PEAK Wind Masters Site and Turbine Selection
Lene Hellstern, Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind, discusses the complexities of onshore wind siting, the advantages of using LIDAR technology, and strategic considerations for turbine selection.
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Allen Hall: We’re back with Lene Hellstern, the Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind, and we’re talking about onshore wind siting, which is a really critical issue that a lot of operators have difficulties with. And I’ve seen it in the United States and it’s not good.
And I’m wondering from your perspective, what are some of the problems, Lene? Well first, welcome back to the podcast.
Lene Hellstern: Thank you. And thanks for having me repeat experience last time, so I hope so. I thought I’ll pop in again.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s good to have you back and thanks
Lene Hellstern: for coming to Copenhagen.
Allen Hall: Yeah, well we love Copenhagen.
It’s great. Uh, I just wish it was a little bit warmer. Yeah, the sun is terrific. Yeah. When you’re in it, well, at
Lene Hellstern: least I fixed that. Right. Yes. It’s not raining. It’s not raining. Yes.
Allen Hall: We, we quite enjoyed it. Uh, but I’m trying to get an understanding of what the underlying issues are with onshore wind siding and why some of the operators have difficulty later on.
Let’s just start with the sighting [00:01:00] itself. Yeah. Is usually, we’ll see a wind mast out on site for several months, maybe a year, maybe two years. To try to get some wind data. We would
Lene Hellstern: really like that. Yeah. Okay. But, uh, the preferable measurements are lidars.
Allen Hall: Oh, lidars. Yeah. I have not seen a lot of lidars in use.
Lene Hellstern: No. You, you need to get some more.
Allen Hall: Why?
Lene Hellstern: Um, because they reach higher.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: Um, and you can, uh, you can, you can move them around. Right. And the hassle of installing a Met Mass that’s a hundred meters tall, is, uh, is it a problem? Quite, uh. Quite it, it cost a lot more. Yes. Um, and, and the lidars, they, they just, they’re better and they measure higher.
And you can, you can have one sort of mother lidar and then you can move the other around and you can cover your wind resources and site suitability much better on the site. So I would definitely recommend
Allen Hall: lidars. Okay. How the lidars use a [00:02:00] good bit of power to make them run, correct? Yes. So you need a decent power source?
Yes.
Lene Hellstern: You do? Yes.
Allen Hall: Okay. Yeah. I, is that one of the difficulties why they don’t use a lidar? Is it just in a lot of remote areas, they don’t have the power source to run it?
Lene Hellstern: It could be, or it could be the, the lack of knowledge. Right. Traditionally we have used med masks, yes.
Allen Hall: Forever.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, so, so it could be, and then there are also some, um, uh, some issues with uncertainties because the lidar is the, the standards are not up to date.
I would say that’s the political way correct way of saying it. So. Eh, the standard actually introduces more uncertainty on the lidar that’s really not necessary to, due to a calibration with a me mast. Um, so that there’s some, there’s some things that needs to improve in that area
Allen Hall: because a lidar should be a lot more accurate than a met mast.
Lene Hellstern: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But, but the, the downside of the lidar, so that, that is not often we see that, is if you don’t have enough particles in the air, you have [00:03:00] an issue because then you are, you’re simply not gonna be able to measure. The, the, uh, velocity of the particles because they’re not there. And then you have a low availability on your measurements.
But, you know, most places there’s, there’s a quite a lot of dust. There’s pollution. Um, so there, there are things in the air that we don’t see, but the lighter sea and then you can make the measurements.
Allen Hall: And as the hub heights have gotten taller, it gets a lot more difficult to get a met mass up that high.
So the lidars go can measure winds. How high up in the air? How many meters? I
Lene Hellstern: think at least 250 meters. Wow. And, and you want, you want to, you know, traditionally you would only measure at hop height, but you wanna measure at the, the, the rotor surface, right? So you wanna measure at tip height, and you wanna measure at lower top tip and lower tip to, to see what, for instance, what’s the wind share across your, uh, rotor disc.
Um, which
Allen Hall: you cannot really do with a met mast at all. You can’t do that. You have no [00:04:00] wind share knowledge. From that instrument? Sort of, yeah,
Lene Hellstern: you can, because you can make, you always, you, you have a met mass that’s at least at hop height, and then you have, uh, anemometers and wind veins and I don’t know what on all the way down.
Um, and you can with, without that equipment, you can, you can measure on the lower part of the rotor, but not the upper part. So, so you, you do get some possibilities to measure wind share, but not as good as, um, for instance, a lidar. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So how many lidars would you typically need on a 100 turbine site?
Lene Hellstern: Well, that depends.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: Because you have a, if you have complex terrain,
Allen Hall: right?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. You may want a lot. Right. That’s what I
Allen Hall: was wondering if the more hills and valleys, the, the more lidars you will need, or more samples you’ll need, or maybe the longer duration you’ll need. Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And you, you would wanna, you know, it’s always the best to measure it.
I think it’s [00:05:00] ideally five years. Nobody does that five years. Nobody. No, no. But you should at least have two, right?
Allen Hall: Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, and then you should do a proper long term correlation. Um, so, so that’s, and how does
Allen Hall: that, how does that accomplish Right now, let’s just say we have a met mass. What I typically see is, has been a met mast out in the middle of the United States where the winds are pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And they have data. They have some data. Yeah. So typically I’ve seen them out there a year, maybe two years, and then. The, but the sites are massive. Yeah. They’re, they’re square miles. Yeah. Dozens of square miles. So it’s big.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I
Allen Hall: dunno whether it’s in kilometers, but a lot of square kilometers. So then they are trying to interpret interpretate that data that they have from the Met Mass on top of that.
I think they’re looking a little bit forward in terms of who, what other wind farms may be surrounding us in the next several years. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And that’s, that’s one of the challenges we have because there’s a lot that. Uh, you, there’s a lot of guessing.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Um, and so if [00:06:00] you are planning a wind farm, you wanna know what goes on in the area.
You wanna map out the already existing turbines, uh, and what, what hop height, what rotor size, because you wanna be able to model them in your calculations.
Allen Hall: That was really good. Get to my question about how difficult this process is and how you try to address it. In the United States, we turn over wind turbines every 10 years, so there’s a repowering happening and.
