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Standardizing Rain Erosion Testing Results with Wind Power LAB’s Rocky Software

Rocky, a cloud-based software developed by Wind Power LAB is helping to standardize the analysis of rain erosion test data for wind turbine coatings. By precisely annotating damage progression in test photos, Rocky eliminates human variability in interpreting results and generating accurate velocity vs. impact (V-N) curves. This innovative tool promises to improve coating durability predictions, reduce operational costs, and accelerate rain erosion solutions for the wind industry. Visit https://windpowerlab.com/ for more info!

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m Allen Hall, and I’m in San Diego, warm San Diego with at ACP OM&S and I’m here with Anders Røpke, who is this founding partner and CEO of Wind Power LAB based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Welcome to the show.

Anders Røpke: Thank for the invitation.

Allen Hall: So we’re gonna have a really technical discussion, but a really timely discussion. Yeah, about rain erosion and rain erosion testing. I was just over in Denmark, went to DTU, saw the Leading Edge Erosion Conference. Fascinated, great speakers, a lot of great data. One of the main discussion points was when you run a rain erosion test on a particular coating for a wind turbine, there’s a lot of variability.

And the holy grail is to get what they call a V N curve for a coating. That’s the velocity versus the number of impacts. You should be able to draw roughly a straight line. Okay. When I was over at Copenhagen, and watching all this go on, there’s a lot of slides up about V in curves where the V in curve was up and down.

The tilt of it was all over the place. When they had done testing at different rain erosion facilities, or had tested in the same erosion facility on the same kind of sample. Getting what they thought was a different result. Now, that seems to be driven by in part, the human element. Exactly. Everything about that test is pretty well controlled and the people at R&D test systems, which designed those rain erosion rigs have made a really nice machine.

Let’s just be honest. It’s a really good machine. But as when PowerLab is determining, the issue is looking at the photos of the damage and then saying, Oh, here’s where damage starts. And this is how it propagates. That’s a human element problem that’s added to this very technical decision making. We’re making errors there.

And that’s where Wind Power LAB comes in. And at Wind Power LAB, you guys are blade experts, right?

Anders Røpke: We are blade experts. So we are actually coming from the field observation side, if you like. So we see the products when they fail. Sorry to bring the bad news, but we see leading edge erosion out there still, even though we have big LEP campaigns.

Yeah. And one thing is the application, it’s a hard environment to turn out offshore, for instance. But we also see coatings fail earlier than anticipated. And the long term effect is a lot of unnecessary cost for these wind farm owners. Because then they’re looking into yet one more LEP campaign.

Through the end of, before the end of life of this wind farm. That’s extremely expensive. Onshore, but it’s maybe 20 times more expensive offshore. It is. So if we should fix this. We should. We should. Then why don’t we try to test our products a little bit better?

And that’s where the Leading Edge Erosion Symposium you visited.

It’s really good. We get some focus on this. Oh, yeah. Because you look at the, at all the erosion test thing that is going on with our partners R&D.

Allen Hall: Yes.

Anders Røpke: You have the most sophisticated machine. You can control the droplet size, the speed and whatnot. It’s magnificent. And then it is the tons of data coming out of the system will have to be processed by some highly skilled experts, right?

Test engineers. And here the trouble starts, right? Because if we are the test engineers, you are getting your 200, 000 pictures in from the test, right? It’s fairly expensive to run the test. I look at the same data. I will almost, I’m almost certain that I can promise you that we will not get the same results.

So that means if you produce one VN curve, I’ll produce another one. Somebody Third parties should select which one is the right one. And that is what we base our product on.

Allen Hall: It is. It’s, there’s literally millions of dollars going in per year on rain erosion coatings based upon the data and the published data on the VN curves.

Anders Røpke: So when you invest in a leading edge shell, protection shell like this is something we bought from our friends at Polytech, then it’s a matter of the durability. So when will this start eroding? That’s what you basically test in a erosion test. The VN curve tells you something about when that time is, right?

