Published

1 year 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.

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Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
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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’s Electrical Signature Turbine Diagnosis

Published

7 hours ago

June 12, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

MotorDoc’s Electrical Signature Turbine Diagnosis

Howard Penrose from MotorDoc discusses their electrical signature monitoring for wind turbines that offers precise diagnostics, enabling cost-effective preventative maintenance and lifetime extension.

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 show. Thank you. Well, we’ve been traveling a, a good deal and talking to a lot of operators in the United States and in Europe, and even in Australia. And, uh, your name comes up quite a bit because we talk to all the technical people in the world and we see a lot of things. And I get asked quite a bit, what is the coolest technology that I don’t know about?

And I say, Howard Penrose MotorDoc. And they say, who? And I say, well, wait a minute. If you want something super powerful to learn about your turbine, that is easy to implement and has been vetted and has years of in-service testing and verification. It is MotorDock, it is [00:01:00] empower for motors, it is empath for systems and vibration and all the other things.

And now empath, CMS, which is a continuous monitoring system that you’re offering that those systems are revolutionary and I don’t use that word a lot in wind. It’s revolutionary in wind and. Let, let me just back up a little bit because I, I want to explain what some of these problems are that we’re seeing in the field and, and what your systems do.

But there’s a, the, the core to what your technology is, is that you’re using the air gap between the rotor and the stator and the generator to monitor what’s happening inside the turbine. Very precisely. Can you just provide a little insight like how that magic happens?

Howard Penrose: Okay. It’s, it’s basically, we use it as an, as a basic accelerometer.

So, um, the side to side movement of the, of the rotor inside the air gap. Um. I could get very technical and use the word [00:02:00] inverse square law, but basically in the magnetic field I’ve got side to side movement. Plus every defect in the powertrain, um, causes either blips or hesitations in the rotation.

Basically, the torque of the machine, which is also picked up in the air gap, and from a physics standpoint. The air gap, the magnetic field, can’t tell the difference. And, um, both voltage and current see that as small ripples in the wave form, and then we just pull that data out. So, um, uh, I, I liken it exactly as vibration.

Just a different approach,

Allen Hall: right? And that that vibration turns into little ripples. And then I’m gonna talk electrical engineering, just for a brief moment, everybody. We’re taking it from the time domain to the frequency domain. We’re doing a four a transform. And in that four a transform, you can see these spikes that occur at, uh, known locations that correlate back to what the machine is doing

Howard Penrose: exactly.

[00:03:00] They’re they’re exact calculations, uh, down to the hundred or even thousandths of a hertz. Uh, so, uh, when we, when we do the measurements, they come up as side bands around, uh, whatever. The, the, uh, signature is, so the amplitude modulation, it’s an amplitude modulated signal. So I have, uh, basically the ripple show up on the positive side of the waveform and on the negative side of the waveform.

So around everything, I just have plus and minus line frequency. That’s, that’s basically the primary difference. Then we just convert it over to decibels, which makes it, um, relational to the load, which means load doesn’t matter. Uh, so I can compare an unloaded machine to a fully loaded machine and get the same results,

Allen Hall: which is also amazing.

So the load, what the turbine is doing doesn’t really matter at all, as long as it’s rotating and producing power. You can [00:04:00] monitor what’s happening, sort of anything up, and then the cell. Mostly,

Howard Penrose: well, it’s even, it’s even more fun than that because the air gap in a wind turbine is at a fixed speed for a dfi.

So, uh, it’s constantly turning at the exact same speed, which is basically all I need regardless of the physical speed. So, vibration, I need to know that physical speed and electrical signature. I need to know the air gap. Speed.

Allen Hall: So with this data and the way you’re monitoring what’s happening on the turbine is through current sensors on the feeds and voltage probes.

You could do one or the other and, and you’ve done both, and we can discuss that for a moment. But just using the what’s happening on the wires, on the generator wires, now he can determine everything that’s generally happening mechanically. So from gearbox to the blades. The, [00:05:00] the hub, uh, you can even determine things that are happening up tower a little bit like ya motors and that sort of thing.

