MotorDoc’s Electrical Signature Turbine Diagnosis
Howard Penrose from MotorDoc discusses their electrical signature monitoring for wind turbines that offers precise diagnostics, enabling cost-effective preventative maintenance and lifetime extension.
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Allen Hall: Howard, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Well, we’ve been traveling a, a good deal and talking to a lot of operators in the United States and in Europe, and even in Australia. And, uh, your name comes up quite a bit because we talk to all the technical people in the world and we see a lot of things. And I get asked quite a bit, what is the coolest technology that I don’t know about?
And I say, Howard Penrose MotorDoc. And they say, who? And I say, well, wait a minute. If you want something super powerful to learn about your turbine, that is easy to implement and has been vetted and has years of in-service testing and verification. It is MotorDock, it is [00:01:00] empower for motors, it is empath for systems and vibration and all the other things.
And now empath, CMS, which is a continuous monitoring system that you’re offering that those systems are revolutionary and I don’t use that word a lot in wind. It’s revolutionary in wind and. Let, let me just back up a little bit because I, I want to explain what some of these problems are that we’re seeing in the field and, and what your systems do.
But there’s a, the, the core to what your technology is, is that you’re using the air gap between the rotor and the stator and the generator to monitor what’s happening inside the turbine. Very precisely. Can you just provide a little insight like how that magic happens?
Howard Penrose: Okay. It’s, it’s basically, we use it as an, as a basic accelerometer.
So, um, the side to side movement of the, of the rotor inside the air gap. Um. I could get very technical and use the word [00:02:00] inverse square law, but basically in the magnetic field I’ve got side to side movement. Plus every defect in the powertrain, um, causes either blips or hesitations in the rotation.
Basically, the torque of the machine, which is also picked up in the air gap, and from a physics standpoint. The air gap, the magnetic field, can’t tell the difference. And, um, both voltage and current see that as small ripples in the wave form, and then we just pull that data out. So, um, uh, I, I liken it exactly as vibration.
Just a different approach,
Allen Hall: right? And that that vibration turns into little ripples. And then I’m gonna talk electrical engineering, just for a brief moment, everybody. We’re taking it from the time domain to the frequency domain. We’re doing a four a transform. And in that four a transform, you can see these spikes that occur at, uh, known locations that correlate back to what the machine is doing
Howard Penrose: exactly.
[00:03:00] They’re they’re exact calculations, uh, down to the hundred or even thousandths of a hertz. Uh, so, uh, when we, when we do the measurements, they come up as side bands around, uh, whatever. The, the, uh, signature is, so the amplitude modulation, it’s an amplitude modulated signal. So I have, uh, basically the ripple show up on the positive side of the waveform and on the negative side of the waveform.
So around everything, I just have plus and minus line frequency. That’s, that’s basically the primary difference. Then we just convert it over to decibels, which makes it, um, relational to the load, which means load doesn’t matter. Uh, so I can compare an unloaded machine to a fully loaded machine and get the same results,
Allen Hall: which is also amazing.
So the load, what the turbine is doing doesn’t really matter at all, as long as it’s rotating and producing power. You can [00:04:00] monitor what’s happening, sort of anything up, and then the cell. Mostly,
Howard Penrose: well, it’s even, it’s even more fun than that because the air gap in a wind turbine is at a fixed speed for a dfi.
So, uh, it’s constantly turning at the exact same speed, which is basically all I need regardless of the physical speed. So, vibration, I need to know that physical speed and electrical signature. I need to know the air gap. Speed.
Allen Hall: So with this data and the way you’re monitoring what’s happening on the turbine is through current sensors on the feeds and voltage probes.
You could do one or the other and, and you’ve done both, and we can discuss that for a moment. But just using the what’s happening on the wires, on the generator wires, now he can determine everything that’s generally happening mechanically. So from gearbox to the blades. The, [00:05:00] the hub, uh, you can even determine things that are happening up tower a little bit like ya motors and that sort of thing.
If they’re acting weird, you can see changes there. And it’s sort of like the pulse of the turbine
Howard Penrose: and the main bearings. And the main bearings, right? So all the bearings never leave out the main bearings. That’s, that’s a study we’re involved in right now. So, um. Yeah. Uh, oh. Yeah. The, the study right now is, uh, we’re using the technology to map out circulating current sub tower.
Um, so we’re, we’re looking at, uh, why main bearings are failing, um, which was missed before. I’ve got an, I’ve got a paper coming out on it. We’re kicking off an NRE L study, uh, on it. And we are also working along with, um, groups in the field and an independent study all to. Well, a main bearing is a really expensive issue.
Um, and, and we’re fine. People are just [00:06:00] finally figured out that they were failing because of electrical discharge. And, um, the high frequencies associated with that basically caused the brushes to become resistors and the bearings to become conductors. So, uh, we now have a technology that allows us to look at these very high frequency sound or.
High frequency
Allen Hall: noise. Okay. Let’s just use that as a test case for your system for iPath CMS, because. That is one issue that pretty much everybody in the United States that uses a particular OEM has
Howard Penrose: actually, uh, you, you got, you hit it on the head. It’s just like the old W Ring thing. Everybody thought it was a specific, uh, generator manufacturer turned out to be every DFI failing the same way we discovered that.
Uh, we’ve also heard, uh, you know, a specific OEM and a specific. Type of platform. They were seeing the problems in the main bearings. And again, it just came about because people were talking about it. Except [00:07:00] guess what? We’re not just seeing it in the us, we’re seeing it globally. That’s one of the benefits we have with so many users worldwide is we’re finding out that all of these problems are not unique to us.
They’re global in nature and they’re cross platform.
