Published

2 years ago

May 22, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Revolutionizing Wind Assessment with First Airborne

We’re joined by Boaz Peled, co-founder and CEO of First Airborne, to discuss their groundbreaking technology that revolutionizes wind resource assessments. First Airborne’s cloud-based anemometer system, suspended from a remotely controlled drone, allows highly accurate measurements of wind speed and direction across existing wind farms, significantly improving the efficiency and optimization of wind turbines.

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

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

Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Our guest today is Boaz Peled the co founder and CEO of First Airborne, an innovative company that is revolutionizing wind resource assessments. First Airborne has developed a cloud based cutting edge anemometer system that is suspended from a remotely controlled drone, allowing highly accurate measurements of wind speed and direction at various heights and locations across an existing wind farm.

The groundbreaking technology is poised to significantly improve the efficiency and optimization of wind turbines. We’re excited to have Boaz join us to discuss First Airborne’s unique solution and his insights on leveraging drones and advanced sensor technology to enhance wind energy production.

Boaz, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. This is going to be an interesting discussion because First Airborne has some new technology, and in wind energy, you don’t see a lot of sort of earth shattering technology, but this is one where it’s a power producer, right? In the wind business, we’re here to produce power.

The power comes from the wind. We need to know as much about the wind as we can. Problem is if you have an existing wind farm with a couple of met towers it can be hard to discern what’s happening on a complex site. That’s where First Airborne comes in. And would you just briefly describe what your product is?

I gave a little summary and introduction, but it’s unique.

Boaz Peled: The best way to think of First Airborne’s technology which we call Windborne by the way, it’s actually very easy to explain for wind power people. Because what it is a windmast, but it can fly. So it’s a flying windmast.

Imagine your windmast just grew wings and started flying any way you’d like to within your wind farm. And back to the question of complex terrain. I think I’d suggest that is simply let’s say one kind of exotic application. But the question, which wind is hitting my turbine? Is I think the most maybe sought after question in wind power.

And if you have a flying wind mast, you position it anywhere you like for any for this turbine or the next, and you’ll get that answer.

Allen Hall: Because once they’ve done a site survey, and usually there’s a pre survey done before the wind turbines are installed, that survey is pretty good. Depending how old that survey is, that survey may be 20 years old.

It could be that old, right? And things change. And the one that happens mostly in the United States, Joel has pointed out numerous times on the podcast, is there’s another wind farm installed in front of your wind farm. And another wind farm in front of that one. So the winds you are now receiving are not what you had initially planned on.

And then trying to understand what those winds are and how to maximize production in that environment is almost impossible without your kind of technology, right?

Boaz Peled: I think I love that example. I think it’s a, it’s a microcosm of a lot of other things, but it’s a really good way to understand that actually in today in wind power, I’ve been an operator for many years and first airborne has really come out of kind of my, Let’s say the shortcomings that I, that myself and my co founders have seen in the industry and to try to figure out how to solve that.

And the first and foremost thing is my turbine producing as it should? That’s the most commonplace, expected question you, you may ask, is and the problem specifically with wind turbines, let’s say, as opposed to solar farms or let’s say other generation types, is that By definition, the fact that the wind turbine is inside the wind is distorting the wind reading.

And then you need a remote sensing device, which is reading the wind that’s about to hit your turbine, but not the one that’s actually there. Now, given the size of wind farms and the variety of layouts and terrains, and then other, as you say, turbines, which are affecting my turbine, depends on the wind direction.

If I’m stationary, there is just so much data and a lot of invalid data coming in, whether it’s because it’s waked or because it’s interrupted by the own machine. But if you’re moving around, in our case, being deployed on an aircraft, if you’re moving around, then you’re actually picking and choosing where is the right place to measure that free wind, which is going to tell me really what.

The production level should be at that point in time, and then that opens up a world of opportunities on tuning, optimization control settings, software upgrades blade repairs, you name it. The fact of the matter is at the moment, wind power operators simply really, I hope this doesn’t sound too large, just don’t know whether their machines are operating, what they’re producing, what they should be producing.

Joel Saxum: We can look at it at the foundational level, right? So this is talking outside of first airborne solutions, right? But it is a few met towers and basically a model, right? And that’s modeling on the, on a statistical or mathematical models that have been developed, and one of the things that Alan and I learned on another with from another guest on the podcast was that, When we talk complex terrain can be as much as a ditch on the side of the road in the middle of a wind farm that isn’t perfectly flat.

So when a model is based on basically what a piece of paper flat is, there’s, there is no wind sites that are out there that are like that, right? So you’re relying on data from the beginning. That is, it’s acceptable for the most part, but it’s not fundamentally correct because it is based on a mathematical model, and that doesn’t fit what the actual real world situation is, and then once you get into oper and that’s at the developmental stage.

