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!

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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

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Published

6 hours ago

May 21, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Howard Penrose of MotorDoc joins to discuss current signature analysis, uptower circulating currents wrecking main bearings, and full drivetrain scans in minutes. Reach out at info@motordoc.com or on LinkedIn.

Howard Penrose: [00:00:00] Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Howard, welcome back to the program.

Howard Penrose: Hey, thanks for having me.

Allen Hall: It’s about time everybody realizes what motorDoc can do. There’s so much technology, and I’ve been watching- Yeah … your Chaos and Caffeine podcast on Saturday morning, which are full of really, really good information about the motorDoc as a company, all the things you’re doing out in the field, and how you’re solving real-world problems, not imaginary ones- Yeah

real-world problems. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and

Howard Penrose: whatever annoys me that week. Exactly. And, and whatever great coffee I’m trying out. Yes. Except for a few. We’ve had the ReliaSquatch down our- Yes … um, a couple of times. Uh, yeah, no, I, I enjoy it, and we gotta get you on there sometime. I don’t do- I, it- … a lot of interviews other than an AI character we put in.

Allen Hall: It’s a very interesting show because you’re [00:01:00] getting a little bit of comedy and humor and s- Yeah … and a, and a coffee review, which is very helpful because I’ve tried some of the coffees that you have reviewed, that you’ve given the thumbs up to. But if you’re operating wind turbines and you’re trying to understand what’s happening on the drivetrain side, on the generator, everything out to the blades even, main bearings, gearboxes- Yeah

all those rotating heavy, expensive parts, there’s a lot of ways to diagnose them-

Howard Penrose: Yes …

Allen Hall: that are sort of like we can look at a gear, we can look at a joint, we can look at roller bearings, whatever, but motorDoc has a way to quickly diagnose all of that chain in about- Yeah … 15 seconds.

Howard Penrose: Well, a little longer than 15 sec- more like a minute.

A minute, okay. It feels like paint drying. But- Uh, in any case, yeah. Uh, uh, and, and what’s kind of funny is, um, back in the ’90s, uh, EPRI actually accidentally steered the technology away from its [00:02:00] core purpose, which was in 1985, um, NAVSEA, the US Navy, had done research on using current signature analysis for looking at pumps, fans, and compressors, the bearings, the belts, the components, all the rotating components using the motor as the sensor.

Not too much different than we are now. I mean, mind you, we got better resolution now, we’ve got, uh, more powerful– I mean, I look at my data from the ’90s, and now it’s completely different. Um, and then Oak Ridge National Lab, same thing, bearings and gears in motor-operated valves. So in 2003, we were the first ones to apply electrical and current signature analysis to some wind turbines in the Mojave Desert.

Wow. Yeah. So, um, nobody had tried it before. Everybody said it couldn’t be done. And, uh, that was a bad thing to say to me because- … it meant I was gonna get it [00:03:00] done. Right. At that time, um, we were looking at bearing issues and some blatant conditions with the, um, with the, uh, generator using a technology called Altest, ’cause I was with Altest at the time.

And, uh, I had taken an EMPath software and blended it with a, a power analyzer, and they still have that tool to this day. I was using that technology all the way through 2015. 2016, I should say. And then- And then switched over to the pure EMPath, which was more of an engineering tool. And then more recently, in 2022, uh, made the decision to ha- to take all the work we’d done on over 6,000 turbines, uh, looking at how we were looking at the data and what we were doing on the industrial side, and took a, uh, created a current signature analyzer that would do one phase of current to analyze the entire powertrain.

Allen Hall: So when you tell [00:04:00] operators you can do this magic, I think a lotta times they gotta go, “

Howard Penrose: What?” Oh, yeah, yeah. They don’t understand it because they’re used to vibration- Right … which is a point analysis system. Right.

Allen Hall: Vibration at this- Yeah … particular location. Yeah. One spot- Even if it’s- … or a couple

Howard Penrose: spots

triax, they’re reading through material, up through a transducer. Hopefully, they put it above the bearing and not in the middle of the machine like everybody is now, because everybody’s trying to sell a sensor. Right. True. They’re not selling a- they’re not selling accuracy. They’re just selling sensors.

Right. So, um- Yeah … you know, uh, I, I’ll, I’ll even talk about one of the companies here. We’ve got Onyx here, and they do it right. I mean, they’ve been doing it right pretty well because we’ve been doing some of the same towers they’re on, and we can match the data they’re getting. Oh, good. Right? Yeah. Uh, so but they get it in multiple spots, and there’s areas they can’t quite reach, so we’ll detect those areas as well.