Joel Saxum: So when we talk cross platforms and, and you, the listeners here will notice that I’ve been markedly absent from the conversation so far. ’cause it’s a bit over my head. Sorry. No, it’s, it’s just, this is, this is great stuff. But what I, that was one of the things I was wondering while we were going through this is we were talking about, um.
Solutions that you guys have that can solve specific problems. Now, does this say I have a direct drive turbine? Or like, is, is there any models or any types of technology that you can’t work on out in the field or does it Basically we have a solutions that can cover all turbines regardless
Howard Penrose: if it’s got a magnetic field, whether it’s a generator, motor, or transformer, we can see it.
I can follow that. So we even, we even, we even use [00:08:00] the technology in the industrial side for power monitoring for plants. Because we get, uh, we get good insights on what’s coming into the facility and what the facility’s putting back into the system, in particular with high frequency noise and stuff like that, that utilities are just now starting to pay attention to.
Joel Saxum: It’s just, this is an important thing for the CMS system that you guys have, because I’m, I’m thinking right now, okay, now, now again, I’m gonna dumb this way down, um, in my. Built Jeeps that I’ve done in the past, I’ve gotten death wobble in the steering wheel because of oscillations in the front axle.
Right? But that only happens at a certain speed, right? If I, if I could, if I could get through second gear at about 4,000 RPMs and grab third, I’m fine. But if I have to shift to 2,500 RPMs, about 32 miles an hour, I’m in a world of hurt, right? I’m, I’m shaking this thing down the road. So turbines I know will do that sometimes at certain RPM.
They will have vibration issues that will either go away or expand a resonance or natural [00:09:00] frequency.
Howard Penrose: Yeah,
Joel Saxum: right. Like at, at at, um, you know, four RPM is one thing at seven and a half rpm it goes away. So having cm, your CMS system, that’s their continuously monitoring when the wind speeds are low, when they’re high, when.
Does that help you pick up different anomalies within the turbine to be able to kind of pinpoint what’s, what could be happening?
Howard Penrose: No, because those frequencies are always present. They just amplify at certain points in speed, right? They, they hit a natural frequency, so they just oscillate like mad. Uh, I’m rereading all of my Tesla books right now.
So where, where he talks about that, you know, you could split the world like an apple if, if you hit the right frequency. Um. With a small device. Uh, so, uh, yeah, we see it across that entire speed range, even though you feel that oscillation. One of the nice things about, um, uh, electrical and current signature is it isn’t a structural vibration analysis.
Like if, if I [00:10:00] have the, um, structure or the machine vibrating outside, I see very little of that. I see all the drivers behind it instead. Right. So it, it’s, it’s less likely, uh, I’ll pick up a false positive because I hit a resonance. That amplitude remains the same.
Joel Saxum: That’s the difference between what you guys are doing and what and what everybody else is doing with a accelerometer, gy, gyro, whatever that sensor may be.
You name it,
Howard Penrose: accelerometer, ultrasound, all that other stuff. It’s all variations of,
Joel Saxum: of physical.
Howard Penrose: Yeah, and I refer to those as basically fault detectors. They’re dummy lights. Nobody’s actually using condition-based maintenance as condition-based maintenance. We can use the information to actually make modifications and changes.
Joel Saxum: You can actually diagnose with yours. That’s what we always say right now. CMS basically at, at this, at a general level is go and look at this turbine, bing. Go and [00:11:00] look at this turbine. You have a problem. Go and look. One of these blades has a problem. Go and look at it. But you are actually going deeper down saying diagnosis, Hey, this may be the actual problem that’s causing.
This issue in your turbine, and that is invaluable.
Howard Penrose: Yeah. One of our case studies is of a bearing a man, a a a a re, a reinstalled bearing on a, or an installed bearing on a drive end of a a wind turbine. The, um, it had some problems with, uh, the cage, which caused one of the roll balls not to rotate. Um, and it had some false brunel on in the inner outer race, and we saw that, but we also saw, uh, a much higher level in the thrust bearing in the gear box.
And so when we, we went back to them and said, yeah, you’ve got a problem here. Uh, they took the bearing back off, and then I said, make sure that you’ve got all the shims in the. And the, uh, coupling and they had left out a shem, so it had [00:12:00] caused a problem in the, so if we hadn’t detected the other thing, we would’ve detected the gearbox, um, bearing.
But they were ignoring that data and were looking at the bearing. They just replaced in the generator. So when, when they put everything back together, we were able to confirm that. All we saw after that was the friction losses in the, in the bearings.
My
Joel Saxum: question is, is okay, we’re looking at. Basically deltas outside of a, a sine wave and these peaks and valleys to in your, in the sign you’re detecting, how are you able to know, oh, I saw this delta here, or I saw this here.
That’s a thrust bearing. That’s a main bearing. That’s something here. Is that just years of knowledge built up from, okay, we saw this fault and we, we figured it was this because of it, or. How are you guys arriving at that?
Howard Penrose: Uh, it’s from my years as a, uh, vibration analyst, um, Navy trained vibration analyst.
Uh, [00:13:00] so, um, what, what was discovered by Oak Ridge National Labs in the 1980s? So this isn’t that new. As a matter of fact, this technology is direct descendant from Howard Haynes’s work another Howard. What we discovered was the frequencies are. For the most part, exactly the same as what we look for in vibration, just side bands, right?
Because we, we, you know, I tell people, how do you interpret the data versus vibration? Stand on your head and cross your eyes. Um, being former Navy, I sometimes use some other, you know, things such as go out and drink heavily. Uh, but in any case, um. Instead of looking from bottom up, we’re actually setting whatever the peak line frequency, current or voltage is, that’s zero.