Almost always, the rotor size gets substantially bigger. 20 to 30 to 50% bigger. Right. So there’s fewer turbines, same location. Yeah. And the turbines are roughly in the same spots, but they’re just bigger rotor diameters. How do you then prepare for that? Do you use the old data or is the old data even applicable?
If I’m really dramatically increasing the rotor size, do I need to be doing more? LIDAR measurements before I make that repower, or how do I even cite that? Right.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, you can, if you have some good SCADA data from your turbines, you can do some [00:07:00] modeling. And many of the sites actually have a met mast. They do a lot Yeah.
As a reference, right? Yes. Right. But that will be on it, it will have sectors where there’s a lot of weight from the existing.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: So, and so I would, I would, I would try, I would filter your SCADA data from your site and see if, can I, can I use this? I’ll take a look at the mid mass state and see, can I use this?
If not, I’ll start a me mass campaign. Now the problem is if you’re reusing the spots now, well first of all, that’s a little bit difficult reusing because your foundation is dimension to an old generation turbine. Uh, let’s say take someone a hundred, a hundred, uh, meter rotor, right? Right. But now you’re going up in size.
Um, so that means everything gets heavier and bigger, right? So your foundation may not be suitable. The old foundation, normally they’re over dimension. So you can, you can extend life or you could repower on them, but you would want a bigger turbine. [00:08:00] So you don’t necessarily want to use the opposition, right?
And then you would wanna know what is in the pipe. You know, when can I get my, when can I start digging? Right? When can I start installing? Uh, what is in the pipeline at that point from the OEMs? Because sometimes it actually takes five years from, you start planning until you, you, you start digging. And in that time, if you, you, if you space with today’s models, you are gonna have two shorter distance between the turbines because the new turbines on the market that you would wanna buy has increased significantly.
Um,
Allen Hall: and that’s a real problem. Yeah. Like that, this, this. Between the, the siting time, the met mass, the LIDAR data, getting enough data and having to make the decision about a turbine relatively early because the production lines are not operating at full capacity right now. Yeah. It’s hard to get a turbine.
So you are 3, 4, 5 years out. Yeah. How do you plan for that on an onshore site?
Lene Hellstern: Well, [00:09:00] you, you gotta guess a rotor and guess a, a turbine site. Okay. Right, right. So, but
Allen Hall: do, do the engineering staffs that a lot of operators have that inside knowledge because it seems like smaller operators, I’m, I’m not the urals of the world, have power and they can see inside the factories and they have a really good connection and they develop that connection over a long, many, many years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Where newer operators usually do not have that sort of insight. So where do they go to get help?
Lene Hellstern: Well, well, they could go to, right? We could help them a little bit, but. You can also look, if you look at the evolution of the turbines, you can, and I, I’m, I’m hoping we are at a little bit of a pause here in the, in, in the growing size.
So we, we can refine the turbine, we can refine our manufacturing facilities. We, we get better at service and installation. But you can pretty much, you know, guess the rotor. Uh, I’ve, I’ve done that a lot in, in this job and my previous job, because you [00:10:00] look at, if you look at when the. When did what? Come on the market and from what, OEM.
Right. And then you, you know, there’s, there’s other topics you need to look into for, for instance, site suitability. Right? Right. What are, what are the conditions on the site? Um, are you a, we, we categorize in different classes. I, e, c, 1, 2, 3, um, or turbulence classes. A, B, C. And then there’s the, the class I like the least that is the Class S.
Which is special. And then you never know what it is before you start digging in all the paper. Um, but, but you, that’s sort of the first things you need to find out. What class are you? And then there’s a small in that because, um, you may think you are a, a class two or have a class two side, but then it turns out that your air density is unbelievably low.
So sometimes you can actually squeeze in a class three. Turbine on a class two [00:11:00] side and get that much more production.
Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators know that?
Lene Hellstern: No.
Allen Hall: I wondered. Okay. Yeah. Well
Lene Hellstern: maybe the, it’s not so much the operators. It’s the developers. Developers. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That has to, to, to dig a little bit more into the lovely engineering science around turbines and.
And, and then do more site suitability because you can actually improve your, the value of your project quite significantly.
Allen Hall: That’s what I wonder if, if you spend a good extra amount of time maybe spending a little more money to get LIDAR measurements Yeah. And to do them for a slightly longer period of time, does that have a return on investment?
Lene Hellstern: You get, you get less uncertainty. Right. And then I think some of the issues or some of the mistakes that the developers do, they. They do a wind, they do a, a production estimate, but that is not the same as a site suitability or uh, [00:12:00] you know, also, some people also think if I do a wind resource assessment, then I’m covered.
No, because that is the input to the site suitability. Now you also need to do the site suitability. So you know, I would start out doing a wind resource assessment, right? Then I would do a site suitability and then you do your production calculator.
Allen Hall: And how long does that process take, generally?
Lene Hellstern: Oh, that’s always a cue.
So it could take, uh, it depends on who you use for this, right? But it could take four to to eight weeks.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s not horrible. No,
Lene Hellstern: no, no.
Allen Hall: Alright, so it, it is relatively efficient compared to other things that happen in wind.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. If you are have a complex site, it can take longer because you need to run a lot more calculations due to, uh, the comp complexity of the terrain, right?
Mm-hmm. You can have issues with inflow, angles, uh, ware, wind share, uh, [00:13:00] all the lovely technical things. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Well, and because we’ve developed so many sites to date, all the best wind sites have turbines in them mostly right now, and. We’re, we’re starting to get along the fringes of that good wind area.
Yeah. And in some cases, does that change the way you do the analysis and do the approach?
Lene Hellstern: Yes, but, um, some of us have done that for a long time because it’s not good enough to have good wind if you don’t have good grid. Um, so, so for me, a good wind side, you know, we, I, I spoke with someone yesterday about.
The best, uh, uh, wind resource in Sweden. Um, but, but if that area doesn’t have a good grid, then you know it, I can’t harvest the wind. Right. Right. Um, and it’s the same in, in the US right? You, you have some grid issues. Um, so we have a lot of
Allen Hall: grid issues. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And if you don’t, everything is [00:14:00] combined.
Everything works closely together, right. Uh, the technical, the commercial and the finance. So if, if, if that is not. Well, um, covered in a, in a, or, uh, investigated in a project, you don’t have a good project. Um, is
Allen Hall: the grid the limiting factor in a lot of onsite onshore sites?