So it’s a good melding of two technologies.

Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Sure,

Howard Penrose: sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you have electrical signature and you have vibration, but in [00:05:00] cases if you don’t have vibration, we’re a direct replacement.

Allen Hall: Because the generator- I

Howard Penrose: dare say that.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Whichever–

Howard Penrose: I dare say that, um, with- Well, the

Allen Hall: generator is acting as the sensor.

Howard Penrose: The air gap. The air gap in the generator s- specifically, yes. Yeah. Generator, motor, transformer. Right.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So any of those- Mm-hmm … you can clamp onto, look at the current that’s on there. Everything that’s happening on the drivetrain, in the gearbox, out on the rotor- Yep … main bearings, all of that creates vibration.

Creates a torque. T- a, a torque. Yeah. Yes, more exactly a torque. Yeah. And that’s seen in the generator, in the current coming out of the generator. Yes. So those signals, although minute, are still there. Yes. So if you clamp onto that current coming out of the generator, you’ll see the typical AC sine wave sitting there.

But on top of that- Is all the information about how that drivetrain is doing

Howard Penrose: Absolutely, and everything else. Anything electrical comes through [00:06:00] that. So what you do is just like vibration, you do a spectral analysis. So every component has a frequency associated with it, just like vibration. It’s, as a matter of fact, I, I keep having to try to explain to people electrical and current signature analysis is no different than vibration analysis.

It’s the same concept. We use the same tools. The signature looks just a little different. It’s a little noisier, um, but you need that noise in order to see everything. But we have a time waveform, and instead of, um, inches per second or millimeters per second, whatever, you know, uh, velocity, acceleration, and displacement, uh, what we end up with is decibels is the optimal method.

You can look at straight voltage signatures at those points or, or current signatures, but the values are so small that you have to look at it from a logarithmic standpoint. Right. There are some benefits to it versus vibration, and there’s some things that aren’t as good as vibration. [00:07:00] So, you know, we, we do…

You have to… Any technology is gonna have their strengths and weaknesses. Sure. So we will see everything all at once. Load doesn’t matter. Right. Speed doesn’t matter. It’s… Only reason speed matters is the location of the frequencies. Uh, so the higher the resolution, meaning the longer you take data, the less chance you have on a lightly lo- loaded machine of blending the peaks together.

Right. Um, on the flip side, if I have two bearings turning at the exact same speed, I couldn’t tell you which one it is. Because they’re the same. Right.

Allen Hall: And the mechanical features of that bearing is w- what creates the signal that you’re measuring. Exactly. So if a bearing has five rollers versus 10, just imaginary thing.

Yeah, yeah. Five rollers versus 10 has a different electrical signature, so you can determine, like, that bearing, that 10 roller bearing- Yes … has the problem, the five is fine. Yes. Yeah. That’s the magic, and I think people don’t translate the mechanical world into the electrical world. That that’s what’s [00:08:00]happening.

They,

Howard Penrose: they don’t because, because what’s happening is they named it wrong.

Allen Hall: Yes.

Howard Penrose: A majority of our users are mechanical folks. Sure. Our vibration analysts and stuff like, ’cause they know how to look at the signatures. Right. Everybody tries to force it on their electrical people, and electrical people go, “We don’t know what this is.”

Yeah. And it’s, it’s, it’s a matter of that training and, and, you know, in the electrical world, you’re not taught to look at that. Right. Yeah. It doesn’t matter. Mechanical world, you’re taught to look at that. So our intern, we were trying to bring in electrical engineering interns and found out that just wasn’t working.

So last year, I brought in my first, uh, intern that’s, you know, he’s been with us now since I brought him in. Okay. Uh, and, uh, Amar, and, uh, you know, he’s helped us develop our vi- uh, vibration software to go along with it. Guess what? It’s the same thing. It’s the exact same sy- system Um, but we just take in a vibration signal instead.

But he picked up on it immediately as a [00:09:00] third-year college student. I can take somebody with a decade as an electrical engineer with a PhD and they can’t figure it out.

Allen Hall: Well, because you’re, you’re taking real- Because it’s different. Yeah. It’s r- well, it’s real-world components-

Howard Penrose: Yeah …

Allen Hall: creating electrical signals.

