Published

2 years ago

June 5, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Blade Platforms: Revolutionizing Blade Repair Access

In this episode, Petr Bartusek from Blade Platforms discusses how their truck-mounted platforms, capable of safely reaching over 100 meters, are transforming wind turbine blade repair access. With increased speed, skill utilization, and 24-hour shift capabilities, using Blade Platforms minimizes turbine downtime and maximizes efficiency in blade repair campaigns.

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 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum, today, we’re tackling a critical issue in the wind industry. Accessing wind turbine blades for repairs. And our guest is Petr Bartusek, commercial VP of Blade Platforms. And Blade Platforms is a truck mounted platform company based in Abilene, Texas.

And with wind turbines hubs reaching new heights, traditional repair access methods can be slow and inefficient. Blade Platforms solves this problem with a fleet of machines that can safely reach over 100 meters, allowing technicians to quickly and efficiently repair blades while minimizing turbine downtime.

Today, Petr will share how Blade Platforms is transforming blade repair access and discuss the future of this innovative company in the wind industry. Petr, welcome to the show.

Petr Bartusek: All right. Thanks for having me.

Allen Hall: So Joel and I happened to visit your facility in Abilene. And the reason we did was because of speed.

It comes down to quickness and our strike click take application where we’re touching a lot of blades, we have to get up and down very quickly because we touched so many blades simultaneously, which is a common industry problem. If you’re going to fix one blade pretty easy, you can use whatever method.

But when we’re. At some farms that have a hundred, 200, 300 plus turbines, it becomes so slow and efficient that there has to be a new way to do it, a faster way to get on blade and to make repairs. And this is where we stopped. And Abilene met with your folks down there at Blade Platforms. It is impressive the speed at which you guys move and it has really changed the industry.

And we, Joel and I have been around a lot of parts of Texas and Oklahoma and we see Blade Platforms. And now we understand why, because you’re really changing the industry.

Petr Bartusek: I’ll add, it’s not just speed, I think. There’s a couple of things. You get speed, you get skill, and you get time utilization, right?

So the speed kind of speaks for itself, right? I tell everyone on a 12 hour day, We’ll do 11 hours worth of work, right? So you got some truck set up time and, some idle time that just, you cannot monetize that, that, that’s one aspect. The other thing is utilization of time and that, these sites are, on windy projects, right?

So you’re, you don’t put turbines where the wind doesn’t blow. So you have to be able to operate in increments of time. When that happens. I use a traditional means of access or ropes or suspended platforms. It’s the rigging time and everything else that goes into it changes the dynamics of what you’re doing because, let’s say you got a rig for two hours, then you go up and you get a three hour weather window.

Then you got to go down and maybe or maybe not, you have to pull it a day. If at two o’clock a storm roll in or something will happen. So for us, we get, six hours worth of work. There’s three hours storm going through. All of a sudden we can take a, three hour lunch to kill that storm, weather a storm, and then we go work again.

So that’s what I would call the time utilization. Third aspect, which is skill or training, right? And the way I look at it is the older you get as a skilled technician, the less likely you are. To be one, I hang on the ropes. So let’s say you’re 20 year old. This is fun. You’re 40. You may have some midsection weight, you may have some bum knees.

You know, you’ve acquired a lot of knowledge and you. Basically could become a liability rather than an assets to a traditional access company. Whereas with us, if your knees a little bum, it doesn’t matter if used to be 175 and now you’re 275. It’s not that big of a deal because the basket can handle 1, 300 pounds.

So we can then effectively monetize or help our customers monetize The skill that particular technician has already built up over, let’s say, 10, 15, 20 years. So I think that those are the 3 advantages that I see. It’s the time utilization and the skill utilization that comes with it.

And I’m not even talking about the safety aspects of, being up there where, there’s 4 redundant systems or how you can get down and. You don’t have to worry about anything.

Joel Saxum: And I can speak to that too, Petr. So I know that you guys have some aid in house that can help someone with a bit of a blade issue if they need it. But if a company has technicians that they need to put up there, this is not, you don’t have to come to site and do a three day training mechanism or something when this, when the. Blade Platform’s truck shows up, there’s a technician with it, there’s a, there’s someone who can operate it I was there, like I was gonna say, I’ll speak to this we came to the Abilene facility, saw the fantastic facility when you pull in, all the trucks everywhere being worked on the army of people maintaining these things and making sure they’re ready to go at a minute’s notice, I did an orientation with one of your techs on site who was fantastic.

