Published

2 years ago

February 15, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Revolutionizing Wind Farm Data Management: Thread’s UNITI Platform

CEO Josh Riedy explains how Thread’s UNITI software platform enables intuitive data management and analysis for drone inspections at wind farms, creating integrated “electronic medical records” for turbines. Visit their website: https://thread.one/

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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. If you’ve been paying attention to the drone inspection business, you may have noticed some significant changes in the last couple of years. The amount of data being acquired is astounding where the industry once lacked sufficient data.

Now we’re overflowing with it and new ideas and businesses are trying to solve the data overload problem and bring more of a uniform approach to inspections. Be that wind turbines, transmission lines, substations. Our guest today is Josh Riedy CEO and founder of Thread, and Thread is based in North Dakota in the central part of the United States.

Thread has developed some really interesting products and is really simplifying the way that we handle data. Josh, welcome to the program.

Josh Riedy: Thank you, Allen. Glad to be here.

Allen Hall: So we have a massive problem that the industry is going through at the moment where we want to acquire more data and that’s what Thread does in their platform.

And let’s talk about that in a moment here, but I want to understand the scope of the problem because we, Joel and I have been around talking to operators lately. And here’s one of the things they tell us, and it happened this morning, actually, on a zoom call they want to acquire more data.

They want to acquire the wind farm, the turbine, the blade, but also the transmission line, all the substation. They want to gather drone images of all of it. And the problem they were having was what to do with all the data that actually happened today.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. How do we manage it all?

Allen Hall: Yeah. And this revolve back to our conversation about what Thread is doing to answer that call.

So maybe you can describe what you’re doing to answer the call of we have a lot of data.

Josh Riedy: Allen and Joel. Thanks for having me again. And you touch on the heart of the problem. There is too much data and not just too much data. It’s sensitive information. It is not meant to be in the public sphere, and that is a huge consideration.

So the goal of Thread and our passion since 2018 has been to take that information and make it relevant to the customer, to the stakeholder that needs that information. And that’s not simple, because no large organization is just one modality. There are many different groupings within a given organization that have different needs.

And to get that right has been a pursuit for some time, but I do believe we are on the right track and we’re able to show the world that.

Allen Hall: I have really seen a shift Josh in what the engineers are asking for it was for the longest time Let’s take some images of blades and then they’re like wow I got this I can got some images of blades with drones This is fantastic Why am I not doing everything around this wind turbine and that means looking at the tower looking at the cell going down to the base of plant, right?

So the BOP and then those large operators are like, Hey we own everything out to the substation here, folks. We need to be inspecting that too. So that ended up in the that’s been a last two year problem. In the last two years, like, holy moly, we’ve, the engineers have just gone crazy on the amount of data.

Right. And I’m sure they’re banging on your door saying, Hey, if you’re here and you’re guys are doing inspections. Can you do the transmission line? Can you do the substation? I assume you’re hearing that from almost every operator at this point.

Josh Riedy: Absolutely, and even more than that, we’ve been able to experience that firsthand.

We have had the development arc with our co development partner in the industry, Xcel Energy, and if I could turn back the hands of time, And record the first conversation to the most recent conversation with Russ and their engineering team, you see a profound transformation that they’re beginning to get mastery over the process and their needs.

And with that comes very specific requests for what the software should do and what you’re really building is a cadence. You know, it’s not just one time, let’s get a picture and it stays there for a year or two years or five. It is, there are ongoing needs that are dynamic. And so how do you build that rapport back and forth to sites and site managers and technicians that may be hundreds and thousands of miles away?

That workspace is every bit as important as the record that data is generating.

Joel Saxum: You’ve got the UNITI platform, right? And that is taken and you’re able to take in. Any kind of data you want. So it can start from, you can be, we, you know, we’re focusing here on the course, drone inspections of wind turbine blades.

Great. But we can also take an images, LIDAR data, anything of the sort you, so you’re, you have this. Database and we could for, you know, operators and we could call it almost a specific like geo database. So you’ve got all kinds of metadata, imagery, all this inspection is living thing that can be refreshed, can be updated when you want to.

But you’re also creating the solutions and this I think was where Thread started. You guys have done a little bit of a pivot. You also have solutions in the field that are kind of changing the way inspections are done because classically. In the drone inspection world, as autonomous drones started and they became a thing, it was like, all right, cool, we got to contract these this company XYZ that has this drone, they’re going to come in, they’re going to do our inspections, but what you guys have changed the market to is basically drones as a service as well, so not only can you have the platform, that’s what we’re focusing on, that’s where we’re going in the future.

But you can help operators collect data more efficiently and more cost effectively as well.

Josh Riedy: Absolutely. And what you’re seeing is a paradigm change in the industry that, that coincides with where the pivot from fossils into renewables is going as a whole. Capitalization, self enablement, building.

