Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Wind Tech Winter Survival Guide: Safety in Freezing Temps
This week we spoke to Alex Fournier, a field operations manager who works on wind turbines in frigid temperatures, about the safety precautions and practices technicians need when doing turbine maintenance and repairs in extreme cold. Recommendations such as heated gear, taking breaks to warm up, and using procedures to mitigate risks like icefalls are only a few ways that techs could keep safe in winter temperatures. Visit https://www.fabricair.com/ice-protection-systems/
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. In this episode, we explore the unique hazards faced by wind turbine technicians working to keep the turbine spinning during extreme cold weather events. As renewable energy expands, more wind farms are located in remote areas with harsh winter conditions, placing technicians at risk of frostbite, hypothermia, and injury.
Joining us to discuss cold weather safety is Alex Fournier, field operations manager at Borealis Wind, which is a division of FabricAir now. Alex is based in Quebec, Canada, and has been working in the wind industry for seven years. Alex will share his insights on the precautions technicians should take when performing maintenance and repairs in cold climates.
Alex, welcome to the program.
Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me today.
Allen Hall: So it’s been really cold in Canada and the United States. There’s been we’re expecting a snowstorm tonight. So we’re battening down the hatches. But as the wind turbines must keep running. And I was recently down in Texas when a cold front was coming on.
Coming through there and the technicians were really concerned about it because it’s something that doesn’t happen very often They’re not really prepared for the cold weather to stay any length of time And I thought Alex does this all the time. He lives in this kind of environment That’s my day today and with Borealis, Borealis obviously creates the de icing systems for wind turbine blades And so Alex is up and down on wind turbines all the time putting systems in and keeping blades Turning, I thought this is a good opportunity to talk about wind turbine safety and cold weather conditions and some of the things that you do and your technicians you work with to keep yourself safe in this cold weather conditions.
Because I’ll have to tell you one of the coldest times I was ever in was in Montreal, very near to you, actually.
Alex Fournier: Yeah the thing with Montreal is, oh, it’s an island, so it’s a circle of water. And so it’s really humid. So when you’re in the city, you can feel the humidity go through your clothes.
It’s so yeah, you don’t go in Montreal when it’s minus 30.
Allen Hall: No, and you better bring a hat and gloves because I thought I could make about a hundred yard run to the building I was working at from my car and I got about halfway there and I thought, I’m going to have hypothermia. I am not going to make it.
Alex Fournier: Oh yeah, no, it’s not not temperature you want to play around with.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Some of the gear that’s used up in Canada, and I’ve seen some pictures of technicians up in Canada, getting ready to go work on wind turbines. I think it’s really important that we all highlight what are those things are and the safety gear you guys take.
Cause I think the other thing about Canada is the location of the wind farms can be very remote. You’re out there by yourself.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. So most of the wind farm in Quebec they’re really isolated from the road or the cities. Some other some other province and Canada, the wind farm are closer to towns, but in Quebec, it’s really isolated.
So normally when you go to the turbine, you need to be prepared, and what I’ve seen recently, so props to Milwaukee, they started doing some heated clothes. So they do heated pants, heated coat, yeah, heated toque, heated glove, heated socks, heated boots even. So I think that’s really one of the key and we see it more and more technicians starting to equip themselves with it.
And we also see company that start buying that stuff to their technician, cause they don’t want to stop the work, even though the temperatures are really cold, right?
Joel Saxum: I’ll go give it one for the the rest of our listeners that may not know it. Okay. Cause I have my better half is Canadian. I’ve spent some time in Canada as well, but a toque.
It’s actually a warm winter hat. That’s what we would call like a be a beanie. Just so when you say two, I wanna make sure everybody knows what it is, but but the Milwaukee clothes, the one thing they’ve done it’s fantastic. So they can use the little drill batteries, actually like the little 12, 12 amp or 12 volt ones, and you plug it in, has a little pocket in the side.
The other cool thing they have is, and I don’t know about all of them, but some of them, like the jackets actually have a 12 volt plugin, so you can plug it into the truck while you’re in the truck and it will heat the jacket up. And then you unplug it, run out, do your work. You can get back in, plug it back in.
It’s like wearing a warm blanket. They’re pretty awesome.
Alex Fournier: Exactly. So I will say like an essential for a technician that work in the winter will be heated clothes or at least a good coverall. Me, I always wear coverall nice winter coverall. And also if they can eat something warm, so even a soup or even crock pot, they sell like a little pot that you can eat and warm up your food that will help you go through the day.
Joel Saxum: Not, this isn’t wind turbine specific, but I spent a lot of time up on the north slope of Alaska in the wintertime, and which is, it’s Arctic, right? The big thing up there, and of course, where wind turbines are, whether they’re in Quebec or Saskatchewan or North Dakota or Frickin Sweden or wherever else it is in the Arctic temperatures, we’re in wind.
It’s going to be windy. So all of those things, you want to protect yourself, right? So one of the, one of the concepts we always drilled home to people was, okay, there’s ambient temperature and then there’s the wind chill. Yeah, the wind chill. Yeah. And so ambient temperature, which is like the regular, Hey, it’s 20 below.
That affects everything material. So whether it’s a metal, or a car door, or ice, or whatever, that affects that. However, windchill only affects things that are living, that are organic. The wind has an effect on your hand, but does not have necessarily an effect on your hammer. So you want to make sure that everything that you have exposed to the wind is covered up in these windy areas.
If you’re out in the farm fields in Alberta, and you’re working wind turbines in the wintertime, Man, that wind is going to be blowing. So sometimes you want to wear face covering, make sure no, no skin, nothing down here under your eyes or anything like that is exposed because that’s when you can get frostbite real quick.
Alex Fournier: Oh yeah. And you have no choice. You’re going to work for, let’s say 10 to 12 hours of that turbine. You want to be warm. If you’re cold, what’s going to affect the cold really going to affect you because it’s going to affect you mentally too. And it’s going to exhaust you. Your body will become exhausted because it’s trying to warm up itself.
And also it can affect you mentally, because while you’re doing the work, you just want to be done because you’re cold, so that can be an effect of, working in cold weather is that it will affect also your job performance.
Joel Saxum: Do they regularly put out okay, here’s the windchill chart.
And when the temperatures are this much, this is when you must take warm up periods to warm up. And do they have policies for all that?
Alex Fournier: Yeah, so normally, especially in Quebec, I was on a site maybe two years ago, and I got to the site and it was minus 37 Celsius. So we got to the site, we assess the situation.
We’re like, Oh, it’s really cold outside. We’re really exposed to frostbite. And even it’s not going to make your day go easy. So do you actually have a charge, a chart and it’s maybe like you do 30 minutes of work and then you do 30 minutes of warm up. But normally when temperature are that cold, you’re going to wait until it drops under the 30 to start working again.
Joel Saxum: Another thing I was thinking, I’m thinking about here. So this was something that happened to us up in Alaska a lot. Certain tools that you use when you can use them inside or when it’s warm you can use just fine But when it’s cold you can’t like the one that always stuck up my mind was like zip ties, okay in a turbine You know There’s zip ties zipping wires together making you making sure everything looks neat and fancy if it’s 30 below a standard plastic zip Type just breaks like the tab just breaks off.
You don’t get to use it They make polar ones that have the little metal tab on them. And sometimes even those So it changes the way you do things.
Alex Fournier: I have a funny story. I was doing rope access in Montreal in my old days, and we had to install a banner on the crane just to promote like a project they were working on and it was during the winter.
So I was like, yeah, we’re just going to use zip tie, we’re going to zip tie it to the crane. And it will be perfect. So then we spend two hours with zip tying the big sign. And then we get to the ground and we look up and the sign is all off. We remove, cause it was so cold as zip tie snap in the wind.
So we looked at it and we’re like, okay, we went to Home Depot and we buy elastic and we put it back with elastic. But yeah we learned from that. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So what are some of the things you guys take on your truck? And I know a lot of times when you’re up that far north, you tend to plug your vehicles in to keep them warm, keep the oil warm so you can start them.
