Published

10 months ago

June 5, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Fibersail’s Fiber Optics Prevent Costly Repairs

Carlos Oliveira, CEO of Fibersail, discusses their advanced fiber optic technology for early detection of wind turbine blade damage, reducing downtime and optimizing maintenance for wind farm operators.

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!

Allen Hall: Wind turbine blade failures cost the industry billions annually. Today we’re talking with Fibersail, CEO, Carlos Oliveira About their innovative fiber optic technology that detects early blade damage before catastrophic failures occur. Learn how their shape sensing system is helping wind farm operators reduce downtime and optimize maintenance.

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Carlos, welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me here.

Allen Hall: This is gonna be a fascinating discussion. when I was over at Wind Europe, the activity around your booth was really good. a lot of interested people wanting to learn more about the technology and how to protect their blades and be able to determine early if they have blade problems.

And I think everybody on the [00:01:00] podcast knows that blades are a huge issue financially. And we just don’t have enough information about how they are moving structurally or what kind of structural issues they’re having. How big do you think this problem is, Carlos?

Speaker 3: I agree with you. So we have quite a busy Wind Europe event.

we were really full all the, time. and I think that, the problem is really, getting out, right? It’s every year, more than. Five, $6 billion are being spent in non-planned repairs activities. and this is impacting a lot to the bottom line of the industry. what we knew at fiber cell 3, 4, 5 years ago, that the problem was really big Honda blades.

Now it’s mainstream knowledge. big companies are putting billions of euros, in, recognizing losses because of this issue. And more and more customers are coming to us. it’s [00:02:00] really a big issue and we believe that, it can really put in danger the wind industry as a whole.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And even if you buy a new turbine today, there is very little information that comes from the blades themselves.

A lot of it is coming from the SCADA system, and that’s, those SCADA systems are not designed to detect this sort of. Issues that Fibersail can detect. Correct?

Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think it’s we are building bigger and bigger blades, using old technology, right? It does not work. you have a mixture for a big explosion happening, and that’s exactly what we are seeing.

If in the past, the turbines, they were showing problems after 5, 6, 7, 8 years of operation. Today we have customers that come to us. with big problems in blades after one, two years of operation, some of them still during the warranty period. So it’s really becoming a big issue and that’s where our shape sensing technology kicks in because we have advanced sensing technology.

For the most [00:03:00] advanced, turbines out there and the new ones, it’s really good interior, but the reality is a different story.

Allen Hall: how soon should you install a system onto a blade, particularly a new blade? Should it go in at the factory or, immediately after in the warranty period, or a lot of operators that we have seen, like to install them at year five or six of operation, which seems.

Late to us.

Speaker 3: I tend to agree, we would prefer to have it installed, at the manufacturing. we know it’s not, straightforward. and what we’re doing, and this is let’s say our go-to market strategy, we are working with end customers, the owner operators of the turbines. the ones that have the hurdle, they have the problem to solve.

And we are working with, many of them. We are deploying, we are doing a retrofit installation. And that data then can be used to convince CEMS to integrate this technology. Of course, that’s our end goal. we understand it’ll take, a bit of time, [00:04:00] transparency, the level of transparency we bring with our, chef sensing technology.

sometimes, people try to avoid it, at the beginning, but we want really to use the data from the field and the value that we deliver to our customers. To push this into the product. So hopefully the next place that, the customers are buying from the OEMs will have, fiber cell technology, inside it.

Joel Saxum: Let me ask you a little bit of a question about that, how it fits into the marketplace. ’cause we’re gonna get into the amazing technology that you guys have. But I just wanna understand, because when we talk to operators a lot of times we’re like, Hey, I’d love to implement this solution, but hey, I can’t do this until end of warranty.

Or it’s, I’m under full service agreement for the next five or 10 years, or whatever that may be. And the OE EMM doesn’t wanna allow me to put this CMS on or this aftermarket product or these things. and contractually those things can be, those contracts can be pretty tight where you can’t even put stuff on that’s even air gapped.

How have you [00:05:00] guys dealt with, that, or have you ran into those, hurdles yet?

Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. We, have, so we, there are different kinds of customers. Of course. If there is no contract, trying to block anything like this, we can, we have an easy entry. And we have some customers like that. others, they really fall into what you said, some of them even during the warranty, period.

we, at Five Cell, we are our position here, we are a solutions provider and we position ourselves as a solutions provider for the industry, not necessarily for one or the other side of the industry. So we don’t want to be used. As a source of information for one side of the industry to try to attack the other side.

We really see that the industry has an issue and, we want to provide transparency to avoid costs and to make wind, competitive, source of energy. and so in those, [00:06:00] situations, usually we try to do a cooperation with three parties. So fiber cell gen customer, and the OEM, if possible. So we always try to invite them.

