Weather Guard Lightning Tech
IntelStor Insights into Wind Turbine Blade O&M Costs
Phil Totaro, CEO of IntelStor, dives deep into the latest trends and data surrounding onshore wind turbine blade operations and maintenance costs. He discusses the strategies and innovations being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce downtime, and drive down costs.
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 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. As the wind energy industry continues to grow and mature, the focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency has never Been more important. Operations and maintenance costs can account for a significant portion of the total cost of energy production, making it a critical area of concern for wind farm operators and energy users alike.
In this episode, Phil Totaro, CEO and founder of IntelStor, will share the latest data and trends related to Onshore Wind Turbine Blade Operations and maintenance costs, which everybody’s wondering about is going to provide some valuable insights into the current state of the blade industry and how we manage blades.
You also discussed some of the strategies, innovations being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce downtime, and ultimately. Drive down costs, so whether you’re a wind farm operator, an energy user, or just simply interested in the future of renewable energy, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Welcome again. Thanks, Allen. Thanks for having me. So the IntelStor report you just published, and there’s some news about it on LinkedIn, is really fascinating because Joel and I have been wandering around Oklahoma and Texas and other parts of the country looking at blades. And there is a lot of concern.
About the costs associated with damaged blades and how to forecast that and how to appropriately budget for them, particularly in terms of all the new types of blades that are being introduced, the bigger generators, the three megawatts, the four megawatts, the six megawatt machines versus the one and a half and two megawatts that we’re kind of used to it becomes really a guessing game for a lot of operators because they don’t have a sense of How much is it going to cost me to operate this turbine, and how do I manage that, and how do I appropriately schedule my technicians?
Like, how many technicians do I need for a season? These are subjects that come up all the time, and, and if you’ve been around anywhere in Canada or the United States over the last year, there’s so much more talk about it now. And this is where your new tool comes in, your Onshore tool. Basically estimator or looking at turbine size versus the types of damage a blade may suffer.
Phil, will you, will you walk us through what this tool is at the top
Philip Totaro: level? Sure. Of course. So, What we have been repeatedly getting asked about is, for the ISPs we work with, they want to understand the, a detailed market forecast. And the only way to get to a detailed market forecast is, we obviously know based on the work that we already do, how much capacity we’re expecting to be installed.
And that’s not based on like estimates, that’s based on actual pipeline of turbines. And so we know in markets like the United States or Brazil, where, there’s reasonably good detailed publication of those turbine sizes, we, we’ve built out that, that pipeline. But what we then needed to do was determine, all right, how many of those units are going to be online within the next, 10 years or so?
What’s the, most importantly, what are the top kind of failure modes? And then what’s the probability and, and kind of the annual failure rate for each one of those type of failure modes on the turbine as a whole. And then we started looking at blades in particular because it, as it turns out, most people will recall either anecdotally or through some previously published information that gearboxes were probably the most expensive.
Item in terms of downtime that you could have on a smaller turbine. But as we go bigger the gearboxes and generators have actually become more slightly more reliable. You still have, your, your periodic faults and failures. But they’ve developed a lot of technology through either modularization or other up tower cranes and things like that that allow you to service gearboxes, generators, etc.
in situ. Blades, if you’ve got a major issue, you probably still need to take it down. And that can either involve a single blade swap kind of, crane mechanism or a big crane. And it’s basically all that said, what’s happening now with bigger turbines is the bigger the turbines go, the The more cost is involved because of the amount of repair time and the crane cost associated with undertaking that type of repair.
So as compared to gearboxes or generators or pitch systems and, and maybe main bearings that used to be like the, the biggest causes of, O& M expense and, and the biggest impact on downtime. Blades are now kind of, unfortunately, taking the, the lead. And I guess right up your alley, lightning is probably still, like, one of the number one causes of both minor repairs and major.
Repairs and replacements.
Allen Hall: Yeah, so we’re seeing the, the common faults that existed on the one and a half megawatt machines and two megawatt machines when they move up to three and four megawatt machines. They didn’t always require a crane. Pretty much when you get to three megawatts, four megawatts, you’re going to require a crane from most of the, the major items.
Any sort of trailing edge bond line on the back end to lightning damage to any, anything internal. Boy, it just seems like there’s a real risk reward to using a larger turbine at the minute. And, and that’s where I think this data is very interesting because we, we are moving away from the one megawatt machines.
We obviously we’re kind of the one and a half to two range at the moment. Right. And then we’re going to be in the threes. What does that mean in terms of operational costs? What do we need to be planning for here? Do we need to be ordering more cranes? Do we need to have other plans
Philip Totaro: to deal with this? So there’s a couple of things at play here.
One is Besides lightning damage, one of the number one expenditures that you’re going to have is actually been a fatigue failure in the route. That’s again, according to the data we’ve got, as far as the probability of occurrence and, and the annual failure rate, that’s one of the highest impact repairs that you’re going to have.
Again, besides lightning damage and followed closely by transportation damage, which, unfortunately, transportation damage is just kind of part of the cost of doing business, so to speak. But it can, it can vary. You can get to site and notice that you’ve got a few little things, maybe in the chips in the top coat that you just need to fix, or you could actually have some some severe issues with leading or trailing edge cracking or other things, you might get to site and notice that you’ve got some, missing parts or, or things like that.