The feedback loops at scale require enabling those very frontline workers to do the work. And it’s not just flying. You know, when you think of inspections, we think of taking a photo or operating a drone. What happens after that is really where the rubber meets the road. And Being able to automate that entire workflow so that it is a cadence where an engineer issues at order that goes or work order that goes onto site and a technician picks that up and acts upon it and that information is delivered back to the engineer to make an informed decision.

And that becomes part of a record. That is an entire cycle that, that frankly speaking, it took us four years to get right. But I’m proud to say that you can find that at scale across the U S and it is. Absolutely. Not just the future, it’s the present.

Joel Saxum: So you’re empowering that field to back office. A transfer of information because you know, even more progressively in the virtual world that we live in, you may talk to like you guys, Xcel Energy is your, you know, your development partner has been since the beginning, but your engineers at Xcel Energy are spread all over North America, right?

They don’t all work in one office anymore, so they can’t make decisions here and there. It’s not, it’s nodular, right? So there may be someone that’s dealing on a wind farm in Minnesota, but they may sit in Chicago or they may sit in, I Houston, wherever they are, but they can go like, Hey, I’ve been looking at this.

I’d like to see this. And you guys are providing the infield workers with the drone to, or the, with the, some of the power to go do that.

Josh Riedy: And that’s tremendously enabling when there is a cause to go take a deeper look. I often compare what we do to the healthcare industry. As ironic as that may seem, you may think a utility and healthcare have very little to do with one another.

But if you imagine what healthcare would be today without being able to log into a system and see your blood work, see your x ray, see your MRI, see your physician’s notes, see the pharmaceutical record that you have. Physicians could not treat or diagnose you. Well, hospital administer administrators could not manage the organization well and yet utility, while in many ways altogether different, has extraordinarily similar needs that parallel electronic medical or health records.

And so that is the very approach that Thread is taken for utilities, not unlike a company not to be named in Wisconsin that did so with healthcare nearly 20 years ago.

Joel Saxum: So, so with that being said, give us some examples of the data that you guys are integrating. Like, what is it, what is a holistic view of a, say, a wind farm project look like?

What kind of data are you bringing in?

Josh Riedy: Yeah, you know, if you think about a wind farm, at the onset, you mentioned all the pieces, you know, that there’s not just a series of blade images anymore. Whether it be the nacelle, whether it be the tower, whether it be the hub, whether there be the blades, whether it be the transmission or distribution lines that are on site.

Every single one of those into or assets need to be entered into a system so that you can holistically manage that site and what it is really creating a record of the site itself. We know sites are bought and sold. What if those sites had a record that could accompany the physical record and move forward to another customer or be used as a basis for warranty or insurance or financing?

The work that we do, the information that we gather has a tremendous number of uses and the cause or the way that information is being generated is the same. It’s focusing on those men and women that are on site that do a hell of a job maintaining those assets and giving them a place to put that information other than a notebook or in their own minds.

Allen Hall: So just so everybody knows. The UNITI system, you can actually check it out online at Thread.one, O N E, and UNITI is spelled UNITI. So you can just Google that and it’ll show up. So, this has been a concept in the working for a while. And you guys have been really pouring a lot of time and effort into getting this platform right.

And maybe you can describe some of the back office things we haven’t seen because This is a tremendous piece of software.

Josh Riedy: Oh, I appreciate you asking that. If you imagine the amount of nuance one piece I’ll take that’s often overlooked, working to get connectivity to remote sites, and not just any connectivity, but making those sites part of a secure corporate network.

You know, just in the news today, you hear that the cyber or the Chinese threats to cyber security for infrastructure, I can tell you that those threats are very real, but they are able to be mitigated, right? And so getting network on the site, especially these remote sites, having devices that are operating on robots that are certified into you.

Okay. A customer’s network. You know, that’s almost unheard of. But the devices that are on top of drones are actually secure devices that are corporate devices, just like a corporate laptop. That work doesn’t happen overnight. That work does not happen without a partner that is of the industry. And so we may be a startup in North Dakota.

But I like to believe we are of the industry because that’s who we’ve relied on to get this right.

Joel Saxum: You know, I, so I’m down here in Houston here for the last few months. And I love my network down here. Love the people I’m around. Go into these, you know, clean energy underground and take some lunches at the ION and the Greentown labs and all this fantastic thing here.

But one of the things that those VCs and private equity firms are starting to focus on is having that launch partner. Right. There’s people down in those facilities that are specifically dedicated to, to, cause there’s so many startups out there. This is great. We love to see the startup industry, but there’s a lot of people creating solutions for problems that are fringe problems or don’t quite exist.

And they don’t have the guidance to get it just right. But you guys have been working with Accel Energy for years on crafting exactly what a utility scale grid, grid tied operator needs. Within their organization. Can you tell us a little bit about that relationship?

