Weather Guard Lightning Tech
FibreGlast and Bergolin: Pioneering UV Resin Systems for Blade Repair
Allen and Joel speak to Michelle Bonnett from FibreGlast and Marvin Hirdler from Bergolin about their new UV-cured resin systems for repairing wind turbine blades. These UV resins allow for faster repairs in cold weather conditions when standard epoxy resins cannot cure properly. They’re a game-changer for extending the wind turbine blade repair season and increasing technician productivity. Visit FibreGlast and Bergolin!
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!
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with my co host, Joel Saxum. We’re still in San Diego at ACP OM& S, and we have run into a bunch of new technology while we’ve been at the show, and one of them is UV cured resin systems, because when it’s cold outside, You really can’t use standard epoxies and it’s cold in most of America and the world right now.
Yeah. So all repair businesses essentially shut down until it gets to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit which could be a while, particularly in the Northern latitudes. So we run into Marvin Hirdler with Bergolin and Bergolin has a new product in the UV space and also Michelle Bonnett with FibreGlast.
And I have worked with, I’ve purchased some FibreGlast material, UV care material. And it’s really awesome, actually for some projects that we were working on. This, I really want to just touch on the UV space because there hasn’t been a lot of UV resin applications in wind. We had touched From aerospace background.
We have used it there but in the wind world, we haven’t, which is crazy because we our season is so short, the repair season’s crazy. Sure. And you’re up tower and yeah, tower and access is tough. It’s really hard. But these new UV resin systems are magical. It’s crazy good. And as, as a, as someone who’s tried it, it’s amazing.
It’s amazing, and I’m surprised we haven’t done this years earlier, but it’s, it’s finally coming to market. I want to talk about this, the one I use first, which is the FibreGlast repair patch. So Michelle, maybe you can introduce yourself a little bit, but you guys, FibreGlast is based in Ohio, right?
So you’re a U. S. based company, and FibreGlast does all kinds of things, fiber related, resin related, you’re like a resource.
Michelle Bonnett: Yes. Correct. Where we’ve been in business for about 65 years where our website is fibreglast.com. We sell to a guy in his garage doing a small repair to a lot of large companies in the aerospace automotive.
And of course wind. We Work predominantly with small quantities. We ship them very fast. If you order before two 30 Eastern time, they ship same day. So it is imperative in the wind industry to get those products out quick. We teamed up with a company called SunRes that has been an industry leader in UV for about correct me if I’m wrong, but around 30 years.
And recently got GE approved UV prepreg. So it’s a 300 by 700 millimeter patch. It comes in UD1000, Biax 806, and the Combi 900. It is a vinyl ester resin. That is cured UV. You can typically lay up about 10 layers. Very easy patches that you can build very quickly, get it up to the blade and apply.
Joel Saxum: One of the things I want to touch on that you said there, and this is super important for the space, right? Anybody that’s an ISP, blade repair, that’s listing, or an asset owner, is that it is GE approved. Yes. Because I know we were at Blades USA, and we were all talking through some of these new UV cured systems, and that was some of the ISP saying this is great.
We can take A project that normally would take us six hours to let some cure and do some layering. Now it takes us ten minutes. That’s a game changer for everybody, right? And in different weather conditions, which is even better. But, is it approved? Can we use it on specific blades? Will the OEM still, honor warranties or things like this?
That was one of some of the big questions. And to say that product is GE says, yes, good to go. That’s huge. That’s not just social proof. That’s technical proof. We can use these products in the field and trust them.
Michelle Bonnett: Correct. And we do carry a non hazardous. It’s an accolade, a modified accolade epoxy.
In these 12 by 12 patches, chopstrap mat and the combi 900 as well. Those are currently with G. E. And testing to get that non hazardous approved. Yeah, FibreGlast is really good. We’re all hazard trained. ship dangerous goods, we overnight stuff when needed. And so these hazardous patches can be shipped for an expense.
The non hazardous is a game changer because it takes that money away and lets us ship overnight without any additional costs. It is with currently with GE, they are testing to make sure, but you really won’t see any type of difference in strength properties all of that. So it should be.
As quick as GE can get approved fairly quickly. So that’s one of the things that we’re working on, but we do carry the 12 by 12 patches as well as those approved hazardous 300 millimeter by 700 millimeter patch.
Allen Hall: And that, that, that patch you buy, since I purchased this thing, it comes in a sort of four line pouch that it’s all ready to go.
You open the pouch, you slide the patch out, you apply it to the Turbine blade, roll it in, kick it off if you need to. It has a plastic, a clear plastic coating on it, so it hardens on the surface. That’s one of the things that everybody, I think, needs to know, right? Is that you, there is a plastic coating over top of the material, so that it doesn’t oxidize and remain sticky.
It’ll cure out all the way perfectly, which is really simple to use. I, even, electrical engineer me, was able to do it. But it is one of those things it’s a little bit different than maybe a standard epoxy. But It’s really simple. If I had to do a quick repair out somewhere in January or February on a wind turbine, that’s what I’m using, because I can do it.
Michelle Bonnett: And that the hazardous material comes with and everything’s color coded. So you have a black plastic lining that you would initially take off to put on the blade followed by a P. E. T. Clear that remains on there because it is a vinyl Lester. So it does need that airless skin, airless finish.
And then it has an orange an orange material that is UV blocking. So what that allows you to do is apply however long it takes you to apply. Then you remove that orange film and bam, that’s when the sun hits. Now, we really recommend the L. E. D. U. V. Lamps. Even out in the field where the sun is present when you’ve got sun out and that what that does is it just, it cures a little quicker.
