Published

2 years ago

December 21, 2023

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

ArcVera CEO Discusses Optimizing Wind Farm Performance and Viability

This episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast features an interview with Gregory Poulos, CEO of ArcVera Renewables, to discuss how the company’s work is helping operators improve wind farm performance. We discuss wind resource assessments, wake modeling, repowering with new turbine technology, evaluating offshore wind resources, and accounting for risks like future nearby wind farm development. ArcVera helps make wind power more viable and cost-effective through services spanning a project’s full lifetime, from initial prospecting to operations to eventual repowering decades later.

Reach out to ArcVera and get your wind farm performing better! https://arcvera.com/contact/

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 back to this special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. ArcVera Renewables is the leading provider of renewable energy technology services, including wind resource assessments, technical due diligence, project engineering, and O& M support.

ArcVera’s work in the wind industry is helping to make. Wind energy more affordable and reliable. The company’s services are helping developers to build new wind farms and improve the performance of existing wind farms. As a result, wind energy is playing an increasingly important role in the global energy mix.

In this podcast, we’ll explore ArcVera’s work with ArcVera’s CEO, Greg Poulos. Welcome to the program.

Gregory Poulos: Thanks for having me on, guys. It’s great to be here. Hi, Allen. Hi, Joel. Good to see you again.

Allen Hall: Yeah, so the last time we got together was in New Orleans at ACP, and that was a good time. That was a really crazy convention.

I know since we have left there Joel and I work in the lightning space and you’re in the wind in the wind space, actual wind, the productive part of the wind industry business. It’s been a busy summer. I assume you guys have been busy with all the projects and all the IRA things have been happening, trying to evaluate performance of farms and what, where to put new farms and what’s going on offshore.

I’m really interested to pick your brain here.

Gregory Poulos: Yeah all of those things globally. Absolutely.

Allen Hall: ArcVera’s been around for about 40 years at this point. Can you just give our listeners a brief introduction as to all the things you do around the wind industry?

Gregory Poulos: Absolutely. So we work on on the wind side.

We also work in solar and battery storage. But on the wind side, we work just as in solar and storage through the full project lifetime. So in wind there’s a prospecting phase where A developer or somebody trying to create a wind farm is looking for a spot or they have a spot in mind and they need to know if it’s going to be economic.

It should they invest more in there in the development. So we help folks understand how windy a certain site may be using our vast experience and also advanced modeling tools. Some which we discussed at ACP um, a variety of other things, including our meteorological expertise about flow over complex terrain. There’s a lot of free material out there that is inaccurate, and so we help narrow the band of to what the real answer is.

Ultimately you have to measure on site and so you have to use lidar, sodar or meteorological towers most commonly offshore, they call them floating lidar or flidar but so we’ll recommend the configuration design and where to place those systems. Monitor all those systems after their installed, inspect them all with an eye toward eventual financing.

You need to have a nice tied up story around your energy production, and it all starts with getting excellent data measured. So we work with them through the entire development process, analyzing data, creating reports related to energy, evaluating the different turbine technologies that are available in the correct hub height to place those at for a given meteorological regime and wind speed based on IEC Standards. Design the turbine arrays, do the energy work, and then ultimately, after a long process that is too long to describe in my brief introduction to what we do a turbine is purchased and an offtaker is found ultimately who will buy the power or you take merchant risk and you go to the bank, get your money.

And we work with the clients through that with technical reports in support of financing wind farms. And, uh, during construction, we do some work on the construction site. Depending on how things are going, we’ll review the contracts for operations and maintenance, review the turbine supply agreement.

And then after construction, there’s all sorts of operational side work we can do. Including forensic analysis of performance power performance testing with the I. C. R. E. Standard certification that we have and all the way through. And then 30 years later, you might repower depending on the situation.

We’ll come back and do it all again. With repowering it.

Joel Saxum: Something to focus on here is what Allen and I, because, with Weather Guard, we’re always talking lightning with people. They call, hey, I have lightning issues, I have lightning issues. And one of the things that we focus on with everybody who calls is the simple fact that there is not a blanket you can throw over and say, This is how lightning works.

It does, in a certain sense, but every site is different depending on the technology installed, depending on the topography, the local geography, the local weather patterns, all of these things go into fact when you’re making decisions on what to do, whether it’s O& M decisions, why, for us, of course, why is lightning striking me this way, what can I expect in the future, I have damage here, why is this happening, what’s going on here. What you guys are focusing on as well, Greg, is, yeah, there may be an idea of, Hey, wind blows here in this county, and we think we have this for a wind resource.

However, when you really want to nail it down and get into the nitty gritty and get some bankable insights, you need to talk to the experts and have them do a per site actual investigation and give you some real insights.

Gregory Poulos: Yeah, that’s correct. There’s a whole process to this that, being around for 40 plus years, at least the original founders, not me, I was 12 when the original founders started.

A set of gurus that existed in those early days, basically over time, came up with more and more rigorous methods to study wind farms and get the answer right. You make mistakes, you make corrections so all the methods of energy assessment have steadily improved over time, and they’re constantly changing as we discover new things, such as the long range wakes topic we discussed last time. So there are new things emerging as the industry changes, but yeah you absolutely have to follow a protocol. And we serve on the standards committee for the international electrical technical commission, the IEC. And there’s a new standard that’s actually going to be coming out I’m not sure the exact timing, a year or two after all the processes are done or new called IEC 15 61400 15 2.