And then we, uh, relate every other peak, um, based upon 20 times the log 10 of the difference in the current, from the current in [00:14:00] question back to that peak. Which is kind of cool because that also means that it’s. As my load changes, everything follows. So it’s not load dependent. The only thing that happens is frequency.
So you have to take enough of a, a data across a long enough time so that you can determine the differences between the, the components, right? So, so in a wind turbine for instance, I’ll have all those bearings in the gearbox, including the planetary gears. I have the main bearing, and they all kind of crowd around line frequency.
I need a resolution that’ll show me a hundredth of a hertz difference between any two peaks. It’s it’s vibration. It’s actually vibration. So the, each of the components, even each component of the bearing, ’cause I can call out which part of a bearing, and that’s actually how we analyze what conditions we’re looking at.
If it’s, uh, cage and ball only, and no signature off of the inner and outer [00:15:00] race, chances are it’s lubrication. Um, you know, that kind of thing on a main bearing. If I see the outer race cha and nothing else, chances are, uh, they didn’t clean out all the old grease and there’s dried grease across the bottom.
Uh, we discovered that actually with a couple of the, a couple of sites. So we, we say check, check greasing and condition of the inner and outer rays, you know, that kind of thing. And, uh, we’ve been right more than wrong. Uh, the, the quoted, the quoted number back from one of the OEMs is about 95% accuracy.
And when you consider, when you consider borescope has been identified at less than 50%, um, it, it, it gives you a really high accuracy.
Joel Saxum: We just had a conversation with someone the other day, Alan, you and I, about borescopes and how can you borescope so think that’s full of grease And they were like, oh, yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s difficult.
At best. Well, and that’s the power of [00:16:00] what Modoc is doing, and what Howard’s doing is that it can detect a range of problems early. And as we get into this area of where o and m budgets are becoming restricted, and you need to spend your money wisely. Do preventative maintenance, which is what MotorDoc is all about, is catching these things early before they become really expensive.
Electrical signal analysis is a very simple way to get that data, which is what the Empower Empath and then Empath CMS system are doing is they’re, they’re reading those electrical signatures and correlating back to where the problem is and the success rate is. Howard, as you pointed out, is. Really high, uh, a lot of systems that I see and I was just went to Europe and looked at some data on some other systems, it’s about 50 50.
Well, if 50 50, I could flip a coin at that point. It’s not of any use to me. It has to be somewhere north of 90 where I become interested. And your system, when I talked to operators that use it, [00:17:00] said, well, geez, um, you know, it’s well in the high, in the nine high nineties all the time and it’s amazing what they can pull out.
It’s this bearing or that bearing or this problem with this motor or this problem with the system and the amount of money they’re saving to pick up those problems early and to get them repaired when it’s lower cost or to keep an eye on ’em even, which is an option, lowers our operational budgets down and it makes sense.
So the, the cost of a CMS system is only relative to the money it saves. And I think this is where a lot of operators are getting a little hung up. There’s a lot of CMS systems, which are you pay per year for, and it’s a constant expanse. It adds up to the om OMS budget and no one wants to do that. What you’re seeing now with MotorDock is that system is a capital expenditure.
You buy it, it comes with the hardware, it comes with the [00:18:00] software, it comes with all the knowledge and all the updates I think are free. So. It makes a lot more sense to use a MotorDoc type of system and empath CMS than necessarily to, to put individual CMS systems on that maybe do less than what Howard can do.
Joel Saxum: I think an important thing here too, Alan, is as we get to, uh, an era of lifetime extension, I. People looking for that solution. How do I guarantee the safety of my turbine, the operation of my turbine as we continue to roll this thing forward? I know here, even in the states, we always say PTC, 10 year repower.
That’s not the case for all these turbines. We have 80 20 repowers. We have a lot of ’em. Like, Hey, we have a good PPA. So these things have been, these are 14 years old, we’re still gonna run ’em. We’re not repowering these, or in Europe or in other places in the world where we don’t have the same kind of tax setup we do, where they’re trying to squeeze as much life outta these in, you know, originally 20 to 25 year lifetimes.
Man, if you can put something on there that can tell you you’re good to go, or Hey, you need to watch this, or This is the next big spend you have coming up, they can help those operators to make decisions [00:19:00] to for lifetime extension in a really, really good way.
Allen Hall: Going into the data acquisition system and how it connects to the turbine, I know it’s one of the problems that we run into occasionally, is using anything that the the Tower has in terms of data streams.
They want of a lot of it information. Does your system plug into the data system of the turbine or is it independent, or how does that work and what is the security features?
Howard Penrose: Yeah, whatever they want. So, uh, that, that, and, and you bring up a good point, like wireless is not allowed. Um, but everybody’s using it, right?
Um, there’s a lot of things that aren’t allowed that we were, we were. Privy to during NIST’s work and, and others’ work on cybersecurity on the hill, because I was advising that stuff back in the, you know, back, uh, prior to 2020 and a little bit afterwards. Um, so, uh, uh, [00:20:00] yeah, we, our system was originally designed for nuclear power plants.
So, uh, it’s meant to either. It’s a wired system basically, that you can take back to an independent server. You can have it go locally and send it through your own, uh, own network. Um, it doesn’t need to connect to cloud or somewhere else. Uh, if you want to keep it itself contained. Uh, in some turbines we have gone the route of, uh, cellular modems.
For, for each of the towers. Um, you know, when, when they’re permanently installed, a lot of people just do data collection. I mean, when you consider, like in a GE turbine, um, if I go, if I personally go to a site and I’ve done over 6,000 turbines in the, in the US and Canada myself, um. And if you could see me, you know, I don’t climb.
[00:21:00] Um, yeah, that’s my running joke. It’s like, yeah, I don’t think the ladders will support me. Uh, but any case, um, the, uh, normally it’s walking the base of the tower gathering data as long as the transformer’s down tower and moving on to the next one, I, I think my record is seven minutes a tower, including traveling in between.
