. Joel Saxum: And, and what’s the output? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so for now now the systems is really small because also because of the sites we want to go into.  So they now have a, we call it cycle power because this is it’s not like what we know from conventional wind turbines. We, we call, we, we always talk about installed power. But we, in our industry, talk about cycle power. So what’s you have in a one power cycle? Yeah. And this is a 200 kilowatt system that we have now in the market. Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a lot larger than I thought you were at right now. So that a 200 kilowatt sheen can help a lot of people, particularly in rural communities or whether it’s been through a hurricane. Just getting back up [00:15:00] and running is huge because the, the, the load is really simplistic. Lights, maybe cooking those kind of things, air conditioning. Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the year would be 780 megawatt hours a year depending on the site, of course again. But that would be enough power for I think so just talking in German households. ‘Cause I have the number in my mind. So that would be something between two and 400 households. For one with one transmission.. Allen Hall: Yeah. It seems like a, the proper solution in, in a lot of cases. So what’s the deployment plan then? If you have a larger community, would you deploy two SkySails systems? Would you install a larger system? What does that look like in terms of the, the right approach and the units and to the community? Mark Hoppe: So what can see now, so looking at our, how, how we go into the market now. So now we have this 200 kilowatt system which is actually meant for like all these [00:16:00] remote places where we have diesel hybridization with PV hybridization. All these places like remote off-grid solutions mostly and mini grids, micro grids. And then next step would be, and this what we are already have the pipeline is to develop the next bigger system. Which is then also meant for more developed countries because you have a different load so which you can match. Then of course you match better the needs of, of these specific markets. And then also already planned is next step after that one. So first step would be now something between four and 500 kilowatt, and then the next step is already megawatt system.  And this is already planned to do. So this is already in project plans and everything. Allen Hall: So what does a megawatt system look like in terms of the kite size? Does it expand? I, I don’t know what the math is. There is by, is it square function? How, how big does kite get versus a 200 kilowatt system to a [00:17:00] megawatt? Mark Hoppe: Yes. So the 200 kilowatt system uses kites up to 180 square meters. Also depending on the wind distribution. So if you have a high wind site, you use a smaller kite. If you have a low wind site you use a bigger kite. So you can use the same system, but you just exchange kite, which is also really great.  When it comes to material intensity. Then if you look into the megawatt system. The kite size would probably be something between 700 square meter up to a thousand. Joel Saxum: How do you, okay, so I’m thinking, I’m thinking in my this is my traditional mind thinking about wind, wind farm, siting and these other things. So of course, like if you, Hey, we’re gonna build a wind farm here. You know, a year before that we put a mast tower out there. We measure the wind resource. We have a general idea of what it looks like at 10 meters above the surface and sometimes, you know, 50 or a hundred. How do you measure the [00:18:00] wind resource at 400 meters of, of height? Like what does that look like? Because I don’t, I’ve, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a map that says, here’s the wind resource at 400 meters. Mark Hoppe: So actually there is no, so this is why you’ve never seen one probably. Yeah, and this is a really interesting question actually, because, yeah. How do you measure the wind? So nowadays we have what we do, we do kind of the same. So when we do project development so what we do is first, okay, our customers come to us and they, okay, we have an idea of a site which would work for us. And then what we do, we, we have, internal developed tool chain, which we use then do a small, like, like a really fast site scouting to get an idea of, okay, if this is this site actually feasible. With weather data, which we can just get from databases, everything is calculated. Like is there a business case? Like pretty, pretty, pretty easy stuff. And then after that next step would be that we go there [00:19:00] and then we actually put a lidar on, on the site. And then we do a lidar measurement campaign. So also wind measurement campaign, but by, by using a lidar we can use we can measure the wind power up  far higher. And that’s, that’s it. Allen Hall: All right. So this sounds really doable. I just did a quick Google search to see what the square meter area of an Airbus A380 is. It, it’s about, it’s about 850 square meters. So you’re talking about a kite that has the wingspan roughly as an Airbus A380, which is, it’s big, but doable. I mean, obviously those airplanes are flying around, so it is not particularly hard to, to make something of that size, particularly in, in a kite form. So this seems relatively straightforward. Once you cross that megawatt threshold, then your market expands dramatically. Correct? Mark Hoppe: Yeah, it expands dramatically. And then and, and, [00:20:00] and even for what, what, what then is the steps do is actually to put them offshore. To put them on the floor because then it expands even wider because what, what we, what we can do with this technology compared also to conventional technologies, which we have on the market nowadays.  Is that also there the floater can be much, much smaller because if you compare it to wind turbine. So the, the wind turbine has all the weight up in the sky and what does it do with the float? So the float must be really big because. Take care of the binding moments up in the ocean. And if you not have these binding moments, you don’t even need a floor, which is that big because if you look at our system, all the weight is on the ground. So the only thing you need is actually an anchor, so it doesn’t swim away because of the kite. Allen Hall: Alright, so let’s, let’s walk through the, the math of that for a second. So instead of putting out a 15 megawatt turbine and all the, [00:21:00] as Joel has pointed out on the podcast numerous times, the complexities of doing that, the ships, the pounding, the monopile, all the regulatory aspects. Mark Hoppe: The material intensity. Joel Saxum: Pure cost. Yeah. Allen Hall: Pure cost, right? So you’re cutting out all the steel. Pretty much out of a wind turbine. Mark Hoppe: Even the rare earth, because like if you, if you look at the wind turbines because they need to take care of the weight they need the rare earth is because otherwise the generator and, and, and the mag magnet inside for the, for the gear would be too to, to, to, would, would have too much weight, you know?  And since we don’t have that issue, we can use other materials like yeah, other materials, which is, which are not that easy, which are much more easy to get, you know. So because we don’t have the weight issue. Allen Hall: Okay, so the cost would come way down. The simplicity would be there, the deployment would be easier. Are you seeing [00:22:00] interest in this and on offshore applications? I’m thinking Joel, I’m thinking California. Joel Saxum: I’m thinking Gulf of Mexico. Because now, now you’ve, now you’ve solved the hurricane problem. Hurricane’s coming, wheel ’em in, shut ’em down for a second. Hurricane blows through, put ’em back up. So you remove that blade problem that we have in the Gulf of Mexico. Mark Hoppe: That would be, that would be great. That would be a great site to actually, to, to develop such systems. And then yeah, and even though, even, even even sites like the, the coast of Japan, because in Japan you have the deep sea really deep sea coast, which means that it’s really hard to install any other wind turbines ’cause it’s deep, you know. Allen Hall: As this technology develops over the, the next roughly year or so, you must be ramping up on the factories and the scale and to be able to produce these units. But that does seem like. There’s a lot of advantage here, particularly on the cost side. Man, even in like UAE, saudi Arabia, places like that, where there, there is wind, [00:23:00] just deploy it, boom, boom, boom. Right? So what does that look like? Are you scaling up at the minute to, to take some of these orders because the math works out it looks like. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, so actually we talk in the right moment. So what we do now is actually, so. We have, we have taken the step to develop the technology and we have proven the technology also by having the first, also being the first company in our industry to have a verified power curve last year. So we, we made the proof for the technology that it actually works and produces power. And this year’s all about to go into the market. And we do this making big steps forward. So as we have a lot of customer inquiries and we’ve not done any. Any outreach from our side, so it’s all inbound.  Which is great. But now, so, so now we say now our customers are actually [00:24:00] ready to reserve their production slots. This is what we do now. So they can reserve the production slots and then we will deliver the system when they need them. Allen Hall: So where can they see a system today? Like if, if I wanted to see a system in action, would I, would I just go to YouTube? Would I, would I travel over to Germany? I. Where would, where I go to Mauritius, where would, where would I go to go see this live? Mark Hoppe: So to see them live, of course it’s always good to go to Northern Germany or to Mauritius. But then of course in the near future, where you will see some flying in Taiwan.  And then we will extend to the Philippines. And then probably will be next or French, we will see, which is faster. And hopefully also Hawaii. Allen Hall: I love Hawaii. Joel Saxum: There we go. That’s where we want to go. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, yeah, of course. I, I’m happy to invite you when, when you, when you’re ready to, to, to run, we take another podcast there I would say. Allen Hall: That would be terrific. Mark Hoppe: Yeah. We, so we actually, we are just ramping up, huh? We just ramping up this [00:25:00] whole, this whole market and, and this is really exciting to us. Joel Saxum: Every country is different with airspace laws. Now there’s some, there’s some global stuff, general guidelines, right? But there’s every country’s different. Like there’s these, you can’t fly a kite over 500 feet in the United States. Then you run into airspace and you have issues. How have you guys circumvented or dealt with some of those local airspace regulations? Mark Hoppe: In our industry. There are different approaches right now. Because some of them, if you, if you compare the technologies they’re two different concepts. So the one we use is the textile kit, and then you have other companies which uses rigid wing which, okay, we have our, why we use textile kite. We have a lot of yeah, issues why we do that and not do the other approach. But if you compare them, then the rigid wing companies, they claim that they’re kind of a drone [00:26:00] because of course they kind of look like a drone, a tether drone, more or less.  It looks like an airplane like a small airplane. But if you compare our kites with them then our kite is not an airplane.. Sorry. It, it’s not as immovable. And it so what we classify as is an obstacle. Joel Saxum: Like a tower. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, like a tower. Yeah. Like a structure. And then because of that we of course we need some marking, which means we now also have developed an integration concept, which comes with different kind of  yeah, safety measures. So, ’cause what we always have to take care of in, in using the airspace is that you have to take care about the safeness, of course. So all the other airspace users, they need to be aware of what you’re using as an airspace. Which means that you need marking. And the marking could [00:27:00] be that you have lighting. It’s like a wind turbine. You have every 50 meters. You have some, some lighting on the tower flashing. And then, then, and what we use, we use kind of the same. So we have a lighting on the ground station, on the, on the mass, and then at the controlled part. And then the kite is also a white and red color.  And then what we also want to implement is a a map mark for the for the aerospace maps. For like a symbol for, for, so, so that, you know, okay, there’s an obstacle. And then you of course need some awareness campaigns to to, to make all them aware of the technology. And like, this also comes with more installations, of course.  And then for now, what we, what we try to get is a solution where we use EDDs danger zones. So like they, all the pilots are aware of, okay, there’s something, [00:28:00] but you can fly in, you can fly through. So it’s not a restricted zone, but it’s like a danger zone. So they even use these danger zones for, in Europe, they use them also in other countries for drones, for example for drone use spaces and stuff.  So yeah, that’s the way to go now. Joel Saxum: In the States, it would be covered under a. I think right, Allen? A certificate of authorization for use, then that’s filed. Filed with the FAA, then they can go from there but. Allen Hall: ‘Cause there are buildings that are operate, that exist, that are taller than what you’re flying at today in the world. So you’re, you’re not the tallest object on the planet at the minute. And obviously there’s hills and mountains and things that are much taller. So I, this makes a ton of sense. So anybody who wants to find out about SkySails, you need to go to the website because there’s a ton of great information. They, yeah. And the website is skysails-power.com. but they’re also on LinkedIn. You can see a lot of SkySails information there and their [00:29:00] YouTube channel. Yeah, YouTube is, the YouTube channel is really good. And, and check it out there. Mark, how do people get ahold of you if they want to acquire one of your systems or see a demo? How do they do that? Mark Hoppe: So it’s actually the easiest way would be just to visit our website and, and file us an inquiry. Or you can just send us a yeah a message on LinkedIn. Allen Hall: Great technology. Fascinating. And the, the growth of this technology is astounding. One megawatt kites or sails does seem like a way to make more wind energy pretty slick. So check out skysails-power.com. Mark, thank you so much for being on the podcast and keep us up to date as things progress, especially if you go to Hawaii. Mark Hoppe: Yeah, we will do that. Thank you Joel and thank you Allen

In this episode, we discuss Ørsted’s new report proposing a 30% reduction in offshore wind energy costs by 2040, and explore the potential role of automation in wind energy manufacturing. Plus a reminder to register for the next SkySpecs webinar, focused on turbine repair trends and best practices. And the La Joya Wind Farm in New Mexico is our wind farm of the week! 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! Speaker: [00:00:00] You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your host. Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Well, you won’t want to miss the next SkySpecs webinar, which is on April 30th at 11:00 AM Eastern Time us Which Joel, that’s like, uh, it’s like 5:00 PM Denmark time, right? Roughly. Joel Saxum: Mm. Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: Yeah. And this is the second webinar in the joint series with Uptime and PES Wind. This edition features industry leading repair vendors and discusses the latest trends, challenges, and innovations, shaping the turbine repair landscape. Now this is who schedule to appear. Sheryl Weinstein, principal blade engineer with SkySpecs and. If anybody knows Sheryl she knows Blades. This is [00:01:00] somebody you want to pay attention to. Alice Lyon, owner and CEO of Lyon technical access. Uh. Really knowledgeable about Blades. Craig Guthrie, who I’ve known for a long time now, director of Blade Service at Takkion and Jose Israel Mejia Rodriguez, who’s director of engineering at RNWBL. And if you’ve worked with renewable, uh, they do a terrific job keeping turbines up and running. So this discussion will be, uh, talking about best practices for operators and owners and repair teams. But so just, there’s a lot of confusion at times on, on how to. Keep your organization running smoothly. Well, these experts are gonna be giving you a, a lot of good advice and how to source repair vendors and, and how to evaluate vendors and get certifications and safety records, which are getting more and more critical as the season goes on. So you won’t wanna miss this. April 30th, 11:00 AM Eastern us. Click the link in the show notes [00:02:00] below to to register for that event and tell a friend, because this is gonna be a, a great webinar. Ørsted has released a significant new report titled Offshore Wind at a Crossroads, and you can go on Google and download this document. It’s, it’s a pretty thick white paper and it examines the current state of the European offshore wind industry. And Rosemary and I were just over in Copenhagen. We saw. A lot of the offshore wind industry at the Wind Europe event. Now the report focuses on the urgent need to revitalize Europe’s offshore wind industry, and it outlines the policies and industry action required to unlock investment and stabilize some of the costs and accelerate the deployment of offshore wind at. There are a number of highlights in this. The one of them or two of them, let’s go with the big ones, which is, um, Ørsted proposed a joint commitment between the governments and industry to auction at least 10 gigawatts of CFD capacity over the next 10 years. So [00:03:00] 10 gigawatts per year over the next 10 years, which would be a hundred gigawatts plus another five that would be for c corporate offtake. So like a PPA, uh, sort of situation. And for doing this, with that commitment, the, the industry would then mobilize investment to try to lower the levelized cost of energy by 30% by 2040. And my first thought was, boy, that’s a pretty good trade off. If, if I’m a. You know, any country in Europe, 30 percent’s a lot because the, the existing CFD prices are in the 90 euros per megawatt hour. And then we’re gonna try to drop them into the sixties, seventies, uh, by 2040. And, um, my first thought no one was gonna talk to all you today was, is this possible you think they can get a 30% reduction by 2040 in the levelized cost of energy for offshore wind? Some of that coming [00:04:00] from lower cost of access or easier access to cash, which hopefully if interest rates comes down, that will happen. The other one is just getting better at what they’re doing. Is that something that we can lower the price down that much by 30% by 2040? Phil Totaro: Well, yeah, they, they target two areas in, in this report that they talk about, uh, reduced cost capital being, you know, 15% of it approximately, and the other 15% being, as you mentioned, like what they’re calling accelerated learning curve. Um, which is really just, you know, um, what do we used to call that? Economies of scale, uh. You know, effectively, like getting familiar with the manufacturing process around certain things and, and being able to, uh, get cost efficiencies out of, um, you know, uh, wasted, um, manufacturing process or, um. You know, wasted materials and, and things like that as well. So the [00:05:00] short answer is I don’t know that it’s gonna be 30%, and I, I would actually forecast that the reduced cost of capital will probably be more than 15%. So you may get there, uh, and you know, you might get to 30% reduction just on cost of capital alone, but at the end of the day, yeah, I mean, this isn’t anything revolutionary here. Um, uh, so. Yeah, it’s, it’s certainly possible to be able to achieve that, especially by a time timeframe like 2040. But we also don’t know what’s gonna happen, uh, you know, in, in the global economic situation between now and then. You know, it’s, that’s 15 years away, 14 years away, and there’s, there’s some black swan event that’s still out there yet to happen that can, you know, throw us into a global recession or, or also into global growth. So. We’ll see. Rosemary Barnes: Black Swan is such a weird phrase for an Australian because all swans here are black, and so [00:06:00] Joel Saxum: the last person that used that with me was an Australian. I think that, I think there’s a couple of things you can think about here though too. If what this is calling for, what this report is calling for is stability within the industry. We want stability. We want to have more growth. We want to have more opportunity. We want to, we want a market and a power producing industry for off offshore wind that is stable and can drive investment. It can take investment, but if you get to that stage, you’re also gonna bring in more competition. That’s good. So if it’s a stable space and more people can enter it to, to work in it, then you’re going to more Competition usually drives prices down, whether that’s vessel manufacturers or suppliers or you know, blade repair companies or drone inspections, whatever that may be. More competition usually drops that price and at the same time. You know, ever since I’ve been in the win industry, it’s been really exciting about how we treat innovation. There’s a lot of people working on a lot of things. And if in the next 15 years innovation, the whole point of innovation is to drive prices down [00:07:00] or to, you know, to save money here, save money there. So I think that more competition in a stable market, more money coming into innovation in a stable market, um, you know, this is outside of what Phil’s thoughts that are completely correct on, you know, financing coming down and, and cost. I think that those things could drive, uh, an LCOE down, down, down, down, down. Um. It’s that economy of scale. It’s that once we’re here, we’re ready to roll, we can do these things. Rosemary Barnes: I might kind of disagree with Joel, but probably at its essence not, not fully disagree. I think that, uh, definitely. I mean, it’s not, it’s not actually a huge reduction over 15 years, right? Like if you look at the previous curves of cost reductions, uh, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna even continue that trend. But I do think that the recent trend. Up until a couple of years ago, the trend for wind energy’s price reductions was too, too steep, artificially steep, and I think driven by like, excessive competition or like a weird, a weird [00:08:00] kind of competition, um, with maybe too much innovation in a sense. So I think that more of the same of that is, is not the right kind of kind of innovation. I think what what we need is to have, uh, a few, a few products available. Definitely you need some competition, but. Companies need to be able to make enough enough turbines from the one platform to have a secure pipeline of project. Then you get the kinds of innovation that maybe don’t immediately seem like innovation but aren’t nonetheless, you know, like just little learnings on how to improve cycle times, little learnings on how to improve quality. You know, just tiny little. Engineering innovations, manufacturing innovations that just have time to build up, have time to repay all of the, you know, like you need a lot of engineering to make a new, a new product, an offshore wind product, reliable and cheap. And you need, uh, enough units made to repay that investment because when you’re just constantly like a new platform, every year we’re [00:09:00] going bigger. Two years later, we’ve got a bigger wind turbine and two years after that, we’ve got another bigger one. It’s not enough time to make enough wind turbines to repay the engineering investment. Joel Saxum: And I think Rosemary, I’m, I’m, I’m, I agree with you a hundred percent on that component, and I, where my point was more driven, and I should have said this was more innovation in o and m. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, Joel Saxum: like I’m thinking an operation of wind farms is my, my take on innovation is more innovation in the operations and maintenance. How can we do this better, faster, more efficiently with robotics or whatever that may be. And so that’s where I was going with it, rather than on the development or OEM side. Allen Hall: But o and m is downstream of OEM. And getting the OEM to deliver a high quality product is the key here. Rosemary, give me a rough estimate on a new development cycle versus continual improvement engineering staff. What is that ratio? Is it 10 to one? When you’re developing a new turbine, you need say, a hundred engineers to sustain it and make it better. Do you need 10? [00:10:00] You need 20, you need 30. What is that relative number? Because that’s where a lot of savings is gonna happen really is. Reducing the staff and getting more into the manufacturing and focusing there, right? Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I mean, it would be a total stab in the dark based on my personal experience. Probably not totally representative, but it does it, it varies so much from product to product, depending on what kinds of innovations. That you’ve got senior management at engineering companies. Love, love to think that the, you know, like lower level engineers, project managers are just, you know, just like to complain and, um, are too risk averse and all that sort of thing. But US engineers, you know, back in 20 16, 17, 18, like we, we were right. It was too fast. And the, you know, the, um. Too fast for the amount of engineering support, and we see quality problems now. So I just think like if the industry can’t take another, we will get through this, this crunch now with increased quality problems, increased warranty costs. We’ll, we’ll, the industry will get through it, but [00:11:00] you can’t have another, another cycle again in five years time from that, you know, like we, you need time to consolidate and rebuild trust in the industry and in the technology. I think in the West we, um, misunderstand what counts as innovation to think it’s only scientists in labs that are, you know, innovating. It’s only those eureka moments of a new, a new cell chemistry or a new battery chemistry. That’s what counts as innovation. But if you look at the cost reduction, actually. Most cost reduction comes from those like small, boring manufacturing innovations. Um, and not just with manufacturing the project, uh, the product itself, either, you know, um, innovations in terms of. Uh, you know, installing, installing wind farms, um, and yeah, innovations in, in operating them more effectively can make a huge difference. Innovations in pro, um, in project financing as well can have a, a really big effect. Like Phil mentioned, like the finance cost is one of the easiest or most likely ways that we’ll see cost reductions actually. So [00:12:00] yeah, we need to broaden our thinking on what kind of innovation that we need. I think Allen Hall: I wanna take a quick break here, and when I come back I want to understand how. More European supplied components that is obviously gonna happen over the next couple of years, are gonna be able to support this 30% reduction in the LCOE. Is it possible? Don’t let blade damage catch you off guard the logics Ping sensors detect issues before they become expensive. Time consuming problems. From ice buildup and lightning strikes to pitch misalignment in internal blade cracks. OGs Ping has you covered The cutting edge sensors are easy to install, giving you the power to stop damage before it’s too late. Visit OGs ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. Alright, we’re back. So the dis Rosemary just led a really good discussion about the the ways and methods that LCOE is going to get lowered on offshore wind in Europe. [00:13:00] One of the sticking points I think, though, is there’s gonna be more emphasis on building more components within Europe, which has a higher cost structure. Can the European manufacturers Vestas, Siemens GAA push down prices if they bring more. Of the components, uh, from Europe, instead of having so many produced in China or in India or wherever they’re gonna be produced at, I, I do feel like there’s gonna be a big push to make some of these things in Europe. Is that gonna offset the savings are making on the installation and the design improvements? Is there, is there a Phil Totaro: way to do it, Phil? Potentially, but only with reductions in labor cost. Which, you know, in, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked on the show before about, you know, unionized labor around the world, but I mean, Europe has probably some of the most [00:14:00] heavily regulated, um. A and, and largest overhead associated with, you know, their, their kind of unionized labor there. Um, so unless they’re going to soften on, on that side of things and find ways to reduce overhead, the short answer is no. The second element of this is raw material costs, which is where we could still leverage. And, and I’ve talked about this on the show a number of times, we could leverage raw materials from China, raw materials from other places around the world. Um. You know, in exchange for, you know, you know, reductions on tariffs for steel imports, uh, in exchange for more access to, you know, the European market. Um, and I’ve said that about the United States as well. It’s like, all right, well if the Chinese wanna come over here, they can, but they’ve gotta give us more rare earth elements, uh, you know, to processed rare earth elements. They’ve gotta lift their quotas. So it’s, it’s gotta be something [00:15:00] like that. Um, those would be really the two easiest scenarios to, to get to, um, a production cost in Europe that would be comparable to what people could get in, in India or China. But without that, I, I don’t see what incentive companies have to re domesticate production. Allen Hall: Is automation going to play a part in that? Uh, when we were over in, uh, wind Europe, uh, there was a big, uh, celebration between EMAC and Windar. Pivot Mac makes the automated welding machines that are welding really thick steel plate together to make foundations and towers super complicated things, but it’s automated and to, to roll the steel. Not easy things to do, but it’s automated and it really lowers the cost down and, and making towers when they use these automated tools, these computer controlled tools, is that where the industry’s gonna go? That. We’re gonna see more automation, [00:16:00] more robotics, more um, AI kind of technology thrown at these problems to lower the cost of these parts down? Rosemary Barnes: I think so. And we’re talking a 15 year timeframe as well. It’s one of the things like with wind industry, that the whole time that I was. Um, looking at a manufacturer, you know, like automation is, um, is coming, is was being introduced to every, every kind of industry. But e everybody in the wind industry was like, oh, we can’t automate wind energy. We tried and it didn’t work. And that, yeah, we, we, you know, we wasted, I dunno, 10, 10 million euros or whatever on a, a project to automate wind, turbine blade manufacturing. So it won’t happen. And it’s just like, well. Okay, but you know, you tried in 2010 and now we’ve got 2020 technology and Sumar 2000, um, 30 technology and like obviously the whole world is not gonna automate except with the exception of wind energy. So, um, I think that. There are now, I I also, I did talk to several people at Wind Europe, even from [00:17:00] OEMs that are working on automation projects now. And, um, so we are gonna see either incremental improvements where they just, you know, automate certain parts of the manufacturing process or my personal belief is that we will actually see maybe even a revolution in the way that, uh, a lot of wind turbine components are made to be fully automated and a, a totally different manufacturing process than what we’ve seen. If that happens, then it, you know, like it goes from being a you, you gotta locate the manufacturing where the, um, labor is cheapest. Then other factors will be more important, like what’s close to the site that you’re installing. ’cause you know, shipping is a large cost, especially for large offshore wind components. And energy will be a larger cost probably for, you know, automated manufacturing. So low energy costs will be an issue. So I, I do think that we’re. Maybe not five years away, but sometime in the next dec decade. I predict a big, big shake up in the way that, um, the [00:18:00] industry works in terms of manufacturing for wind energy and, and we need it as well. You know, that’s, that’s something that’s, that’s gotta happen to, to get the cost down to the level that we need them to be, to roll out the amount that we need to have. Joel Saxum: And when you introduce automation into any kind of industrial process, it, it’s not gonna immediately drop the, the, the end price. A lot of times there’s a, there’s a. Bit of capital, a bit of NRE that happens with that. Um, and you know, like something nobody wants to go in and start losing or like, as a supplier, nobody wants to go in and then take a lower price point right away. So that price point will remain high when automation is first introduced and what the push is gonna be is gonna, it’s gonna control quality. You talk about this pema me thing and the windar renewables deal, like there it is so hard to weld as someone who can weld to weld thick, heavy steel together. And to have it be. Perfect or right, or you know, like, that’s so difficult. That is an art meat science thing. And when you can do it in an automated fashion, then your quality goes up. That’s what we want in the industry. And it’s, and it’s [00:19:00] gonna be a, it’ll be a great snowball. ’cause once we get in there, we get the automation going, quality going, and then after this machine is, you know, basically depreciated, then the, it gets cheaper. Cheaper and cheaper. Cheaper and cheaper as we go. So Phil Totaro: the, this is the exact, uh, direction we need to go in theoretically. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna take. Maybe the contrarian approach to this and say what, what normally happens is what Joel just described. You’ve got non-recurring engineering costs and upfront capital costs that usually make something or keep something as expensive or make it even more expensive than it otherwise would be. Over time. As the, as the, the economies of scale are achieved and the depreciation on the equipment occurs, it’s not like we get a reduction in, in the cost. We just get companies that get bigger margin as a result of, of, you know, leveraging that, that automation and technology. The other point I’ll make is to go back to this, this concept that we, the only reason we haven’t seen. Uh, you know, [00:20:00] automation more widely adopted today because we have a lot of the, the technologies in place, not all of ’em, you know, we can’t, you still can’t automate like everything, you know, and, and just have a, a factory of robots making wind turbines, but. The reason we haven’t adopted it today is because of the cost of production. Yes, you might get higher quality, but the cost of production actually wouldn’t be lower than using people power. Uh, and and that’s something that, so just like you get economies of scale with. The components you’re producing, the, the automation itself needs to go through a cost revolution to be able to get down to a price point where it can be more widely adopted, and that’s one of the main reasons why it hasn’t been Speaker 6: as busy wind energy professionals Staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES WIN magazine. PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert [00:21:00] insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit ps wind.com today. Allen Hall: Well, if you haven’t downloaded your latest copy of PES Win, you need to do it now by visiting ps win.com. Or, uh, you can actually ask for a hard copy. Hard copy’s brilliant if you can get one. They’re hard to get your hands on lately because there’s, everybody keeps grabbing them at all the trade shows before I can get to them, but. Hey, what are you gonna do? And in this quarter’s, PES wins a lot of great articles, and one that I knew was coming for a while is from hard head veterans, Joel down in Sweetwater, Texas, and they’ve been developing a helmet safety helmet for wind technicians. And I saw this probably a year ago when the development started and they were head on this project. This is cool, [00:22:00] uh, neat technology, and so it’s a kevy safety helmet. And it has better protection from both top and side impacts. And the whole goal of this is to have a better, uh, performing better comfort in, especially in Texas where it’s so dang hot. You, you want a helmet that does cool you and, uh. Hardhead veterans have done that on in numerous industries, but now they’re into wind. This is pretty cool. Joel Saxum: I think that something that people don’t realize with, uh, safety gear or PPE in general is being a wind turbine technician is very specialized, right? So just like, look, we’re focused on hard hats here, so you’re, you need to be protected from, uh, anything falling from above. You need to be protective as a we, we call them bump caps, right? So when you’re inside of a n cell or you’re climbing a ladder, whatever, and you bump into something or on the side of the head or the top of the head, you need all that protected. You also need a chin strap because you’re a, we’re the wind [00:23:00] blows. That’s where we put wind turbines. So you need all these things, but then they’ve gone a step further. And these are some of my favorite components of hard hats in general, and I’ve always said these things. Connected tools, right? So now they’ve got, you’ve got this thing. You can put air protection on it, you can put sunglasses on it. You can put a headlamp that’s built into it. And my favorite feature, now, this is my, I’m an old school hard hat guy, and I have been, since my oil field days. I like having the brim on the sides to protect my ears from the sun. I hate getting sun, I hate getting sunburnt. And they’ve done like literally everything I like about a hard hat is. In this hard hat and they’re making ’em in Sweetwater. Uh, I think, uh, this is a fantastic product and these, these guys are gonna see some, some high demand. Hopefully the, the uptime bump helps for their bump caps and then they start making a lot of sales because they look awesome. Allen Hall: If you go to the website, which is hardhead veterans.com, you can see all the different colors of the kevy hardhat. They come in all kinds of great colors and I, and I’m sure, is there a requirement, Joel, to have a specific color on site? I know most of ’em are Joel Saxum: white, but it depends on the operator right, too. Because some of ’em will be like a short [00:24:00] service. Employees need a certain color. Sometimes it’s a, you know, someone who’s a regular technician on the site. They have a regular color guests. Yeah. Guests have a different color. Yeah. You’re, you’re correct, Phil. Um, so that’s gonna be company by company. But, um, I know that, um, I’m a fan of the old school white hard hat. Keeps it, keeps it cool in the sunlight too. Allen Hall: Yeah. When Joel and I show up on wind sites, they give it the helmet much with the flashing red light on top to know that we don’t belong there. Do not let these guys climb a turbine today kinda hat. Yeah. And rightly so. Yeah. So check out uh, PS wind to ps wind.com and also, uh, visit, uh, hardhead veterans, uh, websites. Really cool stuff there. Rosemary Barnes: Please send me a hard hat with a pod alert logo on it. Allen Hall: Rosemary has a very special announcement. Go ahead, Rosemary. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, my, my little YouTube channel got, uh, passed a hundred thousand subscribers a month or so ago. So now I’ve got my very own, very own play button on display in my background to go with, uh. [00:25:00] Weather Guard won from Asias ago now, year, two years ago, um, and soon to be soon to be joined by a gold version of the button to celebrate 1 million subscribers on the Uptime Wind Energy channel. Which is a mind blowing number of people around the world who are interested in all the news in wind energy, and which you can find handily combined in one place. Allen Hall: It’s with Guard Lightning Tech on the YouTube channel. ’cause we, that’s how we started it way back five years ago, is like a little company channel. We were hoping to get like a thousand people to subscribe at the time and. Now it’s a thousand times Joel Saxum: that for this week’s Wind farm of the week we’re heading to New Mexico. The La Joa Wind Farm in New Mexico is, uh, owned by Avan Grid, uh, the completed project, which is two phases. We’ll have 111 turbines in it, and they are built now. So it has 76 ge, 2.8, one 20 sevens, and [00:26:00] 35 Siemens gaa, 2.61 14 uh, meter. Rotor machines. So the project is located about 10 miles west of the village of Encino. Uh, an interesting thing here, which, uh, if you know, if you’ve worked in wind and you know anything about New Mexico, it’s one of the few places in the US that puts wind farms on state. Owned and public land. So this wind farm is partially on New Mexico land with, uh, 74 turbines at 207 megawatts of that generation on that state land, which, uh, Avan grid won, um, in 2019 through an open bid process, which is a pretty cool, uh, consideration. Uh, so this project will raise over $41 million for New Mexico public schools, which is fantastic. And one of the things I wanna highlight here is that this, I was looking Wind Farm of the week and I found an article, and this is from 2020 when this wind farm was first being built and it focused on building it during covid and stuff, and [00:27:00] some really cool things they did there. Um, but back then, the, uh, PNM, uh, which is the, the local grid operator there, generation, the, the vice president Tom Ren, said. When integrated with our wind, solar, and battery storage, p and m is well underway to not only meet state submissions, free mandate, but well positions us on the hundred, the path to a hundred percent carbon free by 2040. So I know that battery storage has been battery storage, battery storage, battery storage last year or so. But back in 2020, this wind farm and, and when they kicked this thing off, they were talking about it already. So New Mexico, a little bit ahead of the curve there. So, um, the, the Joy of Wind Farm in New Mexico Allen Hall: by Avangrid, you’re the Wind Farm of the week. That’s gonna do it for this week’s Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Thanks for listening. Please check out Uptime Tech News, our substack newsletter, which you can find in the show notes below. And check out engineering with Rosie who has reached the 100,000 subscriber stage headed to the millions. We’ll see you here next week on the [00:28:00] Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.

The U.S. Interior Department halts the Empire Wind Project due to environmental concerns, prompting political backlash and legal considerations. The Offshore Wind Industry Council releases a framework to better protect marine life, and a new assessment reveals job opportunities in the Canadian offshore wind energy market. 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! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Allen Hall: The United States Interior Department has ordered a halt to all activities related to the Empire Wind Project off the coast of New York. In a director’s order dated April 16th, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management instructed Empire offshore wind, LLC to suspend ongoing activities. Related to the Offshore wind project. The stoppage order follows in part feedback received from the National oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about environmental concerns. In a July, 2023 assessment, NOAA determined the project would quote, result in significant adverse impacts to essential fish habitat federally managed species, the prey, and other resources, unquote. Noah expressed particular concerns about the project’s overlap with the Clara Bank and important [00:01:00] ecological area that provides valuable habitat for numerous fish species. Interior Secretary Doug Burnham stated The project is being stopped until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis unquote. New York Governor Kathy Hoel has criticized the decision pledging to fight it. Empire Win one is already employing hundreds of New Yorkers, including 1000 good paying union jobs as part of a growing sector, unquote. She characterized the order as quote, federal. Overreach and vowed to protect union jobs, affordable energy, and New York’s economic future. Equinor, the parent company of Empire Offshore Wind, LLC announced it would comply with the order and suspend offshore construction, but is engaging with the relevant authorities to clarify the matter and is considering legal remedies including appealing the [00:02:00] order unquote. The Empire Wind Project Construction included up to 147 wind turbine generators with a substantial submarine cable network connecting the turbines to the mainland electric grid in New York. The Offshore Wind Industry Council has published a framework report to help offshore wind industries better coordinate underwater noise management, various seabed activities, including surveys, turbine installation, and unexploded ordinance clearance need improved coordination to protect marine wildlife. Conservation measures already exist in areas like the Southern North Sea, a marine protected area for harbor purposes. The report identifies a critical need for better planning when government thresholds might prevent multiple projects from operating simultaneously. Key proposals include a coordinated framework for cooperation and a transparent decision making process to quickly resolve scheduling conflicts. [00:03:00] Juliet Shrimpton and Ben Sykes from Ørsted emphasize the importance of balancing biodiversity protection with clean energy development to meet UK’s 2030 targets. And Marine Renewables Canada’s new assessment reveals significant opportunities for atlantic Canada’s wind energy supply chain. Under medium development scenarios. Offshore wind projects could create up to 6,000 jobs during peak periods while onshore wind could generate 5,000 jobs. Of 1070 companies assessed for offshore wind. Roughly 25% were considered highly applicable based on experience and services for onshore wind. Roughly 22% of the 950 companies met similar criteria with and 100 additional businesses showing expansion potential. The report highlights opportunities for indigenous led businesses, and recommends further investment in infrastructure, workforce training, and [00:04:00] specialized manufacturing. 