Lene Hellstern: I think the world is becoming more and more electrical, which it is, which I think it’s good.
Mm-hmm. And I don’t think that they, we can point at any government that was super duper on, um, expanding the grid. Um, no. I know there are issues in Texas. There are also issues in Denmark where I’m from. There are, yes, there’s issues in Europe. So, um, we, we need, we need massive in investments from the government to build out this grid.
It’s, it’s not, um, enough to say we want clean energy and then do nothing. Right. Well
Allen Hall: this is where, where, where the ons onsite versus the onshore versus the offshore comes in. Yeah. [00:15:00] Is the grid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So in the US and other places, uh, there’s been. A, a lot of concern about offshore wind, but offshore wind, you can get to a grid relatively easily.
Yes, usually. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s less bureaucracy to lay cable in the ocean than it is to run transmission lines over land.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So is this starting to flip a little bit because of the onshore limitations in the grid that we’re seeing more offshore, just because it’s easier.
Lene Hellstern: Well in Europe, but I would not say that in the us Right.
But, uh, but, um, um, it, it, it is easier, but it’s also much more complex to put up these, uh, offshore projects. They are in development for many, many years compared to onshore.
Allen Hall: Right.
Lene Hellstern: So, so onshore is a little bit of a, depending on country you are in, if it’s overpopulated right? It’s, it’s difficult, but it’s, it’s a much more of a quick fix, uh, [00:16:00] onshore.
For, uh, lack of energy. Right, right. But, but it just requires it, yes, it requires the grid and yes, it requires that you don’t do it in a popula populated area. We don’t want to do that. Right, right. We want, we want the open fields, um, where we’re not disturbing anyone. True. Yeah.
Allen Hall: True. But we also want infinite electricity.
Absolutely. So you have to weigh those two off.
Lene Hellstern: I, but I think the turbines are beautiful. So I would, I would love to be able to see one from my house, but I can’t. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We have actually quite a few we can see from our, from our house. Yeah. Yeah. And no one complains. No. They complained for the first few weeks after they were installed and after that it’s been completely quiet.
Yeah. But,
Lene Hellstern: but I do understand if you place turbines too close to a house Right. Sure. That, how that can be disturbing. Sure. Um, I, I totally understand that. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Can we talk about AI data centers and independent grids and how that’s factoring [00:17:00] into some of the decisions about where to place wind sites?
Because it does seem like in a lot of places in the world, these AI data centers are going to go in. Yeah. And they’re making decisions about using natural gas to power the turbines or using wind and solar and a little bit of battery to, to run these centers. Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily. Wire a connection to the grid.
Does that make it easier in a sense that you don’t necessarily have to have a grid connection, you could put something out in a remote area that it still had good wind and still has good solar with a little bit of battery? And are you starting to hear more action that way, or interest in that?
Lene Hellstern: I’ve, I’ve seen that there’s been, uh, quite some centers that has, uh, made, uh, PPA agreements with, with wind turbine owners.
But they are normally not super close, uh, uh, located to the wind farm. Okay? And I would also say that I would find it a little bit difficult, [00:18:00] uh, if they were remote, because you need a, you need a constant power source and, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time, right? No. So you need, you need a lot of, uh, combination mechanisms, right?
You do to make sure everything runs stable.
Allen Hall: But you may not have neighbors in that case because you could select a site that’s a little bit further away from. Society in a sense. Yeah. Where the, the wind siding may be a little more complicated though because we, we probably haven’t looked in those areas because it’s not connected to the grid.
So you may not have historical wind data doesn’t make the problem just bigger. So I do think in the United States you see like Amazon and Meta and Google talking about using wind and solar to power some of these data centers. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And, and they are, and I know that there are, uh, agreements that has been signed.
But I, I am, I don’t think they are close, uh, you know, in close proximity necessarily.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: But of course the, the, the electricity needs to be to be transported in the grid. Right. [00:19:00] And it’s not like it’s a microgrid around the data center.
Allen Hall: I think you may see more microgrids.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. Well that could be interesting.
Well, that’s what
Allen Hall: I’m wondering because there may be more microgrids that won’t even be microgrids because the amount of power that they’re gonna use, they’re gonna be decent sized grids.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: That. Th that becomes even a more difficult engineering challenge.
Lene Hellstern: Well, I think it’s gonna be too expensive.
Allen Hall: You think so?
Yeah. Compared to natural gas or just because No, just,
Lene Hellstern: uh, buying, doing a PPA with a wind farm that may be a hundred kilometers away. Yeah. Right.
Allen Hall: Okay. Um, well that’s interesting. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: I think the whole, um, uh, burying the cables in the, you know, the whole installation, uh, is, is simply, it’s simply to, uh, it’s complicated cap.
Is too high.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: It’s, it’s much more affordable just to buy a PPA.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It may be. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. Well this is, this is fascinating. Can I pick your brain or bother you just a little bit longer?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah, [00:20:00] yeah, sure. Okay.
Allen Hall: So
Lene Hellstern: it depends on the time. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We got 20 minutes. Good. Can I steal 10?
Lene Hellstern: Yes, sure.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: This is not my core area, just so you know.
Allen Hall: No, no, no. I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna get back into Yeah. The, the meat here, which is turbine selection.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: I have my LIDAR data. Mm-hmm. I have my MET Tower data. I have say I have two years. I am really the best wind resource knowledge operator developer that you’re gonna meet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Great. Super. What do I do next in terms of picking a turbine?
How do I even do that? And how does that process look like if I’m talking to OEMs about something that’s still three years from being developed?
Lene Hellstern: Well, you need to start, you, you need to have your planning, uh, your permits in order.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Lene Hellstern: So depending on what country you are in some operate, what you need to apply for the [00:21:00] specific location of the turbines more, it’s more a box.
Uh, so it’s, you say, I am, I wanna apply for 300 megawatt, 500. Uh, please. In, in this area. Um, so then you start looking at your site, suitability, uh, what, what boundaries am I working within? What is my average wind speed in different, these different heights? Uh, what’s more, how do I get levelized cost of energy as low as possible?
Because some people still sit and look at the net capacity factor, but those days are over, right? They are,
Allen Hall: yes.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So when, when all alarms should go up, if they say. Good lift capacity factor. Yeah. Super. What’s your live life cost of energy there? Um, so, so then you, now you start, you have a good idea on what kind of a turbine class should I look at?