That’s hard- Well, you have- … to process for a lot of people. Yeah,

Howard Penrose: yeah. It’s

Allen Hall: just not

Howard Penrose: something that we do every day. But that’s… If they, i- if we sa- i- i- if you’re looking at vibration and you start looking at the sensor, it gets complicated too, ’cause guess what? It’s an electrical signal. Right. It’s, it is technically electrical signature now.

It’s converting a

Allen Hall: mechanical signal- Right … into an electrical signal, which is what’s happening in the generator anyway. Yeah.

Howard Penrose: Whether it’s a piezoelectric cell that’s generating a small signal- Yeah … on top of a small waveform that you then take out, you demodulate, uh, or it’s, uh… So you take that carrier frequency out, or it’s a MEMS sensor, which is the same thing.

You know, the, it just sees some slower s- It, it does more of a digital output. So you, you, you know, you have those, or you [00:10:00] have this, which just basically uses a component of the machine to, to, as its own sensor. There is one other difference between them, too, and, uh, I find this very useful when I’m going out troubleshooting something that other people can’t figure out, uh, ’cause we use all the technologies.

So in this case, it would be, uh, the structural movement. Okay? So, so say I have a generator and there’s something wrong with the structure, and the whole machine is vibrating. So y- well, if I put a transducer on it, they might think that’s vibration or something else. We don’t see it. Right. We only see directly exactly what’s happening with the machine.

Sure. So a lot of times when we go in to troubleshoot something that people have done vibration on and everything else, it’s been pro- a, a problem for them for years. We walk in, and all of a sudden we’re identifying whether it’s the machine or it’s something else right off the bat. Then we can take a look at the vibration data and [00:11:00] say, “Okay, it wasn’t the bearing or the bearing, um, structure.

It was, you know, the mounting.” Right. It wasn’t

Allen Hall: fastened

Howard Penrose: down properly. Yeah,

Allen Hall: yeah. Right.

Howard Penrose: Go tighten that bolt. Right, exactly.

Allen Hall: Well, I mean, that’s the cheap answer. Yeah. I’d rather tighten a bolt than rip apart a motor or a generator- And, and- … every day …

Howard Penrose: and that’s the whole point. Now, there are other strengths that go with it.

So for instance, on the powertrain of a wind turbine, I can tell you if you’ve lubricated the bearings correctly. Wow. Because part of what we do is we do take those electrical signatures, and we convert those over to watts. Watts is an energy conversion. Sure. So you see that as heat or some type of loss.

So whatever, whatever’s being lost there is not being sent to the customer. To the outside. Right. Making money. So, um, if I’m taking a look at, say, a main bearing, I might see watts or kilowatts of losses. So you’re gonna have some ’cause you have friction, right? But when we see it increase on, say, a roller, [00:12:00] or the rollers, or, or the cage, that’s usually an indicator that I have a lubrication issue.

Or if we only see it on the outer race, that means that they didn’t clear out all the old grease when they were lubricating it, ’cause the rollers then have to ride across it- Right … ’cause it dries up.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Howard Penrose: Uh, and will carry contaminants. So if you see that, you go up, clean it up, you’ll extend the life of the bearing.

Absolutely you will. Without having to do a lot of work. So, uh, we, we look at our technology as more so early in the, in the stage of a condition. I don’t wanna call it failure, ’cause it’s not a failure. It’s something that’s mitigable. And I made that word up. You can mitigate it. Meaning you can go up and correct it and extend the life of that component.

Sure. Uh, in gearboxes we’ll see problems with, um… Well, the, the one we’re talking about here a fair amount is all the circulating currents going on uptower. We did that research. The current signature analyzer we have is a direct result of doing wind turbine [00:13:00] research just on circulating currents uptower, ’cause we conferred everything over to, to sound at 48 kilohertz.

And so that gives me a 24-kilohertz signal. That high-frequency stuff, which we’re researching in CGRE, and IEEE, and IEC, is called supra harmonics, which I– we talked about that before. Yes, we have. Yeah. And, uh, so when you start seeing that in the, in, in the current that’s circulating uptower because the ground that goes from the top of the tower down is for- DC

lightning protection. And lightning protection, yeah. It’s not meant for, um- Not for

Allen Hall: high frequency- Yeah …

Howard Penrose: currents. Yeah. Uh, we, when we measured it, when we mapped out dozens of towers of all different manufacturers, we found that the impedance about halfway down the tower is where it ends. Sure. The, the resistance.

