PEAK Wind Masters Site and Turbine Selection
Lene Hellstern, Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind, discusses the complexities of onshore wind siting, the advantages of using LIDAR technology, and strategic considerations for turbine selection.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall: We’re back with Lene Hellstern, the Director of Engineering at PEAK Wind, and we’re talking about onshore wind siting, which is a really critical issue that a lot of operators have difficulties with. And I’ve seen it in the United States and it’s not good.
And I’m wondering from your perspective, what are some of the problems, Lene? Well first, welcome back to the podcast.
Lene Hellstern: Thank you. And thanks for having me repeat experience last time, so I hope so. I thought I’ll pop in again.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s good to have you back and thanks
Lene Hellstern: for coming to Copenhagen.
Allen Hall: Yeah, well we love Copenhagen.
It’s great. Uh, I just wish it was a little bit warmer. Yeah, the sun is terrific. Yeah. When you’re in it, well, at
Lene Hellstern: least I fixed that. Right. Yes. It’s not raining. It’s not raining. Yes.
Allen Hall: We, we quite enjoyed it. Uh, but I’m trying to get an understanding of what the underlying issues are with onshore wind siding and why some of the operators have difficulty later on.
Let’s just start with the sighting [00:01:00] itself. Yeah. Is usually, we’ll see a wind mast out on site for several months, maybe a year, maybe two years. To try to get some wind data. We would
Lene Hellstern: really like that. Yeah. Okay. But, uh, the preferable measurements are lidars.
Allen Hall: Oh, lidars. Yeah. I have not seen a lot of lidars in use.
Lene Hellstern: No. You, you need to get some more.
Allen Hall: Why?
Lene Hellstern: Um, because they reach higher.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: Um, and you can, uh, you can, you can move them around. Right. And the hassle of installing a Met Mass that’s a hundred meters tall, is, uh, is it a problem? Quite, uh. Quite it, it cost a lot more. Yes. Um, and, and the lidars, they, they just, they’re better and they measure higher.
And you can, you can have one sort of mother lidar and then you can move the other around and you can cover your wind resources and site suitability much better on the site. So I would definitely recommend
Allen Hall: lidars. Okay. How the lidars use a [00:02:00] good bit of power to make them run, correct? Yes. So you need a decent power source?
Yes.
Lene Hellstern: You do? Yes.
Allen Hall: Okay. Yeah. I, is that one of the difficulties why they don’t use a lidar? Is it just in a lot of remote areas, they don’t have the power source to run it?
Lene Hellstern: It could be, or it could be the, the lack of knowledge. Right. Traditionally we have used med masks, yes.
Allen Hall: Forever.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, so, so it could be, and then there are also some, um, uh, some issues with uncertainties because the lidar is the, the standards are not up to date.
I would say that’s the political way correct way of saying it. So. Eh, the standard actually introduces more uncertainty on the lidar that’s really not necessary to, due to a calibration with a me mast. Um, so that there’s some, there’s some things that needs to improve in that area
Allen Hall: because a lidar should be a lot more accurate than a met mast.
Lene Hellstern: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But, but the, the downside of the lidar, so that, that is not often we see that, is if you don’t have enough particles in the air, you have [00:03:00] an issue because then you are, you’re simply not gonna be able to measure. The, the, uh, velocity of the particles because they’re not there. And then you have a low availability on your measurements.
But, you know, most places there’s, there’s a quite a lot of dust. There’s pollution. Um, so there, there are things in the air that we don’t see, but the lighter sea and then you can make the measurements.
Allen Hall: And as the hub heights have gotten taller, it gets a lot more difficult to get a met mass up that high.
So the lidars go can measure winds. How high up in the air? How many meters? I
Lene Hellstern: think at least 250 meters. Wow. And, and you want, you want to, you know, traditionally you would only measure at hop height, but you wanna measure at the, the, the rotor surface, right? So you wanna measure at tip height, and you wanna measure at lower top tip and lower tip to, to see what, for instance, what’s the wind share across your, uh, rotor disc.
Um, which
Allen Hall: you cannot really do with a met mast at all. You can’t do that. You have no [00:04:00] wind share knowledge. From that instrument? Sort of, yeah,
Lene Hellstern: you can, because you can make, you always, you, you have a met mass that’s at least at hop height, and then you have, uh, anemometers and wind veins and I don’t know what on all the way down.
Um, and you can with, without that equipment, you can, you can measure on the lower part of the rotor, but not the upper part. So, so you, you do get some possibilities to measure wind share, but not as good as, um, for instance, a lidar. Yeah.
Allen Hall: So how many lidars would you typically need on a 100 turbine site?
Lene Hellstern: Well, that depends.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: Because you have a, if you have complex terrain,
Allen Hall: right?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. You may want a lot. Right. That’s what I
Allen Hall: was wondering if the more hills and valleys, the, the more lidars you will need, or more samples you’ll need, or maybe the longer duration you’ll need. Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And you, you would wanna, you know, it’s always the best to measure it.
I think it’s [00:05:00] ideally five years. Nobody does that five years. Nobody. No, no. But you should at least have two, right?
Allen Hall: Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, and then you should do a proper long term correlation. Um, so, so that’s, and how does
Allen Hall: that, how does that accomplish Right now, let’s just say we have a met mass. What I typically see is, has been a met mast out in the middle of the United States where the winds are pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And they have data. They have some data. Yeah. So typically I’ve seen them out there a year, maybe two years, and then. The, but the sites are massive. Yeah. They’re, they’re square miles. Yeah. Dozens of square miles. So it’s big.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I
Allen Hall: dunno whether it’s in kilometers, but a lot of square kilometers. So then they are trying to interpret interpretate that data that they have from the Met Mass on top of that.
I think they’re looking a little bit forward in terms of who, what other wind farms may be surrounding us in the next several years. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And that’s, that’s one of the challenges we have because there’s a lot that. Uh, you, there’s a lot of guessing.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Lene Hellstern: Um, and so if [00:06:00] you are planning a wind farm, you wanna know what goes on in the area.
You wanna map out the already existing turbines, uh, and what, what hop height, what rotor size, because you wanna be able to model them in your calculations.