Anyway, that’s underway with a bunch of industry, current industry experts that are all working together to formulate a standard for that process. But there are very well established practices already. Very well known practices that are used to create bankable wind assessments.

Allen Hall: There’s a big repowering effort in the United States and I want to touch on that point for a minute.

When I talk to existing wind farms that have been around 10, 20 years and they’re getting to that repower stage, when you ask them what the expected power production was from that site, Uh, when they started to build it and what the actual is, there’s a big discrepancy between those two typically. So the data they had went, I think a lot of times it didn’t use an ArcVera-type service when they put these farms out there, they just put some met towers up, got some general numbers and starts putting farms up.

That’s really not the way to do it. So when they come to a repowering situation. What’s the right approach there to actually get some hard numbers because they’re going to put different technology and typically on these new sites and they need to know, do I need to put low wind speed turbines up here?

Do I need to raise the tower hub height a little bit? What’s that process look like?

Gregory Poulos: That process is, is pretty straightforward once you have the right information. In some cases we have the old data from the original wind farm in our database. Because we did work on it before. Maybe they didn’t do a bankable assessment, but we might have been, had the data, happened to have the data in house.

That’s happened several times. But except for that we also advise them to put up new meteorological measurements around the site for a year prior to doing the repowering assessment. Sometimes there isn’t time for that. And you, there’s a a second method to evaluate the energy production on a site, which involves using the actual SCADA data, the power production data from those farms that have been the, from the farm that’s been operating all that time.

You can use that information and Reverse engineer how the wind blows and then re engineer that to create an operational repowering forecast using modern turbine technology, which is usually much taller. And so you need some knowledge of what the shear is at a site like that. In other words the change in the wind speed with height, you have to understand that if you’re going to go higher.

It’s going to be windier generally at a particular location. That’s not always true in topography. Sometimes it’s windier downhill anyway. I didn’t want to get that, sneak that in real quick. But but for the most part, except in certain places like complex California valleys where the wind speed actually decreases with height.

You need to understand how the new, how energy from new modern turbines with bigger rotors, taller hub heights will work. And you have to reverse engineer the data because you don’t have any meteorological information to go on. Let’s say the original net towers were very short anyway, very old technology, very low quality, not much to work with even with the old data for modern techniques, consistent with modern techniques. So you have to reverse engineer the power production at that farm, try to understand how the wind blows there, and then reconstruct what a new turbine at a taller hub height might produce. It’s very uncertain and compared to a full measurement campaign, but it can be done.

Allen Hall: How does LiDAR play into those measurements? Do you need to put LiDAR up at some of these sites to really understand how the wind is moving versus altitude or some of the perturbations you’re getting from the landscape.

Gregory Poulos: You can certainly use LIDAR. You can use meteorological towers or SODAR.

LIDAR is handy certainly. It generally observes the wind speeds to uh, 120 to 200 meters above ground, depending on the settings and characteristics of the site. Lasers that come out of LIDARs bounce off particulates in the atmosphere. So if the atmosphere is very clean, sometimes they don’t return a signal.

Sodars can be used as well and they have different characteristics and meteorological towers are the long standard that’s existed in the industry. A lot of the standards are actually based on anemometers, um, in the wind turbine design. So using LiDAR and sodar creates a little uncertainty in the turbulence measurements.

In any case. They’re very helpful. Absolutely. And many of our clients are using LIDAR and SODAR all around the world to supplement meteorological measure, meteorological tower based measurements and to go higher, above. It’s very expensive to build a very tall net tower. In many parts of the world, so you put up a shorter one and supplement it with information from a lidar or a stodar that looks above the net tower height.

Joel Saxum: Digging back into the repower issue, and this is one of the reasons why I think someone going to do a repower should contact ArcVera, simply because you guys are also doing this long distance wake research, right? So you’re understanding what’s happening down wind and whatnot. So as again, as say XYZ wind farm was installed in 2010 and there are what’s 2023 now about 2013 because someone’s taking perfect advantage of PTCs.

So in that 10 years in that area. There more than likely has been some neighboring wind farms installed, either downstream, upstream, next to it. While you guys are, yes, you have some constraints of this is where the existing towers are, we’re going to assimilate new, possibly new technology onto these existing towers.

However, around this area, there has also been local changes in the wind resource because of these additions. Now, ArcVera has a bunch of specialized knowledge that others may not have around this long distance wake changes that may affect the production. So it, this, in this case right now is my thought.

If I’m doing a repower, I’m calling ArcVera because they’ve got not only the knowledge, the existing knowledge of the wind resource within that wind farm, but they have a specialized batch of knowledge. You guys have a specialized batch of knowledge of what could be going on around, and the long-term wakes affecting it.

Gregory Poulos: That’s right. With the modeling technique that we described in the last podcast we have the ability to recreate the impact of new wind farms being built. Over time so you can do a simulation with and without those wind farms in place and get a more accurate estimate of how that affects ongoing energy production.

The other you can use that method, but you have to have knowledge of when wind farms went in the types of turbines that are there. You have to have all the power curves and all the specs of those wind farms as well as the wind farm you’re trying to build to really understand how that is going to affect things.

Yeah, we can do that, and it’s certainly something we do every day. It’s complicating. Those same issues are complicating day to day wind energy resource assessment for new wind farm builds as well as repowers.

