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/
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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. 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.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
PowerCurve’s Innovative Vortex Generators and Serrations
Nicholas Gaudern from PowerCurve joins to discuss SilentEdge serrations with up to 5 dB noise reduction, Dragon Scale VGs for AEP recovery, and their approach to products that actually perform in the field. Contact PowerCurve on LinkedIn for more information.
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 show.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Always a pleasure.
Allen Hall: Well, there’s a lot of new products coming outta PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is the aerodynamic leader in add-ons and making your turbines perform at higher efficiency with less loss. Uh, so basically taking that standard OEM blade and making it work the way it was intended to work.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. We
Allen Hall: like to
Nicholas Gaudern: think so. Yeah.
Allen Hall: And there’s a, there’s a lot of new technology that you’ve been working on in the lab that you haven’t been able to explore to the, introduce to the world, so to speak. Yeah. And we’ve seen some of it from the inside of, you know, you’re working behind the scenes or working really hard to get this done, but now that technology has been released to the world, and we’re gonna introduce it today, some new trailing edge.
[00:01:00] Components. Yeah. That really, really reduce the noise. But they, they look a little bit odd. Yes. There’s a lot of ADON dams going on with
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: With these. So what, what do you call these new trailing edge parts?
Nicholas Gaudern: So, so what you have in your hand here? This is the Silence edge, uh, serration. So this is our new trailing Edge Serration products.
Now, most people, when they think of training restorations, they are thinking of triangles.
Allen Hall: Exactly.
Nicholas Gaudern: These Dino tails. Dino Tails, that’s the Siemens, Siemens name for them. Pretty, pretty standard. You see ’em on a lot of turbines now. Sure. And they work, you know, they do do a job. They do a job. They reduce noise.
But like with lots of things in, in aerodynamics, there’s lots of different ways that you can solve a problem and some are better than others. So we’ve worked for a long, long time in the wind tunnel, uh, in the CFD simulations, and we’ve come up with this pretty unique shape. We think,
Allen Hall: well, the, the, the shape is unique and if you, if you look at it, there’s actually different heights to the, the triangle, so to speak.
To mix the air from the pressure and the [00:02:00] suction side to reduce the, the level of noise coming off the blade
Nicholas Gaudern: e Exactly. So we have, uh, we have an asymmetry to the part. We have these different tooth lengths. We have, uh, a lot of changes in thickness going on across the part. So it may be a little bit difficult to see on the camera, but these are quite sculpted 3D components.
They’re not, they’re not flat stock white triangles. No, no. There’s a lot of thickness detail going on here. We’ve paid a lot of attention to the edges. We’ve paid a lot of attention to these gaps between the teeth as well. So all of this is about trying to figure out what is the best way to reduce noise.
And something that not a lot of people will, will admit, but it’s true, is that as an industry we don’t really understand the fundamentals of how serrations work.
Allen Hall: It’s a complicated
Nicholas Gaudern: problem. It’s a really complicated thing. Problem, yeah. Yes. So trying to simulate it in CFD is an absolute nightmare. The, the mesh sizes required, the physics models required are really, really difficult.
So what we found is that you’re probably better off spending [00:03:00] most of your time and money in the wind tunnel. Yes. So, so we go to DTU, they have this wonderful, uh, air acoustic wind tunnel, the pool of core tunnel. It’s one the best tunnels in the industry for doing this kind of work. It
Allen Hall: is
Nicholas Gaudern: because you can measure acoustics and aerodynamics at the same time.
So this allows us to do a lot of very cost effective iteration for this kind of design work. So we know what’s important. You know, we’ve, we’ve studied all the different parameters of serrations lengths, aspect ratios, angles, thicknesses, all this kind of stuff. And it’s about bringing them together into a, into a coherent product.
So this is, this is a result of a lot of design of experiments, a lot of iteration, and combining wind tunnel and CFD to kind of get the best of both of those tools. So,
Allen Hall: so what’s the. Noise reduction compared to those standard triangular trailing aerations. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So there’s lots of different ways of, of thinking about noise reduction, but I think probably the most useful is the O-A-S-P-L.
