Published

2 years ago

April 3, 2024

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

T-Omega’s Solution to Simplify Offshore Wind Turbine Design

Rosemary interviews Jim Papadopoulos, the CEO and co-founder of T-Omega Wind, about their unique floating offshore wind turbine design. Resembling a ferris wheel, the lightweight T-Omega turbine aims to overcome challenges like high costs and difficult maintenance faced by traditional offshore wind farms. Learn about the innovative features of this design and the progress made so far, including the installation of a prototype off the coast of Massachusetts. Visit https://t-omegawind.com/

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!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
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Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Rosemary Barnes: Welcome to a special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Rosie Barnes, and I have with me today Jim Papadopoulos, who is the co founder, chief engineer, and CEO at T Omega Wind. Thanks for joining us, Jim. Pleasure to be here. So T Omega Wind is a unique floating offshore wind turbine.

It’s designed to take advantage of being on the water rather than trying to force an onshore design to work on the water. It’s designed to be lightweight in the expectation that will enable improvements in cost and manufacturability. We’ve actually spoken about Tiermaker on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast before, it was episode 132.

It most resembles a ferris wheel, I would say, if I was trying to find some, yeah, analogy. So it’s got a four legged pyramid frame that supports a rotor in between the two halves. So it’s got, frame on the upwind side and the downwind side of the rotor. Since we spoke about them on the podcast, Hairmaker’s made some progress.

They’ve installed a 1 16th scale prototype off the coast of Massachusetts. And I’m going to ask him how that went a little later on in the podcast. But first, Jim, let’s start at the start and find out your origin story. What motivated you to create a new floating offshore design?

Jim Papadopolous: Well, I have to say, I didn’t set out to say there’s got to be a new one.

And here it is I was entranced by offshore wind. And shocked by the costs. This is first bottom fixed and then floating only slowly. I came to realize that floating is, was really not a product yet, that there are just trials and ideas. But looking at offshore wind, we could see a bunch of things very heavy floating foundations, great difficulty of repair, infrastructure and supply chain needs especially as the capacities kept getting bigger and bigger in a way, because the cost of electricity was high.

So if you make it even bigger than the cost per turbine of the maintenance And the installation doesn’t go up too much. So you actually get more energy for, a lot more energy for a little bit more costs. So there’s discussion of 15 megawatts and 20 megawatts and 25 megawatts. All of which means new generations of turbine technology and it need deeper ports and more metal.

So we looked at all the, all these things and thought, hang on, there’s got to be something better and noodled around until we convinced ourselves that’s something which was shallow draft. And therefore following the water elevation. So wave following and therefore having a lot of motion, which is not tolerant, tolerated by the current turbines.

But if you redesign the turbine, you can get by with this very light, shallow draft platform. And as you’re in the water, you can think about wind yawing to remove a bunch of mechanism. So it’s like that we both, we were appalled by the big costs. We saw something easy to do, and then as we fleshed it out lots of pieces fell into place as a nice system.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, right. I’m not sure that I would look at any aspect of designing a totally new I don’t know, in some ways revolutionary design of a floating offshore wind turbine. Easy wouldn’t be a word that I would. associate with that, but you must have a very good team working on it if if that’s an easy challenge.

Jim Papadopolous: Well, we’re naive. We don’t know what we don’t know. So, that’s part of it.

Rosemary Barnes: I think that’s the best way to go into it. Otherwise that, people who aren’t naive tend to. Stick with the status quo because they know it works and they know how many problems you get when you deviate slightly from that.

So, okay. So, I mean, you mentioned some challenges with existing, I mean, not just floating offshore wind, but all offshore wind has most of those challenges, right? I mean, it’s something we talk about a lot on the podcast is in the U S at least the big problems with port infrastructure and the right kind of ship.

And, all those sort of, I don’t know, you might say boring details. If you’re someone like me, that’s interested in turbine technology, you wouldn’t think that you had to worry so much about those kinds of logistics and I guess supply chain is another one. So yeah, are there any more disadvantages that you were hoping to overcome?

Jim Papadopolous: The current design usually needs big cranes. That’s the way people can imagine assembling them. And we would like to say, well, is there a way to do it without a crane? And the current designs are not suited to deep water. And I believe it’s just the cost of the catenary chains at greater depth.

You have three or four whacking great chains at great length, that really add a lot of cost to the mooring. We’re trying to work with synthetics and anticipate being able to go to 2, 000 meters depth. Then there’s the kind of the size of market, the current design with with I don’t know how to put it, with big turbines and with tough maintenance challenges end up with large wind farms.

And so there are going to be markets where you really would only need 50 megawatts, not 500 megawatts. So we can imagine having a few turbines or having just one and quite a bit smaller turbine. So, if you think about scaling down, there are a lot of, there are going to be a lot of places that have water.

And have wind and don’t, can’t work with a one gigawatt wind farm. And we think we could serve those as well as the gigawatt style utility wind farm in shallow or deep water. Yeah,

right. That’s that sounds like a good strategy and I’m definitely going to be interested to hear your solutions for those problems, but I think.

First, we better go back and have you explain what is the T Omega design and what are the, relevant aspects of it that aren’t immediately obvious when, think of it like a Ferris wheel, like I described it.

To talk about one specific size, a 10 megawatt capacity where the hub height for a conventional offshore would be 120 meters.

We have that hub at 120 meters. We have the conventional blades. And then we have a base, which is about 100 meters square, formed of four conical and rather shallow floats. The floats penetrate down into the water five or six meters. So those four conical floats support four legs that all point up close to the same point.

They’re the two ends of the axle, the short axle. And then there has to be bracing between the floats so the legs don’t splay apart. And then that’s a pyramid structure with tremendous structural integrity. Because there are only triangles in the structure, so to speak, four faces that are triangles and then a triangulated base.

