Published

2 years ago

May 15, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Blade Aerodynamics and AEP with PowerCurve

Allen sat down with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve, at ACP in Minneapolis to discuss the importance of aerodynamic blade optimizations and upgrades during wind turbine repowering. PowerCurve’s AeroVista tool can help operators address leading-edge erosion and suboptimal blade designs to mitigate aerodynamic losses.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I am at ACP 2024 in Minneapolis with Nicholas Gaudern the CTO of PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is based in Denmark, and they are aerodynamic blade experts. And Nicolas background is with Vestas, and now he’s a freelancer, so to speak, at PowerCurve.

And PowerCurve is where WeatherGuard goes for aerodynamic help. Yes, and a lot of other operators around the world reach out to power curve. So we thought it’d be a good time to talk to Nicholas because of all the repower activity in the United States and aerodynamic upgrades that should be happening on the ground.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. Yeah.

Allen Hall: That, that the opportunities being passed by, which is a total mistake, absolutely total mistake. And Nicholas, welcome to the program. And I want to walk through that.

Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks for having me back Allen. It’s really nice to talk to you again and and another show. So always good.

Allen Hall: So in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, all over the United States, the IRA bill is kicking in and there’s a lot of repowering happening at the moment.

And when I talk to operators about lightning protection, they’re like, yeah, absolutely. We need to put additional lightning protection on because we know from the previous blades that they were not great. And we’ve heard rumors that these blades are not great. Our new blades are not great. So for lightning protection, that’s pretty easy, but they also don’t they don’t think about the aerodynamic aspects.

Nicholas Gaudern: No not necessarily. And I think it’s it risks being a really big missed opportunity. Yes. Because whenever you’ve got a blade on the ground, that is obviously an easier time to be doing any upgrade work, repair work, enhancement, whatever you want to do. So when you’ve got a blade on the ground, you should absolutely be considering the optimization potential, the aerodynamic optimization potential.

So when you’re repowering, you may think that you have the latest and greatest blade. It’s very unlikely that you do. The blade may have been designed many years ago. And even if it is more recent, we haven’t come across a single blade that we can optimize, not a single one. And that’s not because the OEMs are doing a bad job.

It’s just that they have a lot of different constraints. That can be time pressure, it can be cost, it can be materials, whatever. It maybe means they haven’t spent as much time as they could have done on squeezing every last bit of aerodynamic performance out. Which is fine. Maybe, the business case for them doesn’t support that.

But for the operator, it absolutely does. Because if you can get another half percent, one percent, two percent AEP over the lifetime of that product, That’s a hugely powerful lever to pull.

Allen Hall: Because the blades, let’s just choose a 2X machine. Sure. Which there’s a lot of 2X machines going in the United States at the moment.

Those 2X blades were designed pre pandemic. Yep. Most likely. And they were designed pre 3D aerodynamic analysis. They were designed with the BEM method.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah even today using a fully 3D approach is very rare. Yeah. And there are some good reasons for that. Obviously, it is computationally expensive.

But if you really want to optimize a blade, particularly down towards the root, you have to do a CFD based approach. Because that’s very 3D flow down there. And this BEM method, the blade element momentum method it’s been used to design every blade out there. I’m pretty confident in saying that.

I’m sure it’s going to be designing many blades many years to come. Sure. Because it’s good, it’s computationally quick, But it’s not going to give you the best possible blade, particularly when it comes to optimizing that root region or the tip region where the flow is much more three dimensional.

Allen Hall: So I seen VGs on new blades down close to the hub. That’s an option. It appears to be an option for some operators and they’ll do the ones near the hub because the arrow efficiency there is so poor that’s obvious.

Nicholas Gaudern: It is, yeah. The aerofoil is down towards the the hub. They’re basically cylinders, they’re not the kind of thing you would expect to see on a flying device. So they are playing a structural role. They have to be that thick to get enough material into the blade so it’s stiff enough to withstand the loads. So it’s a structurally constrained area of the blade. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to the aerodynamics.

Allen Hall: At the tip, you don’t see many VGs being added. That’s it. On the ground or even on new blades just being offered. It seems like what happens is the OEMs come back a year or two later, then offer, Hey, we got this aerodynamic upgrade. At that point, it’s like too late because the business case is over.

As soon as you got to get someone on a lift or someone on ropes. It’s just, it’s hard.

Nicholas Gaudern: You need to get more AEP, of course, to pay for it. So you really should think about vortex generators in kind of two, two families, you’ve got root region vortex generators, you’ve got tip region vortex generators. And the ones towards the root, I would say, there’s no reason that every blade shouldn’t have them.

They’re a no brainer. And the reason I say that is because of these thick aerofoils. The thick aerofoils aren’t going to perform particularly well. There’s going to be stalled, three dimensional flow in the root, and vortex generators can help mitigate some of that. So you’re going to get some AP back, but of course, because it’s near the root of the blade, there’s not such a long moment arm.

Even if you get loads more lift there, you can’t just magic more torque, but you should put them there because it’s an easy thing to do and you’ll get some more energy. Of course, they have to be in the right place, we can help with that. Out towards the tip, it’s a little bit of a different problem.

So out towards the tip, if a blade designer has done a good job in principle on a brand new perfectly manufactured blade, a VG near the tip isn’t going to add much energy Because the blade can actually generate all the lift it wants without any problem, the flow is fairly two dimensional, it’s all good.