Maybe they’re the the root inserts weren’t weren’t aligned perfectly correctly or, or something like that, when you go and try to install. So. There’s all kinds of things that, that can, have an impact here, but those are, those are probably the, the top issues you’ve got.
And then, you’ve, you’ve still got, while it’s infrequent, a full separation of the blade is probably the, the number five thing that happens in terms of total cost impact. So we’re looking at just for the U. S. market, by the way this year, it’s about 2. 5 billion in blade repairs that we’re anticipating are going to be necessary.
By 2030, we’re talking about 3 billion. And by, we, we only did our projection out about 10 years, but by, within 10 years, it’s going to be around 3. 3 billion. And that’s assuming that you have turbines that have no service lift. For turbines with a service lift, thankfully and since most, three, four, five, six megawatt turbines are gonna be installed that way from, from now on We’re looking at, anywhere from about two and a quarter billion up to, maybe three billion within ten years.
So, whether you’ve got a service lift or not, we’re talking, close to three billion dollars in, in a blade repair market alone that is Going to need to be serviced and those costs are continuing to inch up. So the other aspect of this that, that you asked about was regarding the growth in turbine size and, and power rating.
And what we’re noticing is that it’s not necessarily reducing the. The frequency of occurrence and the annual failure rate for specific failure modes. You’re still seeing lightning damage. In fact, with longer rotors, you may we don’t have enough data, unfortunately, because there’s not enough turbines out there, but you may actually see an increase in lightning damage as a result of longer blades.
So the reality of this is these, we’re kind of considering these estimates to be a bit conservative at this point. And we’re, we’re looking at a scenario where as turbines are getting bigger, Yes, you get more power out of it but you also get a higher impact on your downtime because for a single turbine going down, you’re not only talking about the repair cost and time you’re also talking about the, the loss of production.
And with that much of a, of an impact on lost production, it’s actually just as financially impactful to the asset owner. Because keep in mind that when we calculate these repair costs and the numbers I’ve just quoted, that’s literally only the, the actual cost of repairs. That’s not even taking into account the downtime which we will be kind of factoring into this.
When we kind of expand on this analysis later, later this year we want to be able to get down to a point where we can see what that impact is going to be on, on owners depending on the, the frequency of occurrence and regional distribution and all that, that sort of thing.
Allen Hall: So what I have seen from the field is as operators have chosen larger turbines, it seems great, right?
There’s less wires in the ground, fewer pads. Concrete everything adds up on that side, right? So it’s just less stuff, but what I’m seeing on the blade side is blades are newer less service history Transportation tends to be more of a problem You see more blade damage from transporting and lifting because of the blades have just gotten bigger and they’re harder to manage On top of that the the unknowns are still there, right?
so instead of We don’t have a good understanding, in some cases, in the early in the design phase of some of the twisting moments and, and the weird things you see out in the field. So you just experience it once they get out there. So instead of having a one and a half megawatt machine in which you have a proven service history, you get it up with this new big massive blade out there.
And what I’m seeing is that the failure rates go up. Not down. So the, the history we have with smaller blades seems to stop with those smaller plates. That’s not, you’re not having a, like a 3 percent failure rate doesn’t seem to be steady across platforms. What seems to be happening as the platforms get larger, the failure rates go up.
So even though you’re putting in fewer turbines, you’re, you’re still working against the failure rate going up. So you’re still roughly losing, you’re losing more power out of the farm than you were previously by having larger turbines is what it So is there really a savings? And this is where I want to get to folks.
I think this is the interesting piece to the analysis is, is it actually less expensive to put more turbines in of a lesser
Philip Totaro: power rating? If the availability is better and the reliability of the components is better, then yes. And, but here’s the thing, here’s the catch on why everybody wants a bigger turbine is because it’s necessarily a bit lower upfront CapEx.
It can, it can lower the, like you said, it’s a fewer number of pads, fewer electrical connections, et cetera. So everybody thinks about it in terms of, Oh, I’ve got to finance this, this project. And we’ve got to reduce the upfront CapEx as much as possible. So how can we do that? Well, let’s get the biggest turbines we can get.
And that’s the mentality. That’s what’s being, so basically what’s happening is developers and. The asset owners that they’re, if they’re doing a build and transfer a business model the asset owners and the developers who originally built the projects, they aren’t necessarily taking into account this total cost of ownership.
They’re assuming that, certain fault and failure rates that are underestimating what we’re actually seeing. And what it’s resulting in is actually bigger losses because of all the things we just talked about, what you’re seeing in the field and what we’re seeing from data.
Allen Hall: So the end of store data becomes really critical here because if you’re making those decisions, you need to understand a craneless repair versus a crane repair.
And the fact that it multiplies it times a hundred, a lot of cases on the cost and then the business interruption and all the other things that come with it. There is a real trade off here. We are crossing this threshold, which you guys are identifying of size versus quantity, right? That’s what it is.
Bigger size or more quantity. You need to pick one. The data, we don’t have a lot of data yet, and this is where I think the end of store data becomes really critical to the decision process, right?
Philip Totaro: Well, we hope so. And, and look, we’re, we’ve built this based on a data set that’s been collected from various independent power producers ISPs, and some academic research papers.
