Weather Guard Lightning Tech
An Expert’s Insight on Root Cause Analysis
This week, Allen and Joel talk to Jonathan Zalar of IWTG Consulting about the complicated RCA process. With 20+ years of experience, Zalar details OEM investigations like analyzing turbine data, assessing damage on-site, and convening engineering teams to determine causes. By understanding the inner workings of the OEM process, operators can get their turbines back up and running faster with less of a struggle.
Website: https://www.iwtgconsulting.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonzalar/
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
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. Our guest is Jonathan Zalar managing partner of IWTG Consulting, and IWTG is based in South Carolina. In the United States, Jonathan has a long career in the wind industry, working for 22 years with GE 13 years with GE Vernova specifically, Jonathan has a wealth of knowledge from both his work in the field and in the engineering offices.
He’s a mechanical engineering major and also holds an MBA. So I put you in a very select class, Jonathan, which we’re going to tap on here. Jonathan, welcome to the program.
Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you guys taking the time.
Allen Hall: There’s not a lot of engineers that go after their MBA and then stick to engineering.
They tend to go to MBA and they go into the business world and have a nice comfy office and you took the other route.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I went right into my MBA after my undergrad. Guess I want to stay in college a little longer.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, that doesn’t make you a bad person, okay? I wish I was still there.
Allen Hall: Jonathan, you have a really a wealth of knowledge here on what happens in the field because you’re out there doing it and interacting with the engineering groups that were doing the design work and support work at their offices.
And one of the issues that Joel and I get wrapped into a lot is RCA’s. And people ask us about this all the time. And we were just at an insurance symposium a week or two ago, Joel and I were, and everybody has a different perspective of what actually happens and what an OEM does behind the scenes, because there’s a lot of things that happen behind the curtain that unless you really are on the inside, you just don’t know.
But there’s a lot of good positive things that an OEM is doing during an RCA. So I just like to walk through what happens during an RCA. If you had a blade issue out in the field and you call the OEM, what typically, what typical things happen there? And maybe you can just walk us through what that process is.
Jonathan Zalar: When something like that happens, it’s like a major event and GE and other OEMs have protocols in place, first of all, to ensure safety, right? Is everybody okay? And then, then it’s like, all right, now it’s time to put your CSI hat on and go investigate.
Joel Saxum: Horatio Zalar, is that what it is?
Jonathan Zalar: While this is all happening, while you’re working with the customer, it’d be like, hey, can we come here? We’re going to send, these experts out there to go look at whatever it is, a blade, for example. The teams are also looking at the data because when a, event happens, there’s data collected on the turbine.
There’s engineers looking at that data, trying to understand, what happened from a data perspective while you’re mobilizing people to go there and, being able to access the turbine can take weeks. Sometimes months, depending on time of year, and how the way is oriented. It does feel like it takes a long time, just to get started
sometimes.
Joel Saxum: I know just the pictures that you see online when there’s a failure, and this could, this is blades, lightning strikes, nacelle fires, whatever it may be, but a lot of times we just looked at one the other day, Allen, where it was like a it looked like spaghetti, right? The blades were ripped up and the tower was bent over itself.
And to look at that and say Oh, we’d like to go do an investigation on that. Like you said, securing the site and being safe first. Is one thing because you can’t expect to bring anybody in there until that is because it’s if a wind gust came one way, the whole thing could come down or something of that sort.
Jonathan Zalar: There is a procedures in place to go analyze the way the turbines currently situated what the wind is to go make sure something like that doesn’t happen. Yeah, safety is like the number one thing for sure.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, but and then the I guess on the outside of that is being say this is a. It doesn’t matter, OEMX Turbine, the people from OEMX will have access to data behind the scenes, usually, right?
If it’s a pretty new turbine, most of the time they’re connected somehow to the SCADA system or the controllers, so they can start their investigation even before something happens in the field, is what you’re saying.
Jonathan Zalar: They’re doing, trying to do two things. One, look at the data to understand if they have a good idea, if it’s already an issue that they’re working on.
And if not, then they’re collecting as much data as they can to, when the investigation actually starts.
Allen Hall: So is part of the issue that I’ve seen on some of these investigations is the the investigation starts too late, right? By the time they get everybody spooled up, particularly on blades, a lot of times if a blade’s been hanging, they’re damaged and the turbine’s shut down, you lose a lot of that fine detail that you have.
I think it’s, it does seem to be important that an operator contacts the OEM quickly to get something started, get the process started.
Jonathan Zalar: Especially with a blade that banana peel, for instance, like if it’s hanging out there for a week, it’s just rubbing and it’s rubbing away evidence. Basically with drones that have come into play now that helps for sure.
Because you can send a drone out there and it falls on the drone. Not a big deal. So you can do something there pretty quick, but to go get a sample, send it to a lab. That takes time, and you can lose some of the critical evidence.
Allen Hall: Yeah, Joel and I see that in lightning all the time. It rains, so it washes away evidence.
Joel Saxum: It’s like fire investigations, too, right? Fire, like I’ve talked to some fire experts before, and they’re like, The biggest thing is like, nobody touches, it has to be an unmolested because otherwise the evidence, like if someone goes in there and starts to like move, just even opens a door the wrong way, they can remove evidence that needs to be seen for that investigation to have basically to have efficacy, right?
To make sure that they have all the data and everything can be learned from it. Let’s go let’s walk through this step by step. We’ve got, we said we had something come down, whether it’s a turbine tower, gearbox failure, blade, whatever it is, or asset owner calls. The OEM, I’m sure at the same time they’re probably calling their internal risk group and getting a hold of their insurance or whatever.
But they, but what we want to concentrate on here is the OEM process. So they call their OEM, OEM makes sure, in conjunction with the asset owner, site is safe, site is secure. We’ve got, we were, we’re good to go. The OEM then starts looking, if they have access to the data, which they usually do, starts looking at data in the background to figure out their things.
Then what’s the next step?
Jonathan Zalar: The OEM will send out some of their like experts. GE had really good people that would go out, especially on blades, and they would know what to look for. They would use the drone photos too to maybe tell them where to put the blade, what orientation when they bring it down, and they’ll go out there tons of pictures, and then depending on the issue or not, they’ll probably take some samples, cut up a couple pieces, put it in a trailer, ship it to a lab.
Basically collecting as much evidence as they can as quickly as they can before, winter rain and everything else washes some of that away.
Allen Hall: The on site investigation that happens from the OEM’s perspective is, those people are experts in the technology that they’re looking at, generically, but they’re not the people that design the equipment, they’re not the people that design the blades or the gearbox or Typically, or maybe they did come out of there.
Jonathan Zalar: They may came out of that team, but they are, there are definitely more field oriented people for these type of issues, but sometimes they will bring out a designer if they need to it all depends on the case.