So this is the overall sound pressure level. Right. Is kind of what [00:04:00]typically you’ll be measuring in an IEC test.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that’s measured in decibels, but a way to decibels because it’s important that we’re waiting to what the human ear can actually hear. Right. Perceive. Exactly. So that’s the numbers we report.
For the field test we’ve recently completed with Silent Edge, we’re seeing up to five decibels of O-A-S-P-L noise reduction.
Allen Hall: Okay. So what’s that mean in terms of what I hear on the ground?
Nicholas Gaudern: So that is an absolutely huge reduction. It’s multiple times of reduction because you know, decibels on a log scale,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: So five DB is is enormous. It’s
Allen Hall: a lot. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: And what’s really interesting is that if you have a turbine that’s running in a noise mode, just one decibel reduction. Of power, sound, sound, power level might be three or 4% P loss. I mean, that, that’s, that’s huge. Think about that loss. So if you need to reduce noise by five decibels to get within a regulation, imagine how much a EP you have to throw away by basically turning down the [00:05:00] turbine to do that.
Allen Hall: That’s right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So that’s really what the, the business case for these kind of products is. It means you can escape noise modes because as soon as you use a noise mode. You are throwing away energy.
Allen Hall: You’re throwing well you’re throwing away profits.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: So you’re just losing money to reduce the noise.
Now you can operate at peak.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: Power output without the creating the noise where you have that risk. Right. So, and particularly in a lot of countries now, there are noise regulations. Yes. And they are very well monitored.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: We’re seeing it more and more where, uh, government agencies are coming out and checking.
Yes. ’cause they have a complaint and so you get a complaint. Oh, that’s fine. Or someone can complain. Yeah. You know, you need to be making your numbers.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And, and the industry needs to be good neighbors, you know? It
Allen Hall: certainly does.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, we have to make sure that people are, you know, approving and comfortable with having wind turbines in their backyard.
Sure. And noise is a big part of that.
Allen Hall: It is.
Nicholas Gaudern: So yeah. Ap sure. That’s really important. Being a good [00:06:00] neighbor also important.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: Meeting the regulations. Obviously you have to meet the regulations. So this product, um, has been through a really long development cycle, and we’re now putting the final touches to the, to the tooling.
So this is available now.
Allen Hall: Oh, wow.
Nicholas Gaudern: Okay. Great. Um, and we’re hoping that in the next uh, few months we’ll be getting even more turbines equipped out in the field with, with the technology.
Allen Hall: So, oh, sure. There’s a, you think about the number of turbines that are in service, hundreds of thousands total worldwide.
A lot of them have no noise reduction at all.
Nicholas Gaudern: No. No.
Allen Hall: And they have a lot of complaints from the neighbors.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: Trying to expand wind into new areas, uh, is hard because the, the experience of the previous Yes. Neighbor
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: Grows into future neighbors. So fixing the turbines you have out in sight today helps you get the next site.
I know we don’t always think about that, but that’s exactly how it works. Yeah, of course. Uh, we need to be conscientious of the people of the turbines we have in service right now. So that we can continue to grow wind [00:07:00] globally and more regulations on noise are gonna come unless we start taking care of the problem ourselves.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And another really important thing with Serrations is that you have to design them so that they don’t impact the loads on the rest of the turbine.
Allen Hall: Right. And people forget about that.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Can you just, can’t just throw up any device up there. And think, well, my blade’s gonna be happy with it. It may not be happy with that device.
Nicholas Gaudern: You have to really carefully understand what the existing blade aerodynamic signature is.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: How is that blade performing? What is the lift distribution across the span? Yeah.
Allen Hall: Right. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So what we do, and we, we’ve talked about it before we go and laser scan blades. We build CAD models, we build CFD models so we can actually understand how much lift a blade can take and what’s the benefit or the penalty of doing so.