But we need more. And so this is a call to action, and frankly, an opportunity for asset owners and operators will pay you royalties for access to some of this information. You don’t have to give us like necessarily site specific data. We would certainly prefer to have turbine specific data so that we could identify which OEMs are really kind of, or which products are really the, the red headed stepchild, if you will, of the, the product family.
But we need to be able to quantify it. I think a lot of people know, kind of anecdotally, it gets talked about, texts from different sites talk to each other, Oh, this thing’s a big pain in the butt. That thing’s not, but You know that we need to quantify it and and in quantifying it at the end of the day, the reason that we do what we do with all this data is we’re trying to tell a story and we’re trying to attract investors to this industry.
Okay, we’ve got a good story to tell. Despite the fact that we’re going to have this, this O and M challenge, we’ve got a really good story to tell in terms of cost of energy in terms of, greening the electric system there, there’s a great story to tell here, but we need data to be able to convince people that we’ve got, a place where they can feel confident in parking their money.
The more data we can get our hands on in terms of fault and failure rates, in terms of, time it takes to do a particular type of repair, which, frankly speaking, It doesn’t necessarily have to be that sensitive, okay? It’s, we’re, we’re just trying to, come up with the best estimates that we can so that we can all work together to try and attract more investment to this industry.
That’s ultimately what we need to be able to do, and, and having the data at our disposal as an industry to be able to tell that story is absolutely essential.
Allen Hall: Does this help us better understand where the next plateau of wind turbine sizes will be? Like GE and Vestas have done offshore at 15 megawatts, is there going to be a data point crossing where you say, All right, 3 megawatts is as far as we should go onshore because it is the most efficient machine we’re going to be able to build and transport and install and maintain today.
Anything bigger than that is going to be trouble. For Doesn’t that data lead us to that kind of decision matrix and also in terms of PPAs? Because the PPA market is a sort of a fixed market out there And if you know what that sort of ballpark cap is for PPAs You’re really trying to keep your costs well underneath those PPAs ideally
Philip Totaro: that’s going to have a decision matrix too, right?
Well, and keep in mind something that we’ve been analyzing recently, which was If you’ve got a PPA that’s below what you’re getting for production tax credit revenue, so basically if your PPA is below, like, let’s say 26 a megawatt hour or, 26. 80 or whatever it’s indexed to these days, if you’ve got a PPA below what you’re getting for PTC revenue, you are absolutely dependent not only on the PTC revenue, but you are absolutely dependent on high availability.
If you do not have high availability, you’ve got a big problem, a revenue problem, and you’re not only going to have to repower, but you’re probably going to have to repower with refinancing a substantial portion of your project site. In that repowering cost any residual value that you haven’t already paid off from the original project, you got to carry that over if you’re debt refinancing your project or whatever you’re doing you’re, you’re going to have a certain amount of, of money left over that you’re going to have to include in, in that refinance.
The more you can pay that down, the faster it, which again, translates back to high availability. The, the faster you can generate revenue on your project, the faster you can reduce the residual value of your project down to a point where you’ve, you’ve broken even and you’re seeing a net positive return on capital that is essential in terms of financial health and, and portfolio viability.
The good news is we’re seeing merchant market prices trend back up there around, 35 to 40 this year. But, going back a few years, I mean, you were seeing power purchase contracts in the U. S. market get executed down like 10, 11, 12 for, for some projects. Now they might have only been like a three or five year duration on that On that PPA, but it’s still a problem, like you, if you’re not going to be able to then transition into a merchant market, if you’re going back to these, power off takers that are only going to pay you like 15 bucks a megawatt hour, you have to be on top of your availability.
Because availability equals PTC revenue equals financial viability of your project. And that’s
Allen Hall: where the IntelStor data comes in, right? Because IntelStor has done the analysis in all the wind farms in the United States to look at availability, which then goes to how the turbines are maintained, the type of turbine that is installed, all those little variables that do produce an availability number.
In a store has, you can go back and look and say, well, this turban did really well in this part of the country because they’re using this type of maintenance scheme. Maybe I want to repeat that because I know what my output will be at the end of the day. Well, my payback
Philip Totaro: time will be right. Absolutely.
And this goes back to what I just talked about. We’re trying to tell a story about. If there’s a particular asset owner or operator that’s doing a really good job and has a really financially healthy portfolio, that’s the kind of, place that investors want to be able to park their money.
That’s the type of, the people who originally developed that project. They’re going to get, an easier time of it, trying to go get financing. The people who are owning and operating those projects are going to have an easier time of it going and getting financing. And it’s largely down to the fact that they’ve taken things like this O& M challenge seriously.
They, they’ve recognized the fact that we’re seeing these issues and they’re getting on top of it by being proactive with their maintenance. Because of, again, all these things we just talked about, you need high availability, you need to reduce your OpEx cost, you need to reduce the frequency with which things fail, and you need to be able to detect that something’s going to fail earlier, so that before you need to call out a crane, you can, you can address it, and you won’t have that that escalation of cost that you necessarily see.
Thank you. So this was, I mean, look, I’ll go back to when we had our IntelStor event the O and M in San Diego, back in February, there was an independent power producer who was there that specifically asked for this. They, they wanted to know how much, we’ve got a finite amount of, of budget to spend, how much can we realistically.
Get out of, addressing all the things that were like a cat 4, cat 5 damage on, on the blade that we have to address to be able to get it back up and running. But going down into things that were maybe cat 2 or cat 3. Should we really put off doing the maintenance on those or are we going to get to a point where we’re going to incur a substantially increased cost later because we’re going to have more crane callouts than we would otherwise have?