So it’s not unusual to knock out a single data collection on a site within, uh, if it’s 120 turbines, normally three days. Three and a half. If there’s a, if it’s summer and they’ve got that wind break in Texas where, you know, it’s changing direction, so it takes a lunch break.
Joel Saxum: You’re a small company, right?
Just like we are here at Weather Guard where we’re flexible to what the client wants. So if the client wants a certain thing, we can deliver a certain thing. If the client needs this, they can, we can do this. So you get, you guys can do the, the CMS UPT Tower where it’s like you have an installation and it’s gonna be there.
Or hey, we can just come to your site, boom, boom, boom, do some testing, and be outta there and give you some reports like you can, you [00:22:00] have a lot of solutions that you can help people out with.
Howard Penrose: We even have, uh, most of the, um, uh, wind service companies, you know, motor repair shops and generator repair shops and everything else have our technology.
They also provide the service. Uh, that’s our model is the more the end users or service companies can do it, the better. Uh, we, we made the choice not to, you know, I don’t want a room full of people that are sitting there doing nothing but analysis, right? They’re gonna burn out. Uh, I’d rather be doing the research and identifying the problems, finding industry related issues to solve.
And our technology was built simple enough that we don’t have to handle a lot of tech support calls. Um, and, uh, and monitoring is an option. Meaning we’ll do the monitoring. I’ve got, I’ve got a number of industrial sites, some wind sites, some other energy sites. Uh, [00:23:00] all, all using the technology and getting us data, but yeah, exactly.
Smaller company. It’s broad, but the technology is not backed by just us. It’s backed by a small $12 billion company called ome. So, uh, yeah, so, and that’s not, it’s not an investor anything. It’s, they, um, they got the license from Oak Ridge back in 1991 or two and, uh, and they maintain it. And during some 97 on, uh, I, in different roles.
Uh, have been supporting the development of the technology. So we have a mutual agreement. They focus on, um, nuclear power, and I focus on everything else.
Allen Hall: Howard, we love having you on the program because your technology is just amazing and people need to get a hold of MotorDoc. So if you’re an operator, a developer, an OEM, and Wind, if you’re making some of the components for wind [00:24:00] turbines, you need to be talking to Howard and MotorDoc to get this diagnostic tool into your toolbox and save the the world a lot of money on downtime and repairs.
Howard, how do people get a hold of MotorDoc? Where do they find you on the web?
Howard Penrose: Well, we could be reached online, uh, through, uh, LinkedIn at, uh, LinkedIn slash in slash MotorDoc, or, uh, at our websites MotorDoc.com or MotorDoc ai.io. Uh, or you can also reach us via email at info@motordoc.com.
Allen Hall: Howard, thanks for coming on.
We’re gonna have you back on soon and everybody keep watching Howard on LinkedIn if you wanna find out what’s happening as MotorDoc develops more technology, watch Howard on LinkedIn. Howard, thank you so much for being on the program. Love having you.
Howard Penrose: It has been a pleasure as always. And we’ll see you the next time [00:25:00] around.
https://weatherguardwind.com/motordoc-electrical-diagnosis/
Renewable Energy
India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
Weather Guard Lightning Tech

India Locks Down Turbine Data, Danish Wind Jobs Dip
India now requires turbine data, control centers, and R&D to sit inside its borders. Plus a study on reverse flow loads in parked blades, Envision’s spare parts push across Southeast Asia, and Danish wind employment falling to 32,700.
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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
Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I’m your host, Rosemary Barnes, and I’m filling in for Allen today here with Jolanda Pedron. All right, onto our first story. India is drawing a line around its wind data. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has ordered every turbine maker on the approved list of models and manufacturers to report where its data actually lives.
Data centers inside India, servers inside India, research centers inside India, and no real-time data leaving the country. The order went out last week with status reports due by month-end. And while the government tightens the rules on data, the hardware keeps moving in. Flender has just opened another generator plant in Chennai [00:01:00] Yolanda, I think this is gonna have a large impact on the number of companies who are, you know, there’s a lot of companies around today developing, like, smarts for wind turbines.
There’s a lot of scope to operate turbines better, to improve power output, reduce maintenance costs, et cetera, and y- a lot of companies are taking advantage of that. Even Patlow has some projects going on in that sort of area. What do you think about the impact this will be? Is India planning to develop their entire own ecosystem for that aspect of the industry?
I
Yolanda Padron: mean, it looks like it, right? Which is really, I mean, kind of groundbreaking. I know that we talked a couple weeks ago about Europe sort of being a little bit scared of bringing in, um, different manufacturers from Asia, um, and just the, the idea of cybersecurity being something really prevalent and really important to all of these people.
So just if India starts siloing everything and that works, maybe that’ll translate to Europe.
Rosemary Barnes: Do you think that it, it can work? Has India [00:02:00] got the expertise in place already to, to make this work, or is this gonna be a real, like, handbrake on their, their wind industry continuing to develop as fast as it has been?
Yolanda Padron: I mean, I’m really curious to see it because I don’t know if they’ll bring in a lot more experts to be able to, to do that.
Rosemary Barnes: I know the Indian, um, operating environment is quite different to other locations. I mean, it’s, it’s similar in a way to Australia in its dissimilarity, if that makes sense. I, I think there’s a lot of really India-specific problems, so of course Indian companies are gonna be best placed to take advantage of that.
But what we’ve seen so far is a lot of, uh, companies from Europe or America coming in to y- you know, like tweak the way that they attack similar problems in other markets. They’re, you know, moving in to understand India better and take advantage of that. Now, of course, like not every smart operating method or aerodynamic improvement, they don’t all need [00:03:00] real-time data, and probably most of them don’t actually.