If they’re acting weird, you can see changes there. And it’s sort of like the pulse of the turbine

Howard Penrose: and the main bearings. And the main bearings, right? So all the bearings never leave out the main bearings. That’s, that’s a study we’re involved in right now. So, um. Yeah. Uh, oh. Yeah. The, the study right now is, uh, we’re using the technology to map out circulating current sub tower.

Um, so we’re, we’re looking at, uh, why main bearings are failing, um, which was missed before. I’ve got an, I’ve got a paper coming out on it. We’re kicking off an NRE L study, uh, on it. And we are also working along with, um, groups in the field and an independent study all to. Well, a main bearing is a really expensive issue.

Um, and, and we’re fine. People are just [00:06:00] finally figured out that they were failing because of electrical discharge. And, um, the high frequencies associated with that basically caused the brushes to become resistors and the bearings to become conductors. So, uh, we now have a technology that allows us to look at these very high frequency sound or.

High frequency

Allen Hall: noise. Okay. Let’s just use that as a test case for your system for iPath CMS, because. That is one issue that pretty much everybody in the United States that uses a particular OEM has

Howard Penrose: actually, uh, you, you got, you hit it on the head. It’s just like the old W Ring thing. Everybody thought it was a specific, uh, generator manufacturer turned out to be every DFI failing the same way we discovered that.

Uh, we’ve also heard, uh, you know, a specific OEM and a specific. Type of platform. They were seeing the problems in the main bearings. And again, it just came about because people were talking about it. Except [00:07:00] guess what? We’re not just seeing it in the us, we’re seeing it globally. That’s one of the benefits we have with so many users worldwide is we’re finding out that all of these problems are not unique to us.

They’re global in nature and they’re cross platform.

Joel Saxum: So when we talk cross platforms and, and you, the listeners here will notice that I’ve been markedly absent from the conversation so far. ’cause it’s a bit over my head. Sorry. No, it’s, it’s just, this is, this is great stuff. But what I, that was one of the things I was wondering while we were going through this is we were talking about, um.

Solutions that you guys have that can solve specific problems. Now, does this say I have a direct drive turbine? Or like, is, is there any models or any types of technology that you can’t work on out in the field or does it Basically we have a solutions that can cover all turbines regardless

Howard Penrose: if it’s got a magnetic field, whether it’s a generator, motor, or transformer, we can see it.

I can follow that. So we even, we even, we even use [00:08:00] the technology in the industrial side for power monitoring for plants. Because we get, uh, we get good insights on what’s coming into the facility and what the facility’s putting back into the system, in particular with high frequency noise and stuff like that, that utilities are just now starting to pay attention to.

Joel Saxum: It’s just, this is an important thing for the CMS system that you guys have, because I’m, I’m thinking right now, okay, now, now again, I’m gonna dumb this way down, um, in my. Built Jeeps that I’ve done in the past, I’ve gotten death wobble in the steering wheel because of oscillations in the front axle.

Right? But that only happens at a certain speed, right? If I, if I could, if I could get through second gear at about 4,000 RPMs and grab third, I’m fine. But if I have to shift to 2,500 RPMs, about 32 miles an hour, I’m in a world of hurt, right? I’m, I’m shaking this thing down the road. So turbines I know will do that sometimes at certain RPM.

They will have vibration issues that will either go away or expand a resonance or natural [00:09:00] frequency.

Howard Penrose: Yeah,

Joel Saxum: right. Like at, at at, um, you know, four RPM is one thing at seven and a half rpm it goes away. So having cm, your CMS system, that’s their continuously monitoring when the wind speeds are low, when they’re high, when.

Does that help you pick up different anomalies within the turbine to be able to kind of pinpoint what’s, what could be happening?

Howard Penrose: No, because those frequencies are always present. They just amplify at certain points in speed, right? They, they hit a natural frequency, so they just oscillate like mad. Uh, I’m rereading all of my Tesla books right now.

So where, where he talks about that, you know, you could split the world like an apple if, if you hit the right frequency. Um. With a small device. Uh, so, uh, yeah, we see it across that entire speed range, even though you feel that oscillation. One of the nice things about, um, uh, electrical and current signature is it isn’t a structural vibration analysis.