Josh Riedy: Yeah. Happy to Joel and you’ve got it right.

My commentary would be is there is so much noise in that industry. So many people I’ve met in utilities and energy are numb to the promises that have been made. And what I see time and again is if you’re an outsider, if you haven’t paid your dues, what may seem logical to you does not work within the organization because you forget again about the workforce.

I think so many people look past a workforce and shame on them because those people show up every day and get the job done. So for us, it is incorporating that workforce whether that be a technician, whether that be alignment, whether it be a drone operator, an engineer, so on and so forth. Because in our product, each of those individual groups have had their fingers into it.

So where we started was being able to get a workflow correct that could go on the site and literally anyone could use it with minutes of training. If you heard, I haven’t said technology once in all of that. It’s about people. It’s about process. It’s about scalability. The technology is frankly the last part.

When you can diagnose the problem that is preventing scale, then you can apply the technology and in the end, it’s all about the data because the one piece that I can mention that again, we feel is overlooked is tying the back end system such as an Esri, such as an SEP, such as a small world To the front end data collection so that the entire workflow doesn’t yield a nicely organized set of images.

It yields information that is directly tied to the assets and the records you already have. I give the analogy back to electronic medical records. If I, If you came to me and I was your physician and you thought you broke your right ankle, I would order an x ray. From a technician that has the ability to understand exactly how to get the right shot of the bone that I believe is broken.

And they don’t x ray your entire body. They x ray exactly the part of the body I’m asking them to and they return that back to me that I can diagnose and turn to someone else to perhaps cast your leg. All of that has language around it. All of it is within the context of healthcare. Utilities are the same.

In that context. Is their life. It is their well being and it means everything to the technology and building of solutions. And I like to think our competitive moat isn’t solved by hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s solved by bringing people into the organizations, meeting the people and getting the solution right.

And then what we do that is extraordinarily unique as we prove it at scale before we ever go outside. Our products are proven they work. And it’s a wonderful relationship that I cannot be more thankful for having built that in 2018 and advancing it to today.

Joel Saxum: So, so let’s talk about this thing. We’ll go back to the medical records side of things.

I like that analogy. What is this? What is you, we have data that now we have the data collection portion. We have the data input portion. We have. The model of the database with all the data in it. Now, offline, we talked about you have some in house AI models that you can train for certain things and do certain kinds of analysis where you’re helping the engineers on the engineer side.

You also can take AI models or ML models from them. Input it. So there’s a different workflows and different data analysis where it can be operator agnostic. Can you share a little bit about that?

Josh Riedy: Yeah, absolutely. And again I’ll talk about it in terms of healthcare, because I think that makes it realistic because we’ve all been to the position.

We’ve all, you know, had our bad luck. So to speak, I bet you, you couldn’t tell me the company that built the MRI machine or the x ray machine. Perhaps you can, and you’re more perceptive than me, but you know what? It really didn’t matter. You needed to get the job done, right? And so you had to have whatever the tooling is.

And I think about that, whether it be a drone or whether it be a sensor or whether it be a robot or manned aviation, there’s a tool for the job. So if you think about. The tool for the job getting the information that’s needed, that is an ecosystem and the Thread portion of that ecosystem is very straightforward.

We take that information, we give it context, we do that in an automated fashion and we put that information into the hands of decision makers and in doing so we create a record for that asset. You know, we talk about patients and electronic medical records. People need to understand that I don’t care if you have a thousand transmission structures or wind turbines.

Each one of them is individual in their needs over time. Each one of them deserves a record. You can’t simply treat them all as one. And if we think about it that way, you can better manage small problems before they become large problems and before they become outages.

Allen Hall: So that then empowers, not just the engineer right now, we’re empowering the whole crew that’s involved in managing, operating, delivering power, right?

So now we’re bringing everybody together. Finally it’s taken a long time to get to this point. So the approach I think is spot on in terms of. Hey, let’s help the industry. Let’s give them the tools, let them manage the data. And then let’s be able to let a larger operator typically plug in their pieces of software to look at the data, analyze the data.

But the continuity, which is what Thread is delivering is the magic, right? Is that we are tying all those things together that are now disjointed.

Josh Riedy: Yes. And we’re taking the hands out of the pie, so to speak. If that work isn’t done at scale. You will never have enough people to make this efficient. Right?

Like we should be adding value, not subtracting value and adding additional cost. Exactly. And we should be selling this in a way that utilities consume everything else. I am all for professional services and third parties, but if we cannot add the component that is self enablement, it’s not going to work.

You know, it has to be another tool in the toolbox. It has to be another system that works and makes jobs safer, makes businesses more profitable, and frankly, better informs decision making. If we can’t do all of the above, we’ve failed in our endeavor.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So you’re, You’re the goal of the Thread platforms.