So I think it’s not gonna like s- snip off this entire kind of improvement. But it is really interesting. It’s quite, like it is quite severe, the restrictions, and I haven’t heard of any other market, um, that is doing that. I, I don’t know, do you think it’s warranted or is it maybe like overly paranoid? I know when I heard that in, um, in Europe they’re not allowing Chinese manufacturers of inverters, for example, and I just felt like, “Ugh, is that a bit over the top?”
I’m not sure. Um, yeah, what’s your opinion, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: I think it, it might be a little bit over the top. We live in such a globalized world that the idea of one country just siloing completely is, is a little bit strange to me. But- I guess if, if that’s, they have a, a reason for concern, then I guess it might make sense.
But to your earlier point, like, I don’t know if the cost of doing this [00:04:00]would also come into play
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that there’s always a, a, a trade-off. It’s like when you have any kind of l- local content rule, which is similar in a way because it forces, um, yeah, it, it forces your own ecosystem to develop, and that’s, that’s great.
Like, it is a missed opportunity if you just have, you know, like a huge new industry and you just import it all, then that i- is a lost opportunity for your own economy. But I mean, in the past, India has had pretty strong local content rules, and they do have a bunch of wind energy manufacturing, um, within the country.
They are a country known for really great engineering, so it’s for sure not beyond them to, you know, step up. So yeah, I guess time will tell if this is a smart move from that point of view. I don’t think it’s actually the motivation behind this rule. I think it’s more of a, like, a cybersecurity, um, kind of perspective where you don’t want, you know, overseas companies having the ability to shut down your energy system, for example.
Um, [00:05:00] so yeah, but it, it has the potential to have that other effect of, you know, like boosting the local industry or alternatively just slowing down the whole industry because they can’t get anything done. I guess that’s always that balance that you need to, need to look at when you’re looking at local content.
So India is deciding who gets to control the data inside a turbine. Our next story is about something inside that same turbine nobody controls yet, the air moving across a blade that isn’t turning. A parked turbine might look like the safest thing on the site. Blades are locked, the rotor’s still, nothing turning, nothing generating.
But a new study says that stillness is not safety. When the rotor is locked and the wind shifts, air can strike the trailing edge first and travel backwards across the blade. That is reverse flow, and in reverse flow, the models this industry uses to predict blade loads start to fall apart. Field data cited in the study suggests blades on turbines above 15 megawatts can go aerodynamically [00:06:00]unstable at winds as low as eight meters per second.
That is nowhere near a storm. So this is actually already definitely a known issue, and I know that modern wind turbines don’t usually park with locked rotors, right, Yolanda?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: We, we saw that a locked rotor during installation was one of the causes of the Vineyard Wind fiasco, right? Where broken blade pieces washed up on the beach.
So definitely something that’s known about.
Yolanda Padron: And it’s something that even onshore you have a, you have your system so that it tracks sort of where the wind is coming from. So even if it’s stopped, it won’t just be stopped at a specific angle, particularly in case the, the winds shift.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and I’ve seen examples of blades failing when, um, there was a storm and there was power lost, so they weren’t able to yaw or pitch a turbine, and that also can cause…
Like, any time that- Wind is going in a different direction than what the turbine desi- was designed for, you’ll get unpredictable stuff happening and often, [00:07:00] like, really bad loads. Like the harshest, um, conditions, loading conditions that a wind turbine blade has to withstand is not in operation. It’s if you’ve got just wind hitting like a bluff body, they call it, where a gust of wind just hits flat on the blade and tries to bend it.
Like that is way, way stronger loading than, um, than anything it would see operationally. If you’re looking at, you know, like a really severe storm, like a one in 50 year kind of, um, wind speeds, and then if you have flow going on weird angles where it’s creating lift, then you can ratchet up those loads even more.
So for sure a known issue. This study, it, it singled out turbines above 15 megawatts, which are huge. That’s a, you know, like a big offshore wind turbine. But I don’t think it’s limited to that. Like what would you think, Yolanda? Is this, is this like purely a big blades thing, or is this something that actually all wind turbines need to take into account?
Yolanda Padron: Oh, this is definitely something that all wind turbines need to take into account. It’s something that we’ve seen a lot in the [00:08:00] US as well, um, onshore and s- wind f- uh, smaller wind farms and wind farms that have, you know, 200 plus, um, wind turbines on them, uh, the, the 1X or 2X turbines. Uh, this is also ver- a, a reason that it’s really important, right, to check your systems constantly, and I know that a lot of the, the owner/operators do that, um, in their regular maintenance checks.
Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s an issue that, uh, if you don’t have the correct systems in place or if you just remotely reset things, uh, because you see an error that maybe you thought, “Oh, that, that must be just a glitch,” uh, then you start having issues like this that can cause catastrophic failures, not just on the blade but on the turbine itself if, if the blade ends up hitting the turbine, um, it, it ends up hitting the, the tower itself.
Uh, and then [00:09:00] a similar issue, um, that can happen too is when you don’t have the correct systems in place for, for an emergency, and so the turbine can just overspin, and that also causes a lot of blade failures, uh, both onshore and, and offshore as well. But I think onshore it’s, it’s just the, the wind farms are so big that it’s It’s easy or, or easier to miss, like, one or two turbines, um, when you’re doing those checks.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. And I think another issue with keeping the rotors locked out, and one of the big reasons why they moved to pinwheeling as the, you know, um, turbine off kind of configuration, was with the, the bearings, right? Like, it’s not good for the bearings to be totally stationary. Um, so I think that it’s better to, yeah, pinwheel.
It’s lower loads on the bearings.