Like if, if I [00:10:00] have the, um, structure or the machine vibrating outside, I see very little of that. I see all the drivers behind it instead. Right. So it, it’s, it’s less likely, uh, I’ll pick up a false positive because I hit a resonance. That amplitude remains the same.

Joel Saxum: That’s the difference between what you guys are doing and what and what everybody else is doing with a accelerometer, gy, gyro, whatever that sensor may be.

You name it,

Howard Penrose: accelerometer, ultrasound, all that other stuff. It’s all variations of,

Joel Saxum: of physical.

Howard Penrose: Yeah, and I refer to those as basically fault detectors. They’re dummy lights. Nobody’s actually using condition-based maintenance as condition-based maintenance. We can use the information to actually make modifications and changes.

Joel Saxum: You can actually diagnose with yours. That’s what we always say right now. CMS basically at, at this, at a general level is go and look at this turbine, bing. Go and [00:11:00] look at this turbine. You have a problem. Go and look. One of these blades has a problem. Go and look at it. But you are actually going deeper down saying diagnosis, Hey, this may be the actual problem that’s causing.

This issue in your turbine, and that is invaluable.

Howard Penrose: Yeah. One of our case studies is of a bearing a man, a a a a re, a reinstalled bearing on a, or an installed bearing on a drive end of a a wind turbine. The, um, it had some problems with, uh, the cage, which caused one of the roll balls not to rotate. Um, and it had some false brunel on in the inner outer race, and we saw that, but we also saw, uh, a much higher level in the thrust bearing in the gear box.

And so when we, we went back to them and said, yeah, you’ve got a problem here. Uh, they took the bearing back off, and then I said, make sure that you’ve got all the shims in the. And the, uh, coupling and they had left out a shem, so it had [00:12:00] caused a problem in the, so if we hadn’t detected the other thing, we would’ve detected the gearbox, um, bearing.

But they were ignoring that data and were looking at the bearing. They just replaced in the generator. So when, when they put everything back together, we were able to confirm that. All we saw after that was the friction losses in the, in the bearings.

Joel Saxum: question is, is okay, we’re looking at. Basically deltas outside of a, a sine wave and these peaks and valleys to in your, in the sign you’re detecting, how are you able to know, oh, I saw this delta here, or I saw this here.

That’s a thrust bearing. That’s a main bearing. That’s something here. Is that just years of knowledge built up from, okay, we saw this fault and we, we figured it was this because of it, or. How are you guys arriving at that?

Howard Penrose: Uh, it’s from my years as a, uh, vibration analyst, um, Navy trained vibration analyst.

Uh, [00:13:00] so, um, what, what was discovered by Oak Ridge National Labs in the 1980s? So this isn’t that new. As a matter of fact, this technology is direct descendant from Howard Haynes’s work another Howard. What we discovered was the frequencies are. For the most part, exactly the same as what we look for in vibration, just side bands, right?

Because we, we, you know, I tell people, how do you interpret the data versus vibration? Stand on your head and cross your eyes. Um, being former Navy, I sometimes use some other, you know, things such as go out and drink heavily. Uh, but in any case, um. Instead of looking from bottom up, we’re actually setting whatever the peak line frequency, current or voltage is, that’s zero.

And then we, uh, relate every other peak, um, based upon 20 times the log 10 of the difference in the current, from the current in [00:14:00] question back to that peak. Which is kind of cool because that also means that it’s. As my load changes, everything follows. So it’s not load dependent. The only thing that happens is frequency.

So you have to take enough of a, a data across a long enough time so that you can determine the differences between the, the components, right? So, so in a wind turbine for instance, I’ll have all those bearings in the gearbox, including the planetary gears. I have the main bearing, and they all kind of crowd around line frequency.

I need a resolution that’ll show me a hundredth of a hertz difference between any two peaks. It’s it’s vibration. It’s actually vibration. So the, each of the components, even each component of the bearing, ’cause I can call out which part of a bearing, and that’s actually how we analyze what conditions we’re looking at.