Brett Tollgaard from Sunrez discusses their new leading edge protection solution, created using a durable UV-cure resin system. Using this solution reduces downtime due to quick cure times and strengthens leading edges for years to come. 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! Bret Tollgaard: Bret, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Allen Hall: A lot has happened at Sunrez and you guys are the magic UV cure resin systems that everybody is using at the moment, but there’s a bunch of new products that are coming out that I think a lot of operators and ISPs need to be aware of. One of ’em. Is a fill of material that looks great when you’re trying to fix the leading edges, which are just mangled from all the dirt and debris and rain. It’s not something you can just kind of smooth over very easily. And a lot of times operators spend a bunch of times sanding, grinding, trying to get it where they can apply some sort of liquidy coating to it, and it never really looks great and it’s not really smooth. Bret Tollgaard: Sunrez has fixed that. We sure have. We’ve got a lot of customer feedback about some of the things that they’d like us to expand our UV cure portfolio on, and one of the big ones was leading edge protection. There’s been a ton of different solutions and stuff used over the years. Some with success, some. Slightly less mild [00:01:00] success. Uh, and so we thought it was an opportunity kind of right for the picking. And so, uh, the chemist spent a reasonable amount of time trying to develop a highly filled, uh, UV curable resin system that will live up to all the abrasion, whether it’s rain, uh, you know, particulates in the air, et cetera. And so we’ve undergone some really reasonable rain erosion testing thus far, and it’s shown to be a pretty good result. And so it’s been a slightly soft rollout as we really kind of finalize the formula in the system. But we really do think it’s a product that the, uh, customers are gonna love, whether it’s a pre impregnated, uh, fiberglass version, or potentially a, a putty version as well. Joel Saxum: I mean, the LEP market is, you’re always hearing about new LEP, right? There’s this LEP test, there’s a whole conference devoted to leading edge erosion that. The DTU puts on, but it’s because it’s such a prevalent issue, right? Like. Alan and I in the field looking at reviewing blade damages for lightning and things. But we see all, all kinds of leading edge erosion. That is, it’s crazy how annuity these turbines, some of these turbines are a [00:02:00] year, two, three years old, they’re still in warranty and the leading edges look like they’ve been hit with a sandblaster. It’s crazy. So the fact that you guys are working on something and what we really like, of course, about the UV cured products is that you get up there, you put it on, boom, you hit it with the uv. You come off the tower, you turn it back on. ’cause a lot of operators, and this is, this is where sun really shines. A lot of operators are always talking about downtime. Downtime. When we talk about installing strike tape, how long do I need to leave the turbine off before? Well, we’ve working on some solutions. We don’t have to, uh, but. It’s a, it’s a very common thing and I really, what I really enjoy about what you said was customer feedback. So that means that you guys are in the market, you’re trusted in the market, and people feel, feel good enough to come back to you and say, Hey, what about this? What about this? What about that? Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. It’s kind of similar to our pre pprs. We originally offered those in 300 millimeter by 750 liter flat sheets. Uh, millimeter, excuse me. It got [00:03:00] everyone kind of on the game experiencing some of it. And then with some more customer feedback, we said, Hey, how can we improve the product, the packaging, et cetera. And they said, 10 meter long rolls of this exact same product would be fantastic. We have less overlaps. We can cut to size, get to shape a little easier, uh, and so we’re always constantly trying to get more customer feedback so we can adapt and tailor our products to the markets that we’re in. And with that LEP is just a tremendous opportunity to really. Try to, uh, fast track some of the opportunities to get blades back, uh, spinning quicker Allen Hall: because there’s really two ways of attacking the leading edge erosion problem. And I think United States is a little bit different than what would happen typically in Europe, uh, especially up north where it’s mostly rain impact. What happens in onshore for the United States is I think a lot of dirt impact dust. Mm-hmm. Dust, dust, dirt, right. Bugs Joel Saxum: till tillable soil. Whenever we see turbines near or downwind of tillable soil, the leading edge erosion always seems to be bad. Allen Hall: So you’re kind of getting hit with a [00:04:00] sandblaster. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s what it’s like. Tip speeds are 200 miles an hour, 90 meters a second. You’re hitting all this debris in the air and it just beats the heck out of these blades. That’s why the OEMs are having problems in those areas. Kansas, Iowa, all those areas are a problem. So the soft materials aren’t necessarily the best for that environment. Mm-hmm. Great For offshore. A lot of places Joel Saxum: Absorbing rain. Droplets Allen Hall: rain, yes. And the testing shows that, but in the Midwest, in the United States and some of the areas, India, another place really harsh, where soft is probably the not the right solution. Something a little more durable, harder wear resistant. Is the right solution and that’s what Sunwest Bret Tollgaard: has developed, correct? Yeah. At the end of the day, everybody wants a rubber rock. Something that can take and withstand, maybe deflect some of the energy coming at it at the same time too. Being sturdy and strong enough. Uh, to have all the wear and abrasion resistance. And so once again, we’ve been formulating UV cure resins for [00:05:00] decades. Yeah. And so we’ve had filled products, unfilled products, et cetera, and you manipulate some of the different concentrations of different additives in there and you can really kind of tailor and tweak the performance. And so. Uh, with that we have the ability to, once again, kind of pre impregnate some fiber in case people want to just wrap and do something kind of similar to the other film type applications. Uh, but then once again, we also are able to provide that in a putty form and so we can change and adapt the viscosity to meet a certain customer’s needs. And really kind of then based on more potential OEM and ISP feedback. As to the processes that they’d both, uh, like us to explore the most, we can certainly go down that path, uh, a little quicker Joel Saxum: with a putty. So I’m thinking, in my mind, I’m picturing a really nasty leading edge ocean problem on a blade. Is there a thickness limit to a UV cured product? Bret Tollgaard: There is. And the more filler you add, the more difficult it is to penetrate through all of that. Yeah. And the, the pre impregnated repair patches, we, uh, have right now, the 73 55 resin formula, we can truly do an inch or a half inch thick, excuse me, of prereq. [00:06:00] So fiberglass and resin, right? Um, so 12 millimeters in under 10 minutes. So a Joel Saxum: pretty, there’s nothing that you’re gonna run into that’s gonna be worse than that. Oh, and, and that’s Bret Tollgaard: just it. So the more fillers you add, it can change the color, it can change the wavelengths, uh, that actually penetrate through that, uh, resin. So we do a lot of testing, um, to really dial in a photo initiated package to maximize that with the, uh, materials that we have inside the resin. And so this new, uh, system that we’re working on is our 73 0 3 resin formula. Uh, and it’s proving to be a pretty resilient system. Uh, we’ve done quarter inch thick trials thus far. As we thought that would kind of gonna be the maximum that people were gonna be looking at. But we do have the capacity to do more if required Allen Hall: because the, the magic, and this is hard for engineers to think about when you want something that’s really stable on the leading edge of a blade, what you’re trying to avoid is a sort of a layering system. If you look at a lot of [00:07:00] epoxies that are apply that are. Structural epoxies, what they are is sort of a cross-linking process, and that cross-linking process also makes it sort of breakable. Mm-hmm. So if you hit it just right, it wants to fracture like a glass almost. It’s not that way, but it’s similar, right? So the magic that sun rests has done is said, okay. I’m gonna take a system that’s cross-linked together, but also a little amorphous to take those impacts without fracturing and wearing away, because it’s the chipping and that’s what you see on leading edges for a lot of the epoxy. Yeah. It doesn’t look like it’s a, doesn’t look like it’s been a braided. Yeah, it is, but it’s fracturing. So you’re getting these like mini explosions that are happening in a sense, and it just wears away. And then you’re exposing fiber. And fiber doesn’t like that. Mm-hmm. And then it just starts to wear burl into where Joel’s pointed out, you can put your fist in some of these blades. Yeah. That are only a year or two old is crazy. Yeah. And I [00:08:00] think that’s where the industry sort of missed one of those areas. You could design a material. That could be quick to apply. Could UV curve could be relatively simple. You’re not mixing anything and fix these blades relatively quickly. There hasn’t been that solution. Everything’s been a two part mix. It. Maybe even heat it up before you apply it. It’s soft. It takes hours. Secure all that. Stuff, the complex chemistry. You need to be a chemistry professor to apply some of these things to, why don’t I just put this coating on? It’s super tough, super durable. It’s going to get me past my Repower 10 year. And I leave it alone. Joel Saxum: Yep. Allen Hall: I think that’s the difference. I Joel Saxum: think another important thing we’re, we’re, so we’re in Nashville here, right? A-C-P-O-M-S. So you have a lot of ISPs that are here, and we’ve got ISP friends from all over the world. Uh, but we are, we’re hanging out with a bunch of Canadians today and they have an issue with, Hey, we can only put LEP on, or we can only do certain repairs from the [00:09:00] end of May. To mid-September, you know, and that’s it. Yeah. So their repair season is so short that they have to change their business models around how to get people in because of it now being that UV cured, that season all of a sudden blows, blows the doors wide open. As long as your fingers aren’t freezing, you can be up there doing it. Yeah. It’s Allen Hall: not blowing snow. Joel Saxum: Yeah, exactly. Allen Hall: Actively raining hard. You could actually apply this material and protect your blades and stop messing around. Yeah, the messing around part is what kills me. Because you’ll hear operatives say, we tried that leading as protection, now we’re moving to this one, and now next year we’re gonna try another one. Like, good lord, we’ve been on this problem for I feel like forever, and somebody Bret Tollgaard: needs to solve it and leave it alone. Well, we try to live by the KISS principle for a majority of our things, right? That’s why our pre pprs, they’re peel and stick. You can pre consolidate it down tower if you want to build, you know, much larger versions. Um, you can over laminate stuff over the top, but the fact that it’s peel and stick, expose it to the sun and or our light when you’re [00:10:00] ready. Is really the kind of most simple solution that you’re truly going to get. Joel Saxum: I think. Uh, an interesting thing that I’d like to get across to the users here as well is Sunrez as a company, you guys have been working in the defense sector, like you’ve done all kinds of things For how long has the company been around for? Bret Tollgaard: We’ve been around since 1986, so we have almost 40 years of just pure UV curing experience. Joel Saxum: Yeah, and that’s, and that’s. It’s rare to find someone that specialized with that much experience. Mm-hmm. So you guys, while, while UV products may be new to refresh to the wind industry, they’re not new or fresh to Suns, suns knows what they’re doing. Bret Tollgaard: That is correct. And we’d really like to tailor and adapt our products to every individual market. And so wind is vastly growing, uh, with our, in the materials and the products and the SKUs that we’re starting to offer into this market. Yeah. Um, but as we said, based on customer feedback, really kind of tailoring and tweaking systems and the LEP system, there is just no true winner. And so we’ve been working on something over the winter that we think was gonna be a great op, uh, product to roll out. So now we’re working with [00:11:00] some other partners to really try to get this out into the right people’s hands to do testing and verification and prove, uh, you know, the concept is really there. Yeah, Allen Hall: it’s definitely Bret Tollgaard: there. I’m not worried about it, Allen Hall: that now the, the, the next effort really is the robotic application of suns materials in general. Unless you’ve kept your ear to the ground, you haven’t realized that there’s a lot of suns materials being applied via a rows robots today. A lot more than I thought. You want to talk about how far advanced that that progress is? We, we’ve been Bret Tollgaard: working with them for a couple of years and it’s gets back to the same kind of principle, right? If you’ve got a material that you can put on the. Consolidate and cure, that just simplifies every single thing. So with robots in particular, whether it’s a pre impregnated patch, a squeezable tube of putty, liquid resin, it’s much easier for a robot to go apply and then cure. Yeah, and so similar with any kind of person, the reduced cycle time saves everybody money. Move on to the next repair. Get in and out before you increment weather [00:12:00] comes through or the winds start to pick up. And the robotic side of things has such an opportunity to grow, uh, and is generally just becoming a more and more safe practice as well. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Application wise, you have OEM approval with some of your products too? Bret Tollgaard: We do, and we are in the process of many more. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Bret Tollgaard: Um, we’re once again starting to gain a lot of traction in this market, and end of 2024, beginning of 2025, has been some opportunities from the exponential growth within the wind industry as more OEMs jump on board for a variety of different types of products that will solve a bunch of different needs. And so LEP, once again, being one of them. Um, but there are some really great opportunities that are starting to come our way with more OEM support Allen Hall: and OEMs have approved Sun Rose materials with the robot application today. Bret Tollgaard: They are being installed in a broad variety of places and we have sold a lot of prereg into that market. Allen Hall: And, and that’s an economic equation that’s being besides the [00:13:00] engineering right? Obviously the engineering is right to, to show structure. You can do these things. Yes. But the math works on the economy side that it’s more efficient to use a robot more consistent, to use a robot to apply a UV cured material than to put a couple of technicians on a rope to try to do this several hundred times. Yes, the repeatability is the issue because you can’t have the same technicians doing all these blades. But you can’t have the same robot do it universally. I think that’s the Bret Tollgaard: game changer. I think so as well. And the documentation process, the quality control they have the ability to see everything in all of their computers to really guarantee that every single repair has done the appropriate way. Allen Hall: And isn’t that as an OAM you want? Because you’re trying to de-risk it. The reason you’re out there in the first place is because you have a problem. The worst thing is that you get out there to repair the problem and you create a secondary problem. And you can’t go back and fix it or you don’t know what caused it. Theones has eliminated that for the most part, from what I can tell, because the data sets [00:14:00] are there. They know what the temperature was, they know what the humidity was, they know where they were they were doing, they know what time of day it happened. They have all that data to show that they’re inside the box where this is gonna be successful. That’s a game changer. Yeah. For the industry. Joel Saxum: And when you’re also Rupa. Okay, so we always talk about there’s a shortage of technicians and skilled technicians and trying to scale that part of it. You’re removing the need for a technician to basically be a chemist. Yes. How many times have we seen two part materials mixed with like someone’s finger or something like, like that stuff happens, right? It does. We talked about it off offline a little bit. There are Bret Tollgaard: some cowboys out there. Yeah, so, but Joel Saxum: doing the, using the UV pre Prague or using a UV material, like it makes things simple. You can work with it, peel off the cover, boom, hit it with the light, you’re done. There’s no, there’s no messing around. There’s no, ah, you know the humidity’s 76% today and the temperature’s 81 degrees in a and a half. Ah, man, we can’t do this. It also reduces downtime, makes repairs more efficient because there’s not as much weather time you. Uh, I mean, you, you, as you’ve said, [00:15:00] traction in 20 24, 20 to five. Right now, UV cured products are taking the industry kind of by storm. Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve gotta say, aone has been absolutely fantastic to work with. They have some extremely intelligent people on that team, great engineer, and they really know how to make a successful product. Yeah. Uh, and so incorporating the fact, the fact they want to incorporate our UV products to really help exemplify that. Uh, it has been a blessing for us and we’re really looking forward to see where the rest of, uh, that technology can kind of take, um, some different curing and, you know, repair opportunities. The same thing as this for Sun. Allen Hall: One of the issues early on when we started working with you was how much of this can you produce? Where’s it produced at? How fast can you get it on site? Having visited your facility a couple of times now, you can make a lot of material. Bret Tollgaard: We can truly, very quickly. Yeah. We, we have, we, we buy resin, you know, buy the truckload. So we have 40,000 pounds to 120,000 pounds of resin on site at all times. We can make literally tons of [00:16:00] prereg a day. And so there’s a tremendous opportunity for growth and volume even beyond where we’re at. Um, but yeah, we do have the capacity to bring in a tremendous amount more material. Free preg resin, putty wise and, and more. Allen Hall: The thing about sun also is that stuff doesn’t have to be put in a freezer. The traceability doesn’t have to be there. It’s gonna come to you in a sealed package. So is versatile. Bret Tollgaard: You’re not throwing it out at the end of every season. Exactly. We, we guarantee 12 month shelf life on all of our products, but the reality is we’ve got stuff that’s 15, 20, even almost 30 years old that still cures, uh, just fine. And so as long as you keep it in your UV protected container. You can really kind of, uh, recertify anything for several years beyond its, uh, original expiration date. Allen Hall: If you think about how much material is thrown away Oh, waste because of it expired. It’s insane. Yeah. It waste, it truly is. It’s a huge waste. And, Joel Saxum: and materials in the wind industry are expensive. They are like all the, all the glues, resins and systems like that stuff is not cheap and it’s, and [00:17:00] there is a lot of waste. Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. And, and one of the big pushes that we had, you know, once again at the end of last year was the introduction of our new non flammable resins. No VOCs, no have. So it makes shipping, transportation, storage so much easier, literally worldwide, as all these other countries have different regulations. Um, and so yeah, moving to our new, you know, resin formulas that are. All non flammable has also really been a big game changer for us. That Allen Hall: allows you to ship ’em overnight on an airplane easy instead of being on a truck or on a ship. That’s huge. Correct? Right. Bret Tollgaard: Most of the repairs that we’ve been receiving and and calls to action have been for emergency repairs. Yes. They need stuff the very next day, so we’ll get. Stuff turned around ASAP on an airplane to their final destination. Do that with another Preprint provider. They’re gonna tell you it’s gonna be two or three weeks, not gonna happen. Allen Hall: No, it’s Bret Tollgaard: not gonna happen. Or I mean specialty, you know, refrigerated components to actually get things to certain areas. Sure. All of our stuff kept in normal warehouse ambient conditions. And the reality is guys will leave these in the back of their trailer. Right. It needs to be a r uh, rugged. [00:18:00] Industrial prereg that can live up to the actual application processes and storage conditions that the reality of, uh, you know, our onsite teams actually have access to. Allen Hall: Now, let’s talk about something that we haven’t really discussed too far, but I saw it up close, was you have the mechanical testing facilities at Sun rests to verify. The product does what you say it’s going to do mechanically, which a lot of operators and ISPs are like, oh, it’s a pre-reg, but you’re doing all the mechanical checks in house, correct? You’re, it is back to Joel’s point, you guys have been around a long time, so it gets you the time to build all that infrastructure to do pre pprs properly. So when you’re, they’re shipping material, you’ve already validated that this stuff works and you checked it out mechanically. I know when you’re. In, in the lab and you’re playing with new materials. I just hear all the activity like, oh, we’re, we’re pole testing this. We’re doing all the mechanical allowables, so we’re not guessing at [00:19:00] it. That’s different. Yeah. And particularly in the United States because this is manufactured in the US in America, which Bret Tollgaard: all of a sudden is a big problem. Yeah, yeah. Well, it benefits us, you know, being such an, uh, an old established company is we’ve been in the r and d space. For true decades. So we have a hundred kilo Newton Instron, uh, on site that we do a lot of the mechanical testing with. We have a DSC as well where we can actually measure the degree of cure of an as cured component. So we can do an exact layout the way that someone’s gonna do it in the field with the same amount of light intensity for the same duration. We can measure the cross thickness of it to make sure that the, uh, you know, material on the backside is gonna be the same as the front. And same thing with, you know, prepregs and everything else. So we can do mechanical testing, adhesion testing, pull test, et cetera, and also make sure that it is 99% cured. There’s not gonna be any uncross link components left in it, and that we’re achieving the right mechanical and thermal stability properties of the, uh, the material, Allen Hall: right? So all you [00:20:00] blade engineers out there that are not familiar with UV cure materials, Sunrez has the data. Stop. I hear this a lot. Like, oh, do they have the data? I want to see all the structural data. Do own individual test. Right. Come on, we, Bret Tollgaard: we do have TDSs of all of our pre pprs. Yes. All the putty and everything as well. No, we are not an accredited certified lab. We’ve been doing this for decades. Uh, but I can tell you all the OEMs that have been revalidating our materials, there’s a reason we’re still selling it into the industry. I like that word, Joel Saxum: revalidating. Yeah, it’s Bret Tollgaard: what it is. It, it is, and I, I respect, you know, everyone’s, you know, kind of cautiousness of really investigating a new material. A lot of people just don’t really believe until they see it firsthand, the, you know, the ability to cure the way we do. Like we’re over at Booth 1 29 here at the show and seeing people’s faces of a prereg flash some light on it, and in 60 seconds you have a completely cured part. It’s pretty incredible to actually witness, because that Allen Hall: was the knock [00:21:00] five years ago on UV Cure materials from other companies. Is that it didn’t cure outright or the chemical properties weren’t right, or the structural properties weren’t what they said it was. They were on the data sheet. Yes. True. I know those companies. I know who you’re talking about. That’s not sun rests. Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And we’re not the only UV cure player in the world. Right. But we are only one of the few, uh, that offer a UV cure pre preg. But then we also have completely different formulas to some of the things that are also out there on the market. And so one of the big benefits of our pre preg is you have a perfectly wet out sheet of fiberglass when you’re out in the field and you’re wetting out by hand. Even if you do a vacuum consolidation and you’re pulling and you’re heating. It takes time to properly wet out all that fiber if you’re doing any kind of hand lamination and then you’re trying to UV cure or do something else afterwards. You just don’t get the same quality of a truly manufactured pre impregnated part, in my personal opinion. Of course. Yeah. But that is one [00:22:00] of the big distinguishing, you know, functions of Sunrez as the materials that we offer and how they perform differently to the other things that are on the market. Yeah. Joel Saxum: I heard from someone the other day that they’ve applied 3,600 of your UV patches and not one of ’em has failed. Bret Tollgaard: We definitely pride ourselves, like every single part that we make, every single piece that we impregnate, we have a complete track record of we. I know I can tell you exact amount of resin that went into it. I can tell you the fiber that went into it. I can give you all of those data sheets to really. Compile, uh, you know, a really, really good track record of a material traceability, but then b, success in the field because if anyone actually had issues, which once again should never happen. ’cause of all the checks and balances we have, the reactivity checks and stuff that we do. But if by, you know, some really, really important misfortune, someone had a product that didn’t act right, I know exactly what batch record it came from. I know all of the other prerequisites that were manufactured with the same material, the same resin on the same day, [00:23:00] so we can go back to all the other customers in case there ever was an issue. And so we’ve yet to have one, we’ve yet to ever ship out material that didn’t cure and didn’t do as, uh, as advertised. And we’ve sold millions upon millions of pounds of resin, uh, and thousands of miles of pre preg. But, uh, yeah, we do have all those checks and balances in place as well. Allen Hall: So for the engineer or the OEM or the ISP. Operators that have not heard of Sunrez and want to find out more, Bret Tollgaard: where did they go? So we are truly starting to finally build up a website, uh, that has all of the information that people want. So we’re putting SOPs on there, we’re linking, uh, videos on our YouTube page and everything to it as well. Because at the end of the day, now that we are starting to get as much exposure as we are, people are coming to us with the same questions. How does this work? What are the best processes? Gimme some hints, tips and tricks. And so we’re developing all that content. Now, we’re rolling out more every single month, so by the time this airs, we’ll hopefully have even a couple more videos out. Um, but yeah, [00:24:00] sun rez.com, youtube.com/sun Rez, uh, are the best places to go to find some of the quick content. And of course, just reach out. We’re available by phone, email, um, you can get to us on our website and everything as well. Yeah. And that’s Allen Hall: Sunrez, S-U-N-R-E z.com. That’s correct. Brett, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Appreciate the time and thanks Bret Tollgaard: for having me back, guys.