Rigged, the guys rigged me up for a harness and showed me where to hook off and all these things. And within 5 minutes I was up 200 and some odd feet in the air. Just a little scared, I’m gonna be honest with you. I think I was the one who actually said, Okay, that’s high enough, we’re good here. I have a beautiful view of Abilene, Texas, right from the sky.

But what I’m saying or what I’m getting at there is if you have technicians or if you have people on the ground already, they don’t need to go through a big training program to do this, right? It was literally 15 minutes of orientation, safety rigging up a harness, which if you’re in a wind industry, you already probably have your own or you know how to do it anyways.

And then Going up and you’re ready to work, right? It was like, now we’re ready to go.

Petr Bartusek: Yeah, that’s exactly it. As long as you have your basic wind search, which is your, safety GW now, which, it’s becoming the prevalent requirement it’s more of an orientation for you, Hey, here’s where you’re going to step here is where you’re going to clip your lanyard.

And then you’re good to go. And then other than that, you’ve been trained for everything. So you’re right. Our unit will roll up to site. Or whoever needs to use it, but I would call self contained. That means there is an operator in the basket. They’ll do all the work. And we also have a ground control technician.

That’s somebody who manages the ground, make sure nobody gets underneath because there is a drop zone. If something were to happen, this person can also serve as a secondary rescue. So if you’ve never seen these units as a future potential customer it’s out of sight, out of mind. Almost.

We roll in, we’d set up everything and we take your super skilled technician or inspector or whoever that needs to be and take him up and then they got to do whatever they got to do. We do have a limited capability. So helping mostly our OEM customers in house, but. Our bread and butter is truly truck rental and access and truck sales.

Joel Saxum: The majority of platforms or the majority, I’m saying platforms as in turbines, right? The majority of the turbines out in the fleet in the United States right now are, or let’s say North America in general, are under a hundred meter hub height. A lot of them, 80 meters, 90 meters for the majority of the fleet.

It’s pretty odd that you get turbines over a hundred meters. So what that means is I know that you guys have trucks at all different levels, like you have 30 meter access all the way to a hundred meter access, correct?

Petr Bartusek: Correct. Yeah, we go 30, 50, 70, 75, 90, and then 103.

Joel Saxum: That’s flipping a football field on its nose and going from the end of the end zone to the end of the other end zone.

Not the, not just the end lines, but the whole thing. That’s huge. You’re 330 feet and you’re 340.

Petr Bartusek: 336 is almost 340. These trucks are actually the highest reaching trucks that exist in North America, South America, probably in Europe.

Joel Saxum: So with these, all these different heights, right? So if you wanted to go just work on the tip of a turbine blade, great.

If you want to go up the side of the tower and look underneath the nacelle, great. If you want to go and work the whole blade length of the tower, we can do that as well. But all of these different heights also have different kind of wind restrictions to go with it, right? Because you’re not going to be up at 100 meters with a 20 meter per second wind, like that’s just not going to happen, right?

But what do the wind restrictions look like for you guys? Because I’m just looking at weather windows.

Petr Bartusek: Yeah for us traditionally, especially on a newer fleet we have what’s called an extended wind regime. So the truck is 12 and a half meters a second, 16 meters a second, and 19 meters a second that you actually can go and operate.

It may have a restricted envelope, so you may not able to hit the full reach. So 90 meter truck, you got only hit. 80 meters at 19 meters a second. And you may not hit the full outreach, which is up to 130 feet. Then you may be limited to a hundred feet on outreach, during those dicey conditions, nobody will want to do anything crazy.

And most wind farms will catch you off at 12, 12 meters a second anyway, because it’s just considered the safe. safe practice. I think for us where it comes in is that, Hey, I know the truck can handle a lot higher wind gusts. So everybody’s safe and then it allows you to finish a job in an emergency situation.

So that’s the use we’re looking at for the extended working at a low based on extended wind regime.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, because at the, in a general rule of thumb, there isn’t many turbines out there that you would even lock out after 15 meters per second. Most of them you just feather the blades negative and let it sit up there.