So we’re talking instead of five to 10 minutes, you’re talking three to five minutes. But it also gives you that consistency. You can make sure that it’s cure. Sometimes if the sun doesn’t quite hit or you get a cloud or something like that might happen, you might not get consistent UV. And so that lamp is important.
Joel Saxum: So let me ask you about that lamp. Now I’m just like from an operational perspective, right? If people are on ropes or in a, in a basket or something, that’s a different story. But what are this, what size is this? What are those? Are they? No, the lamp itself. Oh, the lamp itself, I don’t know why they got to work with that tower.
It’s about 10 by, I think 10 by 12, it’s, it is fairly small.
Michelle Bonnett: You hold it about 13 feet from from the The cure itself. Thirteen feet? Oh, sorry, thirteen inches. Oh, I was like, how are you going to do that? Thirteen feet! You’ve got some really long arms. What I love about it is it has very different mounting capabilities.
So you can either strap it to hold it does have some handles that you can use. Okay. There’s just different ways and different methods that you can use to strap it onto something or secure it to someplace.
Joel Saxum: So if you’re on ropes, it’s not too bad to just take it with you.
Michelle Bonnett: Correct. Yeah, it would hang off of a, a belt.
It’s really lightweight.
Allen Hall: Okay, perfect. So the magic to this is that the UV light is triggering a chemical reaction. It’s breaking some bonds or triggering some bonds so that it starts to, the material warms up itself, it self heats and self cures, so it’s like having a heat gun without having a heat gun.
Using a lamp to trigger the heat in material, and boom, it cures out. It’s magical. Yeah, let’s find a watch and play with.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, and that’s the game changing is right something like we said earlier That would be six to eight hours between layers between top coat and all these different things now Ten minutes because it’s cured hard.
Michelle Bonnett: The best part about it is humidity levels Temperature none of that is important It just takes that out completely.
We had done some testing when we first started carrying this material and we were in 30 degrees, just sat it out on a picnic table, five minutes, it was cured, completely cured. 30 Fahrenheit, right? Yeah, 30 Fahrenheit.
Allen Hall: So in the, let’s, I want to touch on this just for a brief moment. When we say hazardous and non hazardous, what we’re saying is polyester hazardous.
It’s the odor of the thing. It has a certain odor to it. If you’ve been around polyester and the standard. Non hazardous, which is epoxy, has really no smell to it. No smell to it at all.
Michelle Bonnett: Yeah, a lot of the demos that we’ve been doing at some of the different shows are very much inside a hotel and you just can’t have, yeah, you just can’t have that vinylester, polyester, the styrene smell that everybody’s aware of.
Joel Saxum: Right from the booth every once in a while, we’re there and we go, oh, wow, what is that? They cured it and they’re hitting it with a hammer. Yeah, whacking it with a hammer.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s amazing material. And I want to start talking about the burgundy material because this is something new too. Yeah. And Bergolin is based out of what country?
Marvin Hirdler: Germany. Based in Germany. We’re working in WIND over 20 years already. Yes. We are from the coding side. We started with J codes, fillers, top codes, LEP systems. Yep. In the manufacturing side, for sure. And then, I would say three to five years ago, we started also going into blade repair business.
Yeah. Because, yeah, the OEMs are asking for it. We need a different solution. Same application or different application methods has to be faster, easier to apply, robust access, platform, whatever you have. So this was the reason we started going into the blade repair. And last year or one and a half years ago, we started thinking about UV materials.
So we started manufacturing not only, but also developing a UV filler first. So this was the first material we launched into the market not only for blade repair, but also for other composite repairs.
Allen Hall: Okay, so avoid leading edge damage or something to fill in the little bumps and the bruises.
Okay.
Marvin Hirdler: And yeah, especially the good thing with the UV material is always you have a single part material. You don’t have to mix anymore. You don’t have to. True. Yeah. The chrome wife goes away and all the mixing goes away.
Allen Hall: The mixing nozzles and all the craziness involved with that. Yeah.
You’ve seen errors. You just gotta keep it. There’s so many errors with the mixing nozzle. Just keep it dark. Make sure the sun doesn’t get in there. But it’s not that sensitive to light. The Birkeland material is very narrow frequency, light frequency, to make it trigger.
Marvin Hirdler: Exactly. So we have found a way to integrate a UV blocker inside the material.
So if you apply this material, the filler and the resin too, it’s the same chemistry in the sun directly, it will not cure without the curing lamp. So you can do it in the sun. Depending on the UV index, you will have an amount of time. So with a filler, for example, when we have a very high UV index, we tested it here in Texas last year.
UV index 9, 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And you still have three minutes to apply the filler, probably in the sun. Wow. Okay, and then you put the uv lamp on top and then it starts curing.
Allen Hall: Okay, so in the other piece to the burglar material, which is called i’m going to get this right Burgle lead.
Yeah for led Bergl is it BergoLED? Yeah, it’s BergoLED. Yeah, you can BergoLED Okay. All right. So it’s a speed resin I think is how we would say in america speed resin. That’s what’s going to stick is it’s it has a color to it So we apply the resin so you have dry fabric from FibreGlast and you’re applying the resin to It’s red or a pinkish color.
Yeah. Yeah, so the UV light when you kick it off turns it clear So exactly what are you doing? I think this is the problem that everybody’s worried about when I do 5, 8, 10 layers of repair. How do I know I got the UV down to that last layer? With the tinting part of it, that eliminates that as a question.
Yeah. It just changes colors.
