Published

1 year ago

January 24, 2025

Alice Rush

Søren Kellenberger, sales director at CNC Onsite, joins the Uptime Spotlight to discuss their uptower yaw ring repair method. He describes the root causes of yaw ring failure, makes projections for the future, and introduces CNC Onsite’s patented yaw ring repair solution. Their portable precision machine can be lifted uptower to replace a damaged yaw ring, potentially saving operators significant downtime and repair costs.

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Allen Hall: When wind turbine yaw gears fail, operators face a costly choice. Hire a crane for a complete replacement or attempt a risky repair. This week we speak with Søren Kellenberger, sales director and partner at CNC Onsite. CNC Onsite brings precision machining up tower. Making yaw gear repairs faster and more reliable without using an expensive frame.

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight. Shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Søren, welcome to the show. Thank you very much, Allen. And thank you for inviting me. Well, we want to understand first, what is causing yaw gear to break? teeth to be damaged in some of these turbines, because the photos I have seen are remarkable. The teeth are just gone. How does that happen?

Søren Kellenberger: I think there can be a number or there can be a number of reasons.

And it, it depends a little bit, I think, on the turbine, how the yaw ring was designed and stuff like that. But if you look at some of the older turbines the yaw ring. Wasn’t hardened. So there, in many cases, you’ll just see wear and tear from years of of use, operation. And typically in a, in a wind farm, you have a dominating wind direction, right?

So, Especially in Denmark, it’s mainly blowing from the west. So all our wind turbines are pointing that direction most of the time, which means that they are yawing within a limited area of of the yaw ring. So a limited area is taking the majority of, of the wear cycles. So, so therefore they, you, you see some, some local wear and tear and, and finally they will be worn down razor sharp basically and, and break off eventually.

So, so that can be, be just one cause of, of the, of the failure. We also see sometimes that even though they are hardened, they, of course, they don’t wear that much, but they will more break off and probably. Due to some extreme loading and I guess that can be caused by either some, some misaligned yaw gear it can be extreme loads.

You have some sites where you have Really wind directions changing very fast that is causing unforeseen loads on the turbine. So you have actual extreme loads that are, that are higher than the design loads. You could probably also sometimes see foreign objects that are, are falling into the, to the ying and being squeezed between the ying and your gear, causing some, some damages.

So. There are a number of, of different reasons for, for these damages, I guess.

Joel Saxum: Do you see anything environmental? Like in my mind, I think of these Arctic turbines, right? The ones that are operating in this, in the extreme cold. When, when metal gets cold, it gets brittle. Do you see more, more yaw teeth get damaged in those territories as others, or is it just kind of across the board the same?

Søren Kellenberger: No. We haven’t seen that, that these cold condition turbines are affected more than than others, but we do see that the weather conditions play a significant role. And. If you have maybe your ring damages on two to 5 percent of, of, of your turbine fleet, then they will not be evenly distributed across your different parks.

It tend to be that if you have an effective park due to some special weather conditions in that area, you seem to have a lot of problems in that one park, and you can have other parks that will run perfectly fine for, for your the entire lifetime without any issues on, on the yaw ring. Well, at least these inspections aren’t super difficult.

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious when they are missing.

Allen Hall: What’s the effect when they’re missing teeth like that? Is it, is, is the turbine just not able to yaw anymore or is it, it really, it risks some structural overloading when that happens?

Søren Kellenberger: Yeah. I mean, in in the beginning, I guess you, you won’t be able to, to yaw.

So at least you, you, it would be less accurate if you have. where it will start being less accurate. And that will of course cause some loss production. Potentially if, if you are misaligned on your, your system, you’re also introducing unwanted loads to your, to your turbine. So I guess it could have also other consequences when you are other than.

Just lost production when, when you have a yaw misalignment. But yeah, in, in the end you won’t be able to to yaw the turbine if you have too many damaged teeth.

Allen Hall: So is the turbine sent out an alarm when that happens? Is it just a, a complete shutdown? The turbine just says no more. I can’t move and I’m stopped or it doesn’t recognize that this is even a failure.

To be

Søren Kellenberger: honest, Alan, I’m not 100 percent sure. And I think it depends also on, on on the turbine how, how, how new or old they are and how advanced their control systems and condition monitoring systems are. Some of them, they just have on off on the, on the yaw gears. And, and they won’t recognize that, that one yaw gear is just spinning in free air but you can have others that have more advanced control systems where, where you can see that some of the yaw gears are suddenly using a lot more power to to yaw the turbine, which will indicate you have some kind of yaw issue.

If it’s a bad yaw. A broken yaw gear or if it’s some teeth missing in that area where that yaw gear is placed you, you can’t probably tell, but, but there are different warning systems possibilities, but again, depending on how old or how advanced your, your turbine is.

Allen Hall: Wow. So this is really serious.

It’s just beyond just the tooth missing. The consequences for the chairman can be quite dramatic. Now, CNC on site, obviously, is all about doing machining. How do you go about fixing this problem?

Søren Kellenberger: Basically, we have a a smaller CNC controlled, three axis CNC controlled machine that we bring up tower and these machines are adapted to the different different requirements.

Turbine types. As you can imagine, the turbines were not designed for these kinds of repairs. So the design engineers originally didn’t leave much space for for a machine in those areas. But so, so we, we customize the machines to fit the different turbine platforms and, and. Basically we use the internal crane of of the turbine to hoist the, the machine components to, to the turbine.

Use the internal crane to, to position it at the yar ring. And then we mount the machine on, on the Yar ring itself. Which also gives us the advantage that even if the turbine is moving a little bit due to, to wind we are moving along with it. So it doesn’t influence our our accuracy when, when machining.