Then you start looking at who is, do you wanna do self service? Do you wanna have a full service agreement?
Allen Hall: Exactly. That’s what Im really wondering how that works then, because if I [00:22:00] know the basics of the wind site, do I just. Put a proposal together and slide it to Vestus and slide it to ge, or is there still more I need to do before I start talking to them?
Lene Hellstern: You need, you need to ask you yourself and your organization. Okay. Or PEAK. Yeah, but, but we would ask you as well, what is your o and m strategy, right? Do you wanna do self perform? Do you want a full service agreement? What, what’s, how risky do you wanna make it? Is that
Allen Hall: a deciding factor in determining what turbine you want to purchase?
Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Because then you may not need D-O-E-D-O-E-M to have a service organization close to your site. Right? Let’s say, okay, so
Allen Hall: let’s say you choose vestus because they have a, they want to sell you a full service agreement, generally sPEAKing. Yeah. Where a, a GE typically doesn’t care or not so involved in that.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. But then, but you wanna know, do they have a service organization close to right. Right, right. Or are they gonna re uh, are they, do they need to build it? Right? Is this a new [00:23:00] platform? Do they not have any experience with this platform, the people in this area? Because then you, you know, that’s always, so it’s teething issues, right?
Allen Hall: Sure.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So,
Allen Hall: so how does that play into your decision making then?
Lene Hellstern: Well, you know, if you have a, if you have, let’s say, four volumes in this area,
Speaker 3: right?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you had, you, you look at what, what do they, what turbines do they offer? What service agreements can you get? What availability, you know, how does the contracts, you wanna benchmark the TSAs and the SMAs?
Yes. Um, and to see what kind of, who’s the best player here? There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Well,
Allen Hall: that, that’s exactly what I wanted to get to was, I’m trying to understand how deep you’re going in this. So you’re actually looking to see if they have a service site nearby? Yes. And what the service people have been exposed to in terms of turbine type.
Yeah. And also you’re going a little bit deeper to see how successful they have been. Maybe you, you’ve called the sites
Lene Hellstern: around if I have that information. Yes. Yeah. [00:24:00] Okay.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So you’re making a lot of decisions not based upon necessarily what the OEM is offering as a product, but you’re also looking at what does the next 10, 20, maybe even 30 years looks like.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you wanna know what, you know, what, what turbines, what pipeline is there, and then you wanna do the tender. Right,
Allen Hall: right.
Lene Hellstern: Let’s say now you’re down to three because the fourth one, that, that was a no-go. Right? So now you have, that’s why I always, I say four turbines per site. You need to pick, pick four different OEMs.
Now you’re down to three. Right? And then you, you, you, you, you issue a tender and you, you get the proposals in. Okay? And then you, you start negotiating and you do your tech, your technical due diligence, right? To sort of dig a little bit deeper and understand the OEMs right. Also give them a chance to say.
Hey, this was an issue before, but we fixed this problem and you can see it documented. Oh, you go, yeah, but you’re still, you’re not there. So I need to account for that. So then you have a dialogue with them, and then, [00:25:00]then you have, you, you then the third one is too high and now you have or can’t deliver, or you know,
Allen Hall: doesn’t have a production schedule that meets your deeds.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And now you’re down to two, and then may the best one win. Right.
Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re talking about. Several months of gyration. Yes. Meeting with the OEMs or OEMs coming to you even to give their pitch. Meanwhile, you’re evaluating their technical expertise about their turbine, and you’re questioning how the previous generation of those turbines have performed looking forward to say, have you fixed the the existing problems?
And what does the next generation look like? Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Oh, well, what did they look into? Developing a new
Allen Hall: platform.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. Right.
Allen Hall: So are you thinking about risk in terms of new technology? I’ll, I’ll throw the easy one at you two piece blades.
Lene Hellstern: No, thank you.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a, that’s a good response. Yeah. Because I think a lot of, there was just a lot of unknowns about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And then now that we have some service history, yeah. We may wanna rethink that. Yeah. Are there other types of [00:26:00] technologies that would lend themselves to requiring further review?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah, but there’s, I, what I’m hoping is that, that maybe we can pause a little bit on the sizing thing in the. Right.
And then refine the components a little bit more and then, and be more innovative, um, instead in the components. In the components, yeah. And, and improve the manufacturing quality installation service. Right? Because, um, sometimes what I see in the industry is not, it’s an old component, but actually it’s the people that’s the issue, right?
Mm-hmm. We don’t, we are not, we are not trained, you know, we don’t have the technicians trained really in a. We don’t have the people in the manufacturing trained well enough, and so, so we make mistakes. So, and
Allen Hall: are you looking for OEMs that are doing more reflective activity at the moment that they’re basically causing new designs?
And then we always do that, that when we
Lene Hellstern: always look at, when we do technical diligence, how is the training [00:27:00] in the, in the manufacturing, you know, what kind of programs do the different people need to go through? How do you get to a seniority? How do they train them? How do they test them? How many years does it take, right?
Because you can’t do things in five minutes.
Allen Hall: Right?
Lene Hellstern: What’s the turnover at a manufacturing plant?
Allen Hall: See? But this is why you would choose PEAK wind to help you do that process. Because I don’t think a lot of developers, and especially in the United States where we see a lot of it, I see a lot of it developers are about putting turbines in the ground.
Yeah. And then selling that farm to the next owner, right? Yeah. So those long-term agreements don’t really play into a lot of this, and from what I’ve seen, but I think in Europe it’s a lot different.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. No, but we also have, you know, there are different concepts. There is a built to sell.
Allen Hall: Yes. Right? Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: That’s, then you, you, they, they tend not to, uh, be so focused on the technology. Right, right, right. And then there’s the people that built to keep, right, right. And you could, if you can see, they, that was their intention. And then they [00:28:00] ended up having to divest anyway. Then, you know, that they, they, they probably did, did a little bit more work on the technology side.
Which
Allen Hall: one’s more successful? Build to sell or build to keep
Lene Hellstern: build, to keep
Allen Hall: built, to keep has better power production, more revenue,
Lene Hellstern: less uh, downtime.
Allen Hall: Less downtime. Yeah. Because they’ve done their work upfront and many
Lene Hellstern: of them Yes. Have have done it. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Lene Hellstern: So, but, but developers can still do, uh, build to sell.