Yes. And if we are incorrect, because we have some accuracy issues in our assessment between the two of us, then the durability of this product may not be better. Oh, it could be better. It could be worse. It could be worse. We don’t know. That’s the whole point.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Anders Røpke: So with the software here. Then we assisting our leading edge protection developers or manufacturers in handling all the many thousand hours of tests coming through and tons of data.

It’s organized. You can share your your test between inside your test department, right? And then you can go first and do your test down to my test. We can do an overlay. And from that, you can actually see that we agree, right? Because we have. A more accurate view on when we start to see the erosion for the first time.

In here, you mark up with small polygons around the various items from the test results. Yes. And you should have the same picture as, or the same results as I should.

Allen Hall: Wind Power LAB has developed this piece of software. Yeah. It’s based in the cloud. It’s called Rocky, like Rocky Balboa. And what it does is it takes all those photographs from the rain erosion test.

So as the rain erosion test proceeds, it runs for a little while, then it stops and they take a high resolution photo. They started back up again. They continue the count, right? So there you have a series of photos showing increasing levels of damage over time. But the issue is How do you track that VN curve from those images?

That’s where the human element has to come in and a lot of times if they’re not using a Rocky type system They’re actually using like Excel or PowerPoint to sort through all these photos and go Oh, it was at minute 52 that this issue started that is highly interpretive.

Anders Røpke: And today we see that happening, right?

We see clients with spreadsheets and PowerPoints. And they’re really doing their best. The problem is I cannot reproduce your test result, right?

Allen Hall: Which is the ultimate point of a test. It should be reproducible. Otherwise, something is wrong with the test setup.

Anders Røpke: So we have tried to standardize. The way you should annotate in here, yes.

Not annotate, but mark up with polygons track when certain track and when something happens, you can play back and forth inside your time series to get even more accurate, the assessment results. Yeah. And by doing that we will actually be able to, the two of us will be able to come up with the same test result.

Allen Hall: So the results out of the Rocky system have been, from what I’ve seen, remarkable. Because I didn’t think the human element had played that much into the, to the results. It is, you get wide differences in basically the same test data. So if we had the same data set in front of two engineers going through it, they would pick different VN curves out of that same set of data.

That’s a problem for the industry. It is.

Anders Røpke: And then, And it’s very costly as well.

Allen Hall: It’s super costly.

Anders Røpke: Or it could be even better to ability, right?

Allen Hall: So it could go both ways. Sure. Because you ever, what the, what happens with those VN curves is that if I’m an operator, I have a rough idea of the number of water impacts of, at my site, because I track that.

It’s one of the things I track. So then I know okay, I’m going to have X many raindrops hit this material over time, therefore I have a lifetime of X. And. If that VN curve is wrong, I could be overpaying for a material. I could be having material that just fails too early again, overpaying for this thing.

So it’s a cost issue for the operator at the end of the day. And then the operators are struggling because from what I could tell, and I’m not an operator, but if I were an operator, it’d be really confused right now on rain erosion products, because we’re at ACP OMS and I run into four or five different providers of coatings.

Here, and they all saying the same thing to me, but when I talk to the operators, they say, no, like this one works in our site and that one didn’t. Yeah.

And it’s a consistency on the engineering side.

Anders Røpke: It is, but it’s not only on, the test side, but it’s definitely also on the application side out.

Sure. Oh, sure. Sure. So I’m not saying that we have a poor products on the market. I’m just saying that we need to step it up on the testing side so we sure get the correct VN curves.

Allen Hall: We need to test the variability. Exactly. But the problem is if we interpret the photos incorrectly, we don’t have any data.

We can’t make any heads or tails of that. We don’t have, we can’t sort draw on the line. Exactly. That is a huge problem. Yeah, and I think that’s where, based upon the , the number of doctorate students, ed, who really educated people that are working the rain erosion issue. Andres, you’re right. The application is really key, but also just being able to interpret the data.

It’s just a huge learning and there really isn’t any tools to them.

Anders Røpke: And then being able to share those results and reproduce those results. So we have a proper workflow that I’ll quality check your work, your analysis, and I can reproduce it. Then we are aligned and following a standardized way. That’s the dream.