Allen Hall: That was really good. Get to my question about how difficult this process is and how you try to address it. In the United States, we turn over wind turbines every 10 years, so there’s a repowering happening and.
Almost always, the rotor size gets substantially bigger. 20 to 30 to 50% bigger. Right. So there’s fewer turbines, same location. Yeah. And the turbines are roughly in the same spots, but they’re just bigger rotor diameters. How do you then prepare for that? Do you use the old data or is the old data even applicable?
If I’m really dramatically increasing the rotor size, do I need to be doing more? LIDAR measurements before I make that repower, or how do I even cite that? Right.
Lene Hellstern: Uh, you can, if you have some good SCADA data from your turbines, you can do some [00:07:00] modeling. And many of the sites actually have a met mast. They do a lot Yeah.
As a reference, right? Yes. Right. But that will be on it, it will have sectors where there’s a lot of weight from the existing.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: So, and so I would, I would, I would try, I would filter your SCADA data from your site and see if, can I, can I use this? I’ll take a look at the mid mass state and see, can I use this?
If not, I’ll start a me mass campaign. Now the problem is if you’re reusing the spots now, well first of all, that’s a little bit difficult reusing because your foundation is dimension to an old generation turbine. Uh, let’s say take someone a hundred, a hundred, uh, meter rotor, right? Right. But now you’re going up in size.
Um, so that means everything gets heavier and bigger, right? So your foundation may not be suitable. The old foundation, normally they’re over dimension. So you can, you can extend life or you could repower on them, but you would want a bigger turbine. [00:08:00] So you don’t necessarily want to use the opposition, right?
And then you would wanna know what is in the pipe. You know, when can I get my, when can I start digging? Right? When can I start installing? Uh, what is in the pipeline at that point from the OEMs? Because sometimes it actually takes five years from, you start planning until you, you, you start digging. And in that time, if you, you, if you space with today’s models, you are gonna have two shorter distance between the turbines because the new turbines on the market that you would wanna buy has increased significantly.
Um,
Allen Hall: and that’s a real problem. Yeah. Like that, this, this. Between the, the siting time, the met mass, the LIDAR data, getting enough data and having to make the decision about a turbine relatively early because the production lines are not operating at full capacity right now. Yeah. It’s hard to get a turbine.
So you are 3, 4, 5 years out. Yeah. How do you plan for that on an onshore site?
Lene Hellstern: Well, [00:09:00] you, you gotta guess a rotor and guess a, a turbine site. Okay. Right, right. So, but
Allen Hall: do, do the engineering staffs that a lot of operators have that inside knowledge because it seems like smaller operators, I’m, I’m not the urals of the world, have power and they can see inside the factories and they have a really good connection and they develop that connection over a long, many, many years.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Where newer operators usually do not have that sort of insight. So where do they go to get help?
Lene Hellstern: Well, well, they could go to, right? We could help them a little bit, but. You can also look, if you look at the evolution of the turbines, you can, and I, I’m, I’m hoping we are at a little bit of a pause here in the, in, in the growing size.
So we, we can refine the turbine, we can refine our manufacturing facilities. We, we get better at service and installation. But you can pretty much, you know, guess the rotor. Uh, I’ve, I’ve done that a lot in, in this job and my previous job, because you [00:10:00] look at, if you look at when the. When did what? Come on the market and from what, OEM.
Right. And then you, you know, there’s, there’s other topics you need to look into for, for instance, site suitability. Right? Right. What are, what are the conditions on the site? Um, are you a, we, we categorize in different classes. I, e, c, 1, 2, 3, um, or turbulence classes. A, B, C. And then there’s the, the class I like the least that is the Class S.
Which is special. And then you never know what it is before you start digging in all the paper. Um, but, but you, that’s sort of the first things you need to find out. What class are you? And then there’s a small in that because, um, you may think you are a, a class two or have a class two side, but then it turns out that your air density is unbelievably low.
So sometimes you can actually squeeze in a class three. Turbine on a class two [00:11:00] side and get that much more production.
Allen Hall: Do a lot of operators know that?
Lene Hellstern: No.
Allen Hall: I wondered. Okay. Yeah. Well
Lene Hellstern: maybe the, it’s not so much the operators. It’s the developers. Developers. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That has to, to, to dig a little bit more into the lovely engineering science around turbines and.
And, and then do more site suitability because you can actually improve your, the value of your project quite significantly.
Allen Hall: That’s what I wonder if, if you spend a good extra amount of time maybe spending a little more money to get LIDAR measurements Yeah. And to do them for a slightly longer period of time, does that have a return on investment?
Lene Hellstern: You get, you get less uncertainty. Right. And then I think some of the issues or some of the mistakes that the developers do, they. They do a wind, they do a, a production estimate, but that is not the same as a site suitability or uh, [00:12:00] you know, also, some people also think if I do a wind resource assessment, then I’m covered.
No, because that is the input to the site suitability. Now you also need to do the site suitability. So you know, I would start out doing a wind resource assessment, right? Then I would do a site suitability and then you do your production calculator.
Allen Hall: And how long does that process take, generally?
Lene Hellstern: Oh, that’s always a cue.
So it could take, uh, it depends on who you use for this, right? But it could take four to to eight weeks.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s not horrible. No,
Lene Hellstern: no, no.
Allen Hall: Alright, so it, it is relatively efficient compared to other things that happen in wind.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. If you are have a complex site, it can take longer because you need to run a lot more calculations due to, uh, the comp complexity of the terrain, right?
Mm-hmm. You can have issues with inflow, angles, uh, ware, wind share, uh, [00:13:00] all the lovely technical things. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Well, and because we’ve developed so many sites to date, all the best wind sites have turbines in them mostly right now, and. We’re, we’re starting to get along the fringes of that good wind area.
Yeah. And in some cases, does that change the way you do the analysis and do the approach?
Lene Hellstern: Yes, but, um, some of us have done that for a long time because it’s not good enough to have good wind if you don’t have good grid. Um, so, so for me, a good wind side, you know, we, I, I spoke with someone yesterday about.