Sure. But then they need someone with the technol technological glasses to come in and help.
Allen Hall: Sure, sure. But that’s where PEAK wind comes in, because. You carry those people on your staff, you, your PEAK wind’s full of experts.
Lene Hellstern: We would love to, yes.
Allen Hall: So that you can immediately tap the group of experts about the different aspects of this new development.
Yeah. From training to warranties to technology to just generally how an OEM performs and Yeah, but it’s
Lene Hellstern: also, it’s the technology [00:29:00] commercial finance, right? Bingo, finance. Yeah. They go, they go together. Right, right. It’s not a. Enough to have a brilliant gearbox that can last a hundred years if you only need it for 35.
Right. That’s true. And you paid a fortune. Right. That true. That’s just not a good business case.
Allen Hall: Right. And there are turbine manufacturers that have that model that do do that still. Yeah. Yeah. This is fascinating and I, I appreciate your time. Every time we talk, I just get more in depth of what is happening and, and where we can get better as an industry.
Yeah. And that’s what PEAK wind is all about. Yes,
Lene Hellstern: but we are really good already. We just need to get, we are good. Better. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We do need to get better. And we do, I think we do need to take a pause.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So how do people get a hold of PEAK wind and to tap your expertise and attack, to bring in the expertise of your team?
Lene Hellstern: Well, we have a, a webpage, uh, where you can contact us through, or, uh, LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn, so feel free to send me a, a message. Um. [00:30:00] So, and reach out to us and we would love to help. We also have a, we have offices in Boston and uh, uh, Texas. Uh, we also have Oh, around the world. Yeah. Canada. So Taipei, yes.
Yes. Re and
Allen Hall: congratulations. I think you just won a, was it in Taiwan? Uh, an offshore site Yes. That you’re gonna be operating or managing Meow.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yes. Congratulations on that. Thank you. That’s very exciting. That’s
Lene Hellstern: my lovely C in asset management. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Very nice. Yes. So Lene, thank you so much for being back on the podcast and we have to have you back on again ’cause there’s so much to talk about and win.
And it’s great to talk to someone who has been around and has seen it and has done it. Uh, it’s, thank you for having, it’s such a tremendous learning experience.
Lene Hellstern: It was a pleasure. Thanks.
https://weatherguardwind.com/peak-wind-site-turbine/
How Trump has any credibility with Americans–or the other citizens of planet–is a mystery that is impossible to unravel.
At This Point, No One Should Believe a Word that Comes Out of Trump’s Mouth
It’s good to hear Bernie Sanders say what he did here, but it’s sad that it needs to be said at all.
Are we really interested in lower grocery prices if we’re living in a dictatorship?
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Sunrez Products Expand in Wind O&M
Bret Tollgaard, president at Sunrez, joins to discuss faster UV blade repairs, new leading edge materials, and growing OEM approvals. Reach out to sales@sunrez.com to learn more!
The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Brent, welcome back to the program.
Bret Tollgaard: Appreciate you having me back on.
Allen Hall: There’s been so much happening in the world of UV prepregs and UV adhesives over the past year. Particularly on LinkedIn, I’ve seen numerous repairs which have used your material, SunRes material, to fix some pretty decent, uh, blade problems.
Are you seeing, just seeing a, a much wider adoption now that everybody has basically agreed that UV is the way to go?
Bret Tollgaard: I, I really do think that it’s starting to become one of the go-to standards for a variety of repairs in the wind market. And yeah, it’s great to see both our prepregs and lights being used all over LinkedIn, showing the [00:01:00] capabilities of the materials and how happy customers are to use and adopt the materials.
Allen Hall: Yeah. The UV materials are, are getting adopted by OEMs. A lot of ISPs, a, a lot of operators now have it as a standard practice to use UV cured materials just because of the speed and the time that is saved. Uh, it’s, it’s remarkable how much time you’re saving, because the, the real kicker right now if you’re trying to do a repair, even in the summer months, let’s just say it’s warm outside and the temperatures are right and it’s calm winds, you’re saving multiple hours per repair.
What generally… How much time are you generally saving on a kind of a, quote unquote, “standard blade repair”?
Bret Tollgaard: More and more time, actually, with each session. So we might be saving 50 upwards of 80% of the labor of a traditional epoxy repair. Um, what we’ve been training companies to do more and more frequently is to actually pre-consolidate the entire repair patch downtower, whether it’s in the trailer or inside the tower itself.
Um, and so you can pre-consolidate, get [00:02:00] all the air out in between your layers, have the primer pre-applied to the backside. That way, when you’re actually uptower, it’s simply peel, stick, roll, and then cure it out with our UV light. Sub 10 minutes, uh, will get you a fully cured part.
Allen Hall: Wow. That’s remarkable.
Yeah, when I see those LinkedIn posts from all kinds of operators all around the world using your material I also noticed that the weather conditions may not be pristine like you would have to do with epoxy. So there, there’s like a band of temperatures that epoxy systems generally work in. But with the UV material, I’m noticing, I’ve s- I s- especially over the wintertime, I saw some cold weather repairs going on.
Is there any limitation really to the UV cured patches and materials in temperatures?
Bret Tollgaard: There, there really aren’t for the temperature ranges that people will actually be out and installing these. Some of my favorite photos are when it’s negative five Celsius outside and everyone’s got the big gloves, the big [00:03:00] scarves, the big warmers and everything, and they’re applying our prepreg materials, uh, in below freezing conditions and still curing with the same 10-minute cycle time.
Uh, another big advantage of our UV prepregs is everything’s already pre-wet out, so you’re not uptower with your fiberglass and your resin kicking off an epoxy or even some other, uh, you know, materials out there where it’s really hard to impregnate and get that saturation and kick off with UV. And so our prepreg repair patches really lend themselves to efficiency in the field, uh, over a really broad variety of, uh, ambient temperatures.
So some of the negative five, negative 10 C installs all the way up to the hot ones in Texas and India and Australia, where you’ve got these people and it’s 100 Fahrenheit or, you know, 35 plus C, and you still cure with the same consistency, the same cure rate, the k- same cure speeds, um, really, really makes it a very versatile system.