You get into operations, and the anemometer on the back on the that you’re getting your wind reading from is on the back of the nacelle, where the wind has already come through the blades and messed it up anyways. The, what you guys are bringing to the market is really a kind of it’s, it, not it is a first of its kind solution to measure ACTUAL wind resource.

Boaz Peled: Exactly. That’s the asset you as a developer, that’s the asset you bring to the table, right? That’s, that’s your fuel.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah.

Boaz Peled: Now here’s the thing. We’re talking about site assessment in general. So then whether it’s FAT or they model complex rain any assessor will tell you that the errors on, on, on flow models are like 20 percent up and down, in, in some cases, and nobody will argue with that.

That’s that’s why there’s, a lot of drive for within site assessment also to place LIDARs, like what we call roaming LIDARs, move them around to narrow down that that error. But then when you’re moving on to operating, when the situation is no more, it’s not static, you have maintenance, you have, you have inspections, you have people playing around with your turbine, you have like weather conditions, which are not considered in your model.

The model is good for financing, I think, when you, when, at the time when you’re taking over your wind farm, at that very moment, as when you’re, you switch on the turbines, and is that the thing I actually bought? Those models go out the window. They’re irrelevant at that stage, because that turbine is there real.

Let’s measure what’s really hitting it and what it’s really giving us in return. And then, other devices do this kind of thing. And actually sometimes very accurately. Some LIDARs are very good problem is they can’t move and when they can’t move, it’s a lot, there’s a lot of filtering of data and very few turbines, which are actually can be tested.

Once you have a flying LIDAR or a flying windmast, all of a sudden those five or six machines, which you could have, In the best case, maybe tested in a year, turn into maybe 206 machines tested in a year.

Allen Hall: Okay, that’s a huge difference. I, it’s, if you haven’t seen the First Airborne website, you need to go to firstairborne. com and then take a look because you can see the drone and the anemometer being deployed. The anemometer Boaz, I want to just walk through this real quick for everybody who’s listening on the audio platforms. So it’s a drone. It’s a standard quadcopter kind of thing. Then on the bottom of it, it has what looks like to be a submarine, basically an anemometer submarine.

Boaz Peled: I’m going to call it a torpedo, yeah.

Allen Hall: Okay, a torpedo. That falls out of the bottom that’s on a data line. And that anemometer just sits there and records data while the drone hovers above it to hold it. And then that data is then recorded in telemetry back to whoever’s recording it. Okay. But that allows you to like, to take long duration samples, like several hours worth of data, or to take data over multiple tournaments at the same at one time, right?

Boaz Peled: Absolutely. I think it’s spot on. So if we can take a deeper look at the technology, it’s actually, yeah, most of you most of of of the people who’ve seen it are actually surprised at how lightweight it is. It’s eight, eight, all of 80 grams, but it’s packed with tech. It looks like something you may have seen before, maybe one instrument or another, but it’s entirely proprietary.

It’s it has, it sustains itself with its own energy, its own communication link wireless by the way the tether that tethers it to the aircraft is also designed to have very low drag. So actually the smarts of this is that actually what you do have is a sensor, which is flying in there, or stationed in the air, which has zero impact of the aircraft above it.

Aircraft create their own climate. And you need to basically eliminate the climate of the aircraft on the measurement. And then what you have is a sensor standing still. In space or in the on the air and then I should say um, and there’s a lot of smarts going into, we measure acceleration, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, temperature, tilt in 3d 3d vectors.

It’s basically a multi sensor meteorological station, all packed into 80 grams. And I think the most interesting thing for the wind power operators or service providers out there is to know that this is now Third party validated by Deutsche Windgardner, this Europe’s leading um, consultancy for certification and for accreditation and so on.

All LIDARs in Europe, they’ll go in, they’ll validate against their windmast. And we have done the same thing over a four week field trial. And we’ve come out. With first class results. The windborne sensor now the windborne system, which also includes the architecture of the software architecture, which resides with the aircraft.

Is now third party validated and basically tantamount to a first class wind measurement device, the best, we’ve seen maybe the best LIDARs come up to, to, to that degree of accuracy on wind speed and wind direction.

Allen Hall: That’s impressive. So the accuracy is really high, higher than most things you’d be able to deploy.

I’ll give you the case study for America. I’ve got a hundred turbines. I’m in Oklahoma. Oklahoma. And I am not getting the power out of the turbines that I think that I should, and I don’t know what to do about it. And obviously the first place to look should be the wind to make sure that I have the wind that I thought that I had.