Alex Fournier: So some sites in Quebec, mostly they don’t plow the road. So the, they need to access with machinery. So some sites they will use snow cats some sites they will use side by side. So normally we use all that kind of stuff, but the essential really, I would say will be like coffee, warm clothes.
Charger for all your stuff. Cause even your phone up there, will die really quick. So you need the method of communication, either for your radio or your phone. We need, sometimes we need chain for the wheel. Because you can get stuck in the snow, right? So not only you deal, so people think that we’re usually dealing with ice, which is true, like we’re dealing with a lot of ice when we’re outside, but we’re also dealing with the cold weather, the snow and the wind, so you need to be prepared for all that kind of stuff.
Joel Saxum: Do they try to give you some kind of backup communications, right? If you’re normally on site, you have like a VHF radio in the vehicle and a cell phone and this just in case something happens.
Alex Fournier: Normally the radios, they’re charged every day. At the day, we charge our radio.
And we normally have three or four, depending on how many members we have in our team. So for all four radio to die at the same time, I think you need to stop the day there and go home. But yeah, normally we have enough communication, method to be able to talk to site especially with the phone or the radio.
Allen Hall: And for boots, what are you guys doing for boots? And to, are you doing like the yak tracks to add to boots so you get a little more grip when it does turn icy?
Alex Fournier: I know some sites they require ice not ice, but ice like a spike. So I was working on some site in the States and it was required to have some spike on your boots to be on site.
Just cause even at the OM yard, you can just slip and fall, so even the people in the office were wearing spike boots that I like, it’s the Geos or Neos boots. So it’s like a overboots so that will keep your feet warm because you’re not actually touching the surface of the you’re not touching the ground, you’re in your Neos, so the Neos touch the ground and keep your feet warm.
Or just a good winter boots. We’ll do the work.
Joel Saxum: Big old boot that, there’s a difference to that. People don’t think about because if you have an experience that you just don’t know, but when you’re standing on the cold metal stairs, grates or anything of the, of a turbine.
Your feet will get colder way faster than they will just standing on snow.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. And like I was saying, two years ago, I was in Minnesota working in the States and I was working with a lot of people from Texas in January. So they got sent to site and they didn’t really know, what to expect.
So me, I checked the weather before I came down there. So I was like, Oh, wow. It’s pretty close to Canada, so I bought, good boots, fiberglass toe. Because if you wear metal toe, it’s going to freeze up right away. So I bought good fiberglass toes, toe boots. I bought a big coat and I got there and I was ready, but I seen all these Texas people coming in with their stilto boots.
And the first minute they were outside, they were like, my feet are frozen. And I was like, yeah, it’s because you got still cap.
Joel Saxum: Here. I’ll give you, I’ll give you a South to North one. So while I was working on a project in Nenana, Alaska, one time outside of Fairbanks. And it was really remote.
This is an oil and gas thing. So every morning you woke up, you got in a helicopter, you flew over the mountain an hour, and you got dropped out in there, and we surveyed all day. And then they were drilling shot holes behind us for seismic exploration. And the drilling company, drillers for that kind of stuff are really hard to come by.
That is a very specific skill. And so they brought this drilling company out of Louisiana. To the middle of Alaska in February, and they showed up on site and they had, because they’re used to drilling in water, so they always wear like waiters and stuff. So these guys showed up, they were wearing waiters and like hooded sweatshirts and it was 40 below Fahrenheit.
The first day we couldn’t fly because it was 40 below is the cutoff for the collectives of the helicopter. To be able to be too cold to fly. So the first day we couldn’t fly. And all these guys, their eyes were this big. They just showed up from Louisiana what are we doing here? And they had to put them all in a bus and go to Fairbanks and buy them all.
Art, the Arctic Carhartt gear, right? Bibs and jackets and goggles, full face masks, all this stuff, because they were not prepared whatsoever.
Alex Fournier: So that’s what we ended up doing with the Texas people. We did the stop work, reassess, and we went to the store and we bought all the bibs and the big coat for them to be able to work.
It’s not some, it’s not something that someone will know if they don’t experience it, so it’s let’s say the wind farm in Texas that get, ice storm and then they’re stuck, their operation are all stuck because they don’t know what to do. It’s just they just don’t know, it’s not their fault, they just don’t experience it.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, there’s another thing that’s really important in the wintertime that I was taught from a young age, but grew up in northern Wisconsin, right? Same thing. Is layering. So layering it, cause if you go I’m gonna throw on as much clothes as I can to stay warm and you don’t walk around and you start sweating and all this stuff, then you get cold like that.
Then you’re done. If you start sweating, you’re screwed. So you wanna make sure that you got a good thin base layer and just kinda build that stuff up. It’s to, to mount, to be able to manage the heat within your body. Cause then you can take things off, take stuff on, whatever like that.
So if you don’t manage that heat and you get sweaty you’re in a world of hurt.
Alex Fournier: Exactly. And that’s an issue that we face in the wind industry. Cause that ladder, you still need to climb it. It’s not because it’s winter that you don’t climb the ladder. So when you get to climb the ladder, you need to remove some layers.
So when you climb, you’re not. Too warm. So when you get on top, you’re a little bit cold, but then you start layering back up. Exactly. So you don’t want to sweat while you climb because then you’re screwed.
Joel Saxum: Yep. Let me ask you this. Did you ever be up in a nacelle and it’s actually nice that the turbine is running because it creates a little bit of heat up there?
Alex Fournier: Yep. But normally when I go there, turbines are down. So I’m cold.
Joel Saxum: You’re not climbing during a snowstorm unless the turbine’s off.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. Because it’s actually like a rule in Quebec Don’t mark me on my word on that, but I think it’s actually a ruling in Quebec that tower, you cannot stop a tower in the winter if it doesn’t need to be stopped.
Cause that’s in the winter that we have the most wind production, like the wind is stronger in the winter, so they don’t want to stop tower if they’re not stopped. So normally when we go in towers, they’re pretty cold.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, cause they want to maintain the grid. That’s when you guys need the most power too is in the middle of winter.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. There’s some turbine model that they have heaters inside. We’re lucky enough that some of our clients have. Heaters and their turbines. So when we get up there, even if the turbine is stopped, we can start the heater and it’s Cancun in the cell. But we also have clients that don’t have any heating system.
And when we get up there, it’s just freezing cold.
Allen Hall: Are you allowed to take some heaters up there with you if they don’t have a heating system?
Alex Fournier: Yes, we do. But it’s going to be like a conventional house heater. So even if you put it like in the blade, it will make a little difference. We do it because when we eat, we like to be warm.
But even like putting that in the blade, it won’t change anything. I’m lucky enough because we work with the icing system, hot air de icing system, so we can start the system.
Joel Saxum: You just turn the Borealis system on, turn the heater on. Pull, yeah, pull the FabricAir thing off and let the heater just blow on you for a little bit.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, that’s how I eat my lunch, but no For real, when we, normally when we go in there we can start the system before, so when we go in the blade, it’s a little bit warmer. It doesn’t stay warm for hours, but it still give us a little push.
Joel Saxum: Let me ask you this one, this was a trick that we used to use.
So you take your Sammy Maker, Your nice sandwich at home or whatever the night before for your lunch or your soup or whatnot, but that sandwich you’d wrap in tinfoil. So when you got uptower.
Alex Fournier: Put it on the gearbox.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, put it on the gearbox, warm your sandwich up. Does that happen in the wind world?
Alex Fournier: Yeah, we still do that, yeah. We we actually bought the grill cheese maker last year. Heh. It seems stupid, but we bought a grill cheese maker and we just grill her sandwich and and the dinner lunchtime. So that make it more fun.
Joel Saxum: I learned that trick actually, when I was like 19 years old, I was working on a road crew in Chicago, Illinois and what they would do.
Is they would take, was it they’re pouring asphalt, right? So they take your sandwich and say, Hey, wrap that thing in five layers of tinfoil tomorrow. And they take a five gallon bucket and they put us a shovel full of asphalt in there and then put everybody’s sandwich and put another shovel on top.
Wait like 15 minutes, then take the asphalt out, unwrap your sandwiches and they’re all cooked.
Alex Fournier: That’s a good idea.