To the table if possible. because, we, have cases where actually, the contract is blocking the entry of, sensing technology like ours, but the customer is losing above the cap of compensation from the O end. So they are losing lost production. So the problem is really big. So there needs to be a, found a solution.

At the same time, the OEM is losing money because they are paying the compensation okay, till the cap. But they are paying a lot of money and they’ll need to pay this for 20 plus years. So we position ourselves as a solution provider on both hands. Of course, it’s not easy, but as I usually said here with the team, if it was easy, it was already done.

So we are in the. let’s

Allen Hall: talk about the technology just for a [00:07:00] moment. It’s obviously Fibersail. The technology is in the name, it’s fiber, but I, wanna understand a little bit about how are you using the fiber, how it’s installed, where does it go? What is the, electronics or the electrical boxes that are connected to it?

What does the system look like?

Speaker 3: as I said, fiber, it’s easy. The sail part I can do here a connection, right? Fi fiber cells started measuring the shape of the sail of the sailboat. and now what we’re doing is applying the technology to a different cell, right? A blade is a rooted cell and what we are doing is really to get the added level of information of how that sale is behaving, in real time.

And so what, we build actually is our shean technology. That’s the unique approach. We built a fiber optics beam that we glue inside the plate. We go from the root till where we can install in the retrofit. Of course, when we do the integration in the product, in the end, we can go all the way to the [00:08:00]tip.

But that’s a possibility for a later stage. and basically we encapsulate all the fiber optics, all the. technology that does require, more, detailed level of expertise from the people in the field. We encapsulate everything into a system and then we hand over the system, to a normal field technician that can simply glue our sensor to the blade, plug the power, and then we are on,

Allen Hall: we are working.

Wow. Okay. And how many pieces of fiber would typically go in a blade? Is it a, bundle of fibers in one specific area, or is it. Spread out across the blade structure.

Speaker 3: We have, two products today. We are working onto the next two. they are still, not at commercial level, but basically we have, our shade sensor.

That’s our, core technology. But we also have, for example, in our product line, the standard load sensors. It’ll be incredible to know that more and more customers also need this kind of data. [00:09:00] even basic load sensing data is not available for the end customer and we can provide it. and so the setup really depends on what the customer wants.

So if the customer just wants, very limited information, for example, we can provide a system with the load sensors in it. If the customer wants, for example, early damage detection, we put our shape sensor in it and we actually had on top. Hotspot sensor to do really the early damage detection. So it really depends on what the customer needs, what we do, we call it internally, tailored made, but at scale it’s that we adjust and we make a system using all the resources we have in our product line, to offer the customer solution that works and then it works for that turbine type for that customer.

to, give you an example, we are working in a package that will be really working on early damage detection for a [00:10:00] specific turbine type in the field that has huge damage is huge. And then we have a system that works for the entire fleet of that, turbine five.

Joel Saxum: So I, one of the things I want to just, just touch on there and you, briefly mentioned it in its implementation, right?

we wanna, I’ll raise a hand. I’ll put my operator hat on. I wanna retrofit the system in the field. Okay. Because that’s gonna be a lot of what it is. It’s gonna be less right now, of course, factory installs and more after the fact. So if they’re gonna put it in, you guys have packaged this thing so it’s easy for technicians to install.

So you said like basically it comes in, they’ll be in different, like a beam of sorts, and then it’s clean and go inside the blade, clean, epoxy, stick it down and plug it in. More or less it’s,

Speaker 3: not as easy what we did. And we can do the, installation ourselves. And usually we are doing the installation of ourselves for, the initial qualification projects we do with customers.[00:11:00]

let’s say you want to test our technology. Let’s install in five or 10 turbines. We can do it ourselves. And then we go to the hundreds after mine that you have with that model. And then we usually go to a, a service company, actually the ones that do the, service of those turbines in the field.

And for that, we do, a training session. And so we train those teams to do these election for us. but we can do this because we put all the complexity farts on our side. All the fiber optics connected far with our side. And then it’s a robust system. It’s out there. You can put your feet on top of it, you can try to destroy it, it’ll not get destroyed so easily.

and then you send it to blade, blade technicians and they can do the installation themselves, following, of course, our protocol. And we do the quality assurance on our science.

Allen Hall: Carlos, once the system is installed, what are we looking at as a data stream? Is there a data stream that goes to the cloud?

Does Fibersail [00:12:00] analyze that data or is it data that the operator can analyze? What does that interface look like?

Speaker 3: We have all the, data flow prepared from the sensor itself, sending the data through 4G, 5G, starlink, you name it to the cloud. And then we have even a, dashboard solution for the customer.

Anywhere in this process, we can say that we don’t go all the way. For example, we have customers that they don’t want our dashboards because they do have dashboards. And actually what they want is that we feed our results into their dashboard so we can adjust those parts to what are the needs of the customer.

but we can do the full sweep in terms of the, data flow.