And this very rigid and very light structure, And UNLITE is a stand in for saving cost, less material, and it’s a stand in for easier assembly and easier towing. That whole system is going to be moored by a single line, something from a point, something like a trailer hitch on a land trailer. So there’s going to be a point, off, off in front of the turbine, another 50 meters or so, a single point.

And a mooring line will come slanting up from the ocean floor, maybe 45 degrees or 50 degrees. to that point, and the imagined projection of, continuation of that line would go right up to the hub. So that’s a line that points from the ocean floor to the hub. With this arrangement, the tremendous wind thrust on the rotor doesn’t tip the system backwards, but just presses it a little deeper in the water.

And in fact, we will have a separated, but kind of in line continuation of that line as a tensile element between that pitch point. And the hub. So if you stand back, it looks like a single line from the ocean floor up to the hub. Now, when you have an angle like that, 45 or 50 degrees, then when the wind changes direction, you swing in a large circle, depending on how long the line was, which is from how deep the ocean is, and to keep that watch circle to a limited size.

In deep water, we would actually have three anchors and three lines coming up to a point, maybe you. 50 meters below the water surface and that single point below the water surface, a small buoy, will carry the line which otherwise would Be to the ocean floor. So a single line from that buoy and then a rather small circle that it rotates around and the turbine being supported by a single line, like a ship at anchor is meant to be blown downwind.

So it always faces the wind and festooned or kind of looped onto that single line is an export cable. And because the thing may change direction from week to week, we have to think about having a rotary union, an electrical union, so that it could take several swings around, and either, either we let the line wind up three or four times and come back and unwind it, or we have to have a slip ring.

And let’s see what else is going on. We’ve got the shallow floats.

The rest, what you could, from what you could see, there would be the three blades rotating around the rather short axle. And a large direct drive generator is the thing everyone understands, though, in a fantasy of mine, in some future day, we would have a belt drive down to a smaller generator down.

near the water. And one especially important thing to point out is that there is almost no structural mass below the waterline. Whereas conventional floating turbines are like icebergs with more than 80 percent of their weight underwater.

Rosemary Barnes: Okay. And the generator is that special design for It doesn’t look, it’s not that similar to existing wind turbines.

So am I right in assuming that’s a design that you have or will have to come up with on your own?

Jim Papadopolous: Well, the generator, we’re not generator specialists and there are 10 megawatt and 15 megawatt direct drive generators. And we’d essentially be using one of those. Maybe with a slightly different, bigger bore because we have a large diameter axle, but a standard generator, basically.

Rosemary Barnes: It’s got a single connection point. So you’re imagining that this is going to be quite simple to swap them out. Can you explain how you would expect your maintenance to look? And you also, you mentioned that. On your website, at least you mentioned that it won’t need large cranes. Can you also explain how that is?

Like, what is the difference to regular floating offshore wind or yeah, or any kind of, what’s the difference to regular offshore wind and why you wouldn’t need a crane?

Jim Papadopolous: Maintenance is something like a 15 or 20 percent of the cost of electricity of floating wind turbine. So it’s an expense, an expensive proposition.

And we don’t believe it’s safe or a good idea to put people on a turbine that’s bobbing in the waves while the ship is bobbing in the waves. And we hate the idea of having a big crane and needing calm weather to hoist some big piece. So, our notion for maintenance is that since there’s a single point of contact, we like the idea that you can bring a fresh turbine out, we would plan to have one or two extra turbines, they’re not very expensive.

So, bring a fresh one out. When one needs maintenance and swap the rope across, swap the mooring line across and swap the array cable across, which we think if we develop the right technology could be a one hour swap. It’s bringing the towing points of the two turbines close together and swapping the rope and swapping the electric line, taking away the turbine wanting maintenance.

And then once. That’s a shore and we’re aiming to engineer this for easy and kind of rapid towing in almost every weather. Once that leaves, the good turbine is working, so there’s no downtime effectively. And the one we get ashore, of course, you could have a crane. This is an economic question. Do you use the time savings of a crane to justify the cost of a crane?

And that’s fine, but our design is so rigid that it’s ought to be able to be tipped on its side so that the blades are near the ground and that tipping is a, should be a two hour winching operation or something. So we have a, an elaborated scheme, both for assembly and then for disassembly and maintenance that assure it can be tipped.

Thank you. You can reach the bits you need, replace the parts you need, replace anything, take fresh parts from stores and refurbish the old parts later and tip it back up and tow it back into the water.

Yeah, even for fixed bottom offshore wind, maintenance is the huge thing. I mean, the industry itself is still young, so, we haven’t really had a lot of time to see what the.

The true reality of maintenance is going to be not just for the average, but also for the, like, worst five or 10 percent of wind turbines, that makes a difference if you’re going to have long downtimes. And if you’ve got to get personnel out to site every day in a boat or a helicopter, then you can just imagine how much that adds costs if you’ve got your turbine shut down the whole time.

So I can a hundred percent get on board with the concept that you have for maintenance of. Yeah, being able to bring it to shore so that you bring the turbine to the people and yeah, potentially even having a set of spares there so that you can keep things going with the spare turbine while you work on the new one.

I guess that’s going to depend on if if you’ve got space at port to store that and you’ve got the extra money to keep it there, but yeah, like some of the. The floating offshore wind farms now are looking at six months or so of downtime while they fix the issues that they’ve got. So, like you can afford a spare turbine if you’re, if that’s the alternative.

The

parameters that will go into estimating downtime include things like the towing speed, the swapping speed, and then maybe the disassembly time at port and we’re, and we’re really looking for order of magnitude improvements compared to what any what’s predicted for a semi sub.

Rosemary Barnes: Okay. So that all sounds great. Definitely. Very good on, on paper, but on paper is not what we need. We need, actual turbines out in the ocean generating actual electricity. So can you tell me a bit about how far you are along on that process?