Yolanda Padron: Something, um, similar to this as well, right, and, and I think Wind Power posted about it the [00:10:00] other day, um, about just, oh, it’s really common for, for sites to, to think of, of a financial solution to, to negative pricing being just fully stopping turbines that might not be producing at positive pricing.
Um, and then, uh, that can also cause a lot of loading issues because you’re, you’re having a, a turbine at, at full capacity, and then it just stops.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. The braking loads are, are one of the more extreme loads that turbines have to withstand also. I mean, hopefully if they’re curtailing, um, voluntarily, uh, they’re not doing an emergency brake kind of level.
I hope that they’re being a bit more gentle on their turbines, but yeah, for sure, like, the easiest thing for a turbine to do is just operate normally its whole lifetime. That’s exactly what it was designed to do, and anything that deviates from that can reduce the t- life of the turbine, complicate things.
So machines keep getting bigger, and the physics keep [00:11:00] getting harder. Meanwhile, the map keeps getting wider. Next, a Chinese manufacturer planting both turbines and spare parts across Southeast Asia. Stay with us
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Rosemary Barnes: China’s turbine makers are no longer just shipping machines. They are building the network that keeps those machines running. Envision Energy has secured its largest wind project in Vietnam, 200 megawatts with REE Energy, 25 [00:12:00] turbines, grid connection targeted for October 2027. It is also the company’s largest overseas nearshore project to date.
And Batangas, Philippines, Envision has opened a distribution center holding major components and spare parts close to the projects that need them. Turbines first, then the parts network. Yelena, I’m just wondering if spare parts was a big headache for you when you worked in asset management, and do you think that this plan of, that Envision has is gonna be a successful one for Vietnam?
Yolanda Padron: I think spare parts, having spare parts on site or near a site is always a good strategy. I know that sometimes it can get the, the accounting itself can get a little bit difficult because for at least, you know, in the US for tax purposes, you can’t really sell something from one project to another, so you, you have to be a little bit careful, um, as far as when you hold a part or you’re sending one part that might fit in multiple sites and where you’re technically buying that [00:13:00] from.
Uh, but I think the spare parts that they’re having here I, I think it’s a, it’s a really good idea, right? Because oftentimes you might have a, a big, um, there might be a big queue for a particular component that fails years after, uh, it was produced, and then you– I mean, if you need it now and there’s a big queue now, then you need to wait until it can get to site, until it can be produced, until it’s your turn in line.
Uh, and so just having those components on site or really close to the site I think is a really good idea.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, it’s really challenging. Like it’s, it, it’s easy to imagine how you could organize a spare parts network or, you know, just l- literally a bunch of warehouses holding spare parts for the kind of, you know, like one-off failures that happen routinely throughout a wind turbine’s life.
But when you start to see a serial issue or if there’s just, you know, like statistically every now and then [00:14:00] you’ll get clusters of failures even if it’s not a serial issue, that’s when it starts to get really hard. So I know in Australia, and I’m sure it’s the case elsewhere, you kind of got to pair your spare parts inventory with the capability to repair and refurbish as well.
Because sometimes it’s like, you know, you might do, like speaking of blades, which is my specialty, you might have a bill of, you know, maybe even a million dollars to do a really big repair on a blade, but that’s better than spending probably, honestly, the similar amount of money on a brand-new blade, but then that comes with a six-month or a 12-month, um, wait time.
You know, like obviously you’re gonna save overall if you can get that turbine up faster. And we also see a lot of, um, in-country capabilities to refurbish, you know, all of the drivetrain components and, and everything like that, and I think that that is such an important complement. Like your spare parts strategy should never just be about having them physically sitting there, ’cause if you were [00:15:00] to have enough to cover any situation, then, you know, most of your components would go unused over the, the lifetime of the wind farm.
And it’s not like they’re just swap in, swap out for any different wind turbine, right? Like they are usually quite turbine specific.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree with the idea, especially with blades and how trif- tricky some of the new blades and their, their repair processes can be. It’s really important to have a plan and not necessarily just, “Okay, now I’m gonna throw this one out and bring in a new one, and always hold a new one,” because that’s really expensive.
Um, and it’s also really, really important to, uh, that doesn’t matter what particular part it is, that whatever storage facility you’re using, that you’re, you make sure that the environmental factors impacting the spare parts are taken care of, right? So, um, I know I’ve seen spare parts for a battery site or spare parts for a solar site, uh, that just kind of end up degrading even more than the parts that were in [00:16:00] operations because no one was really looking at them.
They were just outside in the elements, and then you just wasted millions and millions of dollars for really nothing. Um, something that you need to take to the landfill eventually or report.
Rosemary Barnes: Hopefully recycle it if it’s electronic waste.
Yolanda Padron: I completely agree that to, to be able to, to have any sort of replacement strategy, you, or any sort of spare parts strategy, you need to make sure that, that the replacement strategy is there and that the refurbishment strategy is there.
If there’s anything that you can recycle in-house and use in-house, that’s a lot better than just landfilling anything or sending anything to be recycled elsewhere where it just piles and piles and piles up.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. I think also it’s reassuring if you’re buying wind turbines from maybe a, a less well-known manufacturer or less well-known in your country, I think it is reassuring to have a, like just a stack of spare parts on site, because that will give you the confidence that if [00:17:00] and when things start to go wrong, you know, a few years into the wind farm’s operation, you are gonna have that capability.
‘Cause I think it is, like it’s a big leap to move away from the really, really well-known, uh, manufacturers into some of the less well-known ones and have the confidence that y- you know, you wouldn’t have any- anyone to ask what they’re like for service, uh, for example, and you might also not have confidence that they’re even gonna exist in, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years’ time.