David King from Gulf Wind Technology discusses RootFusion, their up-tower blade root bushing repair method. By eliminating the need for cranes, the solution reduces costs and operational complexity. And their NDT diagnostic process allows for non-invasive inspection and repair. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: David, welcome to the podcast again. David King: Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It’s an exciting event that we’re here at. So we’re really looking forward to this. Allen Hall: There is so much happening at Gulf Wind at the minutes. Uh, just been watching some of your intellectual property pop out and some of the new things that are at this show. Uh, all kinds of areas that you’re investing in, in terms of blade repairs that have been needed for probably two or three years and. At this point you, you have good solutions. The one I think we’re most interested to hear about is the blade route, bushing, or insert. Repair that happens of tower because Joel Saxum: everybody’s asking about it. I think that’s the important thing there is, first off, we need to get some common language around what this problem is. Yeah. So everybody’s calling it root, bushings root and this infusion like, ah, what are we actually calling? What are the terms, how you brand this? Exactly. David King: Yeah. I mean, just you say it’s really been a long time coming. It’s something we’ve been involved with now for well [00:01:00] over. Three years, and we got introduced originally as an RCA. And so, you know, when you get into something like a root cause analysis, you know, one of the first things you gotta do is actually establish the terms you’re gonna use, establish the definitions, create a common framework that you can communicate around. And so when it comes to this particular issue, a lot of it really starts with how do customers get sensitized to this? We’ve seen everything from some customers getting sensitized through, uh, unfortunately a blade failure. A blade that ends up on the ground. Joel Saxum: Yeah, David King: that’s probably the worst scenario. We’ve seen others where they’ll see things like. Dust, uh, on the outside of the gel coat that’s starting to build up, uh, gapping, where you have fundamentally a, a visible gap forming between the blade root and the pitch bearing, uh, where you see visible daylight in some cases. Yeah. Um, you really want to try and catch things, obviously much earlier than that, but kind of the, the, the common themes here all around a loss of connection between the metal root bushing and the composite laminate, which caused the blade to become loose from the pitch bearing. So just kind of walk through that system maybe a little bit. Um, you’ve got the composite blade which has to transfer [00:02:00] load into a metal pitch bearing, Joel Saxum: right? David King: Metal pitch bearing’s gotta be able to spin so the blade can pitch, produce, power, and do all the things we need to do. And it’s one of the most complicated parts of the blade really. ’cause you’re trying to transfer load from composite to metal and you have this massive stiffness difference between metal. And composites. And so it takes some very clever engineering to bring those things together and, um, get an even load distribution. And so the way that’s done today is through a metal root bushing. So it’s essentially a, uh, precast metal piece, um, that has geometry to it that allows both mechanical and a chemical connection between the composite, the metal bushing. The metal stud, which is threaded to the metal bushing, and then that stud goes back to the pitch bearing. You joint all that together with some, some wedge lock washers and some nuts, and, and you’ve got your, your root connection really, and that’s what’s fundamentally breaking down here. Allen Hall: Okay, so the, the breakdown is occurring. Where in that assembly? Is it where that bushing meets the composite? Is it the composite itself? The way the composite is sort of wound [00:03:00] around that area and how it’s strengthened? Or is it that we’re pulling on the studs too hard and basically pulling that bushing out of the composite? What are the, what creates a scenario why I need to be paying attention to this? David King: No, absolutely. One thing that’s I think quite fundamental to this is actually separating damage and defect. And so I’ll talk a little bit to the damage, ’cause that’s what you’re observing when you see this is the damage that’s resulting in this loosening effect. And so fundamentally what’s breaking down is that metal bushing with that geometry that’s making the physical connection to the composite is, uh, funnily lost. Its, its pretension on it. So it relies on both mechanical connection. So you’ve got this. Basically sine wave looking, uh, um, you know, geometry that you’ve got composite laminate going into those grooves of that sine wave and you’re getting a, a physical compression joint connection there. And then there’s a little bit of chemical connection as well. And so as that. Breaks down over time. You get the composite that’s inside those grooves actually forming into [00:04:00] a dust and eventually loosening and slowly sliding out. Allen Hall: So is there fiber David King: inside of those grooves or is it just resin? That’s the goal. So the goal is to have fibers inside of that groove, basically, if you’re going to. Have a metal bushing and you’re gonna have composites around it that you want to perform well, you’ve gotta have the right, right fiber, weight fraction, the right combination of fiber and resin in that area to really get the best strength out of it. One key piece there though is, is that we talked earlier about compression strength, and that means that you’re relying on the resin strength, which is the weakest part of any composite. Uh, and that’s really where the challenge is. Joel Saxum: So, so is the issue that we’re seeing in the field now. Is it from manufacturing incorrectly or is it just from wear and tear? Or like why? Why is this thing rearing its head or is it materials? David King: Yeah, I mean, these are all great questions and really there’s a variety of answers to those questions that are very dependent on which blade type it is. What the fundamental problem is, it really comes down to having a proper root cause [00:05:00] analysis or RCA on that particular blade type. And, and you know, in our experience it’s usually a combination of many things. Um, you know, these, these, uh, uh, blades are incredibly difficult to manufacture. They’re complicated, they’re incredibly difficult to design, they’re incredibly difficult to maintain. And it’s really a combination of all three of those things that fundamentally leads to really any problem in this industry. And so to solve it, you know, you’ve gotta have a creative solution, but you also have to be addressing those three or four different things. And so you really need that proper root cause analysis. I dunno if you’re familiar with the eight D kind of process, but. You know, having something where you’re really trying to look at this holistically and address each of those things you just mentioned and asked about, Allen Hall: what are the first signs that an operator has this issue? Is it just seeing the dust on the outside or is it something you can hear as the tire as it spins or what? What’s usually that first like uhoh with the technician? Yeah. It’s kinda David King: like, you know, put your yourself in the shoes of the technicians, the operators who are trying to face this challenge, right? And trying to manage risk ultimately, right. Is, um, you really don’t obviously want your first knowledge of this [00:06:00] to be a blade on the ground. You want to catch this earlier. And so just as you said, dust that’s forming on the outside is, is one big, big telltale sign. The other one is, is if you’ve got, uh, visible gapping where you put that blade in the six o’clock position, technician can go up there, feeler gauge. And measure that, that gap that’s starting to form do something about it. The, the other thing is, you mentioned audible. You can, in some cases hear this, you can hear that blade moving, but that’s a very, um, let’s call it mature damage. You really wanna be catching it before that, uh, just because you’re, you’re getting into a risk profile where there’s a lot of uncertainty, whether or not you’re gonna catch it in time. And that’s really important. ’cause we, we don’t want blades on the ground. I think especially in today’s environment, we’ve gotta do right and wind. Joel Saxum: So an operator comes to you and says, Hey, we believe we have one blade doing this. Is the next step to do NDT work on the whole fleet or on that whole wind farm to understand what the risk actually is to that wind farm or what, how does that process move? David King: Yeah, so you know, really it comes down to understanding that operator’s business case, because everybody’s gonna have a different risk profile. [00:07:00] Everybody’s gonna have a different approach to whether, are we trying to repower in a couple years? Are we trying to get 20 years and we’re only 10 years in? Is this something that’s only two or three years old and we got another 17 years to go and there’s a variety of different solutions. So maybe I’ll go through a couple of those if it’s helpful. Um, you know, we’ve seen everything from continuous monitoring systems. There’s some great solutions out there when it comes to acoustics, accelerometers. Gap sensors. Um, you mentioned ut we found UT to be quite good when you’re, it comes time to actually doing the repair pre and post. And if you wanna do a sampling, uh, you know, it’s very hard to justify doing ut across tons of 300 blades. Exactly. Yeah. It’s Joel Saxum: expensive David King: and you really have to have done the diligence on the front end with, uh, UT as well. I think UT is, it’s one of those things that you have to have, have really approach it in a fundamental way where you understand the defect, you understand. What you’re looking for and you’ve done blind trials to make sure you, you’re not giving false positives or anything like that. So, you know, kind of, you know, I don’t want to jump straight into the repair just yet, but we, we can get into that maybe in a minute or [00:08:00] two. But one of the key elements that repair is doing a pre NDT before we go do anything, and that’s built into the repair service we offer, is we do a pre and post NDT. That’s our quality check. Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’re gonna get, if you’re gonna get surgery done, you get x-rays or an MRI done before. So you know what, so the surgeon knows what he’s getting into before you open it up. Same concept. David King: Exactly right. You gotta know what you’re getting into. You gotta know where you’re going and you really want to, you know, not go in blind. And so, you know, what we’ve seen is, is operators will go through and they’ll do maybe. Feeler gauge, dial gauge measurements throughout their farm. That’s a, you know, low cost, low barrier of entry type measurement that their own technicians can be trained on. And you can kind of have a standardized approach to. Sometimes they’ll implement condition monitoring systems to try and again, start, um, best utilizing their, their operation and maintenance fund. You know, how am I gonna prioritize if I’ve got some blades that are really far along, some that aren’t, I’ve gotta save some for next summer. CMS really has some great solutions there, but then when it comes time to repair it, we, we do really need to get the ut and get that pre x-ray, post x-ray and, and [00:09:00] go in not blind. Allen Hall: And the bushings that have the most problems tend to be on the leading edge and trailing edge, or that’s the, the two areas you need to focus on. If you’re doing ut. David King: No. So, you know, it’s kind of interesting. It’s again, by blade type actually. So what we’ve seen is, is there are a variety of, uh, damages and defects out there. And, you know, you can kind of group it. We, we group it into kind of static and fatigue. There’s stuff that’s happening in the first couple years on, on newer, uh, turbines. And there’s stuff that’s happening in 10 to 12, 13 years on older turbines, and based off of which population those blades sit in, there’s gonna be a different, uh, patterns where the damage is. So sometimes you see that damage, like you said, in the leading edge, trailing edge. Sometimes you see it over the spars, and sometimes you see it in the, I call it the corners. You know, between the leading edge and the spa cap. Yeah. Um, there is a pattern though. You just have to know what population you’re looking in to make sense of that pattern. If you look at it too holistically, you’re just gonna go, well, they’re everywhere. You know, it seems random, but if you know what I’m looking at, it’s a fatigue problem. Is this a static problem? Is this a, uh, a particular blade variant? You’re [00:10:00] gonna start to find those pattern areas. Um, Allen Hall: okay, so then if you generally know what the blade model is, then you know what bushings you’re looking for. Generally we using David King: the whole thing as well. That’s the other thing. We’ve, we actually have, have pulled in, uh, some UT equipment we’ve been working with now for about 10, 15 years. But it comes from aerospace where, uh, this, uh, hardware was originally designed to actually NDT, uh, uh, blade Wing. So it’s a very effective, fast way of getting a lot of information around the whole blade route. And so we, NDT, every bushing on the blade route. Okay. And then we can go dial in. We kind of know before we get in there which ones we suspect are gonna be problematic, but we want to verify with that, with something quantitative. Allen Hall: So what percentage of the. Blade bushings are going to be bad in like a moderate case. You detect it relatively early. Is it five? Is it David King: dead? Is it half of them? Yeah. So I mean, you know, if, if you’re talking about something that maybe let’s say has, uh, 64 bushings on it, you’re probably talking 10 to 15. If it’s a 90 bushing plus, you know, maybe you’re getting into 20 bushings. And again, they’re always [00:11:00] gonna be mirrored. So if you’ve got 10 on this side, you probably have 10 on the other side. That type of a, a situation really. Okay. Allen Hall: So the, the scope of the problem is not as bad as I thought because I, I heard operators. Talk about this saying, well, I gotta replace all the inserts, and my first response is like, that doesn’t seem right to me. Yeah. So the data actually shows, it’s just certain areas that have this issues if you catch it soon enough. So I’ll put that caveat on David King: there. If you wait too long, it does go progressive. You’ll eventually get every single bush failing and you’ll end up with the blade on the ground and the bushing’s still up tower. So it’s uh, yeah, unfortunately, Joel Saxum: will it be like, uh, the adjacent ones? So if you have three, four of ’em here, then the next ones go are. The ones adjacent to that, adjacent to that, adjacent to that? Or does it start to show itself in different spots? David King: No, it’s a great question. And what we see is we see that mirroring effect, right? Right. So you see it on each side. And let’s say it’s centered on a, a grouping of three bushings on each, each side, that will then start to grow, just as you’re saying, kind of this unzipping almost of the, the blade roots. And eventually, uh, in extreme cases, what the other thing we’ve seen is you’ll see the crack where we. Do what we call turning [00:12:00] the corner. So it goes on the outside of the blade and you see a crack in the gel coat. The first meter meter and a half of the blade has a gel coat crack. And that crack will have gone through the blade route, through the protrusions. And that’s unfortunately most likely a scrap blade at that point. Allen Hall: I’ve actually seen that David King: up close. Allen Hall: So once, yeah, once you start to crack the blade root, is there really a way to recover that? Is that worth even playing around with? Yeah. Or is it just like, Hey, it’s such a repair, it’s so intensive, high load area, it’s not. Worth. David King: I mean, we always say, you know, it comes back to the business case, and I would say most of the time it’s not worth it. Um, all composites can be repaired. There’s, there’s not a single, I mean, you could rebuild the entire blade if you wanted to, but it doesn’t make cost sense. And that’s really where the business case needs to be brought in. We need to understand what are you trying to get out of this? Is there available blades? And this is where sometimes there can be some special cause situations where maybe it does make sense to bring that blade down tower, do a very large cut and grind operation, and actually fix these bushings and get that thing back to normal health. Allen Hall: [00:13:00] Okay. So the issue is pretty prevalent from what Joel and I have seen. Yep. We talked about our operators that have it. There’s a solution now that Gulf Wind has developed to repair these bushings up tower, which means no cranes. And that’s huge. A lot lower costs. What does that repair look like? Or I need you to walk through it with me because Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot when I talk to operators, the first thing they say is, well, I, I don’t wanna touch it because I gotta get a crane. We have to wait until August when the crane’s gonna be on site. So it just turns into this big fiasco and how Right we and how, so we’ve had this Joel Saxum: conversation like, yeah, you can fix that up tower. I said that to somebody. They’re like, no, you can’t. It’s like, yeah, yeah, you can, no, how? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m like, talk to the people that know. David King: Right? Yeah. So I mean, we’ve got a huge passion for composites of Gulf Wind technology. I mean, you know, our, our history and our legacy has been doing composites, whether it’s aerospace, wind, auto bodies. So we love composites. So three years ago when we got this problem statement originally.[00:14:00] We, um, you know, really wanted to approach it from a fundamental point of view, and, and it developed something that was again, listening to the business case. And immediately we became apparent. You can’t bring cranes in, you can’t bring this thing down tower, you gotta address this up tower. And you’ve gotta do it in a way where you can send a crew up with some bit of kit, some bit of equipment and get this done in, uh, a weak or less really per plate. Otherwise, again, the business case just doesn’t make sense. And so what we’ve done is we’ve really developed a, uh, what I like to call, kind of like a laparoscopic surgery almost. So, um, you know, you might be familiar a little with the medical industry where you come in, you try and be as minimally invasive as possible, try not to disturb other things that aren’t broken. You know, it’s kind of the, the, the, uh, doctor’s motto, do no harm, right? Yeah. We don’t want to go in and just upset all this great fiber that was originally infused in that blade. We don’t want to mess any of that up. We’ve looked at everything from cut and grind to boring bushings, out to bringing things on tower when we were. Working through the business case, we looked at everything. Okay. You know, you could cut the root off and put a new root on all sorts of, you know, really out there. Ideas, uh, and really what it came down to. [00:15:00] Is a series of process trials where, again, everything at Gulf Wind, we, we kind of root in this idea of we build up what’s called a process map. We understand the inputs outputs, we break it down into its critical steps, and we develop a, a series of critical to quality measurements. So we really dial in what does the process need, and then we go run our process trials to dial it in. And the result of all that work over two or three years is this method in which we go up tower with, uh, three personnel. Uh, three technicians with a piece of equipment that’s maybe about 25 pounds or so. Uh, a bit of material. And uh, I call it kind of our, our go box or a go bag. This is kind of kit about 40 pounds more of material. They go up tower. They’re up tower for about three to five days, execute the repair, and they come back down. So what do they do? Up tower, that’s the question You’re really after. Um, step one is we, ut coming back to what we did originally. We do this, this pre-inspection, get the x-ray, we know which, what we need to do as far as, uh, targeting, bushings, that sort of thing, and doing no harm. We don’t want to necessarily over repair. Uh, there’s no [00:16:00] damage if you over repair. Again, the process is, has been designed in such a way that you’re not gonna break anything if you over repair. But again, it’s wasteful. And then we basically are able to, um, get in with this piece of equipment, to that interface with very, very minute holes and basically, uh, um. Uh, inject or create a, a quite a significant amount of pressure, almost similar to hydraulic fracturing and achieve a, uh, repair that gets the material into this broken down interface, and we can put a material into that interface with this, this pump, this equipment. Um, you know, in such a way that we’re actually able to purge out any sort of contaminants in there, dust oil, anything that might be preventing chemical bonding from occurring or preventing proper curing from happening in the adhesive. And, um, yeah, we, we replace the broken material. We replace it with a far superior material that we’ve developed. That again, is, it can actually be mixed one-to-one with oil. So this material, we’ve done a lot of lab testing on where we’ve actually mixed it with, uh, you know, one part uh material, [00:17:00] one part oil. To make sure that it can cure properly and not lose strength. Uh, but we do purge that out with the material and we’re basically able to get this almost dialysis like effect through that root bushing and get that cavity, uh, back into good shape. Um, with this piece of equipment. Joel Saxum: What kind of pressure are we talking? Um, so where’s that secret sauce? It’s, it’s a little bit David King: secret sauce, but I’ll say it’s significant amounts of pressure. It has to be very tightly controlled. We’ve, we’ve done. Probably thousands of process trials to dial in that pressure. I would say it’s significant. We’re talking, uh, way in excess of something you would see in an infusion or a vacuum, but it’s quite key because we don’t wanna do any other damage while we’re in there. So again, we’ve developed a lot of very um. Uh, I guess proprietary, uh, methods of actually being able to get that material without damaging the surrounding composite. The composite, that’s good. And really only attack the bad stuff. It’s kind of, uh, another, another analogy in the medical world might be like a root canal. We don’t want to go messing up the gums or anything else around the tooth. It’s still healthy. Just get that one spot in two. Exactly. And so it’s about pressure, but pressure in the right space. [00:18:00] Very similar to hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas business. Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re taking that existing bushing, you’re drilling some small holes into it. Mm-hmm. You’re forcing an adhesive up through, through the interface, the mechanical interface, and then, then you’re gonna actually flush out the debris that’s inside of this to the front of the. Blade. The bottom of the blade or the root of the blade? I guess it’s gonna come out the front. No. So we actually, or does it just, everything David King: is done internal, so nothing is gonna be introduced into the pitch bearings or anything else. It’s all done from the internal side. And it’s this dialysis like effect where we’ve got a way to bring material in and a way to bring the material out of this cavity. Okay. And clean everything up. You know, we got, um. Good material coming in, you know, and then we, we basically purge out. You’re pulling it out on the same side. Exactly, yeah. Basically. Allen Hall: So you have, you have inputs and outputs like a U around the bushing. Right? Okay. So you’re bringing it in, flushing it out, pulling this material out, and at some point you go, okay, the material we’re injecting in is coming out, so there’s no other debris. We’ve [00:19:00] gotta, we clean this thing out and then under hydraulic pressure. You disconnect that adhesive system hardens, and then what? David King: And so it’s got strength, well in excess of the material that was originally there. And so what it allows us to do is return both the chemical and the mechanical connection that that bushing really needs to perform well. And so that, that’s fundamentally, again, what we’re, what we’re diving into here is, is trying to return that, the state of that connection to better than it originally was. And that’s what we’re, we’re ultimately doing with this. And so. We, we’ve got that material in it cures, you know, we get to the right spot. We come back in with the UT and we verify that we’ve done what we said we were gonna do. We were gonna replace this surface, get the connection back in there. And what we can do is compare pre and post UT and, and really, uh, cement the idea that, look, we know what we did. We can see it, we can prove it. We’ve got the quantitative data, show it, um, and we’ve got a record of it. And that allows us too, to come back if we want, three months later, six months later, 12 months later, and compare. And that’s something [00:20:00] we’ve been doing really over the last. Uh, 12 to 24 months. We’ve now deployed this, uh, quite significantly, I would say, across a variety of turbine OEMs, blade types, different operators. Uh, we’ve done it internationally now as well. Uh, so we have quite a, a, a strong deployed base, uh, uh, really where we’ve got a lot of experience now doing this across a lot of different varieties of, of hub style blade type. Um, and we’ve gone and done follow ups, right? So anytime we do testing, we start out with doing our, our coupon testing, all the basics that you’re used to. We do sub-component testing, we do full component testing, and then we do pilot, um, series fleet leaders, that sort of thing. We’ve done a, a huge amount of those over the last, I would say again, 12 to 24 months really, where, um. We’ve then gone back and actually with UT again, done a three month inspection, six month, 12 month inspection. The main to really ensure that, you know, we, we fixed it, but then we’re also double checking to make sure there’s been no issue. And today we’ve seen no issue and that’s why we have a lot of confidence. Where we’re at today is we’ve got that. [00:21:00] Full testing pyramid, really built out from coupons, sub component, double app shears, um, all the way up through actually proven, uh, um, you know, flight hours basically. Right? At the end of the day, that’s what people care about. Flight hours. Joel Saxum: I think an important thing to touch on here, and you did a little bit ago, is the fact that for a lot of people they think I have to replace this blade. So you’re thinking. Crane costs a hundred fifty, two hundred, two hundred 50,000 bucks for this blade. But you guys are fixing the problem by having a three man crew in that blade for three to five days. That’s, I don’t know what your, the cost model looks like, but that’s not expensive compared to what we’re, we’re used to. Like I’ve seen three to five days people just being inside of a blade. Fixing a shear web de bond or something like that. Right? Like so that cost is something that’s not crazy to the industry. It’s doable. David King: No, exactly. And I, I’ve gotta say a big thank you to our process team and the, the process team at Gulf Wind Technology has got just decades of experience and process and what we’re really about. It’s trying to take out the complexity composites, right. You, we’ve probably heard [00:22:00] in every conference we’ve been at, it’s very hard to manufacture these plates. It’s hard to repair these plates. Anytime you’re working with wet chemicals, grinding, doing anything like that, it’s very complicated and very difficult. Very heavy on the, the, the human aspect as far as keep maintaining quality science meets art. Exactly. And so what we really have done is tried to eliminate as many of the variables that are allowing, you know, the, those sort of, um, errors to creep into the process. And that’s what all that stuff about process, maps, inputs, outputs. We really fundamentally believe that and try and build that into our process, whether it’s the equipment we build and, and, and create the materials we select. The way we drop down our process, the way we do our work constructions, we really want to do it in a way that keeps things simple, keep things easy for the operators. You’re not reliant on, you know, the, the, the person with 20, 30 years developed the process, but now the person executing can be somebody that’s, you know, fairly new to composites maybe, but, but has experience, has a little bit of training. Joel Saxum: So speaking about executing as well now. Golf, wind technology is taking problem [00:23:00] statements in designing engineering fixes for them, but you’re also deploying in the field, so it’s your technicians go into the field to do this. Correct? David King: Yes. Uh, yeah. So, you know, anytime we deploy something, you know, I always say the, the most difficult part is the ramp. Right? You know, a lot of people like to focus on the, the developments and you know, all the testing and the hard work that engineers to do to really. Create a robust product, but the hardest part is actually the ramping part. And so what we’ve been doing over really the last, uh, 12 to 18 months is the ramp, and that means putting our technicians in the field to make sure that we’re getting the feedback, you know, understanding of the problem statements fairly early on in the deployment that might be happening. Even just simple things like, Hey, it’s difficult to get this piece of kit through this hatch that’s in this particular turbine type. All sorts of things like that. And being able to build that back into how we fundamentally approach. Uh, doing this process. But, you know, speaking to, you know, models we’re looking at, we’ve, uh, again, everything we do, we try and make it so it can be, uh, done in a kit. So it can be FedEx, so it’s equipment that can be leased, rented, uh, people that can be [00:24:00] trained and certified in the process. Um, but the only way we could do that is first deploying with our crews, build the training material, and that’s what we’ve been doing really the last 12 months. So where we’re at today is we have been starting a training of third party crews. Actually, we do have, uh, we’ve trained 20 people through the, uh, the, the training center at in New Orleans, uh, on this particular process to date. Uh, we’re gonna continue to ramp that, um, and get more people familiar with this process. Trained, certified, um, you know, and, and basically able to troubleshoot, able to really understand if there’s, there’s anything going wrong with the process. You know, really trying to build in the robustness from the training side, uh, so we can execute this well. Allen Hall: Is there a model in this where you would want to look at. Blaze pre-installation that, you know, this particular kind of blade is gonna have that problem because it’s, it’s a design issue or manufacturing issue that you would do this kind of repair on the ground preemptively while it’s less expensive to do. ’cause the blades are all sitting there. Is David King: that something you’ve looked at and. [00:25:00] Going forward? Yeah, I mean, I think it’s extremely dependent on exactly the type of defect and damage that we’re talking about with, uh, with the, uh, the blade type. So it’s something that we would certainly entertain. I I think it’s very case by case dependent. True. Um, you know, yeah, I would say, you know, it’s not something we’ve seen really on the very, very front end of things like, um. You know, you do have to generally have something to repair. There’s a few, you know, I call ’em outlier cases out there where you can’t repair something very early on, but, right. Uh, for the most part, you, you need damage to have occurred, to have something to repair. Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, just the discussion with some of the operators that have that issue with a farm and they’re repowering with the same equipment, with the, basically the same blade. And the discussion I’ve heard is. Well, why would I put that blade up if I know I’m gonna have this problem? Can I do something on the ground before it goes up so I can just prevent this all together? It’s a lot less expensive to do. Pre-installation then post. David King: Yeah, I mean, so I think with the, uh, 2, 2, 2 approaches there, I guess one of them is, is um, you know, I think the [00:26:00] timing and the cost model that we’ve been able to create for this does allow you to do the UPT Tower in a very competitive way where it actually, to be honest with you, we’re pretty agnostic. If it’s down tower or up tower, it’s uh, in some cases, uh, dare I say actually easier up tower because we can take advantage of the pitch system. Uh, when we’re actually doing the repair. So, kind of funny enough, we in some ways prefer up tower. Um, but, uh, and that’s odd. It’s not normal. Yeah. But then coming back to your question about what can you do on the front end, um, you know, one thing that we’ve seen a lot of interest in is what I typically call owners engineering due diligence, doing factory audits, doing manufacturing inspections, doing firewall audits, all these sorts of things. They’re, they’re really key. It’s important to get, um, experts. With eyes on your blades and, and really do, um, due diligence on things. Yeah. Allen Hall: And that’s something that Gulf Wind offers, correct. That you, you will come David King: out and take a look before the blades get installed? Yes, absolutely. We, we inspect a lot of blades. We go inside a lot of blades. We do a lot of risk analysis factory audits. So we’ve been to a lot of different countries doing these factory audits and, and you know, it’s, uh, it’s [00:27:00] something I think that can give a lot of peace of mind. It can help out with, uh, financing, getting tax equity financing, working with your insurance company. But then ultimately what it all comes down to, right, is. Being able to predict what’s gonna happen with that fleet. You know, I think, uh, one thing that we’ve gotta be very careful with in inspections in this industry is, is uh, what’s the value of the inspection? If the inspection has to allow us to predict better the risk and the, the way we’re gonna maintain things. And we can’t just be doing inspections for inspection’s sake, otherwise we’re just building checks. Exactly. Uh, so that’s a really important thing for us at Gold Wind. Allen Hall: Uh, this is really interesting and good technology. I know there’s gonna be a lot of operators. This summer that are gonna be implementing it, and over the next couple of years, because there’s thousands of lays with this issue at the minute, so you’re gonna be pretty busy sending kits out and sending crews out to go address it. What’s the next generation looks like? Are obviously, uh, Gulf winds involved in so many different things simultaneously. What are some of the challenges ahead you’re trying to deal with? David King: Yeah, no, absolutely. [00:28:00] So I mean, and this is one, you know, very, I’d call it acute issue that we’ve, we’ve developed a product for. We’re obviously ramping teams, getting training set up, that sort of thing. Uh, we, we, um, you know, also are, are very set on, you know, maintaining excellence in composites. So that’s a huge thing for us. We’ve got some really exciting stuff that, you know, at some point I’d love to have y’all actually back out to the facility. So maybe we can get some hands on with some of these new, uh. Uh, cutting edge things that are happening and in composites. So I think there’s some really new manufacturing technology that’s, um, potentially, uh, uh, ready to, to be coming out very soon, that we can show you all, as far as, you know, fundamental changes in how we deal with materials and fusions, all these sorts of things that, that come in there. I’m gonna leave that as a little bit of a teaser. Um, but no, we also have some really exciting stuff coming up in the performance world. You know, I think everything we’ve talked about is what I would call reliability engineering, structural engineering composites, that sort of thing. But, um, we also have some really exciting things coming up in performance with, um, ways of, of creating, uh, lower, you know, basically being able to get better capacity factors out of low wind speed sites [00:29:00] really. Leveraging some exciting technologies that are gonna allow us to expand wind energy. Um, you know, if you look at the map that NREL publishes every year of wind in the United States, you see it’s all concentrated basically from the Dakotas to Kansas to Texas, Oklahoma, and kind of everything in between. And that’s all the high wind sites, right? And so, you know, I think it’s a country, it’s gonna be really exciting to see where that goes next as we start focusing on potentially the southeast market. You know, what does low wind speed look like in America? And I think Gulf Wind’s got some really exciting technologies that are coming out with low wind speed. Where, you know, we’ve, we’ve, I I think fundamentally had some paradigm shifts in how we can extract power, um, out of these challenging sites, um, that historically have, have, have not had wind installed in ’em, and with, you know, data centers going in, uh, the, the power demand going up. I mean, Louisiana just had a $10 billion investment and data centers, one of the first wind farms installed in the southeast of Mississippi. Mississippi just went in. These low wind speed sites are becoming massively critical, Allen Hall: right? And the population base in the United States is moving to the Southeast where [00:30:00] there’s not a lot of renewable energy, but there will need to be over the next 10, 20, 30 years. So we better figure that this problem today, because I know Gulf Wind Technologies in the forefront of that. David, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast. And we do need to get back to New Orleans, just not in the summertime. Yeah, let’s go. So hot sometime when it’s cooler. Right? Right, exactly. David King: So thank you for being back on the podcast. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Maybe we’ll put some smoke in the wind tunnel. That’d be cool.

In this episode, Rosemary and Allen discuss their experiences at WindEurope 2025 in Copenhagen, covering exhibitor highlights, offshore wind projects, industry challenges, and the evolving focus on quality and technology in wind energy. Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Rosemary Barnes and I are in Copenhagen at Wind Europe 2025 at the Bella Center, which is a full with about 15,000 visitors and 350 exhibitors. This is a massive show. It’s the second largest, I would say, in Europe typically. Right? So Hamburg is bigger, but this is, this is. Still massive. Rosemary: I haven’t been to Hamburg. This is the biggest probably conference that I’ve been to. I think probably, ’cause I used to go to, I used to go to a lot of European conferences, but like niche ones, you know, on specific topics like winter wind or, I don’t know, various types of manufacturing. But this is, yeah. All wind and you say 350 exhibitors. If you had told me three and a half thousand, I, I would’ve believed you because I feel like I have seen so, so few. I mean, I’ve seen so many good exhibits, but not, I haven’t scratched the surface of what’s here. And we’ve only got, I’ve only got one day left. You’re going home, so yeah, your time’s over. We’ve [00:01:00] just Allen Hall: walked. Through the hallways quite a bit and the highways to see what is here. It’s a different vibe than what you would see in Australia or see in the United States. It is much more focused on offshore. Rosemary: Yeah. Allen Hall: And big scale offshore wind projects. Rosemary: Yeah. But you know what the Australian NCES are all about offshore wind as well. It’s like a, a, a weird thing that those of us. Working in the industry, you know, in operations. Can’t quite get our head around how little people talk about the kind of wind energy that we actually have. Um, but here in Europe, obviously they do actually have offshore and a lot of the future development will be in offshore. So it makes sense here. Allen Hall: Bristol’s here. R B’s here. Ge Renova. Vestus. Of course, they all have massive displays. Rosemary: Za not a lot. Nordic Allen Hall: had some. Yeah. New, new items. Rosemary: I haven’t seen much, um, Chinese presence here, like Allen Hall: almost none. Yeah. Rosemary: Which this time, time surpris me a little bit. [00:02:00] Yeah. Allen Hall: And there’s not a lot of American presence here either, besides ge Renova as the American, but they’re sort of split, right? They’re all over the world. Rosemary: Americans are busy right now. There’s stuff going on at home Allen Hall: just a little bit. Sure. Uh, but I, uh, I think some perspective there would be good as we get going, because I’m gonna, I’m bringing the American perspective, Rosie, you’re bringing the Australian perspective a lot of. Uncertainty about the United States at the minute. Uh, much talk of aren’t you super concerned about what’s happening in America? And I said, it’s just another day in America really. And uh, what you read in the papers is not necessarily what’s happening on the ground, uh, but I think other, and Europeans have a different perspective and that’s great. Speaker 3: Yeah. Allen Hall: Uh, but it does lead to some weird discussions and maybe Australia, well, you, Australia has a similar problem with America at the moment, but. It, it’s, it’s still, it’s, it feels real. But in the United States, I can just tell you it doesn’t, if you talk to the average citizen, [00:03:00] nothing happened yet. No. You’re much Rosemary: more relaxed. Everyone else is, um, is panicking out much, much more. Yeah. Other than cutting the Allen Hall: vacations and yeah, Rosemary: I don’t think we’re panicking in Australia. Um, but because we’re probably amongst the least affected outta the rest of the world, but it’s just like, I’m still like refreshing news. Speeds to see, oh, what else? What else has happened? ’cause you know, the global implications could, is an interesting experiment, is the way someone put it to me recently. Allen Hall: Yeah. The experiment will probably be short. The issue about, uh, procurement of parts and crossing borders has come up during the show quite a bit. Yeah. If you’re gonna be selling things in the United States, do we need to be having an office in the United States or do we even think about it because two days later it’s all gonna stop. I’m gonna have spent all that money. Uh, I’m not sure there’s a good answer for that. I gotta ask that quite a bit. Yeah. Should we, moving to America, Rosemary: if I was a manufacturer that was worried about, um, yeah. My just [00:04:00] manufacturing facility isn’t in the US and I was worried about tariffs, I would. Find it really hard to say, yeah, let’s make a manufacturing facility in the US because like you said, no one knows is this, how long are these tariffs gonna stick around for? Yeah, I mean, it’s still at least 50% chance that the real purpose was to bring people to the negotiation table, right? Maybe they’ll be over soon. You can’t really invest in like, you know, like physical manufacturing facilities in that sort of uncertainty. So I, I. Don’t think that it’s going to, in the near term, attract a lot of, uh, yeah. Outside companies to manufacture in the US if they weren’t before. Allen Hall: Yeah, I, I agree with you wholly on that. The, the style of show we were here two years ago. We had a wonderful time in Copenhagen, uh, what we noticed two years ago. Was a lot more technology companies. I would say there were more robotics companies, inspection [00:05:00] companies, more on the operations and maintenance side. There was still obviously the, the shield builders and the, uh, model pile installers and all of that. Uh, but there was much more new technology things happening. Very little of it this time. Hmm. Uh, notice the same thing at American Clean Power O and m or OM and S in Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Uh, much more. Uh, about keeping the turbines either operating at peak efficiency or on the development side, like we need to get to turbines in the ground now. And this show is, I think, representative of that in the sense that Europeans are more offshore than onshore, but the deployment, deployment, deployment, we’re just trying to rapidly Europe’s, trying to rapidly deploy gigawatts out in the ocean. Which is one of the most complicated ways to build a turbine, but Europe has the, the capability to do it. Look, walking around this show, it’s, it’s evident like the [00:06:00] process is in place, the tools are in place, that people are in place to make offshore wind extremely successful. Rosemary: Yeah, it’s really interesting, the contrast between Europe, it was just. Doing it versus the US who seem convinced that it’s impossible to do offshore wind. It’s like, well, hello. Like, look across the, at the ocean and you can see that it’s possible and can be cost effective in the right, um, circumstances. So, yeah. Uh, interesting contrast. Mm-hmm. Allen Hall: And, uh, just, uh, walking around some of the things that I noticed were on, on the building and the deployment, uh, tools to make it faster, shorter times to assemble some of these turbines to, to get more gigawatts in with less cost. That is a huge emphasis too, so that the tools are better, the technology’s better, the quality systems are better, the reporting is better. All the pieces that were just kind of left. On the sidelines for a while are now coming back into focus and you see an emphasis on the quality of the turbines. It’s one of the discussion points on the floor was, [00:07:00] Hey, let’s, let’s get the turbine development cycle down. We’re not building so many new turbines, but we’re making the ones we have much more efficient and much more reliable. Rosemary: Yeah, no, I think that’s a. Correction that needed to happen. It was the technology. I love technology development. It’s my thing, right? But it was happening too fast to, you know, rushing, rushing through new technologies and you know, making them bigger and bigger before the previous one had been fully understood. And so you kind of like get ahead of yourself. And we have got lots of, uh, quality problems, warranty costs blowing out. So it makes sense that you would see less emphasis on new technology and more emphasis on, you know, incrementally and, um, just categorically removing quality problems and risks from the existing. Uh, yeah. That what we’ve already got. Allen Hall: Yeah. And the weather in Copenhagen has been, Rosemary: it’s ridiculous. It’s so dated. It makes me hear like, why did I, why did I ever struggle to with the weather when I lived here? It’s, uh, [00:08:00] it’s insane. Yeah. Allen Hall: I don’t know what it is in south. Here, it’s about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Rosemary: Yeah. It’s been, uh, 10 degrees, no, like thir 13, 15 degree maximums. Um, just beautiful, clear skies. Haven’t seen a drop of rain. No Allen Hall: rain. Yeah. Crazy. Rosemary: Yeah, it’s, it’s been lovely. Allen Hall: It’s been great. And one of the things I thought I would see more of here, because it’s a little cooler here than it is in the states at the moment, is, uh, many, many more companies looking at deicing systems because that seems to be where a lot of power is lost. And when you go to a show in Phoenix, like American Clean Power, no one’s talking about de-icing there. ’cause it’s 105 degrees Fahrenheit there, right? But when you come to Denmark, I always think, well, it’s cold. You’re offshore, there is ice. You see more I de-icing technology. Did you see any really here? Rosemary: No, not deicing technology specifically, but there is one company, uh, um, a woman I used to climb turbines with. She now works for this Swedish company that is doing ice forecasting. That’s very interesting. And we’ll have to record an [00:09:00] episode with those guys later on ’cause that, yeah. Um, that was, you know, when I was, I was working every day on icing for five years and, uh, that. It’s one of the things that would always, the technology to actually make, you know, get enough energy to get the heat, enough heat everywhere that you need. It is immense. And if you can just stop the ice building up by being smart about, uh, yeah. Like if you know that you’re about to ice up a bunch, just stop the turbine for an hour or two while those conditions are there and then start up again. You’ll see if you have a world of travel and it’s a much easier problem, I think to see. And solve the problem of actually removing it once it’s there. So I’d be very interested to find out more about how they’re doing that Allen Hall: and sticking to that technology bent for a second. Very little in ai. Rosemary: Yeah. Allen Hall: Isn’t that strange? Rosemary: Yeah, that’s true. That didn’t occur to me ’cause, but. Uh, I mean, I hear a little bit about AI in terms of we need more power in order to, you know, [00:10:00] build more data centers and stuff like that. So I think people are aware of it for that reason. Um, yeah, I haven’t seen, I haven’t seen too much. I mean, it’s probably there beneath the surface and a lot of technologies, but you don’t hear it pushed as a selling point as much here as. It seems like, yeah, I don’t know. Elsewhere, everyone wants to attach all the time, the name AI to anything they’re doing. Allen Hall: Right. Do ai, you see that quite a bit? Yeah. More recently. And then the, the, the spending by the, the companies and where they’re putting the resources and marketing has changed, I think, quite a bit over the last several months. And obviously some of the more recent economic activities have made decisions for a lot of people, but. Companies that have cash, I would assume have cash or are big enough to, to have decent sized displays and booze at, um, yeah. When Europe don’t, don’t have them, which is, I thought was a little strange because some of the bigger [00:11:00] players that I would assume would have at least have a booth. Do not have boost. Like they decided just to walk the floor. And we, we did the same thing actually this year, is that, uh, we didn’t see a lot of sales happening. Europe’s really focused on offshore’s, a lot of development happening. It’s not as much focused on the o and m side at these shows. It’s on the deployment side. So they decided to hold their cash, which is unusual because you would like to see a little bit of everything. I would, Rosemary: yeah. I mean, I’ve seen some big ones and like I said, I haven’t been to a lot of these really big ones before. Chuck Dway in Australia, and um, they haven’t been over so much, but I’ve been, I’ve been to a few that seemed big to me. Like Vestas had a two story. Thing there. I went and talked to an old colleague of mine from LM days, so he’s working on some cool things and we yeah, discussed the state of, uh, you are like, what? Like most of our old colleagues