The South Carolina General Assembly has finalized sweeping energy legislation (the “South Carolina Energy Security Act”) to increase electric bills to finance major new fossil gas pipelines and power plants primarily serving large energy users. If built, the new pipelines and power plants will set the state on a course in which two of its three major utilities depend on fossil gas for over half of the electricity they generate. This move will tie the state’s economy to highly volatile international gas markets. Unfortunately, key consumer protections needed to prevent unfair cost shifting onto smaller customers were stripped out of the bill at the last minute. The Act also includes clean energy provisions championed by SACE and its allies that may streamline the expansion of solar energy and expand energy efficiency efforts. Throughout many legislative ups and downs over a two-year effort, SACE worked closely with many allies across South Carolina to remove numerous additional damaging provisions from the bill.
The new Act began two years ago when utility companies claimed that state government oversight of utility activities was impeding economic development. Utilities particularly chafed at laws requiring review and approval of their long-term plans, which were enacted seven years ago after two utilities spent $9 billion on building a nuclear plant that they abandoned halfway through completion. Customers will continue paying for that unfinished power plant on their electric bills for decades.
However, the legislation evolved over the past two years into a response to huge projected electricity needs associated with new computer data centers. The projected growth in energy needs due to data centers exceeds any energy growth seen in the United States for over 20 years. This projected load growth is driving utility companies across the Southeast to rush to build fossil gas power plants and pipelines to feed them, and to delay closure of multiple aging, expensive coal-fired power plants.
Less Oversight of Utilities
The Act removes key oversight of the prudence of utility companies building new fossil gas plants. For instance, in a deeply unwise move, the Act provides that air, water, and Public Service Commission permits for major new utility infrastructure would be “deemed approved” if the relevant state agency fails to act on an application within six months. It also exempts certain power plants under 300 MW from the certificate of need process, allows the cost of power plants up to 250 MW to be added to rates between rate cases, and authorizes the Public Service Commission to approve ratepayer financing during construction of even larger power plants. Plants in the Southeast in this size range are generally gas-fired plants that can easily exceed $400 million in cost.
SACE believes that any automatic, “deemed” approval threatens to impose costs and pollution on the general population without the necessary legal and factual foundation. Further, because renewable resources tend to cause less air and water pollution, reduced permitting scrutiny inherently favors polluting fossil energy. SACE also believes it is unwise to charge ratepayers automatically for major power plants during construction. Any ratepayer charges before the plant operation should be carefully vetted and likely allowed only, if ever, after the plant is substantially complete. Ratepayer financing of construction costs prior to completion was at the heart of the $9 billion nuclear scandal that led to the enactment of South Carolina’s resource planning law.
Expansion of Fossil Fuels
The Act also authorizes a state-owned public power company, Santee Cooper, to join Dominion Energy South Carolina to build a major new fossil gas combined cycle plant (2,000 MW) on a former coal plant site next to the Edisto River. SACE testified that construction and operation of a plant of this size would be risky for captive utility customers. The construction timeline would depend on the completion of years of uncertain gas pipeline and electric transmission projects. Natural gas prices are also volatile and subject to increasing price pressure from the international gas export market.
Just while the bill was being developed, the effect of a federal trade war and the rush to build power plants to serve data centers has roughly doubled the cost of gas-fired power plants, adding further risk to a project already expected to cost billions of dollars. Perversely, rather than inspiring a search for other ways to meet the power demand, such cost increases could swell the utility rate base that is the basis for determining utility profits under the state regulatory system.
By authorizing a specific plant and its further provisions, the Act threatens to fundamentally undermine the review of long-term utility plans (“Integrated Resource Plans”) in South Carolina. Rather than constraining planned power plants to the amount needed to meet a carefully vetted recast, the bill opens the door to plants built for inherently speculative economic development projections. Longstanding econometric forecasting methods already account for economic growth. Even so, load forecasts often turn out to be on the high side. The new language encourages adding uncertain (and usually secret) possible economic development projects to these forecasts, creating a greater risk that consumers will pay for unnecessary power plants.
Protecting Profits, not Customers
Rather than shielding consumers from potential cost overruns or unwise decisions, the Act creates a new electric rate process focused on protecting shareholder profits. The new process requires annual rate adjustments to maintain utility profit margins every year. This process will nearly always raise rates, even during an economic downturn or recession, when families and non-utility businesses are belt-tightening. Utilities requested the new rate process in order to finance the expected major new power plant additions.
Despite warnings from the AARP, the state Consumer Advocate, the representative of large industrial customers, SACE, and others about potential excessive rate increases, the head of the state government agency charged with investigating utility rate increases (the “Office of Regulatory Staff,” or “ORS”), testified that that rate stabilization could be implemented fairly under ORS oversight. The ORS claimed that customers actually requested the new rate process at hearings under questioning by utility lawyers. Legislators accepted this characterization, and only time will tell whether the new process becomes a “runaway train.”