Joel Saxum: So let me ask a question about something turbine specific. Is there anything that you’ve seen in a turbine, whether it’s a. I don’t know, a cabinet latch or a climb assist or something that are like, man, it’s cold out.
Now we got to worry about this thing, right? Because it was, yeah, I’m thinking about mechanics wise, it was always like, when it got that cold where I’ve been, you don’t want to be cranking on, metal parts and stuff because they get brittle when it
gets that cold.
Alex Fournier: The 1 thing I can think about, it’s the 3s lift.
I know on the nuts, it’s right. If you work. Between these temperature that are low temperature, you need to work the lift before you use it. So make a couple of run and then you can use it just to warm it up. But obviously everything that is battery powered, your drill will, will give up after a couple of minutes.
Your climb assist can even give up after a couple of minutes. So everything really that have a battery, no good in the winter. If you use a lamp, bring extra battery with you because it won’t live forever. But yeah, everything that is mechanical, it’s more work in the winter, just because also you need to think about yourself, you all layer it up, so you’re just your movement are way harder than if it was summer.
Joel Saxum: So the whole crew though, all the technicians that got the spare batteries in their, in And inside their jacket and stuff, trying to keep them good.
We work with we work with Sikaflex and our method to warm it up is we put it in our bibs and we just carry it all day until we need to use it.
Allen Hall: Oh, wow. I wondered about adhesives because yeah, it’s so cold. I just don’t want to, don’t want to move.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, it’s crazy. I will say all. Everything that is fiberglass work, I would say take a break in the winter. Unless you really need to do it. I know some company they’re innovating right now. I seen Acura and they did a post on LinkedIn maybe two weeks ago.
And they’re using the SkyFlix platform with the heaters and the lamp and it’s all cover up, so they’re able to still do composite work in the winter. So a couple of company like this, they’re really innovating and trying to bring services all year round, which is exceptional.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that when we were, when we would run with any kind of adhesives or anything like that, it was like when you’re driving to site, it’s always, they’re up on the dash rate where the defroster is getting heat right on them. You get out, grab, stick them inside, and away you go.
Allen Hall: And wintertime, the days are short, right?
So when your time, especially when you’re up north where you are, and some of those wind farms, the days are really short. Do you have to be cautious about, hey, it’s getting dark outside, we got to get out of here? Are there rules about that? About being where it’s really cold, plus it’s being dark, and the temperature does drop some when the sun goes down, even on those northern latitudes.
Is there more things you have to worry about once the sun goes down?
Alex Fournier: Yeah, my personal advice is if you work in the winter, don’t try to push it just because, it’s cold, you’re tired, it get dark fast, yeah, normally you still try to go down when the sun go down, if that makes sense.
But I don’t think there’s actually a ruling, but yeah, when the sun goes down, you need to go down too, because it will get even colder too.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, and for people who don’t realize that or have been in the South, basically working on turbines, or even the South, really, to be honest with you, all the way up to the Dakotas and whatnot.
If you’re up in Quebec or northern Quebec, especially your day, your sunlight, good sunlight of the day can only be 9 to 3. Like you’re down to a 6 hours of sunlight.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you really need to be cautious too. And if I can tell a story too, we were in Quebec I think a year ago and it was in the morning.
And so we opened the snow cat and it starts snowing and we’re like, oh, it’s going to snow today, but we didn’t expect much snow. And then it was the end of the day around 8, 9, so it’s already dark. Then we get out and all our tracks are completely cover up. So we didn’t even we didn’t even know the road anymore, and it’s all like big ditch.
Joel Saxum: How to get back to the O&M building.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, so we had a guy outside just walking, trying to find like the deep spot. And yeah, we were with the snowcat. It was crazy, be cautious of the snow too, because when it starts snowing, you never know what’s going to happen. And it can be a couple of centimeters, but it can be two feet too.
Allen Hall: Yeah, how do you deal with that though? It does seem like the snowstorms come randomly at times. Do you carry GPS with you in some way? I guess your phone has GPS, but does it even work that far? Away from cell towers.
Alex Fournier: The good idea will have been to look at the weather channel before the start of the day, when you need to get some stuff done, that’s not the first thing you’re going to think about, you mostly think about work first in my case, so no, but yeah, having, let’s say like a good, a good part of the day, a plan of the day, assess all the risk in the morning.
And then you can do your work and, work in consequences. That will really be the key.
Allen Hall: Just to summarize, make sure you have extra gear, make sure of extra food. Don’t get wet and prepare for when it gets really cold. Yeah. And mind your batteries.
Alex Fournier: But there’s some of our client, the innovative solution to, like I said, we work with snow cat.
So that, that can pretty much get you anywhere you need to go. And they also have ice trailer. What is an ice trailer? It’s something you attach either on a truck or at a snowcat, and when you bring it to the tower, there’s actually like a platform that’s deploying so that will protect you from the ice falling too.
Oh, I didn’t, never heard of that. Yeah, so that, that helps the technicians to to work safe and even mitigate the ice risk. And even now, they created some trucks with platform on it that will protect you from the ice as well.
Joel Saxum: Okay, this is a, we’re going to talk about a risk that is specific to wind turbines, right?
You guys, Borealis, you’re in the icing space, like your friends, Ice Tech, that are up there as well, in that icing space, knowing when that’s going on. And getting, the blades getting covered with ice. We, I’ve been on insurance cases where they say, hey the turbine was spinning, a chunk of ice came off that was the size of the hood of a truck.
The next blade came, hit it, did a bunch of damage. Now we’re talking about the blades. But you guys are people standing under the turbines. How do you handle that risk?
Alex Fournier: Yeah, so first of all, I should say, get a de icing system, a Borealis Wind IPS system. But all joke aside, there’s mitigation. First of all, it’s to have a good procedure in place.
I think just with having a good procedure, all to work with ice risk is the key of it because often people, they’re a little bit hesitant, to work with ice because everyone know it’s a risk, right? Everyone across the industry know that ice is a risk. So when you tell it a technician to go work on a tower, that’s I stopped it.
They might be hesitant, but if you have a good procedure in place that explain all the risk and all to mitigate them. That would be the first step, having a good procedure, that would be the first step, just to eliminate all the hesitation from technician and really have a clear idea of what it is.
And the second step will be to get some medication tool. Like I said, a snow cat with an ice trailer that’s really helpful, because now, that you have the procedure and then you’re on top of that. You have, risk mitigation, you have material to mitigate it. That will really be the key to be able to work with the eyes is to get prepared, have the tooling and the procedure to prepare yourself to, to work with the eyes.
And on top of that, if you can have the icing system, obviously that will work too.
Allen Hall: That’s a really serious problem to deal with though. It does seem the icefalls could instantaneously kill you, leave you stranded, or leave you stranded out there, seriously hurt.
Alex Fournier: Yeah, it’s, you don’t want to play around with that, and, there’s certain situation, if you see that it’s super sunny outside, and you see the ice shed, obviously don’t go there.
It’s the first step, and no one will be, no one will be mad because you do a stuff work that’s, you don’t play around with safety. There’s still some way to be able to work even though there’s ice, even if you don’t have a snowcat or ice trailer, if you follow a good procedure, there’s some case that it’s going to be minus four with a big sun shining, obviously some pieces of ice will shed, because it will melt.
But if it’s minus 20 outside, not sunny, and you’re able to yaw the tower away from the door. At temperature around minus 20, minus 15, the ice doesn’t shed. It’s pretty, stuck on the blade. You can do you can do break tests. People do that though. They will spin the rotor, do a brake test, see if the ice shed normally if the ice doesn’t shed, the temperature is super low, and you can yaw away from the tower and the wind is in the, another direction, then I will say it’s safe to access the turbine but yeah, in some cases, it’s just Not workable if you don’t have the good tool.
Allen Hall: I’ve learned a tremendous amount here, Alex. I had no idea of all the techniques and pieces of equipment you take to, to keep yourself safe while working on wind turbines when it’s cold outside, this is fascinating to hear.
Alex Fournier: But like I said, us, we’re used to it cause we’re from, we’re from Nordic province and it’s, we need to deal with it day to day.
