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How Active is Active Pitch Control for Wind Turbines?

In this episode of Uptime, Joel Saxum and Allen Hall sit down with the CEO of AC883, Lars Bendsen. AC883, a Canadian ISP specializing in blade repairs, has gained recognition for their unique approach to pitch alignment during the frozen ground season. Pitch misalignment is a topic of growing importance in the wind energy industry, and in this discussion, Lars shares his insights on its impact and challenges. He raises thought-provoking questions about the effectiveness of active pitch management and its potential limitations in practice. Join us for this engaging conversation as we delve into the complexities of pitch alignment, mass imbalance, and other critical aspects of wind turbine maintenance.

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

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
AC883 – https://www.ac883.com

AC883 Interview

Allen Hall: We’re here at CanREA with Lars Bendsen of AC883. If you are familiar with AC883, they are an ISP up in Canada that does all kinds of blade repairs. And one of the more interesting things that they do that’s unique is pitch alignment. So this is pitch alignment season when the ground freezes over and they take their equipment out and make sure your blades are pointing in the right direction.

And which Evidently, it is a thing that a lot of blades are not pointed in the right direction.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, Lars has shared that with us. Big problems all over the place.

Lars Bendsen: It’s for sure a topic that’s become more and more evident. There’s more and more people out there doing the same or similar way of detecting a pitch misalignment.

Yeah. Of course, there’s more awareness around it now than there was when we started doing it with our methods of doing it. So it’s for sure become a topic. There are also more engineering reports coming out from NREL. And from sorry, from the German Institute as well. Yeah. So there’s ton of rebar coming out of the damages that misalignment causes.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, it’s like running a car down the highway without an alignment on the front

Lars Bendsen: end. You’re gonna just… It’s funny, if you have your right tire and your car is unbalanced, you go in right away to get it changed. Which you don’t do with your turbine, you just let it run. Yeah, because turbines are cheap, right?

Yeah, exactly. It better cost any money.

Joel Saxum: Ha! We’ve been talking with Lars, of course, always great conversations, the knowledge that he has. And the AC 883 team and we’ve stumbled upon a theory that we want to talk about. So it, with the knowledge of pitch alignment and what you guys see out in the field, and of course seeing all kinds of different OEMs and issues that pop up, you’ve come across one specifically that we’ve been talking about.

Want to share that with us?

Lars Bendsen: Absolutely. I think it’s me throwing it out there and also to get some great feedback. So it’s my theory. And what we have seen is the the topic on active pitch. Which means you’re twisting the blades half a degree every time you pass the tower. And the reason they do that is?

Let’s do it because if you take some of the the, what do you call it, the What do you call it? I lost the word, right?

Joel Saxum: What do you call it? It’s like Wind buffeting causing

Lars Bendsen: deflection. Take the other way so we don’t have that and you can actually run in higher winds as well. Okay,

Joel Saxum: yeah. Yeah, because you don’t want that way if you’re running in high wind speed and there’s a lot of force coming by when that tower passes or when that blade passes the tower each time you get like a basically a pressure area of wind

Lars Bendsen: and what they’re trying to do is it’s a little bit of a reversed wake yeah going like that yeah and you get them by more pressure on the tower so that’s why i’m trying to avoid it and that means all you can actually expect the design envelope that’s not my theory that’s a fact by using active pitch you’re extending to this the same you design envelopes, you get more megawatts out of the same turbine.

Allen Hall: So it’s an efficiency move? It’s supposed to be, yeah. Now, you go out and measure hundreds or thousands of blades while they’re running, right? The turbines are running, you’re actually watching as the blades sweeps in front of the tower and you’re determining pitch alignment from that little snapshot there.

So you can see where active pitch alignment happens, right? Yeah,

Lars Bendsen: we should be able to see it. But we can’t. So we have clients that, we asked him to take the active pits off. So we have, I have a more true measurement off the blades of the rotors state, so to speak, but some of them forgot to do it or cannot do it himself.

So they’re running with active pits because depending on what access they have to their own controller from the OEM. Yeah, or what service they have, they might be don’t even have access to do it. Yeah. They have to call the OEM. to take the active pitch away. And that’s way too common in the industry.

That shouldn’t happen. It’s that’s, I think that’s a different topic. Yeah. Of the balance between Mona and OEMs, that’s a different topic. Yeah. that we have seen with or without active pitch, there’s no difference in the misalignment. When

Joel Saxum: that blade comes by and it’s supposed to be moving that half degree back and forth, when you guys are doing your pitch alignments with your actual laser instrumentation, you don’t actually see it.

We don’t see it.

Allen Hall: Now is that a, a, a. A function of the pistons that are driving the blade not functioning properly, which is a thing because you see a lot of oil and a lot of debris around those pitch actuators.

Lars Bendsen: I think it’s it’s many things. It could be the pitch actuator is not working properly.

That’s one of the issues. Yeah. I also, but it’s more consistent. So if it was that issue, it would be the, it would be only on one blade, but it’s on all three blades. If that was the real

Joel Saxum: issue. If the pitch motor was bad, you would see it on, one of them would be bad or something like that. Just

Lars Bendsen: be oil everywhere.

Yeah. Okay. But we don’t. So my theory is, and based on the real, what we call experienced technician in the field, is that it doesn’t work. So in theory, if you see we have the blade that’s 50 meters long, running on, on rated speed, let’s say 7 or 8 meters per second. We have about 40 to 50 ton of pressure onto the blade as it swipes down to 40, about 40 tons of pressure to the blade.

And we have a two horsepower motor, a two kilowatt motor up here, trying to switch it plus minus five degrees, but in an angle of 10 degrees with 15 RPM. And that

Joel Saxum: blade itself weighs 10

Lars Bendsen: tons? And yeah and the flexibility in the blade, which you, it’s built in because you want to have a flexible blade.