The best, uh, uh, wind resource in Sweden. Um, but, but if that area doesn’t have a good grid, then you know it, I can’t harvest the wind. Right. Right. Um, and it’s the same in, in the US right? You, you have some grid issues. Um, so we have a lot of
Allen Hall: grid issues. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And if you don’t, everything is [00:14:00] combined.
Everything works closely together, right. Uh, the technical, the commercial and the finance. So if, if, if that is not. Well, um, covered in a, in a, or, uh, investigated in a project, you don’t have a good project. Um, is
Allen Hall: the grid the limiting factor in a lot of onsite onshore sites?
Lene Hellstern: I think the world is becoming more and more electrical, which it is, which I think it’s good.
Mm-hmm. And I don’t think that they, we can point at any government that was super duper on, um, expanding the grid. Um, no. I know there are issues in Texas. There are also issues in Denmark where I’m from. There are, yes, there’s issues in Europe. So, um, we, we need, we need massive in investments from the government to build out this grid.
It’s, it’s not, um, enough to say we want clean energy and then do nothing. Right. Well
Allen Hall: this is where, where, where the ons onsite versus the onshore versus the offshore comes in. Yeah. [00:15:00] Is the grid.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So in the US and other places, uh, there’s been. A, a lot of concern about offshore wind, but offshore wind, you can get to a grid relatively easily.
Yes, usually. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s less bureaucracy to lay cable in the ocean than it is to run transmission lines over land.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So is this starting to flip a little bit because of the onshore limitations in the grid that we’re seeing more offshore, just because it’s easier.
Lene Hellstern: Well in Europe, but I would not say that in the us Right.
But, uh, but, um, um, it, it, it is easier, but it’s also much more complex to put up these, uh, offshore projects. They are in development for many, many years compared to onshore.
Allen Hall: Right.
Lene Hellstern: So, so onshore is a little bit of a, depending on country you are in, if it’s overpopulated right? It’s, it’s difficult, but it’s, it’s a much more of a quick fix, uh, [00:16:00] onshore.
For, uh, lack of energy. Right, right. But, but it just requires it, yes, it requires the grid and yes, it requires that you don’t do it in a popula populated area. We don’t want to do that. Right, right. We want, we want the open fields, um, where we’re not disturbing anyone. True. Yeah.
Allen Hall: True. But we also want infinite electricity.
Absolutely. So you have to weigh those two off.
Lene Hellstern: I, but I think the turbines are beautiful. So I would, I would love to be able to see one from my house, but I can’t. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We have actually quite a few we can see from our, from our house. Yeah. Yeah. And no one complains. No. They complained for the first few weeks after they were installed and after that it’s been completely quiet.
Yeah. But,
Lene Hellstern: but I do understand if you place turbines too close to a house Right. Sure. That, how that can be disturbing. Sure. Um, I, I totally understand that. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Can we talk about AI data centers and independent grids and how that’s factoring [00:17:00] into some of the decisions about where to place wind sites?
Because it does seem like in a lot of places in the world, these AI data centers are going to go in. Yeah. And they’re making decisions about using natural gas to power the turbines or using wind and solar and a little bit of battery to, to run these centers. Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily. Wire a connection to the grid.
Does that make it easier in a sense that you don’t necessarily have to have a grid connection, you could put something out in a remote area that it still had good wind and still has good solar with a little bit of battery? And are you starting to hear more action that way, or interest in that?
Lene Hellstern: I’ve, I’ve seen that there’s been, uh, quite some centers that has, uh, made, uh, PPA agreements with, with wind turbine owners.
But they are normally not super close, uh, uh, located to the wind farm. Okay? And I would also say that I would find it a little bit difficult, [00:18:00] uh, if they were remote, because you need a, you need a constant power source and, and the wind doesn’t blow all the time, right? No. So you need, you need a lot of, uh, combination mechanisms, right?
You do to make sure everything runs stable.
Allen Hall: But you may not have neighbors in that case because you could select a site that’s a little bit further away from. Society in a sense. Yeah. Where the, the wind siding may be a little more complicated though because we, we probably haven’t looked in those areas because it’s not connected to the grid.
So you may not have historical wind data doesn’t make the problem just bigger. So I do think in the United States you see like Amazon and Meta and Google talking about using wind and solar to power some of these data centers. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: And, and they are, and I know that there are, uh, agreements that has been signed.
But I, I am, I don’t think they are close, uh, you know, in close proximity necessarily.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: But of course the, the, the electricity needs to be to be transported in the grid. Right. [00:19:00] And it’s not like it’s a microgrid around the data center.
Allen Hall: I think you may see more microgrids.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. Well that could be interesting.
Well, that’s what
Allen Hall: I’m wondering because there may be more microgrids that won’t even be microgrids because the amount of power that they’re gonna use, they’re gonna be decent sized grids.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: That. Th that becomes even a more difficult engineering challenge.
Lene Hellstern: Well, I think it’s gonna be too expensive.
Allen Hall: You think so?
Yeah. Compared to natural gas or just because No, just,
Lene Hellstern: uh, buying, doing a PPA with a wind farm that may be a hundred kilometers away. Yeah. Right.
Allen Hall: Okay. Um, well that’s interesting. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: I think the whole, um, uh, burying the cables in the, you know, the whole installation, uh, is, is simply, it’s simply to, uh, it’s complicated cap.
Is too high.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: It’s, it’s much more affordable just to buy a PPA.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It may be. Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. Well this is, this is fascinating. Can I pick your brain or bother you just a little bit longer?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah, [00:20:00] yeah, sure. Okay.
Allen Hall: So
Lene Hellstern: it depends on the time. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We got 20 minutes. Good. Can I steal 10?
Lene Hellstern: Yes, sure.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Lene Hellstern: This is not my core area, just so you know.
Allen Hall: No, no, no. I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna get back into Yeah. The, the meat here, which is turbine selection.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: I have my LIDAR data. Mm-hmm. I have my MET Tower data. I have say I have two years. I am really the best wind resource knowledge operator developer that you’re gonna meet.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Great. Super. What do I do next in terms of picking a turbine?
How do I even do that? And how does that process look like if I’m talking to OEMs about something that’s still three years from being developed?
Lene Hellstern: Well, you need to start, you, you need to have your planning, uh, your permits in order.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Lene Hellstern: So depending on what country you are in some operate, what you need to apply for the [00:21:00] specific location of the turbines more, it’s more a box.