You’re not going to be able to work on them no matter what the access method is that’s wind speed.

Petr Bartusek: Yeah, that’s right. And, operators want to make money too. We can generate, they want to add the other day that’s their business. We get it. And again, that’s why I know we have the capability and capacity.

We don’t really, dangle the carrot much in front of people because it’s, we’re going to work to a point where it’s safe. And where are we adding value? So if, let’s say you’re working just on the tip, and you start getting 30 meters a second, we could probably still be there. The tip may be flapping to where it’s just not safe for the basket or it’s you’re just, you can be up in the air, but you’re creating zero value because you can’t actually do the work.

It depends on where you’re working on that flight. If I’m somewhere, mid span or max core, there’s a lot less movement. Okay. On that blade, so it could still be possible to finish the job, but at a tip, it just poses a whole other dimension.

Joel Saxum: Okay, so we’ve talked about 30, 30 all the way to a hundred meter reach height.

How many trucks do you guys have? What does the fleet look like?

Petr Bartusek: Pushing close to 40, it’s 35 plus. There is a pipeline of about 10 trucks being delivered each year. As we have it, we’re currently still evaluating the mix. I know this is more of a wind show, but we’ve made a huge leap into the transmission space which is adjacent market for us.

That changed our mix a little bit. We operate in other spaces too, like aerospace construction, building big stadiums and highly bridges and whatever else just needs some special equipment like this, but our bread and butter is traditionally going to be wind power.

And transmission, right? With. You’re talking about the average hub height being 80, 90 meters. Your workhorse truly ends up being a 90 meter machine which is a 295 footer. So that means that no matter what happens, you’re going to roll on the side, you can hit it and you don’t have to worry about it because it’s a, it’s an overall workhorse.

Now, if you know you’re only structuring a campaign that’s geared maybe towards strike tape and leading edge protection, Then the 50 or 70 meter variety will likely do. And, there is obviously money savings because it’s a cheaper machine to start with. But it’s going to be limited to that particular campaign that you’re doing.

Allen Hall: And what are the restrictions about moving such a large vehicle around in the United States? Are there permits and things that need to be pulled before? Bringing it some parts.

Petr Bartusek: The problem with the DLT generally is that each state has individual DLTs. There is not like a federal DLT that would make everything super easy.

So each state may have different requirements on weight, actual spacing and how much weight you can have on each axle, basically 30, 50, 70 meter variety. You can drive around the U. S. without any issues at all. That includes California which is not a super friendly state to large equipment.

The 90 meters virtually drivable everywhere except a couple states where they may need to get low boyed. And, it’s just, it’s a permit situation of 1 to 3 days wait, depending on what each state requires, and the 100 meters, they’re about 50 60. I would say about half of the states are.

Road friendly and half of the states are not. So sometimes you end up having to piecemeal Hey, we’re going to drive here. Then you’re going to put it in a low boy, fortunately own a low boy in house. So that makes moves a lot easier on us. And then, again, you get to unload it and you can drive.

It has to do with the overall weight of the vehicle or axle spacing.

Joel Saxum: But when it, when it comes to access within a wind farm, at one point in time, all of these wind farms were built with heavy trucks having to move usually big crawler cranes in, so the roads are, the roads and pads are good for you guys, the bridges, the bridge crossings, the roads around the wind farms once you get to the site, there’s, there should be no issues, no matter what the place is, unless it’s like, Hey, you can’t, put a, put an outrigger out here because the sage grouse is mating this spring or something like that.

You might run into a deal, but there’s nothing we can do about those.

Petr Bartusek: No, generally there are no issues at all. Especially if the turbine operator or, the construction company was a good steward to the County. If they were not, sometimes we walk into the hornet’s nest, they just close.

And I say, Hey, we know it’s not you guys that, that build it or, it’s. It’s not an angry landowner that, didn’t want to sign and now he doesn’t have a turbine on his field and his neighbor has five turbines and all of a sudden this guy has a brand new truck every year and neighbor doesn’t.