So how is that going to work? You want a two horsepower motor? 50 meters down, turn a turn a flexible blade with 40, 40 tons of pressure on. Your theory is starting to make sense. That’s my two cents. I’m interested to hear if anybody… I doubt probably a ton of those listening are gonna disagree with me, and that’s okay.

That’s what we’re here for. That’s my theory, and that’s what I’ve heard and what I have seen. And also talking to pitch guys, they love it. Because they’re selling a lot of pitch cylinders. We’re getting a lot of pitch cylinders. Because the thing is here, you’re basically only… twisting the rubber sealing.

You’re not actually moving anything. The rubber is flexible itself because it has to be. So you’re just twisting the rubber sealing and that got worn out so the blade

Joel Saxum: is not moving. So what you’re saying is when that blade is sweeping down and it gets near the tower at six o’clock, that the pitch, the active pitch management is engaging that motor to turn that blade a half degree and then turn it back.

But because of the forces on the blade, it can’t actually do that. At a two horsepower motor. And so it’s just basically spinning the motor or pitch cylinder is just spinning in itself up top.

Lars Bendsen: Yeah it’s because there’s a rubber ceiling up here. Yeah. So it basically just twisting the rubber ceiling and not actually doing it.

And I think even if it didn’t, even if it didn’t, was either it was a fixed connection without a rubber seal, then would it then be able to do it 50 meters down

Joel Saxum: with 40

Lars Bendsen: it just strip the motor. I would’ve just strip the

Joel Saxum: motor. Yeah. Either way, if this thing is doing this. It’s moving like that. And if you’re talking 15 RPM for the rotor, that’s four times, or what’s

Lars Bendsen: the math on that?

That’s 45 times.

Allen Hall: Yeah, 45

Lars Bendsen: times

Joel Saxum: a minute. That’s a lot of movement

Lars Bendsen: within that thing to get hot, constantly. So my theory, and based on what we have seen, there’s no difference in our system, whether they use it or not.

Allen Hall: How would they know that the system worked in the first

Joel Saxum: place? They would have had to have had tested

Allen Hall: it.

They would have had to have laser shot it, right? How would you know… You can obviously see the motor working, if you’re up in the cell. You can see that twist happen. But how do they know what’s happening way down at the tip? I believe,

Lars Bendsen: of course, you can see the control system that is working.

It does its job. They can see that. Of course, the actuator is moving. They can see that. But it’s a physical moving down on the blade. Can you see it? We’re producing power on the last third of the blade. Yeah. Whatever, from the tip up. Yeah. One thread up, that’s where you’re losing power. But do they actually move down there?

We can’t see it.

Allen Hall: So if you can’t see it, that means that either one or two things is happening. Either it’s not moving the blade at all, or you’re putting some unique torsion into the blade. The blade’s absorbing the rotation you’re trying to impose on it, so you’re twisting the blade every time it comes around the

Lars Bendsen: tower.

But it’s interesting, if it was working as it’s supposed to do, then we would see a difference, because every blade is different. All blades are handmade, so unless they have exactly the same twist, which is, I doubt they would have, but if

Joel Saxum: they had, you would see different levels of deflections. Yeah.

But, either way, the design of active pitch management is going to have a wear part in the pitch cylinder, it’s going to introduce structural fatigue within the blade, so is the juice worth the squeeze even if it was? Because we’re saying that’s not working as a

Lars Bendsen: theory. Yeah, I don’t know the theory behind the blades, if it really has that high an impact.

That’s, somebody had to read more school books than I have to figure that out. So I don’t know that, only from an engineering perspective, because the blades are flexible. Anyhow, they have to be built flexible. And just the fact that they have to be built flexible is that, my theory is, it doesn’t work.

You cannot twist that 50 meter blade in that short time, 45 times per minute, and come back. So that’s my true sense from the, from my experience.

Joel Saxum: So if you were, if you had an operator sitting with you right now at the table across from us, and they had active pitch management in their turbines, what would you tell them?

Lars Bendsen: Depending on the wind scheme, you have to be careful about that. What wind scheme do you have? Let’s say in low wind, very low wind, you might be, would have that twist. I don’t know why you would use it in low wind. Why would you need it? No, I agree. That’s my point. In high wind, I cannot see the need for it.

I can’t. But I would love to see if somebody would argue against me and tell me why I, my theory is wrong and show it to me physically. I want to see that twist coming. I would love to see it. I hope it works.

Joel Saxum: Because otherwise it would just be like, Hey, I know you have this in your turbines, but shut it off.

Cause you’re just causing yourselves. You’re not you’re actually costing yourself more because now you have another O and M part that you have to. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Because the concept between. By active pitch from a blade standpoint as blades get longer is you could make lighter blades you could use that flexibility to your benefit make the blades lighter He transports a whole bunch of money materials, right?

That’s the thought process in it But if it doesn’t actually do the task, then you’re really at a big risk But also it’s a major problem

Lars Bendsen: the theory behind this also take the load off the tower, right? So that’s right that means you can cruise happy. You can increase Your design criteria from, I’m just saying 2 megawatt to 2.

3 megawatt, as an example, by having four enforced active bits. If it doesn’t work, are you then going over your design envelope, or are you just squeezing it to 105%?

Allen Hall: So I want to take this discussion over to mass and balance. Yeah. So mass imbalance seems like it’s a more peculiar failure mode or not so much failure mode a missed opportunity.

I’ll call it that especially on a blade Swap out. Yeah, they have a blade damage problem They’re gonna put a new blade on it and they just slap on a new blade That doesn’t necessarily mean that blade is matched with the other two that already exists so now they have this kind of this really weird rotation aspect where It seems like two of the blades are moving faster than the third one.

Yeah, true. How do you detect that, and, first, describe that. Like, how do you measure to know that one blade is off weight wise? Okay.

Joel Saxum: The first part, you gotta start with getting the blades

Lars Bendsen: served. Yeah, first of all, we need to, when we are measuring, first things first, we’re getting the same angles so they are all aerodynamically aligned.