Allen Hall: Computational power it takes to do that, it’s got to be tremendous, right? That’s a really difficult model.

Gregory Poulos: It is. It’s definitely a specialized activity. The we run on supercomputers in the cloud. For generally thousands of processors operating simultaneously for a day or five days or, whatever it happens to take for the particular instance. And then you get terabytes of data and you have processing methods to take that down to just the answer you need.

There’s a lot more information there you throw away because it’s a commercial application. You could probably do a master’s degree or PhD with most of that every run every day. But it’s very sophisticated stuff. Involves a lot of automation to get down to a commercially viable pricing.

You’re taking something that 10 years ago would cost a million dollars probably, and you’re doing it for 25, 000 or 50, 000 or maybe less.

Allen Hall: So let’s jump offshore. And I know, ArcVera, you have a presence worldwide. Let’s just start there. Where are all your offices at?

Gregory Poulos: We have subsidiary offices operating in Brazil since 2011, I believe was the first major inroads there.

And then South Africa since 2015. And in Bangalore, India, since 2020, during the pandemic, we opened that one.

Allen Hall: I want to touch on the offshore piece because I know India is planning on a lot of offshore and that looks like it’s on the, it’s like the East coast of the United States. Everything’s on the Eastern side of India is where they’re planning all that.

So all the wind’s going to come off land onto the turbines and then on the, in, in the New York bight area, same thing. With all the changes that are happening in the who’s going to put wind turbines where situation in the New York Bight? How do you know what that resource is going to look like when you finally someday put in turbines or putting turbines in the water?

Gregory Poulos: You don’t know what’s coming. That’s the hardest part of the build out risk calculation. So you have to do scenarios. Ocean wind being temporarily canceled, it may come back, right? So you can say, okay we have a reprieve for a little while, but eventually the wind is going to flow through some new wind farms where ocean wind was originally planned and take some of the power out of the wind before it reaches our wind farm.

So we can operate Scott free for a little while, but then they’re going to come later. So you have to assess that. And just so you understand the risk, there’s not too much you can do about it, other than just take a haircut or not build your wind farm. But it’s good to understand the magnitude. If it’s a small magnitude, you could say, okay that’s going to be acceptable even long term, or it may be, okay, for 10 years, we’ll make X.

And then after 10 years, we’re going to assume those are going to be built. And can we handle that financially and, or how would, what would we do in that instance? Because there’s no current laws for reimbursement for future wind farms to existing wind farms. That’s what you have to do, is just evaluate the various scenarios.

Allen Hall: And do you, would you need to know the kind of turbines that would be installed in front of you?

Does that matter all that much? I guess maybe the hub height would matter.

Gregory Poulos: You can make very good assumptions even if it’s not built about what it, what the likely effects are going to be. But depending on how long it is, it could be quite a bit different, right? This could be a really different technology.

We don’t know what’s coming, but Using the three bladed upwind machine assumption, there are certainly standards for expected thrust and power production. That you can apply and make assumptions about the type of turbine just based on experience that very realistic at least it no more uncertain than the rest of the process.

Allen Hall: Yeah, So what happens when we’re talking about wind off the coast of New Jersey places like Atlantic City, right? They built big casinos and there’s big buildings and the build out will continue along the coastline in New Jersey, I assume for a while and even New York for that matter.

When they start building structures right on the edge of shorelines, I assume that affects the wind offshore, right? That’s part of these wakes that are created that seem to go for 50, 100 kilometers?

Gregory Poulos: Sure, yeah. If you were to build wind farms onshore and the wind were from onshore to offshore, they would deplete the wind resource to some degree.

And that effect would be felt in the offshore wind farms. And the reverse is true if the wind blows the other direction. The when the wind blows from onshore to offshore, it also blows the temperature structure over the land, over the ocean. And so it’s suddenly, it’s over warm, let’s say in the summertime, you have very warm air over land, the sun’s up, it’s hazy, hot, and humid.

In New Jersey, New York, and the wind is from the southwest that gets blown over the relatively cold ocean that creates a stable atmosphere, which lengthens the wake effect and makes it worse. There are effects of just the weather that’s occurring onshore if it’s being advected in the terminology of atmospheric science, it’s being moved offshore only.

Joel Saxum: You’re on the big word of the day, wind right now, Greg. Evected.

Gregory Poulos: Evection, there you go.

Joel Saxum: So I’m going to, I’m going to throw an odd one at you and Allen this isn’t in our questions that we threw, but I was just thinking about it as we’re talking offshore. So on the podcast, we have talked about some new technologies and we’ve had some on.

So some of these new technologies, of course, floating offshore wind is going to be new. And I believe that, and I don’t, this is me armchair engineer, right? I believe that those platforms could cause the wake changes as well, because there’s actually a different angles of incidents as they move offshore.

But the other things I’m wondering is, has ArcVera investigated, that they can talk, that you can talk about? Or maybe even just on the side or on the water cooler, the ideas of say, the sea twirl or the wind wall and those kind of technologies that are On the horizon, maybe that are startups that might become commercialized at some point.

Have you investigate investigated any of those?

Gregory Poulos: We haven’t investigated them officially under contract, that kind of thing. But certainly we’ve seen the announcements. There’s a long history of turbine technologies that have been tried of different types. Nothing to date has yet beat the economics of three bladed upwind, upwind turbine. That, that’s not to say there aren’t some strong advocates for other technologies and that others may in fact come out. We do have the experience in house to evaluate them, but we haven’t looked at those specifically. What you off, what you get when it’s early stage is extremely expensive because it’s one off type stuff.