But I, you’ll notice I use the word perfectly designed, perfectly manufactured, perfect surface condition. Of course we know when we go out in the field that is not the case. Even manufactured blades have some variation in the leading edge shapes. They’re handcrafted products. As soon as they’re exposed to the atmosphere, that surface starts to get a little bit rougher, maybe gets eroded.

And at that point, that’s when the blade is actually going to lose AEP because that leading edge damage of contamination, a ruffling of the surface, all those kind of things, they lose your lift and the increase your drag. So vortex generators towards the tip, they really come into their own when you have this kind of suboptimal blade surface.

Yeah. So that’s why you have to treat them as two, two families. One is boosting the fundamental performance of the blade and the root. The other is recovering losses towards the tip.

Allen Hall: And if you’re an operator in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, anywhere, there is a plow field, right? Where there’s farmers and activity, dirt and the dust in the air is doing a Tremendous amount of damage to the leading edges.

Yeah. So if you’ve had turbines out there for two, three years, you know that damage exists and your repower on the farm next door, you should be thinking about putting vortex generators on because of the leading edge erosion effect to keep the power at a high output.

Nicholas Gaudern: It’s a tool for power curve robustness.

Yes. Power curves fluctuate throughout the year and you’re not going to change that different densities, atmospheric conditions, things move around, but VGs are just going to push that average up. Because they’re going to stop you getting into these bad situations where the flow is starting to separate, you’re starting to lose lift, get that increased drag.

If you have a perfect blade with a perfect surface condition, okay, fine. Fine. Maybe focus on the root region only, but I’m yet to see many blades that are perfect.

Allen Hall: No, we’ve seen, Joel and I have traveled around a lot of the Midwest and usually within one year, the leading edge erosion is severe enough that it’s impacting, things.

the AEP performance of that turbine. Yes. Easily.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And something that I think is probably nice to move on to now is to talk about what, how do you understand what the AEP loss is?

Allen Hall: And that’s the problem. I think engineers, the operators are mostly structural people because they’re trying to fix blades or gearboxes or whatever.

They’re mechanically inclined and they have deep knowledge of blade structure or gearboxes bearing same thing. But there’s not a lot of aerodynamicists on staff because they don’t need to be the way they think about it. But when the answer is an aerodynamic fix or an upgrade, they have trouble trying to understand like what the value is of, say, a VG package.

How do I even evaluate that? Which is where AeroVista comes in, this new product you’ve developed, to provide some guidance there.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, I think that there is a bit of a knowledge gap when it comes to aerodynamics. It’s something that is a little bit more niche, a little bit more specialist. Even the OEMs themselves don’t tend to have large aerodynamic teams as a rule.

So there’s just not as much, I would say, breadth of experience in the industry aerodynamically as there are structurally. And there are some good reasons for that. But if you want to optimize performance you do need to understand the aerodynamics. When we talk about the loss from leading edge erosion of the blade damages, there’s some really scary numbers out there, and 10%, 20%, 25 percent AEP loss. That is just not true. It’s too high. It’s way too high. It’s way too high. And I’m not going to say it’s impossible because you may always find an outlier. We’ve worked on some turbines that were really suffering, but it’s certainly not the average. And, uh, 20 years ago where there was a lot of stall regulated turbines, that’s when leading edge erosion and bugs and dirt really did kill performance.

But we don’t really have stalled turbines anymore so the magnitude of loss has really dropped hugely to the point where you’re now in small single digit percentages. That’s where you should be thinking. But in order to really get a better handle on what that number is, you have to understand the blade aerodynamic performance of the actual blade model you’re dealing with.

So you were taking the, the G2X earlier. Obviously, that has a different aerodynamic design to a similar rotor from a Vesta’s design. It does. If you want to work out what’s going on with the blade, we’ve developed this tool AeroVista, and it’s based on real aerodynamic models of the actual blades in question.

Laser scans of actual blades. Yes. Not models. Not models. Real blades. Yeah. Real blades, real geometry. And if we have the real geometry, that means we can actually go to the computer, we can fire up our CFD simulations or other great aerodynamic tools, and we can understand the performance of every single slice of that blade.

And it’s going to be different from one manufacturer to the next from blade model to blade model. So we build this very detailed aerodynamic model. And then what we do is we take a drone inspection metadata. So the kind of thing that Nerf labs, Sky Specs, Globotics, these kinds of companies gather, we take that data.

and we plug it into AeroVista to say what is the aerodynamic impact of every single damage on that blade. So we can calculate the loss from erosion, from a crack, from a peeling LEP, from lightning damage, everything. And it all goes into the model and we can calculate what you’re losing. And that means that on a fleet level you can then see that breakdown of losses and decide Where to spend your money?

How do you prioritize that O& M budget? How do you claw back those losses that you have from from the erosion and the damage?

Allen Hall: So if I’m Pattern Energy, and I’m going to build the largest wind site in America at Sunzea in New Mexico, which is sandy and dusty, and we don’t have a lot of history in that area, and lightning is also very strong there, and there’s a lot of GE, new GED turbines going in there, brand new Vestas turbines going in there.

Nicholas Gaudern: What is the attack plan then for maintaining your AEP in such an erosive, damaging environment? How do you do that?

That’s definitely where those vortex generators towards the tip would come into their own. Okay. Because they’re going to recover the losses that you would face from erosion, dust, bugs, whatever’s going to be contaminating or changing the surface condition.