Okay. Start there. Okay. And after that, then we’re measuring the mass imbalance. And we’re doing on a rotation because we come to call it shiang. If everything works well, it should be 120 degrees between the blades, right? But it, we are measuring the plus and minuses time that comes down a long time or many degrees is that delta from blades A to blade C to blade B, how much is they in between?

And if one is always coming down, a heavy blade coming down faster that way, then it goes up slower to the next one. So we measuring the delta between and the rotational speeds ’cause it should go like. 100 right? But it has always this, if you have the mass imbalance.

Allen Hall: So that, that is torture on a gearbox and a drivetrain, right?

Absolutely. Main bearings?

Lars Bendsen: So there is a, there are two things. If, then one thing is the aerodynamic balance, unbalance. If it’s within reason, whatever that means, within a degree, of course it has an impact on the drivetrain. But if you have extreme aerodynamic imbalance, four or five degrees, which we have seen, then that’s equally bad as mass imbalance.

So back to the mass imbalance. Let’s say now we have aerodynamically balanced. Now we have the mass imbalance. And as you said, change the blade. We had some that should be weighted out. They should be balanced. Everything should be good. The client did not tell, then the clients do not tell us if they have a blade repair.

They tell us after the fact. Oh, why is this one out? Oh, by the way, we actually changed the blade. So on one of them we found there was 82 kilos missing in chamber number two. 82 kilos missing. The turbine could not run over 70 meters per second. It was stalling. Sure. And the blade tip on, you see the, what do you call it?

When you see the rotation from the side, the blade tip delta was five feet. It was one meters and one meter 20. So

Joel Saxum: like basically as the blades passed the tower, one of them was closer to the tower by

Lars Bendsen: five feet. It was actually, no, it was closer to away from the tower. Okay. Because if you see those 82 kilos missing.

It’s not heavy enough, not big enough. It’s actually, it’s further away from the tower. And that was a median 20, so that’s 4 feet. You can see that with your blind eye. We can see it and we can hear it. We can hear the whistling. Yeah, that’s crazy. 100%.

Allen Hall: What percentage of blades have mass imbalances out there?

Lars Bendsen: From what we have seen, we have done about 1, 000, 1, 200 blades. Might be more, not blades, but turbines. Might be done more, I can’t remember. But turbines from. Zero to four years old and say four to eight and over age. Let’s try to do that. The newer turbines is about 15, 20 percent out of bounds.

And once you move up, then you’re about 30 to 35%. And once you get over eight years old, it’s 35 to 50 percent out. Whoa. And that’s, I could go more detailed, but that’s rough numbers. For sure, sorry, but GE turbines older than eight years. That’s 50 percent out. Gemesa turbines, 8 years old, we had a site of more than 100 turbines.

52 were out of bounds. So that’s some examples. Okay, that’s a

Allen Hall: lot. That’s a lot. Way more than I was thinking it was. And that’s mass imbalance or pitch

Lars Bendsen: imbalance? That’s aerodynamic. Aerodynamic

Allen Hall: imbalance. Yeah. Okay. And mass imbalance, where do you think the

Lars Bendsen: number is?

I don’t, I can’t, it’s hard to quantify. I can’t do that because we only see it if we are being called out. All via catching it by

Joel Saxum: coincidence. One of the things that I always wondered about is insurance case, blade gets swapped out. A lot of times they say, hey, we gotta put three new blades up because we can’t find one.

Or if they have a safe harbor blade sitting at the O& M building, hey, that one actually, the weight cert’s close enough, da. Would you recommend that, hey, if you’re gonna swap a blade out, no matter if it’s one blade, or you’re doing a whole rotor set, if it’s a case like that. Come out and get the pitch alignment

Lars Bendsen: checked.

Should for sure get it done anyhow when you’re changing one blade. Yeah. Because the zero mark doesn’t really give you much. It’s not very accurate. Yeah. So we have to get the message somehow, or get it adjusted. Could be the vowel laser, or someone else, but you need to get it mapped out.

Another thing that’s important is that, the spec sheet from the one turbine we had that was really severe, that was a spec sheet from from LM. Tells you where the weight is. And it turns out that person who made that balance did not follow that spec sheet. She was just missing 82 kilos. Wow. So that’s another thing as well.

ISPs, independent contractors, seems not always being educated to the work they do. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that’s an industry wide problem. That’s industry wide, but also many turbines are, of course, mostly placed in rural areas. So how do you get qualified? Yeah,

Joel Saxum: it’s tough. That boils down to the technician issue that we’re always talking about.

Yeah, right training

Allen Hall: is what just one thing Back me up on the GE aero dynamic alignment issue. Is that just a wear and tear on the structure, that the twisting of the blade, having done so many cycles, that it doesn’t, they don’t behave the same as the age? Because that would make sense to me. That on…

Yeah. Structural fatigue, yeah. It’s a structural fatigue issue. I think

Lars Bendsen: also that’s so the GE, of course, is electrical bits. There could be an encoder that doesn’t work properly. Or might be the controller get the signal, it does move. But actually it doesn’t. So that’s one thing, and then of course the, I’m just saying the Vestas, the the Siemens, that’s hydraulic bits.

And there you see that’s leaking pit cylinders they’re wandering because they’re slowly leaking, so you don’t get the movement they think they

Joel Saxum: get. What? It’s easier to see that if you’re up in the nacelle, or looking in the hub, it’s easier to see a problem with the hydraulic bits.

Lars Bendsen: Electrical bits you can’t really see it. Yeah.

Allen Hall: So if that’s so prevalent. What kind of AEP loss is that? That turns into power production issues. Yeah.

Lars Bendsen: There is power production. You’re losing power in the low wind area. Not as much in the high wind area. You trade off in high wind, you get way more vibration.

Yeah. But you’re losing, you have less vibration in low winds, but you’re losing power in high wind. You get way more operation where you’re using your gear pass.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. You’re wearing

Lars Bendsen: components out prematurely. You’re gonna pay either way, , you’re gonna pay in little bit one way and missing production. Yeah.