If it’s, uh, cage and ball only, and no signature off of the inner and outer [00:15:00] race, chances are it’s lubrication. Um, you know, that kind of thing on a main bearing. If I see the outer race cha and nothing else, chances are, uh, they didn’t clean out all the old grease and there’s dried grease across the bottom.

Uh, we discovered that actually with a couple of the, a couple of sites. So we, we say check, check greasing and condition of the inner and outer rays, you know, that kind of thing. And, uh, we’ve been right more than wrong. Uh, the, the quoted, the quoted number back from one of the OEMs is about 95% accuracy.

And when you consider, when you consider borescope has been identified at less than 50%, um, it, it, it gives you a really high accuracy.

Joel Saxum: We just had a conversation with someone the other day, Alan, you and I, about borescopes and how can you borescope so think that’s full of grease And they were like, oh, yeah.

Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s difficult.

At best. Well, and that’s the power of [00:16:00] what Modoc is doing, and what Howard’s doing is that it can detect a range of problems early. And as we get into this area of where o and m budgets are becoming restricted, and you need to spend your money wisely. Do preventative maintenance, which is what MotorDoc is all about, is catching these things early before they become really expensive.

Electrical signal analysis is a very simple way to get that data, which is what the Empower Empath and then Empath CMS system are doing is they’re, they’re reading those electrical signatures and correlating back to where the problem is and the success rate is. Howard, as you pointed out, is. Really high, uh, a lot of systems that I see and I was just went to Europe and looked at some data on some other systems, it’s about 50 50.

Well, if 50 50, I could flip a coin at that point. It’s not of any use to me. It has to be somewhere north of 90 where I become interested. And your system, when I talked to operators that use it, [00:17:00] said, well, geez, um, you know, it’s well in the high, in the nine high nineties all the time and it’s amazing what they can pull out.

It’s this bearing or that bearing or this problem with this motor or this problem with the system and the amount of money they’re saving to pick up those problems early and to get them repaired when it’s lower cost or to keep an eye on ’em even, which is an option, lowers our operational budgets down and it makes sense.

So the, the cost of a CMS system is only relative to the money it saves. And I think this is where a lot of operators are getting a little hung up. There’s a lot of CMS systems, which are you pay per year for, and it’s a constant expanse. It adds up to the om OMS budget and no one wants to do that. What you’re seeing now with MotorDock is that system is a capital expenditure.

You buy it, it comes with the hardware, it comes with the [00:18:00] software, it comes with all the knowledge and all the updates I think are free. So. It makes a lot more sense to use a MotorDoc type of system and empath CMS than necessarily to, to put individual CMS systems on that maybe do less than what Howard can do.

Joel Saxum: I think an important thing here too, Alan, is as we get to, uh, an era of lifetime extension, I. People looking for that solution. How do I guarantee the safety of my turbine, the operation of my turbine as we continue to roll this thing forward? I know here, even in the states, we always say PTC, 10 year repower.

That’s not the case for all these turbines. We have 80 20 repowers. We have a lot of ’em. Like, Hey, we have a good PPA. So these things have been, these are 14 years old, we’re still gonna run ’em. We’re not repowering these, or in Europe or in other places in the world where we don’t have the same kind of tax setup we do, where they’re trying to squeeze as much life outta these in, you know, originally 20 to 25 year lifetimes.

Man, if you can put something on there that can tell you you’re good to go, or Hey, you need to watch this, or This is the next big spend you have coming up, they can help those operators to make decisions [00:19:00] to for lifetime extension in a really, really good way.

Allen Hall: Going into the data acquisition system and how it connects to the turbine, I know it’s one of the problems that we run into occasionally, is using anything that the the Tower has in terms of data streams.

They want of a lot of it information. Does your system plug into the data system of the turbine or is it independent, or how does that work and what is the security features?

Howard Penrose: Yeah, whatever they want. So, uh, that, that, and, and you bring up a good point, like wireless is not allowed. Um, but everybody’s using it, right?