Allen Hall: It just gets rid of the variation and, and [00:04:00] that’s one of the items when we look at repairs. So we’re on the lightning side of this business where lightning damage happens, so we see a lot of repairs happen. We also see a lot of repairs that don’t look great. They’re, I mean, the vast majority do look great, but you get these occasional ones where they’ve tried to use epoxy in the wintertime and use a heat blanket.
It, it’s difficult to do. It, it just is because of the material, it’s very difficult to do. I’m recommending more and more that they use a UV cure material if they’re gonna go off and do it, particularly as they, uh, do what I would consider to be a temporary patch until they get where they can do more in-depth work when it’s warmer outside.
But it, it does really change the game because the ability to buy the material quickly is amazing. Uh, b- there’s no hazardous me- chemi- chemicals in, uh, the Sunrise material at all, so it can be shipped anywhere, anytime, overnight, on a airplane, on a truck, doesn’t matter. Does that really open up the marketplaces for the [00:05:00] Sunrise UV cure materials?
Bret Tollgaard: 100%. And because of the long shelf life as well, um, we stock and store all of the common, um, materials used for wind. The prepreg, the putties, the surface primers. Fiberglass also does a great job of stocking and storing things. And yeah, because these can ship as unregulated materials, we get calls for next-day air shipping all the time, all over the world.
And so whether it’s out here domestically, it’s going up to Canada, Europe, uh, Asia, Australia, um, it’s really, really simplifies the whole process from start to finish.
Allen Hall: Are there any special tools you need to use when applying a, a UV cured prepreg patch to a blade, or is it just standard existing tools? Is there anything unique there?
Bret Tollgaard: No. It’s kind of as simple as it gets. There’s no vacuum bag required. There’s no heat blanket required. To truly install the materials, you’re gonna take off the back, uh, layer of, of the film on the backside of the [00:06:00] prepreg, re-stack and consolidate your materials. Uh, you’re gonna consolidate that with a basic three-inch or six-inch bubble buster hand roller.
Every technician’s gonna know exactly what that is. Uh, it’s a simple piece of little rolling metal that, uh, simply rolls out any air between the, the repair patches. And then after that, you’re gonna grab a paintbrush, and you’re gonna spread some of our surface primer over the backside of the prepreg. So you got a hand roller, and you got a paintbrush That’s all you’re gonna need to get the material up onto the wind blade.
And then of course, to cure the material, you need a UV light to do so. The sunshine, although it will cure the material, you never have consistent sun, light intensity, you’re on the shady side of the blade, et cetera. And so we’ve developed a variety of UV curing devices to help facilitate that. So our standard in the industry right now is what we call our Gen 2 LED lamp.
It’s about the size of an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. Um, but it’ll, it’ll cure several square feet at a time when you’re 14 to 20 inches or so away from that [00:07:00] surface. Uh, but in addition to that, we’re also working on a patent pending LED array system that is gonna be a broader… Right now, it’s about a half meter by one square meter surface area, and it’s gonna, um, emit a very, very uniform, uh, amount of light intensity across that entire surface all at once to make it even easier for the installers so they can just strap it to the blade, cure it for five minutes, and then move it over if they have a longer, uh, you know, one to two square meter repair.
Allen Hall: Wow, that’s remarkable. I, I have one of your lights, and I’m always shocked at how much light intensity there is because I’ve used other lights and seen other lights, and then they’re not nearly as bright or consistent across a, a piece of fabric, for example, where you just see uniformity.
Bret Tollgaard: That is certainly one of the challenges that we’ve actually encountered when people say, “Oh, well, I have a UV light.
I bought it on Amazon. I bought it from eBay. I bought it from somewhere where that 200 watt listed on that is not truly 200 watts, or the light intensity, [00:08:00] uh, that they, you know, claim to have. UV cure materials need the correct wavelength. They also need the correct light intensity on that surface to guarantee your depth of cure and to make sure that you’re truly bonding to the base substrate behind you.
The thicker you go, the more light intensity you’re going to need. So a lot of the knockoff materials really just don’t do it justice, um, and which is why we’ve, you know, intentionally built the LED curing systems that we have to cure with our prepregs, uh, and putties and adhesives. So they are all true one, uh, one single system.
Allen Hall: We’ve looked at different light systems here at Weather Guard, and I know we’re engineer- we’re an engineering group, right? So we’re gonna go look to see what these different lights are, and are they really truly putting out the frequency of light which is written down on the ad. It’s amazing, like, uh, the variation you get light to light.
It really depends on what the source is, but, uh, to test a light, just to test a light to make sure it’s putting out the right intensity at [00:09:00] the right frequency is super expensive. So you can buy a several thousand dollar sensor to check your hundred dollar light, or you could actually buy the right thing from SudRes and have the proper light because it does change the cure rate and what the result is.
So- Y- y- is it easy to tell, Brett, when I, if I have a light in the truck, do I know it’s the right frequency? How do I even tell that, uh, to know that I’m using the right stuff?
Bret Tollgaard: Well, if it says SunRes on the backside of that lamp, you have a guaranteed method of knowing exactly what that is. Um, we have the most broad industrial use UV lamp on the market, like, first and foremost.
There are several that cost four to five times what we do, but a lot of times they’re also a really small aperture, so they’re only curing a small footprint, which is why we’ve become the kind of gold standard for all UV cure repair solutions out there using a SunRes lamp. Um, we just make the best product, not to toot our own horn [00:10:00] too much.
Um, but it, it really serves the need of what these industrial customers in wind and other industries are looking for. Um, and I’m sure there are other systems out there. I’ve personally tried and tested dozens of different lamps out there to always see what’s on the market, and what we provide is just above and beyond performance-wise for the cost.
Allen Hall: And one of the, the questions that comes up with the light when we talk to operators, like, “Where do I get the light?” Well, you, you call Brett at SunRes and you buy yourself a light. The second question that happens is, has the OEM blessed this material? Have they validated the material? Has it been through material testing?
Has the OEM done structural loading on the material? Did I know that as a repair material, it’s actually gonna adhere to my polyester blade or my epoxy blade or whatever this thing is? Do I know that this is gonna work? Sunrise has been through a number of, uh, OEMs at this point. What’s the status of your OEM [00:11:00] relationships there?
Bret Tollgaard: Very, very solid, and constantly getting approved by more and more OEMs. Um, we’ve sold over 35,000 square meters of prepreg into the wind market alone. And with that has come a variety of, uh, you know, engineering approved jobs versus fully validated materials. We now have 20-year lifespans on a variety of different OEM, uh, wind parts.