And anytime you can reduce crane time, everybody already knows inherently that’s, that’s critical. And I
Allen Hall: think this data from what I’ve reviewed of it drives you to some questions about continuous monitoring systems. very much. And other types of systems just to, to keep your turbine from, and that could be technicians having more touch time with the lifts inside the turbines where you can get up and down and take a quick look like, like blade bolts seems to be a big issue, pitch bearings, big issue, right?
That seems to be industry wide. You, you have to stay on top of these things where before, I think, five years ago, ten years ago, you weren’t as on top of them, you didn’t need to monitor them, your farms were smaller even, and now that we kind of crossed this threshold, we’re like, Sunzea, which is, I don’t know how many turbines, 650 turbines or something like that.
Those numbers are massive. There’s no way you’re gonna be able to monitor all those turbines. Doesn’t that, with the, especially with the data you have, and the failure rates, and the projections forward, doesn’t that really force your hand into some sort of continuous monitoring systems so that you can then keep track of what your failure rates are and get ahead of some of these maintenance items.
Philip Totaro: The good news is that the reason that condition monitoring had such a hard time getting adopted with smaller turbines was because of As a percentage of cost of the overall turbine capex, a condition monitoring system was just too expensive. But the technology’s improved, the cost per kind of installed megawatt, shall we say, has come down a little bit.
Over the years based on just economies of scale with deploying more CMS systems. But as turbines get bigger, you can more sort of easily afford I’ll, I’ll say a full kind of condition monitoring system. If you’re getting up to the point where you have a four, five, six megawatt turbine, you’re almost going to want this because you also frankly, whether you’ve got a service lift or not, if you can avoid sending a tech up tower, That right there is, or multiple techs up tower, that right there is saving you, potentially thousands if not millions of dollars across your entire fleet during the course of a year.
If, if we go back to the data we just calculated, Cost Delta between for just for blade repairs for if you assume nobody’s got a service lift versus there’s 100 percent service lift adoption, it’s a diff it’s a difference of 300 million just in the time that techs are taking to climb towers. And that’s, again, that’s just for blade repairs.
We haven’t even done the math on, pitch systems, main shafts. Gearboxes, generators, converters, et cetera. Everything else that might necessitate having a tech go up tower. So, not, we’re, we’re not necessarily doing a, an advertisement for, the service lift companies, but, if I’m, if I’m the sales guy at a service lift company, I should expect my phone to be off the hook at this point.
Allen Hall: Yeah, I would imagine. So the, the IntelStor data is pointing everybody in the right direction. And I think the industry is starting to wake up to what, what data IntelStor has and the power it has and the advantage it gives you going forward, particularly as we build out more turbines across the United States and all over the world.
This data becomes important in the decision making process. So, Phil, how do people get ahold of you and check out IntelStor’s data?
Philip Totaro: They can visit our website, www. intelstor. com, intelstor.com/contact. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, any way you can get in touch. We’re always happy to have a conversation, and we’d love to be able to help you.
https://weatherguardwind.com/intelstor-wind-turbine-blade-om-cost/
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Gulf Wind Scales Uptower Repairs, Sheds Storm Loads
David King from Gulf Wind Technology returns to discuss serial uptower blade repairs, passive load shedding, and data-driven testing.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow
Allen Hall : David, welcome back to the program.
David King: Yeah, I’m so glad to be here. A lot’s happened since the last time I was on, so, uh, this is gonna be great.
Allen Hall : It’s been about a year. Mm-hmm. And last year we were at OM&S in Nashville, and you were talking about root fusion, and this is the insert fix uptower for the blade inserts, right?
So we’re having a lot of blade bolt issues, and the inserts are starting to pull out or become loose, and the blades are moving around. A lot of our operators in the States are trying to solve that problem, and they don’t wanna remove the blades and bring anything down tower. They would like to fix it uptower.
That’s where your solution came in. How’s that going?
David King: Yeah, so I mean, it, it’s really been a five-year journey for us. I mean, we’ve been doing this- I remember that, yeah … for a [00:01:00] very long time. You know, it started like any process does, with a problem statement. Sure. And we’ve been working through from problem statement, you know, going through process development, going through structural development, going through pilots.
Uh, we did a, a huge pilot deployments about three years ago, where those were being monitored. Um, we’re now in a position where we’re in serial deployment, and that’s what’s really exciting. You know, we’re doing about 200 blades a year, uh, of, of serial deployment. We’ve, we’ve done that now, uh, we’re going into our second year of that.
Nice. So we’re extremely excited by that. That comes with its own sets of challenges as you scale up. How do you maintain quality? We even touched a little bit on a few of these things last year. Um, but yeah, we’re really excited to be doing that. Uh, we’re trying to keep it, you know, again, process-driven.
How do you simplify a process that allows you to scale up appropriately, train people appropriately? A- a- and that’s what we’re really excited about this year, is being able to bring this, uh, so that we’re not, um, you know, basically supply constrained, ’cause there is a lot of demand for this, and still able to maintain a very high level of, of quality as we, [00:02:00] we scale up.