Jim Papadopolous: There are a lot of things we don’t know. And for example, our, there’s a, the certification process as we understand it through DNV would involve normally.

Giving everyone a good feeling that you could manage a 25 year fatigue life or something. There’s a lot of calculations involved in that. And we’re upending that thought and saying, well, what if it’s only a three year fatigue life? Of course, I’m only saying that as an unlikely extreme case.

The main idea is that instead of aiming to last a really long time, we expect to replace components as needed year after year, like car parts. So we that’s kind of the beauty of many trips ashore and easy going ashore. And I do, I hope the structure has a lot of air galleries such that with a little bit of air pressure, you can tell if there’s a crack growing somewhere because it leaks.

And so, we’re thinking, well, let’s design for a three or four year life. And so the DNV folks say, hang on, we have to do a study to know what kind of validation we’re going to need. So, right at the beginning, we’re stuck on now knowing exactly what to do. We don’t know exactly what to do.

So we’ve, the very, the most unusual aspect of our thing is the geometry and the mooring and the shallow draft. So we’ve been looking at the hydrodynamics, which means, you get something more like that and then big waves come along and does it tip over? Does it leap out of the water? Does it swing crazily?

What happens? And so some of our study was in wave tanks. We went to Glasgow and we had one at the University of Rhode Island. Look, looking at the largest waves they could supply, which scaled would be, it would be like 30 meter waves in 120 meter, tower hub height. And we saw, kind of beautiful behavior.

And then we’ve been using this program called Open Fast, which is developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab. And it’s considered one of the better programs, and it has all kinds of hydrodynamics and wind forces and mooring forces. And so we’ve kind of tuned, they adjusted the software to work for us, the added features.

And then we’ve been exercising the software and as you must, you look and see it, look at the results and hope that nobody put a minus sign in the wrong place. And we, it all looks reasonable and therefore, yes, with the open fast work coming at it from several angles, very nice behavior in large waves.

And we’ve just started the work of with a wind thrust. Due to energy production and also in a storm case with a wind drag, not a rotor thrust so much so that kind of numerical work which we, it looks similar to the wave tank work. So, we’re, we’re always looking and trying to decide, do we trust it?

And how far can we trust it? And what does it mean for the design? And then we want to change the design. So, in this and OpenFAST work. We saw, we had a look at something with a 70 meter base, and my understanding of the hydrodynamics is it might work better if it was a 100 meter base, so we swapped the model.

And indeed, there was much less hub acceleration, and there was less bending moment in the towers, and bending moment in the braces. And there were lower slamming forces on the floats with this 100 meter base, so that was an inspired guess that seems to be okay, and now we’ve looked at the weight and so forth, and we’ve been trying to we’ve been trying to suit the design to to tolerate 50 year storms in the North Atlantic.

Such that, what’s the biggest bending moment you expect in a three hours, fifty, three hour, fifty year storm of this or that peak period, wave period, and significant wave height. There’s an environmental contour we’re using. And so, yeah, it’s way better than just guessing, but it’s not proof.

And so, this this OpenFAST work has to continue, and the structural design has to be what’s the word fleshed out to suit those loads, at least for ultimate states, and we have to then decide What does it mean for fatigue and what kind of life can we really work with? And I’m saying for some parts, maybe as little as three or six years.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I’m assuming that would be an initial lifetime as you learn more about it, then you would be able to improve the components that are wearing out in three to five years. Right. Cause you could, because the the cost of the turbine is so small compared to the total cost of the wind farm.

Is that why it doesn’t matter? Well,

Jim Papadopolous: I, in my costing, I figured, I just imagined replacing every part of the structure over 10 years, and that was a good cost. So it’s just that if the maintenance is simple and cheap, then have more of it. That’s kind of, kind of my simple minded thinking.

But so all, the design has to be elaborated and studied with greater fidelity, I guess, is the point. And we have to, we found a problem with wind alignment, because a turbine, an operating turbine does not work like a ship at anchor. There’s something we didn’t know. So it’s not that the thrust force on the rotor is downwind, the thrust force is normal to the rotor.

So it doesn’t really self center when it gets off axis. And so the NREL put in a model of individual pitch control, which they have in their controller that they built for us. And that can, if the thing has swung away from alignment with the wind, which it would at certain wind speeds, it can be returned by adjusting the pitch, once per revolution, like a helicopter rotor, to get the center of pressure off one side.

So, so, so there’s the, so there’s the structural work. There’s the kind of the energy harvesting work, there’s the stability when energy harvesting, we have to look very much at the towing, at the swapping, at the at the erecting. So there are a lot of questions, but probably I would say that the open fast work and the wave tank work should give people confidence that it’s not, it doesn’t look like a disaster straight off so that we should get funding to work on something bigger and higher fidelity.

Rosemary Barnes: A couple of good things that I can see in your development approach is one, going and test testing out interesting things that you’ve seen in the simulation and yeah, making sure that they broadly make sense and to using the open fast software, which is developed for wind turbines and has been validated against, no wind turbine exactly like yours, but at least for wind energy.

So I think that puts you definitely a few steps ahead of where you would be if you had done what seems to be the typical thing of just, yeah, grabbing a Ansys license and and having a crack at a model, which you definitely do. And you can definitely get nice colorful graphs that will probably get you investor dollars, but you’re also in for a rude shock when you build something.

Jim Papadopolous: We’ve been very lucky to work with the NREL folks because they’ve. They’ve sort of attacked all kinds of problems in all kinds of directions, and they aren’t in the business of putting out a specialist thing that gives one clear, beautiful answer, and then you’re done. They’ve worked with, all the gusty winds and all the spread spectrum sea states and this, that, and the other, so We have we’ve, one thing we’ve done is we’re using known naval architecture spectral techniques to estimate the worst case, either bending moment or acceleration or float lift in a given sea state.