Allen Hall: This sounds a lot like the airplane business that I’ve been in for a long time.
When we, there’s an accident investigation, the aircraft manufacturer sends out experts. Now, those experts are knowledgeable people about the airplane product, but they’re not specific. Like they didn’t design the elevator, but they didn’t design the propeller, right? But they have a pretty good understanding of what the systems are.
So when those people are out on site photos, images, samples. Now the sample piece. What is, what’s happening with those sample pieces that they may collect? Where are those headed off to?
Jonathan Zalar: In, in GE’s case, they had to think of one or two labs, so it’ll be set to one of those, and then they’ll do microscopy on it, so cut it down to little pieces, get a high end microscope.
I’m not an expert on this, I was more of a person who looked at the results. And then as someone who’s like leading it from a engineering perspective, they’ll spend a lot of time with the person who cut the sample and whatever conclusions they have for adhesion, for example, or number of layers, stuff like that.
So they’re getting really detailed about whatever samples they collect. You need somebody very knowledgeable deciding which samples to take, and then somebody extremely knowledgeable on, how to go look at that sample. So
Joel Saxum: being in an OEM, too, you have, they’re the largest people, right?
So you’ve got access to all kinds of different engineers. So if you’re sitting there and you go, alright, here’s the specialty RCA team. We’ve got the investigation going. We’ve got some samples taken. We’re at this stage where we’re trying to figure out what’s really going on. Alright, we’ve got microscopy done.
Great. Let’s get a hold of that may be the glue expert or it may be the fiberglass expert or the carbon fiber expert and you have access to all those or you would have had access to all of those people, right? So you have, you can send an email to someone down the hallway or walk down there and say Hey, let’s look at this.
Let’s look at this. And that’s one of the advantages that the OEM has. Is it not only do you have access to data, but you have access to experts within each of those kind of … We’re going to say, maybe call them sub silos, right? Because it’s not just you’re a composites person. You’re actually that really toned down one in there.
And so you would go then to those people to get their insights on what may have happened.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, and there might be someone in the middle who’s more of a Blade expert of everything, right? Knows all of it, and they might say, Oh, let’s go talk to This person, because they know a little bit more about this, or they designed this part of the blade, and y’all, you go huddle up over there and guys, try to walk through what’s going on.
Joel Saxum: So does that, in an OEM case, and I know this is a very generalized statement, but does those RCA investigations, when you’re dealing with or trying to engage those individuals, do those take precedent? Or is that kind of yeah, we’ll get to that when we get to it. We’re working on a new blade design.
Jonathan Zalar: It’s like number two under safety.
Allen Hall: Wow. Way up the chain.
Joel Saxum: Okay. So now we’re at the, now we’re at the stage where we’re in, we’ve got data, we’ve got some samples, possibly we’re back in the office and we’re engaging the experts. What does that look like?
Allen Hall: Yeah. Who’s at the table there?
Jonathan Zalar: Depends on the issue, but yeah, you’re getting the people that
probably have the most knowledge in the subjects, right? The people who’ve been around long as to, or maybe even designed the blade or designed a similar blade. They’re in the room, you’re looking at data, trying to understand, hey, is this a one off or is this something we need to worry about? That’s a very key question.
And that’s kind of part of the second or third part, which is like containment. Like, how do you stop the bleeding? Is this a fleet issue or not? That’s one of the biggest questions you’re trying to answer as quick as possible.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. That’s where you get into that, that not pseudo gray area of engineering and business, right?
Because at some level you have to worry about. What could financially be impacting the rest of the larger OEM scale as well?
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. I felt like at least at GE like that was isolated from the business part and it’s more, Hey, technical people, you go figure this out, work with the customer resolution people and y’all built They’ll help with the customer information part.
We were we were let go to go figure out what was going on.
Allen Hall: So does some part of that involve looking at all the SCADA data from the turbine? Because I would think some of the issues that are happening on blades in particular may be related to the operational aspects of the turbine.
There’s some tweaking going on.
Jonathan Zalar: There was like two sets of data. There’s like a high speed data that you can look at the time of the event. You can actually almost tell which blade did what, when, do a rotation. And I, from there, there are probably some 10 minute data points that could indicate something if you’re looking at it for a fleet issue, and then you can start cutting the deck with 10 minute data if you need to, all depends on the issue.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, off air we were talking about one thing that was cool being in an OEM is that if, of course, if you’re connected to the controllers, you guys have, you have the possibility of going hey, if this is a.
I don’t know, GE 1 5 problem. Give me all of the data for the GE 1 5s that looks like this and you had access to that data of possibly saying, give me 5, 000 turbines of data so we can start looking at something statistically.
Jonathan Zalar: Correct. Yes. And I had some very good data people on the team, very knowledgeable in turbines too, that could go take a look at 10, 000 turbines in two hours, come back with an answer.
Joel Saxum: The rest of the industry just doesn’t have that, right? That’s the thing we’re always talking about, like sharing data. I wish we had more of this. Wish we had more of that. But the OEMs are the ones that actually hold the, they hold the cards there.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. Especially if you’re yes, they do.
Allen Hall: But they have also the engineers that designed it, which is the key to this.
So you can have all the data in the world or you want it, but unless you have the knowledge behind what that data means, it’s pretty much pointless. It takes a long time. Oh, Jonathan can attest to this. It takes a long time to become an expert in a particular aspect of a wind turbine. That’s what Rosemary is about in our program.
Like she’s been around a long time and she’s very knowledgeable about those things that she knows about. But unless you have those people on your staff that just live and breathe that, I don’t know if they make heads or tails of what’s going on data wise. And I think that’s why the OEM, getting OEM involved is really critical here.
Joel Saxum: Jonathan, I want to ask you one more question about, this is a, it would be more of an internal thing. So at what stage, or how are they treated different if you go If you get to a split in sitting in the conference room with everybody, all the technical prowess in there, and you say, all right, guys, this looks like a one off issue, or this looks like a serial defect.
How do you treat those differently?
Jonathan Zalar: First you need to verify that. You get to the point where you’re like, hey, I think this is a one off, and how do you know? You get chief engineers involved, and a lot of people have signed off to say, hey, freak event, one off. Whatever it was, if it’s something that you’re concerned about is more widespread, then that’s when you probably bring in more people.
You’re looking at the data, potentially instrumenting turbines going to go to field inspection samples. Then that process starts taking a longer time, for sure.
Joel Saxum: I know this is a weird thing to bring up here, but I was just reading the news. This is literally yesterday, I saw in the news, SGRE laying off all of the engineers that designed the 4X and 5X.
So now in SGRE, if they’re going to continue this investigation into what’s actually happened here. All of those people are gone.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I’m not sure did they lay off leadership or did they lay off design engineers.