How does First Airborne attack that problem? What, can you step through that process?

Boaz Peled: So what would actually, if you were walking onto the site and you were seeing the our system being deployed, What you would see is actually what you see every day in a wind farm wind turbines turning But the other thing you may notice is that you have two technicians.

Basically, looking up in the air Because they’re not flying an aircraft. They’re just supervising and it’s all done in entirely automatic. They they there’s a pre programmed mission set, which basically depends on the wind direction at the time, which is the big advantage of moving away or moving away from wakes or moving within the wind direction.

Which is the one that’s hitting the turbine at the time. And then, um, they’re basically supervising the mission by the way, that’s coming down to one technician very soon because the the next version is much, much more simplified and actually works out of your phone.

Interestingly, we threw an app. But but yeah so what you would see is is a couple of guys a few hundred meters away from the turbine. And you see the aircraft flying in the air in a very stable payload in the air, taking the measurements. And that’s all that’ll be different from a common day in, in the wind farm.

And then that aircraft will come back every now and again for a change of battery. And a minute or two, I will after that we’ll go back to the same position or a different position, depends on the campaign. So that’s actually what you would see and that’ll go on. In the case of a hundred machines, if we want to test each and every one of them, we probably get it done within.

I think a couple of months maximum, probably less.

Allen Hall: So the, are you deploying one airborne sensor at a time or are there multiple sensors being deployed?

Boaz Peled: It depends, really. It depends. That’s mostly a logistical question, not a technological one. So we could so called attack a wind farm, deploy like 10 of them, and run through the wind farm very quickly.

That’s definitely possible. So we have, we’ve developed the system so that it doesn’t interfere, Two systems don’t interfere with each other from a comms perspective. That is something that really has to be paid the had to be paid attention to. And then and then but currently at the moment we have one system running in each of the wind farms that we’re servicing that may change in the near future.

Allen Hall: So it will the drone and then is. Is it moving to different positions for a particular wind turbine? Is it taking like a grid? Is that what it’s doing in height?

Boaz Peled: Then the nice thing is very little interface with even the customer in terms of absorbing their time. And definitely not with a turbine.

You don’t touch the turbine. That’s the whole point. Never touch the turbine. And nobody can come and, wave those warranty documents in your face. So we’ll map out the measurement locations in advance. Usually a single location is good to measure three or four machines. Such as think of it like a windmast, but not in a particular wind direction in any wind direction.

And then and then we move on once we have accumulated a sufficient amount of data, the drone will fly out to the next batch of turbines, and that’s how you go through the entire wind farm.

Allen Hall: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Let me understand the business model just briefly. Is the business model that you provide the technician and the drone and the anemometer at the, as a unit?

Or will you lease out the drone and anemometer so that, Some of these massive sites that are existing in the United States can go out and use your technology when they just to keep track of how the winds are on the site.

Boaz Peled: So far we’ve been validated mid last year and since then quite a few big names have come on board and deployed the technology, but they’ve always done it We’ve always done it so far with ourselves servicing the end customer, the operator, the owner of the winter of the wind farm.

The next version, which is coming out Q3 is is a self let’s say it’s it’s a self controlled or self deployed system which basically allows you to basically attach the payload the windborne sensor. To any industrial aircraft any, anyone that’s been using it in the market and use it at will basically you acquire the technology and you use it at will, wherever you like, whenever you like in your own wind farm.

So that’s, and that will really create, I think, a real rollout that will. Create a lot of utility because it’ll reduce a lot of the logistics of having to have people coming in from here or there and scheduling and so on. You just, you’re worried about something, go out, measure it for a day.

Come back. Let’s see what’s going on.

Joel Saxum: That, that’s a game changer, right? I think that the majority of drone companies in the wind world are going to that inspections and crawlers and all kinds of, because it’s just not. cost effective, standby time, all those good things you have to extra to pay for.

So congrats on that one. Good, good move. Another, so I want to address another thing that you, we had talked about earlier. So a K a case study with yaw misalignment. We talked about one where you told me that you did a site and it was like 11 percent of the turbines in the site were more than five degrees misaligned.

Boaz Peled: I think it was more than that. 11, 11 were considerably misaligned, but I think I’ll tell you what we’ve been seeing. We’ve tested hundreds of turbines within the last 12 months on across different platforms. Okay. Ranging from Siemens.

What else have we done? I think we’ve done some GE, not many and Enercon we’ve done. So I’ll tell you what we see. 25, let’s say between, yeah, you’re right. 11 percent was actually the best site. There was one site. I’ll even say which one it was a Siemens one. So that’s so there, so I take it as a compliment.