Allen Hall: That’s quite impressive. Cause the alternative is, and what I’ve seen is you lift the whole, you take the blade set off and then you lift the whole in the cell off and then you go in, you try to replace the yaw gear, which is super expensive.

Søren Kellenberger: That is, that is very, very expensive.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So you’re really talking about taking up some precise machining equipment up tower.

Doesn’t really matter if the wind’s blowing or not. You’re, you’re fine. You’re all inside. And you’re going in and machining what remains of those teeth. I mean, I, I want to have a sort of a dentist equivalent of this. So it’s like you have a broken tooth and, and the dentist comes in and goes, okay, we’re going to grind that tooth off and we’re going to smooth out.

And we’re going to put a replacement. On top of it, like a crown, right? It’s basically a crown. So that process takes how long to do once you kind of uptower in your starting the machining process.

Søren Kellenberger: If we if we use like the, the Vestas V90, three megawatt platform as a sort of baseline then it takes we have, we have our, our teeth segments, our crowns.

If you, if you want in in segments of of six teeth and it takes roughly one day to once we are open and ready to, to replace six teeth. So for a replacement, you need to consider one day of hoisting and getting in place and then. One day for, for each segment you need to, to install and then one day to, to pack up and clean and get back down.

So so we, we get quite a fair bit done in a week.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, that’s, that’s impressive. So, so there’s a couple of activities here that have to be done, right? Of course, you’re getting up there, you mount the CNC equipment. That’s one big part of it. But then you’re, you’re, you’re milling up tower. So you have to deal with, you guys have a, you have a system to deal with all the filings and tailings and catching all that stuff.

And then, and then once you put the new teeth or the new teeth get in place, is, are they welded in place or how are you, how are you attaching that?

Søren Kellenberger: No we bolt them in place. So that because we have a CNC machine, we, we, we can do a very accurate milling process up there. So, so. So basically we, we, as you say, we, we remove the, the remains of, of the old teeth and, and we machine like a pocket in, in the yaw ring.

And that one is milled within a couple of hundreds of millimeters in tolerance. And then we have the benefit because we know the design of the yaw ring. So we. We bring prefabricated segments that have the exact same shape as, as the original yaw ring. And, and they are of course manufactured in a, in a machine workshop.

So, so they have very good tolerances as well. And then we basically create a press fit. So we either slightly pre bent the segment to, to install it or we, we freeze it. We have some small freezers we can bring up tower as well and cool the segment down to minus 80 degrees, which gives us just enough space to, to easily fit it.

And then as it heats up, it’s a, it’s a press fit. And then we keep it in place with bolts as well.

Allen Hall: Wow. I didn’t realize it was a press fit. That’s insane. That’s better than the manufacturer delivered on site when the turbine was new. Yeah, it could be. The other way I’ve seen this repaired, if you watch LinkedIn enough and Joel and I are constant viewers of crazy LinkedIn wind turbine repair videos and Instagram, there’s a lot of this in Facebook too, when they have broken teeth, you see guys up there with welders and they’re up in there and they’re adding filler, trying to rebuild it, trying to reshape it.

Then you see them grinding on this gear. What are the problems with doing that approach?

Søren Kellenberger: We do actually also work with some welding companies, but because you can have some situation where welding is your only opportunity, but, but we can, we can get back to that. But, but the, the challenges with welding is of course you have a big, massive, steel ring so it absorbs the heat quite fast.

So controlling the the heat and the temperature in, in your welding process is is difficult. The space is just as limited for, for welding and they need to fit a person in there. So so you also have the disadvantage of, of having like hot works and confined space, which is, is not so nice.

And then finally being able to grind those Teeth into the original shape is also relatively challenging. You don’t have much space when you are in there and you would want to try and get that contact surface quite straight to distribute your, the load from, from your York year when you start operating again, and, and I think that probably the most challenging part where we have the benefit of, of machining, bringing a pre machined segment that has that exact shape.

I think that is probably one of the, the biggest benefits to, to, to our process. And, and because it’s such a manual process of, of grinding, it can be difficult to get that shape. And, and that can be, Can give you some extra loads on a, on a welded tooth which can lead to damages again faster than, than what we see on,

Joel Saxum: on segments.

There’s, I mean, there’s one thing for rebuilding teeth on like an excavator by welding, welding up a bunch of metal and, but, but, but teeth that need to be used in a, you know, basically a ring and pinion set or a ge you know, a a tooth gear thing. It’s gotta be exact. It has to be, because if not, you’re just gonna be back up there in a year or two.

Doing the same process because it’s just not going to last. It’s temporary. Does the, there’s

Allen Hall: a yaw motor gear and all the machinery that’s there and the mechanism there, does that need to be updated too? Because it’s been working against these, these gears that have been not the right shape for a long time, that in order to get this really fixed, you need to put the proper.

teeth in the R gear, but also on the motor, you need to take a look at it and make sure it’s up to snuff. Yeah,

Søren Kellenberger: I think that is a typically also a part of the inspection. They, they do that. They, they check that all the motors and, and gear wheels there are okay. It’s normally not a part of, of our process to do that, that, that would be the turbine owners or the, their own technicians who would check that.

Up front or, or right after we, we complete our work. So, but yes I mean, when you are up there fixing it, I, I, I would definitely recommend that you check the remaining system and potentially also try to look for the, for the root cause if you do have. Misaligned your gears or something like that.

It could for sure be an advantage to to get them aligned to avoid having the same damage again soon after the repair. So how many of

Allen Hall: these teeth replacement are you doing in a year? Because my guess is it’s a good Quite a number from what I’ve seen out in the field,

Søren Kellenberger: you can say it’s still a relatively new technology, even though we’ve been doing it for five years.