So these serrations are designed by default to be load neutral. They won’t increase lift. They won’t reduce lift. That’s what
Allen Hall: it should
Nicholas Gaudern: be. That’s where you should start,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: And maybe there’s some scope to do something else [00:08:00] on certain turbines, but you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t guess. You, you need to calculate, you need to simulate, you need to think very carefully about that.
So that’s what we do with these, uh, with these serrations, we go through this very careful aerodynamic design process to make sure that they reduce noise and that’s it. They don’t increase loads, they don’t reduce AP by killing lift. And that’s, that’s an important aspect.
Allen Hall: Well, that’s the goal.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes,
Allen Hall: exactly.
I don’t necessarily want to increase power. I don’t wanna put more load in my blade, but people do that. I’ve seen that happen and man, they regret it.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, regret it. There’s, there’s some pretty wild claims out there as well about observations can and can’t do. And uh, like with lots of things, it’s important to just do the simulations, speak to some experts and, um.
Yeah, maybe take the, the less exciting path, you know, sometimes,
Allen Hall: well, no. Yeah. Well, less exciting path where I don’t have a broken blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s a lot less exciting. It’s, it’s definitely more profitable. Now, the Dragon Scale Vortex generator has been [00:09:00] around about a year or so.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep, yep.
Allen Hall: And the thing about these devices, and they’re so unique, interesting to think about because you typically think of a vortex generator as this being this little bit of a fence.
Where you are tripping the air and making it fall back down onto the blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: A really, it works.
Nicholas Gaudern: It works.
Allen Hall: But it’s it’s
Nicholas Gaudern: been around a long time.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It, it does, it does do this thing. And they, they were, they came outta the aviation business. We use ’em on airplanes to keep air flow over the control surfaces so we can continue to fly even in close to stall conditions.
All that makes sense. And airplanes are not a wind turbine.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: So there’s different things happening there. So although they work great on on aircraft, they’re not necessarily the most efficient thing for a wind turbine where you’re trying to generate power and revenue from the rotation of the blades.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: So this is a completely different way of thinking about getting the airflow back onto the blade where it produces [00:10:00] revenue.
Nicholas Gaudern: And what’s really nice is to actually see this together with silent edge, because historically, and maybe not even historically. Serrations VGs, they’re triangles. They work, they do a job.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it in a different way. In a better way.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that’s the same principles from applying with Silence Edge and Dragon Scale. We want to work the flow in the most efficient way possible.
Allen Hall: Right. You’re trying to get to an
outcome.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: Efficiently.
Nicholas Gaudern: We want to, we want to target very specific things on the blade, and that’s where you can see there’s a few different styles of Dragon Scale that we have on the table here.
We have some that are two fins. We have some that are three fins. We have different sizes, and this is because they’re tailored to different parts of the blade. So these three Fin Dragon scales, their focus is ultimate lift. We are creating a really powerful vortex through this combination of three air foils, if you imagine, um, the inside of a Turbo fan.
You have these cascading air force. [00:11:00] You look at the leading edge slacks on an aircraft. You look at the front wing of a Formula one car. It’s that kind of concept.
Allen Hall: It’s like that,
Nicholas Gaudern: and it’s these air force that are cooperating with each other.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: To end up with a more beneficial result. ‘
Allen Hall: cause an air force by itself does a function, but when you combine airflows together in the right way
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: You can really control airflow efficiently, less losses. More of what you want out the backside. Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s the backside you’re trying to work on, on a VG or, or dragon scales. You’re trying to create this flow which gets the airflow back onto the blade to create power. We,
Nicholas Gaudern: we want as much attached flow as possible and down exactly down in the roots of a blade.
We have to have really thick aerofoils, you know, blades about round. They’re basically cylinders.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that, that’s essential, right? We have to have the blade take a lot of load into the root aerodynamically. They’re horrible.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So this is where these, uh, these powerful Dragon Scale VGs come into play because what they do is they’re [00:12:00] reenergizing the flow over the aerofoils, and they’re ensuring that that flow remains attached for much, much longer than if those bgs weren’t there.