So the solutions in UNITI and everything is to integrate. Into the workflow process where everybody can add things in it. It works for everybody, but you’re not creating a hindrance. You’re creating value add per se.

Josh Riedy: Yes. Every company that we work with should have a common denominator and we want that to be Thread.

The people may change, the tools may change, the sensors, so on and so forth, but the continuity of where that flows into and how it’s made to be a record is very much what we strive to do. And not just for one vertical, not just for wind or for solar or for transmission distribution. To manage effectively, you need all of that information together.

And the ability to have the flexibility or the flexibility it takes to make that come together is a key aspect. And we respect that and we want a thriving ecosystem. I want every drone company to be successful, every sensor company, so on and so forth. We believe we have the key to make this relevant to utilities and to make it a great business decision.

If we get there, everyone benefits because it is a new space that you can sell into.

Allen Hall: Absolutely. Now, one of the things, Josh, that I think that everybody worries about in the drone data space is there’s been a lot of really small companies with very little backing coming to the space and they’re there and operators have put some data in there, then poof, they’re gone.

You guys have set up a slightly different model. You have a very visible investor base with resources to, to make this go at scale, which needs to happen quickly. So do you want to describe who’s backing you at the moment?

Josh Riedy: Yeah. You know, we’ve had wonderful support first, beginning with the state of North Dakota.

I will tell you this in 2024, if you want to start a business, call governor Doug Burgum, call commerce commissioner, Josh Teigen, and show up in North Dakota. It is a great place to be. So there’s my plug to state government that we’re very thankful for. But a lot of that work, if people don’t know, the governor of North Dakota built Microsoft’s largest acquisition at one point in time.

And there’s a substantial Microsoft presence in Fargo, North Dakota. And kudos to him because he Understood what it took to get it done in his generation. And he’s supporting the next generation to be able to get it done. So from that North Dakota has been able to attract other investors in the most visible of the investors that Thread has is none other than Mr.

Wonderful himself from ABC shark tank Kevin O’Leary. And I have the honor of introducing him at. Of at all functions, the Chamber of Commerce annual dinner last week and had the opportunity to watch a hockey game with him. He is a fervent hockey fan, and he’s a Canadian, so he has been great for us.

But really, if you go back to the investment, I think one thing that differentiates us is we have real paying customers with real revenue in the utility industry, and we also have a business model that makes money, and so that passed to being profitable. And having real revenue from real customers makes investment that much easier.

And so relative to our contemporaries, we have not raised the substantial amounts of money, nor are we as far along in that journey, but I really like our positioning because what we had to do is swim upstream and that’s what we did and we changed the rules. And I think the world’s going to see how much it benefits the industry by working from a different approach, a different perspective, if you will.

Allen Hall: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I, now that we’ve talked about this, I’m sure all the engineers and technicians are all sitting there at their computer trying to figure out how to get a hold of Thread. So how do you get a hold of Thread? Where do you go to find out more about UNITI and to find out more about Thread?

Josh Riedy: Absolutely. The internet is a wonderful place. You can either search for UNITI or type in Thread, thread.one. Not to be mistaken with Threads, but Thread. one and look us up, reach out to us. We are a very small group, but we are very hands on and we love this industry. We’re passionate about serving it.

And I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak about Thread with you gentlemen today.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And if you want to go on LinkedIn, you can check out Thread on LinkedIn. Just type in Thread. It’ll pop right up and there’s plenty of information there on LinkedIn and on the website. The website’s fantastic, by the way, Josh, it’s an amazing resource.

So. Congratulations. This is very exciting. I’m really interested to see where this goes because I think you’re actually finally someone here with Thread is connecting all the dots together and it’s going to change the industry. So it’s great to have you on the podcast.

Revolutionizing Wind Farm Data Management: Thread’s UNITI Platform

Renewable Energy

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Published

1 day ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Bret Tollgaard from Sunrez joins to discuss UV-curing prepreg that cuts blade repair time by up to 90% and has recently recieved OEM approval.

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

Allen Hall: Brett, welcome back to the program.

Bret Tollgaard: Thanks for having me again.

Allen Hall: So a lot’s happening at sunrise at the moment. Uh, there’s, uh, activity with sunrise materials on a lot of blades this year.

Over the last couple of years actually, ISPs, operators, OEMs, are realizing that UV curing is a huge advantage.

Bret Tollgaard: Turns out there’s a lot of value added, uh, to the entire process when utilizing UV cure, uh, pre-req.

Allen Hall: So the, the pre pres are, have been available for a couple of years. The qualification though was always the concern.

Has the OEM qualified this material? Are they gonna give you the blessing? Does this show up in the manual? If I call the OEM, are they gonna say they have talked to you guys? A lot of those hurdles have been cleared at this point.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, great question. And we are happy to announce that we have finally been approved by a large OEM for use on the epoxy blade for now all general kind of repairs.