It’s still a conservative industry. You know, they, they want to see new technology introduced and, and see how it operates and works. So it’s not that we do a oaring every. But we we have installed more than a hundred segments since we started and, and we see that it is taking off now the first segments have now been running for more than five years and, and proven them themselves very well.

So, so we, we certainly do and also you see that. The turbines, the number of turbines that are reaching that age where you can could expect some, some wear or damages to your, your ring is also increasing significant significantly. So we, we will be seeing more repairs over the coming years for, for sure.

Joel Saxum: I think that’s a big part of the conversation here is you know, looking, looking in the European market, like if you look at Spain right now, their fleet is starting to get to that Close to end of life or life extension. What does it look like? Is it repower? Is it refurbished? How do we keep these things running?

And Alan and I just had a conversation with a company here in the States that’s doing a lot of repowers just the other day. And I was thinking about that there too, because in the States we have this, you know, PTC driven repower thing where you could put certain amount of value back into the turbine, still qualify for some subsidies.

And I was thinking, man, with all these older turbines. What else can be done here? And some of that would be refurbish, refuel, fix these raw yaw gears, fix these kinds of things to make sure that you’re, you’re maintaining that level of performance that you want. Or, I mean, if you’ve been operating like this for a long time, you may be getting back to back to baseline as well.

I mean, at a minimum would be nice to get that out of it. So I think that the market for what you guys are doing is going to grow massively. Globally right now, right? We’re seeing, we could see a lot of applications from here for it in the States with our 75, 000 and change turbines we have plus that European market that’s changing.

So are you guys starting to get some calls from, you know, how, is it, is it more like damage during regular operation and this is what’s happening or, Hey, we’re at getting close to end of life. Can you help us do an assessment on what this looks like? Are you getting those calls? Both. Yes.

Søren Kellenberger: So, so. Most most operators I guess they, they start really looking for this when they see an issue but if they have had turbines or in other wind farms, for instance, or, or even some of them that, that have been damaged earlier in the lifetime, they are more aware of these issues and, and they would also contact us for, for inspections and, and evaluations if, if what can be done and, and to get some, some budgetary quotes and, and stuff like that to see if there’s a return on, on investment within their potential lifetime extension.

So, so yes, we, we do get both And, and I mean, we’ve been in, in Japan to, to fix teeth on a, on a turbine. We’ve, we’ve been across multiple countries and in Europe we’ve just sold a machine to New Zealand together with the first 25 segments. They will, they will get together with this machine.

So it is picking up around the world. And, and we also have several inquiries from from the U S so, so I would be very surprised if we weren’t doing some turbines in, in the U S next year also on, on the Jolring site.

Allen Hall: So can an operator buy the machinery and do this process themselves with your direction, of course?

Or is it always required that CMC on site people be there to do the process?

Søren Kellenberger: No, it’s a, it’s not a requirement that, that we operate a machine. It, it is a very much a case by case discussion with with our customers, if, if they have The technicians with the right skills and, and they have the volume of turbines to keep them up to, up to speed on, on using these machines.

It can make sense that they buy a machine and we train them. Others prefer that, that we come and do an all inclusive service. So it is, it is basically up to, to the customer. And, and we discussed that case by case how, how we make the best project.

Allen Hall: What process is used if you’re offshore on these massive 8, 10, 12, now 15 megawatt turbines?

Is the process basically the same on those turbines?

Søren Kellenberger: It is. Completely the same process only, only difference is is, is the transport there that we have to go by CTV and not not a, not by car. So that, that is basically the only difference if the turbine is onshore, offshore, doesn’t make any difference for, for us.

It is still the, the exact same milling process and yeah. installation process. We don’t need any other external equipment.

Joel Saxum: How big is one of these kits? Like, if you’re going offshore, if you’re transferring, I know like, on offshore, on the transition piece, there’ll be a little crane sometimes and stuff, but like, how, like, weight and dimensions, what, what does it look like?

Søren Kellenberger: That depends on on the turbine. As I mentioned before, though, most of these turbines weren’t designed for this kind of, of repair. So, so we don’t have a one fit fits all machine. And, and the segments are also different because the yaw ring in a 8, 10, 15 megawatt turbine is, is way bigger.

Bigger than in a two or three megawatt, of course. But if we take the, the two, three megawatt size turbines, our machine is around 80 kilos. And the segment is weighing eight to 10 kilos. So it’s, it’s, it’s easily transferable. And we always make sure that we can, if the machine is too big or heavy when it’s assembled, we always make sure that each component can be handled by the internal crane and go through the hatch in, in in the nacelle.

Because that is very important also. And, and in terms of keeping the cost down that you don’t need any external cranes for, for this operation. But I think our, our heaviest machines for these large offshore turbines is around two, 300 kilograms. So when they are fully assembled.

Joel Saxum: So for me, if I’m, if I’m, if I’m an ISP in the States and I’m listening to this podcast, I’m thinking, Ooh, new service line.

I need to get ahold of Søren. And so I can, so I can be the, I can be the person that gets called in the States to do this. And

Allen Hall: Søren, how do people get ahold of you? How do they reach out to CNC onsite?

Søren Kellenberger: Either through our, our website cnconsite.dk where we have all our, our contact details listed or directly to me at my email ssk@cnconsite.dk or call me.

Yeah, the, my phone number is also also on, on the website. So, there they are most welcome to to reach out to us.

Allen Hall: It’s amazing technology and it needs to be utilized across the world because I’ve run into a number of operators with yaw gear problems and they’re stuck and they didn’t realize you existed.