The Act’s additional “economic development rates” section also poses a significant danger of cost shifting for most electricity consumers. For the largest new industrial customers—those with a load exceeding 50 MW—the bill would allow the Public Service Commission to approve special low rates that are 25% below the incremental cost to serve them (the “marginal cost,” which itself is often manipulated to be well below the actual cost of service). These large customers already pay low rates for bulk power service, but the new law encourages even lower rates for the biggest companies, the costs of which would be borne by other smaller ratepayers. Even a single large customer could shift tens of millions of dollars of cost onto families and small businesses. To compound this problem, the bill also allows the new large industries’ competitors to get the same rate discount, potentially multiplying the cost-shifting to small customers.
It’s Bad, but It Could Have Been Worse
Overall, the combination of potentially inflated load forecasts, “deemed approval” for power plants, legislative support for a specific multi-billion-dollar project, cross-subsidies for the largest industries on the backs of small ratepayers, and automatic rate increases creates an obvious, clear, and present danger. South Carolina consumers risk being saddled with high costs and unnecessary pollution for a speculative buildout of fossil-fueled infrastructure.
While these changes in South Carolina law are bad for consumers and the environment, they could have been worse. The original House-passed bill authorized utility companies to construct up to three new “small modular” nuclear reactors and pass them along to their customers, including potential costs after abandonment. While SACE does not advocate for shutting down existing nuclear power plants at this time, we believe it is harmful to both ratepayers and the environment when utilities spend billions of dollars on the promise of clean energy and produce nothing. Senators removed this provision partly based on the strength of SACE testimony that it risked repeating South Carolina’s recent $9 billion nuclear fiasco. SACE noted that the only actual attempted small nuclear reactor in the U.S. (in Idaho) was recently abandoned when its cost to complete also reached $9 billion. Nevertheless, the final bill retains language establishing that it is South Carolina policy to encourage development of nuclear plants, including small modular reactors and even fusion projects that are not commercially available anywhere in the United States.
Senator Tom Davis, in particular, also led multiple efforts on the Senate floor to remove highly damaging provisions from the original House version of the bill. The House initially accepted utility-drafted language that would override the current practice of allowing intervenors in Public Service Commission proceedings to access utility company software to review projected energy scenarios. The House language would have effectively precluded public-interest non-profit groups from reviewing utility plans by imposing software licensing costs that could exceed $100,000 per proceeding. Senator Davis’s amendment, however, produced a compromise allowing intervenors to review utility software for a smaller fee.
The House bill also originally included utility-requested language that threatened to repeal the right of intervenors to appeal Public Service Company decisions. A Davis amendment removed this language.
The House bill also would have effectively shut down the development of new solar power plants across much of the state by restricting contract lengths to 5 years, but a successful Davis amendment rejected this change. The House also attempted to remove local permitting review for most utility-scale solar plants and impose new state review requirements on any plant over 150 acres. Instead, Senators worked out a new system of setback requirements for solar development.
Positive Provisions Affecting Clean Energy
The two most important provisions concern utility-scale renewable energy procurement and utility-funded energy efficiency programs.
The most important renewable energy provision stems from another Davis amendment. Utility companies must issue periodic RFPs to competitively procure renewable energy and energy storage to fulfill their own filed, approved renewable energy plans. While it may sound duplicative to tell a utility company to execute its own renewable energy plans, Dominion Energy has a history in South Carolina of gaining approval for plans to purchase renewable energy, and then refusing to issue an RFP to follow through. Dominion has also levied legal attacks on specific projects after signing a contract to purchase the energy from them. Further, in recent “all-source” RFPs run by Dominion allowing either renewable or fossil energy to submit bids to compete, the only result has been Dominion’s own affiliate winning every bid and then seeking approval to build its own fossil power plants. Faithful implementation of the Davis renewable energy provisions could lead to thousands of MW of renewable energy at the best available market prices, reducing pollution and bringing customer bills down. Still, time will be needed to gauge the result.
The Act also declares that it is in the public interest for utilities to expand energy efficiency and other demand-side management programs. More specifically, it authorizes the Commission to approve procedures under which utilities will plan for and implement all cost-reasonable, prudent, available and cost-effective energy efficiency programs. It also allows approval of programs targeting low-income customers that do not meet cost-effectiveness tests. The Commission is also authorized to appoint a third party to administer a utility company’s energy efficiency programs if it fails to meet these requirements. While the Senate initially passed a Davis amendment that would set a statutory minimum target for utility programs to help customers save energy, the House rejected this numeric target that would have made the energy efficiency provisions easily enforceable. Implementing the remaining provisions will be up to the Public Service Commission. Similar legal requirements in other states have led to robust programs with very high levels of achievement, but as with the renewable procurement provision, the proof will be in the pudding.
Another demand-side management provision authorizes the Commission to approve utility demand-side management programs that include customer renewable energy and energy storage. This provision could enable virtual power plant or solar plus battery demand response programs, which the South Carolina Commission previously rejected. In addition to helping the utility meet peak loads, these programs can help customers be more resilient in the face of power outages.
Another significant positive renewable energy provision raises the current statutory cap on the size of behind-the-meter solar projects for commercial customers from 1 MW to 5 MW. If faithfully implemented, this provision could substantially expand the commercial customer-owned solar market in much of South Carolina.