And we trust that these are done. This is a good approach. And so we’re using the RAOs. That NREL can give us for all kinds of forces and moments and so forth. And so we like that. We’re going to back that up with the kind of the nonlinear simulation in the same C state to see that it does more or less match.

And then we have, we’re trying, we want to compare the wave tank results to the NREL model as if placed in the wave tank. We haven’t done that yet, but we want to make sure damping looks about right so that a lot of things we want to do to make it right and to do the kind of robust. And, highly varied loading that was called for.

So that’s enough for now on that.

Rosemary Barnes: So I am really keen to hear about how the different phases of development have gone and how long you’ve spent on it. Like how, when did you first start working on this and what kind of a team did you assemble? What backgrounds do you have people from oil and gas industry?

From academia, from the wind industry, how did that start out?

Jim Papadopolous: So it was, it started off with just another professor and myself. I was a lecturer and he was a proper professor at Northeastern University in Boston. He’s been doing work on wind turbine, offshore wind turbine towers, bottom fixed, doing the research and the loadings and so forth in the environmental conditions.

And when I When we made friends and I started telling him my ideas about floating, he liked them. And so we, I think we got a couple of small grants, just working on an idea. Then we formed a company, I think around 2020 incorporated and. Invited people in, we got three very talented people. One of them was a serial entrepreneur and he had a small wind turbine company.

He’d been in offshore oil work for a while. He’d been, he’s a patent attorney. He’s a, an MBA, he’s a tugboat operator. He’s a pilot. He’s a, he’s sort of done everything. Yeah. He’s a very versatile guy. And we need, we needed good IP advice in the company. And then we hired a woman. She had been she had started her career at Equinor, the Norwegian woman.

And she ended up, she got educated in the States and got a business degree and she ended up at Duke. She was at Exxon for a while and then at Duke Energy in the U S for 20 years. And, kind of a fairly senior executive who wanted to get into something clean, as opposed to Duke’s world of coal and oil.

And then we have Dave Forbes, who was a venture capital, he was in politics for a while, helping various presidential and govern, gubernatorial campaigns. And then he was at a venture capital firm, maybe in Hong Kong or somewhere. And so he’s. He’s our outward face to try to get investment because he knows it from the inside.

And so all those people came, we formed the company in 2020 and those people came on at sort of half year intervals and now it’s just turned 2024.

Rosemary Barnes: And they brought with them funding that enabled you to build this 1 16th scale. No. How did you come by the funding to buy your, to, yeah, to build your 1 16th scale prototype?

What, how did that come to be?

Jim Papadopolous: So what happened is we’ve had a few, we’ve been in a couple of accelerators where you get 20 or 50, 000 or 100, 000. And then we got a, an STTR grant from the National Science Foundation that’s You may have heard of it as an SBIR grant. That was probably 250, 000 and let us get the NREL work done.

And then the state gave us a matching, a 50 percent matching grant, 120, 000, and that let us design, build and launch this prototype.

Rosemary Barnes: And so it was recently that you put that prototype in the water and then I saw news reports that it was removed early. Can you tell me a bit about how that experience was getting it in there and yeah, what its short life in the water was like and what’s next for the company?

Jim Papadopolous: Well, we were hoping for a two month trial. That was what the permit is for. And we wanted to have. The wind thrust and the torque of a low, of a, we didn’t have a generator, but we have a pump, so it was going to make power, and we were going to then get the sort of the hydrodynamics with the thrust force, in the given sea states, we wanted to see the orientation to the wind, we wanted to see the RPM, the rotor went, we wanted to see all kinds of things like that, but it turned out that the data acquisition wasn’t working, and also that there was no drag torque on the rotor.

This is something was installed backwards. In the installation that day. So it needed to be tweaked and that never happened. After some internal debate, it was pulled out of the water and taken to bits.

Rosemary Barnes: All right. So it’s there on, on ice until you’re able to, in storage waiting for another. For repair and waiting for it to stay back on the water.

Jim Papadopolous: The repair is trivial. It’s waiting for the group decision to put it back in.

Rosemary Barnes: I will be interested to see how that goes because it’s a really common story where, you know, a great idea, a great product, it, there’s always some frustrating mundane or, interpersonal problems that end up, you causing big issues for our product and.

It’s yeah, it’s not just sad for the individuals involved. It’s sad for everybody that wants to see great renewable energy technologies. So, yeah, I will be definitely rooting for you and following closely. Thank you so much for talking to us about Tia Omega and yeah, I’m wishing you the best of luck for the future.

Thank you, Rosemary. Thanks for listening and please give us a five star rating on your podcast platform and subscribe in the show notes below to the Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter. I’ll see you in the next one.

T-Omega’s Solution to Simplify Offshore Wind Turbine Design

Renewable Energy

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Published

6 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

This exclusive article originally appeared in PES Wind 4 – 2025 with the title, Operations take center stage in wind’s next chapter. It was written by Allen Hall and other members of the WeatherGuard Lightning Tech team.

As aging fleets, shrinking margins, and new policies reshape the wind sector, wind energy operations are in the spotlight. The industry’s next chapter will be defined not by capacity growth, but by operational excellence, where integrated, predictive maintenance turns data into decisions and reliability into profit.

Wind farm operations are undergoing a fundamental transformation. After hosting hundreds of conversations on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, I’ve witnessed a clear pattern: the most successful operators are abandoning reactive maintenance in favor of integrated, predictive strategies. This shift isn’t just about adopting new technologies; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we manage aging assets in an era of tightening margins and expanding responsibilities.

The evidence was overwhelming at this year’s SkySpecs Customer Forum, where representatives from over 75% of US installed wind capacity gathered to share experiences and strategies. The consensus was clear: those who integrate monitoring, inspection, and repair into a cohesive operational strategy are achieving dramatic improvements in reliability and profitability.

Takeaway: These options have been available to wind energy operations for years; now, adoption is critical.

Why traditional approaches to wind farm operations are failing

Today’s wind operators face an unprecedented convergence of challenges. Fleets installed during the 2010-2015 boom are aging in unexpected ways, revealing design vulnerabilities no one anticipated. Meanwhile, the support infrastructure is crumbling; spare parts have become scarce, OEM support is limited, and insurance companies are tightening coverage just when operators need them most.

The situation is particularly acute following recent policy changes. The One Big Beautiful Bill in the United States has fundamentally altered the economic landscape. PTC farming is no longer viable; turbines must run longer and more reliably than ever before. Engineering teams, already stretched thin, are being asked to manage not just wind assets but solar and battery storage as well. The old playbook simply doesn’t work anymore.

Consider the scope of just one challenge: polyester blade failures. During our podcast conversation with Edo Kuipers of We4Ce, we learned that an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 blades worldwide are experiencing root bushing issues. ‘After a while, blades are simply flying off,’ Kuipers explained. The financial impact of a single blade failure can exceed €300,000 when you factor in replacement costs, lost production, and crane mobilization. Yet innovative repair solutions, like the one developed by We4Ce and CNC Onsite, can address the same problem for €40,000 if caught early. This pattern repeats across every major component. Gearbox failures that once required complete replacement can now be predicted months in advance. Lightning damage that previously caused catastrophic failures can be prevented with inexpensive upgrades and real-time monitoring. All these solutions are based on the principle that predicted maintenance is better than an expensive surprise.

Seeing problems before they happeny, and potential risks

The transformation begins with visibility. Modern monitoring systems reveal problems that traditional methods miss entirely. Eric van Genuchten of Sensing360 shared an eye-opening statistic on our podcast: ‘In planetary gearbox failures, they get 90%, so there’s still 10% of failures they cannot detect.’ That missing 10% represents the catastrophic failures that destroy budgets and production targets. Advanced monitoring technologies are filling these gaps. Sensing360’s fiber optic sensors, for example, detect minute deformations in steel components, revealing load imbalances and fatigue progression invisible to traditional monitoring. ‘We integrate our sensors in steel and make rotating equipment smarter,’ van Genuchten explained.

Other companies are deploying acoustic systems to identify blade delamination, oil analysis for gearbox health, and electrical signature analysis for generator issues. Each technology adds a piece to the puzzle, but the real value comes from integration. The impact of load monitoring alone can be transformative.

As van Genuchten explained, ‘Twenty percent more loading on a gearbox or on a bearing is half of your life. The other way around, twenty percent less loading is double your life.’ With proper monitoring, operators can optimize load distribution across their fleet, extending component life while maximizing production.

But monitoring without action is just expensive data collection. The most successful operators are those who’ve learned to translate sensor data into operational decisions. This requires not just technology but organizational change, breaking down silos between monitoring, maintenance, and management teams.

In Wind Energy Operations, Early intervention makes the million-dollar difference

The economics of early intervention are compelling across every component type. The blade root bushing example from We4Ce illustrates this perfectly. With their solution, early detection means replacing just 24-30 bushings in about 24 hours of drilling work. Wait, and you’re looking at 60+ bushings and 60 hours of work. Early detection doesn’t just prevent catastrophic failure; it makes repairs faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

This principle extends throughout the turbine. Early-stage bearing damage can be addressed through targeted lubrication or minor adjustments. Incipient electrical issues can be resolved with cleaning or connection tightening. Small blade surface cracks can be repaired in a few hours before they propagate into structural damage requiring weeks of work.

Leading operators are implementing tiered response protocols based on monitoring data. Critical issues trigger immediate intervention. Developing problems are scheduled for the next maintenance window. Minor issues are monitored and addressed during routine service. This systematic approach reduces both emergency repairs and unnecessary maintenance, optimizing resource allocation across the fleet.

Turning information into action

While monitoring generates data, platforms like SkySpecs’ Horizon transform that data into operational intelligence. Josh Goryl, SkySpecs’ Chief Revenue Officer, explained their evolution at the recent Customer Forum: ‘I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place.

The game-changer is integration across data types. The company is working to combine performance data with CMS data to provide valuable insights into turbine health. This approach has been informed by operators across the world, who’ve discovered that integrated platforms deliver insights that siloed data can’t.

The platform approach also addresses the reality of shrinking engineering teams managing expanding portfolios. As Goryl noted, many wind engineers are now responsible for solar and battery storage assets as well. One platform managing multiple technologies through a unified interface becomes essential for operational efficiency.

The Integration Imperative for Wind Farm Operations

The most successful operators aren’t just adopting individual technologies; they’re integrating monitoring, inspection, and repair into a seamless operational system. This integration operates at multiple levels.

At the technical level, data from various monitoring systems feeds into unified platforms that provide comprehensive asset visibility. These platforms don’t just display data; they analyze patterns, predict failures, and generate work orders.

At the organizational level, integration means breaking down barriers between departments. This cross-functional collaboration transforms O&M from a cost center into a value driver. Building your improvement roadmap For operators ready to enhance their O&M approach, the path forward involves several key steps:

Assessing the Current State of your Wind Energy Operations

Document your maintenance costs, failure rates, and downtime patterns. Identify which problems consume the most resources and which assets are most critical to your wind farm operations.

Start with targeted pilots Rather than attempting wholesale transformation, begin with focused initiatives targeting your biggest pain points. Whether it’s blade monitoring, gearbox sensors, or repair innovations, starting with your largest issue will help you see the biggest benefit.

• Invest in integration, not just technology: the most sophisticated monitoring system is worthless if its data isn’t acted upon. Ensure your organization has the processes and culture to transform data into decisions – this is the first step to profitability in your wind farm operations.

Build partnerships, not just contracts: look for technology providers and service companies willing to share knowledge, not just deliver services. The goal is building capability, not dependency.

• Measure and iterate: track the impact of each initiative on your key performance indicators. Use lessons learned to refine your approach and guide future investments.

The competitive advantage

The wind industry has reached an inflection point. With increasingly large and complex turbines, monitoring needs to adapt with it. The era of flying blind is over.

In an industry where margins continue to compress and competition intensifies, operational excellence has become a key differentiator. Those who master the integration of monitoring, inspection, and repair will thrive. Those who cling to reactive maintenance face escalating costs and declining competitiveness.

The technology exists. The business case is proven. The early adopters are already reaping the benefits. The question isn’t whether to transform your O&M approach, but how quickly you can adapt to this new reality. In the race to operational excellence, the winners will be those who act decisively to embrace the efficiency revolution reshaping wind operations.

Unless otherwise noted, images here are from We4C Rotorblade Specialist.

Wind Industry Operations: In Wind's Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Contact us for help understanding your lightning damage, future risks, and how to get more uptime from your equipment.

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Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage

Renewable Energy

BladeBUG Tackles Serial Blade Defects with Robotics

Published

9 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

BladeBUG Tackles Serial Blade Defects with Robotics

Chris Cieslak, CEO of BladeBug, joins the show to discuss how their walking robot is making ultrasonic blade inspections faster and more accessible. They cover new horizontal scanning capabilities for lay down yards, blade root inspections for bushing defects, and plans to expand into North America in 2026.

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: Chris, welcome back to the show.

Chris Cieslak: It’s great to be back. Thank you very much for having me on again.

Allen Hall: It’s great to see you in person, and a lot has been happening at Blade Bugs since the last time I saw Blade Bug in person. Yeah, the robot. It looks a lot different and it has really new capabilities.

Chris Cieslak: So we’ve continued to develop our ultrasonic, non-destructive testing capabilities of the blade bug robot.

Um, but what we’ve now added to its capabilities is to do horizontal blade scans as well. So we’re able to do blades that are in lay down yards or blades that have come down for inspections as well as up tower. So we can do up tower, down tower inspections. We’re trying to capture. I guess the opportunity to inspect blades after transportation when they get delivered to site, to look [00:01:00] for any transport damage or anything that might have been missed in the factory inspections.

And then we can do subsequent installation inspections as well to make sure there’s no mishandling damage on those blades. So yeah, we’ve been just refining what we can do with the NDT side of things and improving its capabilities

Joel Saxum: was that need driven from like market response and people say, Hey, we need, we need.

We like the blade blood product. We like what you’re doing, but we need it here. Or do you guys just say like, Hey, this is the next, this is the next thing we can do. Why not?

Chris Cieslak: It was very much market response. We had a lot of inquiries this year from, um, OEMs, blade manufacturers across the board with issues within their blades that need to be inspected on the ground, up the tap, any which way they can.

There there was no, um, rhyme or reason, which was better, but the fact that he wanted to improve the ability of it horizontally has led the. Sort of modifications that you’ve seen and now we’re doing like down tower, right? Blade scans. Yeah. A really fast breed. So

Joel Saxum: I think the, the important thing there is too is that because of the way the robot is built [00:02:00] now, when you see NDT in a factory, it’s this robot rolls along this perfectly flat concrete floor and it does this and it does that.

But the way the robot is built, if a blade is sitting in a chair trailing edge up, or if it’s flap wise, any which way the robot can adapt to, right? And the idea is. We, we looked at it today and kind of the new cage and the new things you have around it with all the different encoders and for the heads and everything is you can collect data however is needed.

If it’s rasterized, if there’s a vector, if there’s a line, if we go down a bond line, if we need to scan a two foot wide path down the middle of the top of the spa cap, we can do all those different things and all kinds of orientations. That’s a fantastic capability.

Chris Cieslak: Yeah, absolutely. And it, that’s again for the market needs.

So we are able to scan maybe a meter wide in one sort of cord wise. Pass of that probe whilst walking in the span-wise direction. So we’re able to do that raster scan at various spacing. So if you’ve got a defect that you wanna find that maximum 20 mil, we’ll just have a 20 mil step [00:03:00] size between each scan.

If you’ve got a bigger tolerance, we can have 50 mil, a hundred mil it, it’s so tuneable and it removes any of the variability that you get from a human to human operator doing that scanning. And this is all about. Repeatable, consistent high quality data that you can then use to make real informed decisions about the state of those blades and act upon it.

So this is not about, um, an alternative to humans. It’s just a better, it’s just an evolution of how humans do it. We can just do it really quick and it’s probably, we, we say it’s like six times faster than a human, but actually we’re 10 times faster. We don’t need to do any of the mapping out of the blade, but it’s all encoded all that data.

We know where the robot is as we walk. That’s all captured. And then you end up with really. Consistent data. It doesn’t matter who’s operating a robot, the robot will have those settings preset and you just walk down the blade, get that data, and then our subject matter experts, they’re offline, you know, they are in their offices, warm, cozy offices, reviewing data from multiple sources of robots.

And it’s about, you know, improving that [00:04:00] efficiency of getting that report out to the customer and letting ’em know what’s wrong with their blades, actually,

Allen Hall: because that’s always been the drawback of, with NDT. Is that I think the engineers have always wanted to go do it. There’s been crush core transportation damage, which is sometimes hard to see.

You can maybe see a little bit of a wobble on the blade service, but you’re not sure what’s underneath. Bond line’s always an issue for engineering, but the cost to take a person, fly them out to look at a spot on a blade is really expensive, especially someone who is qualified. Yeah, so the, the difference now with play bug is you can have the technology to do the scan.

Much faster and do a lot of blades, which is what the de market demand is right now to do a lot of blades simultaneously and get the same level of data by the review, by the same expert just sitting somewhere else.

Chris Cieslak: Absolutely.

Joel Saxum: I think that the quality of data is a, it’s something to touch on here because when you send someone out to the field, it’s like if, if, if I go, if I go to the wall here and you go to the wall here and we both take a paintbrush, we paint a little bit [00:05:00] different, you’re probably gonna be better.

You’re gonna be able to reach higher spots than I can.

Allen Hall: This is true.

Joel Saxum: That’s true. It’s the same thing with like an NDT process. Now you’re taking the variability of the technician out of it as well. So the data quality collection at the source, that’s what played bug ducts.

Allen Hall: Yeah,

Joel Saxum: that’s the robotic processes.

That is making sure that if I scan this, whatever it may be, LM 48.7 and I do another one and another one and another one, I’m gonna get a consistent set of quality data and then it’s goes to analysis. We can make real decisions off.

Allen Hall: Well, I, I think in today’s world now, especially with transportation damage and warranties, that they’re trying to pick up a lot of things at two years in that they could have picked up free installation.

Yeah. Or lifting of the blades. That world is changing very rapidly. I think a lot of operators are getting smarter about this, but they haven’t thought about where do we go find the tool.

Speaker: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And, and I know Joel knows that, Hey, it, it’s Chris at Blade Bug. You need to call him and get to the technology.

But I think for a lot of [00:06:00] operators around the world, they haven’t thought about the cost They’re paying the warranty costs, they’re paying the insurance costs they’re paying because they don’t have the set of data. And it’s not tremendously expensive to go do. But now the capability is here. What is the market saying?

Is it, is it coming back to you now and saying, okay, let’s go. We gotta, we gotta mobilize. We need 10 of these blade bugs out here to go, go take a scan. Where, where, where are we at today?

Chris Cieslak: We’ve hads. Validation this year that this is needed. And it’s a case of we just need to be around for when they come back round for that because the, the issues that we’re looking for, you know, it solves the problem of these new big 80 a hundred meter plus blades that have issues, which shouldn’t.

Frankly exist like process manufacturer issues, but they are there. They need to be investigated. If you’re an asset only, you wanna know that. Do I have a blade that’s likely to fail compared to one which is, which is okay? And sort of focus on that and not essentially remove any uncertainty or worry that you have about your assets.

’cause you can see other [00:07:00] turbine blades falling. Um, so we are trying to solve that problem. But at the same time, end of warranty claims, if you’re gonna be taken over these blades and doing the maintenance yourself, you wanna know that what you are being given. It hasn’t gotten any nasties lurking inside that’s gonna bite you.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Chris Cieslak: Very expensively in a few years down the line. And so you wanna be able to, you know, tick a box, go, actually these are fine. Well actually these are problems. I, you need to give me some money so I can perform remedial work on these blades. And then you end of life, you know, how hard have they lived?

Can you do an assessment to go, actually you can sweat these assets for longer. So we, we kind of see ourselves being, you know, useful right now for the new blades, but actually throughout the value chain of a life of a blade. People need to start seeing that NDT ultrasonic being one of them. We are working on other forms of NDT as well, but there are ways of using it to just really remove a lot of uncertainty and potential risk for that.

You’re gonna end up paying through the, you know, through the, the roof wall because you’ve underestimated something or you’ve missed something, which you could have captured with a, with a quick inspection.

Joel Saxum: To [00:08:00] me, NDT has been floating around there, but it just hasn’t been as accessible or easy. The knowledge hasn’t been there about it, but the what it can do for an operator.

In de-risking their fleet is amazing. They just need to understand it and know it. But you guys with the robotic technology to me, are bringing NDT to the masses

Chris Cieslak: Yeah.

Joel Saxum: In a way that hasn’t been able to be done, done before

Chris Cieslak: that. And that that’s, we, we are trying to really just be able to roll it out at a way that you’re not limited to those limited experts in the composite NDT world.

So we wanna work with them, with the C-N-C-C-I-C NDTs of this world because they are the expertise in composite. So being able to interpret those, those scams. Is not a quick thing to become proficient at. So we are like, okay, let’s work with these people, but let’s give them the best quality data, consistent data that we possibly can and let’s remove those barriers of those limited people so we can roll it out to the masses.

Yeah, and we are that sort of next level of information where it isn’t just seen as like a nice to have, it’s like an essential to have, but just how [00:09:00] we see it now. It’s not NDT is no longer like, it’s the last thing that we would look at. It should be just part of the drones. It should inspection, be part of the internal crawlers regimes.

Yeah, it’s just part of it. ’cause there isn’t one type of inspection that ticks all the boxes. There isn’t silver bullet of NDT. And so it’s just making sure that you use the right system for the right inspection type. And so it’s complementary to drones, it’s complimentary to the internal drones, uh, crawlers.

It’s just the next level to give you certainty. Remove any, you know, if you see something indicated on a a on a photograph. That doesn’t tell you the true picture of what’s going on with the structure. So this is really about, okay, I’ve got an indication of something there. Let’s find out what that really is.

And then with that information you can go, right, I know a repair schedule is gonna take this long. The downtime of that turbine’s gonna be this long and you can plan it in. ’cause everyone’s already got limited budgets, which I think why NDT hasn’t taken off as it should have done because nobody’s got money for more inspections.

Right. Even though there is a money saving to be had long term, everyone is fighting [00:10:00] fires and you know, they’ve really got a limited inspection budget. Drone prices or drone inspections have come down. It’s sort, sort of rise to the bottom. But with that next value add to really add certainty to what you’re trying to inspect without, you know, you go to do a day repair and it ends up being three months or something like, well

Allen Hall: that’s the lightning,

Joel Saxum: right?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Lightning is the, the one case where every time you start to scarf. The exterior of the blade, you’re not sure how deep that’s going and how expensive it is. Yeah, and it always amazes me when we talk to a customer and they’re started like, well, you know, it’s gonna be a foot wide scarf, and now we’re into 10 meters and now we’re on the inside.

Yeah. And the outside. Why did you not do an NDT? It seems like money well spent Yeah. To do, especially if you have a, a quantity of them. And I think the quantity is a key now because in the US there’s 75,000 turbines worldwide, several hundred thousand turbines. The number of turbines is there. The number of problems is there.

It makes more financial sense today than ever because drone [00:11:00]information has come down on cost. And the internal rovers though expensive has also come down on cost. NDT has also come down where it’s now available to the masses. Yeah. But it has been such a mental barrier. That barrier has to go away. If we’re going going to keep blades in operation for 25, 30 years, I

Joel Saxum: mean, we’re seeing no

Allen Hall: way you can do it

Joel Saxum: otherwise.

We’re seeing serial defects. But the only way that you can inspect and or control them is with NDT now.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Joel Saxum: And if we would’ve been on this years ago, we wouldn’t have so many, what is our term? Blade liberations liberating

Chris Cieslak: blades.

Joel Saxum: Right, right.

Allen Hall: What about blade route? Can the robot get around the blade route and see for the bushings and the insert issues?

Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so the robot can, we can walk circumferentially around that blade route and we can look for issues which are affecting thousands of blades. Especially in North America. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Oh yeah.

Chris Cieslak: So that is an area that is. You know, we are lucky that we’ve got, um, a warehouse full of blade samples or route down to tip, and we were able to sort of calibrate, verify, prove everything in our facility to [00:12:00] then take out to the field because that is just, you know, NDT of bushings is great, whether it’s ultrasonic or whether we’re using like CMS, uh, type systems as well.

But we can really just say, okay, this is the area where the problem is. This needs to be resolved. And then, you know, we go to some of the companies that can resolve those issues with it. And this is really about played by being part of a group of technologies working together to give overall solutions

Allen Hall: because the robot’s not that big.

It could be taken up tower relatively easily, put on the root of the blade, told to walk around it. You gotta scan now, you know. It’s a lot easier than trying to put a technician on ropes out there for sure.

Chris Cieslak: Yeah.

Allen Hall: And the speed up it.

Joel Saxum: So let’s talk about execution then for a second. When that goes to the field from you, someone says, Chris needs some help, what does it look like?

How does it work?

Chris Cieslak: Once we get a call out, um, we’ll do a site assessment. We’ve got all our rams, everything in place. You know, we’ve been on turbines. We know the process of getting out there. We’re all GWO qualified and go to site and do their work. Um, for us, we can [00:13:00] turn up on site, unload the van, the robot is on a blade in less than an hour.

Ready to inspect? Yep. Typically half an hour. You know, if we’ve been on that same turbine a number of times, it’s somewhere just like clockwork. You know, muscle memory comes in, you’ve got all those processes down, um, and then it’s just scanning. Our robot operator just presses a button and we just watch it perform scans.

And as I said, you know, we are not necessarily the NDT experts. We obviously are very mindful of NDT and know what scans look like. But if there’s any issues, we have a styling, we dial in remote to our supplement expert, they can actually remotely take control, change the settings, parameters.

Allen Hall: Wow.

Chris Cieslak: And so they’re virtually present and that’s one of the beauties, you know, you don’t need to have people on site.

You can have our general, um, robot techs to do the work, but you still have that comfort of knowing that the data is being overlooked if need be by those experts.

Joel Saxum: The next level, um, commercial evolution would be being able to lease the kit to someone and or have ISPs do it for [00:14:00] you guys kinda globally, or what is the thought

Chris Cieslak: there?

Absolutely. So. Yeah, so we to, to really roll this out, we just wanna have people operate in the robots as if it’s like a drone. So drone inspection companies are a classic company that we see perfectly aligned with. You’ve got the sky specs of this world, you know, you’ve got drone operator, they do a scan, they can find something, put the robot up there and get that next level of information always straight away and feed that into their systems to give that insight into that customer.

Um, you know, be it an OEM who’s got a small service team, they can all be trained up. You’ve got general turbine technicians. They’ve all got G We working at height. That’s all you need to operate the bay by road, but you don’t need to have the RAA level qualified people, which are in short supply anyway.

Let them do the jobs that we are not gonna solve. They can do the big repairs we are taking away, you know, another problem for them, but giving them insights that make their job easier and more successful by removing any of those surprises when they’re gonna do that work.

Allen Hall: So what’s the plans for 2026 then?

Chris Cieslak: 2026 for us is to pick up where 2025 should have ended. [00:15:00] So we were, we were meant to be in the States. Yeah. On some projects that got postponed until 26. So it’s really, for us North America is, um, what we’re really, as you said, there’s seven, 5,000 turbines there, but there’s also a lot of, um, turbines with known issues that we can help determine which blades are affected.

And that involves blades on the ground, that involves blades, uh, that are flying. So. For us, we wanna get out to the states as soon as possible, so we’re working with some of the OEMs and, and essentially some of the asset owners.

Allen Hall: Chris, it’s so great to meet you in person and talk about the latest that’s happening.

Thank you. With Blade Bug, if people need to get ahold of you or Blade Bug, how do they do that?

Chris Cieslak: I, I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place to find myself and also Blade Bug and contact us, um, through that.

Allen Hall: Alright, great. Thanks Chris for joining us and we will see you at the next. So hopefully in America, come to America sometime.

We’d love to see you there.

Chris Cieslak: Thank you very [00:16:00] much.