But as you operate the sites it’s There’s all kind of decisions you can make, obviously, with regards to what turbine do you fix, when do you fix them, what do you fix them with, how do you upgrade them. And to us, the starting point has to be to understand your loss. And at the moment basically every turbine in the U.

S. is inspected by a drone every year. That’s what happens now. And the infrastructure and the engineering around the structural understanding of that data is really very high. And it’s being used to prioritise repairs. But I would say from what we’ve seen, the aerodynamics is ignored.

Yes. So that, that doesn’t really make sense to us. Because if you’re prioritising work, you have to consider both the structural severity, sure, but also the financial severity, and that means AEP loss. So what Aerovista brings is that additional layer of data, that aerodynamic data layer, to put on top of the structure.

So you can actually prioritize both on financial implication from AEP loss and structural severity.

Allen Hall: So we were talking to Phil Totaro recently about the average power output, sort of AEP, of older wind turbines in the United States versus the newer ones. The newer ones have less power production.

Nicholas Gaudern: Interesting. Yeah, there’s obviously lots of reasons that could be the case. There’s a ton of reasons for it.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Nicholas Gaudern: Lots of reasons.

Allen Hall: Some of it has to do with the wind speeds. That we’ve had more recently. However, it does start to ring true okay, we have bigger rotor diameters, longer blades.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Maybe a little bit of higher tip speeds. They’re putting it in places where we have a lot of erosion. Yeah. And we’re actually not, we’re less efficient now than we were five years ago.

Nicholas Gaudern: Quite, quite possibly. And as an engineer, as an aerodynamicist, it is interesting to look at this because if you look at the aerodynamic efficiency, like that, that CP, that coefficient of power of a turbine.

It probably has on average declined over the years, even at a design level, but that’s more because we’ve been pushing towards bigger rotors. And a lot of the reason why the CP will have decreased on a design level is you have to use thicker airfoils to enable bigger blades because you have this structural constraint.

So that’s an interesting trend. When I worked at Vestas, it was funny. We should work on these new big rotors, V120, V136, and You maybe couldn’t get the same aerodynamic performance coefficient you had in a V47. But, of course, the amount of energy that big rotor produces dwarfs a V47.

Sure. Oh, yeah. So on a design level, there’s good reason why that ultimate aerodynamic performance may have dropped. But on a fleet level, on a national level, things like, yeah, erosion may well be playing a role. Certainly, we’re finding with The work we’re doing with DTU on the layer cap projects.

This is a collaborative project being run in Denmark between DTU and OEMs and power curve. We’re seeing that, rainfall erosion. It does get worse with tip speed. There’s a direct strong correlation between tip speed and severity of erosion and initiation time.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

So a lot of operators in the United States are not familiar with the work that is happening at DTU and. You and I were both at DTU back in February, not long ago, and I was really amazed at the level of effort and the engineering going into rain erosion, the effects, the physics behind it, what is actually happening offshore versus onshore the size of water droplets, the temperature of the water droplets, all these variable factors that go into leading edge erosion.

That if you’re sitting in Colorado or Texas as a blade support engineer, you just don’t have access to, unless you visit, go to Roskilde and go look, it’s hard to get to that data, but that data does exist. And I think for those engineers in those spots it’s important to reach out to Nicholas and PowerCurve to get updated on what is happening.

Nicholas Gaudern: Absolutely. And I think a lot of what we do as part of our sales process is an education because you know what we’re dealing with is not easy engineering and There’s only so far you can reduce the technical level of an explanation before it becomes a bit meaningless, right?

Part of our job and i’m sure it’s the same at weatherguard you do have to educate on some of The fundamental engineering concepts behind what we’re fixing. So something that we’ve Done a lot of recently is educational webinars seminars Actually getting in front of blade engineers and operators to say, here’s some stuff you may not have known.

Here is how a blade is designed aerodynamically. Here are some of the pitfalls. Here’s some of the potential. And that’s actually a thing we’re offering as a purely educational thing now. So you can reach out to us. We will set up aerodynamic educational webinars, seminars in person, if you prefer, just to help you increase the baseline level of aero knowledge within your organization, because.

That’s good for everyone, right?

Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Yeah. That’s hugely important to get your staff educated on the aerodynamic aspects because that’s what’s producing the revenue. Yep. The blade is where it all starts

Nicholas Gaudern: Without the aerodynamics, you don’t have a wind turbine.

Allen Hall: So are these courses day long, week long?

Nicholas Gaudern: We typically would look for a day or two. We would tailor to the organization and we can have it shorter, longer, can tailor the topics we cover. It’s something that has gone down really well recently. We’ve done it with some big operators. On a personal level, I really enjoy it because I think it, it helps to keep you sharp, right?

If you have to explain all these concepts right down to basics, I think it helps focus the mind. Yeah, I, I love doing them. Get some good feedback.

Allen Hall: I think even in the United States on a lot of the offshore efforts, a lot of staff that’s gonna be supporting them in the United States is new. Yes.

And probably American. Yep. So they probably don’t have a lot of experience in aerodynamic aspects of those gigantic 15 megawatt producing blades.

Nicholas Gaudern: So no, we can talk about that and it can it can form part of, yeah other trading that you may be organizing for your staff.

Allen Hall: I think that you need to have some knowledge and basic understanding of what is being offered out in the fields.

And when you hear about VGs or trailing insurations or. Gurney flaps like what are these devices? What did they do? And why should I care?