I mentioned that I had been to the LM when Power Booth and knocked around. I didn’t see a single [00:12:00] person that I, I knew, which made me really sad because I worked there for nearly five years and um, yeah, there are, apparently there are a few people, I’ve seen quite a few LM XLM people, um, in different. Companies. So it’s nice to see a lot of people still working in the industry. Um, but yeah, it’s, uh, there’s not as much engineering happening in Denmark anymore as there used to be. Yes. For the wind industry. Like it’s really Allen Hall: noticeable. Rosemary: Really? Yeah. It’s really noticeable. Small, not every company, but so like, it felt like Vest still had a lot of cool engineering happening. They do in Denmark, but are they next? You know, like it makes me a little bit, are they the next to just like, you know, close every facility and fire 90% of the engineers? I mean, I don’t, I don’t understand how it’s possible that when you’re in your biggest quality warranty. Period. Like how do you expect to get through that and get out the other side if you fire the engineers that know why decisions were made And you know, like every time that you try to come up with a new [00:13:00] solution, if you don’t have the knowledge of what you tried before, you have to repeat a lot of mistakes. And it’s, um, it’s very hard to document that in a way that the next generation will be able to. To, yes. Uh, maybe it’s a job for AI because, I mean, you do have to write a report. Um, usually in a big company, if you’ve got a project that failed, um, or even one that’s succeeded, you write lessons learned. Maybe they’re feeding that into AI and that’s why they don’t need to keep any, any institutional knowledge anymore because it’s just all a robot. And Allen Hall: I don’t think that’s it. But, um, I, I do think that’s something that’s happened in over the last six months that I’ve noticed that specifically. Uh, in the lightning area, but in other areas too. It’s not just lightning that there’s a lot of younger, newer, uh, engineers that are coming into wind that are trying to make a difference, and they don’t know the lessons of the generation before. Hmm. And you we’re at this odd inflection point, I think, because there’s a lot [00:14:00] of, of the people that were developing wind in the eighties and nineties that are starting to retire out now. Speaker 3: Hmm. Allen Hall: And you’re losing all that knowledge and you see some of them on the floor here and they’re icons. Right. When you Rosemary: speaking icons, I, um, I met Henrik Dale at the Australian Ambassador’s re uh, residence. I got a. Managed to score myself a last minute invite. Amazing, uh, amazing apartment overlooking the Yeah. The harbor wind turbines. In the background, you can see, you know, their, um, CHP, the power plant that, uh, has a ski hill and rock rock climbing wall on it. All laid out there and I, yeah. Uh, ’cause I, I don’t think there were many engineers at that event, so I, as soon as I realized he was there, I, you know, basically ran over to try and, uh, chat with him, assuming that, Speaker 3: did anybody else know Rosemary: everybody would wanna talk to him, but, um, yeah, I mean, people knew who he was. Sure he was there because he was interviewed in the Australian producer. Film on offshore wind energy around the world. [00:15:00] Nice. So, I mean, it, it’s not like he was unknown, but I, um, was able to chat with him for a while and it was interesting to talk about, you know, how things were when he was working on, you know, just normal wind turbines. He’s still working on some related things. Sure. Um, and even to, yeah, like update on some of the today’s problems. Uh, you know, we had a discussion about lightning protection and is, uh, was, you know, surprised to hear how bad the situation has gotten because it’s really weird to think, you know, like by the time, so I think he said 15 years ago, he was still working at, um, Siemens Za, right? And, uh, it’s like, yeah, but there weren’t problems with lightning. Like how have you gone backwards? I was like, well, it’s not. It’s not that it’s gone backwards, it’s that the blade technology’s progressed and what used to work perfectly adequately. Allen Hall: Yeah. Rosemary: No longer does. And so, yeah, it is interesting like from that perspective to think of things that are worse now than they were 10, 20 years ago. But I would say, you know mean there are quite a few lightning leading, edge erosion. Yes. Um, yeah. [00:16:00] Even, uh, you know, like some structural during composite composite, um, yeah, the composite structures, it’s just a lot harder when they’re. Big and really thick and you know, like I said, the game’s totally changed. And so I guess it’s a good reminder that technology or quality, everything doesn’t always go in one direction, right? No. You know, there’s lots of things happening at once and you can, you can go backwards. Allen Hall: Yeah. And I, I do see a lot of young people here, which is great because I think it’s, it’s. The perfect level of exposure to understand what the industry looks like. I know a lot of companies don’t send their engineers to some of these events, and I, I think they’re missing out on one of the quickest learning cycles you can get is to see what others are doing. Go to go see what Vest is up to, to see what Nordex is doing, to see what Intercon is up. To, to go see what GE Renova is proposing at the moment and then to look at all the sub-tier suppliers that go that feed those and what they’re working on and where are they going and what’s so that. [00:17:00] That I think is a missed opportunity by a lot of of companies because I do think there’s a lot of problems at the minute. And the emphasis in this show is quality, quality, quality. Let’s get the quality better, quicker, faster. Let’s stop building as rapidly. This is keep the rotor diameters roughly the same. And Vest has had some big scores recently on 15 megawatt turbines, which is great. That’s where we need to be. Do you think that, oh, that this trend continues, that we Well, where do you see the industry going? You, you, you’ve. Come from Australia, you’re sort of independent of the European scene and you’ve walked into it. Where do you think the European wind industry is at the moment? Yeah, Rosemary: I mean, it’s gotta be offshore. I mean, there’s, yeah, Europe is crowded. That’s the main thing that you, uh, I mean, definitely as an Australian you see that when you move to Europe. Like I spent every weekend trying to find a place where there weren’t a lot of other people. And it, it’s hard. Um, and you know from the US as well, you’ve got a lot of wide open space in, in the us Yeah. So. That’s the big difference in Europe is, um, even though people are very happy, for the most [00:18:00] part to live quite close to wind turbines, you can’t put them absolutely everywhere. You don’t want them in your literal backyard. Like it’s fine to see it, but you know, it doesn’t mean you want to, you know, live, live inside a wind turbine. Um, and offshore. Offshore is the only way to go. Um, I do say. Progress on floating, but I think people are, yeah, Allen Hall: not much on floating. Rosemary: Yeah. The, uh, a lot of conversations I’ve had about floating, people are just saying it’s just moving a bit slower than we expected. I mean, I always expected it to move slowly, so I don’t feel that particularly surprised about it, but I still feel quite hopeful about floating offshore wind that. That there are niches. You know, like if you look at a country like Japan for example, it’s like they’re not choosing between having, you know, just half of the electricity made from solar power and then factories at night, and that’s all fine. They’re choosing between. Importing, continuing to import fossil fuels for, you know, today’s level. And then if they do stick to their net zero [00:19:00] commitments, then they’re talking about importing ammonia or importing liquid hydrogen. So you’re comparing floating offshore wind to. Other really crazy, expensive, immature technologies. So I think it’s a lot more likely there. I think that there are some really big niches in SHO floating offshore wind where it can get a foothold and eventually the long term potential is there to use less steel than a fixed bottom. So. I still think that, you know, like thinking a decade, two decades ahead, that there’s a strong chance that it floating our shop. Do Allen Hall: you just think, right, you think right now that floating is still seemed as risky? You think it’s an investment side issue or a technology issue? Rosemary: Um, uh, I think it’s a way to go in technology, but yeah, it’s expensive. That’s, I think the main problem now is, is that it’s expensive. I think Europe has been pretty happy in the. Past to pay more for expensive things, or at least plan to pay more, you know, look at their extensive [00:20:00] hydrogen plans. They’re not phased by the just immense costs that that would, that, that would have. Um, I think now, and partly because of, you know, the shake up that America has caused, I think people are starting to feel a little bit less willing to spend more. And I think that we’re gonna see. The technologies that are gonna move fast are the ones that are already saving people money. And so that means, you know, a lot of, a lot of wind energy. Um, also solar and batteries and electric cars, they should all, you know, continue because they’re kind of at that level where it’s starting to, you know, make more and more sense on its own. And floating offshore I think is just going to take a little bit longer. I don’t think you’re gonna see a whole lot of projects in Europe where they don’t. Need it. Need it, you know, I think it’s gonna be up to the places where they don’t have other choices to do it. First. I, if I, if I owned a floating or sher wind company, that’s what I would be expecting my first markets to be. Allen Hall: Okay. That’s fair. I wouldn’t, Rosemary: wouldn’t be looking for, you know, a million dollar grant from the eu. [00:21:00] I, I’m not sure that there’s gonna be, be those in a few years because, uh, you know, they’ve got other things to spend their money on. Allen Hall: Now let’s just talk about the conference for a little bit and what you thought of the conference and. How it was run and the, you know, when Europe typically, in my opinion, is one of the better run, more organized conferences that I will attend. Mm-hmm. Uh, I, I always think they really try to take care of the people that are attending it from, I’m gonna think about food first. I don’t know why I say that, but. Rosemary: I was just gonna say lunch is, lunch is good. Allen Hall: Lunch is great. Good. Yeah. It’s insanely nice. Uh, your real China with metal. Silverware. And, Rosemary: and salads. Salads, yes. Yeah. You can eat some vegetables. That’s what I hate when I travel. Some, some places you travel to. It’s impossible to eat a vegetable. And you need to eat vegetables to feel good. You know, you can Allen Hall: have a lot of vegetables. You can when you’re up. Yeah. Every year. Yes. Uh, and the desserts are quite lovely. Yeah. They have tried to have a, a little bit of a more European [00:22:00] flare to the, to the meals are not all con completely danish, I think. Do you think Rosemary: they had mini smurf roll yesterday? So I was happy about that. ’cause I, that’s one of the things I, I miss, I would’ve preferred more Danish, but that’s because. You know, I lived here and there’s certain things that I miss and I’m only in town for four days, so it is like hard to work the way through. I’ve ticked off most of them had, uh, yeah, a couple of the key Danish pastries. Um, yeah, the al I had some Danish potatoes. Not enough. Yeah. Look, love Danish potatoes. Yeah. So, Allen Hall: but even get, getting down to the app and the ability to, to have a map, like a paper map at times where it’s just sometimes you must have paper to figure this out. Yeah, that super helpful. We’ll Rosemary: give you direction somewhere. You just tell like, I’m standing at the envision stall and I need to get to whatever particular coffee zone that someone has said to me. You are, and I’m all turned around ’cause in the wrong hemisphere. And my sense of direction, just it’s, it’s not that I get it back to [00:23:00] front, it just disappears. I’m just like, I don’t, don’t even ask me like which direction I walked in from. Like, I don’t remember anymore. It’s so bad. So, yeah, I appreciate that. The app is pretty good. Allen Hall: Yeah. Which makes it more enjoyable. And they have, going back to the food again, the little snack carts and uh, food trucks and, uh, little but you have to pay Rosemary: for though, right? Some Allen Hall: of the food trucks. But they, I, they evidently had an ice cream. Rosemary: Yeah, I did free ice cream yesterday. It was really good. Actually. It was strawberry and it was like, I love strawberry. It was excellent. Yeah. Oh, Allen Hall: okay. Rosemary: Yeah. You missed out. Um, one criticism, tea bag selection. Just a bunch of down Allen Hall: this year. Rosemary: Yeah. There’s only like different kinds of black tea. You need some, like tea you need or you know, like some sort of relaxer. ’cause it’s just so like, you’re so just on, you can’t just drink coffee all day or you just get too, too wound up, you know? Allen Hall: I don’t know if you watch the Danish Rosemary: decaf drink coffee without decaf, something, without caffeine in it to relax in between [00:24:00] meetings. And Allen Hall: as an American, I always think it’s interesting when you go to a show in Europe and they have those $30,000, uh, grinder. Coffee makers everywhere. Speaker 3: Like Allen Hall: in America, you would get a pot full of liquid coffee that’s been brewing since yesterday. But here you have the little touchscreen and it grinds it and it makes a fresh cup right in front of you. Rosemary: Here I’m gonna display our cultural differences because I would’ve definitely put the coffee as a negative in that place. I mean, I’m not, I know I’m not in Australia and I can’t expect it, but yeah, there’s one, there’s a good cafe near where I’m staying, so I’ve had my coffee there every day. Yeah. And then I, um, stick to tea for the rest of the day because it’s. Uh, the coffee is, it’s terrible. I’ve always hated Danish coffee. They’re like famous, famous. They’re famous for a good copy and I, I, Allen Hall: oh, I quite enjoy it. I don’t Rosemary: like it. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Everyone knows Australians are coffee snobs. Deny it. This is true. Absolutely. Well, Allen Hall: the coffee in Australia is amazing. Yeah. I, I can’t deny that, but I don’t think Europe’s that. Far off. Rosemary: Yeah, I do. [00:25:00] Yeah. Allen Hall: America definitely is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we did, we did happen to stop into Starbucks and because everything else was closed, then we had a Starbucks and Yeah. It tastes like burnt coffee. Yeah. But that’s what they offer. So that’s what you do. Rosemary: Yeah. That it’s not a big complaint. I, yeah. Uh, what about the, um, actual. Conference. Have you been to any sessions? I have not Allen Hall: seen any technical sessions. I never do. Rosemary: Did you go to any, any sessions, commercial ones or? Allen Hall: No, I never go. Rosemary: Yeah. Allen Hall: And I feel like there’s just other things I need to be doing while I’m here and I don’t get to Europe all that often. But when I do get here, I want to meet the people that I know that I only see in Zoom for 11 months out of the year when when I get to see them in person. All the other stuff goes by the wayside. Mm-hmm. Uh, it’s just nice to meet everybody. Rosemary: Yeah. I mean, that’s what I’ve done most of as well. Um, but in my ideal scenario, I would’ve been going to much more sessions. [00:26:00] Like I didn’t, looking at the program, I wasn’t like really excited about. A lot of it. There were, there were, there was enough. Um, but I’ve been to one, one session on innovation and I didn’t get all the way through, but there was, um, a presentation on leading edge erosion. Allen Hall: Was it good? Rosemary: Uh, they described the problem very well, but I was lucky in solutions and Okay. Yeah, I mean, I always want to, it’s been Europe, so it’s European focus, obviously, but I always want to be like, well, you know, how does this apply to Australia? I would really love to, actually, I’ll probably follow up with it ’cause I, um, okay. The presenter, because I would like to add an Australian perspective to that sort of conversation. Allen Hall: I always think at conferences, if you’re not presenting solutions and you’re not presenting the right information. Rosemary: Yeah, I don’t know. My background is, you know, like I did a PhD, so I went to lots of Yeah, Allen Hall: sure. Rosemary: Academic conferences. So, uh, I’m kind of quite used to people talking a lot about problems, um, and not necessarily having a, a solution. But there [00:27:00] was some other ones, uh, there was one on, um, lightning, um. Like testing of lightning protection. Uh, yeah, sure. Which again, like they were really describing the problem, but it’s a problem that I have talked about before, but I hadn’t seen anybody else kind of recognize it’s a problem, has to do with the, you know, fatigue of the, of the LPS systems. Um. And then what else? Were there concrete towers? Um, oh, I didn’t, yeah, Allen Hall: probably should attended that one. Alright. Yeah, Rosemary: I mean it wasn’t like, there wasn’t a lot of like real meaty stuff in there, but it was enough to get you thinking and I mean, it was definitely a worthwhile session. I feel like there was one more session that I. Can’t recall now, but, um, yeah. But that’s Allen Hall: us. I, I know European conferences tend to be more technically focused than America. America, when you, you hear Europeans come over, it’s all about the sale that everybody’s trying to sell you everything. Yeah. Which is true. You can’t deny it. Yeah. But it didn’t Rosemary: feel like a sales pitch. Yeah. Though, [00:28:00] I mean, I’m sure that’s why they are. Fair. But one thing that I did notice, like a thread through those, um, couple of presentations that I saw was people are starting to think of like combinations of, of, uh, of effects. So, you know, with leading edge erosion, instead of just talking about, um, you know, like tip speed, it’s like okay, but also dust is an issue and also. So UV is an issue and also temperature is an issue and we need to look at the combinations. Drop size of those things. Yeah. Droplet size. Um, I still think we’re a long way away from testing and simulation, being able to actually have real world applications, but at least people are asking the right questions now. Um, and then the same with Lightning, you know, it was like, um. You know, fatigue. Yeah. The, the mechanical properties, uh, mechanical behavior of it and how over time that might change the effectiveness of the lining protection system. Sure. And, you know, yeah. There was a question asked about, uh, in the testing that they did, did they. Um, was the [00:29:00] amount of fatigue cycles, was that the same as what’s required under certification? Um, ’cause they showed some, some failure. You know, you do, um, fatigue testing and then, you know, you get tiny, tiny cracks in there, micro cracking, and then you do your electrical test and, you know, um, it got really hot. Allen Hall: Yeah. Rosemary: Um, and so someone was asking, you know, is this beyond the lifetime that it has to be certified for? And it’s like. No, they don’t. They don’t, they don’t do that. They don’t do that at all. You test a, you test a blade in fatigue to make sure that the blade structure is sufficient, not the tip, because that’s not relevant to fatigue behavior of a blade in terms of the structure. Um, and then they test a brand new blade, not the one that was fatigue tested. They test a brand new blade for lightning. So it is just something that isn’t. Isn’t tested. And I’ve definitely heard people in the industry say, you don’t need to. And I’m like, it’s such a high strain environment, you know, the very tip of a wind turbine blade. The strain there is incredible, incredible metals, you know, are subject to, um, fatigue failures. So it makes a lot of sense to me. And so it’s [00:30:00] good to see. Now that was, that was a presentation by Polytech, by the way. So it’s good to see the right questions being asked. Sure. Solutions not presented yet, but you know, right. Yeah. Asking the right question is a right question. A, a good step. Allen Hall: That’s true. Uh, also our announcement this week, uh, that we’ve reached 1 million subscribers on YouTube for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Now we were looking for some alcohol and we really couldn’t find it, so we’ll have to, we’ll Rosemary: have to do a toast later on. I can’t even believe it like it is actually. People are, people are watching, people are subscribing and yeah, Allen Hall: well when is the future? Well, it’s also the now, but it will be even more in the future. The energy of choice, Rosemary Barnes: I think. Um, ’cause you know, for a long time I was too busy to watch many episodes and especially ’cause I already heard. You heard it and you were there as I was reporting it, so I didn’t, you know, listen to as much back, but I have a lot recently, there’s a lot more episodes without me in it. And, um, as I’m, I’m working a lot more in operations, uh, and maintenance now than I was in the past. And so a lot of times I need to find out about a new topic and I will. Level search the back catalog. And, um, there’s always something, I mean, if you’re looking at a specific company, they’ve probably been interviewed. But more than that, like on a topic, you’ll see several [00:01:00] different people, um, different companies, different perspectives, and you can learn a lot. Very easy. We should organize, by the way, we should get the YouTube channel organized into playlist to make that Allen Hall: We are working on that now. Yeah. Right? Yes. Right. Yes. Rosemary Barnes: Claire’s probably doing it. She is. Yeah. Yes. Allen Hall: But you can also use ai. Yeah. Just to search our database and find the episode you’re looking for. Yeah. Which, what a lot of people do. Yeah. Rosemary Barnes: That then that’s what I, that’s what I’ve been doing. But, um, so I can definitely see the, see the value now that I’m using it myself, as well as being, you know, a part of it, but also using it as a resource. And I can see why it’s so, so popular, because it’s all, it’s all there. Allen Hall: It’s the fastest tool to get to an answer or really close to an answer, or maybe to know who to reach out to. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and also to just know the, you know, when you’re new to a topic and you don’t really know the right words to use in your, make the Allen Hall: phraseology language. Yeah. Get hesitant to Rosemary Barnes: even talk to, you know, your, your. Your boss or the other guy at the office because you’re a bit embarrassed, it’s a really good way to get up to speed and quickly, you know, [00:02:00] like you know all the obvious things and Yeah, like quickly, you’re not gonna feel embarrassed that you’ll know. If your question is, if it’s obvious, it’s probably been answered on the podcast, and if it hasn’t been, then you probably know that, okay, this is a. A legitimate question, and I don’t need to feel embarrassed to ask. Not that you should ever feel embarrassed to ask questions. No. Allen Hall: We get questions. We get questions all the time where people, uh, asking to have certain guests on because they’re trying to get to that answer, and they just don’t always connect. And a lot of the technology is in Europe or in Australia or in Asia. And it, it’s hard to reach out to those people. Uh, but we can usually get inside the doorway. Uh, so congratulations, Rosemary also to Phil and to Joel. Yeah. Nice job. And to producer Claire. Rosemary Barnes: It’s all, it’s all because of Claire, Allen Hall: evidently. Yes. That’s the Rosemary Barnes: real MVP, Allen Hall: that’s what everybody’s told me today. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Allen Hall: So, oh, that’s quite nice. Rosemary Barnes: You raised her, so, oh, did I? You know, you can take the ultimate credit. Allen Hall: She’ll deny that, but [00:03:00] yeah, I. Really have enjoyed spending, uh, the last couple of days with you at the conference. It’s been a lot of fun and, and good to see Nicholas Godder, Matthew Stid. I don’t wanna leave out a bunch of people, but, uh, it’s just nice to see everybody and connect up once again. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, Allen Hall: so it’s been a fun time and we’ll have to do it. Um, which the next time we’re gonna be together. Rosemary Barnes: Maybe Houston. Maybe Allen Hall: Houston in October. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that’s right. Allen Hall: Okay. Yeah, so stay tuned for that. That’s gonna be more information released shortly. Uh, but yeah, you may see us all together in October, which will be nice. Yeah, so job well done. Well thanks Rosemary. Thanks for spending the week with us and uh, Rosemary Barnes: thank you. Allen Hall: Safe travels. Thank Rosemary Barnes: you everybody for subscribing to the YouTube channel and making us, uh, yell legitimate. Legitimate YouTube. We’ve got press passes for the We did conference, so Yeah, that’s, you know, like we’ve made it, Allen Hall: we’ll let anybody in. Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Well, we peeked into the, uh, press room, which we are entitled access to, but there’s lots of like serious, proper journalists are tapping away on, on computers and they’re on TikTok. Don’t [00:04:00] worry about it. Allen Hall: Not for us.