And so our epoxy and polyester, we adhere phenomenal to both. And yeah, our prepregs are getting, uh, used more and more in every single application.
Allen Hall: I, I assume you can provide references if, if someone were to ask, like an ISP, “Can I talk to the OEM about this?”
Bret Tollgaard: Absolutely. Uh, and it, it’s, you know, no secret.
General Electric’s been one of the big pushers of UV cure materials now for a while, um, for both their epoxy and the LM polyester blades. Um, but there are several European OEMs that are actively, you know, certifying the materials as well.
Allen Hall: Oh, that’s a smart move on their part. [00:12:00] Uh, one of the considerations for using a UV material is training.
Uh, do I need to do special training for my technicians? Is it really different than epoxy? Do I have to do any training at all? What’s the level of skill that would be in- involved in using a, a UV prepreg?
Bret Tollgaard: The reality is, if you have any bit of experience of knowing what a resin and a fiberglass and wetting things out, UV just makes that job even simpler.
So all the repair technicians that have gone through repair academies, been trained on the, on site or on the job, that have gotten their hands dirty, as we like to call it, with making some, uh, composite repairs, UV is just gonna simplify the process even more. Um, in 2026 and 2027, we’re actually starting to work, uh, uh, more closely now with a variety of the blade repair groups or academies and training facilities to also get UV cure in people’s hands so they don’t experience, uh, for the first time when they’re out, you know, getting a job with one of these other [00:13:00] OEMs that are recommending use our material now instead of, uh, epoxy systems.
Allen Hall: Mm. And all the experience that’s happened at, at Sunrise, I, I don’t know if a lot of people realize that you’re a roughly 40-year-old company. You’ve been around a long time, although you’re nowhere near 40. But the company has been around a long time. What was the origin of SunRes? Uh, because it wasn’t necessarily in wind, right?
Wind is sort of an afterm- after-market kind of application where it kind of transferred over. But what, what was the core start of the business?
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, we were founded in September of 1986. So in just a couple of weeks, we’ll actually hit our 40-year anniversary.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Bret Tollgaard: SunRes was originally founded, uh, in, uh, once again, the, the mid-’80s for just UV cure formulations in general.
Spent the first several decades, uh, of its life being primarily an R&D, uh, kind of based group, um, formulating specialty UV cure solutions for mostly thick wall fiber reinforced applications. So anything from [00:14:00] boat hulls to, uh, drones to, uh, you know, bathtub repair and saddle trees. Um, we’ve sold really the, a whole kind of gambit of very broad basic systems to incredibly advanced high precision, uh, you know, applications.
And so as we grew and evolved the, the formulas and the recipes to cert- uh, to solve certain needs, now we’re kind of elevating that to a more, uh, manufacturing based business and offering true repair solutions as opposed to just R&D and working on developing solutions to repair something.
Allen Hall: And that’s growing outside of just the pre-preg processing materials, packaging it up and shipping it.
And y- you’re now getting more into specific solutions in wind, which is really exciting. The leading edge erosion issue is plaguing a lot of turbine blades in the United States and, and globally. Australia has a big problem with it, and there’s a, some other places that I’ve seen some pretty [00:15:00] rough looking blades, India being another one.
Uh, the solution to go fix those blades has generally involved, uh, putting someone up on a rope, a- applying material, fiberglass back down, trying to repair holes in particular, and trying to cap that off. But now there’s some new materials that can speed up the process to at least get you back to a, a surface, a usable surface that you could then apply an LEP or whatever you decided to do there.
What do those new materials look like and, and how are they being used today?
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, great question. So ultimately there are broad– uh, you know, a really, really broad, uh, array of challenges that wind in particular really kind of faces. And so developing UV cure solutions to fit more of those than just a small little repair patch or a crack has been something that we’ve been working on for a while with a variety of different groups.
Um, but leading edge in particular, not just protection, but also the rehabilitation of those leading [00:16:00] edges. So we’ve done that in a couple of different ways. Some have been some pre-consolidated repair patches that we’ve built, where a specific blade requires, um, you know, a, a design package to reinforce certain areas, whether it was, uh, too many ply drops in a certain zone or an area of high wear.
Uh, but the other ones kind of more recently are starting to build, I’ll call like a fiber reinforced type putty, where you’re actually filling gaps, filling holes, filling imperfections with a more structural repair solution before then coming over the top with an LEP for the protection of that blade long term.
And so being able to provide solutions for both, uh, hand, but then also robotics is something that we’ve been focusing on. So repair technicians can do it, but then also make sure that the, uh, robotics industry has the materials that they need to be able to do that in a fast and timely manner.
Allen Hall: So these new materials can be applied with a robot, I just heard.
How does that work? Is it a cartridge system or a liquid system? How– Is it sprayed on? [00:17:00] W- how does this thing work?
Bret Tollgaard: Ultimately, it’s whatever that robotics company says that they would like and need. And so we build, uh, certain things to meet different demands on both of those aspects. But some are spray, some are coated, some are troweled, uh, all of which though, uh, include applying a UV cure material, uh, and then curing it to then make sure that they get the correct, uh, you know, mechanical and thermal properties for that leading edge or that leading edge re- rehabilitation.
Allen Hall: That must be a huge time saver.
Bret Tollgaard: Phenomenally so. Uh, the robotics companies are, are pretty happy with the way that things are starting to unfold, and then same with the, uh, owner-operators. Like when you can go and you can have a robot Fix, sand, or sand, clean, fill that leading edge without a technician having to be up there.
Tremendous amount of time savings, and then also just liability and repeatability, um, which is always an important thing, is having extremely high quality throughout that entire process, uh, and then recording it and everything like [00:18:00] that too.
Allen Hall: Well, that’s the key to any leading edge repair that I’ve seen, is the repeatability and controlling the, uh, sometimes the uncontrollables, trying to add a little bit of restriction about what you’re doing, how you’re doing it to get the consistency in the product.
Because there’s a lot of products on the market right now, uh, that supposedly will do this thing But there’s– we have seen a variety of outcomes even for the same material. C- moving to something that’s a little more standard and, and particularly UV-based, where it’s stable, shelf-stable, right? I mean, th-there’s no expiration date necessarily.