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, because going back to that earlier discussion on the IRA thing, there’s so many options out there to upgrade your blades, modify your blades.

And you obviously have to spend quite a lot of money to make the IRA scheme work. And we’re actually working with a big US operator right now to install VGs as part of a big IRA upgrade pack. And it’s the perfect time to do it. But obviously you need to understand all those options. Maybe VGs aren’t the best choice for your turbine.

Educate yourself, talk to us. We can help make that make that decision a little bit easier. So how do people reach out to Powercurve? How do they connect with you? So I think LinkedIn, our website, we have we have a good presence. You’ll find all our contact details on the website.

All of us at the company have a LinkedIn page. You can reach out to any of us. I’m Nicholas Gordon. That’s how you’ll find me on LinkedIn. CEO, Niels Brunnen. So yeah just have a look for us online. I’m sure Allen will put a link in the notes for this as well.

Allen Hall: We will.

Nicholas, it’s great to have you back on the podcast and great to see you in Minneapolis.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Allen. Great to talk.

https://weatherguardwind.com/blade-aerodynamics-and-aep-with-powercurve/

Renewable Energy

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Published

9 hours ago

May 21, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Howard Penrose of MotorDoc joins to discuss current signature analysis, uptower circulating currents wrecking main bearings, and full drivetrain scans in minutes. Reach out at info@motordoc.com or on LinkedIn.

Howard Penrose: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Howard, welcome back to the program.

Howard Penrose: Hey, thanks for having me.

Allen Hall: It’s about time everybody realizes what motorDoc can do. There’s so much technology, and I’ve been watching- Yeah … your Chaos and Caffeine podcast on Saturday morning, which are full of really, really good information about the motorDoc as a company, all the things you’re doing out in the field, and how you’re solving real-world problems, not imaginary ones- Yeah

real-world problems. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and

Howard Penrose: whatever annoys me that week. Exactly. And, and whatever great coffee I’m trying out. Yes. Except for a few. We’ve had the ReliaSquatch down our- Yes … um, a couple of times. Uh, yeah, no, I, I enjoy it, and we gotta get you on there sometime. I don’t do- I, it- … a lot of interviews other than an AI character we put in.

Allen Hall: It’s a very interesting show because you’re [00:01:00] getting a little bit of comedy and humor and s- Yeah … and a, and a coffee review, which is very helpful because I’ve tried some of the coffees that you have reviewed, that you’ve given the thumbs up to. But if you’re operating wind turbines and you’re trying to understand what’s happening on the drivetrain side, on the generator, everything out to the blades even, main bearings, gearboxes- Yeah

all those rotating heavy, expensive parts, there’s a lot of ways to diagnose them-

Howard Penrose: Yes …

Allen Hall: that are sort of like we can look at a gear, we can look at a joint, we can look at roller bearings, whatever, but motorDoc has a way to quickly diagnose all of that chain in about- Yeah … 15 seconds.

Howard Penrose: Well, a little longer than 15 sec- more like a minute.

A minute, okay. It feels like paint drying. But- Uh, in any case, yeah. Uh, uh, and, and what’s kind of funny is, um, back in the ’90s, uh, EPRI actually accidentally steered the technology away from its [00:02:00] core purpose, which was in 1985, um, NAVSEA, the US Navy, had done research on using current signature analysis for looking at pumps, fans, and compressors, the bearings, the belts, the components, all the rotating components using the motor as the sensor.

Not too much different than we are now. I mean, mind you, we got better resolution now, we’ve got, uh, more powerful– I mean, I look at my data from the ’90s, and now it’s completely different. Um, and then Oak Ridge National Lab, same thing, bearings and gears in motor-operated valves. So in 2003, we were the first ones to apply electrical and current signature analysis to some wind turbines in the Mojave Desert.

Wow. Yeah. So, um, nobody had tried it before. Everybody said it couldn’t be done. And, uh, that was a bad thing to say to me because- … it meant I was gonna get it [00:03:00] done. Right. At that time, um, we were looking at bearing issues and some blatant conditions with the, um, with the, uh, generator using a technology called Altest, ’cause I was with Altest at the time.

And, uh, I had taken an EMPath software and blended it with a, a power analyzer, and they still have that tool to this day. I was using that technology all the way through 2015. 2016, I should say. And then- And then switched over to the pure EMPath, which was more of an engineering tool. And then more recently, in 2022, uh, made the decision to ha- to take all the work we’d done on over 6,000 turbines, uh, looking at how we were looking at the data and what we were doing on the industrial side, and took a, uh, created a current signature analyzer that would do one phase of current to analyze the entire powertrain.

Allen Hall: So when you tell [00:04:00] operators you can do this magic, I think a lotta times they gotta go, “

Howard Penrose: What?” Oh, yeah, yeah. They don’t understand it because they’re used to vibration- Right … which is a point analysis system. Right.

Allen Hall: Vibration at this- Yeah … particular location. Yeah. One spot- Even if it’s- … or a couple

Howard Penrose: spots

triax, they’re reading through material, up through a transducer. Hopefully, they put it above the bearing and not in the middle of the machine like everybody is now, because everybody’s trying to sell a sensor. Right. True. They’re not selling a- they’re not selling accuracy. They’re just selling sensors.

Right. So, um- Yeah … you know, uh, I, I’ll, I’ll even talk about one of the companies here. We’ve got Onyx here, and they do it right. I mean, they’ve been doing it right pretty well because we’ve been doing some of the same towers they’re on, and we can match the data they’re getting. Oh, good. Right? Yeah. Uh, so but they get it in multiple spots, and there’s areas they can’t quite reach, so we’ll detect those areas as well.