Joel Saxum: Okay? So this is an important thing too, ’cause we’re talking about implementation here. we’ve heard this from many operators. We hear from other CMS companies. cybersecurity’s a big issue, right? Because people wanna make sure that. no nefarious activity could happen within the wind turbine or anything like that.

So how are you guys handling cybersecurity? Yeah,

Speaker 3: we take it very [00:13:00] seriously. Of course, all these communication protocols, they are to the highest standards using the industry, so we take them very seriously. And, in some cases, also mostly with the manufacturers, we actually do a edge solution, meaning we collect everything on the turbine and we don’t use any cloud access any.

Any connection outside of it. So we use it, we store it there, and then we communicate directly even to, the data, the data lakes. Of the customer if need be. So we have this, these two levels of, of, options, let’s say

Allen Hall: o Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And then the interface is working with a large operator.

Obviously they have their own dashboard set up and they’re watching the turbines in the structure. So there’s an API then that takes your data and pumps it into there. Specific system? Is that how that works?

Speaker 3: I’m not, the technology officer here, but, [00:14:00] to, give you an overview of that, it’s like we don’t offer the cu the customers, the raw data from our sensors.

We offer them already the outputs, the value, and then we can, stream them to their own dashboard for, we have customers that, for example, they tell us I don’t have time to go through a dashboard and look into beautiful graphs and data. What I want is to receive an email. If you spot a problem or a potential damage, that’s propagating.

I want to receive an email to go and look into that. And then our dashboard is actually an email or two emails that it receives when our system detect something is off.

Joel Saxum: I think that, to be honest with you, that’s more and more of the direction that the industry is going and it’s driven by the feedback from the market.

So, kudos to that. Doing your, primary market research there, because these, engineers and site supervisors and asset managers, they have so much going on that at the end of the day, they just basically wanna be told what to do. They don’t wanna analyze the data, they just wanna see that [00:15:00] you’ve installed the solution.

It’s doing, its smarts. You guys are analyzing the data yourselves and or, admit, of course, probably using some algorithms and whatnot. and they just get that email. They just get that notification, go look at this turbine, or Hey, you’ve got this propagating, check this out. That’s the way things need to be done.

E Exactly. And, if

Speaker 3: you think about what we see is that you, have a handful of people taking care of, gigawatts of turbines out there. Then all of them have issues, but some of them, they need to be referred this week. Some of them they can wait a couple of months to do it. Today, you don’t know how to do it.

So what you do, you send teams all the way every month to check every single turbine. And what you believe at cyber sale is that to start, you don’t have the manpower to do it. And then it’s not smart to do it like that. So the more complex turbines, they will get a warning from fiber cell, and that’s the ones you need to pay attention to.

Because the other ones, they do have problems, but it’s not a damage that [00:16:00] will, hit you. next week. It’ll continue to propagate and you can optimize the way you manage your fleet.

Allen Hall: that’s a real interesting point. So Fibersail data stream, which is really accurate, can then predict the damage curve in a sense or how damage will progress based upon your intimate knowledge of that structure and when it is actually happening.

That’s really valuable.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And, do we do it in a, different way from the industry? if you have other technologies like, vibration, sensors, meters and other stuff, what do we have that’s unique? Is that we, get the shape of the blade in real time. and so we look into the variations of the chain, but also we look into the model analysis of that structure, The frequency of that structure. And so we do a kind of a double validation. If the cha the shape changes and the frequency also changes. We have two variables to check that the problem is [00:17:00] really there. and I don’t see any other technology out there doing this type of validation to avoid false positives.

So it’s, like we have much more confidence in the result head to our providing to the customer.

Allen Hall: So the different vibration modes that’ll happen on a blade, they do slightly alter over time as the blades age. Is there a significant variation there, even between blade to blade, meaning the same factory?

Are you seeing variations in the sort of the overall performance, the way that the blade operates or, moves, based upon just the variations in manufacturing?

Speaker 3: definitely, yes. let’s say the blades are all the same when they leave the factory. That’s only theory. That’s why you only have a numerical bottle to try and simulate that.

The reality is that they are all different from the factory, from the manufacturing tolerances. And then just think about one, two, or three years of operation, a repair, a new patch of fiber, and then you have a Frankenstein [00:18:00] turbine in your hands that you don’t know what’s doing. And, that’s the reality we have today.

So all the numerical models, everything you have, they are really far off to give you the, precise, knowledge about that.

Joel Saxum: I think the industry would really love to see a white paper or report of some sort of, here’s what Fibersail was able to sensate basically a virgin blade and then this is what it looks like after this repair and that repair.

