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Offshore Wind Innovation Hub: A Launchpad for Cutting-Edge Technologies
Allen and Joel interview Tone Søndergaard, Director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. The hub’s six-month accelerator program provides mentorship, industry connections, and resources to help startups scale. Tone shares insights from the first cohort’s outcomes and discusses the global application process for cohort two. If you’re interested in learning more, visit https://www.offshorewindnyc.com/.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Alan Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxam. Starting a new business in the wind industry is particularly difficult. Uh, there are multiple challenges beyond creating a product that the industry needs or wants. Fundraising, staffing, finding an office, technology development, marketing, international sales, the list goes on.
Well, there is help on the way. The Offshore Wind Innovation Hub, located in Brooklyn, New York, is a groundbreaking initiative launched by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with Ecuador, and supported by the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The hub’s mission is to accelerate the growth of the offshore wind industry by supporting startups developing cutting edge technologies, by providing access to mentorship, industry connections, and resources to scale up.
The hub aims to position New York City as a major player in the rapidly growing Offshore wind sector. Leading this ambitious initiative is Tone Sundegaard, uh, the director of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub. With a background deeply rooted in the Danish wind industry and expensive experience fostering clean tech collaboration between Denmark and the United States, Tone brings a wealth of expertise and passion to her role in shaping the future of offshore wind innovation in New York City and beyond.
Tona, welcome to the program.
Tone Søndergaard: Thank you so much.
Allen Hall: So there is a lot to talk about today, uh, because Hey, we know a lot of small businesses in wind that are trying to get established. We are one of them Uh, and and uh your offshore wind innovation hub Popped up on our radar screen recently, like, Oh, Hey, there’s a lot going on there that we didn’t know about.
And let’s get some, get them on the podcast to talk about all the great activities that are happening there. But I want to first step back and talk about what are some of the problems with starting a small business in wind.
Tone Søndergaard: I think one of the reasons we really started this innovation hub and found that there was a need for an accelerator program and ecosystem development for the smaller businesses within offshore wind was partly twofold in a way.
The first reason really being that we found that smaller businesses, especially within offshore wind, were challenged by what we call information asymmetry, and it was really difficult for many of the smaller businesses who wanted to either move into offshore wind or pivot into offshore wind from other industries to figure out Precisely what is my value proposition?
Precisely when in the supply chain do I fit in? Um, and data in this industry tends to be fairly privileged and sort of like held by some of the really major corporations. Um, so that was really one of the problems that we wanted to try and solve with Innovation Hub was to try and give smaller players access to some of this information and so that they much more efficiently and effectively, um, could enter this industry.
Joel Saxum: Okay, so we’re talking Econor. Econor is Norwegian.
They’re a long ways away. If you’re a United States company, they’re a big, and like, you could look at Econor, it’s like go on LinkedIn. Oh, we have, I don’t know what the number is, but 20, 000 employees or whatever, like, where do I even start? Like, how do I find a stakeholder to even talk to let alone get, you know, to the point where we’re making decisions and making plans and stuff like that.
So it’s a black hole really in some of these large companies when you go into it.
No, completely agree. And I think you were sort of like echoing precisely some of the challenges we also saw with our first cohort, which just ended in December here in 23. Precisely that sort of like wayfinding within some of these like massive energy companies, right, which are setting up shop maybe for the first time in the U.
S. or maybe they have some sort of like oil and gas business already, but it’s completely new structures they’re creating here. Um, and that can be really difficult to wayfind, right? Like what department do I even fit into if I don’t really know what What department does what? You know? So even if we ask sort of like a startup or a relatively new business, like what department in one of the big companies would you like to contact with, they’re like, um, I, I don’t actually know which one does that.
You know?
Yeah. There’s, I mean, there’s, it’s sales 101. You can Google how do I do a sales plan and it will be like stakeholder map and find your personas and stuff. But you’re like. I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. That concept
Allen Hall: is great. But where do I start? Because I think in wind, uh, it’s a renewable energy.