And then the increased, uh, the high-frequency noise turns any of your shaft brushes into resistors. And at about 15 kilohertz, no current is [00:14:00]passing through them. It’s all passing the bearing, which becomes more conductive the higher the frequency. So with 60% of main bearings failing due to electrical currents, it’s actually currents that are circulating uptower.

It’s not static. There is some static up there, but it’s not static. It’s coming from the controls, the, the generator, and everything else. Inverters,

Allen Hall: converters.

Howard Penrose: And we’ve seen up to 150 amps passing through a, through a bearing.

Allen Hall: So I– We run across a lot of operators who have been replacing main bearings, and they don’t know the reason why.

Yeah. And I always say, “Well, call Howard at MotorDoc because I would almost bet you you have the f- high frequency running around uptower in the nacelle- And the next main bearing you put in there is gonna go the same way as the- Yeah … first one you put in there. Until you cut off that circulating current and then the cell, you’re just gonna continue with the problem.

Then you haven’t eliminated the problem, you’re just fixing the result of that problem. Yes. But it takes- Yeah, you’re, you’re- How, [00:15:00] how, well, how long- You’re replacing

Howard Penrose: a fuse.

Allen Hall: Right, you’re replacing a fuse. Yeah. How long does it take you to s- to determine- An expensive fuse. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, ’cause you’re taking the rotor down.

Yeah. Well, how, how fast can you determine if you have harmonics uptower that are gonna be causing you problems? 120 seconds.

Howard Penrose: Okay.

Allen Hall: So that’s the thing. I think a lot of- I mean,

Howard Penrose: that’s of the actual data collection time. So you clamp on uptower, uh, and then you can… Well, the way we have it set up now, you just tell it you wanna collect data every five s- uh, five minutes, and then you go downtower, let it collect its data, go back up, grab it.

Um, it’s like…

It’s huge. It’s this size. So, um, and then you connect- It plugs into a laptop. Yeah. Plug it into a laptop or any type of tablet. Um, it, it’s Windows now. I’m trying to get away from Windows. We’re gonna have Linux systems, uh, as well. Uh, and then you use that to, um, just collect that data, and then you press another button.

Now it pops up, and it tells you if you’re in danger or not, [00:16:00] the amount of current passing through the bearing, and the frequencies all the way out.

Allen Hall: So the ideal is you’re gonna have this kit with you in the truck. Yeah. And as you see these problems pop up, you’re gonna clamp on uptower. Yep. You’re gonna measure these circulating currents, and you’re gonna know immediately if you have another mechanical issue, a, a lubrication issue- Oh, yeah.

It’ll look at- … some kind of alignment issue, or- You’ll get all

Howard Penrose: of this information at once. So you- Right … if you go on the power side. So certain turbines, like anything that has the transformer downtower, you don’t have to climb. Right. GE. I mean, I don’t climb. So, uh, uh, you know, th- and that was part of the, the concept behind when we started down this path because I’ve been in the wind industry since 1997.

So one of the things I always saw was, and, and we talked about even, you know, here when it was called AWEA, and we were talking always on the health and safety side about wearing out the technicians. Um, so we discovered that, you know, what was it? Almost 60% of the [00:17:00] turbines you didn’t have to climb. Right.

Oh, yeah. And even the ones you do, you go up, you set it up, and it’ll tell you where you need to focus. The other thing in the powertrain, let alone the generator, when we do a sweep of a site– Now, if we do a straight electrical signature analysis, I’d term that one as a technician’s tool. Sure. That’s more of an engineer’s tool.

Uh, a lot more data, a lot harder to set up. But even though I’m saying harder to set up, it’s still pretty easy. It’s still minutes. Right. Yeah. Most technicians will collect data with, like, a couple hours worth of training. Yeah. You g- You basically gather that data, and if you’re getting a site, so we’ll go out– I love going out in the field.

So we’ll go out in the field, especially if it’s a tower we don’t have to climb I’ll knock out, uh, well, let’s just say I’ll, I’ll, I’ll name one. Say a GE 1.6. I’ll knock out one of those every eight to 11 minutes, depending on how you get to the tower.