There’s that type of dynamic we walk into. There is some specific seasonal issues like, where there’s a little whale mating or some salamanders somewhere in California or, you’re going to have frost loss up north that, that kick in or if you had heavy rain somewhere in the Iowa cornfields or, even in the corpus area, then the ground is too soft.

So you may wait 2 or 3 days for it to dry, but yeah, no, we don’t have access issues. I think there is one site somewhere in New Hampshire that we have to get a little bit of a. So with a tractor just because the grade was relatively steep, but if any, if a truck can get there, if a car can get there, we usually don’t have issues and our truck are, all wheel drive and rear steering, so we can navigate sites pretty well.

Allen Hall: I think I’ve been to that site in New Hampshire. It is very steep. So that makes a lot of sense. So do you cover Canada as well as the United States? What’s your territory here?

Petr Bartusek: We so we specialize in the U. S. We have the ability to go to Canada. I don’t necessarily pursue it actively, passively we do it.

But there is just so much work in the U. S. for our trucks that, that to actually focus on Canada, it’s borderline counterproductive, nothing against Canadians, I like hockey and everything else. But the service window is so much shorter up there than it is stateside because of the climate and certain provinces have certain restrictions, and, French Canada being one of the harshest ones.

That it, it poses a whole new aspect in terms of, how you bill how you kind of work around labor laws, what you cannot do. So it, again, customer orders it, we’ll bring it there or bring it to the border and they can take it, we’ll deliver it. I say yes, but I don’t seek it out.

Joel Saxum: That’s a market that could greatly benefit from the efficiency of the trucks, right? But if it’s not, if it’s not good, if it’s not as good for your business model, like I get it, like just stay down here and make money where the hate.

Petr Bartusek: What they could benefit is something we discovered by accident about two years ago.

Actually, we discovered we were the beneficiary. Some of our customers discovered it and they’re saying, Hey, the machine doesn’t get tired. Why don’t we run two shifts? That’s something that probably should be utilized in Canada. That is, there is so much work that you truly cannot get everything done in a season.

And especially of the shoulder sort of season. The weather’s a little dicey. So he tried to compress everything into where she was saying may through September in an ideal case. And if everybody had their wish, it would be like June through August. So at that point, how do you.

How do you handle the limited capacity of trucks or technicians that want R& Rs and everything else that is happening? So we’ve been with a couple of our customers. We’ve been running a 24 hour shift. That means I actually have two sets of operators and they have two sets of light decks and we run around the clock.

And that truly is, we’re into what I’ve called the peak season.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, take advantage of the good weather windows, right? Yeah, we know that, like if you’re working on site, even in the U. S., once September hits and October starts looking, if you’re working anywhere north of basically South Texas, you have the possibility of snow or some other bad weather moving in, why not?

You could get two weeks worth of, Or four weeks worth of work done in two weeks if you run night shifts. That’s just makes sense.

Petr Bartusek: And with less of a standby risk, right? So your actual two weeks. Could mean six weeks in real life, right? Cause it gives you a factor, a standby.

So yeah, it’s not everyone’s receptive to it. Again, I did not invent it. I’m sure this is being used because the petrochemical industry all the time during shutdown and turnaround, but, some of our customers came to us and say, Hey, this is what we want to do. And, always figure out how to say yes.

So that is my job, virtually and then operation guys have to figure out how they gonna deliver on that.

Allen Hall: That does seem like a really good idea. And I know there’s a lot of operators that have used Blade Platforms, but there’s still a substantial number that haven’t used your services yet.

How do they reach out to you, Petr? How do they get ahold of Blade Platforms?

Petr Bartusek: So the easiest way is the 21st century, that’s www.bladeplatforms.com. That probably will guide you to our 1 800 number, or, eventually get you to someone who you’ve talked to and they can get to me. I don’t mind sharing my number.

That’s 469-371-4284. If someone needs to get me direct.

Allen Hall: If you need Blade Platforms services, go to bladeplatforms. com. Check out their website, get ahold of Petr. They are really efficient and are experts on blade upgrades and blade repairs. So this Petr, it’s been great having you on the podcast.

Thank you so much for joining. Awesome. Thank you guys. Thanks for having me.

https://weatherguardwind.com/blade-platforms-turbine-blade-repair-access/

Renewable Energy

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

Published

9 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

12 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.