Protecting GE 2.X Blades from lightning damage
GE 2.X blades are experiencing excessive lightning damage. We know why this is happening, and we detailed the issues in a recent article in PES Wind magazine. Unless you’re involved in turbine blade design, the more immediate concern is what to do about it.
Here’s what you need to know.
Cost-effective Protection Against Lightning Damage
GE 2.X blades are experiencing damage about 1 in 10 lightning strokes – that’s five times the “normal” levels defined in IEC. It’s happening for a number of reasons involving tip shape, high speed, leading edge erosion and some other factors.
Lightning damage costs money – and in addition to downtime and repairs, it’s often not covered by insurance.
StrikeTape protects blades by directing lightning safely to the blades’ existing receptors. When lightning strikes, the best-case scenario is that it hits the receptors; that’s how the design is supposed to work.
StrikeTape is cost-effective, simple and fast to install. This video describes the simple four-step process. One tech, on ropes, a platform or on the ground during component exchange, can add StrikeTape to a blade in a matter of minutes.
StrikeTape is protecting more than 16,000 blades worldwide. Learn more about it here, watch the video, or just contact us for a consultation and to order now.
Share this with your Technicians!
When they watch the video they’ll understand the installation process and then they can enter to win a Yeti cooler and some other cool swag.
Why the GE 2.X?
As I explained in the PES Wind article, my first career experience was working for GE, and this is not a personal knock on the blades. It’s a known problem with the 2.X blades as I and others in the field have noted, repeatedly, and operators in the US midwest and western states are experiencing especially high losses from damage.
In talking to those who have installed StrikeTape, the results are immediate and clear – fewer strikes, dramatically less downtime and damages.
The Bottom Line?
Watch the video. Enter to win the Yeti. Give us a call if you have questions. Order StrikeTape and protect your blades.
https://weatherguardwind.com/protecting-ge-2-x-blades-from-lightning-damage/
Seminal astrophysicist Carl Sagan explains why uncomfortable ideas may be banned in religion, they must not be shunned in science.
This is an important concept in American life today, as conspiracy theorists are convinced that climate change denial cannot be considered in scientific circles.
I happened to bring this up in my interview with Dr. V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution, who has been amassing data on global warming since the 1970s. He laughed, and explained, “If I could prove that human activity was not causing temperatures to rise, I’d be be one of the wealthiest and most famous scientists in world history.”
As suggested at left, a great deal of the hardship that has befallen the U.S. was simply bad luck. Al Gore came within a whisker of victory in 2000, a win that would have forever changed the course of our nation in terms of energy policy, education, healthcare, and international affairs.
If Bernie had become the 2016 nominee, we wouldn’t have had Hillary Clinton telling our country’s most mean-spirited and least-educated people that they were “deplorables,” ushering a criminal sociopath into the White House.
We Came Incredible Close to Averting the Disaster that Is Donald Trump
Social democracies are nations in which the tax base provides everyone with healthcare and education, and where the richest and most powerful people are not free to ruin the environment.
I run into someone from one of these counties a couple of times a month, and I like to ask why their people are consistently at the top of the World Happiness Rankings. The normal response is always some variant of the following:
It’s hard to be happy living in a society that is indifferent to the suffering of others. It’s part of the very nature of human beings to care about one another.
Something else I notice about these places is that very few people are religious. Sweden, e.g., is about 80% atheist.
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