Allen Hall: So that’s a full diagnosis of drivetrain- Yeah … plus anything odd happening- Yep

with circulating currents and all that [00:18:00] can- Oh, no, no. Circulating- Or just- … current, that’s a- That’s a separate thing at tower … separate study that- Okay … you have to do that uptower. But anything, anything drivetrain-wise, you can be in and out- Yeah … in a couple of minutes. Yep. Okay. So there’s a lot of operators that have end-of-warranties coming up, right?

Yes. There’s been a lot of developments, so they’re kind of running into the end-of-warranty, and they don’t know the health status of their drivetrain. Same thing for a lot of operators that are in- Yep … full service agreements, and they’re questioning whether they’re getting their money’s worth or not.

Yes. I always say, “Call Howard at Motordoc. You guys can have a whole site survey done maybe in a couple of days, and you will know all the problems that are on site for the lowest price ever”. Yeah. It’s crazy how fast you can do it and how accurate it is. I talk to operators that use your system, so I hear you.

Yeah. Your podcast, listen to your podcast, I’m calling your customers to find out what they say, and they love it. Oh, yeah. They can’t believe how accurate it is. Yeah. Well, the thing about that is we as an industry need to make sure that our turbines are operating at [00:19:00] maximum efficiency. Yep. And if a simple tool like the Motordoc EMPath system exists, we need to get customers, operators in line to start doing it worldwide.

Australia- Oh … Europe-

Howard Penrose: Yeah. We- … Canada. Australia, we’re trying to get into, but right now we even have OEMs using it through North- That’s good … and South America, Asia. Good. Uh, Middle East, um, and, uh, and some of Europe. Good. So it’s, it’s, it’s really taking off. Uh, I’d say probably our biggest market right now is Brazil.

Sure. They’re going crazy. Well, the, the turbines are- They’re having a lot of problems. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Right. And the, well, those turbines have a h- high usage, right? So because- Oh, yeah … the winds are so good, they’re operating at, like, capacity factor is above 50%. Yes. It’s insane. Yeah. So there’s a lot of wear and tear.

There’s no downtime for those turbines.

Howard Penrose: Yeah. Well, and, and people think it’s all the starting and stopping. It’s not. No. It’s a grid-related issue. So we have- Sure … we have a low frequency. And you know some of the stuff I volun- I, I’m, I’ve been volunteered for- [00:20:00] Yeah … uh, including the CIGRE thing. Um, so I get to sit in the grid code committees for IEEE and put my, and our input into that, uh, and kind of watch the back of the IBR industry, right?

Mm-hmm. ‘Cause there’s a definitely bias against our industry. Um, and I also, uh, get to hear what’s going on in the grid side of things from CIGRE worldwide, and it’s all very similar, and it has to do with low-frequency oscillating currents- Yes … called subsynchronous currents- Yes … which are low enough not to damage large synchronous machines.

And they thought, and there’s books written on this, by the way, multiple books written on wind turbine impact- Uh, and they’re seeing now, um… Well, we detected it first, along with Timken. Hank, uh, and, and I went out to a site, and we detected for the first time, because of how they wanna do the testing and where the site was located, we saw the oscillating torque [00:21:00] in the air gap, ’cause that’s one of the things the technology does.

It actually measures the torque, air gap torque. Sure. So we were watching the oscillating torque as a tower started up. And so we did, we went through the rest of that site looking at the same stuff in the same way. It increased our time and data collection, and time on site. But then we started looking for it at other sites, and going to pass data because I don’t have to go back and retake data.

Right. And we’re like, “Oh my God. It’s everywhere.” 16 hertz, 21 hertz, and 50 hertz. And we found a paper that specifically identified that as the sub synchronous frequencies for 60 hertz. So we know what they are also for 50 hertz. Once we identified that and we saw how much the torsi- torque was oscillating, we worked with Shermco, who got us some information on Y-rings that were failing.

Yeah. And they were all failing… When the metallurgy was done, they were all failing from fatigue. And you’re like, fatigue how? What’s fatiguing these connections? [00:22:00] Well, the fatigue is that air gap torque- Exactly … because you’re basically causing the, the, everything to oscillate a little bit, and that causes the windings to move slightly.

It’s a living,

Allen Hall: breathing machine-

Howard Penrose: Exactly … this generator

Allen Hall: is.

Howard Penrose: Yeah.

Allen Hall: It’s not

Howard Penrose: static. It’s definitely not sta- no electric machine is static. No. Even a transformer’s not static. Right.

