Published

6 months ago

November 20, 2025

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

SkySpecs Supports European Wind Growth

Allen and Joel sit down with Michael McQueenie, Head of Sales for SkySpecs in Europe at the SkySpecs Customer Forum. They discuss the booming European wind energy market, SkySpecs’ role in asset management, and their expansion into solar farm operations.

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

Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I have Joel Saxum with me. I’m Allen Hall, the host, and we are here with Michael McQueenie head of sales for SkySpecs over in Europe. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael McQueenie: Thanks for having me.

Allen Hall: We are at SkySpecs customer Form 2025 and it has been a blowout event, so many operators from all over learning and exchanging information about how they operate their assets.

We wanted to have you on today because you’re our reference to Europe and what is happening with SkySpecs in Europe. America and Europe are on different pathways at the moment. What is that status right now in Europe? What are people calling you for today?

Michael McQueenie: the, European market is really booming.

we get calls from customers to support [00:01:00] with internal inspections, external inspections as we always have for, nearly a decade now. We are seeing a lot more, discussions around the, enablement services that we can offer. how did, how do we bring a blade engineer and how do we bring a CMS engineer into support and give us, give us more of an insight on the data that we have or, or the data that Skys fix are producing.

things are evolving. and, it’s a buoyant offshore industry at the moment.

Allen Hall: yeah, there’s like thousands of turbines going up right now. it used to be when you thought of. Deployment. Unlike Germany, for example, it’d be three turbines on the hillside.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Now we’re talking about in the uk have hundreds of turbines hitting the water.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And that’s change of scale has driven a lot of operators realize I need expertise in blades, I need expertise in CMS. I need an expert in gearbox, but I don’t necessarily need them full time.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Skys spec. Can you help me?

Michael McQueenie: the projects [00:02:00] are, they’re fewer projects, but they’re, the scale of these projects are massive.

the scale of the turbine scale of the projects and the impact the projects can have on, the country, as a whole is, is massive. So yeah, it’s, it is a. It’s a, it is a great time to be in Europe and to see the growth. it’s been, coming for a long time. I’ve worked with consultancies who are looking at feasibility studies, in offshore, and onshore.

But the, the growth has been. Just, it’s just around the corner. And I do feel like now with some of these big projects that they’re installing, and yeah, just given the size of the turbines, it’s it’s massive.

Joel Saxum: one of the things I want to, I think there’s an important context here is that we’re talking, we’re sitting in Ann Arbor, right?

we’re in the us You’re over in Europe. I worked for a Danish company for a while and it was always like this seven hour delay. Kinda can I get the in, can I get the support? Can they get the support? Can we work? How do we work back and forth? Sometimes it was cool because you’d send an email at two o’clock and when you woke up in the morning [00:03:00] it was done.

That was awesome. But also there was these delays. Now this is the interesting thing here is, and Skys facts. This morning we listened to Cheryl. always a great presentation. Yeah. the head of the TEI blade stuff here. She was delivering some insights, but with her was Thomas. Thomas is in Europe.

And you have CMS experts in Europe. You have the local talent that’s over there that can work with these operators on their timelines, on their regular day stuff. They’re not waiting as, and what I’m trying to get to is, is SkySpecs is not a Ann Arbor company. Skyspace is a global company in a big way.

And so this, so thinking like, oh, this is an American company, w. Will we use someone that’s more local no. No. Skyspace is a local European company as well.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah, and we’ve got the SMEs over there. it’s not just Cheryl, who’s a fantastic en engineer. Having your at your, disposal, Thomas is phenomenal.

customers are seeing real value in integrating him into their team, being the SME [00:04:00] for them, as you, as we said before. Being able to turn ’em off, on and off as required. Don’t, you’ve not got that the FTE cost right. to bring in an SME that, that needs to, support you with a, with an individual component of your, asset.

Yeah. Blades are a huge problem. The industry’s seeing that as they’re getting bigger, the problems are getting bigger. but yeah, having, a local presence in Europe is, massive. my inbox is full from, all the US. Inquiries and issues, during the night, just like you’re saying.

Yeah. And I wake up to dozens of emails with, requirements on inbox and my to-do list is full. But the, but the reality is yeah, we’re, grown in Europe. we are. Our real solid presence in Europe and we’ve, seen massive growth this year.

Joel Saxum: I think it, it’s part of the value chain there.

Touching on the Thomas and Cheryl. Right. So in SkySpecs over this week, we’ve been talking more and more about the, how you guys like to specifically work within a workflow. And that workflow being we have [00:05:00]inspections, we’re in the platform now we’re in horizon, bam. And we can enable the tech enabled services, which is those SMEs which you have inside.

The company and then rolling that forward to the repair vendor management, which is happening in a big way in the States. Yesterday I saw a number, $13 million in repairs managed by the Sky Spec team. That’s huge. And, that same capability. And we’re just talking blazes right now, like we haven’t even touched on CMS performance monitoring, financial asset monitoring.

That same concept is, is replica replicate in the EU as well.

Michael McQueenie: No, it absolutely is, Our customers have got problems, we can help them with the problems. Thomas is, as you said, we work in workflows and Thomas is, is looking to support customers with how they, touch their data as few times as they possibly can.

How do we get from A to B and how does a customer understand what their problems are and how they fix the problems? And sometimes an [00:06:00]SME is the, way to fix that. Thomas has provide, provided huge value to our customers. The design of workflows in Horizon is the, essence. It exists just to try and get from A to B and, and try and drive insights and then next steps.

And I think that’s the important part, being, this is the action to

Joel Saxum: get

Michael McQueenie: to the, we’ve got the data, we understand what the data’s telling us. here’s an insight, but actually what is the follow up? And, Thomas is designing that follow up for our customers and providing the support.

Allen Hall: and just a little bit comparison between the United States and Europe, when we still talk to anybody in the United States about a turbine.

Almost always, it’s a two megawatt, one and a half megawatt turbine, right? Occasionally a four. Sometimes someone says

Joel Saxum: yesterday like, oh, that’s a three megawatt

Allen Hall: turbine. Whoa, what’s big? And in Europe, three megawatts was like years ago, particularly offshore that, everything’s 6, 8, 10.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Plus

Michael McQueenie: 3.6 was the common [00:07:00] turbine.

Five, eight.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Michael McQueenie: Years ago, that was, what everyone was working on. And, they’re a very reliable turbine. It’s, there was a reason why there were so many of them installed at that time. but nowadays, we’re helping OEMs with 50 megawatt turbines.

Allen Hall: and I think that’s the, thing that we just don’t see in the states is a turbine that’s 15 megawatts is down for a day.

Is so much more expensive and particularly offshore and the expenses go astronomical compared to onshore. Yeah, and Michael, I always see your position of you’re there to save. Millions of pounds or millions, of euros all the time because a shutdown there is huge.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And because the grids are changing so much in Europe where they’re becoming more solar and wind dependent and coal is going to change away.

And

Joel Saxum: triage.

Allen Hall: Yeah. The triage bit, is that the SkySpecs is in that position to really help a lot our operators out. You’re [00:08:00] providing the insights and the guidance and the knowledge that. An operator probably doesn’t have, because they don’t have the staff to go do it. It’s a And can you enlighten us like what that is because we just don’t see a lot of that here.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah. I think there’s a good reason you don’t see that this was, we are just providing data to some of these, transactions. Whether it’s a due diligence, inspection, or an end of warranty. We are just providing the insights for the customers to. Make their own decisions. Um, so it’s not a SkySpecs decision.

We are just providing insights to, to allow them to make a, smart, educated, data-driven decision.

Joel Saxum: I think that’s important, concept too. ’cause like here, the Skys spec user form, of course, we’re in the States, so we’ve been talking and I think there’s only two or three people here from.

Yeah. From overseas. So we’ve been talking a lot about the one big, beautiful, what it means. That doesn’t mean that much to you in your daily life, right? No. But your daily life is a bit different with, you have more of a focus on. Maybe financial asset owners. ’cause the market’s different, right?

Michael McQueenie: yeah.

Absolutely. The, [00:09:00] simplification of process and actually having a workflow no matter what, it’s, whether we’re taking financial data, CMS data or performance, SC data, The simplification of that process and driving insights from it is literally the foundation of what SkySpecs have been here to do.

So providing, financial institutions funds with the ability to. Reach out and, make quick decisions, data-driven decisions. there’s some very smart people in these organizations, asset managers who are, A costly resource to the fund. What they really need to do is pull le pull levers as in when it’s required to.

We need some support with sc. We need some support with blades. How do we, how do they, bring that resource and that expertise in house without having the FTE? and the funds are, phenomenal companies. They’re, growing fast. They don’t want the linear growth of people. to go along with that, that, growth of their portfolio.

So it’s important that we build relationships and make sure that we’re helping them [00:10:00] in every side of their business, whether it’s financial decisions or, technical decisions.

Joel Saxum: I think there’s a, there’s an important takeaway from this week as well, listening to all the SkySpecs, the people, the presentations, the communications, the, collaborations, the conversations.

Some of ’em a little bit later at night than other ones. I, won’t name any names, but. Listening to those things and understanding this. So a few weeks ago when I was talking with, we talked with Josh Garrell a little bit ago, and I, shared this with him. I saw a McKinsey report that said, SkySpecs, inspection company.

SkySpecs to me is not an inspection company. they do the best inspections in the world, in wind, in my opinion. Yes. However, there’s so much more, there’s so much more there. And it is, it’s really a full support in my opinion, for the CMS to scada, the performance monitoring, the financial asset modeling, the tech enabled insights, repair, vendor management.

There’s so many other solutions within this umbrella that I think a lot of people don’t see.

Allen Hall: And the one case study that came up yesterday, Michael, I think [00:11:00] that I found interesting was the offshore. Inspections before blades are hung. Yeah. And we see a lot of times in the states where blades are damaged in transport, we think, okay, yeah, the truck damaged it.

Okay, fine, we can fix it on the ground. But on the offshore case, that simple repair now has to happen out in the ocean, and that goes from a couple of thousand dollars to 10. Pounds to tens of thousands of pounds or more to get that resolved. And you had a case just like that.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah, and I think it’s hundreds of thousands if we’re being honest.

Yeah. If you start looking at vessel costs, crew costs, everything else. But actually what I like about it is that OEMs are actually becoming way more proactive because they know the cost of an up tower repair compared to, an onshore repair. So having the foresight to. Have the inspections completed at the right time.

Working with us on timelines, using technology to perform the inspections, getting through as many as we can, as quickly as we can, [00:12:00] addressing the problems, doing the analysis, and then actually solving the problem before it goes offshore is massive drainage that, how many times is a bleed lifted from the factory to installation.

Lot. It’s a lot. It’s a lot, It’s handled a lot. So there’s a opportunity for something to go wrong, as you said, oh, it’s been knocked, it’s, there’s something wrong. Something’s happened. but solving that is the OEM’s responsibility. So they’re becoming much more proactive in my opinion. we’ve, we’ve had a lot of use cases this week, and it’s always been about the, owners, the operators, how we’ve saved them money, how we provided them value.

The OEMs are looking to us to help them on that front as well, whether it’s robotic or whether it’s, providing analysis or, or a platform to, to manage the data. we are working with, with them in offshore, but the problems are so much bigger.

Allen Hall: I think the OEMs are learning from Skys spec, so watching what operators are doing to hedge their bets to protect their assets.

And SkySpecs is pretty much involved in all of that. [00:13:00] Now the OEMs are watching the operators saying, why are we not doing that? We’re seeing that in

Joel Saxum: the lightning.

Allen Hall: Absolutely. We’re seeing enlightening. We’re seeing it in CMS now. We’re seeing it in a number of areas where the OEMs have watched SkySpecs maneuver and provide better value to their customers that the OEMs are trying to mirror,

Joel Saxum: I touch on another case study because Alan, you and I sat in on this one yesterday, and if so, I’m gonna put my, my, I’m a European operator hat on. and this is a little weird. I don’t, I have a good accent. Not, I’m not gonna try that, but okay. Say I’m going to, I have a smaller wind farm, right?

So I may have, 20 turbines of a specific model, and I would like to understand where am I at for performance benchmarking? Am I doing well or not? I don’t have a huge fleet. European fleets are not that big unless you’re offshore. As specifically compared to the US where our wind farms are a hundred, 120 turbines.

Sun Z is a thousand turbines, right? That’s a wind farm. So the problem is different, [00:14:00] but Skys spec has that data. If this is your site, let’s look at how your site is doing compared to. These 1500 of the same models around the world. And then you can look at that, understand your performance benchmark, and then start diving into the issues that may be causing it, to not perform as well.

And then fixing them and getting it up to speed to what it should be compared to everybody else. And I thought, man, what a use case, especially in the European market.

Michael McQueenie: No, absolutely. and we always talk about benchmarking. We’ve, I’ve been with companies who have tried benchmarking in the past, looking at KPIs.

How do you benchmark your performance of your turbine against something similar? And I think Skyspace are starting to get that right. we’ve, got the sc the scatter data and looking at the biggest impact in damages or the biggest failure faults that you have on your turbine and how we, how it can help you.

Push the OEMs. Yeah, just give them a prod to,

Joel Saxum: we saw

Michael McQueenie: case studies on that

Joel Saxum: yesterday.

Michael McQueenie: The case studies we’ve seen this week have actually been incredible, and that’s probably the, biggest takeaway for a lot of [00:15:00]people. Just try and understand how we’ve helped. The, customers achiever a return or, what we’ve saved them, over time.

those have been probably the biggest takeaway for me this week. just people are starting to understand and appreciate the returns they could see if they engage with us on all these other products. But the performance side of thing, benchmarking is, a really interesting topic.

Completely away from just looking at performance data. Everyone in the room over the last couple of days. Is, dancing around the, topic of benchmarking because, they’re, very, protective of the data. Yes. but I think people, and we’ve spoke about maybe for the last 12 months, they have shown an interest in, oh, I can share some data and if it’s anonymized, that I’d be happy to take part in that.

But. I’d love to see, that taking a step further, I’d love to see that. I think everyone in the industry, everyone in that room would benefit from, [00:16:00]from data sharing to, to learn from each other with freely optimiz data. Yeah, absolutely.

Allen Hall: there have been a number of announcements this week also from SkySpecs.

Some of the bigger ones are the move into solar and Europe. There’s a lot of solar power in Europe, particularly some parts of Europe. That could be a massive amount of phone calls your way, Michael. oh, sky Spec is doing blades. Turbines and solar. I’ll take it.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And I think there’s been a huge demand for that for the last several years, but it’s just been, you’ve been so busy with turbine problems, so honestly that you haven’t had the ability to get to solar.

Now with some of the tools you just brought in, you can.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah, I think we, we started off just blades, as we all know. Yeah. As you said, if we were just an inspection company. the acquisitions we’ve made, over the last few years have been taking us to the point where we’re now covering full turbine asset health monitoring.

And that was an important part. once we achieve that, now you can, you gain a [00:17:00] bit of clarity. we can start to look at diversification into new asset types. Solar’s been something I’m asked about once a month from European customers, and prospects. So we’ve tempered expectations for quite a long time.

We, we know we were going to move into solar at some point. we’ve got, we’ve got a really big opportunity I think, we’re very well positioned to, to help solar operators. Yeah,

Allen Hall: I think, I think there’s the variability in solar. From the different manufacturer. There’s so many manufacturers of panels and are inverters and even some of the configurations, the, support structures have issues, but SkyScan specs is gonna make that a lot easier because the tools are better now than they were five years ago.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah, no, absolutely. And we’ve got a massive customer base with that mix of wind, solar battery. So we, have to come up with that solution and, the tools are perfectly placed.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Michael McQueenie: It’s the same engineers that will be asked.

Joel Saxum: See

Michael McQueenie: now [00:18:00] you’re dealing with solar. There’ll be no questions asked.

There will be. That’s happening already. You fixed wind for us. There’s, I’m gonna change your job description as wind engineer plus solar.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And then it’s gonna be

plus

Allen Hall: best, right?

Michael McQueenie: That,

reviewable energy engineer,

Joel Saxum: that’s what it will be. But I think there’s a, there’s some things here too to share with the European crowd is, there has been some strategic additions to the leadership team, Ben Token coming on as the CTO helping with some of that data architecture in the background.

And then what will be the future of you guys have, there’s always work to be done, right? But have gotten really close to having a big, perfect little model of this is how you manage a wind asset. now that can be control C, C control V, solar, control C control V best, and that’s the future of what Skys spec is going to become a renewable energy company.

And that’s the future.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah. I think that the additions to the business have been pretty visionary. Yeah. rich and Ben are both. Phenomenal individuals will, that will drive us to, success in all these other areas. [00:19:00] rich has, been part of the business and has from the board from a, for a number of years now, and, I think he’s now seeing the.

How special the business is. How special it could be. Yeah. Once we, start that diversification.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. I’ve seen Rich here at the, ’cause we are in Ann Arbor at the forum. It’s Wednesday. So we’ve, we’re on day two, and I’ve seen Rich floating around talking with some of the customers, talking with a lot of the SkySpecs employees.

I’ve had a few conversations with him and. That man has a big smile on his face all day long.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah.

Joel Saxum: He sees the opportunity. he’s happy to engage. He wants to talk with people. he’s gonna be a big part of the future of the group. And I, think it’s exciting to see him here.

Michael McQueenie: He really has, I think both of them have, really accelerated the excitement and the, development of all the tools.

everyone’s rallying behind them to

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Michael McQueenie: to try and make sure that, we, get to the next tech.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Last night we talked with, Ben about big data and analytics. We’re recording it now. So we’re, telling we’re gonna try to get him down to [00:20:00] Australia to speak to the Australian crowd during our event down there in February about big data analytics and his background, what Skys books is doing with it.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And big data is the future. Everybody knew it three years ago. Yeah. We’re finally at the level we can start processing it and make use of it. I think Michael, you’re in a unique position and SkySpecs is in a really unique position in Europe. The world is looking to Europe on renewables. The expansion of renewables, how coal has essentially gone away.

Gas is still kicking around. France has a, still a good bit of nuclear and rightly It’s a great resource for them. but the solar, wind battery play is gonna be the, big push over the next several years. Without SkySpecs, it’s gonna be really hard to be successful there and to get the revenue stream that you expected out of it.

Your phone has to be ringing off the hook all the time. Yeah.

Michael McQueenie: The, co-location story has been building momentum for a couple of years now, and right now it’s [00:21:00] just, everyone’s talking about it, the battery, adding batteries to sites and co-locating solar with wind. And, yeah, it’s, been, it is a really exciting thing.

it’s skys picks are really well positioned to help every one of them.

Allen Hall: So how do people get ahold of you? And is LinkedIn the best place? Just go, Michael McQueenie and SkySpecs.

Michael McQueenie: Yeah, most people, I’m fairly well connected in the European market. A lot of people will have my details, but yeah, LinkedIn, absolutely.

Allen Hall: Okay, great. Michael, I love having you, on webinars and in person for these, interview sessions because Joel and I learn so much. you’re just a great resource and if you’re interested in SkySpecs and, and the services that they offer. In Europe, get ahold of Michael. He will get you set up and get you into the horizon platform and get you solutions.

So Michael, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Michael McQueenie: Thank

Allen Hall: you very much for it. It’s been [00:22:00] great.

https://weatherguardwind.com/skyspecs-european-wind/

Renewable Energy

EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy

Published

10 hours ago

May 28, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy

Pete Andrews from EchoBolt joins to discuss ultrasonic bolt inspection, the Bolt Wave device, and blade stud defect 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.

Pete Andrews: Pete, welcome to the program. Good to be back. Yeah. See you face to face. Yeah. Yes. This is wonderful. It’s a really great event to catch it with loads of the. UK innovation that are happening in the supply chain. So it’s, yeah, really nice to be here.

Allen Hall: This is really good to meet in person because we have seen a lot of bolt issues in the us, Canada, Australia, yeah.

Uh, all around the world and every time bolt problems come up, I say, have you called Pete Andrews and Echo Bolt and gotten the kit to detect bolt issues? And then who’s Pete? Give me Pete’s phone number. Okay, sure. Uh, but now that we’re here in person, a lot has changed since we first talked to you probably two years ago.[00:01:00]

You’re a bootstrap company based in the UK that has global presence, and I, I think it’s a good start to explain what the technology is and why Echo Bolt matters so much in today’s world.

Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as you said, we’re a uk, um, SME, there’s a team of 13 of us based here in the uk. Yeah. But we do deliver our services internationally, but really focused on Northern Europe.

Yeah. But increasingly we’ve done more in the US and North America, a little bit in Canada. Um, but our big offering really is to help wind turbine operators and owners reduce the need to routinely retire in bulks. So we have a quick and simple inspection technology that people can deploy, find out the status of their bolt connections, and then.

Reti them if necessary, but the vast majority of the time we find that they’re static and absolutely fine and can be left [00:02:00] alone. So it’s a real big efficiency boost for wind operators.

Joel Saxum: Well, you’re doing things by prescription now, right? Instead of just blanket cover, we’re gonna do all of this. It’s like, let’s work on the ones that actually need to be worked on.

Let’s do the, the work that we actually need to, and instead of lugging, like we’re looking at the kit right here, and I can, you can hold the case in one hand, let alone the tools in a couple of fingers. As opposed to torque tensioning tools that are this big, they weigh a hundred kilos, and those come with all of their own problems.

So I know that you guys said you’re, you’re focused here. You do a lot of work, um, in the offshore wind world as well. Yeah. I mean, offshore wind is where you add a zero right? To zeros. Yeah. Everything else is that much more complicated. It costs that much more. It’s you’re transitioning people offshore to the transition pieces.

Like there’s so much more HSE risk, dollar risk, all of these different spend things. So. The Echo Bolt systems, these different tools that you have being developed and utilized here first make absolute sense, but now you guys are starting to go to onshore as well.

Pete Andrews: Yeah, that’s right. So I mean, as as you said, that there’s really [00:03:00] three main benefit areas we focus on.

The first one is the health and safety of technicians, right? As you said, some of the fasteners used offshore now are up to MA hundred. So a hundred millimeter diameter bolts,

Joel Saxum: four inches for our American friends. Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Andrews: And they probably weigh. 30 kilos plus per bolt. Yeah. Um, so just the physical manual handling of that sort of equipment and the tightening equipment for those bolts is a huge risk for people.

If you think 150 bolts lifting or maneuvering, the tooling around on on its own can cause all the problems. So as well as the inherent risk of the hydraulic kit failing. So occasionally we see catastrophic tool failure. Is, which have really high potential severity, you know, sort of tensioner heads ejecting or crush injuries from Tor.

So that is really a key focus for our customers, just to [00:04:00] keep their teams safe, but also you have to be the cost effective and the the major cost benefit we allow is that we don’t have to revisit every bolt and every turbine like you’d have to do if you were retyping. So we believe there’s something of the order of a million pounds per installed gigawatt saving.

By moving from a routine REIT uh, maintenance strategy to a focused condition based inspection, you significantly reduce the amount of intervention you make and keep your turbines running more and reduce the boots on the ground on the turbine. So three real kind of, um, key. Benefits for people adopting our technology

Allen Hall: because we routinely see tower bolts being reworked or retention depending on who the manufacturer is.

And I’m watching this go on. I’m like, why are [00:05:00] we doing this? It seems, or the 10% rule, we’re tighten 10% this year, and they’ll come back and see how it’s going. That’s a little insane, right, because you’re just kind of. Tensioning bolts up to see if one of them has a problem and then you just do more of them and we’re wasting so much time because echo bolts figured this out years ago.

You don’t need to do that. You can tell what the tension is in a bolt ultrasonically, which was the original technology, the first gen I’ll call it, uh, that you could tell the length of the bolt. If the length of the bolt is correct within certain parameters, you know that it is tension properly. If it’s shrunk, that probably means it’s not tensioned properly.

That’s a huge advantage because you can’t physically see it. And I know I’ve seen technicians go, oh, I could take a hammer and I can tell you which ones are not tensioned properly wrong. Wrong. And I think that’s where equitable comes in because you’re actually applying a a lot of science simply [00:06:00] to a complex problem because the numbers are so big.

Pete Andrews: Yeah, I mean that, that, that’s been the real. Driving force between our offering is to simplify it. So ultimately we’re based on a non-destructive testing technique. It’s an ultrasonic thickness checking technique, but when from the non-destructive testing background, it’s crack detection, people have time, they can be, it’s a very precision measurement.

People have to be trained in the wind industry. We’re trying to inspect. A thousand, 2000 bolts a day at scale. It’s a completely different, um, ask of the technology and the way the technology has been developed historically has required too much technician expertise, too much configuration and set up time, and hasn’t delivered on the, on the speed that’s needed to be efficient in wind.

And that’s where our bolt wave [00:07:00] unit we’ve, that we’ve developed over the last. 18 months, let’s say, where all of our focus has gone to make it as slick and as easy for a client technician to pick up with minimal training. It’s through an iOS interface. Everyone understands it intuitively. Um, it’s a bit like using the camera app on your phone.

You know, you’re just hitting measure, measure, measure, measure, measure 10 seconds a bolt as you move the, um, ultrasonic transducer across, and then the data gets moved. Automatically to the cloud, to our bolt platform. And customers can view it in near real time. The engineer in the office can see the inspections happened.

They can see if there are any anomalous bolts, and then there can be communication there and then whether an intervention is necessary. So it’s sort of really changed the way our customers think about managing their, um. They’re bolted joints.

Joel Saxum: Well, I think these are, these are the kind of innovations that we love to see, right?

Because [00:08:00] we regularly talk about a shortage of technicians, and this isn’t, I was just learning this this week too, like this is not a wind problem. This is a everywhere problem. No matter what industry you’re in. Use are short of technicians. But we’re seeing like a tool like this is developed to be able to scale that workforce as well.

Right. You don’t need to be an NDT level three expert to go and do these things. ’cause there’s a very few of those people out there. Right? Right. We know the NDT people, a lot of NDT people, and that’s a hard skillset to come by. Yeah. This can be put in the hands of any technician. Yeah, a quick training course.

Just, Hey, this is how you use your iPhone. You can check Instagram, right? Yeah. Okay. You can off figure. Yeah, have fun. See you at lunch. Um, but they can, they can make this happen, right? They can go do these inspections and you’re getting that, that, uh, data collected in the field. Centralized back to an SME that’s looking at it and you don’t have to put that SME in the field and try to scale their ability to go and travel and do all these things.

They can be in the office making sure that the, the QA, QC is done correctly. I love it. I think that that’s the way we need to go with a lot of things. [00:09:00]Uh, and you’re making it happen.

Pete Andrews: Yeah. And it’s a real kind of. F change in mindset for us. So originally when we started Ebot, we were using third party hardware.

Yeah. Which required a bit of that specialism. Yeah. A bit of care about the setup of the project, getting multiple parameters configured before you got going. And it wasn’t really something we could put in the hands of a customer.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Pete Andrews: Which meant Ebot scale was limited to what our own team could go and do, and regionally as well.

You know, so we’re UK based. Probably 60% of our customers are uk, but now we have this Northern Europe offshore wind is obviously on our doorstep, but then increasingly we’ve done more and more in North America, so we’ve probably been to five or six sites now in North America and expect that to be a growth market because we can, we can now ship the devices over there, give some virtual training help.

Uh, [00:10:00] people set themselves up and then that opens up that market, you know, so it’s been a real change in strategy for us, but has allowed us to have far more impact than we otherwise would just try to be a pure service.

Allen Hall: Well, let’s talk about the big problem in the states of a minute, which are the root bushing or inserts that are loose in some blades.

When you lose that pushing, you also lose the tension on the bolt that can be measured. Is that something you’re getting involved with quite a bit now because of just trying to determine how many bolts are affected and, and where we are on the safety scale of can we run this turbine or not? Is that something that EE bolt’s been looking into?

Pete Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I’d say there’s sort of two halves of what we do. There’s the, there’s the bulk wholesale monitoring of. Typically static connections to eliminate this routine retitling where it’s not needed typically, typically. But then we have these edge cases of certain [00:11:00] connections and certain platforms that have known bolt integrity problems, and we are working with clients to really, um, manage those integrity risks.

Blade stud is an absolute classic, you know, sort of, I think almost every turbine OEM on some, if not all of their platforms has got. Embedded risk into their blades, pitch bearing connections. Um, so yeah, exactly as you said, our customers are using the technology for two things really. One is to ensure the bolts have been tightened to the preload that was specified or the target window.

And quite often we find there is an opportunity to increase the preload and therefore increase the resistance to fatigue failure. So. You know, particularly on older sites where the bolts perhaps not in the condition they were on day one. Well, they definitely won’t be. Um, when people have gone and retti them, they haven’t got back to where they, they should be.[00:12:00]

So we can prove that and increase a bit of that resilience, but then also start to look for the segments around the joint where, um, the bolt might start loosening or failures are occurring, and find areas where they can really hone in. And actively manage risk. And that sort of leads to what we’ve decided to do for the next year, particularly with Blade Stud in mind, is evolve this technology.

So whilst it’s also measuring the elongation, we will do a defect scan at the same time. So you’ll monitor your blade stu, um, connection and we’re hoping that we can set the device to flag to you there and then. We believe this bulk has got a defect while you’re here, get it changed out before it fails and, and all the knock on problems, um, from there.

Joel Saxum: So what you’re just pointing to there is a, is a workflow, right? So to me that is typical [00:13:00] of some of the amazing, innovative companies in the UK that I’ve run into throughout my career. And that is, you’re a group of SMEs, you know, bolted connections. That’s what you do, right? But then you’re like, hey. If there’s a tool, we could make a tool that would make our lives a bit easier, then it’s like, well, we could make the entire industry’s lives a little bit easier as well.

So let’s iterate on that. And now you’re able to send these kits around the world to look at these things. Hey, you have a problem with this specific model. We can help you with this because we know the failure mode and we know how to look for it. Let’s do that for you. Also here, you’re doing bolt bulk measurements.

We got that for you. But it all kind of flows back to the fact that Echo Bolt is a team. A bolted connection, SMEs that are making tools and being able to also provide consulting if need be. Yeah. Right. Um, to, to an entire industry. And I think that, um, this is my take on it, right? Wind is stop number one. I think you guys are gonna do a fantastic year, but there’s a lot of, uh, opportunity out there in bolted [00:14:00] connections as well.

Allen Hall: A tremendous amount blade bolts being broken from defects in the crystalline structure. What appears to be a more. Rapidly developing issue across fleets that I’ve seen. I went to a farm this summer and the number of blade bolts that were there on the table that were broken on the conference room table was And the whiteboard office.

Yeah. Yeah. This one,

Joel Saxum: this one.

Allen Hall: Your hard head is not gonna protect you from this one. It’s, it’s, it was this, um, I couldn’t imagine the amount of time they were spending hunting these things down. And of course, the only way they were finding ’em was they were broken. You like to catch ’em before they break because it becomes

Joel Saxum: a safety risk.

Just not too long ago we saw an insurance case where there’s an RCA going on and it is pointing at an entire tower came down. Right. And it is pointing at a mid, mid tower section bolted connection. How often do you guys run into those problems? Or are you contacted by insurance companies or anything like that to, to take a peek at those?

Pete Andrews: We haven’t done anything directly for insurance [00:15:00]companies, but we have been engaged by. Engineering consultancies that are doing RCA type activities. Okay. Um, things like at the end of defect liability periods mm-hmm. A customer has, has seen, they’ve had a lot of, uh, issues from an OEM, maybe an OE EM has offered a modification or an upgrade, assessing whether that upgrade is actually solved the problem or not.

We’ve got involved in, um, but the tower. Issue specifically. It’s actually very rare we find, um, problems with tower connections, but where we do is often where they haven’t achieved good flange flatness, ah, during installation or the bolts have been, let’s say, left out in the elements for a period and lubrication has been, has deteriorated before the bolt’s been installed.

So there are cases out there, but what I would say is. [00:16:00] To think about your whole life cycle, so ensure the bolt’s installed correctly and we can help with that with a QA to say, yes, this torque or tightening method has got you to the load that you want. Do some through life monitoring, but often if you install it correctly, it will it’s operational life.

You will have very little concern. But then in the UK market, we’re increasingly getting involved again at the end of life, right? Life extension where life extension turbines are 20, 25 years old. How does an operator make a decision to carry on running without replacing all bots? Um, and that’s where increasingly we being asked to use the technologist just to say, actually the joint is fine.