So hopefully this podcast gets to them and we can connect you up and get you busy because there’s a lot of yaw gear repairs that need to happen over the coming repair seasons. So. Søren, thank you so much for being on the program. Joel and I have learned a ton. Thank you very much for having me.

https://weatherguardwind.com/cnc-onsite-yaw-ring-repair/

Renewable Energy

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Published

10 hours ago

May 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Conference Recap, Suzlon Targets Europe

Matthew Stead recaps WindEurope Madrid and Blades Europe Edinburgh. Plus Suzlon unveils its Blue Sky platform for Europe, Muehlhan consolidates six specialist firms, and Mingyang keeps hunting for a European home.

Speaker: [00:00:00] The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit striketape.com. And now, your hosts.

Allen Hall 2025: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Matthew Stead, who is back in Australia, but not at home.

He’s up in Queensland. Or actually, not even on– in Queensland, technically. He’s on an island off the coast of Queensland. Where are you at, Matthew?

Matthew Stead: Uh, Moreton Island. It’s, uh, like a resort island off, uh, off of Brisbane, so beautiful outside.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, you need a little bit of resort time because you’ve been to two conferences, and you spent a good bit of time in Austria after that.

So you were at WindEurope in Madrid, and then following that, you went right over to Scotland for Blades Europe. So I wanna hear your thoughts. We’ll start with, uh, WindEurope and what was going on at that conference. It did sound like there was a pretty [00:01:00] good attendance, and some people that I have talked to about it really en-enjoyed being in Madrid.

It’s just

Matthew Stead: a bigger city. Um, first time I’d ever been to Madrid, and, uh, yeah, the show was amazing, actually. I was, I was a bit blown away by, uh, I think the OEMs were back out in force. You know, so like the Vestas, Siemens were, um, really– and Nordexes and so forth were really back out in force, so that was really good to see.

Um, the, some of the larger operators had really, really strong presence as well. So you could see that, you know, Iberdrola, Res, um, those sorts of companies were, um, really, you know, putting a big effort in and meeting their customers and, um, really showing, uh, the world who they were. So that was really, um, you know, really good to see.

There were so many people seriously. Um, the queues for food at lunch were, were, um, one of the major problems. Um, so, um, yeah, it was really a lot of people, so that was really exciting. Um, and I mean, for me, I was [00:02:00]trying to catch up with, with partners and friends and, yeah, it was, it was jam, jam-packed just meeting people in the industry.

Um, probably a few other things. So s- you know, SkySpecs and Aerones had a really strong, um, presence there. So, um, SkySpecs and Aerones were, were doing really well. Um, maybe one of the, um, surprises for me, and I know this has been a topic on a few other previous episodes, was there was a lot of interest in bird and bat detection.

I, I, I think there had to be, like, five companies that were, were– had really big setups, and it was a really, really big topic around cameras and so forth. So, um, that was a, a big topic. And, um, then there, there was a really, really strong, you know, supply chain, you know, from, from vessels to cables to, you know, repairs.

Allen Hall 2025: What was the ratio of offshore companies to onshore companies? I’m always curious.

Matthew Stead: You’re looking through the, the list. Um- I would, I’m only guessing it [00:03:00] was probably about 40% had an offshore focus of some kind. So it was definitely a strong offshore focus. Um, obviously, you know, a lot of onshore, offshore combined companies.

But yeah, definitely the word offshore kept on popping up a lot.

Allen Hall 2025: Because Spain is mostly onshore. Like, um, like 99% onshore, right? I think it’s a couple of small projects going offshore. Does it look like the onshore business is gonna pick up, uh, just in terms of the activity on the floor in Madrid?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yeah.

Um, I, I think, you know, like I said, you know, those big operators like the REZAs and the Iberdrolas and, and the OEMs, I, I think it’s just a given that, um, you know, things are buoyant. Um, well, they appear to be definitely very buoyant. Uh, I think we’ve heard, you know, some of the positive, um, financial news from a few of the OEMs recently.

So yeah, yeah, it seems like o- onshore is, is maturing further, further, further. And so you went straight

Allen Hall 2025: from Madrid, right, to [00:04:00] Edinburgh, Scotland. That was a change in weather, I would assume. Uh, probably about a 20 degree Celsius difference. 25 down to 15, yes. Whoa. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good bit. Uh, but the Edinburgh conference, that’s the first time that Blades Europe has been to Edinburgh.

I, at least I don’t remember them being there before. That tends to be a more technical conference than Wind Europe. Uh, the, the Blades conference is obviously focused on blades, and all the relevant experts in Europe do tend to show up there. What were some of the hot topics at Blades Europe this year?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it was, um, an interesting conference. Um, I, I’d been to Blades USA, so I was able to contrast, um, Blades USA a little bit. I think probably the differences here were, yeah, there was definitely some strong, strong, uh, experts there, like you say. Um, you know, Birgit, um, our friend was, was in attendance and a few of her colleagues from Statkraft.

Um, I think, and or, uh, actually ORE Catapult, the, the [00:05:00] UK research, um, offshore renewable energy research, um, they did some great presentations. I really, um, they really shared some really good insights. So, um, ORE Catapult were talking about life extension and, um, you know, looking at the, the fatigue on blades and, uh, how they’re, how they’re going to perform and life extension.

So some great stuff from ORE Catapult there. Probably another key topic that came up was around, uh, sort of related to life extension, but also recycling. The, there was a really good session on the new IEC standard. Um, um, to, you know, full disclosure, I was actually on the panel. So I, I thought it was a great panel.

But, um, the new IEC standard for blade operations and maintenance, um, is really well a-advanced now in its development. Um, very strong risk focus, you know. So depending on the risk then drives your, your blade O&M program. [00:06:00] Um, so that was a, a great talk as well. Uh, and then maybe finally, um, something close to my heart, um, I think the, the, you know, the maturity of CMS companies.