The Act also requires utilities to include more information about transmission planning in their Integrated Resource Plans.
A further provision may be a “sleeper” that could produce nothing or could produce major positive impacts: The Act “encourages” utilities to work with very large customers to “explore cost-effective, efficient bulk power solutions.” Such solutions might include battery storage, renewable energy, or other generation co-located at the site of data centers or other large industrial energy users. This section of the Act also “encourages” but does not expressly require utilities to protect other consumers against cost-shifting.
Opportunities missed
While clean energy gained a few modest victories, consumer protection did not. The Senate initially required that new data centers pay for the new infrastructure needed to serve them, but senators dropped this requirement in negotiations with the House.
The Senate also initially endorsed landowner protection provisions that would require public notice and specific notice to landowners when a major utility infrastructure project is likely to result in taking private property through eminent domain. While these protections were passed unanimously in the Senate, they were entirely abandoned during House negotiations.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey also attempted to pass an “industrial choice” amendment allowing data centers and other large industrial customers to choose their own energy supplier and contract for their energy needs. This amendment was defeated through intensive utility company lobbying, which also appeared to dissuade Senators from offering other market-based reforms proposed by SACE and others. The Southeast thus remains the only major part of the country that lacks a fully functional regional wholesale energy market.
SACE also urged House and Senate Committees to end the practice under which utilities can pass through 100% of fuel costs to consumers. SACE urged the inclusion of a fuel cost-sharing mechanism to give utilities “skin in the game” and manage fuel costs rather than using captive customers as insurers against wild swings in costs. Still, no member was willing to offer the amendment in the face of strong utility opposition.
Likely Outcome: Higher Bills, More Pollution
The Act as a whole included every major stated goal of South Carolina’s utility industry, particularly as it pertains to expanding fossil gas pipelines and power plants: streamlined permitting, an automatic rate increase process, endorsement of economic development as an independent basis to approve utility investment, legislative authorization for a major joint power plant project. Despite recent history in South Carolina, the Act also widely embraced nuclear power, including unproven and non-commercially available technologies. More positively, it accommodated the continued existence of the solar industry, including streamlined procurement of renewable energy and battery storage insofar as it is included within utility company plans, and a pathway for 5 MW customer-based solar projects. It included promising energy efficiency language, but left implementation uncertain. It provided a vague, potentially significant path for the largest industries to develop their own energy sources in coordination with utility companies. Overall, the more certain impact of the legislation will be higher bills and more pollution, with some opportunities for clean energy expansion to ameliorate cost and environmental impacts.
The post Sweeping South Carolina Energy Legislation Embraces Fossil Gas and Nuclear, Mixed Bag for Clean Energy appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
PowerCurve’s Innovative Vortex Generators and Serrations
Nicholas Gaudern from PowerCurve joins to discuss SilentEdge serrations with up to 5 dB noise reduction, Dragon Scale VGs for AEP recovery, and their approach to products that actually perform in the field. Contact PowerCurve on LinkedIn for more information.
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: Nicholas, welcome back to the show.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Always a pleasure.
Allen Hall: Well, there’s a lot of new products coming outta PowerCurve. And PowerCurve is the aerodynamic leader in add-ons and making your turbines perform at higher efficiency with less loss. Uh, so basically taking that standard OEM blade and making it work the way it was intended to work.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. We
Allen Hall: like to
Nicholas Gaudern: think so. Yeah.
Allen Hall: And there’s a, there’s a lot of new technology that you’ve been working on in the lab that you haven’t been able to explore to the, introduce to the world, so to speak. Yeah. And we’ve seen some of it from the inside of, you know, you’re working behind the scenes or working really hard to get this done, but now that technology has been released to the world, and we’re gonna introduce it today, some new trailing edge.
[00:01:00] Components. Yeah. That really, really reduce the noise. But they, they look a little bit odd. Yes. There’s a lot of ADON dams going on with
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: With these. So what, what do you call these new trailing edge parts?
Nicholas Gaudern: So, so what you have in your hand here? This is the Silence edge, uh, serration. So this is our new trailing Edge Serration products.
Now, most people, when they think of training restorations, they are thinking of triangles.
Allen Hall: Exactly.
Nicholas Gaudern: These Dino tails. Dino Tails, that’s the Siemens, Siemens name for them. Pretty, pretty standard. You see ’em on a lot of turbines now. Sure. And they work, you know, they do do a job. They do a job. They reduce noise.
But like with lots of things in, in aerodynamics, there’s lots of different ways that you can solve a problem and some are better than others. So we’ve worked for a long, long time in the wind tunnel, uh, in the CFD simulations, and we’ve come up with this pretty unique shape. We think,
Allen Hall: well, the, the, the shape is unique and if you, if you look at it, there’s actually different heights to the, the triangle, so to speak.
To mix the air from the pressure and the [00:02:00] suction side to reduce the, the level of noise coming off the blade
Nicholas Gaudern: e Exactly. So we have, uh, we have an asymmetry to the part. We have these different tooth lengths. We have, uh, a lot of changes in thickness going on across the part. So it may be a little bit difficult to see on the camera, but these are quite sculpted 3D components.
They’re not, they’re not flat stock white triangles. No, no. There’s a lot of thickness detail going on here. We’ve paid a lot of attention to the edges. We’ve paid a lot of attention to these gaps between the teeth as well. So all of this is about trying to figure out what is the best way to reduce noise.
And something that not a lot of people will, will admit, but it’s true, is that as an industry we don’t really understand the fundamentals of how serrations work.
Allen Hall: It’s a complicated
Nicholas Gaudern: problem. It’s a really complicated thing. Problem, yeah. Yes. So trying to simulate it in CFD is an absolute nightmare. The, the mesh sizes required, the physics models required are really, really difficult.
So what we found is that you’re probably better off spending [00:03:00] most of your time and money in the wind tunnel. Yes. So, so we go to DTU, they have this wonderful, uh, air acoustic wind tunnel, the pool of core tunnel. It’s one the best tunnels in the industry for doing this kind of work. It
Allen Hall: is
Nicholas Gaudern: because you can measure acoustics and aerodynamics at the same time.
So this allows us to do a lot of very cost effective iteration for this kind of design work. So we know what’s important. You know, we’ve, we’ve studied all the different parameters of serrations lengths, aspect ratios, angles, thicknesses, all this kind of stuff. And it’s about bringing them together into a, into a coherent product.
So this is, this is a result of a lot of design of experiments, a lot of iteration, and combining wind tunnel and CFD to kind of get the best of both of those tools. So,
Allen Hall: so what’s the. Noise reduction compared to those standard triangular trailing aerations. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So there’s lots of different ways of, of thinking about noise reduction, but I think probably the most useful is the O-A-S-P-L.
So this is the overall sound pressure level. Right. Is kind of what [00:04:00]typically you’ll be measuring in an IEC test.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that’s measured in decibels, but a way to decibels because it’s important that we’re waiting to what the human ear can actually hear. Right. Perceive. Exactly. So that’s the numbers we report.
For the field test we’ve recently completed with Silent Edge, we’re seeing up to five decibels of O-A-S-P-L noise reduction.
Allen Hall: Okay. So what’s that mean in terms of what I hear on the ground?
Nicholas Gaudern: So that is an absolutely huge reduction. It’s multiple times of reduction because you know, decibels on a log scale,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: So five DB is is enormous. It’s
Allen Hall: a lot. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: And what’s really interesting is that if you have a turbine that’s running in a noise mode, just one decibel reduction. Of power, sound, sound, power level might be three or 4% P loss. I mean, that, that’s, that’s huge. Think about that loss. So if you need to reduce noise by five decibels to get within a regulation, imagine how much a EP you have to throw away by basically turning down the [00:05:00] turbine to do that.
Allen Hall: That’s right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So that’s really what the, the business case for these kind of products is. It means you can escape noise modes because as soon as you use a noise mode. You are throwing away energy.
Allen Hall: You’re throwing well you’re throwing away profits.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: So you’re just losing money to reduce the noise.
Now you can operate at peak.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: Power output without the creating the noise where you have that risk. Right. So, and particularly in a lot of countries now, there are noise regulations. Yes. And they are very well monitored.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: We’re seeing it more and more where, uh, government agencies are coming out and checking.
Yes. ’cause they have a complaint and so you get a complaint. Oh, that’s fine. Or someone can complain. Yeah. You know, you need to be making your numbers.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And, and the industry needs to be good neighbors, you know? It
Allen Hall: certainly does.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, we have to make sure that people are, you know, approving and comfortable with having wind turbines in their backyard.
Sure. And noise is a big part of that.
Allen Hall: It is.
Nicholas Gaudern: So yeah. Ap sure. That’s really important. Being a good [00:06:00] neighbor also important.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: Meeting the regulations. Obviously you have to meet the regulations. So this product, um, has been through a really long development cycle, and we’re now putting the final touches to the, to the tooling.
So this is available now.
Allen Hall: Oh, wow.
Nicholas Gaudern: Okay. Great. Um, and we’re hoping that in the next uh, few months we’ll be getting even more turbines equipped out in the field with, with the technology.
Allen Hall: So, oh, sure. There’s a, you think about the number of turbines that are in service, hundreds of thousands total worldwide.
A lot of them have no noise reduction at all.
Nicholas Gaudern: No. No.
Allen Hall: And they have a lot of complaints from the neighbors.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: Trying to expand wind into new areas, uh, is hard because the, the experience of the previous Yes. Neighbor
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: Grows into future neighbors. So fixing the turbines you have out in sight today helps you get the next site.
I know we don’t always think about that, but that’s exactly how it works. Yeah, of course. Uh, we need to be conscientious of the people of the turbines we have in service right now. So that we can continue to grow wind [00:07:00] globally and more regulations on noise are gonna come unless we start taking care of the problem ourselves.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep. And another really important thing with Serrations is that you have to design them so that they don’t impact the loads on the rest of the turbine.
Allen Hall: Right. And people forget about that.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Can you just, can’t just throw up any device up there. And think, well, my blade’s gonna be happy with it. It may not be happy with that device.