We have several more OEMs that have already passed their phase one mechanical testing, and we’re iterating through now [00:01:00] their, uh, secondary and tertiary kind of tests. And so we do expect to be fully qualified by several OEMs before the end of the year, which should make the ISPs integration and utilization of our materials much, much easier.

Allen Hall: So the, the, the problem you’re solving is repairs in the field for the most part, or sometimes in the factory. Mm-hmm. But a lot of times in the field that those repairs. It happened quite a bit. They’re the same repair, the same area, the same kind of thing over and over and over again. And wetting out fabric on site takes time.

Particularly if you’re using standard materials, you have to bag it. You have to apply heat in some cases to get it to kick, and then you have to wait several hours for it to cure. So in the repair cycle time, most of your time is waiting.

Bret Tollgaard: It sure is. Uh, and on top of all that, we all know that there aren’t enough technicians in this industry to even do all the repairs, uh, that would like to be done.

Yeah. And so to really kind of streamline all of that, [00:02:00] uh, we’ve rolled out a couple of new things and we’ve had a lot more interest in some pre consolidated preki patches for customers. Uh, if a particular blade model has an issue that is a standardized kind of repair. We’re actually now building custom prepregs, or we will build the appropriate width length, stack it, consolidate it, uh, wrap it between our films.

So then all the customer has to do when they get on site is, uh, you know, do do the appropriate surface prep. Scarfing, apply a little bit of our UV surface primer to the backside of that patch. But now they can go up tower, single peel, stick, roll out, and then they’re cured.

Allen Hall: And that’s a. How many hours of saving is that?

It’s gotta be like six, 12 hours of saving, of, of

Bret Tollgaard: labor. It’s upwards of 80 to 90% of the labor that’s gonna actually need to be done to apply that. Otherwise, and then same thing too. We’ve had a couple instances where we took a several day repair down to one, to two to three hours. And these are multi-meter long repairs that were fast tracked because we pre consolidated preki [00:03:00] everything.

Some were in flat sheet forms, some were much longer on rolls, where you’re actually then rolling out with a team. Um, and so we’ve been able to demonstrate several times, uh, over the last 12 months, uh, the, the value that a UV cure preprint.

Allen Hall: Well, sure, because that, that would make sense. The issue about wetting out fabric in the field you just done in the back of a trailer or something, somewhere like that.

Usually it is, it’s that you’re never really sure that you got the fabric wetted out. The experienced technicians always feel like, have done it enough that they get very consistent results. But as you mentioned, getting technicians is hard and, and there’s so many repairs to do. So you’re doing those wetting out composite things takes practice and skill.

Just buying it, preki it, where you have control over it. And you guys sell to the military all the time. So that, and you’re, are you ass 91 qualified yet? You’re in the midst of that?

Bret Tollgaard: So we, I mean, a, we just got ISO certified, uh, at the end of last year in December. So our [00:04:00] QMS system and everything like that’s up to date, that’s huge.

Another big qualification for the OEMs that want to see, you know, true quality and output.

Allen Hall: That’s it. I, if I’m gonna buy a preki patch, so, uh, uh, that would make sense to me, knowing that. There’s a lot of rigor as a quality system. So when I get out the the site and I open that package, I know what’s inside of it every single time.

Bret Tollgaard: Well, and that’s just it. And like we got qualified based on the materials that we can provide and the testing that’s being done in real world situations when you’re wetting out by hand and you’re vacuum backing and you’re trying to cure. It is a little bit of an art form when you’re doing that. It is, and you might think you have a great laminate, you got void content, or you haven’t properly went out that glass ’cause humidity or the way the glass was stored or it was exposed.

The sizing and the resin don’t really bite. Well. You might think you have a great repair, but you might be prematurely failing as well after X cycles and fatigue. Uh, simply because it’s not as easy to, to truly do. Right? And so having the [00:05:00] pre-wet, uh, pre impregnated glass really goes a long way for the quality, uh, and the consistency from repair to repair.

Allen Hall: Well, even just the length of the season to do repairs is a huge issue. I, I know I’ve had some discussions this week about opening the season up a little bit, and some of the ISPs have said, Hey, we we’re pretty much working year round at this point. We’re, we’ll go to California. We’ll go to Southern Texas.

We’ll work those situations. ’cause the weather’s decent, but with the sunrise material, the temperature doesn’t matter.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And I was actually just speaking to someone maybe half hour ago who came by and was talking about repairs that they had to do in Vermont, uh, in December. They could only do two layers of an epoxy repair at a time because of the amount of the temperature.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Whereas you could go through, apply a six or an eight layer pre-reg cure it in 20 minutes. Uh, you know, throughout that entire length that he had and you would’ve been done. That’s, and so it took several days to do a single repair that could have been done in sub one hour with our material.