’cause like scarf, big scarf repairs, they’re designed to not create structural load hotspots. But I, mean there’s no way to get that perfect. So I would love to see, because I know there’s been a couple of DTU masters projects about this, but it’s all been. FEA stuff. It’s all modeled.

It’s not actually sensed, and it would be really interesting to see if you guys could do that.

Speaker 3: what, I can tell you is that we have, a bunch of, projects out there. We are collecting data as we speak. some of them, I’ll say actually a very promising one, in the next couple of weeks, really targeting, damage [00:19:00]detection, early damage detection, and damage propagation.

but, it’s, I said nothing, is valued as the data from the field. we are collecting the data. We are working on that. Actually, we did some publications that we wrote. So what I can tell is that stay tuned because we’ll be launching some called stuff in the next month.

Allen Hall: So where’s the EIS at the moment?

Is it onshore wind? Is it offshore wind? I could see the value on offshore wind in particular because the, loss of. Like a 15 megawatt turbine is a, big driver. It’s a huge money issue. Where are you seeing the most activity for your

Speaker 3: systems? we are starting onshore. It’s always an easy, an easier entry, let’s say.

And also the volume. The volume is there. much higher volume and a lot of problems. we are doing this, this summer, the first offshore installation in the Netherlands. and all the indications we have is that we have no issue going [00:20:00] offshore. it’s just a matter of planning the installation, doing that, and then the return on investment will be even greater.

But again, we are working to have that, business case proven with real data, in the next couple of months. let’s see if you can, get it right to put the data. On the table. So what is the feedback from your customers today? What are they saying? we have different kinds of customers that said, some customers just want basic data.

Others, they want really the eye end system that you can offer also. So we serve all of them, because our, systems are building a modular approach, so you can add layers of complexity as you need, basically. but I think the most interesting feedback we got, Because he’s using everything we have in our port product line is that he tried every other technology in the fields and none of them can help them.[00:21:00]

And then he said, but what you have is something different. I really want to see if you can help me because I, don’t dunno what to do. And that’s, a great feedback for us. I said we like the, tough stuff. Easy stuff. Everyone can do it. we are focusing on the really hard stuff because.

After we, we solve the hard stuff, we can also do the easy stuff. it’s like after we detect the damage, we can do a increase, we can do whatever you want. It’s not, it’s a no brainer for us after we can, do the early damage detection.

Allen Hall: So the system is, sounds fascinating and I do think there’s a place for this today, and we don’t know much about these larger blades and we’re trying to learn as quickly as we can, but.

One of the things that Joel and I talk about all the time is just a lack of data. If you don’t have any data, you, it’s hard to do ENG engineering and it makes it hard for the next generation to blaze to be better. So Fibersail is gonna change that [00:22:00] dynamic quite a bit. I. And if you want to talk to Fibersail or reach out to Fibersail, Carlos, how do they get ahold of you?

Where do they go?

Speaker 3: we are quite active in the industry, events. that’s, a good start. But, our webpage is always there with, you can contact us directly, and we’ll follow up on that via shared, or follow us on LinkedIn. We are also sharing there some insights of what we do. come and talk with us.

We will love to, to try and, help you on that.

Allen Hall: And the website is Fibersail.com, F-I-B-E-R-S-A-I l.com. Great information on the website, Carlos. it’s, full of good information. So if you’re trying to quickly learn what Fibersail does, just check out the website and yes, the LinkedIn page that you have is really good also.

So a ton of information for everybody to go check out and learn from. Carlos, thank you so much for being on the program. Really enjoyed the discussion. Thank [00:23:00] you for having me.

https://weatherguardwind.com/fibersail-fiber-optics/

Renewable Energy

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Published

5 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Bret Tollgaard from Sunrez joins to discuss UV-curing prepreg that cuts blade repair time by up to 90% and has recently recieved OEM approval.

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!

Allen Hall: Brett, welcome back to the program.

Bret Tollgaard: Thanks for having me again.

Allen Hall: So a lot’s happening at sunrise at the moment. Uh, there’s, uh, activity with sunrise materials on a lot of blades this year.

Over the last couple of years actually, ISPs, operators, OEMs, are realizing that UV curing is a huge advantage.

Bret Tollgaard: Turns out there’s a lot of value added, uh, to the entire process when utilizing UV cure, uh, pre-req.

Allen Hall: So the, the pre pres are, have been available for a couple of years. The qualification though was always the concern.

Has the OEM qualified this material? Are they gonna give you the blessing? Does this show up in the manual? If I call the OEM, are they gonna say they have talked to you guys? A lot of those hurdles have been cleared at this point.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, great question. And we are happy to announce that we have finally been approved by a large OEM for use on the epoxy blade for now all general kind of repairs.

We have several more OEMs that have already passed their phase one mechanical testing, and we’re iterating through now [00:01:00] their, uh, secondary and tertiary kind of tests. And so we do expect to be fully qualified by several OEMs before the end of the year, which should make the ISPs integration and utilization of our materials much, much easier.