Allen Hall: It said engineers.
Jonathan Zalar: A little too soon in my opinion, unless they know what’s wrong.
Joel Saxum: That’s that’s my same thought as well.
Allen Hall: Let’s go back, I want to go step back to the chief engineer aspect of this, because I think maybe GE’s a little bit unique in that they still have chief engineers. A lot of the engineering industry has pulled back from that over time.
But when I worked for GE years ago, chief engineers were a real key to making the operations work. Within GE, and I, this doesn’t have to be specific to GE, but I just curious here. They still have chief engineers that are responsible for a particular product line that really know the ins and outs, and that’s a very unique person to be able to do that, but there is a focal point on the engineering side, right?
Jonathan Zalar: For you mean like a 1. 5 SLE, or do you mean like a blade?
Allen Hall: A turbine model, right? Is it turbine model or is it blade model? Maybe it’s by blade.
Jonathan Zalar: There are there were, I’m not sure now, but there were chief engineers for the major component areas, but there’s also a overall like system engineering chief and like the system engineers are more responsible for the whole product.
Allen Hall: Okay. So they even have chief engineers lower down into the main components then, which is, that’s the way I would do it. Yeah. Okay. That’s the way I would do it. So that’s a, is that your really first touch point? Hey, Chief Engineer, this happened, I just, heads up, this is coming. Is that sort of your focal point if you’re out in the field and doing the RCA work?
Is that your key contact and then the Chief Engineer is grabbing the people to bring into the conference room? Is that how it flows?
Jonathan Zalar: No, it’s, it was more of the systems team was leading the effort, at least for these major issues. And then they would be reviewing that with the Chief Engineer.
And you definitely bring the person in there so they know what’s going on, especially with a big issue, like they’re going to be involved. But they’re not leading, they’re not leading the investigation, but they are approving at the end. They’re asking questions, asking to go back and go look at something else because you want to be, you want to be right.
Allen Hall: You want another set of eyes on whatever the quote unquote answer is, right? And someone who’s knowledgeable about the product on a deep level to go, yes, that makes sense to me. Okay. That’s. A good approach.
Jonathan Zalar: And the big issues, there’s more than two sets of eyes looking at it, for sure.
Allen Hall: So you’re all at the table, you fleshed out, it’s either a sort of a system wide issue or a one off.
You make that decision, and then from there, what’s the support role look like? What are you going back to the operator with? How much information is brought to them? What do they need to know to get to the next step of repairing, replacing, whatever the, what are the answer is there.
Jonathan Zalar: Like part of that safety review initially about like, how to go approach that kind of helps with the, how do you get the turbine back up and running?
What do you need to do? And there’s teams probably separate from the RCA that will like, help with the foundation analysis. Can you go put another turbine up on there? Stuff like that. The RCA is going to, the RCA team is going to stay focused on. Hey, what happened? What’s the root cause?
How do we correct this and then prevent it?
Joel Saxum: That’s more of the client success people then, right? Like the client interaction, they’ll then take load of what happens next. So if they have to deal with the asset owner, their insurance company, their consultants, or something of that sort, that’s a different team.
Jonathan Zalar: Yes, and I’m happy I was a different team because that would just slow it down even more.
Joel Saxum: So that someone there in the customer success reign takes the kind of the control of the, all of the externals per se, and then navigates that mess.
Jonathan Zalar: Multiple times, like I would be presenting to customers on like where we were, like RCA updates throughout the process.
There were definitely touch points and stuff like that, but the hey, how does it get this turbine back out there running? That wasn’t really.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a good, that’s a good way to run it. I’ve seen just from mostly outside the United States where it does seem to be a linear process, but nothing happens until the turbine to the RCA is done.
And then there’s a team that then figures out what the next step is. That doesn’t make any sense to me. In the United States, what you explained makes sense to me. Hey, let’s get the operations up and running again. Let’s get that done. We’ll figure out the problem on the side. It’s got a parallel effort going on instead of a linear effort.
That makes complete sense to me. So then, in that parallel effort, then, is there a lot of crosstalk between the two teams or is it? Engineering RCA. Hey, we had an engineering issue where we really need to hone in on this. The customer side is getting the customer back up and running again. So they’re productive.
But in the meantime, you’re paralleling an engineering approach. Okay.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I mean, the customer, most of the customers, the bigger ones I dealt with, they have, they also have two teams. One’s I need to make power. The other one’s I need to worry about my other turbines like so there’s multiple teams pushing on multiple teams.
Joel Saxum: These bigger operators to you know in the United States in the United States if you’re dealing with those, your NextEra your EDFs, your RWEs they’ve got their own engineering teams as well.
So more than likely, they’re running a parallel process of you guys. Maybe grabbing some data from you, if if it’s available or something like that, but they’re using their own data and they’re running their own analysis to come to their own conclusions at the same time, because they’ve got to, they’ve got to safeguard themselves, right?
That’s part of doing business.
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. And there’s, having a good relationship is also key too, because there were many times where I had to call up one of the really big customers and be like, Hey, can we go instrument a turban or can we go collect some samples? Can we go do this? And that relationship is really important, but also that speeds up the process especially if it’s not a one off.
Allen Hall: Okay, that makes sense then. Yeah, because if it’s engineering collaboration, things tend to go faster. Because it’s an understanding we’re all trying to solve a problem. Let engineers alone solve a problem, they’ll pretty much go off and do it relatively quickly. People, a bunch of insurance people or management people on top of that, it tends to slow it down.
Jonathan Zalar: Every time.
Allen Hall: Yeah, and that’s a good point. If you’re an operator, that’s one of the things to remember is look, you’re paying these people for a reason, let them go do their job, just make sure it’s moving. And that’s it right there. You want to get to the fastest answer that way, instead of trying to interject a bunch of politics into it.
Joel Saxum: If you’re an operator and you run into one of these issues and you’re not sure where to turn, call IWTG Consulting. They’ve got the expertise, Jonathan?
Jonathan Zalar: It’s a fun thing to do. You really are an investigator, right? You get to go solve a problem. It’s one of the funnier jobs I’ve had.
I really enjoy doing it.
Joel Saxum: You’re doing puzzles, but at a grand scale.
Jonathan Zalar: If you get happy when something breaks at home, I’m that type of person. I’m like, yes, something broke.
Allen Hall: So what does the end product look like after all this? Is it just a report? Is it a meeting? Is it a report and a series of meetings?
What happens at the end? When you say, we know what this is it’s this one off turbine issue. Here’s what happened. Here’s how we do to prevent it going forward. What is that? What does that closeout look like?