There’s a lot of focus on it. There’s a lot of tech around it. And I don’t, a lot of smart people are thinking about that industry, getting into that and taking that idea and making it into a product. That’s one phase, right? And I think a lot of the engineers out there that I’ve seen in, in offshore wind and onshore wind have gotten to the, like, Hey, we can make the thing.
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But, when they get to, now I need to sell it, I need to market it, I need to establish a company, that’s where they have the problem. And a lot of the small companies that Joel and I have been around the last several years that have had great tech, unbelievable tech, have failed because of all the other pieces.
And I, this is where the offshore wind hub comes in, right? So that, uh, can you explain like what things you’re offering to fill those voids that a typical engineer running a company. Misses.
Tone Søndergaard: Absolutely. And I think, you know, in, in startup world or in the accelerator world, we call this kind of like the valley of death or the mountain of opportunity is sometimes it’s also framed as, you know, so that’s a great one, but, um, but you’re precisely right.
What we see a lot of our founders or small businesses coming to us with this, a well functioning product, right? Like it’s a well functioning product. They kind of figured out how to sort of like do the basis of that, but what they are struggling with. And, and one of the things we also focus a lot on for the.
for the Innovation Hub program is to help them with creating that first collaboration with a big energy company, right? Figuring out how do we de risk that collaboration so that they get the information they need to truly figure out what is my value proposition? Because one of the things that we see them come to us with is in order to really scale their business.
What is my business model? How do I price my product? How big of a challenge am I actually solving? And am I sort of like approaching the market with the right type of doing that? So we see a lot of the, the sort of like entrepreneurs that we work with really sort of like need to sort of like scope that out to be able to have a scalable business that, you know, will, will make it great in this industry.
Joel Saxum: You’re helping that entrepreneur, that small company, that, that idea, or sometimes it’s not a small company, sometimes a big company, it’s just a division, something they started. Either way, you’re helping that entity by de risking, understanding, building business models, the international business things we talked about a little bit off air.
Um, but then you’re also say like this, you guys are in partnership with Econor here. However, you’re also building an ecosystem for offshore wind. So it’s not just Econor that you guys have access to, right? But, but you, you’re de risking the technology for them as well. Because when those big companies that have billion dollar assets offshore, And someone comes to them with this new tech, immediately their hair gets up on the back of their neck, like, you know, Should we take this risk on?
Should we trust these people? Is it, because, because, and here’s the, here’s the trouble with offshore. Okay, so again, I’ll, I’ll go back to case study type thing, or examples. Weatherguard Lightning Tech, putting strike tape on. You put strike tape on 10 turbines in Texas, and it costs you X. You go try to put strike tape as a test on 10 turbines offshore, And it costs you X times five or 10 just because of vessel time and downtime, all these different things.
So it’s really hard to test products offshore as well. And for the company that owns those assets or is paying for that time and that effort that they need a de risk for them too. And you can, you know, as a business person, you can understand that.
Tone Søndergaard: You’re so right. Like that what we are kind of experiencing actually is like working closely with an entity like Equinor.
It’s precisely like they get a framework by which they can collaborate with a small business for six months, which is part of our accelerator, if you accept it in, right? You get mentorship, but you also get that collaboration where you can kind of, where both sides can sort of like feel each other out a little bit, right?
And in a, in a setting sort of like test out or figure out what is, what is the road to testing this? Because I think you’re precisely right, what we hear from many of the developers or the big sort of like OEMs is it’s really risky right now, right? Right. All of them are feeling like they’re taking on a lot of risk in a, in a market that’s completely new and where the supply chain feels, you know, not fully established yet.
Um, so I think that’s really sort of like what we also try and tackle with this.
Joel Saxum: Pair up with who your end user will be right away at the early stages in your product so that you’re not building a. solution and looking for a problem. You’re actually found a problem and you have a solution and you’re working toward directly towards it.