There actually, there were five blade CMS companies there, which is probably the biggest turnout I’ve seen around blade CMS, um, ever. And so it was good to see that sort of, um, interest and growth, um, and the need for, for blade CMS. Uh, and, um, obviously the last one, lightning. So lightning always an issue.

Lots of discussions around lightning, um, you know, through Greece and a few of the, the, the Balkan go- Balkan states. On the blade recycling front, there’s a

Allen Hall 2025: company in Scotland called ReBlade that is involved in some of the recycling efforts. Did they give a presentation of, of what they’re up to at the moment?

Matthew Stead: Uh, yes, I think they did. Um, they’re talking about setting up a, a site in a, a [00:07:00] couple of sites, and I think Inverness was the, the location where they’re, where they’re setting up a site. The, um, the port is supportive, so they’re working through those, those, those challenges. You know, getting a site, getting transport and access to the blades.

Um, working out when, when the, when the blades will come to them. You know, the storage of blades. Um, the, the end, end uses for those blades. Getting all that supply chain, um, lined up was, you know, yeah, it was, that was quite thorough and quite, um, yeah, inspiring.

Allen Hall 2025: And on the CMS side, what are operators trying to monitor?

‘Cause usually have something in mind that they’re going after.

Matthew Stead: For better or for worse, there’s still some serial, um, failure modes. Um, and so the industry is looking at very particular, you know, challenges that, um, certain make and model have. Um, so root insert failures was definitely one of those, um, one of those topics.

Um, and that was actually one of the, the, the [00:08:00] roundtable discussions at, uh, Blades Europe. Some other, um, monitoring around, you know, lightning and- lightning damage and what’s happening with the LPS. That was also, uh, another big topic for, for monitoring. And then a few other sort of general, more, more general, um, you know, natural frequencies of blades and seeing if the natural frequencies are changing, indicating a change in stiffness, which relates to potential damage.

So yeah, there was– it was quite a mix of the types of, um, CMS that was discussed.

Allen Hall 2025: Has the digital twin finally died? Anybody talk about that?

Matthew Stead: There’s actually a current call-out for a new research project in Europe around digital twins. So, um, yeah, one of the larger, one of the larger operators is, is putting, pulling together a team to talk about digital twins, so-

Allen Hall 2025: I, I think this is one of the more difficult things to do, but just because you’re dealing with a variety of blades and blade factories and unique issues that pop up that are…[00:09:00]

You, you really can’t model until after they happen. And after they happen, everybody knows about them anyway. So what’s the point of the digital twin if you can’t detect things early? It, it, it is a great concept, but hard to implement.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And why? Why would you do it? I mean, you, you’re only gonna do it if there’s a benefit, and what is the benefit?

So, but I think, uh, actually at Blades Europe, digital twins was not really a topic. And maybe one thing I forgot to say is that the, um, Wind Power Lab did a, a good, um, presentation on carbon blades as well, so.

Allen Hall 2025: The, the carbon blades are, is a very good discussion, just because the trend has been lately to scrap blades and bring new ones on site.

And the carbon can be difficult to repair, or it takes a long time to repair, and you just don’t have the manpower or woman power to go out and fix it. So the, the fastest option is to build a new blade. But it does leave a lot of blade waste, which is where the industry is not going. Uh, recyclable blades, which is [00:10:00] in process at the moment, will make that easier, but you just don’t wanna be recycling blades.

You like to be able to repair them. Composites are repairable. And it’s, it is so odd that they, they wanna continue on that pathway, but we’ll see. We’ll see. You don’t really learn the lesson until you do it.

Matthew Stead: Um, however, you know, the, the presentation on carbon blades was, um, you know, highlighted a lot of the challenges, but also highlighted some of the positives and the, you know, how they do help.

Um, and so there was a lot of support for carbon blades, but there’s a lot of unknowns and, um, and there was a lot of discussion around how do you even test if the LPS is working. Uh, it’s just impossible. So, you know, traditional methods on carbon blades, yeah, it just don’t work. So, um, but there was a lot of support that the carbon does bring benefit.

But yeah, I agree with you. There’s a lot of challenges there.

Allen Hall 2025: That’s one of the things we learned years ago back in the late ’80s, early ’90s when we, at least in, in the [00:11:00] States, started building a number of carbon fiber aircraft. And the repair situation and dealing with repairs in, in remote locations became difficult.

And you’ve learned how much training it took to keep an industry running, and you’re starting from zero for a lot of places that all he had worked on was aluminum. It, it’s a completely different world. You’re, you’re training tens of thousands of technicians around the world. You weren’t planning to go do that, and now you are.

So it just, it adds to the cost.

Matthew Stead: It also ties into the OEM, um, you know, providing, you know, details on how to repair those blades because they’re not, they’re not just a standard item, so-

Allen Hall 2025: No, you, you don’t wanna be grinding into a protrusion if you can avoid it. It- you’re just never gonna get it back into that original form because protrusions are in some part magic.

And taking a grinder to them is not gonna… It’s breaking the magic. All the magic will be leaving that protrusion when you do that. Yeah, very [00:12:00]difficult. Delamination and bond line failures in blades are difficult problems to detect early. These hidden issues can cost you millions in repairs and lost energy production.

CIC NDT are specialists to detect these critical flaws before they become expensive burdens. Their nondestructive test technology penetrates deep into blade materials to find voids and cracks traditional inspections completely miss. CIC NDT maps every critical defect, delivers actionable reports, and provides support to get your blades back in service.

So visit cicndt.com because catching blade problems early will save you millions.

Well, as we know, the wind industry has long been dominated by a handful of European and American turbine makers, uh, particularly in the, quote-unquote, “West.” Uh, but that landscape may be [00:13:00] shifting. Suzlon, the Indian turbine giant that nearly collapsed under about a $1.5 billion of debt just a few years ago, is back.