So until it’s commercially viable, you really have to invest a lot of money to get it off the ground, even if it’s more efficient. It might not make it.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, there’s a lot of hurdles there, right? To new technology. And then, not only is the technology development hurdles, but then you have to get past the commercial and political hurdles in front of it as well.

I think some of those technologies may be, they’re very interesting to watch and to look at. But they’re getting them to a commercial status, as Phil Totaro will tell you from IntelStor getting them commercialized is a lot different than being technologically feasible.

Gregory Poulos: Yeah, are they being used for small wind, say house, household style, or farms, farm scale, or are they being utility scale?

It, for the three bladed upwind turbine, utility scale seems to be prime.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think that one of the, one of the big problems here is that what people maybe don’t understand that haven’t seen the whole picture of wind is that yes, like it might be technologically feasible, but then you also have to get the insurance companies to agree that they’ll take this risk on and put it out at a large scale.

And that’s a difficult thing to do when they’re already taking the losses that they do take with the offshore wind that we’re working with today.

Gregory Poulos: Yeah, that’s a standard practice part of due diligence. As you go into financing, or insurance can also get these same reports, you do a turbine technology review.

The less risk is associated, the least risk is associated with small changes from an existing proven technology. If you’re doing something brand new. There’s going to be a risk premium associated with that applied. Basically, you’re going to have to pay more for the money, the loan that you’re going to get because of the risk.

And there’ll be other conditions applied which makes it just a more expensive project in the end, the rates of return drop.

Allen Hall: There’s a lot of interesting areas in wind and to just. knowing what’s happening in the wind energy business. And it all starts with you, Greg, honestly, right? So if you don’t know what the wind is, you do not know what your energy production is going to be.

And that’s why people consistently call ArcVera for knowledge and advice on, on, what those projects will look like, Greg, how do people get ahold of ArcVera? How do they contact you? How do they connect up?

Gregory Poulos: They can certainly contact me. I’m just greg.poulos@arcvera.com. And through our website naturally, right?

So there’s an info button there and you can contact us easily through that arrangement. And there’s also direct contact information for various people on our website anytime. Yeah, please, send a note along, I’ll get you, I’ll get people in touch with the right individuals, technology, technical experts at our company to handle their particular problem, wind, solar, or battery storage.

Allen Hall: It’s a great discussion every time you’re on the podcast. We got to touch base in another couple of months. I know there’s a lot happening in wind at the moment, particularly offshore. And as things develop, I want to touch base. And thanks for being on the program. Love to have you back.

Gregory Poulos: My pleasure.

ArcVera CEO Discusses Optimizing Wind Farm Performance and Viability

Renewable Energy

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Published

8 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

This exclusive article originally appeared in PES Wind 4 – 2025 with the title, Operations take center stage in wind’s next chapter. It was written by Allen Hall and other members of the WeatherGuard Lightning Tech team.

As aging fleets, shrinking margins, and new policies reshape the wind sector, wind energy operations are in the spotlight. The industry’s next chapter will be defined not by capacity growth, but by operational excellence, where integrated, predictive maintenance turns data into decisions and reliability into profit.

Wind farm operations are undergoing a fundamental transformation. After hosting hundreds of conversations on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, I’ve witnessed a clear pattern: the most successful operators are abandoning reactive maintenance in favor of integrated, predictive strategies. This shift isn’t just about adopting new technologies; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we manage aging assets in an era of tightening margins and expanding responsibilities.

The evidence was overwhelming at this year’s SkySpecs Customer Forum, where representatives from over 75% of US installed wind capacity gathered to share experiences and strategies. The consensus was clear: those who integrate monitoring, inspection, and repair into a cohesive operational strategy are achieving dramatic improvements in reliability and profitability.

Takeaway: These options have been available to wind energy operations for years; now, adoption is critical.

Why traditional approaches to wind farm operations are failing

Today’s wind operators face an unprecedented convergence of challenges. Fleets installed during the 2010-2015 boom are aging in unexpected ways, revealing design vulnerabilities no one anticipated. Meanwhile, the support infrastructure is crumbling; spare parts have become scarce, OEM support is limited, and insurance companies are tightening coverage just when operators need them most.

The situation is particularly acute following recent policy changes. The One Big Beautiful Bill in the United States has fundamentally altered the economic landscape. PTC farming is no longer viable; turbines must run longer and more reliably than ever before. Engineering teams, already stretched thin, are being asked to manage not just wind assets but solar and battery storage as well. The old playbook simply doesn’t work anymore.

Consider the scope of just one challenge: polyester blade failures. During our podcast conversation with Edo Kuipers of We4Ce, we learned that an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 blades worldwide are experiencing root bushing issues. ‘After a while, blades are simply flying off,’ Kuipers explained. The financial impact of a single blade failure can exceed €300,000 when you factor in replacement costs, lost production, and crane mobilization. Yet innovative repair solutions, like the one developed by We4Ce and CNC Onsite, can address the same problem for €40,000 if caught early. This pattern repeats across every major component. Gearbox failures that once required complete replacement can now be predicted months in advance. Lightning damage that previously caused catastrophic failures can be prevented with inexpensive upgrades and real-time monitoring. All these solutions are based on the principle that predicted maintenance is better than an expensive surprise.