Allen Hall: So- There’s a little

Howard Penrose: bit of wiggle going on there all the time All the time. And it’s minute, so it takes a long time. Right. And what, uh, uh, everybody…

Well, first people thought it was a particular manufacturer, which it wasn’t. Turned out every defig’s failing the same way. Sure. You’re fatiguing it. Yeah. Every bearing is failing the same way, even in the gearbox, main bearings, and everything else. Right. All of these conditions are happening across all the OEMs, but they’re not allowed to talk.

Well, this is, this is the thing that

Allen Hall: I like watching your podcast.

Howard Penrose: Yeah.

Allen Hall: The Chaos and Caffeine. It comes out Saturday mornings. It’s on YouTube. If you haven’t- Yeah … clicked into it, you should click into it

Howard Penrose: because a lot of these issues are discussed there. It’s definitely, um… [00:23:00] Let’s just say I’ll speak Navy quite a bit.

Allen Hall: It’s a great podcast, and I think what you’re doing with the EMPath system- Yes … at motor dock is really a game changer. Yeah. I’m talking to everybody, all the operators I know. I keep telling them to call you and to try the system out because it’s so inexpensive and it does the work quickly and efficiently, and it’s been proven.

There’s no messing- Oh, yeah … around when you’re talking to MotorDoc. I…

Howard Penrose: Somebody dared tell me that there’s no standard for it. There’s ISO standards for it. Yes. There’s IEEE 1415- Yes … which I chair. Uh, and there’s other standards coming out- This is- … associated with it. And there’s a document that I also chair for Sea Gray- Called A178, which is the practical application of the technology.

So it’s well-documented. There are traceable standards for it. I need more

Allen Hall: operators to call you- Yeah … and to talk to you and get systems in the back of the trucks that they can use to check out the health of their gear boxes and their drive trains and their generators. How [00:24:00] do they do that? Where do they go?

Where, where’s, what’s- Well- … the first place they should look for?

Howard Penrose: Uh, info@motordoc.com. Okay. I get all, I get all of those as well, so do my people. Um, or, uh, LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s really good.

Allen Hall: Look up anything. Yeah.

Howard Penrose: Yeah, yeah. So, so either the company at Motordoc, or, uh, I’m, I sh- I’ll show up either searching for my name or, uh, linkedin.com/in/motordoc.

Come straight to me ’cause I’ve been in, on LinkedIn forever, so- Right, just- … I got to do that … look up

Allen Hall: Howard Penrose, P-E-N-R-O-S-E. Yep. Or go to motordoc.com is- Yep, motordoc.com … the website address.

Howard Penrose: Yep. There’s a lot of great information there. And we have partners, and we have people. We’re growing the company.

You know, talk to me. I, I’ll- Yes … I like answering the phone and talking. It’s, it’s a thing. My people go, “Can we answer the phone one?” No. Um, but, but yeah, we, we, y- when you call us, you’re not just dealing with a single person. Right. The Motordoc is far more expansive. Right now, we [00:25:00] just got our partnership with, uh, Hitachi and, and Juliet- Yeah, that’s great

and stuff like that. Uh, we’re helping them with certain things. Uh, we’re partnered with some of the big OEMs, almost all of them, um, you know, helping identify the issues, you know. And, and when users contact us, often they’ll tell us what’s going on, and we’ll, we can, uh, sometimes say, “Yeah, it’s this, and here’s how we prove it.”

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s the, that’s the beauty- Yeah … of calling Motordoc. So I need my operators that, that watch the show- Yeah … worldwide, go online, go on LinkedIn, get ahold of Howard, get ahold of Motordoc, and get started. Yep. Howard, thank you- And- … so much for being on the podcast. Yeah. This is fantastic. I love talking to you because-

it’s, it’s like talking to, you know… Uh, no, really, it’s talking like someone who’s a real good industry expert, who’s been there a long time, and understands- Yeah … how this

[00:26:00] works.

MotorDoc Finds Bearing and Gearbox Faults in Minutes

Renewable Energy

The Fine Art of Appealing to Idiots

Published

16 hours ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

The fascism of the early 20th Century taught us all the key elements of the playbook (see below).

In particular, when a leader identifies an enemy like Islam as a grievous threat and pledges eliminate it, one might think that such a position would generate suspicion, rather than adoration.

No so here in the United States, where tens of millions of uneducated Americans would happily elect Trump an absolute leader for life, in the way of Putin and Xi.