So down in the root, you’ll get significant boosts to the lift that those sections can generate. And what’s more lift? It goes to more torque, it goes to more power, goes to more a EP. So these dragon scale VGs in the root are there to boost, lift, and boost EP out on the tip of the blade. Things are actually a little bit different because it’s way different.
You shouldn’t really have stall there to begin with if your blade’s been designed well.
Allen Hall: But if you have leading edge erosion exactly. Or some other things that are happening, you can have real aerodynamic problems.
Nicholas Gaudern: So yeah, as soon as you have erosion, uh, maybe your stall margin is not as big as you thought it was.
You’re starting to get some significant losses of lift Yes out towards the tip of the blade. So that’s where these, uh, TwoFin uh, variants come in. So it’s still a dragon scale vg, it’s still the same concept of these cascading error foils. Yeah, but these are [00:13:00] designed for basically ultimate lift to drag ratio.
Mm-hmm. So we don’t really want more maximum lift outta the tip. We kind of have enough, but what we do want is to keep stable attached flow and we want to do it for the less, uh, least drag penalty possible. So basically we want to get rid of as much parasitic drag as we can. These two fin dragon scales, we are seeing 25 plus percent improvements in lift to drag ratio.
Compared to a standard triangle vg. I mean that’s huge.
Allen Hall: That that is really
Nicholas Gaudern: huge.
Allen Hall: That’s huge, right? Because people have seen these, uh, triangular VGs in a lot of places. And one thing I’m noticing more recently is that those VGs, because they’re so draggy, they tend to flutter and they tend to break in just off.
Nicholas Gaudern: Interesting.
Allen Hall: So you’re having this failure mode because this thing is just blocking the air, getting the air to trip.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s not efficient. It does have its downsides ’cause it is. D definitely drag. Just face it, it’s it, is it a draggy [00:14:00] 1940s technology? That’s what it is. Where with the dragon scales, now we’re doing things a lot more efficiently and thinking about how do I get the airflow that the blade designer originally wanted?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes,
Allen Hall: because the blade designer, they’re really intelligent people. They’re, they’re sitting designing blades. But the reality is what you design is on an ideal airflow, and what you have out in service are totally different things. As, as it turns out, the shape of the airflow is not what you think it is because it comes out of the tool and there’s a lot of touching with by humans that are grinding on the leading edges and doing the things that have to be done to manufacture it.
So you don’t really have an ideal blade when it comes out of the
Nicholas Gaudern: No. You
Allen Hall: never do factory. No, you never do.
Nicholas Gaudern: And it’s not polished either.
Allen Hall: It’s not polished. Right. So
Nicholas Gaudern: when you go to the wind tunnel, you have a perfect profile. Yes. And it’s polished. And it works basically. It
Allen Hall: works great. It
Nicholas Gaudern: works great.
Allen Hall: The theoretical and the actual match.
Yeah. In reality they do. I think a lot of operators are not [00:15:00] connected with that reality of, Hey, that Blade should be producing this amount of revenue for me, and it’s not. And you hear that discussion all the time, particularly in the us. It should be producing this amount of power. I’m doing all the calculations.
We are not producing that power. Why? The blade length’s saying, but the power’s not coming out of it. Well take a look at your leading edge, take a look at your yard full of shape and realize you’re going to have to do something like dragon scales to get that E energy. Exactly. Revenue back.
Nicholas Gaudern: You need to do a full aerodynamic health check.
Basically you do. And see what are all the possibilities to improve my blade performance. And some of it is down to the fundamental shape of the blade,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: But some of it is down to blade condition. Yes. Blade Blade manufacturing quality.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, what kind of paint did they put on it? What day of the week was it made?
And all these things can be compensated for by VGs and you’ll get more revenue out at the end.