Um, there’s a lot of things that aren’t allowed that we were, we were. Privy to during NIST’s work and, and others’ work on cybersecurity on the hill, because I was advising that stuff back in the, you know, back, uh, prior to 2020 and a little bit afterwards. Um, so, uh, uh, [00:20:00] yeah, we, our system was originally designed for nuclear power plants.

So, uh, it’s meant to either. It’s a wired system basically, that you can take back to an independent server. You can have it go locally and send it through your own, uh, own network. Um, it doesn’t need to connect to cloud or somewhere else. Uh, if you want to keep it itself contained. Uh, in some turbines we have gone the route of, uh, cellular modems.

For, for each of the towers. Um, you know, when, when they’re permanently installed, a lot of people just do data collection. I mean, when you consider, like in a GE turbine, um, if I go, if I personally go to a site and I’ve done over 6,000 turbines in the, in the US and Canada myself, um. And if you could see me, you know, I don’t climb.

[00:21:00] Um, yeah, that’s my running joke. It’s like, yeah, I don’t think the ladders will support me. Uh, but any case, um, the, uh, normally it’s walking the base of the tower gathering data as long as the transformer’s down tower and moving on to the next one, I, I think my record is seven minutes a tower, including traveling in between.

So it’s not unusual to knock out a single data collection on a site within, uh, if it’s 120 turbines, normally three days. Three and a half. If there’s a, if it’s summer and they’ve got that wind break in Texas where, you know, it’s changing direction, so it takes a lunch break.

Joel Saxum: You’re a small company, right?

Just like we are here at Weather Guard where we’re flexible to what the client wants. So if the client wants a certain thing, we can deliver a certain thing. If the client needs this, they can, we can do this. So you get, you guys can do the, the CMS UPT Tower where it’s like you have an installation and it’s gonna be there.

Or hey, we can just come to your site, boom, boom, boom, do some testing, and be outta there and give you some reports like you can, you [00:22:00] have a lot of solutions that you can help people out with.

Howard Penrose: We even have, uh, most of the, um, uh, wind service companies, you know, motor repair shops and generator repair shops and everything else have our technology.

They also provide the service. Uh, that’s our model is the more the end users or service companies can do it, the better. Uh, we, we made the choice not to, you know, I don’t want a room full of people that are sitting there doing nothing but analysis, right? They’re gonna burn out. Uh, I’d rather be doing the research and identifying the problems, finding industry related issues to solve.

And our technology was built simple enough that we don’t have to handle a lot of tech support calls. Um, and, uh, and monitoring is an option. Meaning we’ll do the monitoring. I’ve got, I’ve got a number of industrial sites, some wind sites, some other energy sites. Uh, [00:23:00] all, all using the technology and getting us data, but yeah, exactly.

Smaller company. It’s broad, but the technology is not backed by just us. It’s backed by a small $12 billion company called ome. So, uh, yeah, so, and that’s not, it’s not an investor anything. It’s, they, um, they got the license from Oak Ridge back in 1991 or two and, uh, and they maintain it. And during some 97 on, uh, I, in different roles.

Uh, have been supporting the development of the technology. So we have a mutual agreement. They focus on, um, nuclear power, and I focus on everything else.

Allen Hall: Howard, we love having you on the program because your technology is just amazing and people need to get a hold of MotorDoc. So if you’re an operator, a developer, an OEM, and Wind, if you’re making some of the components for wind [00:24:00] turbines, you need to be talking to Howard and MotorDoc to get this diagnostic tool into your toolbox and save the the world a lot of money on downtime and repairs.

Howard, how do people get a hold of MotorDoc? Where do they find you on the web?

Howard Penrose: Well, we could be reached online, uh, through, uh, LinkedIn at, uh, LinkedIn slash in slash MotorDoc, or, uh, at our websites MotorDoc.com or MotorDoc ai.io. Uh, or you can also reach us via email at info@motordoc.com.

Allen Hall: Howard, thanks for coming on.

We’re gonna have you back on soon and everybody keep watching Howard on LinkedIn if you wanna find out what’s happening as MotorDoc develops more technology, watch Howard on LinkedIn. Howard, thank you so much for being on the program. Love having you.