Tone Søndergaard: Like an additional part of this and what you also hinting to, right. As we see quite a lot of like technical founders coming into our startup programs, people have amazing ideas, but maybe they need some help with the pitching, right? Like it, It’s a space where you need to be good at selling your product.
And that maybe isn’t necessarily what you learned during your PhD, where you develop something magnificent, right? Like maybe that was not top on the charity list, you know?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, for sure. You did, you, you got a PhD, So you’re, you got, now you’ve got to figure out, Uh, the grassroots way, like by, by paying how to sell things, not to commercialize things, but you get in on board with state offshore wind accelerator program.
Now, all of a sudden you have this whole team around you get, we’re going to help you commercialize this thing. Here’s how we’re going to do it. Here’s the partnerships. It’s, it’s a fantastic initiative. I applaud you guys for doing this.
Allen Hall: So the first cohort has just passed through the program, uh, I think it’d be helpful for everybody listening to understand what the program looks like.
It’s a six month program, how to get selected, what happens once you’re accepted, and what is, and what is that first cohort experienced in their run in that timeframe?
Tone Søndergaard: So we’re actually searching for our cohort two right now. So like shout out to everyone out there who maybe had a great idea. Sitting there being, uh, an innovator or, uh, being at this stage where we’re looking to engage.
We often sort of like take in companies who are sort of in that early revenue phase or maybe more established in another industry and then pivoting into offshore wind. Um, and the program essentially is so that you apply, you have to do that by like end of March essentially. Then sort of like this fairly vigorous down selection process starts, we have, uh, I think 20 plus technical evaluators who looks at the different technologies, figuring out is this, you know, something that is actually solving a problem that the developers have, uh, both specifically for Equinor, but we also have the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Council, helping us sort of have that national outlook on things, um, and then halfway through the selection process, we invite the 12 finalists, To come to New York, pitch at a public pitch event, but also interview with us and all of the partners behind the program to really sort of like scope out.
How is your fit within this program? Are we the right ones to help you? Because I think it’s important to say that we are a non dilutive accelerator. We don’t take equity. Um, so we have, you know, one pure goal and that’s finding the startups who we can help the most, um, throughout the six months. which you’re hinting to, right, if selected to be part of the sex, which is, happens in June, then this six months intensive process, uh, with my fantastic team, um, and all of the partner organizations who also all sort of like contribute to the programming, um, includes, uh, three trips to New York, coming here for a week at a time, workshop more than, you 25 different like expert sessions, but also a lot of what we call peer to peer work.
Um, we really utilize that the different founders or executives entering the program have different types of learnings that they can share with one another and grow their understanding in that sense. Um, but then they’re also paired with an Equinor mentor who can really sort of like dive into the technical challenges they might be facing.
Um, and then of course we try and really help them build their business by just overloading with, with their contacts within, within the offshore wind industry, right? Um, all with the aim to answer the last part of your question, what are the outcomes? I think. More or less all of our companies from cohort one now have revenue streams in New York, so they actually managed to sort of like do that.
We are seeing a hopefully great fundraising news coming out from some of them very soon. Um, many of them looking to establish shop in New York, like actual manufacturing facilities coming to New York because of this program. Um. Yeah, that, which is a fantastic outcome, um, and yeah, their first hires, you know, that’s also what we do a lot, helping them find hires.
Some of, we utilize NYU’s intern programs to get them great, sort of like talented, but we also help them hire more sort of like a C level or mid level people, which is what many of them maybe need in New York. So tons of different types of outcomes in that sense, but all really exciting. And we’re so proud of our first cohort.
Allen Hall: Applicants to your program are not limited to New York or New York City. It’s a global open calling for tech companies to apply, right? I think your first cohort had a number of non U. S. companies apply. You want to describe who you’re looking for?