It is. This is a, ladies and gentlemen, this is Lean and Six Sigma. It’s not something new. Any other industry would test their products like this.

Allen Hall: So you should be able to take the same coding to two different, essentially R&D test systems, Rainrose facilities, they’re all in Europe, and get the same results out of both sites.

Yes. That is the goal. You can’t do that today. No.

Anders Røpke: At least then it’s based on luck. Yeah. That you hit the same number inside your spreadsheets, for instance. Or whatever system you’ve developed. And then then of course we can do this for all kinds of rain erosion test facilities. And we can do this not just only for what is applied in the wind industry.

I pray for that we get some more proper testing inside the aerospace.

Allen Hall: Aerospace needs it horribly bad.

Anders Røpke: Yes, they do. That’s sad news in my ears. Yeah, that’s true.

Allen Hall: Because it’s a difficult problem. They have, the aerospace has the same problem that wind turbine engineers have. is what do you do with all this data?

How do I interpret it? Every engineer interprets it different. If you, it’s hard to be independent, especially if it’s your coding, and you’re the designer of the coding, and you’re going through the photos, you want to lean towards, ah, this is working better. It’s hard. You got to take that human element out of it to really get down to the raw data, and that, that has been the hurdle.

Rocky, though, gets rid of that, right? Rocky, takes that data, even old data. So the data you have been sitting on for two or three years in the past, you can actually put it through the Rocky system and say, okay, the real VN curve is this. So not even on, you don’t have to repeat the test.

Anders Røpke: No, where you can reuse your data if you like.

And optimize your quality in hindsight and then know where you are. Maybe you are in a really strong position. You can have the great material. Just, I know it. Let’s hope for it for us. And, but going forward. Then your entire test engineering team will have the same tool available.

If somebody leaves the company, it’s still in here. It’s still there. Yeah. And as we know from the Rocky movies, it does Rocky one, two, three, and so forth. So this is Rocky one, and now we’re generating a lot of data. And of course we are also AI side of things because all this annotation will eventually be automated.

So our test engineers can focus that time on, optimizing. And making it even more accurate in here, so you get even more accurate VN curves, right? Nobody enjoys watching these tons of images just day in and day out. No. Let’s try to, in Rocky 2, get that one fixed.

Allen Hall: Just get it yeah, as you accumulate more data in the system, that is obviously going to occur, so it’s going to get smarter as you go along.

But in terms of going back and using old data, so I can put my existing data, upload it to the cloud. process it with the Rocky system, get a better data right there. So now obviously codings have evolved. I can start comparing codings. I have, I probably have a lot of data that I can upload to Rocky, a lot of photos.

I can go track each one of them. I can start getting now real VN curves out of it. And now I have a better understanding. And as a manufacturer of a coding, now I can really help my customers say, if you have a, Site where there’s a lot of rain. You want to use this coding because they’ll usually offer more than one coding, or if I have maybe a sandy territory, I want to go to use this coding, but I think from the operator side, also, the operators are starting to go back and do some of the testing on their own and say, okay, I have this curve, I’m not really sure I want to verify, I want to verify this, but they have the same problem.

They need to have a system to go through that data logically. So they can get a true set.

Anders Røpke: Exactly. So if if you can share maybe then as an operator, you would pay for your own tests, right? Maybe you should do that. If you have a probably should have fit 10, 000 turbines and quite a huge investment in doing this, right?

Sure. So making sure that the durability is anticipated. So you can start planning for those LEP campaigns and not get surprised that you need to add one more in.

Allen Hall: Yeah. I do think the R&D test systems, rain erosion test rigs are. As good as they’re ever going to get. The technology, the one I saw at DTU is amazing.

So the technology on the test side is there. But, yeah, we just haven’t figured out the human element and eliminated it. It’s good that Wind Power LAB has stepped into that void. Because you’re Blaine experts. And you understand what’s happening out there. And you can correlate it. So now that you’re creating this data set, you guys will have a data set of these different codings, in a sense.