In this episode, Allen discusses Nordex’s successful Q1 2025 turbine orders, Ørsted’s innovative suction bucket jacket foundations in Taiwan, and Europe’s proposed offshore wind deal aiming for 100 gigawatts by 2040. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Welcome to Uptime Newsflash, industry News Lightning fast. Newsflash is brought to you by IntelStor. For Market in intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com. Leading off the week German wind turbine manufacturer, Nordex secured orders for 2100 megawatts of turbines in the first quarter of 2025. A 5% increase from the same period last year. The company received contracts to deliver 337 wind turbines for projects across 10 countries with Turkey, Germany, Finland, Latvia, and Brazil being the largest markets. The average sales price increased slightly to 870,000 euros per megawatt from 850,000 euros per megawatt a year earlier. CEO Jose Louise Blanco expects this positive momentum to continue throughout 2025. Nordex has installed approximately 57 gigawatts of wind [00:01:00] power capacity in over 40 markets globally, and operates factories in Germany, Spain, Brazil, India, USA, and Mexico. The first suction bucket jacket foundation has been installed at Ørsted’s Greater Changhua 2B and 4 Offshore Wind Farm Site in Taiwan. The 920 megawatt project will comprise 66 Siemens Gamesa 14-236DD wind turbines all mounted on suction bucket jackets foundations. This marks the first large scale use of this foundation type in the Asia Pacific region. According to Ørsted, the suction bucket jacket design minimizes seabed disturbances, generates almost no noise during installation, and can be fully removed at the end of the wind farm’s life. The foundations are being installed by Heerema Marine Contractors, heavy lift vessel Aegir and supplied by HSG Sungdong in South Korea and Petrovietnam Technical Services Corporation in [00:02:00] Vietnam. Europe’s wind industry has proposed a new offshore wind deal calling on European governments to auction at least 100 gigawatts of new offshore wind capacity between 2031 and 2040. The proposal announced at Wind Europe’s annual event in Copenhagen. Recommends using two-sided contracts for difference to provide revenue, stability, and reduce investment risk. The plan calls for more coordinated offshore wind development among European countries with capacity evenly distributed over time at approximately 10 gigawatts annually. In return, the industry commits to reducing offshore wind costs by 30% by 2040. Major developers and suppliers, including Ørsted, RWE, Vattenfall Iberdrola, Vestas, and Siemens Gamesa have signed the proposal pledging to invest in projects, manufacturing capacity and workforce development.

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum speak with Tyler Gifford, Director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik, about the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act on wind turbine repowering. They explore the 80/20 rule, overcoming challenges, and optimizing older wind assets to improve reliability and efficiency. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! 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! Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co-host Joel Saxum. Today we’re diving deep into one of the most significant developments in wind energy, the Inflation Reduction Act, and its impact on wind turbine repowering. Joining us is Tyler Gifford, director of Repower at Deutsche Windtechnik. Tyler leads Repowering initiatives across nine wind energy facilities in five states, managing over one gigawatts. Of clean energy capacity. His hands-on experience with multiple turbine platforms and deep understanding of wind farm operations makes Tyler the perfect guest to discuss the complexities of wind turbine repowering under the IRA. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Tyler, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Guys, there’s a bunch of questions that we want to ask you about the IRA bill and how Repowering is happening, but as we talk across the United States, there seems to be a lot of challenges there. What are some of those challenges that wind farms that are getting close to Repowering are facing? As they start to make some of these decisions? Tyler Gifford: Good question, Allen. I mean, typically with Repowering, a lot of people think of, I’m gonna tear the tower down and I’m gonna start fresh and I’m gonna put a whole new one up. So what we think about is there’s another approach to this, the 80 20 and the IRA has really introduced a new opportunity in the industry to where we can take older assets that are, have been operating reliably for years. And you, you can evaluate, understand your fair market value, and there’s an opportunity to where that fair market value is so low to where you can go out and you can understand what, what is a value add upgrade for this, this asset. Does it ha doesn’t necessarily have to be a whole drive, train or take off the hole in the cell and put a hole in the cell on it. It could be that your fair market value is so low that you wanna evaluate. Typically owners wanna evaluate two things they want. Hire a EP, they want to increase a EP or they want to improve reliability. Those are the two big things that owners want. So with, for, so for Deutsche Wind Technic, that’s what we do. We meet with those owners and we understand, okay, you may have an asset that’s 2015 or 15 to 20 years old but there’s a way that, that you can take advantage of these PTCs, just like the bigger operating assets out there. So we’ll evaluate, look at, what, what are your pain points? What’s causing you to lose reliability, lose availability. What’s causing turbine or what’s causing technicians to have to go out there and climb? What are your pain points? And then we start to target those pain points by finding upgrades that will go after those, those things that are causing causing. Those, those reliability concerns. So that could be things, it could be drivetrain it could be, it could be that you need to focus on your blades. But it could also be smaller things, things that get overlooked. It could be condition monitoring systems that some of these older assets just don’t have. It could be different things like sensors and controller systems and, and things that day to day are causing. Towers to come offline and causing owners pain and causing owners money, and we can qualify them for these PTCs without possibly the cr, the large crane costs, without possibly having to pull big expensive permits and things like that. Joel Saxum: Yeah. So what we’re. What we’re diving into here is just a different way of looking at repowering. So classically, everybody thinks repower, I gotta take a whole new, to sell a whole new everything. Because what they’re looking to do is basically requalify for PTC. This is the joke that Phil always says, we’re PTC farming, not wind farming at some points in time. But it doesn’t have to be that difficult. It doesn’t have to be that capital intensive is what you’re saying by the IRA rules that 80 20 rule. So it, I wanna clarify the 80 20 rule that’s, you’ve got to put. 80 is 80% of the value of the asset back into it. Exactly. Joel? Yep. Okay. And and it’s, and, and it’s based on the individual asset, correct? Tyler Gifford: Individual asset, yeah. The, the IRS sees it as a facility, so it’s turbine by turbine. The IRS defines a turbine as a facility. Okay. So. Joel Saxum: Because some wind farms, I mean, we know one wind farm. We were talking to someone the other day, they had like four different types of turbines on it. It’s like, how do you value all these? So, so that’s the next, I guess, part of it, or a big part of it when Allen says, what are the challenges people take if you’re gonna go down this route of a. Upgrade, refurbish type repower. How do you, how do you get the value of these things? Is it, is it consultants? Do you guys do it at DWT yourself? How does the operator do it? Like what does that look like? Typically, what you Tyler Gifford: gotta find out is, okay, I got this 15 to 20-year-old asset. Can it run another 15 to 20 years? So that’s gonna be through a number of channels. And at DWT Yeah, we’ll partner with you from the beginning stage of understanding what’s my fair market value. We don’t do that in-house, but we have many people that we work with. So you gotta understand what’s your fair market value. Then you gotta understand what’s my integrity of my asset? What is can, can the, can the machine base, can the foundation, can these tubes handle another 15 to 20 years of extended life that we’re planning on providing you? Once you understand that, and you can go through a number of independent engineers, engineering firms that can help you determine that, but then we come in and really help you put together what we call an optimized 80 20 repower package. We’re not gonna hand you a package and say, here’s a drivetrain package in a couple upgrades. Take it or leave it. No. A a a Siemens two three repower to another Siemens two three Repower may look completely different. ’cause what we wanna do is we wanna look at, well, what’s historically, what, what does the fault data tell you? Where, where are your pain points? It’s possible that you could have done retrofits or site-wide sweeps or made upgrades through the years that you don’t have weaknesses that other owners do. It’s possible that you could have replaced drive, train components. You could have done a, a generator bearing sweep and taken away that weakness. So we don’t want to come in and tell you to replace all your generators when you’ve already made those upgrades. We wanna make sure that your, your return on investment Allen Hall: is as high as possible. So the, the goal is from a turbine by turbine by turbine approach is to take that turbine, make it better, let it live another 10 to 20 years. And still meet this 80 20 rule. That makes a lot of sense because the issue I think a lot of operators are having at the moment, if they want to put a new turbine in, there’s not a lot of new turbines you can buy right now that that assembly line is pretty well booked out. And if you want to get the production tax credits rolling sooner rather than later, and the, and you like the turbines, you have your technicians understand the turbines you have. The 80 20 rule allows you to keep that same turbine, but just make it better. How does, how do you do that then, as Deutsche Windtechnik? Obviously you’re bringing a lot of knowledge to the table about a lot of different turbines because Deutsche Windtechnik is huge and you work with a lot of different turbines. Do you have a, like an engineering group internal that comes in and says, yes, this GE 1.5. Generally has these problems. These are things that we can focus on specifically because we have the knowledge of the turbines a hundred percent. Tyler Gifford: So the biggest thing where we flip the script is transparency. So with any owner, they wanna operate their asset. They want to op, they wanna optimize it, they wanna run things the way, the way they wanna run it. So the biggest thing for us is we want that too. We wanna support you. If you have issues, we wanna partner alongside of you. We have US-based engineers right here in the us. That are based in Houston, Texas. And then we also have an extensive engineering support team over in Europe, over in Germany where we have, you know, we have our mechanical engineers, our electrical engineers, our blade engineers. We have specific GE engineers, specific Siemens engineers. Whatever you need, we have the engineering support that, that can help you optimize your assets. So when we think about that, when building a repower package, we think about. How do, how do we improve the way that you’re currently operating? Maybe it’s that for the longest time you’ve had things that you wanted to adjust or wanted to change, maybe with your current controller system that you just haven’t been able to do that. So then let’s target that with a new, you know, third party, a controller system. And then it’s not that we’re gonna, we’re gonna hold back and, and try to keep you from changing parameters or adjusting things the way you want. We’re gonna partner with you to say, Hey, if you have an issue or you have an inquiry, or you have something that you wanna make better. Let’s do it. Let’s partner together. Joel Saxum: So controller systems is a big one. I know. I’ve heard that personally from people doing Repowers. It’s like, well, we have this, you know, X, Y, ZOEM controller, and we’re kind of locked outta this and we can’t get this and we can’t get that SCADA data. So that’s a great example of something. You do an upgrade, but now all of a sudden you have more control. You have the ability to. Do things that you haven’t had before or data that you want to grab before. So what would you say is your most common, I guess, upgrades, and I know this is a broad question because we’re talking diff ge, Vestas, Siemens, like they’re all kind of, there’s a lot of things out there, a lot of different brands, turbine types. But what would you say is the most common thing that you guys, that people say, I wanna upgrade this right away. It, it Tyler Gifford: really depends on the technology and that fair market value of that asset. And MHI 1000, that fair market value is gonna differ pretty drastically from a Siemens two, three. But we take the same evaluation approach. We wanna look at where your pain points how can we give you the most value for a an 80 20 repower package. But I would say, Joel, you’re, you’re correct for a EP. Improving a EP, you’re gonna be, it’s gonna be on your controller, it’s also gonna be in your blades. Anything we can do where we can uplift your power output. So vortex generators, a lot of customers want leading edge protection. And then on the mechanical side, a hundred percent is drive, train components. We’re never gonna steer someone away from reducing their CapEx on the backend. If they can do that, it’s all about reducing CapEx and reducing opex. How do we if, if, if DWT is a partner on the backend, on a long-term service agreement, we want to partner with you on the o and m side. If we want to stand behind a product that we know is gonna run reliable, and we’re gonna put an availability guarantee behind it, and we gotta deliver on the front end. During the construction period when we’re putting upgrades and installing, installing these components in your turbines to make sure that we’re really setting you up for success. Joel Saxum: I think that’s a really important thing to touch on here is Deutsche Windtechnik As a company, I mean, if you’re in wind, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. You’ve heard of Deutsche Windtechnik, so what, but what you guys are offering as well is, Hey, we’ll come and do your repower. On the back end of it, we’ll also run the wind farm for you and give you, and, and you’re even going to the point of giving availability guarantees is, is that what I heard? Yep, that’s right. And then Tyler Gifford: it’s the tricky piece with some, with this 80 20 and the IRA is that you have to have a. 15% of your total labor hours for your construction period ought to be performed by qualified apprentices. So that’s the next piece. So that’s, that’s something new, that’s something that’s new that’s been introduced to the WIN industry. So DWT actually has our own internal apprentice program so we can meet that labor requirement. And that’s really a key piece. ’cause without that piece. Owners aren’t gonna be doing 80 20 repowers. So that’s a really important aspect of these 80 20 repowers is being able to meet those labor requirements, not only for prevailing wage at the local rate of the construction project, but also the apprentice labor hour percentage requirements. Allen Hall: Well, how soon should I bring Deutsche Windtechnik in? Before my site gets repowered, just, just trying to understand what the logistics are here, because one of the, the things I hear about most frequently in terms of repowering, particularly if they’re just doing work up to hour, is what about the concrete? What about the tower? How do I know that? Those two pieces, which are the critical pieces of holding everything together. How do I know that those two pieces are okay to live another 20 years do. There must be a little bit of engineering that goes on ahead of time and maybe just some monitoring that goes on ahead of time to know like, okay, we understand what the real issues are with this farm. We’ve monitored it, we, and we think these turbines you can just leave alone and. Upgrade while this turbine over here. Maybe we gotta rip the foundation out and maybe you don’t wanna repower that one. I mean, we’re a partner that Tyler Gifford: will partner with you throughout the full process. Whether it’s, whether it’s, you need someone that will help you evaluate the fair market value, I. If we don’t do it in-house, we’re not gonna tell you that we can do it, but we can steer you in the right direction for the right industry experts that can help you navigate along those steps. But we’ll be your partner shoulder to shoulder up. Okay? Let’s determine your fair market value. Okay? You have your fair market value. Now we need to determine structural integrity. You have your structural integrity. Now let’s start evaluating salt data. Our engineers will be telling you, this is the data I need, these are the reports that I need. And when they start going through that, it’s a back and forth collaborative conversation to understand what makes sense on a 80 20 repower. It’s not this, here’s our quote, here’s our bid. Take it or leave it. That’s not how it works. That’s how it works with us. Allen Hall: Tyler, what, what does that timeframe look like when you They say, okay, Deutsche Windtechnik, Hey, I’m putting my trust in. You go. How much time do you need to overlook a site before you really understand how it works and what you can do to it? You’d be surprised at how quick we can Tyler Gifford: turn some of these evaluations, but I, I would say it can be as quick as a, as a few weeks and as long as a few months. That’s quick. That’s a lot faster than I thought I was looking, looking to hear like 18 months or something like that. Now that’s for the evaluation and understanding what does an 80 20 look like? And, and you certainly have customers that are more motivated and their legal teams are set up and ready to go. But then what we’ll do is we’ll be open and honest with you about, okay, so we’ll do the, we’ll support you with the engineering side, we’ll support you with the procurement side. We have the full supply chain folks that can help you understanding, okay, you’re telling me this is the components and these are the upgrades that I need, but can we get that? Everyone knows supply chain is constrained. And if one company’s talking about 80 20 and Repower, then a num, another company is talking about 80 20 and Repower. So we’ll be open and honest about, okay, maybe we wanna do this upgrade, but if that doesn’t work for the project timeline, then maybe this other upgrade makes, makes sense because of the procurement time. So the procurement time is a really Allen Hall: critical piece. The supply chain is a critical piece to the repowering. You do see a lot of sites where they wanna repower and they wanna put new bearings in, but there aren’t bearings available, so they’re kind of stuck navigating. That is probably the hardest. Part in the Repowering is getting the components that you want to be on the turbine, but Deutsche Wing technique has those resources to either the, you carry those parts or they know how to procure those parts. And the procurement piece is probably the most difficult part of Repowering. You wanna explain how strong that procurement piece is for Deutsche Wing technique because you have been able to do these 80 20 projects. Yeah, the big thing is global. You Tyler Gifford: gotta think global. So with 80 20 there is a piece of domestic. So there is a domestic content bonus adder for the IRA. Very, very difficult. It’s very, very difficult ’cause most of our materials and a lot of our components for these wind, these wind turbine assets. Come from overseas. So that piece is there, but you have to think global of where do these parts come from? We have a global, we have our US supply chain, and then we have our global supply chain in Germany. And that’s really the critical piece. These are, these are people that have been working in the wind industry DWT U TWT Inc. Was founded in 2004. So these are folks that have been partnering with the, the Siemens and the Vestas, and. Building those relationships with a large supplier providers for, for many, many years. And you just have to think larger scale and you have to be really unique on your strategy on, on how you’re gonna procure these parts because. Everybody needs parts to, to perform these repowers Allen Hall: Well, what kind of performance improvements can you typically deliver here? If you’re going to put Vortex generators on, you’re gonna clean up a lot of the drivetrain, clearly. Get the CMS installed, put a new controller in. What are we talking about in terms of. Numbers in terms of percentage upgrade? Tyler Gifford: Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the asset. I mean, it really depends on is it a one megawatt machine, is it a two megawatt machine? And really the, the components that you’re gonna be installing, but anywhere from, I would say a one to four to 5% uplift with the, with the upgrades. Depending on, you know, what all you install and then the reliability piece. I mean, when we’re coming on the backend, when construction phase is finished and we’re coming in with a long-term service agreement Deutsche Windtechnik really matches the OEMs. Where we’re a lot of these technologies you know, we’re high, high nineties availability guarantee. So we have to stand behind the quality and. The product that we’re putting out there. Joel Saxum: So you need products like, like strike tape from weather guard to make sure you don’t have lightning damages. That’s what you need. Tyler Gifford: Exactly, Joel. That’s exactly the product that we need. Yes. Joel Saxum: So let me ask you this question, because I’ve heard this before from a few people, like, Hey, we’re thinking about doing a repower, but. If we do a full repower, we have to renegotiate our PPA and they don’t want to do that ’cause they have a really good PPA in place. Do you have to, is that, does that come into play as well with the 80 twenties or do you get to bypass some of that? It Tyler Gifford: really depends on the site and the owner and the situation. But yeah, some of our owners are doing that. It really depends on the situation. Joel Saxum: It’s a, there’s a difference there too. ’cause you’re looking at the cost. So if you have a $200 million wind farm and you’re gonna do a full repower, the classical we repowers have been done, which to me is, is. It is hard to watch that as an engineer and as people that know what’s going on because like those assets are still fine. Why are we taking them down? Why are we replacing blades and hole in the cells and all this stuff when the thing is still running? I. Let’s do something different. Like you guys are doing the 80 20 repower, we’re gonna use the same equipment, we’re gonna keep it outta landfills, we’re gonna keep this asset running. But people are, they look at it like, oh, I don’t know about this PPA thing. However, there’s two ways in my mind, CapEx is one thing. So if you have a 200, a hundred million dollars wind farm, it’s gonna cost you probably a a hundred, $150 million to do that. You know, full on repower, where you don’t have to do all of that. Spend all of that cash. So your capital versus the money spent and money made can maybe even make up for that PPA difference. Tyler Gifford: Yep. You’re really, your risk is really much lower. Again, like I talked about, the permitting risk. I mean, you think a lot of these components that I’m talking about, it’s no different than when you’re operating the site. You know, you don’t have the large permitting, you don’t have the big crane. Sometimes we do have big crane costs, but not all the time. But you’re not introducing new technology that you just don’t understand. You spend all this money and, and all this capital training up your technicians to get them to understand these turbines and not, then you have a reliable asset and you have a reliable site that you’re operating, why not keep that going and take out the, the parts that you are upgrade, the parts that you know are causing you pain. And you really take out that that unknown, those bugs, those years of pain and suffering and it really can target some. Some value added components that really, really make a difference. Allen Hall: What is the future for 80 20 refurbishment? Is it growing like, I think that it should because I think Joel’s point is right. It is sort of painful to watch blades being dumped and recycled that are, have a lot of life lifting ’em. A lot of those older blades are tough as nails and a lot of the equipment and the, the drivetrains is really tough. Are you seeing more action and more people picking up the phone and calling Deutsche Windtechnik and calling you Tyler and saying, tell me about 80 20. Explain how this works. How do I get this done? A hundred percent. I mean, we’ve had. Tyler Gifford: Customers that are very, very well versed in 80 20 understand it very well. You know, customers that are, this is, this is a new concept to them. They weren’t thinking, they were thinking about, you know, tearing down their turbines. A few months ago, and this has been a new concept for them, but 80 20, assuming things aren’t gonna change with the new, new government change. It’s not gonna go anywhere because you think the turbines right now that are 15 to 20 years old, those are gonna be the low hanging fruit. Those are the ones that are gonna be getting repowered right now in five to 10 years from now that, that, that is gonna overturn. And the turbines that were 10 years old are now 20 years old. The turbines that are five years old are now 15 years old, so it’s gonna continue to have this. This, these turbines that are always gonna be optimal for an 80 20 repower. Allen Hall: I understand this, this is really fascinating to me. I, I believe 80 20 is the way for a lot of operators over the next couple of years are going to move forward because there’s a limited number of new turbine slots, and it isn’t like they’re designing new turbines all the time. Right now, you’re seeing fewer and fewer turbines being even offered. So your selection is very narrow of what you can install. I know a lot of operators that love their GE 1.5 or their Siemens turbines that just do not want to replace them. They need to be really considering using Deutsche Windtechnik and, and getting an understanding of what the financing piece of this is along with the engineering piece quickly because. There’s gonna be a long line, obviously at your door, Tyler, you’re gonna have a lot of people saying, Hey, help me, help me, help me. It’s better to be in the front of that line and then the back of that line, how. How do they get ahold of you? How do they connect with you? How do they start this process and learning what their assets are worth and learning what engineering things need to be done? Tyler Gifford: Yeah, I mean, reach out to reach out to us. We have a mailbox set up focused on repower, so that’s repower@deutscheuh-windtechnik.com. Get on our website, check us out. Reach out to me. You can hit me up on LinkedIn, but I mean, you’re right, there’s so many reliable assets out there. Think of the MHI 1000. Everyone that has those assets, that’s, that’s had those assets for some time that’s taken care of them. Reliable machine, they know it can run. They know it’s bulletproof. Me being a former clipper tech man, I wish 80 20 repower would’ve been an opportunity ’cause we could have saved those assets. ’cause I sure enjoyed working on them, but there’s probably a lot of people that say differently. But man, I would’ve loved to have saved more of those assets and had 80 20 repower for those. Allen Hall: That’s why I need to get a hold of Tyler and Deutsche Wind. And if you go to their website, I’m gonna spell it out because I have trouble with it. I know everybody else does too, if you’re an American, but spelling Deutsche and Win Technique or not Easy is D-E-U-T-S-C-H-E hyphen W-I-N-D-T-E-C-H-N-I k.com. You go to that website, you can get ahold of Tyler and get your 80 20. Repower situation figured out, and now’s the time to do it. Tyler, thank you so much for appearing on the podcast. I love having you on. I, I learned a tremendous amount. Appreciate Tyler Gifford: talking with you guys as long as it’s not talking about the Wisconsin Badgers with Joel. I’ll chat with you guys all day long.