Allen Hall: So the, the, the problem you’re solving is repairs in the field for the most part, or sometimes in the factory. Mm-hmm. But a lot of times in the field that those repairs. It happened quite a bit. They’re the same repair, the same area, the same kind of thing over and over and over again. And wetting out fabric on site takes time.

Particularly if you’re using standard materials, you have to bag it. You have to apply heat in some cases to get it to kick, and then you have to wait several hours for it to cure. So in the repair cycle time, most of your time is waiting.

Bret Tollgaard: It sure is. Uh, and on top of all that, we all know that there aren’t enough technicians in this industry to even do all the repairs, uh, that would like to be done.

Yeah. And so to really kind of streamline all of that, [00:02:00] uh, we’ve rolled out a couple of new things and we’ve had a lot more interest in some pre consolidated preki patches for customers. Uh, if a particular blade model has an issue that is a standardized kind of repair. We’re actually now building custom prepregs, or we will build the appropriate width length, stack it, consolidate it, uh, wrap it between our films.

So then all the customer has to do when they get on site is, uh, you know, do do the appropriate surface prep. Scarfing, apply a little bit of our UV surface primer to the backside of that patch. But now they can go up tower, single peel, stick, roll out, and then they’re cured.

Allen Hall: And that’s a. How many hours of saving is that?

It’s gotta be like six, 12 hours of saving, of, of

Bret Tollgaard: labor. It’s upwards of 80 to 90% of the labor that’s gonna actually need to be done to apply that. Otherwise, and then same thing too. We’ve had a couple instances where we took a several day repair down to one, to two to three hours. And these are multi-meter long repairs that were fast tracked because we pre consolidated preki [00:03:00] everything.

Some were in flat sheet forms, some were much longer on rolls, where you’re actually then rolling out with a team. Um, and so we’ve been able to demonstrate several times, uh, over the last 12 months, uh, the, the value that a UV cure preprint.

Allen Hall: Well, sure, because that, that would make sense. The issue about wetting out fabric in the field you just done in the back of a trailer or something, somewhere like that.

Usually it is, it’s that you’re never really sure that you got the fabric wetted out. The experienced technicians always feel like, have done it enough that they get very consistent results. But as you mentioned, getting technicians is hard and, and there’s so many repairs to do. So you’re doing those wetting out composite things takes practice and skill.

Just buying it, preki it, where you have control over it. And you guys sell to the military all the time. So that, and you’re, are you ass 91 qualified yet? You’re in the midst of that?

Bret Tollgaard: So we, I mean, a, we just got ISO certified, uh, at the end of last year in December. So our [00:04:00] QMS system and everything like that’s up to date, that’s huge.

Another big qualification for the OEMs that want to see, you know, true quality and output.

Allen Hall: That’s it. I, if I’m gonna buy a preki patch, so, uh, uh, that would make sense to me, knowing that. There’s a lot of rigor as a quality system. So when I get out the the site and I open that package, I know what’s inside of it every single time.

Bret Tollgaard: Well, and that’s just it. And like we got qualified based on the materials that we can provide and the testing that’s being done in real world situations when you’re wetting out by hand and you’re vacuum backing and you’re trying to cure. It is a little bit of an art form when you’re doing that. It is, and you might think you have a great laminate, you got void content, or you haven’t properly went out that glass ’cause humidity or the way the glass was stored or it was exposed.

The sizing and the resin don’t really bite. Well. You might think you have a great repair, but you might be prematurely failing as well after X cycles and fatigue. Uh, simply because it’s not as easy to, to truly do. Right? And so having the [00:05:00] pre-wet, uh, pre impregnated glass really goes a long way for the quality, uh, and the consistency from repair to repair.

Allen Hall: Well, even just the length of the season to do repairs is a huge issue. I, I know I’ve had some discussions this week about opening the season up a little bit, and some of the ISPs have said, Hey, we we’re pretty much working year round at this point. We’re, we’ll go to California. We’ll go to Southern Texas.

We’ll work those situations. ’cause the weather’s decent, but with the sunrise material, the temperature doesn’t matter.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And I was actually just speaking to someone maybe half hour ago who came by and was talking about repairs that they had to do in Vermont, uh, in December. They could only do two layers of an epoxy repair at a time because of the amount of the temperature.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Whereas you could go through, apply a six or an eight layer pre-reg cure it in 20 minutes. Uh, you know, throughout that entire length that he had and you would’ve been done. That’s, and so it took several days to do a single repair that could have been done in sub one hour with our material.

Allen Hall: I know where those wind turbines are.

[00:06:00] They weren’t very far from, we used to live, so I understand that temperature, once you hit about November up in Vermont, it’s over for a lot of, uh, standard epoxy materials and cures, it is just not warm enough.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, we, we’ve literally had repairs done with our materials at negative 20 Fahrenheit. That were supposed to be temporary repairs.