Marvin Hirdler: Especially when we’re doing it in blade repair, we were not aware how easy it would be to test if all the layers cured through. It’s easy testing with epoxy, you go ahead, the curve of the temperature and everything. You don’t have that with the UV material.
It’s not getting hot or whatever. So we found a way. This is yeah, an initiator from a different industry and we use it normally for floor coatings. Because they doing the same thing with the UV stuff and it’s first blue or red and then they see if it’s cured or not It’s colorless afterwards.
Okay, so we use the same thing this is cool.
Joel Saxum: Okay, it’s So they make this product for like at Home Depot. You can buy it not the same product no, same concept. It’s a like putty You’d fill nail holes within the wall, right? And when you put it on it’s pink and when it dries better It drives white.
Oh. It’s just, it’s, but it’s genius. I always buy it when I need it because I want to know when the job is done. Exactly. And then you see all these little pink dots all over the place and in 10 minutes they all turn white and you’re like, all right, we’re good here. We can paint over it. Oh, okay. It’s slick.
Slick as hell.
Marvin Hirdler: Yeah, just make it easier, especially for the text to see directly in visual if it’s cured or not. So this is something we figure out. It’s the same with the putty or the putty too. So we have also the same idea. First red, then colorless after curing. So just make sure you can do a repair, the whole repair with just visual looking, okay, it’s cured or not.
Joel Saxum: I think that there’s something important here to touch on. So cost of poor quality, COPQ as it’s called in business, is a huge thing in the wind industry because The engineers are not on the blades and they’re the ones that have to look at the repairs to make sure they’re well done. Your blade text, that’s the front line.
That’s the people you have to trust. But what happens of course in the world as people who listen, know this, you’re in the field, you’re taking pictures, putting together repair reports, all this stuff, and then that gets sent to the back office or sent to the client. They have to approve it. And, or you may have to come back up.
Sometimes it’s live where they’re taking pictures right now and someone’s looking at them remotely to make sure the repair is done properly. And what you guys are doing is engineering a, now a product. Of that process, you’re dummy proofing it. Yeah. This is the idea, right? It was red, it’s clear now.
Yeah, you are good to go. There’s no approval needed. Is.
Allen Hall: Just think about it, all the porcelain. Yes, I know. The temperature outside, the humidity outside, and all of that. And then, obviously, bring water or something to cure out before they start playing the top coat to it.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, I mean, it’s the solution that you’re putting forth for solutions.
Is part of the solution for scaling the wind technician fleet of people?
Allen Hall: Yeah, we need to extend our window. The technicians are essentially sitting on the sidelines for six months out of a year. Yeah, that’s crazy. We need to put the guys back to work and to start fixing blades because, and especially at this conference where you walk through the halls here and start talking operators, everybody, cause it’s February, everybody’s got huge blade issues.
They got a lot of blades. Can they even get them all done this year? The season’s short. They’re trying to schedule people’s, not enough technicians. If you just double the amount of time you have to go and do some of these things makes life a lot easier.
Joel Saxum: And you’re cutting down on the time on Blade and on project.
Yeah, too. Yeah. That’s the big, speeding it up quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Because now a team of a rope access team with two people on it, and instead of, fixing one turbine per week, they can now maybe fix three. Sure. That’s huge. Yep. Yep. It’s the speed.
Marvin Hirdler: We talked about that. Especially when we talk about like the.
Countries North Canada or also the North US states. So they had the biggest issue especially in winter doing no repair at all And yeah, just certain so we’re talking about turbines who is just standing still not producing any energy so this is the reason we’re trying to get in contact most of the time Starting with operators owners because they have to pay for it Sure, and they have to pay or not getting paid for downtime So they’re trying to make it fast Even if it’s just in the beginning a temporary repair with the uv materials because they say okay We want to test that first Seeing the same repair in six, eight months later in the summer, everything is good.
But so they can start use the turbine again in operation. So they don’t have the downtime at all. And now they just have to wait until the temperature is high enough. Humidity is low enough, whatever they have limitations on.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. That’s something that you see quite often in the industry is Hey, we’ve got a damage.
We need to patch this thing just to get it through the winter. Because if you get ice, snow, water, anything in there, and then your core gets wet, then you end up running into real big problems. So now you have a solution where you can go into a temporary repair. It’s technically permanent, but yeah, but you could go up there and you can slap one of those panels on UV cure, move on to the next one before wet weather changes.
Allen Hall: It’s genius. Yeah, it really is. And I know when I first saw FibreGlast website, like, why haven’t I seen this before? And we just released it. So you had a good, you had a good reason for it because you just brought it out. But I was probably one of the early people to see it and try to try it. So it’s amazing.
And I if I’m an operator trying, want to try this material, cause they don’t want to try it, they want to check in or independent service provider, they want to play with the material before they take it out in the field. What do they need to do? Who are they calling? Are they calling FibreGlast here?
Are they calling Michelle and saying, hey, give me a sample, send me a sample? Exactly. And what should they be asking for? They should be asking for polyester, the polyester material for GE turbines, the epoxy for Vestas. What’s the scenario here?
Michelle Bonnett: Right now, probably the hazardous is the most popular.
Okay. But. Any of them, like I said the strength properties, all of the properties are almost identical to the data sheet there. You can download on the website. We have our, the product data sheet and the SDS available. For you to take a look decide what you want. Our business development manager, his name is Rod Miaty.
He’s over at our, he’s manning the booth while we’re over here. Yeah. He’s the guy to get in touch with. Yes. Rod Miaty. Yeah. Rod Miaty.
He is the, probably the best person or call up customer service. They’ll be happy to process one for you. Okay. The best part about these things is we I, if you buy direct from Sunrise, you’re buying boxes of this stuff.
We do like to downsize. So our 12 by 12 patches, you could buy a single patch, you could buy a pack of 12, you could buy a case of 10. And same with the the other patches are in packs of 10 or in a case. So we can get some samples out to you. Let you give it a try. The 300 by 700 millimeter patches, they’re very easy to cut.
As well and very easy to use as far as just peeling everything off, all of the packages have your step by step instructions on what you do, which film to release, what, everything that you do, very clear, very concise to make sure that there’s not anything, our customer service is trained, you can call the 800 number if you’re having problems they can talk you through something, but yeah, definitely give us a call place an order through the website or contact rod.
Allen Hall: Yes. And it’s FibreGlast, F I B R E G L A S T. So you just Google that and you’re going to get to Michelle’s website. All right. For Bergolin, how are we getting a hold of Bergolin, because you guys are over in Germany and this podcast goes worldwide, so you’re going to have people calling you from all over the world.
How do they get a hold of you?
Marvin Hirdler: Yeah. I run the whole US business here, so I do the technical training, the commercial side too. Also we operating or helping also the training companies like Redwood Academy, TSL Windtrade company too, to make sure that they get the hold of the materials. Sure.
So I trained the trainer. I’ve been there, I doing, two or three trainings a week right now because everyone is interested in the new materials for sure, right? So I make sure that they get their first training with me and then they can train their technicians Okay, we even have a process description where everything every step is perfectly written down with pictures.
So how close you have to go with the lamp? How many layers you have to you need to apply in one step that section? So if you have to help you apply or do a vacuum so I just want to make sure that there are no questions at all afterwards. If there are any questions, they always can call us.
Allen Hall: And your YouTube video you sent me today.
Yeah. Which is very explanatory, so yeah, you can get a lot of information. So easy, a lightning engineer can do it. Yeah. I am not a composites expert for sure. Actually, this was the idea we had.
Get it that simple everybody, huh? Bergolin is B E R G O L I N. If you just Google that and put UV behind it, you’re going to come across the UV material.
It’s fantastic stuff. So if you’re a technician, you’re an operator, you’re an ISP looking to speed up operations or extend your season, you need to get a hold of Michelle. I need to get a hold of Marvin and talk UV cured resins. So it’s the future. So thanks to both of you being here. Thank you.
FibreGlast and Bergolin: Pioneering UV Resin Systems for Blade Repair
Renewable Energy
No Hungry Kids
I just saw a question on social media: do you want your tax dollars going to feed someone else’s kids??
Yes. I’d like to live in a world in which no kids go hungry, and I don’t have a problem contributing to create that world.
This may sound like a tall order, especially given the variability of wealth in the world’s countries.
But let’s stick with the U.S. for a minute. In the US, nearly 14 million children live in food-insecure households, a statistic that has risen recently, with some reports indicating that one in five children face hunger.
This is disgraceful.
So again, yes. Please sign me up to allocate a portion of my tax dollars to feeding hungry kids.
Renewable Energy
Wind Power Succeeds to Meet Energy Needs
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Wind Power Succeeds to Meet Energy Needs
While European wind giants like Maersk and Ørsted face cancellations and layoffs, America’s offshore wind projects in Virginia and Massachusetts are surging ahead, proving that genuine energy demand trumps political headwinds when the physics and economics align.
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!
It’s an interesting time to be in wind energy….In a shipyard in Singapore, there’s a vessel worth four hundred and seventy-five million dollars. It’s ninety-eight percent complete, built specifically to install wind turbines off the coast of New York. And it’s just floating there… abandoned.
Maersk Offshore Wind walked away from the contract last week. Just cancelled it. Left Seatrium, the shipbuilder, holding a near-finished vessel with nowhere to go. The ship was supposed to build Empire Wind, but now lawyers are circling and nobody knows what happens next.
This is happening at the same time Orsted, the company that pioneered offshore wind energy, announces it’s cutting two thousand jobs. That’s a quarter of their entire workforce. In Germany, Eno Energy just filed for bankruptcy, leaving two hundred and eighty workers unemployed and the state government holding thirteen million euros in loan guarantees.
You might think the wind industry is collapsing.
But, you’d be wrong. Very wrong.
Thirty miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, workers just accomplished something remarkable. They hammered one hundred and seventy-six massive foundations into the Atlantic seabed, finishing the job in just five months… ahead of schedule… in what everyone agrees was perfect weather. And the weather along the East Cost of the US has been splendid this year.
This is Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, and when it starts generating power next March, it will be America’s largest offshore wind farm. Two-point-six gigawatts of power, enough for half a million homes.
But here’s what makes this story truly odd in today’s US political environment….
Republican Congresswoman Jen Kiggans from Virginia Beach stood up on the House floor last month to defend this wind farm. Not attack it… defend it. She explained that this project provides a five hundred million dollar power grid upgrade to Naval Air Station Oceana. She called it a matter of national security.
House Speaker Mike Johnson from Louisiana, oil country, personally told reporters he delivered Kiggans’ message directly to the President. “We want to do right by Virginians,” he said.
Think about that for a moment. In this political climate, a Republican Speaker is defending wind power. Why? Because Virginia desperately needs electricity. Data centers are consuming power at unprecedented rates, the military requires reliable energy, and this project has already created two thousand American jobs while pumping two billion dollars into the economy.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, something interesting is also developing. Chinese manufacturer Ming Yang Smart Energy just announced they’re investing two billion dollars to build a turbine factory in Scotland. They’re promising fifteen hundred jobs for Scottish workers, with production starting in twenty twenty-eight. The job creations and investment amount sounds great, but there are still many hurdles to overcome. The reliability and insurability of Ming Yang turbines is still a hot topic amongst wind energy engineers. And security concerns with Chinese turbines will surely raise eyebrows of the UK, EU and US governments. Only time will tell….
Remember that ship floating in Singapore? Here’s where the story gets interesting. Dominion has just taken delivery of Charybdis, the first American-built wind turbine installation vessel. When it finishes its work in Virginia, it will be available for other projects — like the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. One company’s cancellation could become another’s opportunity. We shall see….
And before I forget, up in Massachusetts, without fanfare or political drama, Vineyard Wind has quietly reached fifty percent capacity. Thirty turbines are now spinning, delivering four hundred megawatts to the New England grid.
Here’s what years of covering energy markets has taught me: Politics is temporary, but physics is forever.
The companies struggling today made a bet that political support … and interest rates….would remain stable. The projects succeeding made a different bet entirely. They bet on need and they have flexibility.
Virginia needs power. The military needs energy security. Data centers need electricity to keep the internet running. And when genuine need meets engineering capability, politics usually steps aside.
That abandoned ship in Singapore won’t stay abandoned for long. Those unemployed German and Danish engineers will find new jobs.
Because here’s the secret that wind energy professionals understand but politicians sometimes forget: We’re not running out of wind, we’re running out of power….and money.
The move to lower cost power sources shouldn’t really be about politics anymore. It should be about pocketbook math. And the simple reality that our electricity demand is growing faster than older energy sources can supply.
Ultimately the winners in this industry won’t be the ones with the best political connections or the loudest voices.
They’ll be the ones who understand that when you’re building infrastructure designed to last generations, you’d better be building something the world needs and can afford for years to come.
https://weatherguardwind.com/wind-energy-needs/
Renewable Energy
SkySpecs Customer Forum Recap with Josh Goryl
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
SkySpecs Customer Forum Recap with Josh Goryl
Allen and Joel speak with SkySpec’s Chief Revenue Officer, Josh Goryl, at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. With record attendance, the forum emphasized industry collaboration, data amalgamation, and the application of AI for optimizing wind and solar renewable energy assets. SkySpecs announced their expansion into the solar industry, leveraging their established wind solutions to streamline data management and operational strategies across renewable energy sectors.
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: [00:00:00] I’m Alan Hall, host of the Uptime Winner Energy podcast, and I’m here with Joel Saxon and Josh Gar, chief Revenue Officer with Sky Spec, and Josh brought us out this week to participate in the Skys Pick Customer Forum 2025, which as it turns out, has been the largest attendance this year.
Joel Saxum: Yeah,
Allen Hall: it’s grown every single year. Yeah. It’s a room full of people, all experts in blades all here to learn about the next generation of skys specs, blades and
Joel Saxum: CMS predict CMS predict analysis and that’s why it’s growing so much. Right. How, what kind of percentage of the capacity in the states do you think is represented here?
Allen Hall: We, we should have ran the number, I should have came prepared for this, but, um, I mean, I would say. 75%. Yeah. 80%. Okay. Yeah, that’s, you’re talking all the, all the big operators are, are here. Yep. I think, uh, 21 total organizations represented over 40 experts, blades, drivetrain, few senior management as well, and asset management [00:01:00] engineering.
So it’s an awesome, awesome group. We keep, uh, ev It’s tough though. Every year we have to step it up a bit, so we’re kind of, I think we’re outgrowing the space that we’re at here and excited for. Yeah, we’re bursting at the seams. Uh, last year Joel and I were invited to come and it’s the first time that we had been here and I thought, wow, this is a pretty full room.
And this year, like, okay, she’s back. We’re we’re, we are sitting next to the door right now because everybody is trying to learn what Sky Specs offers, what. Power do I have on my desktop right now, but also what is coming and there’s a lot of new product releases happening that were announced just this morning.
Yeah, and I think the cool thing too, that’s it’s not often you’re able to get this many experts from operators together in one room, and even more so ones that cut across drive, train, CMS, all main components and. It can be tough to kind of keep everyone engaged ’cause everyone’s a domain expert in different, different areas.
But the conversations have been been incredible and I think even within [00:02:00] organizations as, as, as well. And so we’re trying to learn how do we help our customers come together more and, and collaborate across. And even just having these discussions that want to discuss pulled out of is fantastic. Just some of that collaboration between even people that are, that are at the same company, they don’t see each other as much.
Joel Saxum: There, there’s some cultural things playing out here that are funny to me because if you’re in wind and you’ve bounced around, if you’re an ISP or you’re at an operator, you know, some of the players and kind of how they act, how they keep their, their, their poker hands close to their chest and stuff. So you see some people sitting at a table and you see, and I noticed this yesterday, like the psychological look of things sails, right?
Mm-hmm. So I’m kind of looking at people listening and stuff and, and the, the one of the persons from an operator that usually does play things close to their hands mm-hmm. Was just kind of sitting there listening. Everyone’s like, what’s your opinion? What’s your opinion? He was like, uh, what’s yours? But, but that being said, the, the collaboration here has been fantastic.
Uh, uh, we were talking with Matt Stead earlier and he was saying mm-hmm. He, uh, was a part of a conversation where someone from Canada, someone from the us they shared some [00:03:00] information and they were like, that’s a amazing, thank you. Let’s swap cards. Different operators, you know, sharing things. Uh, we sat in a couple of the breakout sessions and the breakout sessions.
Yes, we had a presentation. Yes, we were walking through solutions and problems, but they, they devolved into amazing conversations where everybody in the room just kinda like turned to each other and were like, what do you think? How could we use this? Could you use that? Does this make sense? Um, and it’s, and it’s, it’s engineers.
It’s all engineers. Oh yeah. They’re geared to solve the problems and that’s what’s happening.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And, and I think at a macro level, right? Like it’s, it’s a lot of the same themes that, that everyone’s seeing. We’re, we’re talking about the, the same things. And a lot of it is how do we continue to do. More with less as these fleets grow mm-hmm.
There’s different issues that pop up every, every year and just having a tier. To your point, even even last year, last night I was talking to somebody and after the conference they stayed in touch with each other for four months and were talking weekly mm-hmm. On just different, uh, tools and tricks that they [00:04:00] were using to be more, more efficient.
Nothing. Confidential to their, their own organization, but more so how are they more efficient with the tools that they’re, that they’re using. So that’s where a lot of the value is if there’s only so many blade engineers and CMS engineers in the industry. And so it’s important that there’s opportunities for them to learn from each other and they’re, they’re not really competing with one another.
Once a turbines or the solar panels are deployed now, it’s about operational efficiency. And delivering that power. So every operator is maximizing the revenue and you really can’t do that today without Sky specs. You need to have blade data, you need to have CMS data, you need to have, uh, power curve information.
Mm-hmm. Like how your turbines are performing before you can even make sense. So the engineers. To me are finally accessing tools on a almost universally, that they didn’t have five years ago. Yeah. That are empowering them way beyond what they ever thought would be possible.
Joel Saxum: You can’t optimize, uh, an industrial fleet on a spreadsheet.
No. You can [00:05:00] maybe maintain some things and look at some part numbers and figures, a couple things out model wise. Right. But, and I know some good people that are really good with spreadsheets. Yep. But you need, you need tools. You need to, uh, be able to amalgamate your data. You need to be able to look at, I mean, this is one of the big things we’re talking about here.
Um, predict, prevent, perform. Yep. Or did I do it backwards? I’ve gotten it wrong all week. Prevent, predict. Perform. Perform. There you go. There you go. So, so, but looking at this saying, okay, so we have a foundation, we need inspections, we need these things, right? That is the foundation of the data. We have to have collections, whether it’s, uh, inspections, scada data, CMS data, whatever that may be.
Yes. Okay. Now it’s amalgamated into a platform. Now we can see this stuff. Mm-hmm. Now we can start running predictive analytics. We can start visualizing things. Yesterday you and I said, and, and. On the performance monitoring breakout session, and the data that was in that thing was just like, what about this?
You could use this data for that. You could use it for that. This is a great idea here. Now, this morning we talked, or we listened to, uh, Alan Larson from your team say, we’re gonna marry that [00:06:00] performance data with CMS data. Yep. And we’re gonna be able to look at, here’s your performance drop. Here’s what your CMS data is saying, and get real insights out of it.
And it sounds. To me, like I don’t know any other solution that’s never been done in the industry before.
Allen Hall: No, and and I think to your earlier point, it starts with that baseline and that health record and to be able to see, we’ve all been in the industry for some time now, and the level of maturity, even just year over year, we finally start to see it.
Right. And so another thing they brought up this morning was even just. Uh, preventative inspection programs. Years ago, it was, you know, maybe we’ll do 25, 30% of the fleet each year. And then after four or five years, we inspected everything. Well, it’s, it’s not that simple, right? There’s different makes and models, different risk tolerances.
Mm-hmm. And the arrangements with third parties is, is different. So, um, it’s, it’s kind of that intake valve and having all that data in, in one place. And, uh, fortunately we’re seeing most of the operators have taken big, big leaps over the course of the [00:07:00] last couple years to have all that data in, in one place.
And then from there it’s like, okay, how do I start to see trends. Across main components and optimize the repair windows. And now it’s about the fine tuning. And I think we’re getting there as, as an industry. And that’s why we, that’s one of the things we talked about. We’re excited about jumping into the solar and battery battery storage space.
’cause our customers said, Hey, a lot of these problems that we saw in wind and what you guys solved in blades and drivetrain, solar’s been in hypergrowth mode. We’ve done a lot of inspections, but data’s everywhere. Help us solve that problem.
Joel Saxum: Let’s pause there for a second. That’s a huge announcement.
Let’s do that announcement here.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So here, that’s what we announced now this morning, so we’ll, we’ll definitely have, have, uh, have, have more information very, very soon, soon on. Um, things have been moving, moving fast over the course of the last, last few months, but the reason why we’re, we’re diving into it is because, um, really we’ve al always been about following our customers and [00:08:00] helping them solve their, their biggest problems.
And we’re starting to hear, uh, that they want to bring the playbook. From wind, from wind o and m into, into solar. Um, again, earlier we were talking about how SCADA teams are not just looking at wind data. Mm-hmm. It’s across all their generating assets. And having one place for all that data is, is very, very important.
And I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place and going from. Data capture to work order in whatever system that you have. It could be an ERP system, it could be, it could be in horizon, but there absolutely is a, is a need in that, in that space and we think we can really help out.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Listening to the, uh, new, new Sky spec, C-C-E-C-T-O this morning, Ben Toan, he was talking about some of the architecture moves that you guys are making in the background to be able to make that, I don’t want, I don’t wanna simplify it, this, this far, but the copy paste of the wind playbook. Two Solar makes, it makes it easier for the future of if expanding [00:09:00]into other silos, doing more things, uh, making that platform.
One login. We can manage all of our assets and um, and do it the same way. Right. So as you guys have expanded in the last few years with. Inspections, tech enabled insights from the, the, the SMEs that are here, um, into the, using the digitalization tools and the qa qc process. We talked a bunch about that and, and your repair vendor management yesterday.
Yep. But being able to take all of those things that you guys have perfected and built over the years and wind. And boom, immediately be able to deploy that into solar. That’s gonna be a game changer for some people.
Allen Hall: Yeah, we’re, we’re super excited about it. And, and that’s what, so Ben Tor, who’s our, our new Chief Technology Officer is, talks a lot about a, a common data model and being able to, as we, as we start to scale.
It’s not just about a, a blade or a drivetrain gearbox, it’s, it’s about more, more than that. And being able to put in the solar data, whether it’s the panels, inverters, combiner boxes, and that ex expands further, right? And the battery storage and [00:10:00] other power generating assets. And I think that’s where we can, we can really help out.
So it’s kind of taking a step back a bit and thinking about, okay, how do we think about that model holistically, mm-hmm. Across renewable, uh, renewable assets. So excited for it. But again, don’t wanna get too far out over our skis here. So the first, first step is, is solar and, and working in partnership with our, with our customers on that.
And I think it’s big because a lot of the engineers we’ve been working with for the last several years that have been primarily wind focused, blade focused. Yeah. When you talk to them today. They’ll say, oh yeah, and I have a solar site that I’m now responsible for. Mm-hmm. And so they’re trying to learn the solar aspects pretty quickly, but staying in the same platform is huge because it reduces the cycle, learning cycle Yeah.
By quite a bit.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I, we, and this is a, a, we’re gonna make a, well, let’s make a side announcement. Yeah. We just added another team member to the weather guard team. I hear you. You’ll hear more about that here in the next, in the coming weeks. But, uh, she came from a team that managed wind solar. And [00:11:00] battery storage with the same engineering group.
Right. And I think that that, like you said, is becoming onshore and offshore. Mm-hmm. It is becoming more and more common. Right. So you’re seeing that be engineering resource. We always talk about the shortage of technicians. Mm-hmm. But there’s a shortage of engineers and it’s shrinking in a lot of pools.
Yep. Right. There’s a lot of people who, one big beautiful deal thing, trying to cut budgets, changing operating models. So engineers are being asked to do more. The more with less thing, right? Yep. They’re being asked to do more with less. Well, how do you do that? You don’t do that by using spreadsheets. You do it by using a, a common tool set with the architecture that works together in something, you know, and one place that you can manage all these things.
Allen Hall: Oh, yeah. It’s the only way to do it. And as we go forward over the next year, what I’m really interested in is what new concepts, ideas, platform updates. They get implemented by the operators because you, you always come out every year. Mm-hmm. We talk to Sky Specs and we, we see all the new things that happen and then we wait for the, the feedback and then we get to the customer [00:12:00] forum.
You see what they just used over the last year, they’re gonna be more hungry for more data than ever before. Mm-hmm. Even though they may be a little bit on a reduced staff. So that puts a big onus and burden onto Skys specs to not just provide data. Well, here’s all the drone images. No, we need to be able to give you insights as to what is happening and what I should be doing about it.
That’s the benefit of being with Skys specs. Yeah. I, I think, I think that’s huge. Right. And definitely there’s always a, a call to move faster and faster. Yeah. Because there’s, there’s a lot of challenges. A year ago, we were sitting in this room and we talked a lot about internal inspections, and we were on a journey.
Ingesting that third party ingest, uh, data, but customers are like, Hey, it’d be really great if you had a robot for that too. Yeah. So, and now it’s sitting right out here’s sitting out there and our robots are very busy. So, yeah. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s stuff like that where it’s, it’s continuing to get that feedback.
We get it at forums like, like this. Right. And, um, for us too, especially as we get into those other spaces like doing. An [00:13:00] external drone inspection of a blade is just one piece of the puzzle, right? There’s a lot of other data streams that are critically important, and even it’s especially important in solar when there’s different data capture methods.
And again, our big focus is gonna be on that JE ingestion. Mm-hmm. And getting all that data into, into one place. Um, maybe in some cases we’ll do the data capture, but customers are sitting on a ton of data already. Right. And so it’s helping them digitize it, get it into that common data model, and then connect it to their work order system.
That is key. And there’s a lot of automation and rules that kind of go in to trigger the optimization. And that’s where I think we’re, we’re good at. And some of our customers have seen that success and wind and that value case. And that’s what it’s about for, for, for solar. So it’s an exciting, exciting time.
I’m gonna put you on,
on
Joel Saxum: the hook here. Okay.
Allen Hall: All right. So
Joel Saxum: our producer Claire, make a short outta this. We’re gonna put it on LinkedIn. Okay. This morning we heard and we saw a slide and some promises that said, expect transparency from skys specs. [00:14:00] So we’re here talking about all kinds of awesome developments.
Yep. A lot of things happening. Probably the most active product roadmap I think that I’ve seen at Skys specs. Mm-hmm. In since I’ve been around wind. Right. So. Expect more information. Q4, Q1, 26. Things rolling out. Um, you know, the, the, the jump into solar, some more CMS things, some the financial asset modeling.
Expect to hear more about that.
Josh Goryl: Mm-hmm.
Joel Saxum: Um, a repair vendor management, possibly moving into other components than just blades. Like there’s going to be a lot of announcements and the transparency promise, we got it this morning. Yep. We’re recording it now.
Allen Hall: Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you got it here, but I will say I have to leave some, uh, some stuff for the audience so they come, set out calls and do all that.