Jonathan Zalar: The closeout with the customer, it, it’s going to be a meeting, it’s going to be, a presentation of some sort, and sometimes it’s a report depending on who they are, but, and it’s going to be like, does it, more does everyone agree this is what it was, and nine times out of ten, by the time you’ve through everything, everyone agrees.
Allen Hall: You hear from the field that there’s complaints that the OEM and the operator just don’t agree. Really? I think politically they may not agree, but engineering wise they probably do agree. Usually the financial part they never agree on. Engineering wise though, it does seem like there’s an agreement.
Typically, right?
Jonathan Zalar: Not always day one, but usually by, midway through to the end mostly both teams have a good idea where it’s heading, right? There’s gonna be some one offs that it’s just no one knows. Like that, that will happen, but that’d be really rare. But I don’t remember many that says I know it’s this.
And someone else says, I know it’s that usually there’s enough smart people that have looked at enough data that they can convince one or the other that they’re more likely.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And like you said, Allen, that’s on the engineering side, right? What ends up muddying the water there is when you get an insurance company and then they grab a lawyer and then there’s arbitration and there’s all this, and people are sitting there but who’s on the hook for the four million bucks and that kind of stuff, right? That’s where it gets lost sometimes.
Allen Hall: That’s good though, that the OEMs are trying to keep the engineers separate from that discussion, because you, at the end of the day It’s all about operating and producing power if you get tangled up in all the money part of it up front, it’ll never come to a solution and I’m glad that at least, GE side that they’re working the engineering solution, which makes sense that GE is an engineering company and that all makes sense to me. And this is where IWTG comes into the play, right?
That if you’re an OEM You have your team. If you’re an operator, you don’t have everybody you probably need, and especially some of those mid tier operators. Even the large operators don’t have all the experience with a particular turbine type because there’s just things you just don’t know, right?
You don’t dig deep into a system architecture as an owner of a turbine. You know how to operate it, but if there’s things, complex things happening, you may not have those details. This is where IWTG comes in, you call Jonathan up and say, Hey, how do we go debug this? What’s going on? And what, how do we, how do we flow through this to get to the right engineering answer?
Jonathan Zalar: Yeah. I think it helps just also like explaining to some of the, smaller customers of what the process is help them, support the OEM with whatever process are going through. It’s been pretty helpful with a couple of customers I’ve worked with.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I would say one of the, one of the biggest hurdles there is navigating the whole thing, but it’s understanding who to talk to and what data that needs to happen and all these different things because that, that’s a big problem in the industry too, is like people you throw it at a site manager. That site manager is so dang busy with just the everyday stuff they have going on, they just go man, hey, I got this I’ll deal with that later, right? So if they if if an asset owner wants to actually get moving on this thing, having someone that knows what they’re doing is a good help.
Allen Hall: It’s a necessity today.
Yeah, there’s definitely a place for those experts. And in the United States, there’s not a lot of people walking around that have that sort of expertise. You have to spend your time in the trenches. And Jonathan has done that. So this is why it’s so good to talk to him because he’s been there and he’s lived through it.
Jonathan, how do people get a hold of IWTG and how do they get a hold of you directly?
Jonathan Zalar: My website’s www. iwtgconsulting. com. They can reach out to me there. I’m also on LinkedIn.
Allen Hall: And Jonathan, I really appreciate you coming on the program and we want to have you back because there are a wealth of knowledge and it’s good to get that knowledge out into the industry.
Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
As the United States continues its slide into corporatocracy and oligarchy, the concept of universal healthcare becomes ever more unlikely.
As the midterms approach, we need to brace ourselves for the onslaught of messaging from the GOP to the effect that Trump is the only force separating America from communism. This, believe it or not, is a concept warmly embraced by tens of millions of hateful idiots.
The rest of the developed world deems healthcare to be a human right, like potable water. We counter: Bull****. Corporate profitability is the supreme right here.
Yes, the MAGA crowd has a huge appetite for the type of rhetoric we see at left, but their numbers are slowing shrinking.
That said, it’s still amazing that the U.S. is home to tens of millions of idiots who believe that liberals hate our country and are trying to destroy it.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
PowerCurve Recovers India AEP, Silent Edge Cuts Noise
Nicholas Gaudern, CTO at PowerCurve, joins to discuss India AEP gains, DragonScale VGs, and Silent Edge noise reduction.
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: Nicholas, welcome back to the podcast.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Great to be back.
Allen Hall: So there’s a lot going on at Power Curve, and I saw some news online about Power Curve in India.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Which is a new development.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, so we’ve been working in India for, for some years now, and we have, uh, more than 100 turbines out there with our equipment on, primarily vortex generators so far.
And what we’re seeing in India is some of the highest AEP gains we’ve ever recorded with our vortex generators And I think a lot of this is being driven by the fact that in certain parts of India, there’s some very unique, uh, environmental conditions, climatic conditions, and there’s parts of the year, like the dry season up in [00:01:00] the north of India, where you’re getting this very sticky dirt accumulating on the blades.
And it’s really quite dramatic when you see the photographs, but that means that the blades are actually starting to, to stall, have flow separation on them.
Allen Hall: I’ve seen pictures of that. Yeah. I was really shocked at the time, uh, ’cause I didn’t know it was just kind of a black, gooey- Yeah … kind of tar-like substance- Yeah, yeah
on the blades, and, uh, it, it was only on there a limited time. As soon as the monsoons come through and the rains hit, it would wash, eventually wash it off. Yes. But while it’s there, you could see the airflow over the blade surfaces. You, you could definitely see separation happening really early on those blades.
Dramatic.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, absolutely, and I think the, um… Like you say, it’s not all year. No. But it doesn’t have to be all year to have a huge impact on, on how many, you know, megawatt hours you’re getting out the other end. So there’s a few months of the year where this problem is particularly severe, maybe sort of December through to February, something like that.
And what we’re finding is that when you see, uh, the power curves for these [00:02:00] turbines, some of them aren’t even hitting rated power. They’re not able to hit rated power because there’s so much flow separation on the blades.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that, I mean, just imagine that. You’ve got a two megawatt turbine, for example.
Maybe it doesn’t cast- get past 1.5 megawatts for this, uh, time of the year. I mean, that’s crazy.
Allen Hall: Does the turbine try to adjust itself when that happens? Because the pictures I s- have seen indicates, like, the turbine is pitching the blades to, ’cause it knows- It can- …
Nicholas Gaudern: what the wind
Allen Hall: speed is- I mean, yeah … and it knows what it should be putting out, and it’s not putting that out.
Nicholas Gaudern: It’s very turbine specific, kind of controller logic specific, but what we see is even the turbines that try to do something, they’re very limited in how much pitch authority they have from the controller. They might be able to just do a little bit, a degree. Okay. Two degrees. You know, very, very small pitch adjustments.