So it’s a good melding of two technologies.

Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Sure,

Howard Penrose: sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you have electrical signature and you have vibration, but in [00:05:00] cases if you don’t have vibration, we’re a direct replacement.

Allen Hall: Because the generator- I

Howard Penrose: dare say that.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Whichever–

Howard Penrose: I dare say that, um, with- Well, the

Allen Hall: generator is acting as the sensor.

Howard Penrose: The air gap. The air gap in the generator s- specifically, yes. Yeah. Generator, motor, transformer. Right.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So any of those- Mm-hmm … you can clamp onto, look at the current that’s on there. Everything that’s happening on the drivetrain, in the gearbox, out on the rotor- Yep … main bearings, all of that creates vibration.

Creates a torque. T- a, a torque. Yeah. Yes, more exactly a torque. Yeah. And that’s seen in the generator, in the current coming out of the generator. Yes. So those signals, although minute, are still there. Yes. So if you clamp onto that current coming out of the generator, you’ll see the typical AC sine wave sitting there.

But on top of that- Is all the information about how that drivetrain is doing

Howard Penrose: Absolutely, and everything else. Anything electrical comes through [00:06:00] that. So what you do is just like vibration, you do a spectral analysis. So every component has a frequency associated with it, just like vibration. It’s, as a matter of fact, I, I keep having to try to explain to people electrical and current signature analysis is no different than vibration analysis.

It’s the same concept. We use the same tools. The signature looks just a little different. It’s a little noisier, um, but you need that noise in order to see everything. But we have a time waveform, and instead of, um, inches per second or millimeters per second, whatever, you know, uh, velocity, acceleration, and displacement, uh, what we end up with is decibels is the optimal method.

You can look at straight voltage signatures at those points or, or current signatures, but the values are so small that you have to look at it from a logarithmic standpoint. Right. There are some benefits to it versus vibration, and there’s some things that aren’t as good as vibration. [00:07:00] So, you know, we, we do…

You have to… Any technology is gonna have their strengths and weaknesses. Sure. So we will see everything all at once. Load doesn’t matter. Right. Speed doesn’t matter. It’s… Only reason speed matters is the location of the frequencies. Uh, so the higher the resolution, meaning the longer you take data, the less chance you have on a lightly lo- loaded machine of blending the peaks together.

Right. Um, on the flip side, if I have two bearings turning at the exact same speed, I couldn’t tell you which one it is. Because they’re the same. Right.

Allen Hall: And the mechanical features of that bearing is w- what creates the signal that you’re measuring. Exactly. So if a bearing has five rollers versus 10, just imaginary thing.

Yeah, yeah. Five rollers versus 10 has a different electrical signature, so you can determine, like, that bearing, that 10 roller bearing- Yes … has the problem, the five is fine. Yes. Yeah. That’s the magic, and I think people don’t translate the mechanical world into the electrical world. That that’s what’s [00:08:00]happening.

They,

Howard Penrose: they don’t because, because what’s happening is they named it wrong.

Allen Hall: Yes.

Howard Penrose: A majority of our users are mechanical folks. Sure. Our vibration analysts and stuff like, ’cause they know how to look at the signatures. Right. Everybody tries to force it on their electrical people, and electrical people go, “We don’t know what this is.”

Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s a matter of that training and, and, you know, in the electrical world, you’re not taught to look at that. Right. Yeah. It doesn’t matter. Mechanical world, you’re taught to look at that. So our intern, we were trying to bring in electrical engineering interns and found out that just wasn’t working.

So last year, I brought in my first, uh, intern that’s, you know, he’s been with us now since I brought him in. Okay. Uh, and, uh, Amar, and, uh, you know, he’s helped us develop our vi- uh, vibration software to go along with it. Guess what? It’s the same thing. It’s the exact same sy- system Um, but we just take in a vibration signal instead.

But he picked up on it immediately as a [00:09:00] third-year college student. I can take somebody with a decade as an electrical engineer with a PhD and they can’t figure it out.

Allen Hall: Well, because you’re, you’re taking real- Because it’s different. Yeah. It’s r- well, it’s real-world components-

Howard Penrose: Yeah …

Allen Hall: creating electrical signals.

That’s hard- Well, you have- … to process for a lot of people. Yeah,

Howard Penrose: yeah. It’s

Allen Hall: just not

Howard Penrose: something that we do every day. But that’s… If they, i- if we sa- i- i- if you’re looking at vibration and you start looking at the sensor, it gets complicated too, ’cause guess what? It’s an electrical signal. Right. It’s, it is technically electrical signature now.

It’s converting a

Allen Hall: mechanical signal- Right … into an electrical signal, which is what’s happening in the generator anyway. Yeah.

Howard Penrose: Whether it’s a piezoelectric cell that’s generating a small signal- Yeah … on top of a small waveform that you then take out, you demodulate, uh, or it’s, uh… So you take that carrier frequency out, or it’s a MEMS sensor, which is the same thing.

You know, the, it just sees some slower s- It, it does more of a digital output. So you, you, you know, you have those, or you [00:10:00] have this, which just basically uses a component of the machine to, to, as its own sensor. There is one other difference between them, too, and, uh, I find this very useful when I’m going out troubleshooting something that other people can’t figure out, uh, ’cause we use all the technologies.