But yeah, to your, to your point, we’re super thrilled for what’s, what’s, what’s ahead. Um, so Alan, Alan Larson, who leads, leads product here, he had a, he a great presentation on some of the things that we’re gonna, we’re gonna be doing and you, we hit [00:15:00] on a lot of them. So solar. We have a, we have a POC now, uh, working with, with customers all already.
So we’ll see more of that in in 2026. Uh, thrilled to continue to work closer and closer with you guys at, at Weather Guard and a logic ping. And on the lightning stuff we’re going deeper and deeper into a lot of these lightning work workflows. It’s a big problem, right? Big, big problem, right? You, you guys know more than more than anyone.
And so bringing all that data into the horizon platform is, is, is, is key. So we’re, we’re, we’re thrilled about that. And then I think what’s also important is that we continue to do and improve what we’re good at. So even on the, the inspection side, I think there’s a lot that we can do in collaboration with customers to optimize those workflows.
So there’s a lot less kind of human in the loop, uh, because we have to continue to, to scale. And, um, we have amazing SMEs in this, in this industry, and it’s helping empower them to do, to do more. There is a [00:16:00] lot more inspection data than anyone could have ever imagined at this, at this point. And as an industry and as a company, we’ve gotten very good at, uh, moving faster, but it’s continuing to, to optimize and use AI and different tools.
Tools like that. Yeah. And I wanna talk about the AI. This, uh, improvements that have been made over the last year. There was a presentation yesterday talking about how to use AI to suss out images to make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for mm-hmm. On repairs. That was a monumental task, just listening to the engineering discussion of what it took to do that analysis.
How much AI comes in in 20, late 20, 25 into 26. Is that where the industry is headed? Because. Of the mass, massive amounts of data from every turbine. The images are so much better than they were three years ago, and they’re just, we’re taking more pictures. We’re doing it quarterly. Mm-hmm. So a yearly, or we’re not doing a third of the farm, we’re doing the whole farm year and the repair reports.
That was the big thing. Yeah. And the repair reports u the PDFs for ai. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the, the, the data stream comes in and it’s, it’s huge. Are [00:17:00] you then thinking more AI over the next couple years, just so we can get that condensed data set down? No question. And in all areas we have to, and I think every organization is thinking about their Ai, AI strategy.
And, and for us it’s, it’s kind of going back to first principles and thinking on a workflow level. Right, and so there was a use case yesterday where we were talking about okay, reviewing images a lot more efficiently from the field. There’s thousands of PDF reports from rep from repair reports that our customers are trying to digitize.
How do we use AI to to do that? So we see those improvement. It feels like every couple weeks there’s something new that helps our team. And we’re trying to put more of those tools in the hands of our, our customer, but customers. But that is, um, one of the key pillars of our, of our strategy because we know we need it.
We know our customers need it, and how do we do that to together? So. What I will say, it’s not just AI that spits out the, an the right answer every single time. Right. Right. We, we always have, have, have work to [00:18:00] do, but we kind of think about it on a, on a workflow level and, and, um, how does it help us and everything we do every, every day.
Joel Saxum: Hmm. And the addition of Ben Torquing to the team is, is gonna spur that along. We, we heard from him this morning, man. That guy’s got it going on.
Allen Hall: Oh yeah, Ben, Ben, Ben has been fantastic. So Ben, uh, has been with us for about two months now. He’s our new Chief tech technology officer, and he is an AI background, uh, enterprise architecture background.
So that’s one of the other areas too, even outside of e uh, AI is being able to integrate to other third party platforms. We deal with utilities and IPPs. There’s a lot of big systems and being able to do that in a flexible way. That’s, that’s quick. Um, and, and works best for, for both sides. We know it’s not realistic that every single person every day is working in horizon.
Um, but it’s getting all that engineering and asset management data into the, into the right hands and doing that through some of these third party connections. So another area [00:19:00] where we’re gonna continue to, to level up and, and grow as an organization. So if you’re an asset manager and you are not using Skys specs, I don’t even know who that would be today.
But if you’re an engineer, you’re not actively on the Horizon platform and or if you’re on the Horizon platform and you wanna learn all the things that you missed this week. Yeah. How do they get ahold of you, Josh, to get the update? Yeah, I would say, um, I’m definitely gonna, I’ll leave my kind of contact information behind.
You can contact me directly. Always our sales teams. We have a sales@skysspecsdot.com, that goes to all of our account account executives and our technical sales manager. So depending on the, the area of need, we’d be happy to kinda set up, even if it’s just a discovery call and, um, with no agenda to kind of help and assess.
What you have, have going on, and I’m sure there’s areas where we can, we can help and yeah, if you have solar assets, you better be calling Skys picks now and getting that turned on. That’s right. Yeah. We’re, we’re super, super excited. And I think too, like we’re, we’re in it to, to learn and we know everyone has a different [00:20:00] operating strategy and may think about, uh, the world a little bit differently.
And so it’s important that we, we kind of take a step back and, and learn from you all. So we’ve kind of always taken that, taken that approach. And we can move fast too. Josh, you love having you on the podcast and love being at the customer forums. They’re very, yeah. Thanks for the invite. Uh, yeah, they’re eye-opening every single time and, uh, we get to talk to so many people.
So, Josh, thank you so much for inviting us and, and thanks so much for being on the podcast. No, the thing I’ll say too is, I, I can’t thank the two of you and, and Claire enough and just kind of the, the level of support and engagement and you guys have really helped level up our forum the last couple years.
So it means a, means a ton.
Joel Saxum: Thanks. Appreciate it.
https://weatherguardwind.com/skyspecs-customer-forum/
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