The company has unveiled a new turbine platform aimed squarely at Europe, and says it will build its first factory on the continent if it wins enough orders. Vice Chairman Girish Tanti, uh, delivered the announcement at the WindEurope conference in Madrid, where Matthew was Signaling that Suzlon believes its time has come.

And since you were there, Matthew, did you hear any news on the floor, any discussion on the show floor about Suzlon entering Europe?

Matthew Stead: Well, actually, yes. So, um, um, there was actually a good, uh, contingent of Suzlon people at, uh, Blades Europe. So, uh, they attended, uh, Wind Europe and then Blades Europe. Um, and I, you know, I was able to have a bit of discussion with them.

I think, I think, uh, they were quite optimistic about, um, [00:14:00] you know, moving back or moving into, into Europe in terms of manufacturing. Um, however, there was an element of skepticism. Am I allowed to say that? So they, uh, were, they were not completely, um, convinced that it’s gonna happen, but, uh, they were certainly excited by that.

It was definitely a, a clear possibility, but not a given.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, they have a, a new platform called the Blue Sky platform, um, which will have, I think, two turbines here, a 5 megawatt and a 6.3 megawatt, which is squarely aimed at Europe and also the United States, for that matter. And building a factory, though, doesn’t make a lot of sense if the cost driver for a factory in Europe is the European employees, which it tends to be when you hear the discussions about the cost structure, it’s about the employees.

I’m not sure why Suzlon would make blades or nacelles in Europe unless they could avoid tariffs or taxation, because India is a very [00:15:00] cost, uh, driven, uh, manufacturing facilities writing country. So why would you wanna go build another expensive factory, probably in the realm of a couple hundred million pounds, uh, if you’re gonna go do it?

It probably doesn’t make any sense to do that as well as just selling turbines into Europe. It seems like the easier path.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. And then you’ve got all the, like, the quality control challenges and, you know, you get the cultural challenges. So yeah, to be honest, I don’t qu- I don’t quite understand the logic behind that either.

Um, maybe there’s, there’s some things that we don’t know about behind the scenes in terms of tariffs and other, other incentives that we don’t know about.

Allen Hall 2025: Would you see operators taking, uh, a Suzlon presentation and maybe even writing plans for developing with Suzlon turbines in the next couple of years?

Is that a, a feeling that Europeans would, would do that, or is Vestas mainly and Siemens Gamesa so strong in Europe that it doesn’t make any sense unless [00:16:00] you’re in sort of the periphery countries of Europe?

Matthew Stead: I mean, my first exposure to a wind turbine was a Suzlon turbine in Australia, and there are many, many, many Suzlon turbines in Australia.

And they’re all, they’re all still working. They’re all still reliable. So I mean, from a reputation and reliability and, um Yeah, history point of view, I can’t see why not. I mean, you know, uh, the operators will see that, you know, they’ve proven themselves. They’re not new kids on the block. Um, and so why wouldn’t an operator think about it?

Allen Hall 2025: Well,

Matthew Stead: in

Allen Hall 2025: this quarter’s PES Wind magazine, which you can download for free at peswind.com, there is a nice article from Muelhen Wind Services, and that is a growing company. A lot going on there. Our friends at AC883 just joined Muelhen a f- few months ago, and is being part of that conglomerate. And, and we know that obviously building wind farm used to mean [00:17:00]consulting with dozens of contractors, and this is where Mue- Muelhen has really s- stepped into the breach here.

So from blade repair at one company and heavy lift cranes at another company, all that had to be managed separately. You’re calling s- different companies all the time. And watching asset managers and site supervisors do this, uh, it is a thankless job. Well, Muelhen’s trying to change that a little bit, uh, and they’re saying that that model no longer works, and I totally agree with them.

It’s insane. Uh, but so Muelhen has consolidated six specialist firms under its one brand, and covering everything from port pre-assembly to long-term operations and maintenance across Europe, the US and Canada, uh, and Asia-Pacific. Its CEO, Søren Hoffer, uh, puts it plainly, “The next phase of wind will not be won by turbine size alone.

It will be decided by the supply chain’s ability to execute.” Boy, [00:18:00]couldn’t say truer words. Uh, I’ve worked with Muelhen or my company, Weather Guard Lightning Tech, has worked with Muelhen on a couple of projects over the years, and we’ve always had, uh, great service from them, and we have talked to a number of operators that love them, that love using Muelhen.

So it’s not a surprise that they’re trying to grow and expand and make life easier for the operators.

Matthew Stead: Sounds like a brilliant move, really. I mean, you know, pulling all these sort of things together is, is a real challenge, isn’t it? I mean, coordinating all these subcontractors, um, getting to turn up at the right time, and yeah, I mean, it just sounds like a brilliant move, and I think that we need more, more, more efficient service companies to service the growing fleet.

So the more they can get organized, the better.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, the scale matters here, and the expertise matters. As we’ve have a couple hundred thousand turbines that are [00:19:00] operating in the, quote-unquote, “West,” it does make sense to have a larger player that has seen most of those turbines and has some experience with them.

It’s always the scary scenario when you’re working with a new company. Have they been on this turbine before? Do they know what they’re doing? Do they know- Lockout tagout. Even simple things like that come to the forefront. And the, the trouble is on some of these smaller companies that are in that business is that, uh, you just don’t get the level of service, you don’t get the level of response, you don’t have the horsepower if something were to, to go wrong on site.

They don’t have the cash to, to bring in a second crane or another crew to get this job done. It, it does become scale at some point. And, uh, for a long time in the wind industry, particularly United States, it, it has been a lot of, quote-unquote, “mom-and-pop operations,” and those are slowly getting acquired by the likes of Muehlhan.