And when you have this kind of dirt on the leading edges, a degree of pitch ain’t gonna save you really. Um- N-
Allen Hall: no. And I think that’s what we’re seeing. And it’s not gonna get that power back. No, no.
Nicholas Gaudern: No.
Allen Hall: But does it add extra load onto the blade structurally over [00:03:00] time when you do that?
Nicholas Gaudern: In terms of the pitching, or-
Allen Hall: Yeah, in terms of the pitching, where you’re trying to be more aggressive on the angle of attack to get the power out of the turbine.
Potentially. And the winds are still pretty strong, you just, the blades are inefficient.
Nicholas Gaudern: I think it’s one of those things where there’s, there’s so many interconnected items with the dirt and the controller and the structure. It’s actually pretty difficult, I think, to say with confidence how much life impact you would have from that.
But what I would say is the more that you might end up trying to pitch, if that’s what’s going on on some machines, that obviously puts wear on the pitch bearings themselves. But yeah, I think at the moment we’re kind of at the beginning of really trying to understand how some of these turbines do deal with this phenomenon.
But what we’re trying to do is get to a point where the turbine doesn’t really have to deal with it. Because if you fix the problem at the source, which is stop the flow separating, then the controller doesn’t really have to, to worry. It doesn’t have to try to, to fix it itself.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That makes a lot more sense.
Just the number of images I’ve seen over the last couple years from India-
Nicholas Gaudern: [00:04:00] Yep …
Allen Hall: you realize how difficult it is to operate a wind turbine there.
Nicholas Gaudern: So even when we, um, have this issue for a few months that we’re resolving with the VGs, we can still be seeing over the whole year more than 5% increases in annual energy production.
Because those months are really important. Um ‘
Allen Hall: Cause that’s when they need the
Nicholas Gaudern: power. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. For sure. And this is primarily coming from the vortex generators towards the tips of the blades. So that’s where you’re having this, uh, heavy contamination issue, and that’s where all the power would be produced.
So kind of the outer third of a blade is 50, maybe 60% of the power production of a turbine, maybe closer to 50. So that means that if you have a problem out there, it’s, it’s a big problem in terms of your annual energy production. So-
Allen Hall: Right …
Nicholas Gaudern: the VGs are, what they’re doing is they are, they’re injecting energy back into the flow.
Allen Hall: Redirecting the flow, in a
Nicholas Gaudern: sense. So, so basically you have all this contamination on the leading edge. It’s generating more turbulence. The flow isn’t able to retain, uh, remain attached [00:05:00] across the entire chord length. So the VGs are putting energy back into the flow and allowing it to remain attached all the way to, uh, to the trailing edge.
Allen Hall: So even with the blades are dirty-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes …
Allen Hall: you get that power out- Exactly … put, that you really desire or-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah …
Allen Hall: are paying for. Yeah. You, you paid a lot of money for that turbine- Yeah, exactly … you need to get the power out of it.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And-
Nicholas Gaudern: So of course, you know, that suggests that if you had a, a super clean blade, you went and pressure washed it, uh, you would get, uh, an increase in power as well, and that’s true.
You, you- That’s true … you will do. But that’s a one-time thing. Um, so- And
Allen Hall: it’s expensive to do- Yeah … and time-consuming.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. Maybe a few days later, the dirt’s back. So- Sure … you know, it’s not really a sustainable thing for you to be going out washing these blades the whole time. And washing the blades may not be great for the surface of the blade either.
So, you know, a VG is just sat there the whole time. It doesn’t matter if it’s dirt, bugs, erosion, frost, it’ll recover those losses that, that you’re seeing.
Allen Hall: Do the VG installations in a situation like that, [00:06:00] the actual location differ because of the contaminants that are present and the kind of, uh, leading edge effects that you’re seeing?
Do you design it for that environment? Or- Yeah … is every- Oh, you do. So- Yeah, we
Nicholas Gaudern: do. I mean, typ- typically our, our VG arrays are turbine model specific. But in India, we’re finding we’re actually having to be more site specific as well. Oh,
Allen Hall: wow.
Nicholas Gaudern: Because some of this contamination is so severe, we’ve seen that we need to design the VG layout a little bit differently to make sure that we’re giving enough, uh, energy recovery potential when you have these really severe, uh, situations.
Allen Hall: Are you using the AeroVista tool to do that? How do you, how do you quantify the contamination that’s happened on the leading edge at a particular moment or roughly on scale a- and then try to model that? That just seems like a difficult computation.
Nicholas Gaudern: It is. And, um, you know, we’re, we’re getting better all the time.
AeroVista is definitely part of that. So AeroVista’s primary function really is to look at, um- [00:07:00] AEP losses due to structural damages, things like erosion. But actually, erosion behaves very similar to dirt when it comes to, like- It, right … aerodynamic behavior. Yeah. So we can actually use kind of the AeroVista engine to help us understand what is the loss from different levels of contamination.
So we can add contamination levels into AeroVista, as well as, uh, erosion. And we can start to look at, well, what happens if the blade looks like this? What if it looks like this? And then this gets combined with our computational fluid dynamics, our CFD models that we’re running, three-dimensional, two-dimensional.
We sometimes do some aeroelastic modeling as well. So we basically have a big toolbox, and like with any engineering problem, it’s about picking the best tool for the job. So we just go in, and we have all these great tools, and we, we put them together in a workflow that allows us to design the, the best solution for each site that we look at.
Allen Hall: And it’s not India-specific in terms of leading-edge contamination. No. I’ve seen pictures from the US, Brazil, um, [00:08:00] Australia, a number of places where there’s just bugs. Yeah. Right? Those, especially in places where there’s large bugs- Yes. … you kind of get this splatter effect going on. Yeah. And you can have a really contaminated blade surface.
In the US, in the middle of the US, you’ll have grasshopper season, and-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, absolutely …
Allen Hall: tho- those grasshoppers are big, and they splatter. And they leave a disaster. We’ve seen
Nicholas Gaudern: that in, uh, in the Midwest, for sure. Oh, yeah. Some really, really severe contamination from bugs.
Allen Hall: And you, you don’t think about, as an engineer or a site supervisor, that- All right.
This sort of, uh, grasshopper season that happens is affecting my AEP, but 100% it is. And that stuff is gooey, so if you ever drive through the Midwest in the summertime- … you run through, uh, any kind of insect swarm and try to get it off your vehicle. Yeah. It takes some scrubbing.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. It re- it really does.
And imagine when you’ve gotta go up there for, like, 100-meter diameter rotor.