Tone Søndergaard: We are looking for the most promising, both hardware and software, from all over the globe.
In our first cohort, we had half European companies, half American companies joining our cohort. Hopefully this year we’ll have even more great startups also from either the South American continent or from Asia, where we’re seeing great applicants coming in from. You know, they’re really starting to catch on to offshore wind as well.
So that’s super exciting. And what we’re really looking for is precisely like technologies that can help American developers lower the cost of developing these projects. So one of the key things we’re looking for. Is a technology’s innate, like, ability to facilitate that kind of like either cost reduction or efficiency gains or whatever your sort of like technology works on.
Allen Hall: That applies to hardware companies and software companies, right? It’s both.
Joel Saxum: Absolutely. If you’re in wind, you know that a lot of technology that’s used in the States comes from Europe, right? Comes from Northern Europe, comes from the Danes, comes from people over there. So that’s a, that is a non trivial thing to navigate because people don’t, a lot of people don’t realize it.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the globe, that’s a tough way to do business if you don’t understand it. So getting these people in one room together to share experiences, to share business knowledge, engineering knowledge, whatever that may be, that’s a huge advantage of this program.
Tone Søndergaard: And I think you’re precisely right.
What we see that especially the different founders or executives can learn from one another. It’s actually that like business culture part of it. I think so. Like technology wise, many of them again have figured that out. And that’s maybe more similar. But how you sell a product is really different between even the same people.
Like maybe European headquartered developers, how they operate in Europe and how they operate in the States is completely different. Um, and many of them are kind of like struggling with that being like, if I’m European, cold calling might not be such as a like way of going about things, right? And like, how, how much humor should I use in my first couple of meetings?
You know, it’s like,
Joel Saxum: Sure, for sure.
Tone Søndergaard: Stuff like this and like, scoping out like, what is the, what is the culture I’m going for here? Like, how insistent can I be? How, one of the questions we really encounter often is like, when do I start talking about the price of my product? Like, when is that appropriate, right?
And that differs, um, between the U. S. and Europe in many ways. So we really try and focus on, on them learning some of that from one another, because that’s often more effective than, you know, sort of like a set of experts coming in and telling you how to run your business that rarely works as well, you know?
Joel Saxum: Experiential on the same plane, right? To be honest with you, the way you sell things, even within the United States, is different. You sell something different to someone from the northern Midwest, then you do Texas, then you do California, then you do Massachusetts. So even just here, you got to understand those, those kind of, um, ends and outs, I
Allen Hall: would say.
This is a great program. And I know that’s a little bit of a short timeframe to get into cohort two. How do people connect with the hub? How do they apply to the hub? And what does that process, that application process look like?
Tone Søndergaard: Everyone interested in reading our full call for innovators should go to offshorewindnyc.com
That’s kind of easy. Um, there we have sort of like laid out the full, full material. That’s also where the app, online application portal is. And it’s, uh, I would say it takes, depending on how many application one has behind them, like it maybe takes three, four or five hours to fill out the application.
So it’s a little bit of a time commitment, but we really try to make it, you know, as intuitive and as straightforward as possible. Um, So that’s kind of like the really easy way of doing it. If you have questions and we really encourage all our potential applicants to reach out to us first, we happy to help sort of like maybe frame the, the application you have in mind a little bit.
Talk through some of the points where you’re a little bit in doubt about should I be specific here or be more broad? How do I make the strongest case for precisely my solution? Then you can reach out to me or my team. And we take 30 minute calls with everyone who’s interested in applying. And that can also be facilitated through the website.
Allen Hall: And there’s no application fee. It’s totally free. It’s all online and you can apply from anywhere.
Tone Søndergaard: You can apply from anywhere. No application fee. Even if you join the cohort, there is, again, there’s no fee of joining. Everything is free for the, for the cohort selected and, um, and we provide travel grants.
So if you, if you come from far away, we’ll help you sort of like make it possible coming to New York.