Allen Hall: You say? ’cause what happens? The, the, the scenario which is hard to visualize unless [00:16:00] you’re an A and emesis, is that there comes on the suction side, and it should be, in a ideal sense, rolling all the way to the back edge of the blade and coming off.
What happens is though, is that. When you get leading edge erosion is that the air flow actually separates. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: It
Allen Hall: doesn’t
Nicholas Gaudern: always make it, yeah.
Allen Hall: Doesn’t make it to the back edge. Yeah. And so you can see that, especially if, if there’s dirt in the air, you can look on dirty blades, you can see where that separation line is, and a lot of operators have sky specs, images or Zeit view images, and then go back and look at the blades.
It takes two minutes to go. I have
Nicholas Gaudern: particularly down in the root, you’ll see it.
Allen Hall: Oh, in the root all the time. You, you
Nicholas Gaudern: see it really clearly that that separation line
Allen Hall: all the time, you really see that separation line. I’m seeing it more and more up towards the tip. Interesting. That’s where the lightning protection, yeah.
Systems sit.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: I see a lot of airflow that is not front to back on the suc. Well, you
Nicholas Gaudern: have a lot of three dimensional flow out there.
Allen Hall: You do towards the tip you do. And you realize how much power you’re losing there. And I think operators are just throwing away money.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: So you could [00:17:00] put dragon skills on it very efficiently, very quickly.
Get that revenue back into your system and it’s gonna stay. So even if leading edge erosion happens, the dragon scales are gonna compensate for it. It’s gonna get the airflow back where it should be.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. And the nice thing about this is, you know, we are building on well over a decade of upgrading turbines with aerodynamic components.
Oh yes. So this technology stands on the foundations of all of that work. In terms of the materials, the work instructions. Um, the fatigue calculate, you know, everything
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: Is built on thousands of installations that we’ve done. Yes. So, although it’s a new technology aerodynamically, it’s not really new in lots of sensors.
Allen Hall: Well, I look at it this way. If you turn on Formula One today and look at what the new generation of cars running around as you look at the, that front. Yes. Uh. Fin. Yeah. What do I call it? Air foil shape in the front. It’s super complicated.
Nicholas Gaudern: The sculpting of the [00:18:00] surfaces is really impressive,
Allen Hall: right? There’s a lot of thought going into those surfaces versus you turn on a Formula One race or go on YouTube and look at a Formula One race from the 1980s.
Yeah, it’s basically a piece.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: To provide down downforce. That’s it. The aerodynamics wasn’t really there, so we come a long way and a lot of that technology that happens in Formula One that happens in aviation eventually rolls down into. Yeah. Wind.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly
Allen Hall: right. So we, we, although we are not designing Formula One style blaze today, we’re taking that same knowledge and information and we’re applying that back in.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. We’re
Allen Hall: secondarily we,
Nicholas Gaudern: which is a right thing to do. We’re taking, taking inspiration from all these different aerodynamic fields and, you know, picking the best
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: From what’s available and just allowing ourselves to be a little bit more creative.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: And thinking outside the box a bit. There’s so many ways to do this as we’ve been saying.
And the import. And the
Allen Hall: data’s there.
Nicholas Gaudern: The data’s there. Exactly.
Allen Hall: The data’s there because you’ve been at the DTU Yep. Uh, wind Tunnel, which also has the acoustic piece to it. Yeah. So you have measured data from a reliable source. [00:19:00] You have field data, and you know, you put all these together, you’re gonna get that improvement back.
You’re gonna get your invest back, you’ll be more profitable.
Nicholas Gaudern: So Dragon Scale, focus on the AP. And that a EP will, uh, vary depending on the turbine.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: But we’ll assess the turbine and, and decide the best configuration, and then say silent edge. That’s the focus on the noise reduction. And we’re seeing up to five decibels OASP on the field.
It’s, which
Allen Hall: is crazy.
Nicholas Gaudern: It’s even more That’s really good that we were hoping for, you know?