You, you probably put a time limit on it, but it’s shelf-stable, so I have a, a barrel of it in the, in the pickup truck. I can probably still use it. But, uh, what am I thinking about when I start to make those decisions? Because this is all new to most of the industry. They haven’t seen this. What– some of the things should they be considering when they’re thinking about, “I got a leading edge repair.[00:19:00]
It’s kinda ugly. It’s probably cat three, maybe cat four. Where am I going here? Who am I talking to, and why am I thinking about UV?”
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, I mean, ultimately it comes down to, you know, a variety of value that we provide the customers. Um, as you said, being shelf-stable is incredibly important. The reality is a lot of these repair materials aren’t being stored in a temperature-controlled warehouse.
It’s being stored in someone’s trailer, and they’re gonna use half of a cartridge, or they’re gonna use four prepregs, and they’re gonna have six more sitting on the shelf for two more months until they move to another job that they’re gonna go and do something else. And so the materials themselves need to have an incredibly long shelf life, but also be able to handle those varying temperatures.
Like if you’re out in the middle of Texas here in the United States, it can be 130, 140 degree Fahrenheit inside that trailer during the day, but at the same time at night, you can have temperatures below freezing in certain areas, and it needs to be able to withstand both of those extreme temperature environments.
Um, that being said, [00:20:00] you buy from a group like us or you buy it from Fibre Glast where it is stored properly, and it can be shipped next day to, to you on site. Uh, it simply, it, yeah, it simply helps, uh, everyone long term, uh, make sure that they have the materials that they need.
Allen Hall: I would be remiss not to talk about our Strike Tape Ultra product, which is a partnership between Weather Guard, Lightning Tech, and SunRez.
Uh, it’s a project that we’ve been working on for probably two years now, maybe a little bit longer. It, it’s been a tremendous amount of effort, engineering time and materials-wise, and learning about different, uh, performance of a, uh, particular resin system and trying to figure out what works. But, uh, there is now a solution, and SunRez is producing a lot of Strike Tape Ultra parts at the minute Really durable, based on Sunrise material, but you’re using not just our, our, our obviously our, our recent, uh, experiments and all the data, [00:21:00]but this goes back almost 40 years.
You’re, you’re bringing 40 years of knowledge to the table to come up with a solution for a really difficult environment.
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, and we’ve had to certainly rely on the past experiences that we have learned along the way. Um, you know, part of the challenges of working for the last year or two years together on this was to truly make as robust and durable of a system as we can.
And so having this new 7303 vinyl ester-based system, uh, which we’re not only using for you but also using as the primary component for our LEP system, uh, it definitely has the durability and the longevity for, uh, your strike tapes, uh, in particular to be, uh, to withstand all the elements and all the abrasion and all the erosion that’s gonna come its way for years.
Allen Hall: Now, I, I’ve watched you at trade shows take a hammer to some of your prepreg materials and demonstrate you can cure it within a couple of minutes, and you’re hitting it with a hammer and it’s super tough. We’ve done that at Weather Guard with the Strike Tape Ultra. It’s [00:22:00] crazy durable, and I don’t understand the chemistry of what you guys do.
You’re experts in UV and all the chemicals and how to make this thing work, but it is truly remarkable how tough that material is and UV stable it is and how quick it is to cure and to get onto a blade in a couple of minutes. It’s quite remarkable, and the, the rain erosion performance of it has been crazy good.
Uh, it’s a real game changer.
Bret Tollgaard: We’re extremely proud of the way that, uh, this has all kind of unfolded, and it has been a long time to kinda work through and iterate through the different formulas. Um, but the combination of the extremely hard and durable system that we have as the overcoating combined with our UV cure adhesive, AKA surface primer, uh, to act as that really, um, gooey, high elongation, great stress distribution kinda medium, uh, to then get that into the blade, it’s the perfect one-two combo, [00:23:00] and being able to cure in just a couple of minutes is only, uh, icing on the cake.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s quite good. Uh, I know, uh, when people hear this podcast, you’re gonna get a lot of reach-out because we’re kinda getting near the end of the typical Northern Hemisphere season. It’s gonna get chilly here in about six to eight weeks since when we’re recording. How do people get ahold of you and start talking about repair patches and materials for this year, and also for next season?
Bret Tollgaard: The easiest way is gonna be reach out to us, uh, via email, info@sunrez.com, sales@sunrez.com. We’ll put you in touch with, uh, all the right people within Sunrez to make that happen for you. Um, and similarly too, groups like com- uh, Fibre Glast have been stocking and storing the material for years. They’re really, really great at tailoring the exact amount of material that you need for a given job site.
They’re willing to break it down to individual patches, single things of primer, putty. Uh, you come to us, you’re gonna have larger MOQs to be able to buy [00:24:00] boxes and rolls, uh, directly off the shelf. But at the same time too, we’re happy to get customers whatever products they need as quickly as they need, and put them in touch with the right people to do so.
Allen Hall: So you just Google Sunrez, S-U-N-R-E-Z, or just go to sunrez.com, and you’ll get to the Sunrez site, and you can learn a whole bunch about the materials of what is offered. But you need to, to call Brett and call the team at Sunrez, uh, to, to get the solution for you. And it is, uh, really great working with Sunrez.
It, it’s been a pleasure, honestly.
Bret Tollgaard: My, uh, my business development manager, Gerhard, will certainly have me say, “Let’s direct all that to Gerhard instead of Brett.” So he’ll be happy to get you all the info that you need. Um, but yeah, so ultimately, we’re an extremely customer-driven company, and we bend over backwards as often as necessary to get customers what they need in the time that they need it.
It’s something that we really pride ourselves on. Uh, it’s also how we developed all these new, uh, technologies and materials to, to make customers’ [00:25:00]lives easier in the field. And so even as all of our wind portfolios, you know, grow and expands for product line offerings, um, we’re certainly interested in learning about what your challenge in particular is, and how we can best help you solve that challenge.
Allen Hall: Yeah, so if you have a blade challenge right now, and most operators do, you better be checking out sunrez.com. Brett, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast. Love having you on, and we’ll speak again soon.
Bret Tollgaard: Looking forward to it. Thank you, Allen.
https://weatherguardwind.com/sunrez-wind-om/
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Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
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Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
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Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
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Renewable Energy10 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
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Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
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Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits