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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
Meet Reid Rasner (photo at left). He’s a MAGA Republican running for congress in Wyoming–that’s a good fit.
He faces three challenges, however:
1) He’s openly gay, a terrible fit for Wyoming,
2) His politics appeals only to the true idiot. While it’s true that voters there are not well-educated, they’re aware and alert. They’ve seen trickle-down economics fail consistently since the days of Roland Reagan, and they’ll be very hard to convince that democratic socialism as it’s implemented around the world makes the nation’s citizens poor, and
3) I hate to judge a book by its cover, but he looks like a dullard.
Asking the congress to “address the climate crisis” is something of a joke. Most of them have their seats by virtue to their allegiance to Big Oil, and, for many, their position on climate change is that it’s a hoax.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
IWTG Consulting on Pitch Bearing Cracks, Loose Root Inserts
Jon Zalar, founder of IWTG Consulting, joins to discuss broken blade bolts, cracked pitch bearings, loose root inserts, and early detection.
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!
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow
Allen Hall: Jon, welcome back to the program.
Jon Zalar: Thanks for having me.
Allen Hall: Uh, last time I saw you, we were in Melbourne- Yep … at WOMA 2026, and that was a huge event. We know we’re gonna do it again next year in March three, the 3rd through the 5th, so you’re invited back, of course- I can’t wait … if you can make it. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be a good time. A lot is happening in the blade world and in the wind turbine world more broadly. A lot of things we’re hearing right now are related to blade bolt connection, pitch bearing inserts still. A lot of that still happening in the United States. What is the current status of, uh, the blade connection issues in the US?
I,
Jon Zalar: I feel like it’s a growing [00:01:00] issue, not super, super fast, but it seems to be getting a little worse. There’s, you know, more bolts breaking at that joint. Um, pitch bearing cracks are, seem to be pretty common. There’s different solutions for it, and then, you know, the root inserts are another thing that we’ve talked about before that seem to be happening more and more, or maybe more and more people are finding them ’cause they’re looking.
Allen Hall: What are the first indications that you have a blade bolt or some sort of joint issue at the root of a blade? What can you see?
Jon Zalar: A bolt laying in the hub bouncing around. Um, you know, from like a– looking at it from, like, the sensors on the turbine, it’s really hard to tell unless it gets really bad. Uh, some of the OEMs have some analytics developed to kinda start to indicate if there is a aero change because there’s missing bolts or root inserts are coming out, and they’re using that as a way to go figure out which ones to go inspect first.
Allen Hall: Really? Yeah. You think [00:02:00] the SCADA data will give you some indication that you have a, basically a little bit of a loose blade?
Jon Zalar: Yeah. I, I, I think because the number of turbines and the number of data points you have, I think there is a pretty good analytic out there right now.
Allen Hall: Wow. All right. I think a lot of our operators have not taken advantage of that.
Is, is that just b- based on the high-speed data, SCADA data, or is it low-speed data you could see that same effect?
Jon Zalar: I believe it’s on the low-speed data as well, but I bet the high-speed data was used to kinda develop it.
Allen Hall: Wow. All right. So that’s a huge help to operators. Yeah. So what are you looking for if you’re looking through SCADA data, what would be the couple of markers there that say, “Hey, maybe we ought to go look up at the– in the hub”?
Jon Zalar: I don’t know exactly what they’re using, but they would basically look for maybe an imbalance or looking for certain components that are being overworked.
Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Okay.
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So your pitch actuator may be getting a little bit overworked. It would seem like one of the places- I think that, yeah … that would get loaded, right?
Jon Zalar: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Okay. [00:03:00] And any vibration monitoring going on? Because it, it, uh, in some cases you’re– I’m hearing, like, millimeter gaps-
Jon Zalar: Correct. Yeah …
Allen Hall: between the blade and the pitch bearing.
Jon Zalar: So probably a combination of the ALC sensors, at least on a GE turbine, looking at that. But the PCH box also is looking at the tower vibration, so it could be a combination of all three.
I don’t know the exact- Okay … details, but between all of that, I think there are some analytics that kinda say, “Hey, go take a look.” And then I think there’s some other companies that have- tools that go monitor it.
Allen Hall: Mm-hmm.
Jon Zalar: Dial indicators remotely or even, you know, people going up there with dial indicators to go kind of rotate the rotor and kind of see if there is gapping between the blade and the pitch bearing.
Allen Hall: Is that a safe situation in your– from the gapping? I’ve heard this where they’ve basically took shims and they’re trying to measure this gap or some sort of dial indication. Is that a smart thing to do? Is it even reliable to do it that way? [00:04:00]
Jon Zalar: I, I, I think there’s some reliability there. And like, you know, these are really big parts, right?
So like a little bit of gap, it, it’s probably expected to a point, but growing gaps is where you should be a little more scared.
Allen Hall: So you’re– you would have to go do that quarterly, monthly, weekly? How, how often would you have to do it to see the progression? Because I’ve heard stories of, uh, a couple of weeks from nothing to hub crack to, “Oh, it took a year or more.”
Jon Zalar: I think it depends on the issue. I think for– if you’re looking at that, the bolted joint itself between the root inserts and the, uh, bolts breaking itself, I, I think they’re doing about quarterly. Now, the pitch bearings inspections are also quarterly. They’re al- they’re, they’re leveraging the drone inspections for the blades, and they’re looking at the pitch bearings to see if they’re cracked, right?
Uh, you guys are doing that too.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Jon Zalar: I think Coraly is doing a good job mitigating the risk, feels like.
Allen Hall: Wow. All right. [00:05:00] Yolanda, looking at pitch bearings, you’ve looked at a lot of drone images in your lifetime. Mm-hmm. How much can you see on drone images on pitch bearings? Can you see cracks and, or y- or do you see grease, which is a really indication that something is wrong in the bearing?
Yolanda Padron: You can see grease. You can see the cracks pretty, pretty well. Yeah. The drone images are, are really high quality. Uh, but you did mention that it’s something that you’re seeing a lot more. Is it because there’s a lot more aging fleets, or is it a problem with a lot of the new turbines that are coming online?
Jon Zalar: I, I think it’s an, I think it’s a more of a fatigue problem, so the aging of the fleet. And also, I think more people are looking at it, right? ‘Cause, like, initially the drones that were looking for blade cracks weren’t looking at pitch bearings, but then pitch bearings started cracking, so now they added that to whatever they buy off the drone companies, right?
Go look at my pitch bearings, for example.
Allen Hall: Hmm.
Jon Zalar: So I, I think it’s a problem of the more you look sometimes, the more you find.
Yolanda Padron: Hmm.
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So we [00:06:00] have root insert issues, which are being addressed by a couple of different companies- Yes … uh, uh, with somewhat similar solutions. OEM is offering one right now also.
Jon Zalar: I, I think there’s three solutions. There’s two uptower that are basically looking at ways to go fill the void between the root insert itself and the blade root. Um, and I– there’s another company that’s also more of a downtower solution where they’re actually, like, r- drilling out the root inserts and putting new ones in that are gonna last better, longer.
Allen Hall: Okay. So the drilling out is, would be CNC onsite. Correct.
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And they’re based over in Europe. But th- the drilling out is a take the blade down, set it on the ground sort of- Yeah. Right … doing really fine machining on the, on the blade itself. So that, that’s a different, completely different insert that’s going into that-
Jon Zalar: Correct
Allen Hall: new hole or- Yep … clean hole, right? So it’s a, just a, uh, totally different kind of product versus trying to inject [00:07:00] some s- sort of epoxy or resin into the, the void.
Jon Zalar: Right. Yeah. Uh, I mean, you would prefer to do it uptower. It’s gonna cost you less money.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Jon Zalar: But you wanna make sure you do it right, so I think, uh, I do foresee it being a combination of both solutions kinda going forward.
Allen Hall: Is it dependent upon, like, how much damage has been already done, or what the fatigue w- uh, an estimate on what the fatigue life is?
Jon Zalar: I think it’s strictly on measurement perspective right now. So how much gapping you have, um, kinda determines what potential solutions you have.
Allen Hall: So the gaps aren’t big, right?
So the, the gaps I hear are one millimeter is k- kind of sort of start a problem.
Jon Zalar: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: Three millimeters is, “I need to be making decisions.”
Jon Zalar: Yeah. So- That, that’s what I’ve heard, too. Yes.
Allen Hall: Three millimeters is about a eighth of an inch.
Jon Zalar: Mm-hmm.
Allen Hall: So it’s not a lot of m-
Jon Zalar: But you can see sunlight through it if you’re s- down there.
Allen Hall: Okay. That’s not… Well, you should see. That’s not
Jon Zalar: good either. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Right. Okay. So in a, in a three millimeter situation then, you’re doing what? [00:08:00]
Jon Zalar: You’re trying to decide if the uptower solutions are something you wanna go try, ’cause they’re still in the trial mode from my understanding or-
Allen Hall: Okay …
Jon Zalar: people are learning a lot.
So I think when you get to that point, you’re calling some of those companies to say, “Hey, I have this issue. I got a couple blades with, you know, .3. Can you guy- you guys wanna come take a look at it, see if your solutions, if you guys wanna go use it or not?” And then I think the ones that get too bad, from my understanding right now, is they’re, they’re replacing the blades.
Allen Hall: So they’re taking the whole blade down.
Jon Zalar: Yes.
Allen Hall: And what’s the thought process in that? Uh, versus drilling out the inserts and putting new inserts in. Is there just a composite degradation that’s happened around those joints that it just puts it at risk or, or you have actually aged the blade much faster than you would otherwise have done?
Jon Zalar: I, I think they aged that particular connection too much. So I, I- Wow … either between the [00:09:00] fatigue or lack of epoxy resin, w- whatever the actual root cause is for that root insert coming out, when it gets that bad, it’s like you’re not gonna be able to inject enough To make it adhere
Allen Hall: You can’t de-age it.
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: Right?
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Bring back the youthfulness of the blade. Wow. All right. And we have seen this worldwide. I know in the, in the States you hear about it all the time, but it, this seems to be not a US- Correct … problem.
Jon Zalar: It’s a worldwide problem, yes.
Allen Hall: Okay. So if, if it’s a worldwide problem, are there more solutions on the way?
I know you talked about three of them already.
Jon Zalar: I have not heard of any other ones except those three as of today.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Jon Zalar: There could be other people working on it. I think there should be.
Allen Hall: So, yeah. You would think so, yeah. So we’ll, I guess we’ll eventually hear about it on the podcast. Usually people with technology will contact us.
They might call,
Jon Zalar: yeah. They might call you, they might call you tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Sure, they may. So that leads to sort of a subsequent issue, which I think is getting grouped together. So the [00:10:00] hub crack, pitch bearing crack, root insert pullout issue is also discussed with blade bolts being broken.
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: Are they related or are they separate engineering problems?
Jon Zalar: If you look at them individually, you’d probably come up with some separate answers, but if you combine them all together, you kind of start looking at is there too much loading happening in the leading and trailing edge of the blade? ‘Cause the hub cracks, the root inserts, and the blade bolts, from my understanding, are happening at those two highly loaded areas of the, the blade or that whole rotor connection.
So I mean, I do feel the root cause is probably a little higher loads than anticipated.
Allen Hall: I think everybody’s talked about when they’ve done the injection method and the drilling method, all they’re discussing is leading edge, trailing edge.
Jon Zalar: Yes.
Allen Hall: And how– It’s a question of how many- Correct … are you gonna replace.
So th- [00:11:00] that’s, those are the two highly loaded spots on the bolted connection.
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: And that’s where blade bolts are also breaking or, or the bolts breaking elsewhere around the periphery?
Jon Zalar: I don’t have all the data, but what I had seen, it’s very similar areas.
Allen Hall: So if you don’t pull the insert out, you’re then loading the bolt.
Cr- Right It’s one or the other, right? Right. Yeah. So the, the, the load path is the load path, so it’s coming through the insert into the bolt. Bolt’s carrying it into the pitch bearing. Pitch bearing’s carrying it into the hub.
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: Hub carrying it downtower. So eventually, one of those, uh, links in the chain is- The weakest.
Yeah … is, is the le- is the weakest. What is it about blade bolts that is so dangerous? We hear– we walk onsite to an O&M building, there are signs saying, you know, “Pay attention for loose bolts. Look around on the ground for loose bolts.” We’re gonna– and as electrical engineer, like, “Whoa.” Bolts should not be falling out of this tower.
What i- what is that sort of sequence where a [00:12:00] bolt would escape from the nacelle?
Jon Zalar: So let’s just use one bolt. One bolt breaks, falls in the hub, bouncing around, doing some– potentially doing some damage inside the hub. And ’cause these turbines, you don’t need to go out there every day ’cause they do run pretty good, right?
Right. You just do your regular maintenance. And if you don’t really know about that, ’cause, like, it bounces around for a while, then it usually gets, like, lodged behind a, uh, either center box or pitch cabinet or actually in the front sometimes. Kinda don’t know it happened. But, you know, frees itself up, keeps bouncing around, it, it could escape through the hatch covers ’cause, you know, people have to get into the hub anyway.
And I’m sure a lot of people listening here that have sites, like, you know, probably found some bolts laying on the ground, which is a little scary.
Allen Hall: Right. So is, is the busting the hatch opening levers? I know there, there’s a couple different ways to get into that hatch. Yeah. But, uh, is it just completely busting the hatch?
Yeah. So it’s– [00:13:00] okay. So you see a– so if you see a loose hatch panel, you have an issue. You probably gotta be careful about coming up on that turbine?
Jon Zalar: Potentially. A lot, a lot of hatches are, you know, not always maintained well.
Allen Hall: Right. I’ve seen them, I’ve seen loose ones, yeah.
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. So that, that would be a sign that– but though if, if you’re approaching a turbine, one look on the ground.
And Yolando, you, you’ve seen a lot of turbines. So are you, are we looking on the ground and seeing what’s around the turbine before we approach the turbine now? Yeah. Just, just a sanity check?
Yolanda Padron: Yeah. Be aware also of what’s happening on site, right? Because if it’s some- if it’s a problem on site, you need to be extra careful when you’re approaching any turbine there.
Uh, is it something that people maybe should start thinking about implementing, like, a sensors earlier on than when they’re seeing the issue actually happen?
Jon Zalar: Yeah. I, I, I think that’s a potential, ’cause it, the quicker you catch it, the less damage you’re gonna do, and it also reduce the risk of [00:14:00] it, um, falling out of the hub And I’ve worked with a couple of my, uh, customers for some, like, potential ways to detect it.
Still kind of trialing it right now. But I, I do think there’s gonna be some benefit from a safety reduction, but also from a strictly a damage. ‘Cause, like, you get a couple bolts bouncing around there, and you bang up some cabinets or some pitch motors, that’s expensive and hard to go fix.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, we were talking about it earlier too.
Like, it goes down, it can hit a transformer, it can hit, like, a truck or someone.
Jon Zalar: Chance of it hitting someone. Yeah. I mean, I don’t care what hard hat you have on, it’s not gonna do anything.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah.
Allen Hall: So what kind of sensor should you be putting onto the turbine if you don’t have access to the SCADA data or you don’t know what the correct algorithm is to suss out there’s something wrong up there?
But a, a bolt breaking is not gonna be something that a SCADA would even pick up, I don’t think. One bolt out of the whole- Yeah. No.
Jon Zalar: No way. Okay. I mean, there’s a– I think there’s, like, [00:15:00]one company looking at more of a, like, mechanical way to, like, prevent the bolt from coming out. I forgot the name of it.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Jon Zalar: Um, and then what I was looking at was more of a, like, you know, microphone type detection to kind of listen for that.
Allen Hall: It would make a lot of noise.
Jon Zalar: Yeah. It seems like it works. It, um, yeah, still more development needed on my end.
Allen Hall: So- The engineer in me was, is saying, “Why are we not putting strain gauges on bolts?”
I picked on the leading and the trailing. It’s like right dead center there to look at, even if it’s just two strain gauge bolts to see what the loads are.
Jon Zalar: So like there are s- there are bolts that are, or that are made with the strain gauges built in that you can use to go, you know, monitor that. But you also need to understand like what was the design intent.
So unless you’re working with the OEM, you don’t really know what you’re seeing is good or bad. You just say, “Oh-
Allen Hall: You just see a number.
Jon Zalar: Yeah. Right. I mean like, and if you install, I don’t know, four, you’d be like, “All right. Leading and trailing edge are higher [00:16:00] than the other two.” Well, yeah, it’s supposed to be, but like is a 10% difference expected or not expected?
Allen Hall: Is that something where if you’re, especially if you’re in a full service agreement, and a lot of these turbines are- Yeah … for the first couple of years, if you were to do that, it’s something you would just say to the OEM, “Hey, this is, these are the loads we’re seeing from the strain gauges on these bolts.
Does this make sense to you?” Or, or would an OEM just not even respond to that kind of inquiry?
Jon Zalar: I mean, I think it’s all about relationship with the OEM. I, I, I think
Allen Hall: it- I think they would wanna know.
Jon Zalar: I have a feeling they probably are looking.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Jon Zalar: I mean, ’cause I mean they have the test turbines too that they probab- that, that I know they have instrumented heavily.
Allen Hall: Yeah. So they, they’re probably getting at least some feedback. Th- that’s the problem. Yeah. And you worked on the other side, right? I have. So you worked for an OEM doing the RTAs. The first problem is you don’t have data, so now you gotta go get the data.
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: And that data is not available tomorrow. No.
‘Cause you’re gonna have to go run some sort of design of experiment to go figure out if [00:17:00] there is even a true problem or even what the root causes could be.
Jon Zalar: And it, and it’s expensive to go instrument a blade and get the data back at the right speed and connected to the turbine data. I mean, I rem- I, I used to say it’s about like 300 to 500,000 to go put a couple gauges on a blade just with all the equipment you need to get the data correct.
Allen Hall: To get the right data.
Jon Zalar: Get the right data at the right frequency connected to the controller. It’s, it’s very expensive.
Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. Yeah. I, I don’t, I don’t see a lot of operators doing that.
Jon Zalar: And especially connecting it to the operating data, right? So like if you go put a strain gauge and I don’t know, you’re curtailed, you’re only making, I don’t know, a megawatt- Doesn’t matter.
And if you don’t know what the turbine’s doing and you’re looking at this, like, strain gauge data, it’s really hard to correlate anything.
Allen Hall: So you need a full suite of data. Yeah. That includes weather data- Yeah … at some level, right? Gust winds and- Oh,
Jon Zalar: yeah …
Allen Hall: average wind speed. You need the anemometer. You need which, which way [00:18:00] the n- cell’s pointing.
Y- uh, you would need a lot of information- And what the controller’s- … to even suss it out …
Jon Zalar: and what the controller’s doing, right? Right. ‘Cause, like, every turbine, the controller’s trying to, like, you know, balance the rotor the whole time. It’s trying to, you know, micro pitch depending on what the winds are doing.
And if you don’t know what all that stuff’s doing, like, it’s really hard to correlate a strain gauge measurement to is that bad or not.
Allen Hall: It’s a complicated problem.
Jon Zalar: Yes. That’s why RCAs take, you know, a long time, and they’re not done in two weeks.
Allen Hall: No, they’re done in a year.
Jon Zalar: Yeah.
Allen Hall: Typically, or longer. So what should an operator be thinking about now?
If, if we s- get our drone images back, we’re scanning through them like, “Oh, there’s a crack” What am I doing next besides calling you and connecting to your LinkedIn page?
Jon Zalar: So right now with the pitch bearing crack, um, some of the OEMs are providing stiffener plates to put over the crack and try to run it.
Allen Hall: So that’s a doubler plate, basically. A double plate. Doubler
Jon Zalar: plate, yes. [00:19:00]
Allen Hall: Yeah. Okay. So even in a, in a crack scenario, that pitch bearing, if given mechanical support, can run like that?
Jon Zalar: That’s my understanding, yes. That, that potentially could run for some period of time. I don’t know if it’ll make it 20 years or not, but it’ll buy you time for sure.
Allen Hall: Does that involve a crane to do that work or is that just… My recollection, that was in pieces, like there, it’s not a ring, it’s a, a couple of pieces that you’d be able to bolt on without taking the-
Jon Zalar: No, it’s a- … blade down … it’s a, it’s a single piece that-
Allen Hall: It’s like a single casting kind of thing.
Jon Zalar: Right. And I, I think you need some like small crane, like a jig crane or one of those-
Allen Hall: Just to support the blade while you do it?
Jon Zalar: And to go put it in, right. Okay. Yeah, I don’t think, you’re not taking the blade off. You’re not taking the
Allen Hall: blade down.
Jon Zalar: Correct. Yeah. It’s, it’s done with the blade up there.
Allen Hall: Okay.
Jon Zalar: You’re putting new, putting longer studs in and putting the plate on.
Allen Hall: So first step is let’s get the joint reinforced. Right.
That’s the easy first step.
Jon Zalar: Right. Although there has been some cases where since [00:20:00]you’ve put that stiffener plate on, the loads get spread out to the end of the plate, and then you- Sure … you could see cracks there.
Allen Hall: Okay. All right. So the loads- It, that- … have to go somewhere …
Jon Zalar: loads have to go somewhere. That’s, that is a bottom line.
Allen Hall: All right. So you’re just changing where the load path is, so you have to be cognizant of that. Okay. Sure. Fine. But if you have, uh, especially in the United States, you don’t have 10 of these turbines, you have 50, 100- 100 … 200, 300 of these things, or thousands as it, as it turns out. Are there simple solutions that can be applied to, just to give me a sense, like that turbine’s having a problem, but the one next to it’s not, and, and just, just from a maintenance spin standpoint where I’m not just blanketing everything and trying to do everything to all these turbines at once, how do I, how do I manage this?
Jon Zalar: I, I think it’s like being very observant. So like, you know, making sure you’re looking at the pitch bearings from the drone images, right? Um, also talking [00:21:00] to your maintenance people like, “Hey, are, are you finding a bunch of broken bolts? Like, what positions?” Like, you know, if I was back at the OEM, I would like to have as much data as possible on this issue.
Like how many bolts are, when did you find them, what positions? A lot of times we, when I was there, like we would not get all that information, so it’s like really hard to run an RCA without that information.
Allen Hall: Sure. Yeah, where did this bolt break in the ring?
Jon Zalar: Right.
Allen Hall: Could tell you a lot. Is it just a b- bad lot of bolts, or is it something more load related?
Jon Zalar: Correct.
Allen Hall: Wow. Okay.
Yolanda Padron: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point, too, to make sure that you’re connected with like every stage of the operations. ‘Cause I know that everybody’s obviously really, really busy on a wind farm, but it’s really common for like an engineer to have certain data and the site team to just be running around and having a lot of data, but maybe they don’t realize that, oh, it’s important to know how many bolts per tower are coming down.
Jon Zalar: Correct. Yeah
Allen Hall: That’s a lot of work
Jon Zalar: It definitely-
Allen Hall: It’s a tremendous effort if you’re gonna [00:22:00] go after this problem and, and solve it RCS
Jon Zalar: are hard. They
Allen Hall: are. Yeah. All of it. Yeah. Machines are complicated today. There’s a lot of computer-driven s- things about them, and then you have these loading issues, and you have composite materials.
Th- there’s just, y-
Jon Zalar: you got to get- It’s a very complex
Allen Hall: It’s a machine, right? Yeah. It’s a complex machine. So how do people reach out to… You’re, you’re the head of IWTG, which is based in South Carolina, but you do consulting worldwide. Yes. And, and you are a huge resource because you understand the complexities of these problems.
How do people get ahold of you and, and get something started if they have a, a, a blade bolt issue or an insert issue or a cracked pitch bearing? Where do they start?
Jon Zalar: They can send me an email, jzalar@iwtgconsulting.com.
Allen Hall: Okay. And you have a great LinkedIn page, so you can connect with you on LinkedIn.
Jon Zalar: Yes.
Yeah, I have one
Allen Hall: of those. Yes. Or you could just come to WOMA in [00:23:00]2027. Yeah. You can. You can meet John there and, and arrange everything there. So John, it’s great to see you, and thank you for coming up. We, uh, we’re recording this at the world headquarters of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and, uh, John just lives down the street in, in, in US terms.
Yeah. So it’s, it’s great to have John come and visit us up here in North Carolina. So John, thank you so much for joining us.
Jon Zalar: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
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