Howard Penrose: It has been a pleasure as always. And we’ll see you the next time [00:25:00] around.

https://weatherguardwind.com/motordoc-electrical-diagnosis/

Renewable Energy

Data Center Load Uncertainty Dominates Georgia Power IRP Hearing

Published

24 hours ago

June 11, 2025

Alice Rush

Under state law, every three years, Georgia Power must show government regulators at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) its plan to meet electricity demand over the next 20 years. The Commission then must either approve, deny, or amend what is typically a multi-billion-dollar plan that ultimately shows up on your electric bill. Georgia Power’s profits depend on the amount of spending approved in the plan. This year, the review is particularly important because customer bills have already skyrocketed due to two new nuclear plants and high fossil fuel prices.

In its new plan this year, Georgia Power told state regulators that its customers would need a 50% increase in power in just six years, requiring a historically massive buildout of new power plants. For the last fifteen years, despite economic and population growth, most utilities around the country have seen slow or flat demand growth because appliances have become more efficient and now use less energy.

In a hearing to review the plan, multiple experts testified that Georgia Power’s forecast is highly unlikely, even with expected growth in huge new computer data centers. Why is this so important? Because if the Commission approves the plan and the projected new demand doesn’t show up exactly as Georgia Power expects, existing customers will have to pay for billions of dollars of unneeded power plants.

Huge Projected Computer Data Center Expansion Would Increase Fossil Fuel Usage

In order to power the projected electricity demand from huge new computer data centers, Georgia Power proposes to keep its old, inefficient coal-fired power plants (over 4,000 MW of coal-fired capacity) operating through the mid-2030s, when some will be over 60 years old. These plants have emitted an average of 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year over the past few years. In previous Georgia Power resource plans, these plants were going to retire to reduce costs and health impacts.

Georgia Power also proposes to double down on building many new gas-fired power plants (8,000-9,000 MW of gas-fired capacity) that would make the state’s economy fundamentally dependent for another fifty years on out-of-state oil and gas drilling. We estimate that the new gas power plants alone are likely to emit over 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year for decades.

The coal and gas power plants would be by far the largest source of air pollution in the state, spewing tiny, toxic particles that cause heart attacks, asthma, and climate change.

Experts Decry High Electricity Demand Forecast

Seven highly qualified experts hired by different interests disagreed with Georgia Power’s assumptions around demand forecast driven by data center expansion, and none endorsed them. For instance, a national electric reliability expert hired by SACE, NRDC, and Sierra Club testified that Georgia Power’s forecast was “malpractice.” Even the PSC’s own staff poked holes in Georgia Power’s demand forecast.

Expert witnesses Stenclik, Richwine, and Goulding; sponsored by SACE, NRDC, and Sierra Club:

Here is a list of the witness panels that had broad or specific issues with the demand forecast, and timestamps for the hearing video so you can listen to their critiques yourself.

Next in the process, Georgia Power will file rebuttal testimony and have a hearing for that rebuttal. Intervenors and Georgia Power will then file final briefs, and the Georgia PSC will decide what to do with this IRP in July. The PSC is an elected body that oversees the work of utilities in the state. Georgia Power, which generates over $7 billion in revenue annually, is the only electric utility regulated by the PSC in Georgia.

The post Data Center Load Uncertainty Dominates Georgia Power IRP Hearing appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Data Center Load Uncertainty Dominates Georgia Power IRP Hearing

Renewable Energy

National Drive Electric Month: [Insert Your Town Name Here]

Published

24 hours ago

June 11, 2025

Alice Rush

The author would like to credit and thank Karen Freedman, co-chair of the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team, for her contribution to the content contained in the article.

National Drive Electric Month

National Drive Electric Month (NDEM) is a nationwide celebration that highlights the benefits of electric vehicles. This fall, events will be taking place across the country to help educate the public on the cost-effectiveness, public health and environmental benefits of electric transportation. It’s an opportunity for members of the public to see a wide variety of electric models in one place, talk to EV owners and have their questions answered. The campaign is presented by several national organizations that offer fantastic resources, but the real secret sauce of the events are the volunteers that help coordinate them and the EV drivers who participate as peer-to-peer EV ambassadors.