So in this case, it would be, uh, the structural movement. Okay? So, so say I have a generator and there’s something wrong with the structure, and the whole machine is vibrating. So y- well, if I put a transducer on it, they might think that’s vibration or something else. We don’t see it. Right. We only see directly exactly what’s happening with the machine.

Sure. So a lot of times when we go in to troubleshoot something that people have done vibration on and everything else, it’s been pro- a, a problem for them for years. We walk in, and all of a sudden we’re identifying whether it’s the machine or it’s something else right off the bat. Then we can take a look at the vibration data and [00:11:00] say, “Okay, it wasn’t the bearing or the bearing, um, structure.

It was, you know, the mounting.” Right. It wasn’t

Allen Hall: fastened

Howard Penrose: down properly. Yeah,

Allen Hall: yeah. Right.

Howard Penrose: Go tighten that bolt. Right, exactly.

Allen Hall: Well, I mean, that’s the cheap answer. Yeah. I’d rather tighten a bolt than rip apart a motor or a generator- And, and- … every day …

Howard Penrose: and that’s the whole point. Now, there are other strengths that go with it.

So for instance, on the powertrain of a wind turbine, I can tell you if you’ve lubricated the bearings correctly. Wow. Because part of what we do is we do take those electrical signatures, and we convert those over to watts. Watts is an energy conversion. Sure. So you see that as heat or some type of loss.

So whatever, whatever’s being lost there is not being sent to the customer. To the outside. Right. Making money. So, um, if I’m taking a look at, say, a main bearing, I might see watts or kilowatts of losses. So you’re gonna have some ’cause you have friction, right? But when we see it increase on, say, a roller, [00:12:00] or the rollers, or, or the cage, that’s usually an indicator that I have a lubrication issue.

Or if we only see it on the outer race, that means that they didn’t clear out all the old grease when they were lubricating it, ’cause the rollers then have to ride across it- Right … ’cause it dries up.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Howard Penrose: Uh, and will carry contaminants. So if you see that, you go up, clean it up, you’ll extend the life of the bearing.

Absolutely you will. Without having to do a lot of work. So, uh, we, we look at our technology as more so early in the, in the stage of a condition. I don’t wanna call it failure, ’cause it’s not a failure. It’s something that’s mitigable. And I made that word up. You can mitigate it. Meaning you can go up and correct it and extend the life of that component.

Sure. Uh, in gearboxes we’ll see problems with, um… Well, the, the one we’re talking about here a fair amount is all the circulating currents going on uptower. We did that research. The current signature analyzer we have is a direct result of doing wind turbine [00:13:00] research just on circulating currents uptower, ’cause we conferred everything over to, to sound at 48 kilohertz.

And so that gives me a 24-kilohertz signal. That high-frequency stuff, which we’re researching in CGRE, and IEEE, and IEC, is called supra harmonics, which I– we talked about that before. Yes, we have. Yeah. And, uh, so when you start seeing that in the, in, in the current that’s circulating uptower because the ground that goes from the top of the tower down is for- DC

lightning protection. And lightning protection, yeah. It’s not meant for, um- Not for

Allen Hall: high frequency- Yeah …

Howard Penrose: currents. Yeah. Uh, we, when we measured it, when we mapped out dozens of towers of all different manufacturers, we found that the impedance about halfway down the tower is where it ends. Sure. The, the resistance.

And then the increased, uh, the high-frequency noise turns any of your shaft brushes into resistors. And at about 15 kilohertz, no current is [00:14:00]passing through them. It’s all passing the bearing, which becomes more conductive the higher the frequency. So with 60% of main bearings failing due to electrical currents, it’s actually currents that are circulating uptower.

It’s not static. There is some static up there, but it’s not static. It’s coming from the controls, the, the generator, and everything else. Inverters,

Allen Hall: converters.

Howard Penrose: And we’ve seen up to 150 amps passing through a, through a bearing.

Allen Hall: So I– We run across a lot of operators who have been replacing main bearings, and they don’t know the reason why.

Yeah. And I always say, “Well, call Howard at MotorDoc because I would almost bet you you have the f- high frequency running around uptower in the nacelle- And the next main bearing you put in there is gonna go the same way as the- Yeah … first one you put in there. Until you cut off that circulating current and then the cell, you’re just gonna continue with the problem.

Then you haven’t eliminated the problem, you’re just fixing the result of that problem. Yes. But it takes- Yeah, you’re, you’re- How, [00:15:00] how, well, how long- You’re replacing

Howard Penrose: a fuse.

Allen Hall: Right, you’re replacing a fuse. Yeah. How long does it take you to s- to determine- An expensive fuse. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, ’cause you’re taking the rotor down.

Yeah. Well, how, how fast can you determine if you have harmonics uptower that are gonna be causing you problems? 120 seconds.

Howard Penrose: Okay.

Allen Hall: So that’s the thing. I think a lot of- I mean,

Howard Penrose: that’s of the actual data collection time. So you clamp on uptower, uh, and then you can… Well, the way we have it set up now, you just tell it you wanna collect data every five s- uh, five minutes, and then you go downtower, let it collect its data, go back up, grab it.

Um, it’s like…

It’s huge. It’s this size. So, um, and then you connect- It plugs into a laptop. Yeah. Plug it into a laptop or any type of tablet. Um, it, it’s Windows now. I’m trying to get away from Windows. We’re gonna have Linux systems, uh, as well. Uh, and then you use that to, um, just collect that data, and then you press another button.