Allen Hall: Right. That’s an important note because if you do come from Europe or South America or even Japan, even South Korea, big wind in places. Or Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas, which is a long ways away, right? It’s not free to travel and travel is expensive today.
So it really. It’s a smart move because you want to get the innovation out into service as quickly as you can. You need to accelerate it and you are. And that’s why this program is so innovative. I like that Equinor stepped into the space. I like, Tona, what you’re doing and the efforts you’re making. I, The first cohort is really interesting if you can go online, I encourage everybody to go online and look at the list of the first cohort and where they’re going, that’s a fascinating list.
Tona, I really appreciate you being on the program, we’re going to blast this out to everybody, so if you’re interested and you have a tech company and you’re trying to grow an offshore wind, you need to get a hold of Tona. And you need to get a hold of her fast and you need to be applying for this program, so Tona, thank you so much for being on the podcast, we love having you.
Tone Søndergaard: Thank you so much, it was a pleasure being with you today.
Offshore Wind Innovation Hub: A Launchpad for Cutting-Edge Technologies
It’s amazing how often we hear that the Democratic party’s platform can’t be “We’re Not Trump.”
Of course, I agree that Democrats have to stand up for lower prices, quality education, affordable healthcare, etc. But right now, the critical agenda item is removing this criminal sociopath from public office.
Until Donald Trump rose to power, I probably would have said climate change.
Now, I would say it’s world fascism, as the world’s power powerful nation, at least at this point, is no longer a democracy in any meaningful sense of the word.
The planet is faced with rule by sociopathic dictators with absolute authority.
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EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy
Pete Andrews from EchoBolt joins to discuss ultrasonic bolt inspection, the Bolt Wave device, and blade stud defect detection.
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.
Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here.
Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah.
Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00]
You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world.
Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe.
Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then.
Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators.
Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on.
Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems.
So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces.
Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well.
Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on.
The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts,
Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely.
Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people.
If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor.
So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving.
By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly reduce the amount of intervention you make and keep your turbines running more and reduce the boots on the ground on the turbine. So three real kind of, um, key. Benefits for people adopting our technology
Allen Hall: because we routinely see tower bolts being reworked or retention depending on who the manufacturer is.
And I’m watching this go on. I’m like, why are [00:05:00] we doing this? It seems, or the 10% rule, we’re tighten 10% this year, and they’ll come back and see how it’s going. That’s a little insane, right, because you’re just kind of. Tensioning bolts up to see if one of them has a problem and then you just do more of them and we’re wasting so much time because echo bolts figured this out years ago.
You don’t need to do that. You can tell what the tension is in a bolt ultrasonically, which was the original technology, the first gen I’ll call it, uh, that you could tell the length of the bolt. If the length of the bolt is correct within certain parameters, you know that it is tension properly. If it’s shrunk, that probably means it’s not tensioned properly.
That’s a huge advantage because you can’t physically see it. And I know I’ve seen technicians go, oh, I could take a hammer and I can tell you which ones are not tensioned properly wrong. Wrong. And I think that’s where equitable comes in because you’re actually applying a a lot of science simply [00:06:00] to a complex problem because the numbers are so big.
Pete Andrews: Yeah, I mean that, that, that’s been the real. Driving force between our offering is to simplify it. So ultimately we’re based on a non-destructive testing technique. It’s an ultrasonic thickness checking technique, but when from the non-destructive testing background, it’s crack detection, people have time, they can be, it’s a very precision measurement.
People have to be trained in the wind industry. We’re trying to inspect. A thousand, 2000 bolts a day at scale. It’s a completely different, um, ask of the technology and the way the technology has been developed historically has required too much technician expertise, too much configuration and set up time, and hasn’t delivered on the, on the speed that’s needed to be efficient in wind.