Allen Hall: I know where those wind turbines are.

[00:06:00] They weren’t very far from, we used to live, so I understand that temperature, once you hit about November up in Vermont, it’s over for a lot of, uh, standard epoxy materials and cures, it is just not warm enough.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, we, we’ve literally had repairs done with our materials at negative 20 Fahrenheit. That were supposed to be temporary repairs.

They were installed four or five years ago. Uh, and they’re still active, perfectly done patches that haven’t needed to be replaced yet. So,

Allen Hall: so, because the magic ingredient is you’re adding UV to a, a chemistry where the UV kicks it off. Correct. Basically, so you’re, it’s not activated until it’s hit with uv.

You hit it with uv that starts a chemical process, but it doesn’t rely on external heat. To cure

Bret Tollgaard: exactly. It, it is a true single component system, whether it’s in the liquid pre preg, the thickened, uh, the thickened putties that we sell, or even the hand lamination and effusion resin. It’s doped with a, a variety of different food initiators and packages based on the type of light that’s [00:07:00] being, uh, used to, to cure it.

But it will truly stay dormant until it’s exposed to UV light. And so we’ve been able to formulate systems over the last 40 years of our company’s history that provide an incredibly long shelf life. Don’t prematurely gel, don’t prematurely, uh, you know, erode in the packaging, all those

Allen Hall: things.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly.

Like we’ve been at this for a really long time. We’ve been able to do literally decades of r and d to develop out systems. Uh, and that’s why we’ve been able to come to this market with some materials that truly just haven’t been able to be seen, uh, delivered and installed and cured the way that we can do it.

Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s a huge thing, the, the shelf life.

Bret Tollgaard: Mm-hmm.

Allen Hall: You talk to a lot of. Operators, ISPs that buy materials that do have an expiration date or they gotta keep in a freezer and all those little handling things.

Bret Tollgaard: Yep.

Allen Hall: Sunrise gets rid of all of that. And because how many times have you heard of an is SP saying, oh, we had a throwaway material at the end of the season because it expired.

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, tremendously

Allen Hall: amount of, hundred of thousands of dollars of material, [00:08:00]

Bret Tollgaard: and I would probably even argue, say, millions of dollars over the course of the year gets, gets thrown out simply because of the expiration date. Um, we are so confident in our materials. Uh, and the distributors and stuff that we use, we can also recertify material now, most of the time it’s gonna get consumed within 12 months Sure.

Going into this kind of industry.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, but there have been several times where we’ve actually had some of that material sent back to us. We’ll test and analyze it, make sure it’s curing the way it is, give it another six months shelf, uh, service life.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, and so you’re good to go on that front

Allen Hall: too.

Yeah. So if you make the spend to, to move to sun, you have time to use it.

Bret Tollgaard: Yes.

Allen Hall: So if it snows early or whatever’s going on at that site where you can’t get access anymore, you just wait till the spring comes and you’re still good with the same material. You don’t have to re-buy it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And with no special storage requirements, like you mentioned, no frozen oven or frozen freezer, excuse me, uh, or certain temperature windows that has to be stored in, uh, it allows the operators and the technicians, you know, a lot more latitude of how things actually get

Allen Hall: done.

And, and so if. When we [00:09:00] think about UV materials, the, the questions always pop up, like, how thick of a laminate can you do and still illuminate with the UV light? And make sure you curate I I, because you’re showing some samples here. These are,

Bret Tollgaard: yeah.

Allen Hall: Quarter inch or more,

Bret Tollgaard: correct. So

Allen Hall: thick samples. How did you cure these?

Bret Tollgaard: So that was cured with the lamp that we’ve got right here, which are standard issued light, sold a couple hundred into this space already. Um, that’s 10 layers of a thousand GSM unidirectional fiber. Whoa. This other one is, uh, 10 layers of, of a biox. 800 fiber.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, those were cured in six minutes. So you can Six

Allen Hall: minutes.

Bret Tollgaard: Six minutes.

Allen Hall: What would it take to do this in a standard epoxy form?

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, hours,

Allen Hall: eight hours maybe?

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. About for, for the, for the post cure required to get the TGS that they need in the wind space, right? Absolutely. And so yeah, we can do that in true minutes. And it’s pre impregnated. You simply cut it to shape and you’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: And it looks great when you’re done, mean the, the surface finish is really good. I know sometimes with the epoxies, particularly if they get ’em wetted out, it doesn’t. It [00:10:00] doesn’t have that kind of like finished look to it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And the way that we provide, uh, for our standard, uh, you know, pre pprs are in between films and so if you cure with that film, you get a nice, clean, glossy surface tack free.

But as more and more people go to the pre consolidation method down tower, so even if they buy our standard prereg sheets or rolls, they’re preki down tower, you can also then just apply a pre, uh, a peel ply to that top film. Oh, sure. So if you wet out a peel ply and then you build your laminate over the top.

Put the primer and the black film over when they actually get that up on tower, they can then just remove that fuel ply and go straight to Sandy or uh, uh, painting and they’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That’s, that’s impressive. If you think about the thousands and thousands of hours you’ll save in a season.

Where you could be fixing another blade, but you’re just waiting for the res, the cure,

Bret Tollgaard: and that’s just it. When you’re saving the amount of labor and the amount of time, and it’s not just one technician, it’s their entire team that is saving that time. Sure. And can move on to the next [00:11:00] repair and the next process.

Allen Hall: So one of the questions I get asked all the time, like, okay, great, this UV material sounds like space, age stuff. It must cost a fortune. And the answer is no. It doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s very price competitive.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really is. And it might be slightly more expensive cost per square foot versus you doing it with glass and resin, but you’re paying for that labor to wait for that thing to cure.

And so you’re still saving 20, 30, 40 plus percent per repair. When you can do it as quickly as we can do it.

Allen Hall: So for ISPs that are out doing blade repairs, you’re actually making more money.

Bret Tollgaard: You are making more money, you are saving more money. That same group and band of technicians you have are doing more repairs in a faster amount of time.

So as you are charging per repair, per blade, per turbine, whatever that might be, uh, you’re walking away with more money and you can still pass that on to the owner operators, uh, by getting their turbines up and spinning and making them more money.

Allen Hall: Right. And that’s what happens now. You see in today’s world, companies ISPs that are proposing [00:12:00] using UV materials versus standard resin systems, the standard residence systems are losing because how much extra time they’re, they’re paying for the technicians to be on site.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct.

Allen Hall: So the, the industry has to move if you wanna be. Competitive at all. As an ISP, you’re gonna have to move to UV materials. You better be calling suns

Bret Tollgaard: very quickly. Well, especially as this last winter has come through, the windows that you have before, bad weather comes in on any given day, ebbs and flows and changes.

But when you can get up, finish a repair, get it spinning, you might finish that work 2, 3, 4 later, uh, days later. But that turbine’s now been spinning for several days, generating money. Uh, and then you can come back up and paint and do whatever kind of cosmetic work over the top of that patch is required.

Allen Hall: So what are the extra tools I need to use Sunz in the kits. Do I need a light?

Bret Tollgaard: Not a whole lot. You’re gonna need yourself a light. Okay. You’re gonna need yourself a standard three to six inch, uh, bubble buster roller to actually compact and consolidate. Sure. Uh, that’s really all you need. There’s no vacuum lights.

And you sell the lights. We do, we, [00:13:00] we sell the lights. Um, our distributors also sell the lights, fiberglass and comp one. Uh, so they’re sourced and available, uh, okay. Domestically, but we sell worldwide too. And so, uh, we can handle you wherever you are in the world that you wanna start using uv, uh, materials.

And yeah, we have some standardized, uh, glass, but at the same time, we can pre-reg up to a 50 inch wide roll. Okay, so then it really becomes the limiting factor of how wide, how heavy, uh, of a lamette does a, a technician in the field want to handle?

Allen Hall: Yeah, sure. Okay. In terms of safety, with UV light, you’re gonna be wearing UV glasses,

Bret Tollgaard: some standard safety glasses that are tinted for UV protection.

So they’ll

Allen Hall: look yellow,

Bret Tollgaard: they’ll look a little yellow. They’ve got the shaded gray ones. Sunglasses, honestly do the same.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: But with a traditional PPE, the technicians would be wearing a tower anyways. Safety glasses, a pair of gloves. You’re good to go. If you’re doing confined space, work on the inside of a, a, a blade, uh, the biggest value now to this generation of material that are getting qualified.

No VOC non [00:14:00] flammable, uh, no haps. And so it’s a much safer material to actually use in those confined spaces as well as

Allen Hall: well ship

Bret Tollgaard: as well as ship it ships unregulated and so you can ship it. Next day air, which a lot of these customers always end. They do. I know that.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so next day air, uh, you know, there’s no extra hazmat or dangerous goods shipping for there.

Uh, and same thing with storage conditions. You don’t need a, a flammable cabinet to actually store the material in.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so it really opens you up for a lot more opportunities.

Allen Hall: I just solves all kinds of problems.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really does. And that’s the big value that, you know, the UV materials can provide.

Allen Hall: So. I see the putty material and it comes in these little tubes, squeeze tubes. What are these putties used for?

Bret Tollgaard: So right now, the, the existing putty is really just the same exact thickened, uh, resin that’s in the pre-print.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: And it’s worked well. It’s, it’s nice we’re kind of filling some cracks and some faring, some edges and stuff if things need to be feathered in.

But we’ve [00:15:00] been working on this year that we’ll be rolling out very, very soon is a new structural putty. Okay. So we’ll actually have milled fibers in there and components that will make it a much more robust system. And so we’ve been getting more inquiries of, particularly for leading edge rehabilitation.

Where Cat three, cat four, even cat five kind of damage, you need to start filling and profiling before any kind of over laminates can really be done properly. And so we’re working on, uh, rolling that out here very, very soon. Um, and so that will, I think, solve a couple of needs, um, for the wind market. Uh, and then in addition to some new products that we’re rolling out, uh, is gonna be the LEP system that we’re been working on.

Uh, the rain erosion testing showed some pretty good results. But we’re buying some new equipment to make a truly void free, air free system that we’re gonna it, uh, probably submit end of April, beginning of May for the next round, that we expect to have some very, very good, uh, duration and weather ability with,

Allen Hall: because it’s all about speed,

Bret Tollgaard: it’s durability.

Allen Hall: All about e

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And ease of use by someone in the [00:16:00] field. Yeah. Or OEMs on, you know, in the manufacturing plant. Um, there has yet, in my opinion, to be a true winner in the LEP space. That is just the right answer. And so by applying our materials with the really high abrasion resistance that we expect this to have and be as simple to do as it really appeal, stick and cure, um, we think it’s gonna be a bit of a game changer in this industry.

Allen Hall: Well, all the sunrise materials, once they’re cured, are sandal

Bret Tollgaard: correct.

Allen Hall: And I think that’s one of the things about some of the other systems, I always worry about them like, alright, they can do the work today, but tomorrow I have to come back and touch it again. Do I have a problem? Well, and the sun rests stuff is at least my playing around with it has been really easy to use.

It’s, it’s. Uh, things that I had seen maybe 20 years ago in the aerospace market that have they thought about using the material not only [00:17:00] in the factory, but outside the factory. How easy is it to adapt to, how easy to, to paint, to all those little nuances that come up? When you’re out working in the field and trying to do some very difficult work, uh, the sunroom material is ready to go, easy to use and checks all the boxes, all those little nuances, like it’s cold outside, it’s wet outside.

Uh, it’s, it’s hot outside, right? It’s all those things that, that stop ISPs or OEMs from being super efficient. All those parameters start to get washed away. That’s the game changer and the price point is right. How do. People get a hold of you and learn about the sun rose material. Maybe they, you can buy through fiberglass or through composite one.

Mm-hmm. That’s an easy way to do, just get to play with some samples. But when they want to get into some quantity work, they got a lot of blade repair. They know what they’re doing this summer or out in the fall or this winter come wintertime. How do they get [00:18:00] started? What do they do?

Bret Tollgaard: Well, one of the first things to do is they can reach us through our website.

Um, we’re developing a larger and larger library now for how to videos and install procedures, um, generating SOPs that are, you know, semi, uh, industry specific. But at the same time too, it’s a relatively blanket peel and stick patch, whether it’s a wind turbine blade, a corroded tank, or a pressure pipe. Um, and so yeah, www.suns.com Okay, is gonna be a great way to do it.

Uh, we’re actively building more videos to put on, uh, our YouTube channel as well. Um, and so that’s kind of gonna be the best way to reach out, uh, for us. One of the big things that we’re also pushing for, for 26 is to truly get people, uh, in this, in industry, specifically trained and comfortable using the products.

At the end of the day, it’s a composite, it’s a pre impregnated sheet. It’s not difficult, but there are some tips and tricks that really make the, the use case. Uh, the install process a lot easier.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, and so just making sure that people are, are caught up on the latest and greatest on the training techniques will [00:19:00] go a long way too.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s only as good as the technician that applies it

Bret Tollgaard: e Exactly.

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s great. Uh, it’s great all the things you guys are doing, you’re really changing the industry. In a positive way, making repairs faster, uh, more efficient, getting those turbines running. It’s always sad when you see turbines down with something that I know you guys could fix with sun.

Uh, but it does happen, so I, I need the ISPs to reach out and start calling Sun and getting in place because the OEMs are blessing your material. ISPs that are using it are winning contracts. It’s time to make the phone call to Sun Rez. Go to the website, check out all the details there. If you wanna play with your material, get ahold of fiberglass or composite one just.

Order it overnight. It’ll come overnight and you can play with it. And, and once you, once you realize what that material is, you’ll want to call Brett and get started.

Bret Tollgaard: A hundred percent appreciate the time.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Thanks Brett, for being on the podcast. I, I love talking to you guys because you have such cool material.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, we’re looking, uh, forward to continuing to innovate, uh, really make this, uh, material [00:20:00] splash in this industry.

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Renewable Energy

Infringing on the Rights of Others

Published

1 day ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

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

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