I, I, I think this is inevitable at some point. Uh, from the asset owner’s, uh, desktop watching this go on, [00:20:00] how do you see, you know, a large operator interfacing with Muehlhan? Are they gonna do just one-stop shopping at this point? They’re, they’re not gonna have three or four different companies to work with, that they’re just gonna lock into, uh, Muehlhan?

‘Cause, uh, that’s what I see.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. I, I think, you know, from the, the WOMA Conference in, in Melbourne, we saw a bit of a, bit of a shift towards, um, outsourcing, at least in Australia Pacific region. And I mean, if, if you’re gonna outsource, um, you’re, you’re probably gonna join up with a, a Muehlhan, um, equivalent.

So, you know, that way it just takes some of the risk out of, out of it, so it, it sort of makes sense. Um, the other observation I’ve heard is that, you know, because of the seasonality of blade repairs, it’s really hard to keep hold of, um, blade techs. And so if you’re a global company, you’ve got at least some opportunity of using the ses- seasonality and keeping hold of the good techs and, um, you know, so, you know, you know, summer in, in North, North, uh, America, and then, you know, summer in [00:21:00] Australia.

So it, it, it allows these company, allows these companies to keep hold of their good people.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. And that, that’s always been the yearly problem, right? That you have a, a crew of a couple good crews in the summertime, and you come back the next summer and it’s a whole different group of people and yeah, that, that, that’s trouble for the industry.

Well, a- and it’s good. It’s fi- it’s finally good to see this happening, and I know, uh, we’ve talked about it internally here at Weather Guard of who to work with and who to partner with. We like working with companies that have scale, and I think we’re finally there. So it’s really interesting to see this article from Johan in PES Wind.

So if you, if you haven’t read the article, you should go visit peswind.com and take a look. There’s a lot of great content in this quarter’s issue, and y- you don’t wanna miss it. So go to peswind.com today. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial, and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime podcast recommends PES Wind magazine.

PES Wind offers [00:22:00] a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. So when, when the energy prices spike like they’re happening right now, uh, the Iran war being one of the main drivers, and obviously gasoline prices have jumped quite a bit, here’s what happens.

The China’s clean energy sector goes to work, and they’re racing to make connections and make sales. As electricity prices jump up, gas prices jump up, everybody wants to try to find a cheaper way to provide energy to their countries or locales. Uh, China’s there to offer it. So it’s solar panels, batteries, EVs, and even wind turbines are, are looking for homes out of China.

Uh, for European wind professionals, [00:23:00] the most important part comes from Mingyang, right? So they were unable to get a production facility in Scotland, but they haven’t given up yet. They are still searching for a home somewhere in Europe. And as of today, I don’t think they’ve found it. They’re s- I think they’re still looking for some country to host them.

But how long is that gonna go on, Matthew? I, I think with the domination of Vestas and Siemens Gamesa in Europe and Suzlon trying to make an entry, will Mingyang and other Chinese manufacturers eventually find a home?

Matthew Stead: It’s interesting. I think, uh, if you look at the airline industry, you’ve always had premium providers, and you’ve always had low-end providers, and I think there’s always a place for all of them.

And so I re- I reckon they’ll find, I think they’ll find their place in, in the market and just, you know, it might just take a while. But they’ve got the strength, haven’t they? They’ve got the product. They’ve got the strength. So it’s just a matter [00:24:00] of time.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah. I, I, I d- I do think eventually it will happen.

But Vestas and, and Siemens Gamesa have done a pretty good job of controlling it, and wind Europe, honestly. Wind Europe has not been a proponent of a Chinese manufacturer in Europe, so that generally will help slow down any business plans they would have But at the same time, there’s a lot of opportunities around the world that’s not necessarily in Europe, right?

South America has strong ties with China. They’re– And Chinese companies are, are starting production in China. There’s a lot th- things happening there. You’re gonna see that in Africa and other places. So it doesn’t necessarily have to happen in Europe, which is, I think Europeans and Americans think, “Well, we can’t have China in those locales.”

Fine. But it isn’t like China doesn’t have other opportunities to, to sell turbines or solar panels or batteries. There are plenty places on the planet where

Matthew Stead: people that

Allen Hall 2025: need

Matthew Stead: lower cost energy, and they’re gonna find them. Um, I did attend a, a panel [00:25:00] discussion on Türkiye, um, and the growth, and there was a lot of growth in Türkiye around onshore and offshore.

And so maybe Mingyang, that might be a, a place, um, for them to, to start, you know, on the doorstep of, of Europe. The stepping stone, so to speak. Stepping country.

Allen Hall 2025: Is there risk in that, uh, uh, if, uh, uh, Mingyang decided to put a plant in Türkiye? Is, does that come with some political aspect? Because I, I, I don’t remember.

Türkiye t-tends to play, uh, uh, k- kind of like Switzerland in, in terms of working with different, uh, political systems over time. Yeah.

Matthew Stead: I, I’ve had a bit more to do with a few, a few, um, sort of organizations in Türkiye recently and, um, you know, it’s highly professional, highly, you know, logical, and so I, I can’t see why it’d be a challenge.

So I think, yeah, that stepping stone into Europe might be a, a logical way to go. Well, maybe

Allen Hall 2025: we’ll see that in the next [00:26:00] couple of months. I don’t know. There’s gonna be a lot to happen there. There’s so much money being spent in Europe on renewables, wind, solar, battery, all the above, that there’s plenty of opportunity, and every company that has a product that’s gonna be trying to sell it in Europe right now.

It’s a smart move. Absolutely.

Matthew Stead: I think the other thing that we’ll probably be talking about a little bit more is EV trucks or, you know, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: You think so?