Seeing problems before they happeny, and potential risks

The transformation begins with visibility. Modern monitoring systems reveal problems that traditional methods miss entirely. Eric van Genuchten of Sensing360 shared an eye-opening statistic on our podcast: ‘In planetary gearbox failures, they get 90%, so there’s still 10% of failures they cannot detect.’ That missing 10% represents the catastrophic failures that destroy budgets and production targets. Advanced monitoring technologies are filling these gaps. Sensing360’s fiber optic sensors, for example, detect minute deformations in steel components, revealing load imbalances and fatigue progression invisible to traditional monitoring. ‘We integrate our sensors in steel and make rotating equipment smarter,’ van Genuchten explained.

Other companies are deploying acoustic systems to identify blade delamination, oil analysis for gearbox health, and electrical signature analysis for generator issues. Each technology adds a piece to the puzzle, but the real value comes from integration. The impact of load monitoring alone can be transformative.

As van Genuchten explained, ‘Twenty percent more loading on a gearbox or on a bearing is half of your life. The other way around, twenty percent less loading is double your life.’ With proper monitoring, operators can optimize load distribution across their fleet, extending component life while maximizing production.

But monitoring without action is just expensive data collection. The most successful operators are those who’ve learned to translate sensor data into operational decisions. This requires not just technology but organizational change, breaking down silos between monitoring, maintenance, and management teams.

In Wind Energy Operations, Early intervention makes the million-dollar difference

The economics of early intervention are compelling across every component type. The blade root bushing example from We4Ce illustrates this perfectly. With their solution, early detection means replacing just 24-30 bushings in about 24 hours of drilling work. Wait, and you’re looking at 60+ bushings and 60 hours of work. Early detection doesn’t just prevent catastrophic failure; it makes repairs faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

This principle extends throughout the turbine. Early-stage bearing damage can be addressed through targeted lubrication or minor adjustments. Incipient electrical issues can be resolved with cleaning or connection tightening. Small blade surface cracks can be repaired in a few hours before they propagate into structural damage requiring weeks of work.

Leading operators are implementing tiered response protocols based on monitoring data. Critical issues trigger immediate intervention. Developing problems are scheduled for the next maintenance window. Minor issues are monitored and addressed during routine service. This systematic approach reduces both emergency repairs and unnecessary maintenance, optimizing resource allocation across the fleet.

Turning information into action

While monitoring generates data, platforms like SkySpecs’ Horizon transform that data into operational intelligence. Josh Goryl, SkySpecs’ Chief Revenue Officer, explained their evolution at the recent Customer Forum: ‘I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place.

The game-changer is integration across data types. The company is working to combine performance data with CMS data to provide valuable insights into turbine health. This approach has been informed by operators across the world, who’ve discovered that integrated platforms deliver insights that siloed data can’t.

The platform approach also addresses the reality of shrinking engineering teams managing expanding portfolios. As Goryl noted, many wind engineers are now responsible for solar and battery storage assets as well. One platform managing multiple technologies through a unified interface becomes essential for operational efficiency.

The Integration Imperative for Wind Farm Operations

The most successful operators aren’t just adopting individual technologies; they’re integrating monitoring, inspection, and repair into a seamless operational system. This integration operates at multiple levels.

At the technical level, data from various monitoring systems feeds into unified platforms that provide comprehensive asset visibility. These platforms don’t just display data; they analyze patterns, predict failures, and generate work orders.

At the organizational level, integration means breaking down barriers between departments. This cross-functional collaboration transforms O&M from a cost center into a value driver. Building your improvement roadmap For operators ready to enhance their O&M approach, the path forward involves several key steps:

Assessing the Current State of your Wind Energy Operations

Document your maintenance costs, failure rates, and downtime patterns. Identify which problems consume the most resources and which assets are most critical to your wind farm operations.

Start with targeted pilots Rather than attempting wholesale transformation, begin with focused initiatives targeting your biggest pain points. Whether it’s blade monitoring, gearbox sensors, or repair innovations, starting with your largest issue will help you see the biggest benefit.

• Invest in integration, not just technology: the most sophisticated monitoring system is worthless if its data isn’t acted upon. Ensure your organization has the processes and culture to transform data into decisions – this is the first step to profitability in your wind farm operations.

Build partnerships, not just contracts: look for technology providers and service companies willing to share knowledge, not just deliver services. The goal is building capability, not dependency.

• Measure and iterate: track the impact of each initiative on your key performance indicators. Use lessons learned to refine your approach and guide future investments.

The competitive advantage

The wind industry has reached an inflection point. With increasingly large and complex turbines, monitoring needs to adapt with it. The era of flying blind is over.

In an industry where margins continue to compress and competition intensifies, operational excellence has become a key differentiator. Those who master the integration of monitoring, inspection, and repair will thrive. Those who cling to reactive maintenance face escalating costs and declining competitiveness.

The technology exists. The business case is proven. The early adopters are already reaping the benefits. The question isn’t whether to transform your O&M approach, but how quickly you can adapt to this new reality. In the race to operational excellence, the winners will be those who act decisively to embrace the efficiency revolution reshaping wind operations.

Unless otherwise noted, images here are from We4C Rotorblade Specialist.

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind's Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Contact us for help understanding your lightning damage, future risks, and how to get more uptime from your equipment.