Allen Hall : Yeah, and that’s the key to all sort of repairs in the wind industry. You like to do it once and be done with the life of the turbine. Now, so you’re going uptower. You’re drilling some holes up along the blade, injecting those with a resin system, curing it, basically reinforcing what is already there That all makes sense to me.
Engineering-wise, that makes sense to me. But a- again, it goes back to the technicians and the training and the deployment of it. Are you starting to train technicians, bring them in, show them how to use the, use the machines and, and get them out in the field so they are ready to go? It, it… ‘Cause it seems like you’re at that threshold now.
David King: No, absolutely. So we, we believe in people first, right? Yeah. People at the end of the day make things happen. And so, you know, the best ways to do that is give people the right tools to be successful, and where that comes from is training. That’s a huge part of it. We have a, a certified training program that we run.
Uh, it started out as an internal program we were running. It basically has five levels to it. Uh, we’ve now extended that to, uh, enabling, uh, you know, basically [00:03:00] preferred partners to be able to take part in that training, uh, to be able to utilize modular kits, pumps and equipment, to be able to, you know, go out and meet that demand that’s out there, but do so in a way that’s, uh, controlled.
Yeah. And so really that comes back to that certified training program. And really, you know, level one is about a lot of your basic safety, procedural base type, uh, you know, making sure people are competent, uh, they’re not gonna get themselves hurt. Right. They’ve got the right personality traits about focus, uh, you know, detail focus and things like that.
Yeah. Uh, level two to that program is, is really about, um, basically getting people to a stage in which they can be a, uh, team member. Uh, they’re able to be on a team and contribute to that team in an effective manner, be in the field.
Allen Hall : That’s really important. A lot of-
David King: Absolutely …
Allen Hall : companies miss that aspect of being a team member instead of an individual.
Yeah, you have to work with other people. Yeah. It’s, it’s critical.
David King: It’s massively important. Personalities clash. You’ve got to be able to work through that sort of thing. And so that level one to level two is really kind of taking your green horn hat off and putting, “Okay, I, I, I can be on this team and I’m, I’m a, a contributing [00:04:00] member.”
And then at level three, that’s your team leads. Those are people that are leading teams. They’re leaders. They’re up and coming. They’ve got a career path, career trajectory. Level four is our mentors. That’s the people that are going out there and that are basically qualified to now actually mentor other people in the field.
Allen Hall : Yeah.
David King: And then your level five is train the trainer. How do you grow more trainers so that you’re not constrained on that training factor? And that, that’s kind of how we, we typically run training.
Allen Hall : Uh, and Gulf Wind has the ability to do that. I mean, I’ve been to your facilities, they’re impressive, and that’s one of the limitations for a lot of companies.
They don’t have the facilities to train people, and they don’t have the resources you do. That opens up a lot of opportunities. Obviously, you’re in the composite repair business. You have crews out fixing wind turbine blades. Some of the more complex ones is what I hear. I mean, I hear it secondarily, but I assume that’s what’s happening.
What are, are the areas that you get called in on to do composite repairs?
David King: We, we really do anything that stops somebody else. Okay. So we wanna be there when there’s a problem where you’re like, “I don’t know where to go next. Uh, this is a big [00:05:00] problem. We’re unsure. Maybe there’s a new technology at play.
Maybe it’s, uh, a carbon spar cap. Maybe it’s something, uh…” You know, obviously the root stuff that’s very complicated. Sure. And, uh, it’s just gonna require a little bit more engineering. It’s gonna require a little bit more rigor, and that- that’s where we say, look, we, we can, whether it means testing something, verifying something, training somebody on a process, developing a process- Yeah
or just doing something complicated, that’s where we excel.
Allen Hall : Well, that- that’s what I hear from the road is, uh, Gulf Winds here and I think, “Uh-oh. You must have a really serious problem because you’re calling in the experts to do the, the difficult things.” Carbon pultrusions, carbon fabric in, in blades today is such a massive problem because it’s not, it’s not fiberglass.
It’s just a lot more to deal with, and some of the loading issues we’re finding and, boy, it’s just all over the place. They need Gulf Winds Technology to, to come on site to give them a hand. Now, a- as part of the growth of the business, and you guys have been growing. Every year I, I see they’re just… it’s just a little bit bigger, a little more [00:06:00] people.
I walked on LinkedIn and hiring some engineers and some people to work over the summertime. That’s all great. What’s the structure look like now? How are you trying to organize yourself as a business?
David King: Yeah, so we really break down into three different structures. We have our service division, and that’s, um, putting people out there to solve problems in the field.
As simple as it gets, right? It’s like you’ve got a problem, we’ve got the right people with the right solutions, and they’re gonna go deliver, uh, a result. Um, and then we’ve got an engineering division. That’s about developing problems. It also has a lot to do with IP. You know, things like root fusion, that’s a pat- protected technology.
Sure. All of our technology, we do a lot of investments in, in, you know, patent protection and IP work, and so that sits inside that engineering division. Uh, it’s how we, we have the smarts of the company kinda sat in there. Uh, it also is what allows us to really get into some of these, uh, kinda juicy problem statements that are a little bit prickly maybe.
Uh, and we love getting into those and solving them. Yeah. And then the third and final thing is the composite side of things, and that’s the, the manufacturing. That’s that 30,000 square [00:07:00] foot composite manufacturing facility where we wanna be the best in vacuum infusion. We wanna be the best in prepreg, the best in pultrusions, complex assemblies, and be trying to de- uh, just deliver really high-quality composites to the industry.