Allen Hall: What are the first signs that you know you may have a pitch alignment issue? Is the SCADA system chipping off before you’re in high wind conditions? Are you getting alarms, let’s say? Something is wrong?

Lars Bendsen: Vibration alarms. Vibration alarms, you get that from the ABA. A lot of vibrations in this turbine.

It’s stalling after seven meters per second. Let’s check that. And then we’re going out and then we’re digging into it. And mostly we find out it is a aerodynamic imbalance or a mass imbalance.

Allen Hall: I know one of the… issues from GE more recently over in Europe was they had a couple of blades snap off and then they traced it back to a single sensor in the turbine now I’m catching it soon enough, like there’s an issue with the sensor.

Yeah, that’s the story we’re being told today. Yeah, I’ve seen that story a couple times now, so it seems to be a pretty consistent story. So if that’s the case, is that basically a load imbalance, an aerodynamic imbalance, then that it’s not catching…

Lars Bendsen: Of course, if you don’t catch the vibration regardless of where it’s coming from, already there you have an issue because then again you’re going to pay later. If it’s from, if that could have been caught by the sensor working and thereby you could adjust your blade, I don’t know, but that’s an option.

Allen Hall: What’s the issue though? Is it an aerodynamic imbalance? Not shipping the sensor. Forget about the sensor for a minute. The sensor is there to capture gross errors, right? So if they had a gross error, and in a blade, which would cause the blade to fatigue and break, I would assume that’s a vibration sensor of some sort and that the issue would be, could

Lars Bendsen: be as simple as pitch alignment.

Could be, yeah. But we see, vibration level, we see that caused by both. Okay. The shorter vibration level could be caused by aerodynamic imbalance, but that’s more a vibration level. If you have a massive imbalance between the oscillation of the tower, and then you’re down to the foundation, and then you’re really in trouble.

Allen Hall: Yeah, because I think that has a lot to do with repowering. So we talked to Onyx Insight for instrumenting towers for the amount of sway they have. Yeah. There’s a couple of companies doing this, but basically they’re monitoring the towers from the sway they have because it helps them determine the structural integrity of the foundation when they go to repower.

Put a slightly bigger blades, maybe a slightly bigger generator on this thing. They have to know what the foundation is doing, and it takes 12 months to do it. But my guess is that when they monitor some of those turbines, they must be seeing some decent amount

Lars Bendsen: of sway. We are seeing, we can see sway up to 600, 700 millimeters.

Half a meter and more. Whoa. But one thing is the sway, but what if we have the isolation?

Allen Hall: It’s not back and forth, it’s left and right. No, it’s actually elliptical. Yeah, it’s elliptical right. Yeah. That’s a big problem for a

Lars Bendsen: foundation. That’s why we have seen, tower collapse and we have seen the change of foundations.

It’s out there. We went to sites where basically there’s no dirt around the foundation because it’s all shaken apart. Wow. It’s horrible. Sometimes it’s scary, but you see a lot of stuff, but I do believe by, we were one of the first movers doing this. We have a ton of people doing it with different technologies.

SCADA data, which can be done to, might be more data heavy. And more on the backend of the engineering department. Heavy. There’s high speed cameras, different ways of doing it. Sure. But it’s the same issue we’re trying to address. So by we have more people out there doing it. It’s got more awareness, I believe that people know.

Yeah. Oh my be is not only a 83 finding stuff. Yeah. But there’s actually a lot of findings out there.

Joel Saxum: Speaking of finding stuff, Lars, I got a question for you. ’cause this is something that I was actually talking to someone last night about. Is blade bolts. Yeah. So blade bolts, whether it’s pre tensioned, post tensioned, however they’re tightened, Torqued, over torqued, under torqued issues with the torquing guns when they go on, all these different kind of things.

If there was an issue in either the blade bolts torquing, breaking, or say the actual pockets that they’re epoxied into starting to move, Would you guys be able to find that with your pitch

Lars Bendsen: measure as well? I think it would be hard for us to tell that is a root cause. But there’s a lot of boxes we check once we we can see it’s in balance, right?

Check, that’s good. If we still have vibrations, but we have no tower movement, okay, then we might be looking at the drivetrain. Yeah. There could be some gearbox or main bearing issues. If we, is that also in okay, but we still have a lot of sway, let’s check the imbalance, the mass imbalance, which we’re also checking, right?

So we get the report fully from right away.

Joel Saxum: So it’s, so you’re using your pitch alignment methodology as a

Lars Bendsen: diagnostic tool. Yeah, it’s more than just, it’s more than just a, what do you call it measurement tool. We also get a lot of checking boxes. Is it that? Is it that? Is it that? It could be different reasons.

Blade twists. We have detect, we have detected huge what do you call it failures in blades. We had a tip that was twisting five, six degrees compared to the rest, and there was a crack in the blade. That we that was by pure coincidence. That was not why we were on site. But we see a lot of stuff, a lot of boxes you can check.

Once we do that analytics. And it takes seven, eight minutes. That’s it. And we get the whole report. Then we are checking some KPIs if they are okay. And then we move on to the next. Or we analyze a little bit on site. What it is.

Allen Hall: So we’re in the peak pitch alignment season. Because the ground is frozen.

That makes life a lot easier. And

Lars Bendsen: We have more constant wind than in the summer. So we need a constant wind speed. What’s your, what,

Joel Saxum: what are your constraints for actually

Lars Bendsen: doing it? Roughly between four to ten, ten meters per second. But it’s more important we need the number of rotations. We need roughly six RPMs.

That means a GE meters, 37 meters. Slaves, yes, they’re spinning way faster than a 53 meter blade. But roughly 7, 7 RPM would be good for us.

Allen Hall: So then, this is the time to be calling AC883, right? Where at the end of October, the ground’s starting to freeze up in Calgary, clearly. Absolutely.