Download the full article from PES Wind here

Find a practical guide to solving lightning problems and filing better insurance claims here

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Renewable Energy

BladeBUG Tackles Serial Blade Defects with Robotics

Published

11 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

BladeBUG Tackles Serial Blade Defects with Robotics

Chris Cieslak, CEO of BladeBug, joins the show to discuss how their walking robot is making ultrasonic blade inspections faster and more accessible. They cover new horizontal scanning capabilities for lay down yards, blade root inspections for bushing defects, and plans to expand into North America in 2026.

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: Chris, welcome back to the show.

Chris Cieslak: It’s great to be back. Thank you very much for having me on again.

Allen Hall: It’s great to see you in person, and a lot has been happening at Blade Bugs since the last time I saw Blade Bug in person. Yeah, the robot. It looks a lot different and it has really new capabilities.

Chris Cieslak: So we’ve continued to develop our ultrasonic, non-destructive testing capabilities of the blade bug robot.

Um, but what we’ve now added to its capabilities is to do horizontal blade scans as well. So we’re able to do blades that are in lay down yards or blades that have come down for inspections as well as up tower. So we can do up tower, down tower inspections. We’re trying to capture. I guess the opportunity to inspect blades after transportation when they get delivered to site, to look [00:01:00] for any transport damage or anything that might have been missed in the factory inspections.

And then we can do subsequent installation inspections as well to make sure there’s no mishandling damage on those blades. So yeah, we’ve been just refining what we can do with the NDT side of things and improving its capabilities

Joel Saxum: was that need driven from like market response and people say, Hey, we need, we need.

We like the blade blood product. We like what you’re doing, but we need it here. Or do you guys just say like, Hey, this is the next, this is the next thing we can do. Why not?

Chris Cieslak: It was very much market response. We had a lot of inquiries this year from, um, OEMs, blade manufacturers across the board with issues within their blades that need to be inspected on the ground, up the tap, any which way they can.

There there was no, um, rhyme or reason, which was better, but the fact that he wanted to improve the ability of it horizontally has led the. Sort of modifications that you’ve seen and now we’re doing like down tower, right? Blade scans. Yeah. A really fast breed. So

Joel Saxum: I think the, the important thing there is too is that because of the way the robot is built [00:02:00] now, when you see NDT in a factory, it’s this robot rolls along this perfectly flat concrete floor and it does this and it does that.

But the way the robot is built, if a blade is sitting in a chair trailing edge up, or if it’s flap wise, any which way the robot can adapt to, right? And the idea is. We, we looked at it today and kind of the new cage and the new things you have around it with all the different encoders and for the heads and everything is you can collect data however is needed.

If it’s rasterized, if there’s a vector, if there’s a line, if we go down a bond line, if we need to scan a two foot wide path down the middle of the top of the spa cap, we can do all those different things and all kinds of orientations. That’s a fantastic capability.

Chris Cieslak: Yeah, absolutely. And it, that’s again for the market needs.

So we are able to scan maybe a meter wide in one sort of cord wise. Pass of that probe whilst walking in the span-wise direction. So we’re able to do that raster scan at various spacing. So if you’ve got a defect that you wanna find that maximum 20 mil, we’ll just have a 20 mil step [00:03:00] size between each scan.

If you’ve got a bigger tolerance, we can have 50 mil, a hundred mil it, it’s so tuneable and it removes any of the variability that you get from a human to human operator doing that scanning. And this is all about. Repeatable, consistent high quality data that you can then use to make real informed decisions about the state of those blades and act upon it.

So this is not about, um, an alternative to humans. It’s just a better, it’s just an evolution of how humans do it. We can just do it really quick and it’s probably, we, we say it’s like six times faster than a human, but actually we’re 10 times faster. We don’t need to do any of the mapping out of the blade, but it’s all encoded all that data.

We know where the robot is as we walk. That’s all captured. And then you end up with really. Consistent data. It doesn’t matter who’s operating a robot, the robot will have those settings preset and you just walk down the blade, get that data, and then our subject matter experts, they’re offline, you know, they are in their offices, warm, cozy offices, reviewing data from multiple sources of robots.

And it’s about, you know, improving that [00:04:00] efficiency of getting that report out to the customer and letting ’em know what’s wrong with their blades, actually,

Allen Hall: because that’s always been the drawback of, with NDT. Is that I think the engineers have always wanted to go do it. There’s been crush core transportation damage, which is sometimes hard to see.

You can maybe see a little bit of a wobble on the blade service, but you’re not sure what’s underneath. Bond line’s always an issue for engineering, but the cost to take a person, fly them out to look at a spot on a blade is really expensive, especially someone who is qualified. Yeah, so the, the difference now with play bug is you can have the technology to do the scan.

Much faster and do a lot of blades, which is what the de market demand is right now to do a lot of blades simultaneously and get the same level of data by the review, by the same expert just sitting somewhere else.

Chris Cieslak: Absolutely.

Joel Saxum: I think that the quality of data is a, it’s something to touch on here because when you send someone out to the field, it’s like if, if, if I go, if I go to the wall here and you go to the wall here and we both take a paintbrush, we paint a little bit [00:05:00] different, you’re probably gonna be better.

You’re gonna be able to reach higher spots than I can.

Allen Hall: This is true.

Joel Saxum: That’s true. It’s the same thing with like an NDT process. Now you’re taking the variability of the technician out of it as well. So the data quality collection at the source, that’s what played bug ducts.