Uh, so it’s, you say, I am, I wanna apply for 300 megawatt, 500. Uh, please. In, in this area. Um, so then you start looking at your site, suitability, uh, what, what boundaries am I working within? What is my average wind speed in different, these different heights? Uh, what’s more, how do I get levelized cost of energy as low as possible?
Because some people still sit and look at the net capacity factor, but those days are over, right? They are,
Allen Hall: yes.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So when, when all alarms should go up, if they say. Good lift capacity factor. Yeah. Super. What’s your live life cost of energy there? Um, so, so then you, now you start, you have a good idea on what kind of a turbine class should I look at?
Then you start looking at who is, do you wanna do self service? Do you wanna have a full service agreement?
Allen Hall: Exactly. That’s what Im really wondering how that works then, because if I [00:22:00] know the basics of the wind site, do I just. Put a proposal together and slide it to Vestus and slide it to ge, or is there still more I need to do before I start talking to them?
Lene Hellstern: You need, you need to ask you yourself and your organization. Okay. Or PEAK. Yeah, but, but we would ask you as well, what is your o and m strategy, right? Do you wanna do self perform? Do you want a full service agreement? What, what’s, how risky do you wanna make it? Is that
Allen Hall: a deciding factor in determining what turbine you want to purchase?
Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Because then you may not need D-O-E-D-O-E-M to have a service organization close to your site. Right? Let’s say, okay, so
Allen Hall: let’s say you choose vestus because they have a, they want to sell you a full service agreement, generally sPEAKing. Yeah. Where a, a GE typically doesn’t care or not so involved in that.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. But then, but you wanna know, do they have a service organization close to right. Right, right. Or are they gonna re uh, are they, do they need to build it? Right? Is this a new [00:23:00] platform? Do they not have any experience with this platform, the people in this area? Because then you, you know, that’s always, so it’s teething issues, right?
Allen Hall: Sure.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. So,
Allen Hall: so how does that play into your decision making then?
Lene Hellstern: Well, you know, if you have a, if you have, let’s say, four volumes in this area,
Speaker 3: right?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you had, you, you look at what, what do they, what turbines do they offer? What service agreements can you get? What availability, you know, how does the contracts, you wanna benchmark the TSAs and the SMAs?
Yes. Um, and to see what kind of, who’s the best player here? There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle. Well,
Allen Hall: that, that’s exactly what I wanted to get to was, I’m trying to understand how deep you’re going in this. So you’re actually looking to see if they have a service site nearby? Yes. And what the service people have been exposed to in terms of turbine type.
Yeah. And also you’re going a little bit deeper to see how successful they have been. Maybe you, you’ve called the sites
Lene Hellstern: around if I have that information. Yes. Yeah. [00:24:00] Okay.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So you’re making a lot of decisions not based upon necessarily what the OEM is offering as a product, but you’re also looking at what does the next 10, 20, maybe even 30 years looks like.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. And then you wanna know what, you know, what, what turbines, what pipeline is there, and then you wanna do the tender. Right,
Allen Hall: right.
Lene Hellstern: Let’s say now you’re down to three because the fourth one, that, that was a no-go. Right? So now you have, that’s why I always, I say four turbines per site. You need to pick, pick four different OEMs.
Now you’re down to three. Right? And then you, you, you, you, you issue a tender and you, you get the proposals in. Okay? And then you, you start negotiating and you do your tech, your technical due diligence, right? To sort of dig a little bit deeper and understand the OEMs right. Also give them a chance to say.
Hey, this was an issue before, but we fixed this problem and you can see it documented. Oh, you go, yeah, but you’re still, you’re not there. So I need to account for that. So then you have a dialogue with them, and then, [00:25:00]then you have, you, you then the third one is too high and now you have or can’t deliver, or you know,
Allen Hall: doesn’t have a production schedule that meets your deeds.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And now you’re down to two, and then may the best one win. Right.
Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re talking about. Several months of gyration. Yes. Meeting with the OEMs or OEMs coming to you even to give their pitch. Meanwhile, you’re evaluating their technical expertise about their turbine, and you’re questioning how the previous generation of those turbines have performed looking forward to say, have you fixed the the existing problems?
And what does the next generation look like? Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: Oh, well, what did they look into? Developing a new
Allen Hall: platform.
Lene Hellstern: Okay. Right.
Allen Hall: So are you thinking about risk in terms of new technology? I’ll, I’ll throw the easy one at you two piece blades.
Lene Hellstern: No, thank you.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s a, that’s a good response. Yeah. Because I think a lot of, there was just a lot of unknowns about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And then now that we have some service history, yeah. We may wanna rethink that. Yeah. Are there other types of [00:26:00] technologies that would lend themselves to requiring further review?
Lene Hellstern: Yeah, but there’s, I, what I’m hoping is that, that maybe we can pause a little bit on the sizing thing in the. Right.
And then refine the components a little bit more and then, and be more innovative, um, instead in the components. In the components, yeah. And, and improve the manufacturing quality installation service. Right? Because, um, sometimes what I see in the industry is not, it’s an old component, but actually it’s the people that’s the issue, right?
Mm-hmm. We don’t, we are not, we are not trained, you know, we don’t have the technicians trained really in a. We don’t have the people in the manufacturing trained well enough, and so, so we make mistakes. So, and
Allen Hall: are you looking for OEMs that are doing more reflective activity at the moment that they’re basically causing new designs?
And then we always do that, that when we
Lene Hellstern: always look at, when we do technical diligence, how is the training [00:27:00] in the, in the manufacturing, you know, what kind of programs do the different people need to go through? How do you get to a seniority? How do they train them? How do they test them? How many years does it take, right?
Because you can’t do things in five minutes.
Allen Hall: Right?
Lene Hellstern: What’s the turnover at a manufacturing plant?
Allen Hall: See? But this is why you would choose PEAK wind to help you do that process. Because I don’t think a lot of developers, and especially in the United States where we see a lot of it, I see a lot of it developers are about putting turbines in the ground.