Allen Hall : Yeah, and you have the equipment to do a lot of testing. And I think a, a lot of operators don’t realize what you have And the knowledge that’s sitting there, when I run into operators across the country that have complicated issues, particularly if they have carbon, I mean, oh my gosh, you, you need to be calling experts here.
And if they have issues they haven’t really sussed out, they don’t know, they don’t understand the engineering that went into that blade, they need to be talking to you guys about Why is this blade designed the way it is? How should I approach this? Do I need to be turning my turbines off until I figure out a solution?
A lot of times there’s not a lot of resources there because the, the designs are more complex than ever. But on the, on the same hand, I would say they’re not doing a lot of testing of their own materials. [00:08:00]
David King: Yeah, and there’s a huge space for that. And which is crazy. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s definitely a gap.
It is. And we see it as a gap that needs to be filled. Yes. And so that’s where, you know, we, we say you’ve gotta give the engineers the tools to be successful. Sure. And so what are those tools? You know, that could be anything from what does an aerodynamicist need? They might need a metrology scanner. Right.
So we do 70 million plus point scans of full blades. We’ve done now a full blade scan and, uh, I think we did it in about an hour, which was a, a new record of how quickly you could get 70 million points on a blade. Wow. And then that allowed- Uptower
Allen Hall : or
David King: downtower? It was downtower. Okay. Okay. It was outside in the field, but it was downtower.
Okay. It’s still impressive. So that was a little, little, little bit easier than uptower. Sure. Maybe that’s next. Um- Yeah. But, um, no, and then so what can you do with that? Well, then you can go, uh, really analyze, you know, the performance of that blade. Maybe you can go do something in a wind tunnel with it.
So coming back to that toolkit- Yep … an aerodynamicist needs a wind tunnel. We have aerodynamicists, so we have a wind tunnel. Then going on to, like, a structural engineer. What does a structural engineer need? Well, they need their FE tools. They need some good first principle approaches to, to structures.
But they also need test equipment. Right. They need to be [00:09:00] able to develop and characterize materials both in static and fatigue. And so we’ve made a lot of investment in those sort of test equipment, uh, so that we can, we can put numbers to things. You know, I think the wind industry needs more data. Less speculation and more data-driven decisions, and the, where that starts is really building up that test base.
And we, we believe in this thing called the testing pyramid, and what it is is, like, you’ve gotta characterize the material. That’s where you’re gonna have thousands of samples. Right. That’s your tensile, double lap shear testing, all the basics. Then you do your subcomponents. Add some geometry into that, that- Add some shape.
Exactly. Maybe that’s hundreds of samples. And then you’re gonna go on top of that to, like, your full component. And look, we don’t have a blade test stand yet, but- Right … that’s kind of that, that space. And then the final top of that pyramid is go do it in the field, get results- Run it … and then run that back into your design cycles.
And I think the more we can do that as an industry, the more successful we’re gonna be as an industry.
Allen Hall : Yeah, and I think a lot of operators don’t think they have to participate in that, and they’re sadly mistaken. And the fact that the industry has grown as fast as it has means [00:10:00] there’s some holes in some of the engineering that maybe they didn’t consider the, the site assessment properly or they didn’t understand some of the manufacturing variability.
Now you own this product, you’re gonna have to do some of the homework that maybe the OEM should have done. It’s your site. You own it. And a lot of times I think, uh, as an owner/operator, they don’t realize there’s resources. Like, okay, well maybe do some mechanical testing. Maybe the repairs I had last summer aren’t working out the way that I think.
Maybe I need to look at some materials
David King: and see if- And we want you to own your data. Well, that’s exactly it, right? That’s really what it comes down to is like you wanna own the data, know your blades, know your products, whether it’s, you know… I know you’re very, uh, you know, uh, specialized in lighting, really know your stuff.
Everybody’s gotta take that same approach. Know your stuff- You need to know it … or go find the experts that know it- Right … and work with them. Yeah.
Allen Hall : Well, at, at this point in the industry’s growth, you realize who’s all percolated towards the top, right? You, you, you see the companies like Goldwind that have the expertise in-house and, and have established themselves as a [00:11:00] knowledge center, as a resource for the US and globally, and there’s only a couple of those spread around the world in that- We as an industry need to be utilizing you more to help us solve problems.
Because if I don’t tell Gulf Wind what’s going on, Gulf Wind can’t help come to a solution.
David King: And we find that really, like, just the more you know, you start finding all sorts of new opportunities. Yeah. ‘Cause we almost learn what you don’t know, in a way. You kind of realize that, like, there’s so much more out there.
Yeah. And that’s where it gets really exciting. That’s where it’s like you can get these novel solutions, people who take creative approaches. Um, and, and I really think that’s what’s gonna take this industry forward, especially now when, you know, there are some headwinds for wind. And all that means is we’ve gotta get sharper, and we’ve gotta be, uh, more agile.
And I think it’s actually almost times like this that create some of the best, uh, behaviors in an industry to, uh, take it forward into the future really.
Allen Hall : Yeah. Wind’s not gonna go anywhere, but it’s being stressed a little bit. And in those stress points, we need to take the time to reflect and to make the industry [00:12:00] stronger.