They were installed four or five years ago. Uh, and they’re still active, perfectly done patches that haven’t needed to be replaced yet. So,

Allen Hall: so, because the magic ingredient is you’re adding UV to a, a chemistry where the UV kicks it off. Correct. Basically, so you’re, it’s not activated until it’s hit with uv.

You hit it with uv that starts a chemical process, but it doesn’t rely on external heat. To cure

Bret Tollgaard: exactly. It, it is a true single component system, whether it’s in the liquid pre preg, the thickened, uh, the thickened putties that we sell, or even the hand lamination and effusion resin. It’s doped with a, a variety of different food initiators and packages based on the type of light that’s [00:07:00] being, uh, used to, to cure it.

But it will truly stay dormant until it’s exposed to UV light. And so we’ve been able to formulate systems over the last 40 years of our company’s history that provide an incredibly long shelf life. Don’t prematurely gel, don’t prematurely, uh, you know, erode in the packaging, all those

Allen Hall: things.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly.

Like we’ve been at this for a really long time. We’ve been able to do literally decades of r and d to develop out systems. Uh, and that’s why we’ve been able to come to this market with some materials that truly just haven’t been able to be seen, uh, delivered and installed and cured the way that we can do it.

Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s a huge thing, the, the shelf life.

Bret Tollgaard: Mm-hmm.

Allen Hall: You talk to a lot of. Operators, ISPs that buy materials that do have an expiration date or they gotta keep in a freezer and all those little handling things.

Bret Tollgaard: Yep.

Allen Hall: Sunrise gets rid of all of that. And because how many times have you heard of an is SP saying, oh, we had a throwaway material at the end of the season because it expired.

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, tremendously

Allen Hall: amount of, hundred of thousands of dollars of material, [00:08:00]

Bret Tollgaard: and I would probably even argue, say, millions of dollars over the course of the year gets, gets thrown out simply because of the expiration date. Um, we are so confident in our materials. Uh, and the distributors and stuff that we use, we can also recertify material now, most of the time it’s gonna get consumed within 12 months Sure.

Going into this kind of industry.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, but there have been several times where we’ve actually had some of that material sent back to us. We’ll test and analyze it, make sure it’s curing the way it is, give it another six months shelf, uh, service life.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, and so you’re good to go on that front

Allen Hall: too.

Yeah. So if you make the spend to, to move to sun, you have time to use it.

Bret Tollgaard: Yes.

Allen Hall: So if it snows early or whatever’s going on at that site where you can’t get access anymore, you just wait till the spring comes and you’re still good with the same material. You don’t have to re-buy it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And with no special storage requirements, like you mentioned, no frozen oven or frozen freezer, excuse me, uh, or certain temperature windows that has to be stored in, uh, it allows the operators and the technicians, you know, a lot more latitude of how things actually get

Allen Hall: done.

And, and so if. When we [00:09:00] think about UV materials, the, the questions always pop up, like, how thick of a laminate can you do and still illuminate with the UV light? And make sure you curate I I, because you’re showing some samples here. These are,

Bret Tollgaard: yeah.

Allen Hall: Quarter inch or more,

Bret Tollgaard: correct. So

Allen Hall: thick samples. How did you cure these?

Bret Tollgaard: So that was cured with the lamp that we’ve got right here, which are standard issued light, sold a couple hundred into this space already. Um, that’s 10 layers of a thousand GSM unidirectional fiber. Whoa. This other one is, uh, 10 layers of, of a biox. 800 fiber.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, those were cured in six minutes. So you can Six

Allen Hall: minutes.

Bret Tollgaard: Six minutes.

Allen Hall: What would it take to do this in a standard epoxy form?

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, hours,

Allen Hall: eight hours maybe?

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. About for, for the, for the post cure required to get the TGS that they need in the wind space, right? Absolutely. And so yeah, we can do that in true minutes. And it’s pre impregnated. You simply cut it to shape and you’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: And it looks great when you’re done, mean the, the surface finish is really good. I know sometimes with the epoxies, particularly if they get ’em wetted out, it doesn’t. It [00:10:00] doesn’t have that kind of like finished look to it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And the way that we provide, uh, for our standard, uh, you know, pre pprs are in between films and so if you cure with that film, you get a nice, clean, glossy surface tack free.

But as more and more people go to the pre consolidation method down tower, so even if they buy our standard prereg sheets or rolls, they’re preki down tower, you can also then just apply a pre, uh, a peel ply to that top film. Oh, sure. So if you wet out a peel ply and then you build your laminate over the top.