Yeah. And then selling that farm to the next owner, right? Yeah. So those long-term agreements don’t really play into a lot of this, and from what I’ve seen, but I think in Europe it’s a lot different.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah. No, but we also have, you know, there are different concepts. There is a built to sell.
Allen Hall: Yes. Right? Yeah.
Lene Hellstern: That’s, then you, you, they, they tend not to, uh, be so focused on the technology. Right, right, right. And then there’s the people that built to keep, right, right. And you could, if you can see, they, that was their intention. And then they [00:28:00] ended up having to divest anyway. Then, you know, that they, they, they probably did, did a little bit more work on the technology side.
Which
Allen Hall: one’s more successful? Build to sell or build to keep
Lene Hellstern: build, to keep
Allen Hall: built, to keep has better power production, more revenue,
Lene Hellstern: less uh, downtime.
Allen Hall: Less downtime. Yeah. Because they’ve done their work upfront and many
Lene Hellstern: of them Yes. Have have done it. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Lene Hellstern: So, but, but developers can still do, uh, build to sell.
Sure. But then they need someone with the technol technological glasses to come in and help.
Allen Hall: Sure, sure. But that’s where PEAK wind comes in, because. You carry those people on your staff, you, your PEAK wind’s full of experts.
Lene Hellstern: We would love to, yes.
Allen Hall: So that you can immediately tap the group of experts about the different aspects of this new development.
Yeah. From training to warranties to technology to just generally how an OEM performs and Yeah, but it’s
Lene Hellstern: also, it’s the technology [00:29:00] commercial finance, right? Bingo, finance. Yeah. They go, they go together. Right, right. It’s not a. Enough to have a brilliant gearbox that can last a hundred years if you only need it for 35.
Right. That’s true. And you paid a fortune. Right. That true. That’s just not a good business case.
Allen Hall: Right. And there are turbine manufacturers that have that model that do do that still. Yeah. Yeah. This is fascinating and I, I appreciate your time. Every time we talk, I just get more in depth of what is happening and, and where we can get better as an industry.
Yeah. And that’s what PEAK wind is all about. Yes,
Lene Hellstern: but we are really good already. We just need to get, we are good. Better. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: We do need to get better. And we do, I think we do need to take a pause.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So how do people get a hold of PEAK wind and to tap your expertise and attack, to bring in the expertise of your team?
Lene Hellstern: Well, we have a, a webpage, uh, where you can contact us through, or, uh, LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn, so feel free to send me a, a message. Um. [00:30:00] So, and reach out to us and we would love to help. We also have a, we have offices in Boston and uh, uh, Texas. Uh, we also have Oh, around the world. Yeah. Canada. So Taipei, yes.
Yes. Re and
Allen Hall: congratulations. I think you just won a, was it in Taiwan? Uh, an offshore site Yes. That you’re gonna be operating or managing Meow.
Lene Hellstern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yes. Congratulations on that. Thank you. That’s very exciting. That’s
Lene Hellstern: my lovely C in asset management. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Very nice. Yes. So Lene, thank you so much for being back on the podcast and we have to have you back on again ’cause there’s so much to talk about and win.
And it’s great to talk to someone who has been around and has seen it and has done it. Uh, it’s, thank you for having, it’s such a tremendous learning experience.
Lene Hellstern: It was a pleasure. Thanks.
https://weatherguardwind.com/peak-wind-site-turbine/
Are you saying that Trump is defying the law, as if this is news?
It happens almost every day.
Most people change their political ideologies as they go through life, experience new things, and continue to learn. This is natural, and the vast majority of these folks are perfectly honest and sincere.
On the other hand, there are people like JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, and, of course, Donald Trump, who are simply opportunists. They would try to convince you that day is night if they thought it would further their careers.
They count on Americans to accept things like the following: Last June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons capability. Now we have to re-obliterate it.
There is a huge audience of American fools who are thinking: makes perfect sense to me! When we get finished with this war, we’re gonna f*** it up again!
Within the realm of political punditry, I’ve always wondered if people like Rush Limbaugh actually believe what he told their wildly receptive American audience. Is he really a hateful moron, or was he, just like the televangelists, just another career actor, looting the bank accounts of our nation’s idiots?
There Are Legitimate and Illegitimate Reasons to Shift One’s Political Views
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes
Bret Tollgaard from Sunrez joins to discuss UV-curing prepreg that cuts blade repair time by up to 90% and has recently recieved OEM approval.
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!
Allen Hall: Brett, welcome back to the program.
Bret Tollgaard: Thanks for having me again.
Allen Hall: So a lot’s happening at sunrise at the moment. Uh, there’s, uh, activity with sunrise materials on a lot of blades this year.
Over the last couple of years actually, ISPs, operators, OEMs, are realizing that UV curing is a huge advantage.
Bret Tollgaard: Turns out there’s a lot of value added, uh, to the entire process when utilizing UV cure, uh, pre-req.
Allen Hall: So the, the pre pres are, have been available for a couple of years. The qualification though was always the concern.
Has the OEM qualified this material? Are they gonna give you the blessing? Does this show up in the manual? If I call the OEM, are they gonna say they have talked to you guys? A lot of those hurdles have been cleared at this point.
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, great question. And we are happy to announce that we have finally been approved by a large OEM for use on the epoxy blade for now all general kind of repairs.
We have several more OEMs that have already passed their phase one mechanical testing, and we’re iterating through now [00:01:00] their, uh, secondary and tertiary kind of tests. And so we do expect to be fully qualified by several OEMs before the end of the year, which should make the ISPs integration and utilization of our materials much, much easier.
Allen Hall: So the, the, the problem you’re solving is repairs in the field for the most part, or sometimes in the factory. Mm-hmm. But a lot of times in the field that those repairs. It happened quite a bit. They’re the same repair, the same area, the same kind of thing over and over and over again. And wetting out fabric on site takes time.
Particularly if you’re using standard materials, you have to bag it. You have to apply heat in some cases to get it to kick, and then you have to wait several hours for it to cure. So in the repair cycle time, most of your time is waiting.
Bret Tollgaard: It sure is. Uh, and on top of all that, we all know that there aren’t enough technicians in this industry to even do all the repairs, uh, that would like to be done.