I suspect was actually the best one that we’ve seen in terms of misalignment ratios. But it will range. We’ve seen 11 percent on the best case and 29 percent on the worst case. Of all what we call considerably misaligned, which means beyond five degrees. Okay, so that’s five degrees or more.

And the rest of them have fallen in between. And that’s and that is something that I don’t know what to say we were surprised by, because really the fact of the matter is, and I can say this as an operator, you just don’t know. We just simply don’t know, there are, because of the difficulty to measure what’s powering your turbine, there is so much unknown out there that we assume or presume or whatever, but there is just, no empiric data to back that up.

So even the question is, once we fix misalignment, how long does it take it to come back? It’s something that, it’s something that the industry is. It really has, again, some assumptions on, but there is no, to date, there has no really not been a good way to validate that, you know?

So yeah, and we, for example one of the sites we’re servicing in America, we do it seasonal. So we run a campaign in the summer. We see what the turbines are saying on misalignment. And then we, before we fix them before we actually suggest the the vein adjustment offset We basically test them again in the winter, and so far we’re seeing very consistent results.

What’s happening in the summer is very much what’s happening in the winter on the very same turbines.

Allen Hall: So there’s no seasonal movement or differences in the anemometer?

Boaz Peled: Not statistical. It’s, we’re, when you specifically address the question of your misalignment, you’re actually addressing your static misalignment, okay, or static your misalignment.

What is the innate offset or bias that the turbine has towards? Wherever it’s turning, dynamic is an entirely different question is more of a control or software question. And then or a strategy by the OEM, but the question of static misalignment should theoretically appear over and over if we’re measuring correctly and at the right spots.

Allen Hall: So your customers that, which you’ve identified these large percentage of misalignments must be thrilled that you’ve identified them.

Boaz Peled: Absolutely. And those who have good some of them who some of them who are actually maintaining their own fleets Have a really easy life. They just offset them because they’re taking care of their own controls.

They just offset the veins Seven degrees six degrees five degrees nine degrees, whatever the case is and they’re good to go, right? Those who are you who are being serviced by OEMs and have good relationships with them again simpler situation And those who are or a little let’s say what’s the word, uh, having a harder time, maybe with with their service providers, whoever they may be, may have some lag time and some, sometimes some argumentation, which is commonplace in our industry, to get through the OEM.

Okay for lack of a better definition.

Allen Hall: So the extra revenue must be a pleasant surprise to these operators.

Boaz Peled: Absolutely. The nice thing about in the case of, we do several kinds of testing whether it’s the cell transfer function, which we’ve done a couple of campaigns now in France and Italy whether it’s which basically in turn, turns into a power curve assessment.

Which is a bigger story in, in, in that sense. But then if you’re looking at your misalignment, the nice thing is there’s no, because of the mechanics of wind turbines or the aerodynamics of wind turbines, really don’t need to argue that much about it. If my turbine is misaligned, it’s lift by definition is reduced.

Everybody in the industry knows that, a reduction of, let’s say or let’s say a misalignment of say, Two and a half, three, four degrees will result in somewhere around, since some cases up to 3 percent of AEP, two to 3 percent of AEP. And that’s because it’s coming back, it’s no argument needs to be made.

It’s the aerodynamics. That’s just what they are. There’s no lift. If your turbine is turning 45 degrees away from the wind, it will not move irrespective of what the wind is. It’s feathered.

Allen Hall: This is amazing technology. I’m really fascinated by it. And it sounds like you have some good case studies going on at the same time.

And so just because this is going to be a universally needed product. How do people get ahold of First Airborne? How do they get ahold of you to discuss how to implement this new tech?

Boaz Peled: So we have our contact details on the website. I think you mentioned earlier, firstairborne. com. Everything is in there.

So I think, if you want to get ahold of us and want to understand what your wind is, and I think that’s like the most, the first thing you want to understand as a wind power operator, then as I did anyways. Then then it’s it’s pretty simple to, to get in touch with us and we respond very quickly.

Allen Hall: It’s been tremendous to have you on the program. I’m really interested to see how the season goes for you and to learn more about the technologies that we see in deployed in the field. It’s been fantastic. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Boaz Peled: Thank you very much for this. Really a pleasure.

https://weatherguardwind.com/wind-assessment-first-airborne/

Renewable Energy

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Published

14 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

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.

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Renewable Energy

Infringing on the Rights of Others

Published

19 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

I agree with what Ricky Gervais says here; I would only add that there are dozens of ways religion impinges on others.

In my view, the most common is that it impedes our implementing science in things like climate change mitigation. If you believe, as is explicit in the Book of Genesis, that “only God can destroy the Earth,” you have a good excuse to ignore the entirety of climate science.