Allen Hall: Yeah,

Joel Saxum: that’s the robotic processes.

That is making sure that if I scan this, whatever it may be, LM 48.7 and I do another one and another one and another one, I’m gonna get a consistent set of quality data and then it’s goes to analysis. We can make real decisions off.

Allen Hall: Well, I, I think in today’s world now, especially with transportation damage and warranties, that they’re trying to pick up a lot of things at two years in that they could have picked up free installation.

Yeah. Or lifting of the blades. That world is changing very rapidly. I think a lot of operators are getting smarter about this, but they haven’t thought about where do we go find the tool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And, and I know Joel knows that, Hey, it, it’s Chris at Blade Bug. You need to call him and get to the technology.

But I think for a lot of [00:06:00] operators around the world, they haven’t thought about the cost They’re paying the warranty costs, they’re paying the insurance costs they’re paying because they don’t have the set of data. And it’s not tremendously expensive to go do. But now the capability is here. What is the market saying?

Is it, is it coming back to you now and saying, okay, let’s go. We gotta, we gotta mobilize. We need 10 of these blade bugs out here to go, go take a scan. Where, where, where are we at today?

Chris Cieslak: We’ve hads. Validation this year that this is needed. And it’s a case of we just need to be around for when they come back round for that because the, the issues that we’re looking for, you know, it solves the problem of these new big 80 a hundred meter plus blades that have issues, which shouldn’t.

Frankly exist like process manufacturer issues, but they are there. They need to be investigated. If you’re an asset only, you wanna know that. Do I have a blade that’s likely to fail compared to one which is, which is okay? And sort of focus on that and not essentially remove any uncertainty or worry that you have about your assets.

’cause you can see other [00:07:00] turbine blades falling. Um, so we are trying to solve that problem. But at the same time, end of warranty claims, if you’re gonna be taken over these blades and doing the maintenance yourself, you wanna know that what you are being given. It hasn’t gotten any nasties lurking inside that’s gonna bite you.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Chris Cieslak: Very expensively in a few years down the line. And so you wanna be able to, you know, tick a box, go, actually these are fine. Well actually these are problems. I, you need to give me some money so I can perform remedial work on these blades. And then you end of life, you know, how hard have they lived?

Can you do an assessment to go, actually you can sweat these assets for longer. So we, we kind of see ourselves being, you know, useful right now for the new blades, but actually throughout the value chain of a life of a blade. People need to start seeing that NDT ultrasonic being one of them. We are working on other forms of NDT as well, but there are ways of using it to just really remove a lot of uncertainty and potential risk for that.

You’re gonna end up paying through the, you know, through the, the roof wall because you’ve underestimated something or you’ve missed something, which you could have captured with a, with a quick inspection.

Joel Saxum: To [00:08:00] me, NDT has been floating around there, but it just hasn’t been as accessible or easy. The knowledge hasn’t been there about it, but the what it can do for an operator.

In de-risking their fleet is amazing. They just need to understand it and know it. But you guys with the robotic technology to me, are bringing NDT to the masses

Chris Cieslak: Yeah.

Joel Saxum: In a way that hasn’t been able to be done, done before

Chris Cieslak: that. And that that’s, we, we are trying to really just be able to roll it out at a way that you’re not limited to those limited experts in the composite NDT world.

So we wanna work with them, with the C-N-C-C-I-C NDTs of this world because they are the expertise in composite. So being able to interpret those, those scams. Is not a quick thing to become proficient at. So we are like, okay, let’s work with these people, but let’s give them the best quality data, consistent data that we possibly can and let’s remove those barriers of those limited people so we can roll it out to the masses.

Yeah, and we are that sort of next level of information where it isn’t just seen as like a nice to have, it’s like an essential to have, but just how [00:09:00] we see it now. It’s not NDT is no longer like, it’s the last thing that we would look at. It should be just part of the drones. It should inspection, be part of the internal crawlers regimes.

Yeah, it’s just part of it. ’cause there isn’t one type of inspection that ticks all the boxes. There isn’t silver bullet of NDT. And so it’s just making sure that you use the right system for the right inspection type. And so it’s complementary to drones, it’s complimentary to the internal drones, uh, crawlers.

It’s just the next level to give you certainty. Remove any, you know, if you see something indicated on a a on a photograph. That doesn’t tell you the true picture of what’s going on with the structure. So this is really about, okay, I’ve got an indication of something there. Let’s find out what that really is.

And then with that information you can go, right, I know a repair schedule is gonna take this long. The downtime of that turbine’s gonna be this long and you can plan it in. ’cause everyone’s already got limited budgets, which I think why NDT hasn’t taken off as it should have done because nobody’s got money for more inspections.

Right. Even though there is a money saving to be had long term, everyone is fighting [00:10:00] fires and you know, they’ve really got a limited inspection budget. Drone prices or drone inspections have come down. It’s sort, sort of rise to the bottom. But with that next value add to really add certainty to what you’re trying to inspect without, you know, you go to do a day repair and it ends up being three months or something like, well

Allen Hall: that’s the lightning,

Joel Saxum: right?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Lightning is the, the one case where every time you start to scarf. The exterior of the blade, you’re not sure how deep that’s going and how expensive it is. Yeah, and it always amazes me when we talk to a customer and they’re started like, well, you know, it’s gonna be a foot wide scarf, and now we’re into 10 meters and now we’re on the inside.