Yeah. And so to really kind of streamline all of that, [00:02:00] uh, we’ve rolled out a couple of new things and we’ve had a lot more interest in some pre consolidated preki patches for customers. Uh, if a particular blade model has an issue that is a standardized kind of repair. We’re actually now building custom prepregs, or we will build the appropriate width length, stack it, consolidate it, uh, wrap it between our films.
So then all the customer has to do when they get on site is, uh, you know, do do the appropriate surface prep. Scarfing, apply a little bit of our UV surface primer to the backside of that patch. But now they can go up tower, single peel, stick, roll out, and then they’re cured.
Allen Hall: And that’s a. How many hours of saving is that?
It’s gotta be like six, 12 hours of saving, of, of
Bret Tollgaard: labor. It’s upwards of 80 to 90% of the labor that’s gonna actually need to be done to apply that. Otherwise, and then same thing too. We’ve had a couple instances where we took a several day repair down to one, to two to three hours. And these are multi-meter long repairs that were fast tracked because we pre consolidated preki [00:03:00] everything.
Some were in flat sheet forms, some were much longer on rolls, where you’re actually then rolling out with a team. Um, and so we’ve been able to demonstrate several times, uh, over the last 12 months, uh, the, the value that a UV cure preprint.
Allen Hall: Well, sure, because that, that would make sense. The issue about wetting out fabric in the field you just done in the back of a trailer or something, somewhere like that.
Usually it is, it’s that you’re never really sure that you got the fabric wetted out. The experienced technicians always feel like, have done it enough that they get very consistent results. But as you mentioned, getting technicians is hard and, and there’s so many repairs to do. So you’re doing those wetting out composite things takes practice and skill.
Just buying it, preki it, where you have control over it. And you guys sell to the military all the time. So that, and you’re, are you ass 91 qualified yet? You’re in the midst of that?
Bret Tollgaard: So we, I mean, a, we just got ISO certified, uh, at the end of last year in December. So our [00:04:00] QMS system and everything like that’s up to date, that’s huge.
Another big qualification for the OEMs that want to see, you know, true quality and output.
Allen Hall: That’s it. I, if I’m gonna buy a preki patch, so, uh, uh, that would make sense to me, knowing that. There’s a lot of rigor as a quality system. So when I get out the the site and I open that package, I know what’s inside of it every single time.
Bret Tollgaard: Well, and that’s just it. And like we got qualified based on the materials that we can provide and the testing that’s being done in real world situations when you’re wetting out by hand and you’re vacuum backing and you’re trying to cure. It is a little bit of an art form when you’re doing that. It is, and you might think you have a great laminate, you got void content, or you haven’t properly went out that glass ’cause humidity or the way the glass was stored or it was exposed.
The sizing and the resin don’t really bite. Well. You might think you have a great repair, but you might be prematurely failing as well after X cycles and fatigue. Uh, simply because it’s not as easy to, to truly do. Right? And so having the [00:05:00] pre-wet, uh, pre impregnated glass really goes a long way for the quality, uh, and the consistency from repair to repair.
Allen Hall: Well, even just the length of the season to do repairs is a huge issue. I, I know I’ve had some discussions this week about opening the season up a little bit, and some of the ISPs have said, Hey, we we’re pretty much working year round at this point. We’re, we’ll go to California. We’ll go to Southern Texas.
We’ll work those situations. ’cause the weather’s decent, but with the sunrise material, the temperature doesn’t matter.
Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And I was actually just speaking to someone maybe half hour ago who came by and was talking about repairs that they had to do in Vermont, uh, in December. They could only do two layers of an epoxy repair at a time because of the amount of the temperature.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Bret Tollgaard: Whereas you could go through, apply a six or an eight layer pre-reg cure it in 20 minutes. Uh, you know, throughout that entire length that he had and you would’ve been done. That’s, and so it took several days to do a single repair that could have been done in sub one hour with our material.
Allen Hall: I know where those wind turbines are.
[00:06:00] They weren’t very far from, we used to live, so I understand that temperature, once you hit about November up in Vermont, it’s over for a lot of, uh, standard epoxy materials and cures, it is just not warm enough.
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, we, we’ve literally had repairs done with our materials at negative 20 Fahrenheit. That were supposed to be temporary repairs.
They were installed four or five years ago. Uh, and they’re still active, perfectly done patches that haven’t needed to be replaced yet. So,
Allen Hall: so, because the magic ingredient is you’re adding UV to a, a chemistry where the UV kicks it off. Correct. Basically, so you’re, it’s not activated until it’s hit with uv.
You hit it with uv that starts a chemical process, but it doesn’t rely on external heat. To cure
Bret Tollgaard: exactly. It, it is a true single component system, whether it’s in the liquid pre preg, the thickened, uh, the thickened putties that we sell, or even the hand lamination and effusion resin. It’s doped with a, a variety of different food initiators and packages based on the type of light that’s [00:07:00] being, uh, used to, to cure it.
But it will truly stay dormant until it’s exposed to UV light. And so we’ve been able to formulate systems over the last 40 years of our company’s history that provide an incredibly long shelf life. Don’t prematurely gel, don’t prematurely, uh, you know, erode in the packaging, all those
Allen Hall: things.
Bret Tollgaard: Exactly.
Like we’ve been at this for a really long time. We’ve been able to do literally decades of r and d to develop out systems. Uh, and that’s why we’ve been able to come to this market with some materials that truly just haven’t been able to be seen, uh, delivered and installed and cured the way that we can do it.
Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s a huge thing, the, the shelf life.
Bret Tollgaard: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: You talk to a lot of. Operators, ISPs that buy materials that do have an expiration date or they gotta keep in a freezer and all those little handling things.
Bret Tollgaard: Yep.
Allen Hall: Sunrise gets rid of all of that. And because how many times have you heard of an is SP saying, oh, we had a throwaway material at the end of the season because it expired.
Bret Tollgaard: Oh, tremendously
Allen Hall: amount of, hundred of thousands of dollars of material, [00:08:00]
Bret Tollgaard: and I would probably even argue, say, millions of dollars over the course of the year gets, gets thrown out simply because of the expiration date. Um, we are so confident in our materials. Uh, and the distributors and stuff that we use, we can also recertify material now, most of the time it’s gonna get consumed within 12 months Sure.