Alex Fournier, Director of Composite Operations at Enertek, discusses the importance and training of SPRAT certification for wind turbine technicians. He details the certification levels, recent changes in safety standards, and the significance of proper protective gear and equipment maintenance in rope access and blade repair. 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! Allen Hall: With wind turbine scaling up and rope access becoming more critical. Technicians need proper training for safe and efficient blade repairs. This week we speak with Alex Fournier director of Composite Operations at Enertek, Alex brings insight on the spread certification process and how recent changes are enhancing safety. Efficiency for technicians working at Height. Speaker 2: Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the program. Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me once again. Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re glad to have you back. There’s been so much so many changes that has happened since the last time you were here, but today we want to talk about SPRAT training and. What this means for the industry and what the latest and greatest is in terms of sprt. And for those who don’t know what SPRT is, it’s actually an acronym like most things in Wind, it’s the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians, and they create [00:01:00] the standards around. The knowledge you’re supposed to have and the skills you’re supposed to have if you want to climb with rope access. Now. I, Alex, I wanna start off first, like how big of a problem do we have right now on the training on rope access technicians? I see a lot of variation across the United States in particular. Are you seeing the same thing, that they’re just not so much a concrete standard everybody’s using? Alex Fournier: I think in Canada, like we don’t have that many schools that offer the course, first of all. So I think we don’t have much in the east Coast. We probably have what? Three, four. In the west coast they have a little bit more. And it’s often like vendors that will offer it. So it’s a mistress, for example, offered a course. They do IDA and spread. I did my course at Novel in Montreal, which is one of the best training center I’ve seen in all my years of Rob Access. Celtic Falcon too in the East coast. Really good training center. But I [00:02:00] think since we don’t have that many, everyone is kinda like on the same page, so everyone talked to each other and the course is pretty well structured, at least in Canada. Before when I started the course was four days, and then you had one days for the exam. So it’s a lot to learn in four days, but now they changed it to five days of course, and then one extra day for the exam. So that give you much time to train and, if you don’t understand something you can. You can really take the time to really understand it. So you’re ready for the exam. Joel Saxum: Alex, let me ask you a question about SPRAT and ia, right? ’cause Sprat is the North American version. IRATA is usually the EU version or rest of the world version. They are they’re organizations that push this safety forward and there’s, this is how we should do things. And a lot of times a company will adopt it, say, X, Y, Z operator says, if you’re gonna be on ropes on my site, you must be sprat level, this level, that level, that, however. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but this is my take on it. They’re not actually like a [00:03:00] governmental association. They’re not an OSHA or something that mandates that you must have. It’s just these things are in our industry, sprat best practices. This is what people live by. This is how we do it. Okay. That’s correct. Yeah. So can you walk us through the different levels of spray? ’cause I know there’s like a 1, 2, 3. What do those all mean? Alex Fournier: Yeah. Level one basically you’re just a basic technician. You just learn how to move yourself on the ropes basically. So you’ll do basic like rope Totaro transfer, or you’re gonna pass deviation. All the basic maneuver that you need to know on ropes. You’re gonna learn it into your level one which is great. Then to be a level one you just need to be 18-year-old and you can sign up and do your level one. That’s the only requirement. Level two is after you did 600 hours on ropes and six months of experience as a level one. Then you can do your level two which you’ll learn more. It will be more like rescue scenario. So you’ll do some basic [00:04:00] maneuver combined with rescue, but yeah, so as a level two, you’re gonna learn more as taking some charge up and moving some charge up in the air. And then to be a level three, it’s kinda the same thing you do you’re level two, so then 600 hours as a level two, and then six months as a level two, and then you can go to level three. And then level three, you do every basic maneuver that I said in level one, but it’s rescue, so you’re gonna do like a climbings rescue. You’re gonna do deviation rescue, ballet rescue just rope to rope transfer with a victim on you. So it’s every maneuver with a rescue because when you’re a level tree, normally you’re in charge of the site or you’re gonna be in charge of. All the employees, not necessarily, but normally that’s all it is. So you wanna make sure that you’re able to rescue pretty much everyone in every Joel Saxum: scenario. So what is, okay, so we have level ones, level twos, level threes. What is a normal, and we’re talking blade repair here, [00:05:00] right? This is the Uptime podcast. So what is a normal blade repair, sprat rope access crew look like? Alex Fournier: So I know a lot of people will be, mad, that’s what I’m gonna say. But normally when you work, we call it when the rope access world, the wind turbine industry is the easiest rope access world. Because you’re only doing you’re only going down. You’re only going up. There’s not much to it. You’re not gonna do crazy deviation or you’re not gonna do crazy, like zip line and all that stuff. If you do oil and gas, it’s much bigger. But in rope access, in the wind industry, normally a level one and level two. It’s pretty much that a level three might be overkill sometimes. On big job you probably want to have one just ’cause you probably have more knowledge and project management. But normally just a regular team, it’s Joel Saxum: gonna be a level two and a level one. Yeah. And from my experience, basically everybody’s dropping down two, two people on the blade. You don’t go by yourself. So there’s always gonna be two [00:06:00] technicians on that blade. And that makes sense. What you’re saying is and while people may not like this of rope access, what it looks and that is a little bit easier because for the most part, you’re going up and down and. Two dimensions, right? It’s just up down on that one thing. Whereas in, I’ve been on, I’ve been offshore on oil and gas crews where you see people in three dimensions, guys going across tanks and all kinds of crazy stuff in between. Pylons, like that’s pretty, that’s some pretty advanced stuff. And when you watch those guys work, it is really impressive. Sometimes the really experienced ones, I’m sure they are level threes or whatever, how they can zip around. It’s the same thing on a wind turbine though. When you’re, if you’ve never seen that and you watch these people, Alex Fournier: it’s Joel Saxum: mind blowing. Alex Fournier: It’s really the industrial athletes, that’s how we call it normally. Joel Saxum: But it’s really impressive. The seasonality of wind makes that kind of stuff difficult because what happens is from a lot of times, okay, we’ll take North America for example, because of our blade repair season. You may be, if you’re a rope person, you may be out on ropes from April till September, [00:07:00] October, depending on how far north you are. And then you got three, four months off. So coming back around to April again, much. A little bit tough, isn’t it, when you’re coming off the couch. Alex Fournier: Yeah. And I gotta see a lot of people they take it off in the winter and I don’t blame them ’cause it’s really cold when you do ropes. But when you come back, you in that if you are of bench board in six months, you shall do a day at a training center to just put you back in your element. So yeah, you shall still practice a little bit. But yeah, coming back after two months of holidays or three months of. Vacation. It can be hard. Yeah, you’re gonna be sore. Definitely. The first you’re gonna be sore. Allen Hall: Let me ask the obvious question, because a lot of guys that do wind turbine work in the summertime do something else in, in the fall and the winter, but they want to stay on ropes. So is then the sprat carries over. So even if you’re just doing spprt work for a wind turbine, you can get over into oil and gas and do some rope work there, or. Wherever the place is. So it’s so itpr as a [00:08:00] universal training system in a sense. It’s not just wind specific. Alex Fournier: Yeah. It’s basically, it’s kinda like a driver license. And the wind turbine industry is kinda like the car. So let’s say you go to oil and gas you have your driver license, your rope access guy. But the car is, let’s say like the oil and gas industry, like myself, I started in 2015 as a ax technician. I started doing window cleaning in Montreal. So I was washing windows and then one of my friend got me into the wind industry. But definitely around the spread universe. You can do building maintenance. You can do oil and gas, you can go and mines, you can go in wind turbines. So there’s a lot of universe that are related to the spread industry as well Joel Saxum: as Ida. So staying up to date on it. What kind of changes have you seen lately in the for the Spprt certification? What does it look like? Alex Fournier: So for spprt, one of the big change that will be related to the wind industry is that you don’t need A level three on site anymore. So I know a lot of [00:09:00] people ’cause you cannot have a level trees on every wind turbine of your project. So Sprat said, as long as your level two just do up and down maneuver. So you cannot do like crazy ballets and zip line and all that stuff, but we basically just do up and down, right? So as long as you do up and down maneuver and your level two is trained you can have only a level two taking care of the job. Allen Hall: So to get to that point of being a level two, if you’re just starting in the industry, takes several months to get there. How, what’s the best way to go about doing that? Alex Fournier: If you’re really new let’s say it’s your first time, like doing something related to wind industry and you’re a level one and you’re just starting sprats say that 600 hours and six months as a level one to be level two you need to know it’s 600 hours on ropes. You cannot be just chilling in the wind. Turbine doesn’t count as being on ropes. You actually need to be on ropes or calling ropes or putting ropes in a bag. Doesn’t count as hours. So you need [00:10:00] to be 600 hours on ropes in six months as a level one. I will say if you’re able to do 600 hours in one season, in six months, that’s really good. You can do your level two obviously will give you more seniority. Like you’re gonna be a level two so you can tap your shoulder. But I will say if you’re really new, maybe I will do another year as a level two, not as a supervisor, but just, to understand like all the industry work and, slowly taking the role as a level two. But that will be my approach. Let’s say you get your ticket and then you do one season as just a level two, and then. Once you’re ready, you go As a lead, that will be all. I will do it. That’s how I did it. But if, of course, if you’re ready, you think after your 600 hours go ahead and do it. But that’s how I see it. Joel Saxum: We’re talking blade repair too, right? So rope this is why blade repairs like. So complicated because we’re just talking about the rope access part of it, right? We’re just talking about how you get to work. Yeah. We didn’t talk about Blade yet. Yeah. Your [00:11:00] co your commute is the, probably one of the craziest commutes in the world to get to the actual job task. But now we’re, then you gotta get there, then you gotta, yeah. Then you gotta learn blade repair. So I think that if you’re a sprat level one, basically you’re a minimum of a season sprat, level two, you’re probably two seasons. Then level three, maybe at the beginning of that fourth year, you’re taking, you’re level three and you’re ready to run a crew. Does that look about right? Alex Fournier: Yeah, it look about right for myself, I did two years as a level one one year as a level two, and then I did my level three, like really fast. But I was ready to do it. But yeah, ’cause like you said, you also need to learn how to do fiberglass also, right? So you gotta learn how to be confident on ropes and how to manage all your rope, all your stuff, like all your buckets on you, all the elements around you. And then you need to do the fabricas as well. So if you’re learning everything at the same time, it can be a little bit overwhelming. But just take your time and you’ll do just fine. Joel Saxum: Alex, I’m gonna ask you a question. [00:12:00] And this is a non access guy. How do you use the restroom when you’re hanging on ropes? Alex Fournier: There’s different school of thought. You need to know that ammonia, like we have a ammonia in our bodies, but it’s one of them. The bows, dangerous material for RNS, it’s ammonia, like it will just destroy your R ns. So you need to be really careful of what you do when you go to the bathroom. I will recommend removing your RNS before you do so it’s either you go down or you can take the risk to do it up there. I already did it up there. It’s not super fancy, but you can do it. Allen Hall: See, that leads into my question about taking care of your equipment. Spprt walks you through how to maintain your gear, right? What are some of the keys to keeping your equipment ready to Alex Fournier: climb? So basically, as a level one, you should even all the levels, you should do like checkup every day before you. Climb the tower or what you’re about. The job you’re about to do is you check the webbing, you check your RNS if it look good you check if there’s any discoloration, if you see some stitches going away, or if you see that it start to rip, obviously you need to [00:13:00] discard. Same thing with plastic or metal. If you see cracks, if see your plastic discoloring or cracks in your plastic are your battle, you need to discard as well. But yeah just make sure that everything looks right and there’s no cracks or discoloration. Allen Hall: So let’s talk about the, probably the, one of the most controversial topics when we talk climbing and ropes is helmets and all the protective gear, because everyone has their own opinion that everybody likes a certain style, and if they choose the other brand, it’s like, it’s not any good. I wanna hear someone that I trust. Alex, you, what your thoughts are on some of the protective gear that you should be wearing when you’re climbing and using ropes. Alex Fournier: I use the pencil lme, the vertex best. I’ve been using it since forever. I never change lme. I know there’s cask and pedal Petzel. I rather petzel. For a couple of years I think Petzel, they were playing with their design and there was some stuff that, you had to buy clips to [00:14:00] fit on your helmet to be able to put a visor and the protective earrings. But now I think the, it all came together and their helmet is better today. Like you can wear a lamp with a visor and then you can have your protective earring on your helmet. But yeah, it’s a must to have your ed lamps at least a visor, right? Like the visor and the protective earrings. ’cause when you do grindings. Wanna protect your hair, Allen Hall: right? So all the accessories matter there now. So the hearing protection is probably in the eye protection are the two big ones, and now they’re incorporated into the helmet themselves or clip on things now. So is there certain things about those that you should pay attention to? Maybe. Where, like the hearing protection, I always think the hearing protection is very person centric. Like some hearing protection is comfortable, some of it is not. It’s really a decision of the technician. Have you seen a lot of variation there? Have you tried a bunch of things? What works for you? Alex Fournier: What, for sure me, it’s really like the overhear like airing protective system and then the visor for me I wear glasses, right? So if I wanna make sure that [00:15:00] I’m fully protected, I wear the visor. My glasses too. But yeah I wear both. I like to have shades, so I take the shade visor. So yeah, I take the shade visor. My overall like air protective. ’cause sometimes when you put like just the one in your hair little plugs, they wear out and you cannot use them. You cannot use them like often. You can use them often, but you cannot, you’re not supposed to reuse a plug. So then like buying plugs, every day or just putting new plugs every day. Then you’re gonna lose them as when you have them on your helmet, you’re never gonna lose them. Joel Saxum: I like the visor on the petzel too. ’cause it makes you look like a fighter pilot. Yeah. Alex Fournier: With the air protective too. You really look like a jet pilot. But when you have everything on your lme, you’re not gonna forget it, because everything’s on it. Joel Saxum: That’s the benefit, right? ’cause when you’re climbing, everything needs to be, you gotta, the stop the drop. We, the whole industry talks about that, right? So everything has to be carabiner off and lanyard it off and all this stuff. So if all of those things that you [00:16:00] use are connected to your helmet, boom, that’s one much easier way to go about your day. ’cause you just, soon as you clip that thing under your chin you got all your stuff on. Allen Hall: Same thing for work gloves. What are you using? Alex Fournier: Work gloves. The petzel once again. Allen Hall: Really? Are you using petzel Alex Fournier: for that? Okay. Yeah. The work gloves when I do propex is maneuver. I use my pencil gloves. But when I do grindings, I use my cut resistant gloves. So I like the cut resistant clip from Grainer. I think they have some, and then the anti vibration too. When you grind for long hours, it, you know it’s gonna hurt your hands. So anti-vibration and anti cut, it’s the best. Allen Hall: Okay, so I wanna talk about that now. It was leading to this question, the anti vibration discussion. So over in Europe, they have limitations on how long you can operate a piece of equipment like a grinder because of the vibration and what it does to your hands and your arms, and. North America. I don’t think there are any regulations about that. Are there regulations about that in Canada? Alex Fournier: Not that I know of. Not that I [00:17:00] heard of. Maybe there is, but I’m not really sure. Allen Hall: Yeah. I, from what I’ve seen in Canada, it doesn’t seem like there is. So essentially you could be using a grinder 4, 6, 8 hours a day. Gloves matter there. So what is the best in terms of anti vibration gloves? I’ve seen a couple of ’em. They look really cool. Alex Fournier: If you go on Uline and you wrote anti vibration gloves, they’re gonna be gray with a big Uline on it. And that’s the one that I use. And they’re pretty good. We use them for years and they really make a difference actually. Allen Hall: Okay. All right. Yeah, because that it is a big issue over in Europe that they’re actually limiting people. That, that’s fascinating. Alright, there’s a lot to do with Spprt and if you’re a technician, especially, you want to get into the wind industry and now’s the time to get into the wind industry, you’re going to need spprt training and you need to get to, at least to a level two. And that’s gonna take a bit of time. So you need to get started now and find the right place. Now. Alex has a second job. Besides being an expert climber and doing blade repair, you’re the [00:18:00] director of composite operations at. Intertech is always looking for people, I assume, because that’s the big demand. When you make a call out for people to take a look at Intertech and join as composite technicians. Alex Fournier: Yes. So if you’re a composite technician if you don’t have your rope access ticket, it’s okay. We’ll give it to you if you’re, a spread technician and you’re looking for a change of care and you want to try the win industry, we’ll take you as well. So if you do composite or rope access, we’ll take you both. Allen Hall: Okay. And so how do they reach Intertech? How do they get ahold of you to get started, Alex Fournier: On LinkedIn, you can send my message on my personal profile or on the Win Intertech page, or you can reach me by email. Allen Hall: Obviously you can find Alex on LinkedIn and because he’s available and you see him posting and yeah, he’s an easy guy. Get ahold of. So if you’re interested in being a wind technician, get started. Listen to the device of Alex that brought here today. Get your sprt training. Check out intertech, for sure. Great company. [00:19:00] Alex, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I love having you on. Alex Fournier: Thank you guys. I love to be on the podcast as well. It’s awesome every time.