It’s moving south rapidly because you want to get ready for the season. The peak production season. Yes. And you want to have your blades aligned to get rid of some of these. Exactly. Historical problems that are happening.

Joel Saxum: Or if you want to talk to Lars about his active pitch management. Yeah, you’re going to have to talk

Lars Bendsen: to Lars to definitely talk about that.

Oh, absolutely. I’m happy to take the discussion. And I’m happy to be turned around. I would love that.

Allen Hall: So how do we find you on

Lars Bendsen: the interwebs? Interwebs is just ac883. com. Okay.

Allen Hall: AC883. com. Yeah. It should be right there. Okay. And then also only you can check out on LinkedIn or you can, especially if you have alignment issues, you can reach Lars directly on LinkedIn. Talking about the act of vigilante.

Lars Bendsen: I’m happy to take this discussion. I’m happy to take this discussion. I’m happy to cave in. Totally happy to do that. That’s just my practical two cents. And there’s probably a bunch of engineers that can tell me different. I would love that.

Perfect.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Lars has been fantastic. We don’t get to see you so much just at conferences because we all that’s how this works. But yeah. And this has been great and I, and this has been a great conference in Canada and we appreciate all the support you’ve given to Weather Guard. Yeah.

And it, it’s been fantastic. Really. It has been. Thank you. My pleasure. Really, we appreciate all the effort there. So yeah, you have to take us out for a steak tonight or Joel and I just steak

Lars Bendsen: tonight. . Absolutely.

How Active is Active Pitch Control for Wind Turbines?

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Profound Nihilism?

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Normally, “nihilism” means the belief that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.  Trump was elected by mean-spirited idiots, but they could hardly be called “nihilists.” For example, they believe very strongly in white supremacy, the dismantling of the federal government, saving people from the lethality of vaccinations, etc.

Now, there is a secondary meaning to the word, i.e., those who reject established social systems.  In this sense, I suppose they are indeed nihilists, in that they reject lawfulness, honesty, human rights, truth, science, tolerance, and compassion.

Profound Nihilism?

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Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory

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Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory

Vestas doubles second quarter profit and adds €4.7 billion in market value overnight. Plus EnBW finishes He Dreiht after a V236 blade break, the UK blocks Ming Yang’s Scottish factory, and India rules turbines are movable goods.

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

The Uptime Wind Energy podcast, brought to you by StrikeTape. Protecting thousands of wind turbines from lightning damage worldwide. Visit StrikeTape.com. And now, your hosts

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with Rosemary Barnes, Matthew Stead, and Yolanda Padron. And three out of the four of us will be in Melbourne Australia talking to a number of operators and interested parties about WOMA 2027. Matthew, where will we be the couple of days we’re in Melbourne?

Matthew Stead: So, um, first of all, we’ve got the Pullman, uh, East Melbourne, which is, uh, where the venue will be for, for 2027. Um, so that’ll be our home base. Um, we’ve got around about eight meetings planned already. So what we’re doing is we’re talking to the operators and a few other industry, um, players about [00:01:00] what we need to talk about, how we’re gonna move the industry forward in Australia.

Uh, so it’s gonna be jam-packed, but there’s a little bit of time left on the Friday afternoon if there’s any late-minute, um, people that wanna get in contact and catch up with us, um, for next Thursday, Friday, or actually Friday. Uh, so yeah, it’s gonna be a, a jam-packed time. I think we’re gonna be tired, too many coffees, and talking to all the key, all the key operators, uh, about what they wanna hear about and how we can move the, the industry forward.

Allen Hall: And if someone wants to put an input into the WOMA panel about what will be discussed at WOMA 2027, Matthew, how would they do that? How do they get ahold of you?

Matthew Stead: Well, we have a wonderful website, and that’s got all the details you could ever want. Um, you can also register on the website, so please register.

Otherwise, um, I’m sure we’re gonna be a sellout this year for sure. So woma2027.com.

Rosemary Barnes: I just wanna add that when people talk to [00:02:00] me about the event, they always say how they love that the topics are so relevant, and the reason why that they’re so relevant is because we make sure to go around to operators and find out what are the issues that they’re really dealing with.

So anybody that’s thinking of attending, even if you can’t, you know, meet us up, meet up with us in Melbourne, get in touch and tell us what are the, yeah, what are the topics that you’re struggling with that you’re not, um, you’re having trouble finding enough information, having trouble finding the people that can help you.

And y- yeah, like we take all of that information, and that’s how we come up with our agenda each year. And yeah, I mean, for us, that’s the, the main thing is that this has to be really relevant, up-to-date information for the industry, and we need your help to make sure it stays that way. I

Matthew Stead: mean, that’s what we’ve done the last two years, so this is– we’re just repeating the formula, um, listening to the operators and getting the good topics and the good speakers.

Allen Hall: Well, Vestas has had a good quarter. Uh, the, for the last couple of years, honestly, s- [00:03:00] Vestas has been really thin on margins. There was questions about it continuing on. Rising costs mostly, uh, supply chains, especially during COVID, were bad. Uh, and, uh, but for the most part, the shareholders stayed attached.

Well, that story is changing rapidly. The world’s largest turbine maker posted second quarter operating profits of $400- €46 million, more than double what the analysts had expected, and it’s raised its full-year margin guidance alongside half-year results for the first time in a decade. The shares climbed about 20% in Copenhagen, adding roughly €4.7 billion of market value in a single session.

Now, the chief executive, uh, Henrik Andersen, ha- put it plainly to, uh, uh, in a couple of news sources that something much bigger is happening and Vestas is gonna be the, the leader in wind. That’s how I read it, that everybody [00:04:00]at Vestas was super happy with the, the change in direction and things were moving up steadily.

But a 20% jump in a day is remarkable. You don’t see that in large industrial businesses like wind energy. Matthew, this has real implications on what happens next for Vestas because success like this usually means more orders.

Matthew Stead: Yeah, I wonder what’s going on under the hood there. Um, I mean, Vestas is a quality company, although, although can I just do a quick segue?