So it will be a shame if every day we will not be able to work because of the ice. So people with good idea came in and, that’s how we’re able to work and innovate the industry.
Allen Hall: So if I’m down in Texas and I’m in the middle of an ice storm and I want to get ahold of you, Alex, how do I get some advice from you about how to work in cold climates?
Where do I go?
Alex Fournier: Really I suggest that every, service company or, energy provider to really dig into it and just make clear procedure for all their worker. That will be the best bet I can give them. Cause like I said, with a clear procedure, you educate your worker too, and you ensure that they’re safe to work.
Allen Hall: If you’re on the web, you might as well check out Borealis Wind. Because they have a really cool deicing system.
Alex Fournier: borealiswind.com. We can, so scrap all the podcasts, just go on the website and use our solution and you will be set.
Allen Hall: Alex, thanks for appearing on the program. We love hearing all this good stuff and we’ll see you at some of the trade shows this month.
Alex Fournier: So myself, Alexander, will be in Quebec at the IQPR conferences to talk about deicing. My buddy, Wade Coulis, our sales manager will be at Blades USA and me and him will be at, in San Diego next week at the OMS safety summit. And Daniel Roper will be at Winter Wind and we will be in Minneapolis for the ACP trade show also.
Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s great. Alex, so much for being on the program.
Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me and I wish you all a good day.
If you own or manage a commercial property in Australia right now, energy costs are probably already giving you a headache.
Power prices jump around, demand charges can be high, and tenants are asking tougher questions about sustainability and operating costs.
That’s why solar paired with battery storage has moved far beyond a nice idea. For most of the Australian businesses, it’s now a practical, commercial decision.
Wandering what’s more?
Well, in businesses, solar and batteries aren’t just about cutting emissions; they also protect cash flow, improve property value, and give businesses greater control in an ever-changing energy system.
So, now let’s walk through how it all works, what incentives are available, and why more Australian businesses are making the move now in 2026!
In this blog post:
-
Why Solar & Batteries Matter for Australian Commercial Properties?
-
Government Rebates & Incentives for Solar: 2026 Updates!
-
How to Choose the Right Solar & Battery System for Your Commercial Property?
-
Commercial Solar in 2026: What the Financial Returns Look Like
-
Solar Panel Policies & Market Trends| What to Watch!
-
Future Growth Forecast for Commercial Solar in 2030: What’s Next!
-
Final Thought | Why 2026 Is the Year to Act?
Why Solar & Batteries Matter for Australian Commercial Properties?
Commercial energy use is big and often expensive. Every day, offices, retail stores, manufacturing facilities, and warehouses consume large amounts of electricity during daylight and after dark.
Traditionally, businesses pay peak rates for grid energy during working hours, and then again for nighttime power. That’s where solar plus storage flips the script:
Solar Panels: Cutting Your Daytime Costs
Solar PV systems convert sunlight into electricity. In Australia’s abundant sun-rich climate, rooftop solar is a no-brainer:
- Australia has among the highest rooftop solar penetration in the world, and commercial rooftops have huge capacity for panels.
- Solar reduces dependency on the grid during peak rates, ensuring immediate savings on energy bills.
Battery Storage: Power After the Sun Goes Down!
Solar alone is great, but what if your business still needs power at night? So here comes the power of battery storage.
Batteries store surplus solar power generated throughout the day and discharge it when you need it most, such as during evening peak times or during grid outages.
For many commercial setups, having battery storage means:
- Lower peak demand charges.
- Backup power resilience during blackouts.
- More control over energy usage patterns.
Solar panels combined with solar storage can transform a commercial property from a passive energy consumer into an active energy optimiser.
Government Rebates & Incentives for Solar: 2026 Updates!
In Australia, government rebates and
incentives in 2026 are strengthening the business case for commercial solar and battery systems.
The federal government has dramatically expanded support, making it a particularly compelling time for businesses to
act.
1. Renewable Energy Rebates Under Small-Scale Technology Certificates
Both solar panels and battery storage systems qualify for Small-scale
Technology Certificates (STCs). These certificates are tradable, that translate into a direct upfront
discount on installation costs:
- Batteries earn STCs based on their usable capacity, and these are typically applied as an instant point-of-sale
discount via your installer. - Solar PV systems also attract STCs, which substantially reduce the net price.
2. Cheaper Home Batteries Program Extended to Businesses
Since 1 July 2025, the federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program has been
offering significant battery rebates and, importantly, businesses can access benefits too.
Key points:
- Eligible batteries installed alongside solar PV systems receive STC-based rebates.
- For 2026:
Batteries installed before 1 May 2026 have a higher STC factor (a higher rebate per kWh).
From 1 May 2026, the rebate is tiered by battery size, with higher support for the first 14kWh and gradually less
for
larger capacities.
- The program runs until 2030, but rebate amounts decrease each year. This means the earlier you install, the more
you benefit.
The federal rebate is available to commercial
properties as long as the system meets eligibility requirements.
3. State-Based Rebates & Incentives
State-level
incentives can stack on top of federal support, giving commercial properties even more value:
- NSW Peak Demand Reduction Scheme (PDRS) offers additional battery rebates and VPP connection bonus payments.
- Victoria’s Business Renewables Fund and other local programs support larger solar and storage projects.
- Queensland offers interest-free loans and targeted incentives.
- South Australia’s Home Battery Scheme provides rebates for battery installations tied to smart energy networks.
However, these vary greatly by region, so businesses should talk with accredited installers and local energy agencies
to understand stacking opportunities.
4. Tax & Depreciation Benefits
Beyond rebates, commercial solar and storage investments can be tax-effective:
- Immediate or accelerated depreciation on assets (subject to ATO rules) can produce valuable upfront tax
deductions. - Solar + battery systems are treated as capital assets, which can accelerate the return on investment.
How to Choose the Right Solar & Battery System for Your Commercial Property?
Choosing the
right system isn’t one-size-fits-all. Here’s a step-by-step guide for sizing and designing what you need.
Step 1: Energy Audit
Start with a detailed energy audit to understand daily and seasonal load patterns. This informs:
- How much solar capacity do you need
- What battery size makes sense for backup power
For instance, if you have a warehouse with high daytime loads, you might prioritise solar capacity. For an office
that uses power after hours, a larger battery makes more sense.
Step 2: Solar Panel Selection
Commercial systems range from tens to hundreds of kilowatts (kW). System options:
- 20–100 kW rooftop systems for small-medium businesses
- 100 kW and beyond for large facilities or multi-site portfolios
Larger arrays often qualify for LGCs (Large-scale Generation Certificates) if they exceed the STC threshold, which is
another way to reduce costs.
Step 3: Battery Sizing
Battery capacity is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). So, ask yourself:
- Do you want to reduce peak demand charges?
- Do you want emergency backup?
- How many hours of stored power do you need?
A battery that is about 20–50% of peak demand can deliver strong savings, but your energy audit will help refine this
estimate.
Smart Management & VPP Integration
Did you know that nowadays most modern batteries are VPP-capable? This means they can join the Virtual Power Plant
network
This connection allows aggregated batteries to transmit stored energy into the grid at peak times for added value,
often with payments from network operators or utilities.
Also look for:
- Energy management software to optimise usage.
- Time-of-use tariff compatibility to shift power consumption into cheaper periods.
Commercial Solar in 2026: What the Financial Returns Look Like
Undoubtedly, commercial solar with battery storage isn’t just a green, sustainable solution; it’s financially savvy.
How? Let’s find out!
Reduced Energy Bills
Solar power offsets expensive grid power during daylight. Add batteries, and you reduce:
- Peak demand charges
- Night-time grid consumption
Savings vary by site, but on average, many businesses report reductions of 20–50% or more in annual energy spend.
Rebate Impact
Solar STCs can knock thousands off upfront costs. Battery rebates, especially in early 2026, are significant.
An 10kWh commercial battery could attract several thousand dollars in rebate support alone.
Payback Period
For many commercial setups, payback periods of 3 to 7 years are achievable, and tax benefits can further improve them.
In Australia, major tenants also value energy-independent buildings, supporting higher rental premiums.