Allen Hall: Right. ‘
Nicholas Gaudern: Cause that’s quite a challenge. So I think, yeah, they have all these challenges, uh, in terms of environmental conditions, and a lot of people consider aerodynamic [00:09:00] behavior blades quite binary. Either the blade is clean or the blade is dir- Or it’s dirty
or it’s dirty. Right. But it’s this entire spectrum. It’s everything in between, and I think that is kind of a little bit of a different way of thinking about the problem. And then it makes the argument around why to put VGs there kind of, uh, easy to, to answer, because the blade is never really truly clean.
Allen Hall: No. I… Unless it’s right after a rainstorm- Yeah … I rarely see clean blades. Okay, so the … If VGs are going on, are you using the DragonScale VGs to solve some of the India problems, some of the contamination problems?
Nicholas Gaudern: So DragonScale’s not in India yet. That’s something that we’re looking at. So we, um, we got all the tooling finished for DragonScale some months ago now, and we’re shipping DragonScale kits.
Uh- Oh, wow. Okay … not, not to India yet, but they are out in, in the field, and we’re gonna be having some more out just in the next couple of weeks, actually, which is quite exciting. We’re doing our first project, um, in Canada.
Allen Hall: Oh.
Nicholas Gaudern: So we’re starting to kinda come across the, the pond with the VGs now, [00:10:00] with the DragonScale VGs.
Allen Hall: So the DragonScales, uh, uh, uh, thank you for bringing a, a sample here today, but the, the DragonScales are really interesting in terms of just the way the airfoil shapes are and how they’re s- kinda stacked and layered- Yeah … and there’s different depths to them, heights to them, to get the flow back where you want it to.
Yeah. And it, I guess it depends on where you are on the blade. If you’re near the root, they’re gonna look something like this. Exactly. Yep. If you’re getting near the tip, they’re
Nicholas Gaudern: much
Allen Hall: smaller- Yeah, we have some smaller ones. Yep … scale, scale of this. So- This then, the Dragon Scales do require a little bit of computational knowledge of what’s going on- Yep
with the blade. And as you say, they- You just can’t willy-nilly stick
Nicholas Gaudern: them on … they’re, they’re quite different. You know, they’re quite different from a standard triangle of VG.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: And, you know, there’s lots of ways that you can create a vortex aerodynamically. And triangles- Sure … create a vortex, sure, but they, they really create one through a process of separation.
Yeah. You have a flow hitting this, this plate that’s angled to the flow. It’s rolling over the top, and it’s tripping into a, into a vortex. But that’s quite a draggy way [00:11:00] of- It is … creating a vortex. Yes. Um, so VGs work. We’ve seen that. You know, we have more than 2,000 turbines now with VGs, so we, we know they work.
Yeah. But Dragon Scale, the whole idea is not that we … This is still a VG. It’s still creating a vortex. Sure. But it’s doing it in a much more efficient manner, so we get the same lift recovery benefits, lift boosting benefits, but at a much lower drag. So we have a better drag ratio. ‘Cause it’s the drag, right?
Allen Hall: It’s the drag. The little triangular-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah …
Allen Hall: vortex generators are draggy.
Nicholas Gaudern: So anything you stick on a blade, it, it has a drag. It has a parasitic drag component. Um, they have a huge benefit that outweighs that. That’s why we put them on.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: But of course, you can always do better. And I think here we really try to take inspiration from, from lots of the aerodynamic developments we’ve seen over the past decades in aviation and motorsport and, and these other disciplines.
Allen Hall: Right. I always say these look like a Formula One
Nicholas Gaudern: add-on. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. A bigger blade. Or maybe some front slats of a aircraft or some, uh, gas turbine cascading elements- Oh, sure.
Allen Hall: Yeah …
Nicholas Gaudern: these
Allen Hall: kind of things. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Gas turbine people would easily recognize this. Yeah, [00:12:00] I
Nicholas Gaudern: think so.
Allen Hall: Uh, so the, the Dragon Scales then in terms of, uh, the location of them on the blade, would it differ than the triangular VGs in terms of generic location?
A, a
Nicholas Gaudern: little bit, but broadly it’s the same because- Okay … you know, ultimately the fundamental physics of what we’re trying to do hasn’t changed.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: Um, so we’re kind of, we’re addressing the same areas of the blade. But the Dragon Scale gives us a bit more flexibility. We can have these three fin versions that create a very powerful vortex, so we find those down in the root, ’cause that’s where we just want as much lift as possible.
Right.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, but out at the tip we actually have a two fin variant. Oh. Because there we’re, we’re more focused on L over D. We wanna maximize our lift-to-drag ratio.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: Because that’s where the drag really hurts you, out towards the tip.
Allen Hall: So are they in a strip form then? Yes. Very similar to the triangular VGs?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. So the, the smaller ones on the strip, just because they’re only, like, five millimeters high.
Allen Hall: Yeah. They wanna
Nicholas Gaudern: see more- So otherwise it’s, it’s kind of watchmaking if they’re individual- … little pieces, uh, going down on the blade. O-
Allen Hall: okay. Yeah. Well, that’s fascinating. All right. Uh, I wanna talk about [00:13:00] Silent Edge before I, I lose you today.
The Silent Edge product has been out in the field- Mm-hmm … and there has been some noise testing done, which I always think is very interesting because I’ve- Yeah … I’ve watched videos from, mostly from DTU, explaining how they do this, where they got the microphones around. And like- Yes … wow, that’s a really complicated test to go pull off.
But you just got through a series of these-
Nicholas Gaudern: We did …
Allen Hall: noise tests with Silent Edge. And you have the results back.
Nicholas Gaudern: We do, yeah. I mean, it was a really exciting, um, test program, and we were partnered together with, uh, Statkraft, who very kindly lent us a few of their wind turbines up in Sweden. Uh, and we are working with the Danish Technical University, DTU Wind, to help with the measurements and actually figure out what’s going out on the turbine.
So this was a project that we were, um, able to secure some funding from, from the Danish, uh, EUDP. So that’s the Energi [00:14:00] Teknologisk Udviklings- og Demonstrationsprogram.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Nothing to do with the EU. It’s a very, it’s a Danish thing. Danish, yeah. But there is EU in the name. Right. Um, so they supported this project with Statkraft and DTU, and what we found is that when we put a Silent Edge on a, uh, it was like a two, two and a half megawatt machine, it had no serrations before.
Okay.
Allen Hall: So we measured- So just a out of the factory blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly, and it was in good condition. It had had a recent repair campaign, so the blade was in, in good shape. And then what we did, uh, or what DTU did, is they went out and they measured the noise of this turbine according to the IEC standard.