How many turbines were installed in Denmark in the last, uh, two years? Like last year and the year before?

Allen Hall: I don’t know. How many?

Matthew Stead: I believe it was eight turbines installed onshore in Denmark last year, and the year before it was 12. So, you know, maybe, maybe Vestas needs to focus on their own backyard a little bit as well.

Allen Hall: I’m not sure there’s a lot of opportunity there. Yeah, onshore.

Matthew Stead: How can you ever be full? I mean, there’s always, um, [00:05:00] uh, you know, um, you know, resiting or, um, you know, upgrades and-

Rosemary Barnes: You know what? Allen and I are probably gonna get some time in Jutland, uh, later this year, um, and that area and the old wind turbines there was actually the inspiration for my whole YouTube channel.

It just, ’cause there’s, you know, there’s turbines there from, the earliest one is, um, from the ’70s and still going. I think it’s one and a half megawatts, actually huge for, for that time. Um, and it was like community made, um, at Tvind. But anyway, I’m interested to revisit the site and have a look and see are these, you know, all these old turbines still there.

It’s only, like six years since I went through and did the experience but for the most part, they don’t seem to be yet pulling down the, the small old ones and putting up big ones. There’s a lot of, a lot of them are community owned. Um, and yeah, I mean, Danish people love wind turbines, but there’s only so many that you can have onshore.

Like, people are happy to live near them by, you know, the standards of people in other countries, but you don’t want [00:06:00] one in your literal backyard. I think that there is, there, there is a, a limit to how many more onshore wind turbines that you can get in that area and offshore expansion is the more likely way to go.

Um, and also I think it’s, it’s, it’s good to recognize that if you have a domestic only or a domestic first strategy, that will only get you so far and then you have to expand, and I think Denmark did that really well. I think Germany a little bit less. I think that Enercon were a bit surprised, um, by their strategy.

It, uh, they had a real hard time anyway when they had to transition away from mostly Germany to getting overseas. And obviously, like if you look at China, they have most of their installations are in China. They are trying so hard to get outside of China because it’s not, like even a market as big as China, it’s got decades to go before it will be full.

Um, you can still recognize that that’s not your, like long-term strategy for growth has to involve expansion, I think.

Allen Hall: I think Vestas, regardless of what happens in Denmark, is making a play for the United States. That seems to be [00:07:00] where a significant effort is happening at the moment and on offshore. Their– Vestas seems very excited about the offshore opportunities.

Of course, there’s a ton of wind turbines gonna be installed in the UK and, and all around Northern Europe. Offshore, the opportunities to buy turbines, there’s only a couple that you could get today. Uh, uh, the GE Vernova offerings I, I don’t think are gonna fit the mold, and I don’t know if GE’s even actively selling.

So their competitor realistically is Siemens Gamesa, which does seem like the smaller player at the minute versus Vestas, which is heavily pushing the V236 and will fill order books like crazy, I think, uh, just based upon the, the history they’ve had and everybody knowing who they are. So Also on the move in Australia, right?

Vestas is huge in Australia right now.

Rosemary Barnes: I think it’s really good that their, um, yeah, finances, uh, are [00:08:00] looking a bit better ’cause it’s been funny. Like, I tried early on in my wind career to invest in, you know, wind turbine manufacturers knowing that there would be immense growth, and I was right. There, there was immense growth.

Not that that was so hard to figure out that there would be, but it did not lead to any kind of, um, return on, on anything, you know. Like, that did not keep pace with the just general market. Um, so I, I stopped trying to, stopped trying to invest to that. But it has been really, really hard for the companies to, you know, raise money or y- you know, do any of the things that they need to do because they’ve always, like, they’re growing, growing, growing, but finances has been so tight that it has been a real constraint on the amount of engineering that they could do, and I really hope that Vestas are gonna take this opportunity that they’ve got compared to, you know, a lot of the other manufacturers.

Vestas do have really strong, um, innovation and, yeah, engineering capabilities for doing– you know, developing new technologies and improving them, and I really hope that they’re taking this opportunity to build that up. There are a lot [00:09:00] of very good engineers with a lot of experience in the industry in that area that are working in other fields at the moment because, you know, there’s been a lot of contraction in Denmark.

So I don’t know, it seems like a really good time to hire back some of that really in-depth knowledge and, yeah, get a- get ahead of, you know, some of the future quality problems. We’re going through such a hard time at the moment from the fast development that happened in the 20-teens when there wasn’t a whole lot of money around.

We’re dealing with quality problems now, so, you know, maybe we can get ahead and not have the next round of them if we can invest in just a lot more, uh, engineering capacity.

Allen Hall: When you have success like Vestas has, usually the upper level management and some of the executive team starts getting pilfered, that they’ll get offers to repeat that success at another company, and it sounds like that process has started already.

There’s a couple of executives that have recently departing or are in the midst of departing from Vestas. [00:10:00] I would see that continuing f- at least for the next six months, uh, because everybody wants to repeat that, right? If you can get a 20% increase in your valuation overnight, uh, I can, I can list a number of companies, regardless of industry, that would love to participate.

Even in a 5% increase, that would be remarkable. So, um, Vestas is gonna have a hard time holding onto this. That’s just the nature of the business where things are successful, people will wander. And Rosemary, I, I think they’re– And Yolanda In, in my book, Vestas should sort of s-stand down and just make quality products.

I’m not sure you sh-should tinker too much at the time being and just make the good stuff better. That seems like a way to really increase profits.

Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, solving a lot of the issues that– And, and that’s not just a Vestas exclusive thing, right? All of these OEMs have some sort of issue that maybe– I know Rosie’s touched a lot on, on it, where [00:11:00] you build this version A and then version B solves one of the small little issues, but now it creates another little problem, and then you have version C, and then everything just kinda has its own niche little issue, um, that really expands over time.