But in order to do that, we need to be relying upon the sources that we have. There are global sources. There are so many resources to touch into. I think you guys are, are doing amazing things. Obviously, being down in your facility, seeing the wind tunnel, just blown away by that. Seeing the mechanical testing, seeing the, the 3D printing of air foils and all that work you’re doing, plus the ability to scan blades, do large scale studies.
I remember one was on CMS at the time, thinking, “All right. Somebody’s, somebody’s actually doing the right thing. There’s a study happening so we can understand what’s happening in CMS.” Like, those things need to happen as an industry to grow.
David King: Oh, absolutely. And I know you and I were at WOMA- Yes … quite recently.
Yeah. And we heard about that LEP study. Yes. And what a prime example- … of people going out there, getting real life data. Yes. And then, uh, making it accessible so that people can make smart decisions, and again, drive the cost of energy down and make wind successful. It’s, it’s amazing.
Allen Hall : It, uh- Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
But the transfer of knowledge is the key, right? And you guys are involved [00:13:00] in looking at some, what LEP will do to improve a blade, but also what leading edge damage will do to erode performance. Those are some of the things that a lot of operators don’t understand. Like, is that blade being in that damaged form even affecting my AEP?
It depends on the turbine, I think, a lot of times. But you better be asking the question at least. Talk to somebody who knows.
David King: Yeah. ‘Cause it, it’s really interesting. I mean, you know, I think it so much drives back to that business case for the operator, and they all have their own approaches. And, and really- Yeah
you know, most people are repairing LEP when it becomes structural. That’s the- That’s right … that’s the predominant approach. And, you know, I understand that approach very… You know, I, I get it from an operator’s point of view. Um, but yeah, there’s definitely, uh, other things you could do to try and make a, a data-based business decision.
Um- Sure.
Allen Hall : Sure. Now, what are some of the cool new things that Gulf Wind is working on, that you haven’t announced to the world yet, but you’d like to announce? I know you’ve been working on things. I’ve seen all the white papers being published. There’s some things- Back behind the scenes, what’s new?
David King: Yeah. I mean, so, you know, you take something like Roof [00:14:00] Fusion, right?
Right. Which is a long process to develop. So we, knowing that everything that, uh, you have as an idea is gonna take almost maybe three, four, five years to actually bring to market- Sure … we’re always starting on this constant cycle of development. Right. And so the things- You know
Allen Hall : it’s gonna be five years.
David King: Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, it’s like the patents on this stuff take three, four, five years to work out. Yeah. And so it- it’s a very important part of the entire process. Yeah. But to, to answer your question, we do have some exciting things both in the aero side, uh, side of the world. Uh, we have been doing a lot of development work around, uh, basically, uh, passive load shedding, so the ability for a turbine, or actually any structure, to be able to react to the wind in a passive manner.
Uh, so you don’t need any sort of mechanicals. You don’t need anything, uh, that’s going to break in the field, and the structure itself is able to actually react to the load that’s coming onto it and change its aerodynamic, uh, profile and change its load that it’s experiencing. So you get these… Uh, that’s a very interesting new technology.
Yes. Uh, it’s something that we’ve been working on for about three or four years now. It’s now, uh, [00:15:00] getting demonstrated, uh, which we’re very excited about. Uh, we also have some technologies, uh, around new connection types between metal and composites. So this is, uh, something that’s, uh, probably got a lot of, um, application in aerospace, but I think it’s also gonna find its way into wind.
And this is just a new way of really trying to fix some of the problematic joints that we’ve been dealing with now for the last few years, but looking forward, not looking backward. Yeah. Right. Sure. Not being retroactive. Right. But how do we do that next generation of roof pushing design, for example? And we’ve got a really exciting method for that, that, uh, is been tested now.
We have test results for it, and they look extremely good. Uh, we also are making some major CapEx investments this year into- Sure … new manufacturing equipment. So we have, um, some… I, I would say some, some pretty advanced, um, automation we’re trying to bring to composite manufacturing- Okay … around pre-preg carbon fibers and things like that, which is gonna be very, very exciting I think.
Uh, I hope it finds its way into the wind industry. It’ll probably start in other industries. Sure. Maybe kind of this, uh, [00:16:00] subsea, you know, and, uh, and air, uh, space first- Sure … you know, around UAVs, ROVs- Sure … that sort of thing. But I think it’s also gonna have applications in wind, and we’re really, really excited about that.
Well,
Allen Hall : that’s good because it, it does seem like wind is downstream of a lot of aerospace things ’cause it does, definitely costs money to develop those, and aerospace is a place where that can happen. However- If you work out all the kinks and you solve all the manufacturing issues, it is directly applicable to wind.
David King: And it’s massive volume. The beautiful thing about wind is that the volume, when you get something right and you do it right, you get to deploy technology. Yeah. Yes. You, you get to take it off the shelf- Right … and put it in the world and make it happen, which is, there’s nothing more exciting as an engineer.
Allen Hall : Well, I mean, in, in terms of blade manufacturing, how many times have we talked about automating that so we have less things like wrinkles and some ply issues, overlaps, those kind of things where automation would help, but we just haven’t really refined it enough to i- implement it at a large scale in a blade factory.
David King: Exactly. And it’s always usually too bespoke, you know? It is. It’s like you solve the problem for the, the 40-meter blade, and now- Right … there’s a [00:17:00] 45-meter blade, and we need all new CapEx. Right. And then it doesn’t, uh, doesn’t scale well.