Solar Panel Policies & Market Trends| What to Watch!
Honestly, understanding government policies and trends in the Australian energy market isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. It takes proper time and research to find your exact match.
So, here are key trends and cautions you should take into account while planning to install solar and battery storage in your property:
Rebate Step-Downs
Rebate values decrease every year through to 2030. Therefore, later installs receive less government support than earlier ones. So, timing matters; act fast.
Feed-In Tariffs Are Evolving
In Australia, state feed-in tariffs for exported solar vary widely and are under review.
In some states, such as Victoria, midday solar export credits have been proposed to drop sharply, making batteries for storing and using your own power even more valuable.
Installer Accreditation
To claim rebates, systems must be installed by accredited professionals and use certified equipment. This ensures compliance and warranty security.
Future Growth Forecast for Commercial Solar in 2030: What’s Next!
Australia’s energy landscape is changing fast. More renewables are coming onto the grid, batteries are becoming essential for keeping the system stable, and policymakers and market operators are rolling out new ways for distributed energy resources (DERs) to create value.
Therefore, solar paired with batteries is no longer just about generating power; it’s increasingly seen as a flexible asset that can support the grid when it’s needed most.
At the same time, commercial microgrids are gaining traction, with groups of buildings sharing solar and storage to boost reliability, cut energy costs, and better manage peak demand.
Taken together, these shifts are making commercial solar more valuable than ever, cementing its role as a key part of Australia’s move toward a smarter, more decentralised, and low-carbon energy system by 2030.
Final Thought | Why 2026 Is the Year to Act?
If you’re a commercial property owner, don’t worry much! In Australia in 2026, solar and battery storage isn’t just a sustainability project; it’s a strategic investment.
Also, with current government rebates, state incentives, and tax benefits, you can dramatically lower upfront costs while future-proofing your energy usage.
Plus, as grid export tariffs evolve and demand charges climb, the economics of self-generated and self-stored power only get stronger.
This is the moment when smart businesses make the leap not just to cut costs, but to take control of their energy future.
Wanna join this energy revolution? Contact Cyanergy, your most trusted partner, and win a free solar quote today!
Your Solution Is Just a Click Away
The post A Guide for Solar & Battery Storage for Commercial Properties appeared first on Cyanergy.
A Guide for Solar & Battery Storage for Commercial Properties
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Morten Handberg Breaks Down Leading Edge Erosion
Morten Handberg, Uptime’s blade whisperer, returns to the show to tackle leading edge erosion. He covers the fatigue physics behind rain erosion, why OEMs offer no warranty coverage for it, how operators should time repairs before costs multiply, and what LEP solutions are working in the field.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter 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 YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. 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: Morten, welcome back to the program.
Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back on on, on the podcast. Really excited to, uh, record an episode on Erosion Today.
Allen Hall: Wow. Leading as erosion is such a huge worldwide issue and. Operators are having big problems with it right now. It does seem like there’s not a lot of information readily available to operators to understand the issue quite yet.
Morten Handberg: Well, it, I mean, it’s something that we’ve been looking at for the, at least the past 10 years. We started looking at it when I was in in DONG or as it back in 2014. But we also saw it very early on because we were in offshore environment, much harsher. Uh, rain erosion conditions, and you were also starting to change the way that the, the, uh, the coatings [00:01:00]that were applied.
So there was sort of a, there was several things at play that meant that we saw very early on, early on offshore.
Allen Hall: Well, let’s get to the basics of rain erosion and leading edge erosion. What is the physics behind it? What, what happens to the leading edges of these blades as rain? Impacts them.
Morten Handberg: Well, you should see it as um, millions of, of small fat, uh, small fatigue loads on the coating because each raindrop, it creates a small impact load on the blade.
It creates a rail wave that sort of creates a. Uh, share, share loads out on, uh, into the coating that is then absorbed by the coating, by the filler and and so on. And the more absorbent that your substrate is, the longer survivability you, you’re leading into coating will have, uh, if you have manufacturing defects in the coating, that will accelerate the erosion.
But it is a fatigue effect that is then accelerated or decelerate depending on, uh, local blade conditions.
Allen Hall: Yeah, what I’ve seen in the [00:02:00] field is the blades look great. Nothing. Nothing. You don’t see anything happening and then all of a sudden it’s like instantaneous, like a fatigue failure.
Morten Handberg: I mean, a lot of things is going on.
Uh, actually you start out by, uh, by having it’s, they call, it’s called mass loss and it’s actually where the erosion is starting to change the material characteristics of the coating. And that is just the first step. So you don’t see that. You can measure it in a, um, in the laboratory setting, you can actually see that there is a changing in, in the coating condition.
You just can’t see it yet. Then you start to get pitting, and that is these very, very, very small, almost microscopic chippings of the coating. They will then accelerate and then you start to actually see the first sign, which is like a slight, a braided surface. It’s like someone took a, a fine grain sandpaper across the surface of the plate, but you only see it on the leading edge.
If it’s erosion, it’s only on the center of the leading edge. That’s very important. If you see it on the sides and further down, then it’s, it’s [00:03:00] something else. Uh, it’s not pure erosion, but then you see this fine grain. Then as that progresses, you see more and more and more chipping, more and more degradation across the, the leading edge of the blade.
Worse in the tip of it, less so into the inner third of the blade, but it is a gradual process that you see over the leading edge. Finally, you’ll then start to see the, uh, the coating coming off and you’ll start to see exposed laminate. Um, and from there it can, it can accelerate or exposed filler or laminate.
From there, it can accelerate because. Neither of those are actually designed to handle any kind of erosion.
Allen Hall: What are the critical variables in relation to leading edge erosion? Which variables seem to matter most? Is it raindrop size? Is it tip speed? What factors should we be looking for?
Morten Handberg: Tip speeds and rain intensity.
Uh, obviously droplet size have an impact, but. But what is an operator you can actually see and monitor for is, well, you know, your tip speed of the blade that matters. Uh, but it is really the rain intensity. So if you have [00:04:00] sort of a, an average drizzle over the year, that’s a much better condition than if you have like, you know, showers in, in, in, in a, in a few hour sessions at certain points of time.
Because then, then it becomes an aggressive erosion. It’s not, it’s, you don’t, you get much higher up on the. On the, on the fatigue curve, uh, then if it’s just an average baseline load over long periods of time,
Allen Hall: yeah, that fatigue curve really does matter. And today we’re looking at what generally is called VN curves, velocity versus number of impacts, and.
The rain erosion facilities I’ve seen, I’ve been able to, to give some parameters to, uh, provide a baseline or a comparison between different kinds of coatings. Is is that the, the standard as everybody sees it today, the sort of the VN curve
Morten Handberg: that is what’s been developed by this scientific, uh, community, these VN curve, that that gives you some level of measure.
I would still say, you know, from what we can do in a rain erosion tester to what is then actually going on [00:05:00] the field is still very two very, very, very different things you can say. If you can survive a thousand hours in a rain erosion tester, then it’s the similar in the field that doesn’t really work like that.
But there are comparisons so you can do, you know, uh, a relationship study, uh, between them. And you can use the VN curves to determine the ERO erosion aggressiveness. Field. We did that in the bait defect forecasting that we did in wind pile up with DCU back in 2019, uh, where we actually looked at rain erosion across Europe.
Uh, and then the, uh, the actual erosion propagation that we saw within these different sites, both for offshore and for onshore, where we actually mapped out, um, across Europe, you know, which areas will be the most erosion prone. And then utilize that to, to then mo then, then to determine what would be the red, the best maintenance strategy and also, uh, erosion, uh, LEP, uh, solution for that wind farm.
Allen Hall: Oh, okay. Uh, is it raindrop size then, or just [00:06:00] quantity of raindrops? Obviously drizzle has smaller impact. There’s less mass there, but larger raindrops, more frequent rain.
Morten Handberg: If you have showers, it tends to be larger drops. Right. So, so they kind of follow each other. And if it’s more of a drizzle. It will be smaller raindrops.