Matthew Stead: I reckon we’ll be talking more and more about electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Does Europe even have a, a le- a real true EV tractor-trailer, large truck?

What do they call… I guess they call it a lorry.

Matthew Stead: I don’t think yet. But that’s why I’m saying I think this is a topic that’s gonna raise itself. Um, I’ve, I’ve seen some numbers recently which says that it’s a bit of a no-brainer to go from diesel to, um, to battery now.

Allen Hall 2025: So is Tesla gonna be the, the winner there just because of their, I don’t even what they call it, the Tesla truck?

Is that what they call that now?

Matthew Stead: Not the Cybertruck, the, the truck truck.

Allen Hall 2025: Electric semi-truck. There you go. [00:27:00] Thank you, producer Claire.

Matthew Stead: I think you’ve gotta watch, you know, you’ve gotta watch BYD and a few of the other, the other, um, other companies.

Allen Hall 2025: Do they have something as large as what, uh, Tesla is offering today?

Because Tesla is offering a true semi or tractor-trailer

Matthew Stead: I, I, I must admit I’m not a, a huge expert on the topic, but I’m sure Rosemary is.

Allen Hall 2025: She drives the big rigs? Is that what she’s doing?

Matthew Stead: But I think we– Yeah, I think, I think it’s an in-interesting thing to watch because, um, certainly fuel prices in Australia are definitely pushing, um, this idea of, um, electric trucks.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, diesel prices are really high in the States. I- if they’re high in the States, I can’t even imagine what they are in Europe or Australia. They must be through the roof. So if you have a diesel vehicle, although they run forever and are pretty efficient, the price of fuel is insane right now.

Matthew Stead: And, you know, if you, if you take that a step further into mining, so Twiggy Forest, um, and Fortescue, you know, switching to [00:28:00] electric, uh, trucks and electric mining, yeah, it makes sense.

Allen Hall 2025: Does the math work out on that? Uh, obviously Fortescue is taking, uh, really a pretty significant risk in that they’re developing their own electricity generation sites via wind and solar and battery, the whole thing, and they’re converting some of their larger vehicles to electric. Does that hold a big risk, or is this just a financial no-brainer, particularly when diesel prices are so high?

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think it’s a financial no-brainer. Uh, and that’s why partly I think we’ll be talking about trucks because, you know, once the finances make sense, um, there’ll be a faster transition. And I think, you know, Fortescue is not a silly company.

Allen Hall 2025: Fortescue is willing to dabble, right? So they’re willing to, to see where the technology is and spend a little bit of money and possibly it works out, right?

I think there’s– you have to take a little bit of risk if you’re in that business because you are spending so much money on fuel. [00:29:00] You can spend a couple million dollars playing in different areas to pick an eventual winner. Obviously, they’re gonna– Well, it’s not obvious at the moment, but it, it seems obvious to us being on the electricity side.

Electricity is gonna be the answer. Renewable energy is gonna be the easy way to do it, the lowest cost way to do it. There you go. Go do it. Well, American Clean Power’s event, uh, which is in Houston this year, will be happening June 1st through the 4th at the convention center downtown in Houston. It’s gonna be warm, everybody, so if you’re traveling from a cooler country like Denmark to Houston, bring something cool to wear.

It will be warm in June. It, it– Houston is just a very warm place, and it’s quite humid, so it’ll, it’ll be a, a unique environment. However, it does sound like there’s gonna be a, a, an– A number of interesting companies and a lot of people that are attending that event this year, and one of them is gonna be Matthew and EOLOGIX-PING with Weather Guard Lightning Tech will [00:30:00] both be down at the event in a booth and seeing everybody and, and, and meeting a whole bunch of, of, uh, new people that are getting into the industry, which is, to me, is always the fun part.

Like, we just meet so many really fun people. Uh, and Matthew, you know, we had a discussion internally about that, like, uh, our, our new, uh, chief commercial officer, Nikki Briggs, has been commenting. We’ve been talking to so many operators around the world, and after every, uh, little meeting briefing that we have, we do a post-briefing, and she goes, “They were so nice.”

And I s- yes, Nikki, the wind industry people are fantastic to work with. Like, they’re all focused on doing something positive, and they’re trying to, to do it the best that they can. And there’s a lot of constraints to it, and they’re making a number of hard decisions. But when we all come together at American Clean Power here in the States, hey, we can kinda commiserate and [00:31:00] talk about what’s happening and catch up.

And I feel like we need a little bit of catch-up time in this industry, particularly here in the United States.

Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, um, I, I definitely agree. And I, I found, you know, previously I used to work in the construction industry and work with engineers and, you know, transport, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And actually, I found that the renewable industry, there’s a lot of really open people, really happy to have a discussion, um, not the big egos, so I completely agree. And, um, I’m thinking back, um, I first met people in the wind industry in, you know, around 2012, 2013, and, you know, I still know a number of those people and really appreciate catching up with them.

Um, so actually, Berend van der Pol was probably one of the first, and, uh, Birgit Junker was, um, maybe one of the second, so yeah. And I’m definitely looking forward to ACP.

Allen Hall 2025: If you’re, if you’re down in Houston at American Clean Power, definitely stop by a- and say hi to everybody from [00:32:00]EOLOGIX-PING and Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and hey, learn about all the things that are going on because both companies have new products that’ll, were gonna be announced at the site.

Uh, we’re already getting inundated with requests on the Weather Guard side. It’s insane. We’re telling people, like, “Slow down, slow down, slow down. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk to you about it when we get to Houston.” But, uh, expect a very attentive audience this year, which is exciting. That wraps up another episode of “The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.”

If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas- We’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It helps other wind energy professionals follow the show. For Matthew, I’m Allen Hall, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:33:00] Podcast.