So having the parts on site can give you that confidence. Although, as you say, if those parts aren’t actually functional when you go to use them, that can be worse than not having them in the first place because you thought that you were okay and then you find yourself scrambling. That’s not ideal at all.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I completely agree. I did hear about someone who, um, had a, a blade that they They thought they, they didn’t really have the capabilities in-house to, to restore it, and so they sent it to be recycled, [00:18:00] and then later it was sold to them by their OEM, um, on site. And so I think that also speaks to the…
And, and it was just because someone noticed the serial number was exactly the same and kind of noticed. It was, it was really honestly kind of a funny, funny thing in retrospect. But, uh, and it, it just speaks to the idea of you really need to understand if you’re holding spare parts and, and just in general, even if you don’t wanna hold spare parts.
Um, the idea of being able to refurbish or have a plan to be able to refurbish the, the materials that you have on site is really, really, really important because it can save you so much money. I mean, the, I mean, the, for that case, just the, the transportation costs of hauling the blade off, of paying someone to recycle it, of paying for a new blade, um, and everything just to kind of be bamboozled in that way where you could’ve just repaired it on site is, is It’s almost a no-brainer, yeah.
Rosemary Barnes: I gotta say, that’s like a real recycling win, right? Like, you can’t get [00:19:00] better than, than that. Uh, you know, you had a blade, you recycle it into a blade. It’s, you know, performing exactly the same function, better than shredding it and hiding it in a, you know, a footpath, a sidewalk, or something like that.
Stay with China a moment longer, because the product strategy tells you as much as the project map. Mingyang Smart Energy has unveiled the Tianchi MCD 5 MW turbine at its factory in Guizhou. It’s the first machine in the company’s new medium-speed compact drive platform, a semi-direct drive that Mingyang says cuts component count by 60%.
And it is built for sites nobody used to bother with: mountains, plateaus, places where the wind averages four and a half meters per second. Now, Yolanda, 5 MW is pretty big for an onshore turbine in locations. It sounds like, you know, these locations, aside from the, like, less than ideal wind resource, also sounds like places where it’s actually, you know, transport might be a bit of a constraint.
I wonder what their strategy [00:20:00] is gonna be to get those large components and installation equipment in.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s not gonna be the first site, I think, that we’ve seen that where they have to develop some sort of game-changing vessel or crane or something to be able to, to get things, uh, to the site.
Uh, my, my first thought honestly was just kind of like, “Oh goodness, that might be a lightning nightmare depending on, on where they’re located.”
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, that’s true. Like we’ve seen in Japan, they have all their turbines on the ridges where the wind speeds are great, at least. Um, but they have been just absolutely destroyed by lightning, like really, really dealing with extreme situations.
I think also, like these are low wind speed sites. Like what, what did they say? Four and a half meters per second average wind speeds? I mean, that’s like half what you would consider a good, a good site, right? And we know that the power in wind, it goes, like it increases with the cube of wind [00:21:00] speed. So, um, you know, like if you double the wind speed, you get eight times as much power.
So it’s like all of the challenges associated with a high wind speed site in the mountains or, you know, somewhere tricky to get to you know, at least you’ve got eight times the power to make up for the effort of maintaining it. Uh, just it seems like, like a lot of effort to get to a low wind speed site, right?
I think these turbines, the cut-in wind speed is gonna be two and a half meters per second, so you know, again, like you can reduce your, yeah, like the, the wind speed a- again by another factor of eight. It’s almost nothing at that wind speed. It really, yeah, I don’t know that you can make up for a low wind speed site by having a really low cut-in wind speed, right?
Like, you’re still gonna end up with low power across the board.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, and it’s, it’s strange too, I mean, we said it’s, it’s a mountainous region, right? And so, and the transportation [00:22:00] in itself, I mean, we talked about the idea of bringing them in is gonna be difficult. But I know that a lot of times we see a lot of blades that have issues down the line because of the transportation issues and because of the way that maybe they, they didn’t use the lifting points right, and there might be a lot more transportation issues or damages from transportation on the site if they come in and it’s a completely different terrain that they’re used to.
Uh, and teams have to build in a completely different terrain to- that- than they’re used to, then that might also cause problems down the line. Not to mention the idea that I know sometimes in sites where there’s already roads, uh, it, it, because of the position of the turbines, because of the, the way that things are, are mapped out in development and construction, sometimes it’s a, a hassle for operations to, to get the correct cranes or trucks or everything in there to do any sort of maintenance.
Uh, so [00:23:00] I can’t imagine in a place where it’s just really, really difficult to get to in general.
Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, and especially over the lifetime, you know, maintenance i- is gonna be such a challenge. So I think that it sounds like they’re aware of that because their emphasis with this new platform, dropping the component count by 60%, that’s a claim from Ming Yang that I haven’t seen the details of.
It seems highly implausible but, um, yeah, I would wanna look into that a bit more to believe it. But they also say that their new bearings and gearbox features lift reliability by 10%, so yeah, I think that that is going to make their job a little bit easier, but yeah, I don’t know if it’s enough that would make me wanna invest in a wind farm with a, what was the number?
Four and a half meters per second average wind speed. Seems marginal at best. So new machines for marginal sites built in China and priced to compete. Now let’s move [00:24:00] to Denmark, where the employment numbers show what that competition feels like from the other side. Back in a moment.
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Rosemary Barnes: Numbers out of Denmark tell two stories at once. Green Power Denmark counted [00:25:00] just under 110,000 full-time jobs across the Danish energy sector in 2025. That is up 1,526 positions or 1.4%, slightly ahead of Danish employment overall. That is the good news. Inside the wind sector, employment fell to 32,700, a drop of roughly 500.
Green Power Denmark blames international competition and unfavorable market conditions. Its chief economist calls the dip normal You know what, Yolanda? I think that if Denmark’s labor market is weak in the wind industry, there are many countries outside of Denmark that would wanna snap up that talent.