So if they could solidify what they already have in, in a, in a model that, that would help them just even keep a lot of their customers, I think that’d be great, and it would help, certainly help them, um, not continuously, like, rotate around the customers, ’cause it almost feels like, at least in the States, right, you, you get GE to be really, really strong and have a huge market share, and then GE starts focusing more on gas turbines, so then they all go onto Vestas, and then they all go onto Ontara now.

Um, and then just, you know, just kind of everybody starts cycling through them because they just kind of want something that’s better quality than what they’re getting in the long haul.

Matthew Stead: Allen, you, you talked about you think there’s something big under the hood. I think you, you [00:12:00] thought that maybe Vestas was angling towards something or being quite bullish.

Do you think that they might take over GE Vernova?

Allen Hall: I don’t think they’re gonna grab Vernova, and I don’t think Vernova is for sale at the minute, but I wonder if Siemens Gamesa is, or Nordex. I mean, Nordex has done terrific the last couple of quarters and is making inroads in places that I didn’t think possible three, four years ago.

Uh, the European marketplace is be- becoming really unique in that sense that there’s a lot of money being put out. But is there a sole perfect solution for Europe? Not at the minute, ’cause you got two competitors there, and then China trying to, to work its way in. Will the Europeans come together and form something more united, even if it’s just a partnership, a loose partnership, versus letting China on the shores?

We’ll see. 64 of the largest machines that Vestas has builds are standing off the German coast, but one blade is missing a [00:13:00] piece. We’ll talk about that when we come back.

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Allen Hall: Well, Germany’s largest offshore wind farm is now fully installed, and EnBW confirmed this, uh, past week that all 64 of the Vestas V236 15-megawatt turbines are s- standing at the He Dreiht wind farm about 85 kilometers northwest of Borkum. Uh, 960 megawatts, [00:14:00] 2.4 billion euros invested. Man, these offshore projects are expensive to get installed.

Uh, so it’s power for roughly 1.1 million households, and there’s no state subsidy behind any of it. And so this is a little bit of a u- unique situation. Uh, th- well, the one footnote about the wind farm is they had a V236 blade break and fall into the North Sea, and they had fished it out and I think I passed along s- pictures that I saw online of, uh, one of the police boats pulling the shear web out of the water I don’t know what to think anymore about some of these offshore blade issues.

Obviously, Vestas is very conscientious about it and will be doing RCAs and engineering reviews and all the above to go identify what the problem is. But it does just lead to a little bit of a pause of do– what is going on for some of these offshore [00:15:00] wind blade installations or, or whatever’s causing these blades to break?

Do we have a good handle on it? Yolanda, is– are we following up on all the design details so that we can prevent these things in the future?

Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’d, I’d hope you’d be following up on the design, right? Like, and, um, but I think there is still a little bit of a disconnect from, from what we’ve seen, and again, not just Vestas exclusive, um, between the people who are designing and the people who are manufacturing, the people who are in operations, right?

So, uh- The, from what we’ve heard, uh, this could have potentially been a, um, partially because of a transportation issue, which is what happens a lot in onshore. It’s a lot more common than we would like it to be. Um, and so that even goes beyond what would go on in the design studio and what would go on in the manufacturing and what would [00:16:00] go on even just for the people that are running the site, right?

So, so some sort of, um, in between, uh, EPC error. Um, but yeah, I just think that, like in a lot of industries, there should be a lot more communication between all of these teams on the lower level, so that way a lot of these problems can, can be avoided.

Allen Hall: I’m wondering if it’s actually an issue on the, the testing side.

And, uh, the one question that just popped up, and we saw from the ORE Catapult, uh, survey that’s being conducted at the moment, and if you haven’t participated in that, you just visit ORE Catapult and answer some of the survey questions. But torsion on a blade, which is very difficult to test for, and it really isn’t tested for today, but does happen during the move and the transportation of these big offshore blades.

Is it one area that we need to do a little more work in or maybe spend some more time focusing on it to see what is happening as blades are [00:17:00]moved?

Rosemary Barnes: The thing about te- torsion is that it is much more significant as blades get longer. I can’t, I can’t remember the equation off the top of my head, which is, um, bothering me.

But I think it scales with, like, the fourth power or something of, of length. And so whilst it was always a bit of a problem, it’s much more of a problem as it gets, as blades get bigger. I mean, they’ve never, like, fully tested a blade, and there was always a lot of reliance on, hey, y- you know, like we’ve tested certain things that is possible to test in a test facility on the ground.

But they also rely on their decades of experience of how blades actually behave in the field. But, you know, remember, that’s a real lagging, lagging indicator because y- you know, their decades of experience is mostly with lots smaller blades. Now, blades are really different because they’re longer and different effects are, are taking over.

It’s not just, uh, torsion, but it’s also the laminates get much thicker, and then y- you know, you, you have issues with the way that they’re curing, [00:18:00] and there’s a lot more just space for, um, defects to be present in a really thick laminate All of those things add up. Oh, yeah, then add in addition, like new materials, carbon fiber is new, and then new ways of producing it, you know, pultrusions, um, all kinds of different materials like balsa’s being replaced with foams and, um, like, you know, 10 times that number of what sounds like a small innovation, but all of these things have the potential for damage and don’t have a really long track record in the field to be able to kind of calibrate.

We do need to remember that, like, when you do something new, things are gonna break, uh, sometimes, they’re gonna fail sometimes. If they don’t, then you’re definitely being too conservative, and your product is costing more than it should, and nobody wants more expensive wind energy, right?

Matthew Stead: Rosie, Rosie, I, I know you’re doing some, some excellent work on, um, industry studies around erosion and temperature and so forth.

Um, I just wanted to let a little secret out of the bag that, um, in the future there will also be some [00:19:00] other studies on torsion and blade twist and blade dynamics. So, um, just a few things are in, in train at the moment, which I can’t share, share, but, uh, watch this space around better understanding blade twist.

Allen Hall: The Hydride wind farm runs on European turbines, but the next one might not. Two governments with two very different answers on who gets to build Europe’s wind fleet.