Going into this kind of industry.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Bret Tollgaard: Um, but there have been several times where we’ve actually had some of that material sent back to us. We’ll test and analyze it, make sure it’s curing the way it is, give it another six months shelf, uh, service life.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Bret Tollgaard: Um, and so you’re good to go on that front
Allen Hall: too.
Yeah. So if you make the spend to, to move to sun, you have time to use it.
Bret Tollgaard: Yes.
Allen Hall: So if it snows early or whatever’s going on at that site where you can’t get access anymore, you just wait till the spring comes and you’re still good with the same material. You don’t have to re-buy it.
Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And with no special storage requirements, like you mentioned, no frozen oven or frozen freezer, excuse me, uh, or certain temperature windows that has to be stored in, uh, it allows the operators and the technicians, you know, a lot more latitude of how things actually get
Allen Hall: done.
And, and so if. When we [00:09:00] think about UV materials, the, the questions always pop up, like, how thick of a laminate can you do and still illuminate with the UV light? And make sure you curate I I, because you’re showing some samples here. These are,
Bret Tollgaard: yeah.
Allen Hall: Quarter inch or more,
Bret Tollgaard: correct. So
Allen Hall: thick samples. How did you cure these?
Bret Tollgaard: So that was cured with the lamp that we’ve got right here, which are standard issued light, sold a couple hundred into this space already. Um, that’s 10 layers of a thousand GSM unidirectional fiber. Whoa. This other one is, uh, 10 layers of, of a biox. 800 fiber.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Bret Tollgaard: Uh, those were cured in six minutes. So you can Six
Allen Hall: minutes.
Bret Tollgaard: Six minutes.
Allen Hall: What would it take to do this in a standard epoxy form?
Bret Tollgaard: Oh, hours,
Allen Hall: eight hours maybe?
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. About for, for the, for the post cure required to get the TGS that they need in the wind space, right? Absolutely. And so yeah, we can do that in true minutes. And it’s pre impregnated. You simply cut it to shape and you’re ready to rock.
Allen Hall: And it looks great when you’re done, mean the, the surface finish is really good. I know sometimes with the epoxies, particularly if they get ’em wetted out, it doesn’t. It [00:10:00] doesn’t have that kind of like finished look to it.
Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And the way that we provide, uh, for our standard, uh, you know, pre pprs are in between films and so if you cure with that film, you get a nice, clean, glossy surface tack free.
But as more and more people go to the pre consolidation method down tower, so even if they buy our standard prereg sheets or rolls, they’re preki down tower, you can also then just apply a pre, uh, a peel ply to that top film. Oh, sure. So if you wet out a peel ply and then you build your laminate over the top.
Put the primer and the black film over when they actually get that up on tower, they can then just remove that fuel ply and go straight to Sandy or uh, uh, painting and they’re ready to rock.
Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That’s, that’s impressive. If you think about the thousands and thousands of hours you’ll save in a season.
Where you could be fixing another blade, but you’re just waiting for the res, the cure,
Bret Tollgaard: and that’s just it. When you’re saving the amount of labor and the amount of time, and it’s not just one technician, it’s their entire team that is saving that time. Sure. And can move on to the next [00:11:00] repair and the next process.
Allen Hall: So one of the questions I get asked all the time, like, okay, great, this UV material sounds like space, age stuff. It must cost a fortune. And the answer is no. It doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s very price competitive.
Bret Tollgaard: It, it really is. And it might be slightly more expensive cost per square foot versus you doing it with glass and resin, but you’re paying for that labor to wait for that thing to cure.
And so you’re still saving 20, 30, 40 plus percent per repair. When you can do it as quickly as we can do it.
Allen Hall: So for ISPs that are out doing blade repairs, you’re actually making more money.
Bret Tollgaard: You are making more money, you are saving more money. That same group and band of technicians you have are doing more repairs in a faster amount of time.
So as you are charging per repair, per blade, per turbine, whatever that might be, uh, you’re walking away with more money and you can still pass that on to the owner operators, uh, by getting their turbines up and spinning and making them more money.
Allen Hall: Right. And that’s what happens now. You see in today’s world, companies ISPs that are proposing [00:12:00] using UV materials versus standard resin systems, the standard residence systems are losing because how much extra time they’re, they’re paying for the technicians to be on site.
Bret Tollgaard: Correct.
Allen Hall: So the, the industry has to move if you wanna be. Competitive at all. As an ISP, you’re gonna have to move to UV materials. You better be calling suns
Bret Tollgaard: very quickly. Well, especially as this last winter has come through, the windows that you have before, bad weather comes in on any given day, ebbs and flows and changes.
But when you can get up, finish a repair, get it spinning, you might finish that work 2, 3, 4 later, uh, days later. But that turbine’s now been spinning for several days, generating money. Uh, and then you can come back up and paint and do whatever kind of cosmetic work over the top of that patch is required.
Allen Hall: So what are the extra tools I need to use Sunz in the kits. Do I need a light?
Bret Tollgaard: Not a whole lot. You’re gonna need yourself a light. Okay. You’re gonna need yourself a standard three to six inch, uh, bubble buster roller to actually compact and consolidate. Sure. Uh, that’s really all you need. There’s no vacuum lights.
And you sell the lights. We do, we, [00:13:00] we sell the lights. Um, our distributors also sell the lights, fiberglass and comp one. Uh, so they’re sourced and available, uh, okay. Domestically, but we sell worldwide too. And so, uh, we can handle you wherever you are in the world that you wanna start using uv, uh, materials.
And yeah, we have some standardized, uh, glass, but at the same time, we can pre-reg up to a 50 inch wide roll. Okay, so then it really becomes the limiting factor of how wide, how heavy, uh, of a lamette does a, a technician in the field want to handle?
Allen Hall: Yeah, sure. Okay. In terms of safety, with UV light, you’re gonna be wearing UV glasses,
Bret Tollgaard: some standard safety glasses that are tinted for UV protection.