Yeah. And the outside. Why did you not do an NDT? It seems like money well spent Yeah. To do, especially if you have a, a quantity of them. And I think the quantity is a key now because in the US there’s 75,000 turbines worldwide, several hundred thousand turbines. The number of turbines is there. The number of problems is there.

It makes more financial sense today than ever because drone [00:11:00]information has come down on cost. And the internal rovers though expensive has also come down on cost. NDT has also come down where it’s now available to the masses. Yeah. But it has been such a mental barrier. That barrier has to go away. If we’re going going to keep blades in operation for 25, 30 years, I

Joel Saxum: mean, we’re seeing no

Allen Hall: way you can do it

Joel Saxum: otherwise.

We’re seeing serial defects. But the only way that you can inspect and or control them is with NDT now.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Joel Saxum: And if we would’ve been on this years ago, we wouldn’t have so many, what is our term? Blade liberations liberating

Chris Cieslak: blades.

Joel Saxum: Right, right.

Allen Hall: What about blade route? Can the robot get around the blade route and see for the bushings and the insert issues?

Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so the robot can, we can walk circumferentially around that blade route and we can look for issues which are affecting thousands of blades. Especially in North America. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Oh yeah.

Chris Cieslak: So that is an area that is. You know, we are lucky that we’ve got, um, a warehouse full of blade samples or route down to tip, and we were able to sort of calibrate, verify, prove everything in our facility to [00:12:00] then take out to the field because that is just, you know, NDT of bushings is great, whether it’s ultrasonic or whether we’re using like CMS, uh, type systems as well.

But we can really just say, okay, this is the area where the problem is. This needs to be resolved. And then, you know, we go to some of the companies that can resolve those issues with it. And this is really about played by being part of a group of technologies working together to give overall solutions

Allen Hall: because the robot’s not that big.

It could be taken up tower relatively easily, put on the root of the blade, told to walk around it. You gotta scan now, you know. It’s a lot easier than trying to put a technician on ropes out there for sure.

Chris Cieslak: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And the speed up it.

Joel Saxum: So let’s talk about execution then for a second. When that goes to the field from you, someone says, Chris needs some help, what does it look like?

How does it work?

Chris Cieslak: Once we get a call out, um, we’ll do a site assessment. We’ve got all our rams, everything in place. You know, we’ve been on turbines. We know the process of getting out there. We’re all GWO qualified and go to site and do their work. Um, for us, we can [00:13:00] turn up on site, unload the van, the robot is on a blade in less than an hour.

Ready to inspect? Yep. Typically half an hour. You know, if we’ve been on that same turbine a number of times, it’s somewhere just like clockwork. You know, muscle memory comes in, you’ve got all those processes down, um, and then it’s just scanning. Our robot operator just presses a button and we just watch it perform scans.

And as I said, you know, we are not necessarily the NDT experts. We obviously are very mindful of NDT and know what scans look like. But if there’s any issues, we have a styling, we dial in remote to our supplement expert, they can actually remotely take control, change the settings, parameters.

Allen Hall: Wow.

Chris Cieslak: And so they’re virtually present and that’s one of the beauties, you know, you don’t need to have people on site.

You can have our general, um, robot techs to do the work, but you still have that comfort of knowing that the data is being overlooked if need be by those experts.

Joel Saxum: The next level, um, commercial evolution would be being able to lease the kit to someone and or have ISPs do it for [00:14:00] you guys kinda globally, or what is the thought

Chris Cieslak: there?

Absolutely. So. Yeah, so we to, to really roll this out, we just wanna have people operate in the robots as if it’s like a drone. So drone inspection companies are a classic company that we see perfectly aligned with. You’ve got the sky specs of this world, you know, you’ve got drone operator, they do a scan, they can find something, put the robot up there and get that next level of information always straight away and feed that into their systems to give that insight into that customer.

Um, you know, be it an OEM who’s got a small service team, they can all be trained up. You’ve got general turbine technicians. They’ve all got G We working at height. That’s all you need to operate the bay by road, but you don’t need to have the RAA level qualified people, which are in short supply anyway.

Let them do the jobs that we are not gonna solve. They can do the big repairs we are taking away, you know, another problem for them, but giving them insights that make their job easier and more successful by removing any of those surprises when they’re gonna do that work.

Allen Hall: So what’s the plans for 2026 then?

Chris Cieslak: 2026 for us is to pick up where 2025 should have ended. [00:15:00] So we were, we were meant to be in the States. Yeah. On some projects that got postponed until 26. So it’s really, for us North America is, um, what we’re really, as you said, there’s seven, 5,000 turbines there, but there’s also a lot of, um, turbines with known issues that we can help determine which blades are affected.

And that involves blades on the ground, that involves blades, uh, that are flying. So. For us, we wanna get out to the states as soon as possible, so we’re working with some of the OEMs and, and essentially some of the asset owners.

Allen Hall: Chris, it’s so great to meet you in person and talk about the latest that’s happening.

Thank you. With Blade Bug, if people need to get ahold of you or Blade Bug, how do they do that?

Chris Cieslak: I, I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place to find myself and also Blade Bug and contact us, um, through that.

Allen Hall: Alright, great. Thanks Chris for joining us and we will see you at the next. So hopefully in America, come to America sometime.

We’d love to see you there.

Chris Cieslak: Thank you very [00:16:00] much.