They typically follow each other. You know, if you’ve been outside in a rainstorm before we just showered, you would have sense that these are, these are much higher, you know, raindrop sizes. So, so there is typically an a relation between raindrop size and then showers versus a drizzle. It’s typically more fine, fine grain rain drops.
Allen Hall: And what impact does dirt and debris mixed in with the rain, uh, affect leading edge erosion? I know a lot of, there’s a lot of concern. And farm fields and places where there’s a lot of plowing and turnover of the dirt that it, it, it does seem like there’s more leading edge erosion and I, I think there’s a little bit of an unknown about it, uh, just because they see leading edge [00:07:00]erosion close to these areas where there’s a lot of tilling going on.
Is it just dirt impact worth a blade or is it a combination of dirt plus rain and, and those two come combining together to make a worse case. Uh, damage scenario.
Morten Handberg: Technically it would be slightly worse than if it were, if there is some soil or, or sand, or sand contamination in the raindrops. But I mean, logically rain typically, you know, comes down from the sky.
It doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t mix in with the dirt then, you know, it would be more if you have dirt on the blades. It’s typically during a dry season where it would get mixed up and then blown onto the blades. Honestly, I don’t think that that is really what’s having an impact, because having contamination in the blade is not something that is, that would drive erosion.
I think that that is, I think that is, that is a misunderstanding. We do see sand, sand erosion in some part of the world where you have massive, uh, sand, uh, how do you say, sandstorms [00:08:00] coming through and, and that actually creates an, an abrasive wear on the plate. It looks different from rain erosion because it’s two different mechanisms.
Uh, where the sand is actually like a sandpaper just blowing across the surface, so you can see that. Whereas rain is more of this fatigue effect. So I think in the, theoretically if you had soil mixed in with rain, yes that could have an impact because you would have an a, a hardened particle. But I do, I don’t think it’s what’s driving erosion, to be honest.
Allen Hall: Okay, so then there’s really two different kinds of failure modes. A particle erosion, which is more of an abrasive erosion, which I would assume be a maybe a little wider, spread along the leading edge of the blade versus a fatigue impact from a raindrop collision. They just look different, right?
Morten Handberg: Yeah, so, so sand erosion you could have spreading across a larger surface of the blade because it, because it doesn’t bounce off in the same way that a raindrop would, you know, because that’s more of an impact angle and the load that it’s applying.
So if it comes in at a, at a st [00:09:00] at a, um, at the, at the, at a, at a steep angle, then it would just bounce off because the amount of load that it’s impacting on would be very limited. So that’s also why we don’t really see it on the, um, uh, outside of the leading edge. Whereas sand erosion would have a, would, would have a different effect because even at a steep angle, it would still, you know, create some kind of wear because of the hardened particle and the effect of that.
Allen Hall: Okay. So let’s talk about incubation period, because I’ve seen a lot of literature. Talking about incubation period and, and what that means. What does incubation period mean on a leading edge coating?
Morten Handberg: So that is, that, that is from when you start having the first impacts until you get the, the, the change in structure.
So when you get to the mass loss or first pitting, that would be your incubation period, because that is from when it starts until you can see the actual effects. Would say that, that that is what would be defined as the incubation period of leading into erosion.
Allen Hall: Okay. So you wanna then maximize the incubation period where the coating still looks mostly pristine [00:10:00] once incubation period is over and you get into the coating.
Are there different rates at which the coatings will deteriorate, or are they all pretty much deteriorating at roughly the same rate?
Morten Handberg: I mean, for the really high durability. We don’t really have good enough data to say anything about whether the, um, the, the period after the incubation period, whether that would actually, how that would work in the field.
We don’t really know that yet. I would say, because the, um, some of the, the shell solutions, some of the high end polyurethane coatings, if they fail, typically it’s because of workmanship. Or adhesion issues. It’s has so far not really been tied in directly in, into leading edge erosion. Uh, the ones that I’ve seen, so typically, and, and, you know, all of these high-end coatings, they’re just, they, they have shown, you know, some of them you couldn’t even wear down in a rain erosion tester.
Um, so, so we don’t really know. Um, how, [00:11:00] how the, how the shells, they would, they, they, they, they, how they would react over the five, 10 year period because we haven’t seen that much yet. And what we have seen have been more of a mechanical failure in, in the bonding
Allen Hall: that, I guess that makes sense. Then operators are still buying wind turbine blades without any leading edge coating at all.
It is basically a painted piece of fiberglass structure. Is that still advisable today or are there places where you could just get away with that? Or is that just not reality because of the tip speeds?
Morten Handberg: For the larger, I would say anything beyond two megawatt turbines, you should have leading edge protection because you’re at tip speeds where, you know, any kind of rain would create erosion within, um, within the lifetime of the late.
That is just a fact. Um, so. I don’t, I don’t see any real areas of the world where that would not apply. And if it, if you are in a place where it’s really dry, then it would typically also mean that then you would have sand erosion. Is that, that, [00:12:00] that would, I would expect that it would be one of the two.
You wouldn’t be in an area where it couldn’t get any kind of erosion to the blades. Um, so either you should have either a very tough gel code, um, coating, or you should have have an LEP per urethane based coating. On the blades,
Allen Hall: well do the manufacturers provide data on the leading edge offerings, on the coatings, or even the harder plastic shells or shields.
Does, is there any information? If I’m an operator and I’m buying a a three megawatt turbine that comes along with the blade that says, this is the li, this is the estimated lifetime, is that a thing right now? Or is it just We’re putting on a coating and we are hoping for the best?
Morten Handberg: The OEMs, as far as I, I haven’t seen any.
Any contract or agreement where today, where erosion is not considered a wear and tear issue, there is simply no, no coverage for it. So if you buy a turbine and there’s any kind of leading [00:13:00] edge erosion outside of the end of warranty period, it’s your your problem. There is no guarantee on that.
Allen Hall: So the operator is at risk,
Morten Handberg: well, they’re at risk and if they don’t take matters into their own hands and make decisions on their own.
But they would still be locked in because within the warranty period, they will still be tied to the OEM and the decisions that they make. And if they have a service agreement with the OEM, then they would also be tied in with what the OEM provides.
Allen Hall: So that does place a lot of the burden on the owner operator to understand the effects of rate erosion, particularly at the at a new site if they don’t have any history on it at all.
To then try to identify a, a coating or some sort of protecting device to prevent leading edge erosion. ’cause at the end of the day, it does sound like the operator owner is gonna be responsible for fixing it and keeping the blades, uh, in some aerodynamic shape. That that’s, that’s a big hurdle for a lot of operators.
Morten Handberg: The problem is that if you have a service [00:14:00]contract, but you are depending on the OEM, providing that service. Then you have to be really certain that any leading edge erosion or anywhere on the leading edge is then covered by that contract. Otherwise, you’re in, you’re in a really bad, you’re in a really risky situation because you can’t do anything on your own.
Because if you’re a service contract, but you’re beholden to whatever the, your service provider is, is, is agreeing to providing to you. So you might not get the best service.
Allen Hall: And what are the risks of this? Uh, obviously there can be some structural issues. Particularly around the tips of the blaze, but that’s also power loss.
What are typical power loss numbers?
Morten Handberg: Well, there is a theoretically theoretical power loss to it, but for any modern turbine, the blade, the, the turbine would simply regulate itself out of any leading erosion loss. So, so the blades would just change their behavior that the turbine would just change, its its operation [00:15:00]conditions so that it would achieve the same lift to the blade.
So. Uh, any study that we have done or been a part of, uh, even, you know, comparing blades that were repaired, blades that were cleaned, blades that were, uh, left eroded, and then operating the, uh, the deviation was within half, half percent and that was within the margin of error. We couldn’t read, we couldn’t see it even for really, you know, really er road blades.
Of course there is different between turbines. Some turbines, they, they could show it, but I haven’t seen any data that suggests that erosion actually leads to a lot of power loss. There is a theoretical loss because there is a loss in aerodynamic performance, but because blades today they’re pitch controlled, then you can, you can regulate yourself out of that.
Some of that, uh, power laws,
Allen Hall: so the control laws in the turbine. Would know what the wind speeds are and what their power output should be, and it’ll adjust the [00:16:00]pitch of each of the blades sort of independently to, to drive the power output.