Here is everything you need to know to host an event and share the benefits of EVs with your community.

Consider Organizing an Event

This year’s event window runs from September 12 through October 12, 2025. Anyone can create an event and the NDEM website makes it easy to create an individual event webpage to promote the event.

Advantages of creating an event through the NDEM platform include:

Adding your event to an interactive US map & event list
Creating an individual event webpage
Making email notifications easy with registered EV owners & interested attendees
Providing access to how-to guides, a social media toolkit, templates, Canva, sponsor logos, hand outs, etc.
Receiving free banners/signage, educational handouts and swag
Providing access to free event-planning webinars

Photo courtesy of Karen Freedman and the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team.

Organizing an Event 101

Reach out to your local municipality and see if they would be interested in co-hosting the event. Partnering with your municipality can help with identifying access to a venue, co-promotion and the opportunity to piggyback on an existing event. You can ask your mayor to create a proclamation celebrating the event. Also consider partnering with your local utility as well as civic and environmental organizations. When selecting the date and location look for a site that is walkable and accessible to attendees with varying levels of mobility. A community park that is visible will attract more participants day off than an area on a busy highway. Also consider amenities like shade, restrooms and access to food.

Publicity Considerations

Start promoting the event early with flyers and posters that include:

Date, time, location
Event website
Contact info
QR Code
Photos
National & local sponsors’ logos
Description w/ Buzzwords: FREE, Family-friendly, EV showcase, Local EV owners share enthusiasm, etc.

Ask your local library, local business, restaurants and schools to display the poster.

Here’s a beautiful example from the Lakeland National Drive Electric event in 2023.

Photo courtesy of Karen Freedman and the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team.

You can also post your event online to various community calendars and social media venues. You can create press releases that can be sent to your local radio and television stations, community newspapers and local magazines.

Event Considerations

Having a volunteer check-in the EV drivers who will display their cars and direct them to where they park will provide great structure and set the tone for a successful day. The sponsors provide printable signs that EV drivers can display on their vehicles to help explain the models to participants.

Having an education table with resources including multilingual versions is vital to connecting with attendees. Consider having a knowledgeable volunteer(s) be ready to answer questions. You can also have an EV quiz game and spin wheels to engage participants.

Photo courtesy of Karen Freedman and the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team.

Other details to consider include having a kids’ table with coloring sheets that can occupy children while you talk to the adults they are accompanied by. Also, consider getting a prize(s) donated that can be given away as a drawing and having folks sign up so you can continue to connect with them after the event.

Photo courtesy of Karen Freedman and the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team.

Get additional modes of transportation and electric equipment on display like:

E-bikes
Electric school buses and transit buses (contact your school district and transit authority)
Electric lawn care equipment (local homeowner or yard care company)

Photo courtesy of Karen Freedman and the League of Women Voters FL Clean Energy Action Team.

Finally, try to get either a ride component (if EV drivers are comfortable driving attendees in their EV) or a drive component where participants can drive an EV. Reach out to local car dealerships to see if they would be interested in bringing a representative and vehicle for the event.

Post Event Considerations

One important aspect of the National Drive Electric Month events website is that you can update it after the event with photos and statistics like how many vehicles participated and how many attendees you talked with. It’s also great to send thank you correspondence with the EV drivers, volunteers, and local government representatives who helped pull off an amazing event.

Get Started Organizing

National Drive Electric Month events don’t need to have a ton of vehicles to be impactful. If you have an interest in helping educate your community about electric vehicles, take the plunge and organize one this year. Not sure yet? Learn more about organizing an event by looking at the NDEM planning guide, Getting Started As An Event Organizer. If you are just too overwhelmed, click here to find a National Drive Electric Week event near you and commit to volunteering this year with the intent of hosting your own next year.

Electrify the South is a Southern Alliance for Clean Energy program that leverages research, advocacy, and outreach to promote renewable energy and accelerate the equitable transition to electric transportation throughout the Southeast. Visit ElectrifytheSouth.org to learn more and connect with us.

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