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So we, we know this is gonna be a, a great product.
Allen Hall: It looks very interesting.
Nicholas Gaudern: It does.
Allen Hall: It does it. It looks complicated and you think air airflow is complicated. It’s a compressible fluid. It’s not easy to, to just assume it’s gonna do what you think it is.
Yeah. You need to get into the tunnel. You need to replicate, you need to do all that work, which is expensive in time consuming. That’s why you go to someone like Power. Curver knows what they’re doing in the wind tunnel, knows how to measure those things and know when they’re getting nonsense. Out of their computer.
I
Nicholas Gaudern: mean, you, you’ll pay thousands and thousands of [00:20:00] Euros dollars a day to run a wind tunnel.
Allen Hall: You will.
Nicholas Gaudern: You’ve gotta Absolutely. You’ve gotta turn up with your plan in hand, that’s for sure.
Allen Hall: Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there’s a lot of assumptions because it, aerodynamics is hard. You know, you watch these blade spin around, you don’t realize how complicated these devices are.
They are complicated. Those air force shapes we are running today have been through a lot of history, a lot of history to get to where we are now. Now we’re just gonna take him into the next generation. This, we’re bringing ’em into the two thousands. In sort of a
Nicholas Gaudern: sense, what I’m hoping to see is, you know, with the OEMs, some OEMs do it already, but it’s important to think about these components when you’re designing new blades as well, you should because then that will allow you a much bigger design space to work in.
And
Allen Hall: a lot less customer complaints.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Where’s my power?
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. You know, these products, particularly the VGs, are really important tools for PowerCurve robustness. And some OEMs have known this for a long, long time.
Allen Hall: Yep.
Nicholas Gaudern: And you’ll see VGs on most of their blades. Mm-hmm. Others not so much. And that’s a design choice.
It’s a design philosophy. Um, and I think it may not [00:21:00] be the right one, you know?
Allen Hall: Well, I think the operators are asking to get the most out of their turbines. Yeah. Why shouldn’t they? They should be asking for that.
Nicholas Gaudern: I think for a, for a long time, and it’s not just in wind devices, like these have been considered, you know, band-aids fixes when you’ve, you’ve messed something up.
But I feel that’s a really negative way to think about products like this. They’re doing something that the kind of raw air fall shape on its own cannot achieve. Sure. Oh no. Right. You know, you might be able to mold some interesting stuff. Uh, as part of the blade, it’s very difficult to, to recreate the kind of aerodynamic effects that these products, uh, have.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So they shouldn’t be considered bandaids or fixes. No. They should be considered opportunities. And ways that you can maximize performance and unlock areas of the design space that previously weren’t accessible to.
Allen Hall: Sure. Every possible component that deals with fluid air is moving this way.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Jet engines, you look at jet engine, how much more is going into those jet engines today in terms of this kind of [00:22:00] technology?
Yeah. All the race colors, doesn’t matter what class, where it is, is all looking at this anything to do with aircraft, it’s all over this.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah,
Allen Hall: exactly. Or, or doing this today. It’s just wind that’s behind
Nicholas Gaudern: wind. Wind is
Allen Hall: significantly
Nicholas Gaudern: behind. No,
Allen Hall: it’s not magic. It’s proven technology. It’s
Nicholas Gaudern: just good engineering.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s good engineering and if you call PowerCurve, they’re gonna help you under to to, to understand what you have today and what you could have tomorrow.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: And how this, these devices will improve your revenue stream.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. You know, we will look at your blades, we’ll give you some good advice and maybe that advice will be that.
You know, a certain product isn’t right for your blade. Right. That’s fine.
Allen Hall: That’s an answer.
Nicholas Gaudern: That’s an answer.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it is.
Nicholas Gaudern: But let’s, let’s look at the blade. Let’s see what’s possible, and let’s just have a, have a proper conversation about it over some real data, some real
Allen Hall: facts. Right. I think that’s the key, and a lot of operators are afraid to talk about aerodynamics is it’s, it’s a difficult area to, to start the conversation on, right?
Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, when I work with PowerCurve, and I’ve worked with you guys for a [00:23:00] number of years, the answers I get back are intelligent and they’re not. Super complicated. This is what you’re gonna see. This is the improvement. And then we can, this is how we’re going to show you can get that improvement.
It’s not magic,
Nicholas Gaudern: no
Allen Hall: power crews backing up with data, which I think is the key, right? Because you’re the, you do hear a lot of noise in this industry about magical products that’ll do all these things. Particularly aerodynamic ones. Yes. PowerCurves, the ones really bringing the data.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And we have, we have the track record now.
We have like we do 17, 1800 turbines. Should be over 2000 very soon with our products on. Yeah. So we have a lot, we have a lot of data to draw on to know that we’re doing a good thing.
Allen Hall: Well, and speaking of that, because one of the questions that always pops up is, well, we have put these new VGs or trailing edges on, are they gonna stay on?
How durable are they?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And that’s a, that’s a really important question to ask was it doesn’t matter how fancy aerodynamic product is, if it falls off the blade.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So, you know, we’ve spent a lot of, uh, time and effort looking at how we should be fixing these products on. [00:24:00] So we use a, uh, a wet adhesive.
We specify a plexus adhesive to put our products in place. Really good adhesive. It’s a great adhesive and it means that they are not going anywhere. Basically. It’s a very, uh, forgiving adhesive. Uh, and it’s a very high spec. So we, we don’t use, uh, sided tape. We might have some of our products for some initial tack to help, you know, get the clear, the clear outta the line exactly.
But in terms of the bond itself, that is with a, a proper structural adhesive. So one thing that we are really proud of is that we haven’t got any, uh, reported failures of our panels over all the installations we’ve made. And that’s a combination of materials, but also geometry, work, instructions, adhesive.
It’s, it’s the full package. So it’s something that, um, yes, say we’re very proud of. And I think it’s, it’s a big part of what we do at PowerCurve, making sure the product is the right shape. Sure. But also making sure it stays on the blade.
Allen Hall: Well, you see it [00:25:00] from OEMs who have all kinds of aerodynamic treatments on there, and they’ll double set a tape to the blade, and then those parts are on the ground.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And double-sided tape. You can get some really nice spec tape. Sure.
Allen Hall: You,
Nicholas Gaudern: yeah. But it’s not
a
Allen Hall: 20 year device.
Nicholas Gaudern: No. And the installation tolerance required on surface prep is really, really high. So it’s possible. It’s just harder. I think it’s riskier,
Allen Hall: it’s risky.
Nicholas Gaudern: So, you know, I think for us, the adhesive is, is the way to go.
And, and it’s been proven out by the, by the track record.
Allen Hall: And some of the things we’ve seen over in Australia is when trailing ulcerations have come off, it’s been a safety concern. So now you got
Nicholas Gaudern: absolutely
Allen Hall: government officials involved in safety because parts are coming up. Turbine.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: You
Nicholas Gaudern: can’t have these components flying, flying through the air.
That’s, that’s not safe.
Allen Hall: That’s because PowerCurve has done the homework.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: And has the track record. That’s why you wanna choose PowerCurve. So how do people get a hold of PowerCurve? How do they get a hold of you, Nicholas, to start the process?
Nicholas Gaudern: So, um, you’re welcome to reach out to us in lots of different ways.
We’re on LinkedIn. Uh, we have our website, [00:26:00] PowerCurve, dk, um, so yeah, LinkedIn websites. There’ll probably some links on this podcast as well to get in touch. But, um, yeah, whatever way works best for you.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s gonna be a busy season. So if you’re interested in doing anything with PowerCurve this year, you need to get on the website, get ahold of Nicholas.
And get started, uh, because now’s the time to maximize your revenue.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks a lot and great to talk to you,
Allen Hall: Nicholas. Thanks so much for being back on the podcast.
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