Put the primer and the black film over when they actually get that up on tower, they can then just remove that fuel ply and go straight to Sandy or uh, uh, painting and they’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That’s, that’s impressive. If you think about the thousands and thousands of hours you’ll save in a season.

Where you could be fixing another blade, but you’re just waiting for the res, the cure,

Bret Tollgaard: and that’s just it. When you’re saving the amount of labor and the amount of time, and it’s not just one technician, it’s their entire team that is saving that time. Sure. And can move on to the next [00:11:00] repair and the next process.

Allen Hall: So one of the questions I get asked all the time, like, okay, great, this UV material sounds like space, age stuff. It must cost a fortune. And the answer is no. It doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s very price competitive.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really is. And it might be slightly more expensive cost per square foot versus you doing it with glass and resin, but you’re paying for that labor to wait for that thing to cure.

And so you’re still saving 20, 30, 40 plus percent per repair. When you can do it as quickly as we can do it.

Allen Hall: So for ISPs that are out doing blade repairs, you’re actually making more money.

Bret Tollgaard: You are making more money, you are saving more money. That same group and band of technicians you have are doing more repairs in a faster amount of time.

So as you are charging per repair, per blade, per turbine, whatever that might be, uh, you’re walking away with more money and you can still pass that on to the owner operators, uh, by getting their turbines up and spinning and making them more money.

Allen Hall: Right. And that’s what happens now. You see in today’s world, companies ISPs that are proposing [00:12:00] using UV materials versus standard resin systems, the standard residence systems are losing because how much extra time they’re, they’re paying for the technicians to be on site.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct.

Allen Hall: So the, the industry has to move if you wanna be. Competitive at all. As an ISP, you’re gonna have to move to UV materials. You better be calling suns

Bret Tollgaard: very quickly. Well, especially as this last winter has come through, the windows that you have before, bad weather comes in on any given day, ebbs and flows and changes.

But when you can get up, finish a repair, get it spinning, you might finish that work 2, 3, 4 later, uh, days later. But that turbine’s now been spinning for several days, generating money. Uh, and then you can come back up and paint and do whatever kind of cosmetic work over the top of that patch is required.

Allen Hall: So what are the extra tools I need to use Sunz in the kits. Do I need a light?

Bret Tollgaard: Not a whole lot. You’re gonna need yourself a light. Okay. You’re gonna need yourself a standard three to six inch, uh, bubble buster roller to actually compact and consolidate. Sure. Uh, that’s really all you need. There’s no vacuum lights.

And you sell the lights. We do, we, [00:13:00] we sell the lights. Um, our distributors also sell the lights, fiberglass and comp one. Uh, so they’re sourced and available, uh, okay. Domestically, but we sell worldwide too. And so, uh, we can handle you wherever you are in the world that you wanna start using uv, uh, materials.

And yeah, we have some standardized, uh, glass, but at the same time, we can pre-reg up to a 50 inch wide roll. Okay, so then it really becomes the limiting factor of how wide, how heavy, uh, of a lamette does a, a technician in the field want to handle?

Allen Hall: Yeah, sure. Okay. In terms of safety, with UV light, you’re gonna be wearing UV glasses,

Bret Tollgaard: some standard safety glasses that are tinted for UV protection.

So they’ll

Allen Hall: look yellow,

Bret Tollgaard: they’ll look a little yellow. They’ve got the shaded gray ones. Sunglasses, honestly do the same.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: But with a traditional PPE, the technicians would be wearing a tower anyways. Safety glasses, a pair of gloves. You’re good to go. If you’re doing confined space, work on the inside of a, a, a blade, uh, the biggest value now to this generation of material that are getting qualified.

No VOC non [00:14:00] flammable, uh, no haps. And so it’s a much safer material to actually use in those confined spaces as well as

Allen Hall: well ship

Bret Tollgaard: as well as ship it ships unregulated and so you can ship it. Next day air, which a lot of these customers always end. They do. I know that.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so next day air, uh, you know, there’s no extra hazmat or dangerous goods shipping for there.

Uh, and same thing with storage conditions. You don’t need a, a flammable cabinet to actually store the material in.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so it really opens you up for a lot more opportunities.

Allen Hall: I just solves all kinds of problems.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really does. And that’s the big value that, you know, the UV materials can provide.

Allen Hall: So. I see the putty material and it comes in these little tubes, squeeze tubes. What are these putties used for?

Bret Tollgaard: So right now, the, the existing putty is really just the same exact thickened, uh, resin that’s in the pre-print.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: And it’s worked well. It’s, it’s nice we’re kind of filling some cracks and some faring, some edges and stuff if things need to be feathered in.

But we’ve [00:15:00] been working on this year that we’ll be rolling out very, very soon is a new structural putty. Okay. So we’ll actually have milled fibers in there and components that will make it a much more robust system. And so we’ve been getting more inquiries of, particularly for leading edge rehabilitation.