So there’s an IEC standard on how you should measure noise and what microphones to use and how to post-process it, and then we installed the Silent Edge serrations. And firstly, before we’d even done any measurements, we had people out at site, and they, they live out there. They’re the technicians. They see these- Okay
turbines every day, and they went, “What, what have you, what have you done to, to this turbine?” Because it sounded so different. It sounded much [00:15:00]quieter. The, the quality of the sound was very different, and they just, they just stepped out the car and went, “Wow.” “This is, this is really impressive.” Um-
Allen Hall: So what, give me a description of what the sound is.
I know generally, when you come with a standard blade, it has that kind of shoop, shoop-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly … shoop. It basically just really brings down that perceived loudness of the sound, so it’s just a m- it’s a much quieter sound, and we’re also taking out quite a lot of low frequency component.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Nicholas Gaudern: That’s what- These serrations are really targeting the lower frequencies, so kind of around the kilohertz and, and under.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Nicholas Gaudern: That’s where these things are really starting to bring down the, um, the decibels.
Allen Hall: This- So, okay. So Silent Edge is, uh, sort of a unique design, or is a unique design i- in terms of the- What you see on the typical trailing edge, which are a bunch of triangles or dino tails, right? Yes, dino tails. Yes,
Nicholas Gaudern: yeah.
Allen Hall: Dino tails is, was the generic term for years, and they looked like dino tails, so, so it’s a good description- Yeah … of them. But these more, look more like a cathedral in
Nicholas Gaudern: a sense. Yeah, these, these are quite different though. So we have kind of this iron-shaped, uh, tooth fundamentally, [00:16:00] but we have three different tooth sizes, uh, and they’re asymmetric.
Allen Hall: Mm.
Nicholas Gaudern: And I would love to come here and tell you that we know exactly how this works. Um, but I can’t unfortunately, and, and that’s just how it is sometimes with engineering. We cannot simulate this in the detail required to really understand exactly why each geometric feature does what it does. And if someone claims they can do that, then, then I may be a bit suspicious.
Or, or I’d really like to talk to them, one of the two. Um, but that means that to develop this kind of product successfully, you have to go to the wind tunnel. Okay. Because the simulation is so demanding. So we go to the wind tunnel. We spent a lot of time in the Paul Ricard wind tunnel at DTU, so we can measure aerodynamics and acoustics at the same time And we went with lots of components and 3D prints, and we iterated through design paths, and we came up with this, I think it’s a really wonderful shape we’ve ended up with.
And it was proven out in the field because the final result was we reduced the overall sound [00:17:00] pressure level of the turbine by five decibels. And that is- Whoa … that is huge.
Allen Hall: That’s a lot.
Nicholas Gaudern: So in terms of, like, perceived, uh, loudness of the sound, that’s like a 30% reduction. So this is why the, the technicians who st- stepped out the car heard such a difference, because it’s a massive reduction in, in what the turbine produces.
So
Allen Hall: you’re lowering the decibels coming off the, the trailing edge. Yeah. But also moving around the frequencies so it’s a little less-
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, so a lot of that- … uh- That… So the- …
Allen Hall: noticeable
Nicholas Gaudern: also … the five decibels, that’s, that’s this OASP, or we call it overall sound pressure level. This is an integration of all of the reductions we see across the frequency spectrum.
Oh,
Allen Hall: okay.
Nicholas Gaudern: All right. So we’re getting more reduction at lower frequencies. Right. Good. There’s also some high frequencies. But the lower frequencies matter more. So what we do when we’re doing acoustic measurement is we A-weight, we, we weight the, the noise because it relates to how the human ear perceives sound.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: So it matters more to you, the one [00:18:00] kilohertz frequency than the 20 kilz- kilohertz frequency.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Can’t hear
Nicholas Gaudern: 20 kilohertz. E- exactly. So that’s right at the upper end. So we weight the results, and this is part of the ICE standard, to understand how the human ear perceives the sound.
Allen Hall: Oh, wow. Okay.
Nicholas Gaudern: Um, and this is where we get our, our five decibels
Allen Hall: from.
So this, this was really an iterative process then- Yeah … in the DT laboratory. Yeah. Ooh, wow. I didn’t realize that. Mm-mm. I, I figured you had gotten relatively close by computational methods and then- We- … honed it a little bit …
Nicholas Gaudern: we, we come sort of computate… We do a lot of computation around the angle of the serrations, because the angle of the serration is really critical for, uh, lift generation and loads.
Allen Hall: So when you’re speaking of angle, you’re talking about- E-
Nicholas Gaudern: exactly … this angle back here at the- You can see that angle there. Okay.
Allen Hall: Yeah,
Nicholas Gaudern: yeah. Because you don’t want to put a serration on a turbine and add 20% to the lift of the blade. Right. No. Because-
Allen Hall: That’s not- …
Nicholas Gaudern: lift means loads. Yeah.
Allen Hall: You know? Right. You’re adding load.
Nicholas Gaudern: So you have to be very careful about how you design these products to make sure that you’re not gonna add extra load to the turbine. And, and on the flip side, you also don’t wanna reduce lift significantly, which then [00:19:00] there’ll be less power produced. So it’s a bit of a balancing act, and this is where the computation comes in.
We do a lot of CFD on these to make sure that we’re, we’re handling the loads correctly.
Allen Hall: And how important is the material choice- Yeah … in terms of the noise quieting? Is there a little bit to it about, well, one, durability. Yeah. You, you want to put them on once and leave them forever, so there’s a lot of interactions between the air and these parts that are gonna flex and bend, and you got- I think there’s, you know-
20 years of
Nicholas Gaudern: doing
Allen Hall: that …
Nicholas Gaudern: the, you’ve, you’ve s- you’ve hit the, hit the nail on the head there. The durability is critical. Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you put these products on the blade, and they perform beautifully for six months and then fall off or, or snap or whatever.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So no, we, we make these products out of the same material as our VGs, and this is a material, uh, it’s an ASA, uh, plastic.
And we’ve had these out in the, in the field for a long time now, so we know- It’s- … this, this is great.
Allen Hall: It’s ex- it’s kind of a flexible material.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, there’s
Allen Hall: a little b- It’s stiff but flexible.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly. There’s a bit of give in there- Yeah … uh, which is important, but it’s very impact-resistant. Uh, it doesn’t really suffer much in terms of [00:20:00] UV aging, which is obviously critical- Oh, wow.
Yeah … when you’re, when you’re- Very critical, yes … out in the field. Yes. So yeah, we’re, um, we’re really happy with the material choice because we know from all our other campaigns with VGs that they last. It doesn’t matter whether it’s sun, rain, ice, snow. These products can survive out in the field for 20 years.
Allen Hall: That’s one of the things I’ve noticed, uh, looking at a lot o- of blade photos with OEM trailing edge serrations. That the little triangles on the back edges break off.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And I think- There’s
Allen Hall: a lot of them. I was shocked on
Nicholas Gaudern: some sites. One thing you have to be very careful as well is, is lifting and handling as well.