Morten Handberg: Typically, erosion is a uniform issue, so what happens on one blade happens on three.
So it’s rare to see that one blade is just completely erod in the two other they look fine. That’s really rare unless you start, you know, doing uh, abnormal repairs on them. Then you might get something. But even then, I mean, we’re not talking, you know, 10 per 10 degrees in, in variation. You know, it’s not, it’s not anything like that.
It’s very small changes. And if they would do a lot of weird DA, you know, uh, different angles, you would get instant imbalance and then, you know, you would get scatter alarm. So, so you would see that quite fast.
Allen Hall: Well, let me, let me just understand this just a little bit. So what the control logs would do would increase the pitch angle of the blaze, be a little more aggressive.
On power production to bring the power production up. If leading edge erosion was knocking it down a percentage point or two, does that have a consequence? Are like when you [00:17:00] start pitching the blades at slightly different angles, does that increase the area where rain erosion will occur? Is like, are you just.
Keep chasing this dragon by doing that,
Morten Handberg: you could change the area a little bit, but it’s not, it’s not something that, that changes the erosion, uh, that the erosion zone, that that much. It’s very minimal. Um, and one, one of the, another, another reason why, why you might see it might, might not see it as much is because voltage generator panels is widely used in the industry today.
And, and Vortex panel, they are. Uh, negating some of the negative effect from, uh, leading erosion. So that also adds to the effect that there, that the aerodynamic effect of leading erosion is limited, uh, compared to what we’ve seen in the past.
Allen Hall: Okay. So there’s a couple manufacturers that do use vortex generators around the tip, around the leading edge erosion areas right outta the factory, and then there’s other OEMs that don’t do that at all.
Is, is there a benefit to [00:18:00] having the VGs. Right out of the factory. Is that, is that just to, uh, as you think about the power output of the generator over time, like, this is gonna gimme a longer time before I have to do anything. Is, is in terms of repair,
Morten Handberg: it does help you if you have contamination of the blade.
It does help you if you have surface defects off the blade. That, that any, uh, any change to the air, to the aerodynamics is, is reduced and that’s really important if you have an optimized blade. Then the negative effect of leading erosion might get, uh, you know, might, might, might get, might get affected.
But there are, there are still reasons why I do want to do leading erosion repairs. You should do that anyway, even if you can’t see it on your power curve or not, because if you wait too long, you’ll start to get structural damages to the blade. As we talked about last time. It’s not that leading edge erosion will turn into a critical damage right away, but if you need, if you go into structural erosion, then the, then the cost of damage.
The cost of repairing the damage will multiply. Uh, [00:19:00] and at, at a certain point, you know, you will get a re structure. It might not make the blade, you know, uh, cost a, a condition where the blade could collapse or you’re at risk, but you do get a weakened blade that is then susceptible to damage from other sources.
Like if you have a lighting strike damage or you have a heavy storm or something like that, then that can accelerate the damage, turning it into a critical damage. So you should still keep your leading edge in, in shape. If you want to do to, to minimize your cost, you should still repair it before it becomes structural.
Allen Hall: Okay. So the blades I have seen where they actually have holes in the leading edge, that’s a big problem just because of contamination and water ingress and yeah, lightning obviously be another one. So that should be repaired immediately. Is is that the, do we treat it like a cat four or cat five when that happens?
Or how, what? How are we thinking about that?
Morten Handberg: Maximum cat, cat four, even, even in those circumstances because it is a, it is a severe issue, but it’s not critical on, on its own. So I would not treat it as a cat five where you need to stop [00:20:00] the turbine, stuff like that. Of course, you do want, you don’t want to say, okay, let’s wait on, let’s wait for a year or so before we repair it.
You know, do plan, you know, with some urgency to get it fixed, but it’s not something where you need to, you know, stubble works and then get that done. You know, the blade can survive it for, for a period of time, but you’re just. Susceptible to other risks, I would say.
Allen Hall: Alright. So in in today’s world, there’s a lot of options, uh, to select from in terms of leading edge protection.
What are some of the leading candidates? What, what are some of the things that are actually working out in the field?
Morten Handberg: What we typically do, uh, when we’re looking at leading edge erosion, we’re looking at the, the raw data from the wind farm. Seeing how, how bad is it and how long have the wind farm been operated without being repaired?
So we get a sense of the aggressiveness of the erosion and. Um, if we have reliable weather data, we can also do some modeling to see, okay, what is the, what is the, the, uh, environmental conditions? Also, just to get a sense, is this [00:21:00] material driven fatigue or is it actually rain erosion driven fatigue?
Because if the, if the coating quality was not, was not very good, if the former lead leading edge, it was not applied very, very, very good, then, you know, you still get erosion really fast. You get surface defects that, uh, that trigger erosion. So that’s very important to, to, to have a look at. But then when we’ve established that, then we look at, okay, where do we have the, the, the, uh, the structural erosion zone?
So that means in what, in what part of the BA would you be at risk of getting structural damage? That’s the part where that you want to protect at all costs. And in that, I would look at either shell solution or high duty, um, put urethane coating something that has a a long durability. But then you also need to look at, depending on whether you want to go for coating or shell, you need to look at what is your environmental condition, what is your, you know, yeah.
Your environmental conditions, because you also wanna apply it without it falling off again. Uh, and if you have issues with [00:22:00] high humidity, high temperatures, uh, then a lot of the coatings will be really difficult to process or, you know, to, to. Uh, to handle in the field. And, you know, and if you don’t, if you don’t get that right, then you just might end up with a lot of peeling coating or uh, peeling shells.
Um, so it’s very important to understand what is your environmental conditions that you’re trying to do repairs in. And that’s also why we try not to recommend, uh, these shell repairs over the entire, out a third of the blade. Because you’re, you’re just putting up a lot of risk for, for, uh, for detaching blades if you put on too high, um, uh, how do you say, high height, sea of solutions.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So I, I guess it does matter how much of the blade you’re gonna cover. Is there a general rule of thumb? Like are we covering the outer 10%, outer 20%? What is the. What is that rule of thumb?
Morten Handberg: Typically, you know, you, you get a long way by somewhere between the outer four to six meters. Um, so that would [00:23:00]probably equivalate to the, out of the outer third.
That would likely be something between the outer 10 to 15 to 20% at max. Um, but, but it is, I, I mean, instead of looking at a percentage, I usually look at, okay, what can we see from the data? What does that tell us? And we can see that from the progression of the erosion. Because you can clearly see if you have turbines that’s been operating, what part of the blade has already, you know, exposed laminate.
And where do you only have a light abrasion where you only have a light abrasion, you can just continue with, and with the, with, with the general coating, you don’t need to go for any high tier solutions. And that’s also just to avoid applying, applying something that is difficult to process because it will just end up, that it falls off and then you’re worse off than, than before actually.
Allen Hall: Right. It’s about mitigating risk at some level. On a repair,
Morten Handberg: reducing repair cost. Um, so, so if you, if you look at your, your conditions of your blades and then select a solution that is, that is right for that part of [00:24:00] the blade
Allen Hall: is the best way to repair a blade up tower or down tower is what is the easiest, I guess what’s easier, I know I’ve heard conflicting reports about it.
A lot of people today, operators today are saying we can do it up tower. It’s, it’s pretty good that way. Then I hear other operators say, no, no, no, no, no. The quality is much better if the blade is down on the ground. What’s the recommendation there?
Morten Handberg: In general, it can be done up tower. Um, it is correct if you do a down tower, the quality is better, but that, that, that means you need to have a crane on standby to swap out blades.
Uh, and you should have a spare set of blades that you can swap with. Maybe that can work. Um. But I would say in general, the, your, your, your, your cheaper solution and your more, you know, you know, uh, would be to do up tower. And if, and again, if you do your, your, your homework right and, and selecting the right, uh, products for, for your [00:25:00] local environments, then you can do up tower then leading it, erosion.
Not something that you need to, you should not need to consider during a down tower. Unless you are offshore in an environment where you only have, uh, 10 repair days per year, then you might want to look at something else. But again, if we talk for offs for onshore, I would, I would always go for up, up tower.