Now it pops up, and it tells you if you’re in danger or not, [00:16:00] the amount of current passing through the bearing, and the frequencies all the way out.

Allen Hall: So the ideal is you’re gonna have this kit with you in the truck. Yeah. And as you see these problems pop up, you’re gonna clamp on uptower. Yep. You’re gonna measure these circulating currents, and you’re gonna know immediately if you have another mechanical issue, a, a lubrication issue- Oh, yeah.

It’ll look at- … some kind of alignment issue, or- You’ll get all

Howard Penrose: of this information at once. So you- Right … if you go on the power side. So certain turbines, like anything that has the transformer downtower, you don’t have to climb. Right. GE. I mean, I don’t climb. So, uh, uh, you know, th- and that was part of the, the concept behind when we started down this path because I’ve been in the wind industry since 1997.

So one of the things I always saw was, and, and we talked about even, you know, here when it was called AWEA, and we were talking always on the health and safety side about wearing out the technicians. Um, so we discovered that, you know, what was it? Almost 60% of the [00:17:00] turbines you didn’t have to climb. Right.

Oh, yeah. And even the ones you do, you go up, you set it up, and it’ll tell you where you need to focus. The other thing in the powertrain, let alone the generator, when we do a sweep of a site– Now, if we do a straight electrical signature analysis, I’d term that one as a technician’s tool. Sure. That’s more of an engineer’s tool.

Uh, a lot more data, a lot harder to set up. But even though I’m saying harder to set up, it’s still pretty easy. It’s still minutes. Right. Yeah. Most technicians will collect data with, like, a couple hours worth of training. Yeah. You g- You basically gather that data, and if you’re getting a site, so we’ll go out– I love going out in the field.

So we’ll go out in the field, especially if it’s a tower we don’t have to climb I’ll knock out, uh, well, let’s just say I’ll, I’ll, I’ll name one. Say a GE 1.6. I’ll knock out one of those every eight to 11 minutes, depending on how you get to the tower.

Allen Hall: So that’s a full diagnosis of drivetrain- Yeah … plus anything odd happening- Yep

with circulating currents and all that [00:18:00] can- Oh, no, no. Circulating- Or just- … current, that’s a- That’s a separate thing at tower … separate study that- Okay … you have to do that uptower. But anything, anything drivetrain-wise, you can be in and out- Yeah … in a couple of minutes. Yep. Okay. So there’s a lot of operators that have end-of-warranties coming up, right?

Yes. There’s been a lot of developments, so they’re kind of running into the end-of-warranty, and they don’t know the health status of their drivetrain. Same thing for a lot of operators that are in- Yep … full service agreements, and they’re questioning whether they’re getting their money’s worth or not.

Yes. I always say, “Call Howard at Motordoc. You guys can have a whole site survey done maybe in a couple of days, and you will know all the problems that are on site for the lowest price ever”. Yeah. It’s crazy how fast you can do it and how accurate it is. I talk to operators that use your system, so I hear you.

Yeah. Your podcast, listen to your podcast, I’m calling your customers to find out what they say, and they love it. Oh, yeah. They can’t believe how accurate it is. Yeah. Well, the thing about that is we as an industry need to make sure that our turbines are operating at [00:19:00] maximum efficiency. Yep. And if a simple tool like the Motordoc EMPath system exists, we need to get customers, operators in line to start doing it worldwide.

Australia- Oh … Europe-

Howard Penrose: Yeah. We- … Canada. Australia, we’re trying to get into, but right now we even have OEMs using it through North- That’s good … and South America, Asia. Good. Uh, Middle East, um, and, uh, and some of Europe. Good. So it’s, it’s, it’s really taking off. Uh, I’d say probably our biggest market right now is Brazil.

Sure. They’re going crazy. Well, the, the turbines are- They’re having a lot of problems. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Right. And the, well, those turbines have a h- high usage, right? So because- Oh, yeah … the winds are so good, they’re operating at, like, capacity factor is above 50%. Yes. It’s insane. Yeah. So there’s a lot of wear and tear.

There’s no downtime for those turbines.

Howard Penrose: Yeah. Well, and, and people think it’s all the starting and stopping. It’s not. No. It’s a grid-related issue. So we have- Sure … we have a low frequency. And you know some of the stuff I volun- I, I’m, I’ve been volunteered for- [00:20:00] Yeah … uh, including the CIGRE thing. Um, so I get to sit in the grid code committees for IEEE and put my, and our input into that, uh, and kind of watch the back of the IBR industry, right?

Mm-hmm. ‘Cause there’s a definitely bias against our industry. Um, and I also, uh, get to hear what’s going on in the grid side of things from CIGRE worldwide, and it’s all very similar, and it has to do with low-frequency oscillating currents- Yes … called subsynchronous currents- Yes … which are low enough not to damage large synchronous machines.

And they thought, and there’s books written on this, by the way, multiple books written on wind turbine impact- Uh, and they’re seeing now, um… Well, we detected it first, along with Timken. Hank, uh, and, and I went out to a site, and we detected for the first time, because of how they wanna do the testing and where the site was located, we saw the oscillating torque [00:21:00] in the air gap, ’cause that’s one of the things the technology does.

It actually measures the torque, air gap torque. Sure. So we were watching the oscillating torque as a tower started up. And so we did, we went through the rest of that site looking at the same stuff in the same way. It increased our time and data collection, and time on site. But then we started looking for it at other sites, and going to pass data because I don’t have to go back and retake data.