Oh. So, you know, sometimes if these products are installed in the factory, then how do you safely transport that blade and lift that blade?
Allen Hall: You really can’t.
Nicholas Gaudern: So in some ways it’d be better if you put them on at site, but obviously I, I know that’s not always possible. No. So we’re typically acting, um, as, you know, a retrofit.
Mm-hmm. So in that sense we, we minimize a lot of that risk of the, the transport and handling that the OEMs may have to deal with.
Allen Hall: So [00:21:00] what’s next for Power Curve? What’s h- happening this summer?
Nicholas Gaudern: So we’re gonna be really pushing to get Silent Edge and Dragon Scale out in the field more. Yeah. Um, Dragon Scale is, is really exciting, and we’re gonna get our, our first, uh, turbines in different countries equipped with these products.
And Silent Edge, uh, we’re currently putting some of the finishing touches on the, um, the tooling, the injection molding tooling. So the part we have in front of us, this is actually one that we had in the wind tunnel. So this one here is a 3D print. A very nice 3D print. Oh, yeah, it’s- Uh, it’s had vapor smoothing on it, so the surface- It is really smooth
is, is super nice. And you can put these out in the field. So the, the trial with Statkraft was actually with 3D-printed components. If you wanna do a trial for a few months, it’s very possible to do it with 3D prints. Oh. And I, I think they’d actually last way, way longer than that, but, you know, the test was designed to put them on, measure them, take them off again.
Yeah. And that’s what we did.
Allen Hall: Offshore.
Nicholas Gaudern: Mm.
Allen Hall: Uh, uh, w- we’ve had some people write into the podcast talking about offshore wind turbines. And in the States, offshore wind turbines are [00:22:00] usually 10, 15, 20 miles from the shore, but that’s not always the case. Over in Japan and some other areas, the turbines are pretty close to shore.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, def- They’re
Allen Hall: almost-
Nicholas Gaudern: They’re definitely near-shore …
Allen Hall: they’re almost- Yeah. Yeah, yeah … onshore turbines, but because they’re offshore, they get really big, right? So y- you can build a really big offshore turbine. And some of the comments we have received is, “Hey, these turbines are noisy.”
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And, you know, the, the water surface can do some weird things-
Allen Hall: Well, that’s what I wanted to know
acoustically. Okay. Yeah. That’s what I wanted to know- Yeah. Yeah … because if you have trees and hills that kind of block the noise- Yeah … that’s easy. But if you have a turbine and you live on the, essentially the beach- Yep … or real close to the shore- Yeah … that turbine is right there. In some cases in Japan, it’s not very far.
Yeah. You can see it.
Nicholas Gaudern: Particularly on a still day, you know, when you have a very flat water surface, that can mean that sound is able to propagate a little bit further than maybe it otherwise would.
Allen Hall: So is there a, a real need then to pay attention to the acoustics and noise- Yeah … coming off of offshore wind turbines?
Nicholas Gaudern: [00:23:00] I think, uh, c- certainly the near-shore, the things you’re describing now. Yeah. Offshore’s an interesting question because I think often, if I think about the UK and, and Denmark, they are quite offshore, and I think in that, in that sense, the noise is much less of a, a concern. And I think it may be more driven by regulatory r- requirements- Mm-hmm
than actual, you know, neighbor complaints perhaps. So noise is interesting because people put serrations on for different reasons. Yeah. Some put them on because there’s a regulation. Yeah. Uh, some put them on because they want to be shown to being a good neighbor, you know, doing the best they can to reduce noise- We should
Allen Hall: try to-
Nicholas Gaudern: which we should absolutely be doing …
Allen Hall: do that every time we can.
Nicholas Gaudern: And some are doing it because they have curtailment on their turbines.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: So in order to meet a regulation perhaps, they have to basically turn down the turbine, and it means that it spins slower. And if it spins slower, the noise is lower, sure.
But the power output is also lower. And what we found is that on some turbines that are in noise modes, they’re losing 3, 4, 5% AEP- Ooh. Ouch … [00:24:00]every year because they’re having to turn down the turbine to meet a regulation or to, to satisfy, you know, uh, neighbor relationships. But just imagine what that means for finances if you put a serration on.
You can turn the turbine up again, which you’re now addressing the noise at the source, so you don’t actually have to stop it spinning slower. You’re actually killing the noise where it’s being generated.
Allen Hall: So there’s a big financial incentive- Yes … to look at trailing edge and try to quiet them as much as you can, particularly onshore.
I think that case has- Yeah … been well made over time. I’m always shocked that a lot of operators that, uh, even in the US Midwest, and we s- we drive around quite a bit in the Midwest, there’s a lot of turbines that are near homes.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah,
Allen Hall: absolutely. Y- you know, there’s one or two or three homes. This isn’t like there’s a suburb right there, but there are homes out there, and, and they would like to have enjoyment of their property.
Yeah, of course. And if you can knock down the noise a little bit, it would make it
Nicholas Gaudern: a much more pleasant place. Well, if you take, you know, if you take 30-plus percent off the perceived loudness, that’s, you know-
Allen Hall: Oh, that’s very noticeable … that’s gonna, that’s gonna make a difference. Yeah, you’ll get a thank you letter- Yeah
for [00:25:00] sure. So that’s exciting. The- Yeah … all this is exciting. It- It’s
Nicholas Gaudern: gonna be, it’s gonna be a really great summer, I think, to get more of these components out in the field.
Allen Hall: So if, uh, an operator or an asset manager wants to get ahold of Power Curve, understand what Silent Edge is, and how to get it installed or put some dragon scales on this season, how do they do that?
Nicholas Gaudern: So you can check out our website, uh, powercurve.dk. That has all of our contact details on. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn, uh, as well. I’m often around these, uh- … events that we find- Yeah … uh, in different countries. So no, look, look us up, reach out by email, phone, whatever, and we’d be very happy to talk to you.
Allen Hall: Or reach out to the India office.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes, that’s something that we’re hoping to have up and running, uh- So
Allen Hall: if you’re
Nicholas Gaudern: in India- …
Allen Hall: later this year. Yeah. Reach out. Yeah, that, that’s gonna be an exciting advancement. Yeah. Great. For
Nicholas Gaudern: sure.
Allen Hall: Nicholas, it’s great to have you on the podcast again.
Nicholas Gaudern: Nice talking to you, [00:26:00] Allen.
DeBriefed 3 July 2026: US faces scorching Independence Day | Record ocean temperatures | Vietnam’s EV surge
Q&A: How will the World Bank’s abandoned finance goal affect climate action?
As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 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”
-
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”
-
Renewable Energy8 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases12 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测