Allen Hall : That doesn’t scale at all. No. Right. So that’s why they haven’t done it, is because they know the next generation of blade is coming.
It’s another 10 meters longer, and that’s not gonna fit in this building, and doesn’t make sense- We’re in trouble … to buy the equipment.
David King: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall : Right. So it, it, it’s a- Yeah … it’s a constant evolving industry. Now, I, I had looked at your load shedding patent application or patent. Maybe it came out as a patent.
David King: Yep.
Allen Hall : Mm-hmm. Okay. I wanna understand that a little bit since I’m here talking to you now. The load shedding piece was because, uh, you’re in Louisiana, that’s where hurricanes- Come up … every once in a while, if people haven’t read the papers. But the load shedding technology makes sense because now you can deploy wind turbines in places that you otherwise may not do it because of the risk of typhoons, hurricanes, even tornadoes on some level, some odd wind situations.
You wanna explain what that technology is? Yeah.
David King: Really what it’s doing is it’s trying to decouple the, uh, turbine’s ability to protect itself from its requirement to maintain power and maintain [00:18:00] control. So if you have something that relies on electrical hydraulics or anything like that- Yeah … it’s gonna be extremely susceptible to failing, uh, when- Yes
there’s a grid outage or when you have a battery that fails or, you know, most airplanes require, like, dual redundancy or triple- Triple … triple redundancy because of that very reason, and we just can’t afford to do that in wind. No. And so the innovation then that gets required is you have to have something that’s passive, something where the structure itself has been designed in a way where the laminate is designed in a way where it’s going to not react progressively like a linear fashion as you apply load, right?
It keeps bending and bending and bending. Right, right, right. But it’s gonna have quite a sudden reaction to a very particular load case. And so that’s what we’ve been able to do is-
Allen Hall : Okay …
David King: basically construct that laminate in a way where when it, the right load is applied, in this case, that’s the, the hurricane load or the extreme load- Right
we can shed that load, uh, completely by the structure simply reacting to the load, and that’s very exciting for wind. It has a lot of other applications ’cause- Sure it does … basically allowing you to hinge composites. We now can- Right … with [00:19:00] composites almost in an origami fashion, hinge them any way we want, which is really, really exciting.
Nice. And we’re excited to bring that now to other areas besides just wind and, and wind will be a key one as well.
Allen Hall : Sure it will. Yeah. Wow, okay. That’s cool. I mean, that’s why I follow Gulf Wind Technology on LinkedIn to see all the cool things that are coming out because, uh, if, if you’re thinking about- What’s new, what’s next.
There’s probably three or four places, honestly, in the world that I rely upon, DTE being one, Fraunhofer being another, and then Gulf Wind Technology. Like, okay, let’s… So they tram for it here. I… Let’s, let’s see what’s going on this week. That’s amazing. And I, I know that as you guys get more experience out in the field and people will start to recognize the name, it’s just only gonna grow to something even bigger.
So that, that’s fantastic. I know you, you spend a lot of time making
David King: this business go. We’re de- definitely very excited about it. Yeah. But with, with growth comes, you know, a, a discipline. Right. You have to be very disciplined. Yes. And so that’s something, you know, we’ve gotta be very focused on. Yeah. That’s where things like that certified training program are important.
Yes. It’s where [00:20:00] how we patent things is very important. Yes. How we, uh, you know, kind of set up company structure is very important. So I know we touched on a few of those subjects today. Yeah. But those are really just about trying to be able to maintain quality as we grow. A- and that’s really important to our customers, it’s important to us, and it’s how we maintain the brand.
Allen Hall : We gotta get back down to Louisiana. I’m really curious to see what’s happening inside the buildings and see where you’re at, because, uh, I know there’s great things happening there. And I really appreciate the time. Thank you for coming over to Australia. I thought your, your talks and your, your presentation and being on panels in Australia was really insightful to a lot of Australians, because you’re just bringing a different viewpoint into that marketplace.
And, and that’s what Gulf Wind does. So I, I appreciate all that effort. And, uh, yeah, we should connect up this summer. Come down and check out what’s going on.
David King: Absolutely. If you’re willing to brave the heat- Oh, no. … you are always welcome. And our aim is that every time you come to that factory, hopefully it’s like a, a whole new world.
We wanna surprise you with something new, because, uh, that’s the only way we can demonstrate progress.
Allen Hall : Oh, that’s a deal.
David King: So.
Allen Hall : Okay, great. Well, thank you,
David King: Dave. Great to see [00:21:00] you. Thanks
Allen Hall : for being on the
David King: podcast. Thank you very much.
Of course, there is no science or math behind the map here. But it fits the narrative that people are fleeing California because of its (you name it) environmental regulation, high taxes, woke ideologies, etc.
Why would anyone want to live in a state that, if it were a nation on its own, would be the fourth largest economy on Earth? Leads the planet in innovation? Where someone can ski and surf in the same day?
Better get yer ass down to Texas, the oil-drillin’ and death penalty capital of the world.
If you’re a racist moron who’s desperate to punish blacks, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQs, as well as intelligent, kind people, you can force yourself to believe that constant torrent of lies that come out of Trump’s mouth.
You go online our turn on the television, not to learn something, but go shopping for ideas that support the hateful crap that’s already in your mind.
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