Right. And we’re like, “Oh my God. It’s everywhere.” 16 hertz, 21 hertz, and 50 hertz. And we found a paper that specifically identified that as the sub synchronous frequencies for 60 hertz. So we know what they are also for 50 hertz. Once we identified that and we saw how much the torsi- torque was oscillating, we worked with Shermco, who got us some information on Y-rings that were failing.

Yeah. And they were all failing… When the metallurgy was done, they were all failing from fatigue. And you’re like, fatigue how? What’s fatiguing these connections? [00:22:00] Well, the fatigue is that air gap torque- Exactly … because you’re basically causing the, the, everything to oscillate a little bit, and that causes the windings to move slightly.

It’s a living,

Allen Hall: breathing machine-

Howard Penrose: Exactly … this generator

Allen Hall: is.

Howard Penrose: Yeah.

Allen Hall: It’s not

Howard Penrose: static. It’s definitely not sta- no electric machine is static. No. Even a transformer’s not static. Right.

Allen Hall: So- There’s a little

Howard Penrose: bit of wiggle going on there all the time All the time. And it’s minute, so it takes a long time. Right. And what, uh, uh, everybody…

Well, first people thought it was a particular manufacturer, which it wasn’t. Turned out every defig’s failing the same way. Sure. You’re fatiguing it. Yeah. Every bearing is failing the same way, even in the gearbox, main bearings, and everything else. Right. All of these conditions are happening across all the OEMs, but they’re not allowed to talk.

Well, this is, this is the thing that

Allen Hall: I like watching your podcast.

Howard Penrose: Yeah.

Allen Hall: The Chaos and Caffeine. It comes out Saturday mornings. It’s on YouTube. If you haven’t- Yeah … clicked into it, you should click into it

Howard Penrose: because a lot of these issues are discussed there. It’s definitely, um… [00:23:00] Let’s just say I’ll speak Navy quite a bit.

Allen Hall: It’s a great podcast, and I think what you’re doing with the EMPath system- Yes … at motor dock is really a game changer. Yeah. I’m talking to everybody, all the operators I know. I keep telling them to call you and to try the system out because it’s so inexpensive and it does the work quickly and efficiently, and it’s been proven.

There’s no messing- Oh, yeah … around when you’re talking to MotorDoc. I…

Howard Penrose: Somebody dared tell me that there’s no standard for it. There’s ISO standards for it. Yes. There’s IEEE 1415- Yes … which I chair. Uh, and there’s other standards coming out- This is- … associated with it. And there’s a document that I also chair for Sea Gray- Called A178, which is the practical application of the technology.

So it’s well-documented. There are traceable standards for it. I need more

Allen Hall: operators to call you- Yeah … and to talk to you and get systems in the back of the trucks that they can use to check out the health of their gear boxes and their drive trains and their generators. How [00:24:00] do they do that? Where do they go?

Where, where’s, what’s- Well- … the first place they should look for?

Howard Penrose: Uh, info@motordoc.com. Okay. I get all, I get all of those as well, so do my people. Um, or, uh, LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s really good.

Allen Hall: Look up anything. Yeah.

Howard Penrose: Yeah, yeah. So, so either the company at Motordoc, or, uh, I’m, I sh- I’ll show up either searching for my name or, uh, linkedin.com/in/motordoc.

Come straight to me ’cause I’ve been in, on LinkedIn forever, so- Right, just- … I got to do that … look up

Allen Hall: Howard Penrose, P-E-N-R-O-S-E. Yep. Or go to motordoc.com is- Yep, motordoc.com … the website address.

Howard Penrose: Yep. There’s a lot of great information there. And we have partners, and we have people. We’re growing the company.

You know, talk to me. I, I’ll- Yes … I like answering the phone and talking. It’s, it’s a thing. My people go, “Can we answer the phone one?” No. Um, but, but yeah, we, we, y- when you call us, you’re not just dealing with a single person. Right. The Motordoc is far more expansive. Right now, we [00:25:00] just got our partnership with, uh, Hitachi and, and Juliet- Yeah, that’s great

and stuff like that. Uh, we’re helping them with certain things. Uh, we’re partnered with some of the big OEMs, almost all of them, um, you know, helping identify the issues, you know. And, and when users contact us, often they’ll tell us what’s going on, and we’ll, we can, uh, sometimes say, “Yeah, it’s this, and here’s how we prove it.”

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s the, that’s the beauty- Yeah … of calling Motordoc. So I need my operators that, that watch the show- Yeah … worldwide, go online, go on LinkedIn, get ahold of Howard, get ahold of Motordoc, and get started. Yep. Howard, thank you- And- … so much for being on the podcast. Yeah. This is fantastic. I love talking to you because-

it’s, it’s like talking to, you know… Uh, no, really, it’s talking like someone who’s a real good industry expert, who’s been there a long time, and understands- Yeah … how this

[00:26:00] works.

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Renewable Energy

The Fine Art of Appealing to Idiots

Published

18 hours ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

The fascism of the early 20th Century taught us all the key elements of the playbook (see below).

In particular, when a leader identifies an enemy like Islam as a grievous threat and pledges eliminate it, one might think that such a position would generate suspicion, rather than adoration.

No so here in the United States, where tens of millions of uneducated Americans would happily elect Trump an absolute leader for life, in the way of Putin and Xi.