And that’s where our bolt wave [00:07:00] unit we’ve, that we’ve developed over the last. 18 months, let’s say, where all of our focus has gone to make it as slick and as easy for a client technician to pick up with minimal training. It’s through an iOS interface. Everyone understands it intuitively. Um, it’s a bit like using the camera app on your phone.
You know, you’re just hitting measure, measure, measure, measure, measure 10 seconds a bolt as you move the, um, ultrasonic transducer across, and then the data gets moved. Automatically to the cloud, to our bolt platform. And customers can view it in near real time. The engineer in the office can see the inspections happened.
They can see if there are any anomalous bolts, and then there can be communication there and then whether an intervention is necessary. So it’s sort of really changed the way our customers think about managing their, um. They’re bolted joints.
Joel Saxum: Well, I think these are, these are the kind of innovations that we love to see, right?
Because [00:08:00] we regularly talk about a shortage of technicians, and this isn’t, I was just learning this this week too, like this is not a wind problem. This is a everywhere problem. No matter what industry you’re in. Use are short of technicians. But we’re seeing like a tool like this is developed to be able to scale that workforce as well.
Right. You don’t need to be an NDT level three expert to go and do these things. ’cause there’s a very few of those people out there. Right? Right. We know the NDT people, a lot of NDT people, and that’s a hard skillset to come by. Yeah. This can be put in the hands of any technician. Yeah, a quick training course.
Just, Hey, this is how you use your iPhone. You can check Instagram, right? Yeah. Okay. You can off figure. Yeah, have fun. See you at lunch. Um, but they can, they can make this happen, right? They can go do these inspections and you’re getting that, that, uh, data collected in the field. Centralized back to an SME that’s looking at it and you don’t have to put that SME in the field and try to scale their ability to go and travel and do all these things.
They can be in the office making sure that the, the QA, QC is done correctly. I love it. I think that that’s the way we need to go with a lot of things. [00:09:00]Uh, and you’re making it happen.
Pete Andrews: Yeah. And it’s a real kind of. F change in mindset for us. So originally when we started Ebot, we were using third party hardware.
Yeah. Which required a bit of that specialism. Yeah. A bit of care about the setup of the project, getting multiple parameters configured before you got going. And it wasn’t really something we could put in the hands of a customer.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Pete Andrews: Which meant Ebot scale was limited to what our own team could go and do, and regionally as well.
You know, so we’re UK based. Probably 60% of our customers are uk, but now we have this Northern Europe offshore wind is obviously on our doorstep, but then increasingly we’ve done more and more in North America, so we’ve probably been to five or six sites now in North America and expect that to be a growth market because we can, we can now ship the devices over there, give some virtual training help.
Uh, [00:10:00] people set themselves up and then that opens up that market, you know, so it’s been a real change in strategy for us, but has allowed us to have far more impact than we otherwise would just try to be a pure service.
Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about the big problem in the states of a minute, which are the root bushing or inserts that are loose in some blades.
When you lose that pushing, you also lose the tension on the bolt that can be measured. Is that something you’re getting involved with quite a bit now because of just trying to determine how many bolts are affected and, and where we are on the safety scale of can we run this turbine or not? Is that something that EE bolt’s been looking into?
Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I’d say there’s sort of two halves of what we do. There’s the, there’s the bulk wholesale monitoring of. Typically static connections to eliminate this routine retitling where it’s not needed typically, typically. But then we have these edge cases of certain [00:11:00] connections and certain platforms that have known bolt integrity problems, and we are working with clients to really, um, manage those integrity risks.
Blade stud is an absolute classic, you know, sort of, I think almost every turbine OEM on some, if not all of their platforms has got. Embedded risk into their blades, pitch bearing connections. Um, so yeah, exactly as you said, our customers are using the technology for two things really. One is to ensure the bolts have been tightened to the preload that was specified or the target window.