So they’ll
Allen Hall: look yellow,
Bret Tollgaard: they’ll look a little yellow. They’ve got the shaded gray ones. Sunglasses, honestly do the same.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Bret Tollgaard: But with a traditional PPE, the technicians would be wearing a tower anyways. Safety glasses, a pair of gloves. You’re good to go. If you’re doing confined space, work on the inside of a, a, a blade, uh, the biggest value now to this generation of material that are getting qualified.
No VOC non [00:14:00] flammable, uh, no haps. And so it’s a much safer material to actually use in those confined spaces as well as
Allen Hall: well ship
Bret Tollgaard: as well as ship it ships unregulated and so you can ship it. Next day air, which a lot of these customers always end. They do. I know that.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Bret Tollgaard: Um, so next day air, uh, you know, there’s no extra hazmat or dangerous goods shipping for there.
Uh, and same thing with storage conditions. You don’t need a, a flammable cabinet to actually store the material in.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Bret Tollgaard: Um, so it really opens you up for a lot more opportunities.
Allen Hall: I just solves all kinds of problems.
Bret Tollgaard: It, it really does. And that’s the big value that, you know, the UV materials can provide.
Allen Hall: So. I see the putty material and it comes in these little tubes, squeeze tubes. What are these putties used for?
Bret Tollgaard: So right now, the, the existing putty is really just the same exact thickened, uh, resin that’s in the pre-print.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Bret Tollgaard: And it’s worked well. It’s, it’s nice we’re kind of filling some cracks and some faring, some edges and stuff if things need to be feathered in.
But we’ve [00:15:00] been working on this year that we’ll be rolling out very, very soon is a new structural putty. Okay. So we’ll actually have milled fibers in there and components that will make it a much more robust system. And so we’ve been getting more inquiries of, particularly for leading edge rehabilitation.
Where Cat three, cat four, even cat five kind of damage, you need to start filling and profiling before any kind of over laminates can really be done properly. And so we’re working on, uh, rolling that out here very, very soon. Um, and so that will, I think, solve a couple of needs, um, for the wind market. Uh, and then in addition to some new products that we’re rolling out, uh, is gonna be the LEP system that we’re been working on.
Uh, the rain erosion testing showed some pretty good results. But we’re buying some new equipment to make a truly void free, air free system that we’re gonna it, uh, probably submit end of April, beginning of May for the next round, that we expect to have some very, very good, uh, duration and weather ability with,
Allen Hall: because it’s all about speed,
Bret Tollgaard: it’s durability.
Allen Hall: All about e
Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And ease of use by someone in the [00:16:00] field. Yeah. Or OEMs on, you know, in the manufacturing plant. Um, there has yet, in my opinion, to be a true winner in the LEP space. That is just the right answer. And so by applying our materials with the really high abrasion resistance that we expect this to have and be as simple to do as it really appeal, stick and cure, um, we think it’s gonna be a bit of a game changer in this industry.
Allen Hall: Well, all the sunrise materials, once they’re cured, are sandal
Bret Tollgaard: correct.
Allen Hall: And I think that’s one of the things about some of the other systems, I always worry about them like, alright, they can do the work today, but tomorrow I have to come back and touch it again. Do I have a problem? Well, and the sun rests stuff is at least my playing around with it has been really easy to use.
It’s, it’s. Uh, things that I had seen maybe 20 years ago in the aerospace market that have they thought about using the material not only [00:17:00] in the factory, but outside the factory. How easy is it to adapt to, how easy to, to paint, to all those little nuances that come up? When you’re out working in the field and trying to do some very difficult work, uh, the sunroom material is ready to go, easy to use and checks all the boxes, all those little nuances, like it’s cold outside, it’s wet outside.
Uh, it’s, it’s hot outside, right? It’s all those things that, that stop ISPs or OEMs from being super efficient. All those parameters start to get washed away. That’s the game changer and the price point is right. How do. People get a hold of you and learn about the sun rose material. Maybe they, you can buy through fiberglass or through composite one.
Mm-hmm. That’s an easy way to do, just get to play with some samples. But when they want to get into some quantity work, they got a lot of blade repair. They know what they’re doing this summer or out in the fall or this winter come wintertime. How do they get [00:18:00] started? What do they do?
Bret Tollgaard: Well, one of the first things to do is they can reach us through our website.
Um, we’re developing a larger and larger library now for how to videos and install procedures, um, generating SOPs that are, you know, semi, uh, industry specific. But at the same time too, it’s a relatively blanket peel and stick patch, whether it’s a wind turbine blade, a corroded tank, or a pressure pipe. Um, and so yeah, www.suns.com Okay, is gonna be a great way to do it.
Uh, we’re actively building more videos to put on, uh, our YouTube channel as well. Um, and so that’s kind of gonna be the best way to reach out, uh, for us. One of the big things that we’re also pushing for, for 26 is to truly get people, uh, in this, in industry, specifically trained and comfortable using the products.
At the end of the day, it’s a composite, it’s a pre impregnated sheet. It’s not difficult, but there are some tips and tricks that really make the, the use case. Uh, the install process a lot easier.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Bret Tollgaard: Uh, and so just making sure that people are, are caught up on the latest and greatest on the training techniques will [00:19:00] go a long way too.
Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s only as good as the technician that applies it
Bret Tollgaard: e Exactly.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s great. Uh, it’s great all the things you guys are doing, you’re really changing the industry. In a positive way, making repairs faster, uh, more efficient, getting those turbines running. It’s always sad when you see turbines down with something that I know you guys could fix with sun.
Uh, but it does happen, so I, I need the ISPs to reach out and start calling Sun and getting in place because the OEMs are blessing your material. ISPs that are using it are winning contracts. It’s time to make the phone call to Sun Rez. Go to the website, check out all the details there. If you wanna play with your material, get ahold of fiberglass or composite one just.
Order it overnight. It’ll come overnight and you can play with it. And, and once you, once you realize what that material is, you’ll want to call Brett and get started.
Bret Tollgaard: A hundred percent appreciate the time.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Thanks Brett, for being on the podcast. I, I love talking to you guys because you have such cool material.
Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, we’re looking, uh, forward to continuing to innovate, uh, really make this, uh, material [00:20:00] splash in this industry.
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Renewable Energy2 years ago
GAF Energy Completes Construction of Second Manufacturing Facility