The bolts have run in a good, um, operational envelope. Run them on. Don’t replace a hundred percent of them like you might have been recommended to from your, um, yeah. Turbine supplier side. [00:17:00]

Allen Hall: So Pete, if someone’s doing a repower where they’re basically putting a new one in the cell on an existing tower, they’re making a lot of assumptions about all the bolts from the ground up that they’re gonna be okay.

And I know we’re talking about that. We’re in a lot of installations where. If the turbine has gone through a repowered or two. So now those bolts are 20 years old. Yeah. And trying to get ’em to

Joel Saxum: 30 35. 35

Allen Hall: 40. Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing. By those bolted connections. Are they just like replacing the bolts?

Are they hitting ’em with a hammer again? Is that the, yeah,

Pete Andrews: I mean, they might replace ’em, but you’ve got a problem with the foundation bolts. ’cause they’re obviously often anchor bolts set into concrete, so you have to reuse them and. With the projects, both in wind and in process power industry with the chimney stacks to try and ascertain whether foundation bolts that are set into concrete are still suitable for operations.

So look for corrosion losses, look for [00:18:00] defects. Um, so yeah, they’re all things that need thinking about before you just make the snap decision to repower. But I think

Joel Saxum: a lot of that, uh, going back to a couple minutes ago, you were talking about at the commissioning phase, making sure that you have proper qa, QC of how these things were installed day one, and then making sure that before commissioning of a turbine, they’re checked.

I think that’s really important. We’re starting to see that in the blade world now too, where we’ve been talking about it for a long time, and now when you talk to operators, they’re like, we’re getting inspections done on the blades before they’re hung. Or at the factory before they’re hung. After they’re hung.

Like they want a good foundation baseline. Are you seeing that in the bolted connection world too?

Pete Andrews: Yes. Sort of. It’s just emerging for us. What we’ve found is, so most of our customers are in the operational phase ’cause they are the ones feeling the pain. Yeah. Of the routine retitling work. When they do major components, they sometimes engage us to come and say, can you check [00:19:00] before and after the blade was removed?

What was it? Before we took it off from a a bolt load perspective, what is it afterwards? Can you then recheck after 500 hours When we retalk it? And what we’ve seen there often is the initial install hasn’t got them to where they needed to be and they’ve had to go and do the break in maintenance or the 500 hour REIT to get the bolts to the right load.

So one of the questions that we have is whether. Some of the defects are actually being initiated very early on in that initial running in period and whether if, if actually you’d taken the time at, at the point of assembly to make sure you were correct, whether that avoids some of the knock on integrity concerns.

So yeah, it’s interesting area.

Allen Hall: Well, bolts are what hold wind turbines together and you better know you have the right. Tension and [00:20:00] torque on your bolts to get to the lifetime of the wind turbine and to, and to check it once in a while. And I know there’s a lot of operators I can think of right now in the United States that are sort of doing that job somewhat.

I I think they have missed out on opportunities to save a lot of money and to call it echo bolt. How do people get ahold of you? Because that’s one thing I run into all the time. Like, Hey, hey, you gotta talk to Ebol, call Ebol. How do they get ahold of you?

Pete Andrews: So the easiest ways are via our website. Which is echo bolt.com.

Um, LinkedIn, you’ll find us at Echo Bolt on LinkedIn. Reach out. Our email would be info@cobolt.com. So any of those route and you’ll, uh, reach me and the team and more than happy to speak to you about any of your faulting concerns or problems. We are, uh, yeah, we’re passionate about your problems.

Allen Hall: Pete, thank you so much for being on this podcast.

I, it is great to actually see you in person and see the bolt wave technology. It’s really [00:21:00] impressive. So anybody out there that needs bolt tensioning to checking tools, you need to get ahold of Pete at Echo Bolt and get started today. Thank you Pete. Thanks guys. It’s great to be here.

EchoBolt’s BoltWave Makes Bolt Inspections Easy

Renewable Energy

Carbon Capture and Synthetic Fuels

Published

2 days ago

May 26, 2026

Alice Rush

As we’ve noted in the past, the idea of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere is completely unfeasible, since 99.96% of the air around is something other than CO2 (mostly nitrogen). However, there are environments that change this equation radically, cement plants being one of them, where the concentration of CO2 emissions is as high as 30% (versus .04%).

Now, this brings the subject of synthetic fuels into the realm of possibility. Sure, if you want to make gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, you’ll need two other things: hydrogen (which can come from electrolyzing water), and a considerable amount of energy, as these processes are heavily endothermic, meaning that energy must be supplied from external sources.

The good news is that we have enormous amounts of off-peak wind and nuclear that are wasted every day. Please see: Doty WindFuels.