Where Cat three, cat four, even cat five kind of damage, you need to start filling and profiling before any kind of over laminates can really be done properly. And so we’re working on, uh, rolling that out here very, very soon. Um, and so that will, I think, solve a couple of needs, um, for the wind market. Uh, and then in addition to some new products that we’re rolling out, uh, is gonna be the LEP system that we’re been working on.

Uh, the rain erosion testing showed some pretty good results. But we’re buying some new equipment to make a truly void free, air free system that we’re gonna it, uh, probably submit end of April, beginning of May for the next round, that we expect to have some very, very good, uh, duration and weather ability with,

Allen Hall: because it’s all about speed,

Bret Tollgaard: it’s durability.

Allen Hall: All about e

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And ease of use by someone in the [00:16:00] field. Yeah. Or OEMs on, you know, in the manufacturing plant. Um, there has yet, in my opinion, to be a true winner in the LEP space. That is just the right answer. And so by applying our materials with the really high abrasion resistance that we expect this to have and be as simple to do as it really appeal, stick and cure, um, we think it’s gonna be a bit of a game changer in this industry.

Allen Hall: Well, all the sunrise materials, once they’re cured, are sandal

Bret Tollgaard: correct.

Allen Hall: And I think that’s one of the things about some of the other systems, I always worry about them like, alright, they can do the work today, but tomorrow I have to come back and touch it again. Do I have a problem? Well, and the sun rests stuff is at least my playing around with it has been really easy to use.

It’s, it’s. Uh, things that I had seen maybe 20 years ago in the aerospace market that have they thought about using the material not only [00:17:00] in the factory, but outside the factory. How easy is it to adapt to, how easy to, to paint, to all those little nuances that come up? When you’re out working in the field and trying to do some very difficult work, uh, the sunroom material is ready to go, easy to use and checks all the boxes, all those little nuances, like it’s cold outside, it’s wet outside.

Uh, it’s, it’s hot outside, right? It’s all those things that, that stop ISPs or OEMs from being super efficient. All those parameters start to get washed away. That’s the game changer and the price point is right. How do. People get a hold of you and learn about the sun rose material. Maybe they, you can buy through fiberglass or through composite one.

Mm-hmm. That’s an easy way to do, just get to play with some samples. But when they want to get into some quantity work, they got a lot of blade repair. They know what they’re doing this summer or out in the fall or this winter come wintertime. How do they get [00:18:00] started? What do they do?

Bret Tollgaard: Well, one of the first things to do is they can reach us through our website.

Um, we’re developing a larger and larger library now for how to videos and install procedures, um, generating SOPs that are, you know, semi, uh, industry specific. But at the same time too, it’s a relatively blanket peel and stick patch, whether it’s a wind turbine blade, a corroded tank, or a pressure pipe. Um, and so yeah, www.suns.com Okay, is gonna be a great way to do it.

Uh, we’re actively building more videos to put on, uh, our YouTube channel as well. Um, and so that’s kind of gonna be the best way to reach out, uh, for us. One of the big things that we’re also pushing for, for 26 is to truly get people, uh, in this, in industry, specifically trained and comfortable using the products.

At the end of the day, it’s a composite, it’s a pre impregnated sheet. It’s not difficult, but there are some tips and tricks that really make the, the use case. Uh, the install process a lot easier.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, and so just making sure that people are, are caught up on the latest and greatest on the training techniques will [00:19:00] go a long way too.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s only as good as the technician that applies it

Bret Tollgaard: e Exactly.

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s great. Uh, it’s great all the things you guys are doing, you’re really changing the industry. In a positive way, making repairs faster, uh, more efficient, getting those turbines running. It’s always sad when you see turbines down with something that I know you guys could fix with sun.

Uh, but it does happen, so I, I need the ISPs to reach out and start calling Sun and getting in place because the OEMs are blessing your material. ISPs that are using it are winning contracts. It’s time to make the phone call to Sun Rez. Go to the website, check out all the details there. If you wanna play with your material, get ahold of fiberglass or composite one just.

Order it overnight. It’ll come overnight and you can play with it. And, and once you, once you realize what that material is, you’ll want to call Brett and get started.

Bret Tollgaard: A hundred percent appreciate the time.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Thanks Brett, for being on the podcast. I, I love talking to you guys because you have such cool material.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, we’re looking, uh, forward to continuing to innovate, uh, really make this, uh, material [00:20:00] splash in this industry.

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Renewable Energy

Infringing on the Rights of Others

Published

10 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

I agree with what Ricky Gervais says here; I would only add that there are dozens of ways religion impinges on others.

In my view, the most common is that it impedes our implementing science in things like climate change mitigation. If you believe, as is explicit in the Book of Genesis, that “only God can destroy the Earth,” you have a good excuse to ignore the entirety of climate science.