I, I don’t, I don’t really see the need for, for, for taking the blades down.
Allen Hall: So what is the optimum point in a blaze life where a leading edge coating should be applied? Like, do you let it get to the point where you’re doing structural repairs or. When you start to see that first little bit of chipping, do you start taking care of it then there I, there’s gotta be a sweet spot somewhere in the middle there.
Where is that?
Morten Handberg: There is sweet spot. So the sweet spot is as soon as you have exposed laminate, because from exposed laminate, uh, the repair cost is exactly the same as if it was just, you know, uh, a light abrasion of the coating because the, the, the time to, to, um, prepare the [00:26:00] surface to apply the coating is exactly the same.
From, you know, from, from, from light surface damage to exposed laminate. That is the same, that is the same repair cost. But as soon as you have a structural damage to your blade, then you have to do a structural repair first, and then you’re, you’re multiplying the repair time and your repair cost. So that is the right point in time.
The way to, to determine when that is, is to do inspections, annual inspections, if you do 10% of your wind farm per year. Then you would know why, what, how the rest of your wind farm looks like because erosion is very uniform across the wind farm. Maybe there are some small deviations, but if you do a subset, uh, then, then you would have a good basic understanding about what erosion is.
You don’t need to do a full sweep of the, of the wind farm to know, okay, now is my right time to do repairs.
Allen Hall: Okay, so you’re gonna have a, a couple years notice then if you’re doing drone inspections. Hopefully you put, as you put your blades up, doing a drone inspection maybe on the ground so you [00:27:00] have a idea of what you have, and then year one, year two, year three, you’re tracking that progression across at least a sampling of the wind farm.
And then, then you can almost project out then like year five, I need to be doing something and I need to be putting it into my budget.
Morten Handberg: When you start to see the first minor areas of exposed laminate. Then the year after, typically then you would have a larger swat of, of laminated exposure, still not as structural.
So when you start to see that, then I would say, okay, next year for next year’s budget, we should really do repairs. It’s difficult when you just direct the wind farm, maybe have the first year of inspection. It’s difficult to get any, any kind of, you know, real sense of what is the, you know, what is the where of scale that we have.
You can be off by a factor of two or three if, you know, if, um, so I would, I would give it a few years and then, uh, then, then, then see how things progresses before starting to make, uh, plans for repairs. If you [00:28:00] don’t have any leading edge erosion protection installed from the start. I would say plan, at least for year, year five, you should expect that you need to go out, do and do a repair.
Again, I don’t have a crystal ball for every, you know, that’s good enough to predict for every wind farm in the world, but that would be a good starting point. Maybe it’s year three, maybe it’s year seven, depending on your local conditions. That is, but then at least you know that you need to do something.
Allen Hall: Well, there’s been a number of robotic, uh, applications of rain erosion coatings. Over the last two, three years. So now you see several different, uh, repair companies offering that. What does the robotic approach have to its advantage versus technicians on ropes?
Morten Handberg: Obviously robots, they don’t, they don’t, uh, get affected by how good the morning coffee was, what the latest conversation with the wife was, or how many hours of sleep it got.
There is something to, with the grown operator, uh, you know how good they are. But it’s more about how well, uh, [00:29:00] adjusted the, the controls of the, of the, the robot or the drone is in its application. So in principle, the drone should be a lot better, uh, because you can, it will do it the right, the same way every single time.
What it should at least. So in, so in principle, if you, you, you, when we get there, then the leading it then, then the robot should be, should outmatch any repair technician in, in the world. Because repair technician, they’re really good. They’re exceptionally good at what they do. The, the, the far majority of them, but they’re, they’re still people.
So they, you know, anyone, you know, maybe standing is not a hundred percent each time, maybe mixing of. Um, of materials and they’re much better at it than I am. So no question there. But again, that’s just real reality. So I would say that the, the, the draw, the robots, they should, uh, they should get to a point at some, at some point to that they will, they will be the preferable choice, especially for this kind of, this kind of repair.
Allen Hall: What should [00:30:00] operators be budgeting to apply a coating? Say they’re, you know, they got a new wind farm. It’s just getting started. They’re gonna be five years out before they’re gonna do something, but they, they probably need to start budgeting it now and, and have a scope on it. ’cause it’s gonna be a capital campaign probably.
How much per turbine should they be setting aside?
Morten Handberg: I would just, as a baseline, at least set aside 20,000 per per blade
Allen Hall: dollars or a Corona
Morten Handberg: dollars.
Allen Hall: Really. Okay.
Morten Handberg: Assuming that you actually need to do a repair campaign, I would say you’re probably ending up in that region again. I can be wrong with by a factor of, you know, uh, by several factors.
Uh, but, um, but I would say that as a starting point, we don’t know anything else. I would just say, okay, this should be the, the, the, the budget I would go for, maybe it’ll be only 10 because we have a lesser campaign. Maybe it will be twice because we have severe damages. So we need just to, to, to source a, um, a high end, uh, LEP solution.
Um, so, so [00:31:00] again, that would just be my starting point, Alan. It’s not something that I can say with accuracy that will go for every single plate, but it would be a good starting point.
Allen Hall: Well, you need to have a number and you need to be, get in the budget ahead of time. And so it, it’s a lot easier to do upfront than waiting till the last minute always.
Uh, and it is the future of leading edge erosion and protection products. Is it changing? Do you see, uh, the industry? Winning this battle against erosion.
Morten Handberg: I see it winning it because we do have the technology, we do have the solutions. So I would say it’s compared to when we started looking at it in 14, where, you know, we had a lot of erosion issues, it seems a lot more manageable.
Now, of course, if you’re a, if you’re a new owner, you just bought a wind farm and you’re seeing this for this first time, it might not be as manageable. But as an, as an industry, I would say we’re quite far. In understanding erosion, what, how it develops and what kind of solutions that that can actually, uh, withstand it.
We’re still not there in [00:32:00] terms of, uh, quality in, in repairs, but that’s, um, but, but, uh, I, I think technology wise, we are, we are in a really good, good place.
Allen Hall: All the work that has been done by DTU and RD test systems for creating a rain erosion test. Facility and there’s several of those, more than a dozen spread around the world at this point.
Those are really making a huge impact on how quickly the problem is being solved. Right? Because you’re just bringing together the, the, the brain power of the industry to work on this problem.
Morten Handberg: They have the annual erosion Symposium and that has been really a driving force and also really put DTU on the map in terms of, uh, leading edge erosion, understanding that, and they’re also trying to tie, tie it in with lightning, uh, because, uh.
If you have a ro, if you have erosion, that changes your aerodynamics. That in fact changes how your LPS system works. So, so there is also some, some risks in that, uh, that is worth considering when, when, when discussing [00:33:00]repairs. But I think these of you, they’ve done a tremendous amount of work and r and d system have done a lot of good work in terms of standardizing the way that we do rain erosion testing, whether or not we can then say with a hundred uncertainty that this, uh, this test will then match with.
With, um, how say local environment conditions, that’s fine, but we can at least test a DP systems on, on the same scale and then use that to, to, to look at, well how, how good would they then ferry in in the, um, out out in the real world.
Allen Hall: Yeah, there’s a lot too leading edge erosion and there’s more to come and everybody needs to be paying attention to it.
’cause it, it is gonna be a cost during the lifetime of your wind turbines and you just need to be prepared for it. Mor how do people get ahold of you to learn more about leading edge erosion and, and some of the approaches to, to control it?
Morten Handberg: Well, you can always re reach me, uh, on my email, meh, at wind power.com or on my LinkedIn, uh, page and I would strongly advise, you know, reach out if you have any concerns regarding erosion or you need support with, um, [00:34:00] uh, with blade maintenance strategies, uh, we can definitely help you out with that.
Or any blade related topic that you might be concerned about for your old local wind farm.
Allen Hall: Yes. If you have any blade questions or leading edge erosion questions, reach out to Morton. He’s easy to get ahold of. Thank you so much for being back on the podcast. We love having you. It
Morten Handberg: was fantastic being here.
Cheers. A.
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