Nicholas Gaudern: You have to really carefully understand what the existing blade aerodynamic signature is.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: How is that blade performing? What is the lift distribution across the span? Yeah.
Allen Hall: Right. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So what we do, and we, we’ve talked about it before we go and laser scan blades. We build CAD models, we build CFD models so we can actually understand how much lift a blade can take and what’s the benefit or the penalty of doing so.
So these serrations are designed by default to be load neutral. They won’t increase lift. They won’t reduce lift. That’s what
Allen Hall: it should
Nicholas Gaudern: be. That’s where you should start,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: And maybe there’s some scope to do something else [00:08:00] on certain turbines, but you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t guess. You, you need to calculate, you need to simulate, you need to think very carefully about that.
So that’s what we do with these, uh, with these serrations, we go through this very careful aerodynamic design process to make sure that they reduce noise and that’s it. They don’t increase loads, they don’t reduce AP by killing lift. And that’s, that’s an important aspect.
Allen Hall: Well, that’s the goal.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes,
Allen Hall: exactly.
I don’t necessarily want to increase power. I don’t wanna put more load in my blade, but people do that. I’ve seen that happen and man, they regret it.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, regret it. There’s, there’s some pretty wild claims out there as well about observations can and can’t do. And uh, like with lots of things, it’s important to just do the simulations, speak to some experts and, um.
Yeah, maybe take the, the less exciting path, you know, sometimes,
Allen Hall: well, no. Yeah. Well, less exciting path where I don’t have a broken blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s a lot less exciting. It’s, it’s definitely more profitable. Now, the Dragon Scale Vortex generator has been [00:09:00] around about a year or so.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep, yep.
Allen Hall: And the thing about these devices, and they’re so unique, interesting to think about because you typically think of a vortex generator as this being this little bit of a fence.
Where you are tripping the air and making it fall back down onto the blade.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yep.
Allen Hall: A really, it works.
Nicholas Gaudern: It works.
Allen Hall: But it’s it’s
Nicholas Gaudern: been around a long time.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah. It, it does, it does do this thing. And they, they were, they came outta the aviation business. We use ’em on airplanes to keep air flow over the control surfaces so we can continue to fly even in close to stall conditions.
All that makes sense. And airplanes are not a wind turbine.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: So there’s different things happening there. So although they work great on on aircraft, they’re not necessarily the most efficient thing for a wind turbine where you’re trying to generate power and revenue from the rotation of the blades.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: So this is a completely different way of thinking about getting the airflow back onto the blade where it produces [00:10:00] revenue.
Nicholas Gaudern: And what’s really nice is to actually see this together with silent edge, because historically, and maybe not even historically. Serrations VGs, they’re triangles. They work, they do a job.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t do it in a different way. In a better way.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that’s the same principles from applying with Silence Edge and Dragon Scale. We want to work the flow in the most efficient way possible.
Allen Hall: Right. You’re trying to get to an
outcome.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: Efficiently.
Nicholas Gaudern: We want to, we want to target very specific things on the blade, and that’s where you can see there’s a few different styles of Dragon Scale that we have on the table here.
We have some that are two fins. We have some that are three fins. We have different sizes, and this is because they’re tailored to different parts of the blade. So these three Fin Dragon scales, their focus is ultimate lift. We are creating a really powerful vortex through this combination of three air foils, if you imagine, um, the inside of a Turbo fan.
You have these cascading air force. [00:11:00] You look at the leading edge slacks on an aircraft. You look at the front wing of a Formula one car. It’s that kind of concept.
Allen Hall: It’s like that,
Nicholas Gaudern: and it’s these air force that are cooperating with each other.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: To end up with a more beneficial result. ‘
Allen Hall: cause an air force by itself does a function, but when you combine airflows together in the right way
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly.
Allen Hall: You can really control airflow efficiently, less losses. More of what you want out the backside. Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s the backside you’re trying to work on, on a VG or, or dragon scales. You’re trying to create this flow which gets the airflow back onto the blade to create power. We,
Nicholas Gaudern: we want as much attached flow as possible and down exactly down in the roots of a blade.
We have to have really thick aerofoils, you know, blades about round. They’re basically cylinders.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: And that, that’s essential, right? We have to have the blade take a lot of load into the root aerodynamically. They’re horrible.
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So this is where these, uh, these powerful Dragon Scale VGs come into play because what they do is they’re [00:12:00] reenergizing the flow over the aerofoils, and they’re ensuring that that flow remains attached for much, much longer than if those bgs weren’t there.
So down in the root, you’ll get significant boosts to the lift that those sections can generate. And what’s more lift? It goes to more torque, it goes to more power, goes to more a EP. So these dragon scale VGs in the root are there to boost, lift, and boost EP out on the tip of the blade. Things are actually a little bit different because it’s way different.
You shouldn’t really have stall there to begin with if your blade’s been designed well.
Allen Hall: But if you have leading edge erosion exactly. Or some other things that are happening, you can have real aerodynamic problems.
Nicholas Gaudern: So yeah, as soon as you have erosion, uh, maybe your stall margin is not as big as you thought it was.