And plush. You have a lot of people out in the field reporting back this blade has this issue, that blade has this issue, this coating has this issue. It should start to correlate back to the data set, right? The VN curves should start to match. And feed into the innovation process of the next generation of products.

We’re moving too slow on rain erosion.

Anders Røpke: And then last but not least, this project here, or the software, this project here, Something we have commercialized now and it’s available for anyone in the industry that would like to, use it. It is something that started in a grain funded project back home in Denmark between the Technical University of Denmark and R&D Systems.

Okay. So it’s actually a good use of innovation funding. Sure. Came all the way out to the marketplace as a tool you can buy and have on subscription.

Allen Hall: It’s actionable information, which is needed today across the world. There’s two problems in the world and wind turbines, mostly.

Lightning and rain erosion. Okay. And sometimes rain erosion is more than lightning, but those are the two. Yeah. Danny Ellis from Sky Specs told me years ago, every wind turbine has rain erosion problems, every one of them. And I think that is going away, but until we have better data and people start using the Rocky system to evaluate their photos and their damage, we’re just not going to solve this problem.

It’s just going to continue on.

Anders Røpke: And eventually this could be what will save maybe one or two leading edge protection campaigns. In an offshore scenario, we have clients in Netherlands, for instance, where they save like millions in vessel costs.

Allen Hall: Oh, easy.

Anders Røpke: Because they could, get rid of some part of the scope because they were actually able to pinpoint which of the turbines that were in need of a LEP coating.

Yeah. That case could have been even better if the durability on these products applied were actually as anticipated and planned.

Allen Hall: Yeah. So the engineering results in the LAB have to match what happens in the field.

Anders Røpke: Exactly.

Allen Hall: It has to happen that way. So how do people get in contact with Wind Power LAB to evaluate Rocky and take a look at it, maybe throw some images up on the Rocky cloud?

Anders Røpke: Yeah, so you can look me up at LinkedIn, of course, and connect. I’m happy to connect with anyone that invites me. Or go to wind power app.com. Yeah. And you will find a contact phone. We’ll be in touch , and you can see our phone number. Come and visit us in Denmark or invite us for a meeting. We are happy to.

Allen Hall: How fast could they implement that system? They give you the phone calls, the auditors, Hey, I’m ready for this. Give the demo how soon before you can hook ’em up and run through it.

Anders Røpke: Basically, we need to create a use account. That’s it. That’s it.

Allen Hall: Wow.

Anders Røpke: Of course, they need to have a, the RainyMotion data.

Allen Hall: They have the photos. Yeah. Okay. But as fast as they can upload them, it’s as fast as you can process.

Anders Røpke: And of course, then a proper introduction to the tool.

Allen Hall: Sure. Sure. A little bit of training. Yeah. But that’s it. It’s pretty user, you guys make great software. So it’s pretty much user intuitive things.

Yeah. So no problem with that.

Anders Røpke: And yeah, then we could discuss, another topic would be that the test results. We could open up and do maybe joint innovation on products and that whole deal, but it’s not like we’re sharing your results with anyone else.

Allen Hall: No, but hey, if you’re working with WinPowerLab, there’s a lot of smart people working there and they understand that issue.

They can help with the codings. And plus we have seen real life. Yeah. Does it make sense? It gives good advice, which is what we need. We need some good advice. Ander, this is fantastic. This is a really, this is a really innovating piece of software and it’s going to be used and it already is being used at GTU and R&D test systems.

But anybody that has an R&D test system rig can use it. Anybody who has R&D test system data can use it today.

Anders Røpke: Yeah.

Allen Hall: Amazing.

Anders Røpke: So if you have a test system with R&D today, then reach out to R&D colleagues as well. Yes. Or contacts and then we can get in touch that way as well.

Allen Hall: Wow. That’s fantastic. Anders, thanks so much for being on the program.

This is fantastic.

Anders Røpke: Thank you very much.

Standardizing Rain Erosion Testing Results with Wind Power LAB’s Rocky Software