And quite often we find there is an opportunity to increase the preload and therefore increase the resistance to fatigue failure. So. You know, particularly on older sites where the bolts perhaps not in the condition they were on day one. Well, they definitely won’t be. Um, when people have gone and retti them, they haven’t got back to where they, they should be.[00:12:00]
So we can prove that and increase a bit of that resilience, but then also start to look for the segments around the joint where, um, the bolt might start loosening or failures are occurring, and find areas where they can really hone in. And actively manage risk. And that sort of leads to what we’ve decided to do for the next year, particularly with Blade Stud in mind, is evolve this technology.
So whilst it’s also measuring the elongation, we will do a defect scan at the same time. So you’ll monitor your blade stu, um, connection and we’re hoping that we can set the device to flag to you there and then. We believe this bulk has got a defect while you’re here, get it changed out before it fails and, and all the knock on problems, um, from there.
Joel Saxum: So what you’re just pointing to there is a, is a workflow, right? So to me that is typical [00:13:00] of some of the amazing, innovative companies in the UK that I’ve run into throughout my career. And that is, you’re a group of SMEs, you know, bolted connections. That’s what you do, right? But then you’re like, hey. If there’s a tool, we could make a tool that would make our lives a bit easier, then it’s like, well, we could make the entire industry’s lives a little bit easier as well.
So let’s iterate on that. And now you’re able to send these kits around the world to look at these things. Hey, you have a problem with this specific model. We can help you with this because we know the failure mode and we know how to look for it. Let’s do that for you. Also here, you’re doing bolt bulk measurements.
We got that for you. But it all kind of flows back to the fact that Echo Bolt is a team. A bolted connection, SMEs that are making tools and being able to also provide consulting if need be. Yeah. Right. Um, to, to an entire industry. And I think that, um, this is my take on it, right? Wind is stop number one. I think you guys are gonna do a fantastic year, but there’s a lot of, uh, opportunity out there in bolted [00:14:00] connections as well.
Allen Hall: A tremendous amount blade bolts being broken from defects in the crystalline structure. What appears to be a more. Rapidly developing issue across fleets that I’ve seen. I went to a farm this summer and the number of blade bolts that were there on the table that were broken on the conference room table was And the whiteboard office.
Yeah. Yeah. This one,
Joel Saxum: this one.
Allen Hall: Your hard head is not gonna protect you from this one. It’s, it’s, it was this, um, I couldn’t imagine the amount of time they were spending hunting these things down. And of course, the only way they were finding ’em was they were broken. You like to catch ’em before they break because it becomes
Joel Saxum: a safety risk.
Just not too long ago we saw an insurance case where there’s an RCA going on and it is pointing at an entire tower came down. Right. And it is pointing at a mid, mid tower section bolted connection. How often do you guys run into those problems? Or are you contacted by insurance companies or anything like that to, to take a peek at those?
Pete Andrews: We haven’t done anything directly for insurance [00:15:00]companies, but we have been engaged by. Engineering consultancies that are doing RCA type activities. Okay. Um, things like at the end of defect liability periods mm-hmm. A customer has, has seen, they’ve had a lot of, uh, issues from an OEM, maybe an OE EM has offered a modification or an upgrade, assessing whether that upgrade is actually solved the problem or not.
We’ve got involved in, um, but the tower. Issue specifically. It’s actually very rare we find, um, problems with tower connections, but where we do is often where they haven’t achieved good flange flatness, ah, during installation or the bolts have been, let’s say, left out in the elements for a period and lubrication has been, has deteriorated before the bolt’s been installed.
So there are cases out there, but what I would say is. [00:16:00] To think about your whole life cycle, so ensure the bolt’s installed correctly and we can help with that with a QA to say, yes, this torque or tightening method has got you to the load that you want. Do some through life monitoring, but often if you install it correctly, it will it’s operational life.
You will have very little concern. But then in the UK market, we’re increasingly getting involved again at the end of life, right? Life extension where life extension turbines are 20, 25 years old. How does an operator make a decision to carry on running without replacing all bots? Um, and that’s where increasingly we being asked to use the technologist just to say, actually the joint is fine.