You’re starting to get some significant losses of lift Yes out towards the tip of the blade. So that’s where these, uh, TwoFin uh, variants come in. So it’s still a dragon scale vg, it’s still the same concept of these cascading error foils. Yeah, but these are [00:13:00] designed for basically ultimate lift to drag ratio.
Mm-hmm. So we don’t really want more maximum lift outta the tip. We kind of have enough, but what we do want is to keep stable attached flow and we want to do it for the less, uh, least drag penalty possible. So basically we want to get rid of as much parasitic drag as we can. These two fin dragon scales, we are seeing 25 plus percent improvements in lift to drag ratio.
Compared to a standard triangle vg. I mean that’s huge.
Allen Hall: That that is really
Nicholas Gaudern: huge.
Allen Hall: That’s huge, right? Because people have seen these, uh, triangular VGs in a lot of places. And one thing I’m noticing more recently is that those VGs, because they’re so draggy, they tend to flutter and they tend to break in just off.
Nicholas Gaudern: Interesting.
Allen Hall: So you’re having this failure mode because this thing is just blocking the air, getting the air to trip.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s not efficient. It does have its downsides ’cause it is. D definitely drag. Just face it, it’s it, is it a draggy [00:14:00] 1940s technology? That’s what it is. Where with the dragon scales, now we’re doing things a lot more efficiently and thinking about how do I get the airflow that the blade designer originally wanted?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes,
Allen Hall: because the blade designer, they’re really intelligent people. They’re, they’re sitting designing blades. But the reality is what you design is on an ideal airflow, and what you have out in service are totally different things. As, as it turns out, the shape of the airflow is not what you think it is because it comes out of the tool and there’s a lot of touching with by humans that are grinding on the leading edges and doing the things that have to be done to manufacture it.
So you don’t really have an ideal blade when it comes out of the
Nicholas Gaudern: No. You
Allen Hall: never do factory. No, you never do.
Nicholas Gaudern: And it’s not polished either.
Allen Hall: It’s not polished. Right. So
Nicholas Gaudern: when you go to the wind tunnel, you have a perfect profile. Yes. And it’s polished. And it works basically. It
Allen Hall: works great. It
Nicholas Gaudern: works great.
Allen Hall: The theoretical and the actual match.
Yeah. In reality they do. I think a lot of operators are not [00:15:00] connected with that reality of, Hey, that Blade should be producing this amount of revenue for me, and it’s not. And you hear that discussion all the time, particularly in the us. It should be producing this amount of power. I’m doing all the calculations.
We are not producing that power. Why? The blade length’s saying, but the power’s not coming out of it. Well take a look at your leading edge, take a look at your yard full of shape and realize you’re going to have to do something like dragon scales to get that E energy. Exactly. Revenue back.
Nicholas Gaudern: You need to do a full aerodynamic health check.
Basically you do. And see what are all the possibilities to improve my blade performance. And some of it is down to the fundamental shape of the blade,
Allen Hall: right?
Nicholas Gaudern: But some of it is down to blade condition. Yes. Blade Blade manufacturing quality.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: Uh, what kind of paint did they put on it? What day of the week was it made?
And all these things can be compensated for by VGs and you’ll get more revenue out at the end.
Allen Hall: You say? ’cause what happens? The, the, the scenario which is hard to visualize unless [00:16:00] you’re an A and emesis, is that there comes on the suction side, and it should be, in a ideal sense, rolling all the way to the back edge of the blade and coming off.
What happens is though, is that. When you get leading edge erosion is that the air flow actually separates. Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: It
Allen Hall: doesn’t
Nicholas Gaudern: always make it, yeah.
Allen Hall: Doesn’t make it to the back edge. Yeah. And so you can see that, especially if, if there’s dirt in the air, you can look on dirty blades, you can see where that separation line is, and a lot of operators have sky specs, images or Zeit view images, and then go back and look at the blades.
It takes two minutes to go. I have
Nicholas Gaudern: particularly down in the root, you’ll see it.
Allen Hall: Oh, in the root all the time. You, you
Nicholas Gaudern: see it really clearly that that separation line
Allen Hall: all the time, you really see that separation line. I’m seeing it more and more up towards the tip. Interesting. That’s where the lightning protection, yeah.
Systems sit.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: I see a lot of airflow that is not front to back on the suc. Well, you
Nicholas Gaudern: have a lot of three dimensional flow out there.
Allen Hall: You do towards the tip you do. And you realize how much power you’re losing there. And I think operators are just throwing away money.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, exactly.
Allen Hall: So you could [00:17:00] put dragon skills on it very efficiently, very quickly.
Get that revenue back into your system and it’s gonna stay. So even if leading edge erosion happens, the dragon scales are gonna compensate for it. It’s gonna get the airflow back where it should be.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. And the nice thing about this is, you know, we are building on well over a decade of upgrading turbines with aerodynamic components.
Oh yes. So this technology stands on the foundations of all of that work. In terms of the materials, the work instructions. Um, the fatigue calculate, you know, everything
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: Is built on thousands of installations that we’ve done. Yes. So, although it’s a new technology aerodynamically, it’s not really new in lots of sensors.
Allen Hall: Well, I look at it this way. If you turn on Formula One today and look at what the new generation of cars running around as you look at the, that front. Yes. Uh. Fin. Yeah. What do I call it? Air foil shape in the front. It’s super complicated.
Nicholas Gaudern: The sculpting of the [00:18:00] surfaces is really impressive,
Allen Hall: right? There’s a lot of thought going into those surfaces versus you turn on a Formula One race or go on YouTube and look at a Formula One race from the 1980s.
Yeah, it’s basically a piece.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: To provide down downforce. That’s it. The aerodynamics wasn’t really there, so we come a long way and a lot of that technology that happens in Formula One that happens in aviation eventually rolls down into. Yeah. Wind.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly
Allen Hall: right. So we, we, although we are not designing Formula One style blaze today, we’re taking that same knowledge and information and we’re applying that back in.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. We’re
Allen Hall: secondarily we,
Nicholas Gaudern: which is a right thing to do. We’re taking, taking inspiration from all these different aerodynamic fields and, you know, picking the best
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: From what’s available and just allowing ourselves to be a little bit more creative.
Allen Hall: Yes.
Nicholas Gaudern: And thinking outside the box a bit. There’s so many ways to do this as we’ve been saying.
And the import. And the
Allen Hall: data’s there.
Nicholas Gaudern: The data’s there. Exactly.
Allen Hall: The data’s there because you’ve been at the DTU Yep. Uh, wind Tunnel, which also has the acoustic piece to it. Yeah. So you have measured data from a reliable source. [00:19:00] You have field data, and you know, you put all these together, you’re gonna get that improvement back.
You’re gonna get your invest back, you’ll be more profitable.
Nicholas Gaudern: So Dragon Scale, focus on the AP. And that a EP will, uh, vary depending on the turbine.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Nicholas Gaudern: But we’ll assess the turbine and, and decide the best configuration, and then say silent edge. That’s the focus on the noise reduction. And we’re seeing up to five decibels OASP on the field.
It’s, which
Allen Hall: is crazy.
Nicholas Gaudern: It’s even more That’s really good that we were hoping for, you know?
Allen Hall: Yeah.
Nicholas Gaudern: So we, we know this is gonna be a, a great product.
Allen Hall: It looks very interesting.
Nicholas Gaudern: It does.
Allen Hall: It does it. It looks complicated and you think air airflow is complicated. It’s a compressible fluid. It’s not easy to, to just assume it’s gonna do what you think it is.
Yeah. You need to get into the tunnel. You need to replicate, you need to do all that work, which is expensive in time consuming. That’s why you go to someone like Power. Curver knows what they’re doing in the wind tunnel, knows how to measure those things and know when they’re getting nonsense. Out of their computer.
I
Nicholas Gaudern: mean, you, you’ll pay thousands and thousands of [00:20:00] Euros dollars a day to run a wind tunnel.
Allen Hall: You will.
Nicholas Gaudern: You’ve gotta Absolutely. You’ve gotta turn up with your plan in hand, that’s for sure.
Allen Hall: Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there’s a lot of assumptions because it, aerodynamics is hard. You know, you watch these blade spin around, you don’t realize how complicated these devices are.
They are complicated. Those air force shapes we are running today have been through a lot of history, a lot of history to get to where we are now. Now we’re just gonna take him into the next generation. This, we’re bringing ’em into the two thousands. In sort of a
Nicholas Gaudern: sense, what I’m hoping to see is, you know, with the OEMs, some OEMs do it already, but it’s important to think about these components when you’re designing new blades as well, you should because then that will allow you a much bigger design space to work in.
And
Allen Hall: a lot less customer complaints.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Where’s my power?
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. You know, these products, particularly the VGs, are really important tools for PowerCurve robustness. And some OEMs have known this for a long, long time.
Allen Hall: Yep.
Nicholas Gaudern: And you’ll see VGs on most of their blades. Mm-hmm. Others not so much. And that’s a design choice.
It’s a design philosophy. Um, and I think it may not [00:21:00] be the right one, you know?
Allen Hall: Well, I think the operators are asking to get the most out of their turbines. Yeah. Why shouldn’t they? They should be asking for that.
Nicholas Gaudern: I think for a, for a long time, and it’s not just in wind devices, like these have been considered, you know, band-aids fixes when you’ve, you’ve messed something up.
But I feel that’s a really negative way to think about products like this. They’re doing something that the kind of raw air fall shape on its own cannot achieve. Sure. Oh no. Right. You know, you might be able to mold some interesting stuff. Uh, as part of the blade, it’s very difficult to, to recreate the kind of aerodynamic effects that these products, uh, have.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So they shouldn’t be considered bandaids or fixes. No. They should be considered opportunities. And ways that you can maximize performance and unlock areas of the design space that previously weren’t accessible to.
Allen Hall: Sure. Every possible component that deals with fluid air is moving this way.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: Jet engines, you look at jet engine, how much more is going into those jet engines today in terms of this kind of [00:22:00] technology?
Yeah. All the race colors, doesn’t matter what class, where it is, is all looking at this anything to do with aircraft, it’s all over this.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah,
Allen Hall: exactly. Or, or doing this today. It’s just wind that’s behind
Nicholas Gaudern: wind. Wind is
Allen Hall: significantly
Nicholas Gaudern: behind. No,
Allen Hall: it’s not magic. It’s proven technology. It’s
Nicholas Gaudern: just good engineering.
Allen Hall: Well, it’s good engineering and if you call PowerCurve, they’re gonna help you under to to, to understand what you have today and what you could have tomorrow.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: And how this, these devices will improve your revenue stream.
Nicholas Gaudern: Exactly. You know, we will look at your blades, we’ll give you some good advice and maybe that advice will be that.
You know, a certain product isn’t right for your blade. Right. That’s fine.
Allen Hall: That’s an answer.
Nicholas Gaudern: That’s an answer.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it is.
Nicholas Gaudern: But let’s, let’s look at the blade. Let’s see what’s possible, and let’s just have a, have a proper conversation about it over some real data, some real
Allen Hall: facts. Right. I think that’s the key, and a lot of operators are afraid to talk about aerodynamics is it’s, it’s a difficult area to, to start the conversation on, right?
Yeah. But I think at the end of the day, when I work with PowerCurve, and I’ve worked with you guys for a [00:23:00] number of years, the answers I get back are intelligent and they’re not. Super complicated. This is what you’re gonna see. This is the improvement. And then we can, this is how we’re going to show you can get that improvement.
It’s not magic,
Nicholas Gaudern: no
Allen Hall: power crews backing up with data, which I think is the key, right? Because you’re the, you do hear a lot of noise in this industry about magical products that’ll do all these things. Particularly aerodynamic ones. Yes. PowerCurves, the ones really bringing the data.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And we have, we have the track record now.
We have like we do 17, 1800 turbines. Should be over 2000 very soon with our products on. Yeah. So we have a lot, we have a lot of data to draw on to know that we’re doing a good thing.
Allen Hall: Well, and speaking of that, because one of the questions that always pops up is, well, we have put these new VGs or trailing edges on, are they gonna stay on?
How durable are they?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And that’s a, that’s a really important question to ask was it doesn’t matter how fancy aerodynamic product is, if it falls off the blade.
Allen Hall: Right.
Nicholas Gaudern: So, you know, we’ve spent a lot of, uh, time and effort looking at how we should be fixing these products on. [00:24:00] So we use a, uh, a wet adhesive.
We specify a plexus adhesive to put our products in place. Really good adhesive. It’s a great adhesive and it means that they are not going anywhere. Basically. It’s a very, uh, forgiving adhesive. Uh, and it’s a very high spec. So we, we don’t use, uh, sided tape. We might have some of our products for some initial tack to help, you know, get the clear, the clear outta the line exactly.
But in terms of the bond itself, that is with a, a proper structural adhesive. So one thing that we are really proud of is that we haven’t got any, uh, reported failures of our panels over all the installations we’ve made. And that’s a combination of materials, but also geometry, work, instructions, adhesive.
It’s, it’s the full package. So it’s something that, um, yes, say we’re very proud of. And I think it’s, it’s a big part of what we do at PowerCurve, making sure the product is the right shape. Sure. But also making sure it stays on the blade.
Allen Hall: Well, you see it [00:25:00] from OEMs who have all kinds of aerodynamic treatments on there, and they’ll double set a tape to the blade, and then those parts are on the ground.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. And double-sided tape. You can get some really nice spec tape. Sure.
Allen Hall: You,
Nicholas Gaudern: yeah. But it’s not
a
Allen Hall: 20 year device.
Nicholas Gaudern: No. And the installation tolerance required on surface prep is really, really high. So it’s possible. It’s just harder. I think it’s riskier,
Allen Hall: it’s risky.
Nicholas Gaudern: So, you know, I think for us, the adhesive is, is the way to go.
And, and it’s been proven out by the, by the track record.
Allen Hall: And some of the things we’ve seen over in Australia is when trailing ulcerations have come off, it’s been a safety concern. So now you got
Nicholas Gaudern: absolutely
Allen Hall: government officials involved in safety because parts are coming up. Turbine.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah.
Allen Hall: You
Nicholas Gaudern: can’t have these components flying, flying through the air.
That’s, that’s not safe.
Allen Hall: That’s because PowerCurve has done the homework.
Nicholas Gaudern: Yes.
Allen Hall: And has the track record. That’s why you wanna choose PowerCurve. So how do people get a hold of PowerCurve? How do they get a hold of you, Nicholas, to start the process?
Nicholas Gaudern: So, um, you’re welcome to reach out to us in lots of different ways.
We’re on LinkedIn. Uh, we have our website, [00:26:00] PowerCurve, dk, um, so yeah, LinkedIn websites. There’ll probably some links on this podcast as well to get in touch. But, um, yeah, whatever way works best for you.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s gonna be a busy season. So if you’re interested in doing anything with PowerCurve this year, you need to get on the website, get ahold of Nicholas.
And get started, uh, because now’s the time to maximize your revenue.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks a lot and great to talk to you,
Allen Hall: Nicholas. Thanks so much for being back on the podcast.
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