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Well, two countries and two decisions, one question. In Scotland, the UK government blocked plans for the Chinese manufacturer Mingyang to build a turbine factory, uh, near Inverness on national security grounds. 1.5 billion pounds of investment, up to about 1,500 jobs. And First Minister John Swinney has asked the new prime minister to reconsider.

And the UK energy secretary minister called that request irresponsible. Meanwhile, up in Denmark, Vattenfall has just won two offshore wind farms and will not say whether it will buy European turbines. Danish suppliers are not taking that quietly. So [00:21:00] the Scotland question about the Mingyang factory is at least being discussed again with the new prime minister in the UK.

It does seem like there’s a lot to do and get the government formed and make all this stuff happen. But I don’t see a Burnham administration changing the outcome for Mingyang, but I could be wrong. At the, the same time, Vestas is pushing for a more Eurocentric focus and to really keep out the Chinese.

Uh, something has to give here pretty soon.

Matthew Stead: I actually think Mingyang should, um, set up a factory in Scotland. I, I mean, what’s wrong with that? I mean, uh, why is that a security issue?

Rosemary Barnes: Set up the factory and put the, like, whatever you’re worried about, put protections in place for it, require it to be a local joint venture or whatever.

You know, we’ve seen the blueprint in many of what used to be, you know, less rich countries. That’s how they, you know, got a head start on some of these technologies. It’s not like, I don’t think that China [00:22:00] has a head start on wind, wind turbine technology, but they certainly have different ways of doing things that, um, yeah, we could, we could learn from.

But I think across the board, wind turbines, batteries, solar panels, whatever, let them set up factories, put the rules in place that mean that your country benefits from it and you’re getting the, you know, the information transfer.

Yolanda Padron: Do you think that’ll, like, impulse a lot of these more established European companies to maybe start fixing some of the issues that they’ve known about for, for a while, um, particularly regarding the blades and everything that we’ve talked about earlier?

Like, there’s enough competition there, so maybe they need to start looking a little bit more deeply into their problems.

Allen Hall: Do we think that Chinese operations have been out front, forward, honest, I’ll even use, about their blade issues?

Rosemary Barnes: No, but this is a good way to find out, isn’t it?

Allen Hall: Governments decide who is allowed to build a turbine after a discussion on Scotland.

Uh, but, but [00:23:00] occasionally, a court decides what a turbine legally is. India has just settled that question, and the reasoning should be of interest to anybody who ships machines across a border right after this. As wind energy professionals, staying informed is crucial and let’s face it, difficult. That’s why the Uptime Podcast recommends PES Wind Magazine.

PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to wind, PES Wind has the high-quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit peswind.com today. A tax fight in India has produced a definition every turbine supplier should read.

Is a wind turbine bolted to a concrete foundation movable goods, or is it immovable property? State tax authorities argued immovable, which would have [00:24:00] taxed erection and commissioning contracts at 18% instead of 5%. The Andhra Pradesh, uh, High Court disagreed, and on the 12th of August, the Supreme Court declined to interfere.

The reasoning rests on something this whole industry takes for granted. A turbine can be taken down, moved, and put back up. So a turbine is a movable object, and it has less taxation. Bonus. So this is a really interesting discussion that’s happening in India because it’s probably symptomatic of things we’re seeing elsewhere across the world about taxation for wind turbines, right?

That, um, if there’s a way to tax a wind turbine, we’re gonna try to do it. This is a unique way, uh, that happens in India where depending on if it’s permanent or movable, the tax rates are different. I, I guess that would apply to a lot of components inside a wind turbine too, Matthew, don’t you? Like the, the generator, the, the big heavy things, [00:25:00] gearbox, generator, blades, rotors, tower sections, would be taxed at a, a lesser rate.

Matthew Stead: I agree with the court case that it’s all movable and, uh, you can actually buy turbines on the secondhand market, can’t you? I mean, if I wanted to buy, yeah, whatever, whatever, I could buy one and, and put it up in my backyard if I had a bigger backyard. Um, so yeah, I vote for movable. I vote for lower taxes.

Yolanda Padron: The way that it would work a lot of times in the US is, I mean, it’s, you pay, the company itself pays a lot less than they would’ve over time, right? Just by pure, the, the regular kind of tax laws. Um, but the community, there’d be just direct donations to the community, so then they’d get, uh, like money would actually come into the community where the turbines were being built instead of just distributed around the state, which I mean, in a state as big as Texas, it gets, um, but easier for that c- um, that county to get a lot more, uh, funding than they would typically get if it was [00:26:00] through a big enough area.

Um, but yeah, no, I agr- I completely agree with you guys that, that this should be a movable good. I mean, how many times have we seen, uh, even just a blade, um, that it looks like it’s, uh, just a, a failed blade that they have to go in and replace, and then they take it out, fix it, and then just bring it back to the same site or take it to another site across the country.

And, and to that point, like if you were to h- judge it as something that’s immovable, would then any blade replacement just not be taxed? Because then it’s, you’re moving that one component and two, but it’s essentially the same turbine. Like, I don’t know how that all would make sense.

Allen Hall: I think the Uptime Supreme Court agrees with the Indian Supreme Court that wind turbines are movable, and that’s good.

Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. If today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. [00:27:00] Reach out to us on LinkedIn. And if you found value in today’s conversation, please leave us a review. It really helps other wind energy professionals discover the show.

And don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. For Rosa, Yolanda, and Matthew, I’m Allen Hall. We’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast.

Vestas Shares Jump 20%, UK Blocks Ming Yang Factory

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Vermont and Florida: A Key Difference

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Can’t swear that the story here is authentic, but it sure rings true.

Vermont is a somewhat quirky state, but it protects its citizens very well. FWIW, this is where I want MY tax dollars going too.

Florida is a deeply red state that, true to form, wants as much ignorance as it can possibly produce. Educated people aren’t voting for people like Ron Desantis.

Vermont and Florida: A Key Difference

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