The bolts have run in a good, um, operational envelope. Run them on. Don’t replace a hundred percent of them like you might have been recommended to from your, um, yeah. Turbine supplier side. [00:17:00]
Allen Hall: So Pete, if someone’s doing a repower where they’re basically putting a new one in the cell on an existing tower, they’re making a lot of assumptions about all the bolts from the ground up that they’re gonna be okay.
And I know we’re talking about that. We’re in a lot of installations where. If the turbine has gone through a repowered or two. So now those bolts are 20 years old. Yeah. And trying to get ’em to
Joel Saxum: 30 35. 35
Allen Hall: 40. Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing. By those bolted connections. Are they just like replacing the bolts?
Are they hitting ’em with a hammer again? Is that the, yeah,
Pete Andrews: I mean, they might replace ’em, but you’ve got a problem with the foundation bolts. ’cause they’re obviously often anchor bolts set into concrete, so you have to reuse them and. With the projects, both in wind and in process power industry with the chimney stacks to try and ascertain whether foundation bolts that are set into concrete are still suitable for operations.
So look for corrosion losses, look for [00:18:00] defects. Um, so yeah, they’re all things that need thinking about before you just make the snap decision to repower. But I think
Joel Saxum: a lot of that, uh, going back to a couple minutes ago, you were talking about at the commissioning phase, making sure that you have proper qa, QC of how these things were installed day one, and then making sure that before commissioning of a turbine, they’re checked.
I think that’s really important. We’re starting to see that in the blade world now too, where we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now when you talk to operators, they’re like, we’re getting inspections done on the blades before they’re hung. Or at the factory before they’re hung. After they’re hung.
Like they want a good foundation baseline. Are you seeing that in the bolted connection world too?
Pete Andrews: Yes. Sort of. It’s just emerging for us. What we’ve found is, so most of our customers are in the operational phase ’cause they are the ones feeling the pain. Yeah. Of the routine retitling work. When they do major components, they sometimes engage us to come and say, can you check [00:19:00] before and after the blade was removed?
What was it? Before we took it off from a a bolt load perspective, what is it afterwards? Can you then recheck after 500 hours When we retalk it? And what we’ve seen there often is the initial install hasn’t got them to where they needed to be and they’ve had to go and do the break in maintenance or the 500 hour REIT to get the bolts to the right load.
So one of the questions that we have is whether. Some of the defects are actually being initiated very early on in that initial running in period and whether if, if actually you’d taken the time at, at the point of assembly to make sure you were correct, whether that avoids some of the knock on integrity concerns.
So yeah, it’s interesting area.
Allen Hall: Well, bolts are what hold wind turbines together and you better know you have the right. Tension and [00:20:00] torque on your bolts to get to the lifetime of the wind turbine and to, and to check it once in a while. And I know there’s a lot of operators I can think of right now in the United States that are sort of doing that job somewhat.
I I think they have missed out on opportunities to save a lot of money and to call it echo bolt. How do people get ahold of you? Because that’s one thing I run into all the time. Like, Hey, hey, you gotta talk to Ebol, call Ebol. How do they get ahold of you?
Pete Andrews: So the easiest ways are via our website. Which is echo bolt.com.
Um, LinkedIn, you’ll find us at Echo Bolt on LinkedIn. Reach out. Our email would be info@cobolt.com. So any of those route and you’ll, uh, reach me and the team and more than happy to speak to you about any of your faulting concerns or problems. We are, uh, yeah, we’re passionate about your problems.
Allen Hall: Pete, thank you so much for being on this podcast.
I, it is great to actually see you in person and see the bolt wave technology. It’s really [00:21:00] impressive. So anybody out there that needs bolt tensioning to checking tools, you need to get ahold of Pete at Echo Bolt and get started today. Thank you Pete. Thanks guys. It’s great to be here.
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