I know that my own company, Pardalote, is included in those numbers of people that would really like to have Danish talent. I’m trying to s- hire someone currently that’s got wind turbine blade expertise, and I tell you what, that is not easy to do in Australia. So I would say if there are any Danes listening or watching who fancy a move to Australia, then please do get in touch [00:26:00]if you have some excellent wind turbine blade experience.
Yolanda Padron: You guys would have a lovely, lovely boss. I’ve- I just gotta say that. The learnings that you have in Denmark and just the, the, the school- not just from the schooling, the, the onsite, I mean, it- it’s just historically Denmark’s been really, really great in, in wind. And there’s just so many bright minds, um, that d- I mean, if, if they can’t find a j- a job in Denmark, then I, I agree that there’s a lot of places in wind that if they’re, they’re okay with moving, they’ll, they’ll find a, a good spot that’ll receive them really happily.
Rosemary Barnes: I know it is a bit of a, like, a cultural blocker. Danes more than other nationalities that I know are, are really, um, I don’t wanna say attached, it makes it sound like not quite the word I’m looking for, but they, they do really appreciate the region that they’re from and, you know, family is so important to Danes, so not the easiest thing [00:27:00] to just say, “Just move to the other side of the world.”
But you know, I did it. It, it can be done and, uh, yeah, Australia is, has got very nice weather, especially at the moment. It’s, um, it’s gonna be… It’s been, like, in the high teens Celsius all this week, and this is, I’m in Canberra in still winter and, uh, yeah, like, on the weekend it’s gonna be 20 degrees. It’s, you know, normally 15 degrees is a really great one-off day in winter.
It was my birthday this week and in Denmark there is a, a saying or a, you know, a belief that if you have good weather on your birthday, then that means that you must have been really good all year. And the weather was just, like, unprecedentedly good for my birthday, um, yeah, for a winter day. So obviously I was very, very good this year.
Yolanda Padron: You’re a great person, and happy belated birthday.
Rosemary Barnes: Thank you. But it is something that I say every time we get another story about another Danish wind energy company that’s, you know, doing layoffs and, you know, I’m honestly surprised that it’s [00:28:00] only 500 fallen in wind energy. If you look at, like, even just the job losses at LM Wind Power alone, um, I think that it would be about that many, right?
And so there are obviously some other companies um, growing to absorb some of the job losses, ’cause for sure we’ve covered more than 500 job losses just on the show. But I know I always feel really sad, um, not just for the people involved who y- you know, probably love wind energy and wanted to work in that field, but I feel sad that, you know, this was such a strength for Denmark, their, their wind industry, that they had been, you know, developing this expertise since the ’70s, honestly.
Uh, really, really world leading and, uh, of course, like, globalization means that you can’t, like, stay siloed forever, and Denmark obviously also took advantage of that globalization to, you know, export. Wind industry was a huge export market for Denmark, and still is. Um, but I do, I, I just feel really bad at the companies that are losing, um, all of that, you know, institutional [00:29:00]knowledge and the really, really deep specialist knowledge.
It’s, um, yeah. Uh, and they’ll go on to, you know, bring new skills to other industries, but it just makes me sad. As a wind energy lover and, um, you know, somebody who has a lot of friends that work in wind industry in Denmark, I do feel, feel sad. And there are some of my old colleagues who are amazing, like, literally the best engineer that I ever worked with, an electrical engineer, it, it was not easy for him to find a new job in wind.
I’m actually not sure if he’s working in that industry now. And plenty of other, like, really, really talented engineers that have gone on to other, um, yeah, other different kinds of industries, and it just makes me a little bit sad.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people too that are com- And I agree, it’s sad.
It’s really sad. But I, there are a lot of people too, some friends that, uh, just, you know, started doing consulting on their own, and it’s, it’s good to see that they’re still in wind, you know? Because they’re, they, they’re so smart and they have so much knowledge of so many years in the industry that they bring to the table, um, [00:30:00] that, I mean, it, it might even work out better for them, right?
Because maybe now they’re not just wor- focusing on Denmark itself, and now they get to, to expand and do what they evidently love to do, uh, the, for clients around the world, which is really exciting.
Rosemary Barnes: Well, that wraps up another episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, and my first as the primary host of the show, so let me know if you think I did a terrible job in the comments.
Comments boost engagement, make me look better. So if today’s discussion sparked any questions or ideas, we’d love to hear from you. 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 Yolanda, and Matthew and Allen Hall in their absence, I’m Rosemary Barnes, and we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy [00:31:00] podcast.
Renewable Energy
About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”
At what point did 30% of the U.S. electorate become so tuned into a criminal sociopath’s wanting to rename places in the Western Hemisphere in an effort towards his own self-aggrandizement?
The only interesting question that remains is what if any trajectory does this nation have to recover some level of dignity once Trump is removed from the presidency.
Some say it will take generations. No one knows for certain.
About Two-Thirds of Americans Will Never Call the Lake North of New York “Lake America”
Renewable Energy
Nothing Endures But Change
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus
One of humankind’s greatest thoughts is tied up in this quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. It’s right up there with “I think therefore I am,” and “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
But where the last of the three are indisputable, what up with this “persistence of change” stuff?
It’s true that the aspects of people and things change. The walls of the Grand Canyon are constantly shifting, but no sensible person thinks it’s a different place than it was millions of years ago.
Most of the cells in my body die and are replaced in a matter of a few months, and my attitudes and beliefs change day by day. But my beloved kindergarten teacher, Alice Adams, will exist in my memories until the day I die.
What Heraclitus left of us is intellectually stimulating, but it doesn’t affect how we function as human beings.
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