Published

2 years ago

November 5, 2023

Alice Rush

As part of the Clean Energy Generation webinar series, our Executive Director, Dr. Stephen A. Smith, shared a video tour of clean energy modifications and upgrades he and his family have made to their Knoxville home over the years, which reduces the family’s energy usage and saves money on monthly utility bills.

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Video Tour of the Smith Family’s Clean Energy Home

My family purchased our home in Knoxville in 2006 with a plan to live here temporarily and ultimately to build a new home from scratch to utilize clean green technology as much as possible. In 2008, we switched gears – we decided that the better approach was to improve the existing home. This has been a multi-step process with lots of planning and forethought in order to keep it within our budget and use smart sequencing. Today we are very happy with where we stand, and we continue to be pleased with the performance of all of the additions and modifications.

I also want to acknowledge that we are fortunate to have some resources that others may not. This is why we are breaking down the steps and pieces to show there are things people can do within any budget. These steps can be built upon, especially now with incentives and rebates from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Additionally, there are always questions about whether these are smart investments that bring value to the homeowner. We all have different things we value more than others. I can say with certainty that I have never regretted any of our investments outlined here. Our home is more comfortable, healthier, and smarter, and allows us to feel we are part of the Clean Energy Generation working for solutions. Furthermore, there is clear evidence that many of these investments not only pay back with monthly dividends from savings but also increase the overall value of your home if and when you may sell it. Would I have put solar panels on a house that I was not going to live in for more than five years? Maybe not. But as we watch the ravages of climate disruption, the bottom line for my family has been that our home is not only more resilient, it is also an attempt to model a new future that works with utilities to find solutions. From a values perspective, this is priceless.

Start with Energy Efficiency to Stretch Every Electron

We began the upgrade process intentionally, spending time planning and creating a logical course of action. The natural starting point was to install extensive energy efficiency improvements: first tightening up the home by reducing air leaks, changing to efficient lighting, replacing the windows and insulation, and switching to electric appliances.

Efficiency is the foundation that a clean home is built upon – a home that stretches every electron as far as possible makes the best use of energy, whether it relies on traditional utility-generated power or sexier components like solar and storage. Air sealing, lighting, windows, and insulation are first to come to mind when considering efficiency upgrades. The next lowest hanging fruits are HVAC and electric kitchen appliances, so we added a geothermal heat pump and induction cooktop in the kitchen.

Beyond these more obvious efficiency improvements, we added nine Solatube solar tubes to our interior spaces. These clever lighting alternatives bring natural daylight into interior rooms, reducing lighting needs, AND can function as traditional light fixtures at night. The Schüco solar hot water heater we added is another efficiency gain: water is pre-heated before it goes into the electric hot water heater, so rather than starting with 50-60 degree water, the system begins with 100+ degree water, depending on the season, meaning the electrical element in the hot water heater doesn’t have to run as much for us to have ready hot water.

1st Phase Solar: Grid-Tied

Once we established an energy-efficient foundation, we were ready for our first solar photovoltaic (PV) installation: a 7.13 kW Sharp rooftop system comprised of thirty-six 198-Watt solar modules installed by GES Solar. At the time, Sharp was making these panels in Memphis TN. This system pretty much offset the vast majority of our household energy use, especially during spring and fall when sun is plentiful and HVAC needs are less.

At that time (2009-2010), TVA was effectively running a solar buy-back program that we were eligible to take advantage of called Generation Partners Program, which is basically like a feed-in-tariff (FIT) program where the homeowner is bound to sell all electricity produced to the utility, and the utility is bound to buy it. Generation Partners required a 20-year contract: for the first 10 years TVA paid us a premium or 12 cents above retail (~21-22 cents/kwh); now that we are in the second 10 years, TVA pays us the retail rate. When the sun shines, the 7.13 kW system generates electricity, measured with a dedicated meter. A separate meter is a traditional meter measuring how much power is being used/pulled from the grid. The program has been discontinued, but the 7.13 kW system at my home remains ‘grandfathered in’ for about six more years, meaning that this system remains contractually grid-tied, offsetting the cost of any electricity we pull from the grid first, and then generating income with whatever we generate above that.

2nd Phase Solar: “Behind the Meter”

With my family expanding in 2019-2020, we put an addition on the home, which created additional south-facing roof space for more solar panels. This system is smaller – 3.96 kW – and is “behind the meter.” Power from this 3.96 kW system, which is comprised of twelve 330-Watt REC solar modules and installed by Lightwave Solar, meets household load first. While the original panels remain interconnected with the grid, these new panels run directly to two 13.5 kWh Tesla powerwalls (also installed by Lightwave) – giving us a total of 27 kWh of storage at our home. If powerwalls fill up, we can plug in one of our electric cars and take all the extra power.

Adding Storage Helps Move Us Toward Net-Zero

These compact powerwalls really are one of the keys to making the system self-sufficient. If the 3.96 kW system provides enough for our home needs at a given time, we are net-zero – requiring no energy from the grid at all. If we need less than the panels generate, the surplus runs to the powerwalls and can be stored for future use.

This obviously saves us money; it also saves us worry and inconvenience during outages. Think about this: a ‘typical’ American household uses ~1000 kWh of electricity per month. This is (very) roughly averaged at around 30 kWh/day. The two powerwalls total 27 kW, so if TVA loses power, and my powerwalls are full, I can power the house for about a day without being replenished with sunshine. If the sun is out, there’s no limit to how long we could run the house normally without grid power. Since we installed the new system and the powerwalls, power has gone out in our area at least five times, mostly for short durations of minutes. But a couple of notable times, our part of Knoxville has been without power longer, at least once for many hours. We have yet to be without power since installing the storage system.

Time of Use: Mutually Beneficial Incentives for Homeowners & Utilities

We are now part of a pilot program with Knoxville Utilities Board (or KUB – our local provider, which purchases power from TVA and sells to Knoxville customers). Through the pilot, KUB is attempting to use “time of use” incentives to manage demand. Under this pilot, KUB institutes “peak” service times to correspond with the time it costs them (KUB) more to buy electricity from TVA – they charge residential customers significantly more for energy used during “on peak” times, and less for energy used during “off-peak” each day. On peak in winter is 5 am-11 am, and in summer 2 pm-8 pm. Customers who opt in to this program purchase electricity used during the 18 off-peak hours of each day at 2 cents below standard rate. To incentivize customers to really roll back energy use during peak hours, KUB then charges almost twice the standard rate (21 cents or so) during peak hours. My household has been participating for a little over a year and we have saved about $400.

Time of use also benefits the utility immensely: Massive central station plants are notoriously inflexible and are constantly responding to the energy loads of industry, businesses, and homeowners. Peak load is different in different geographies, especially when utilities often cover widespread areas. These peaks and valleys make it more expensive and less efficient to provide reliable power, and utilities use “peakers” – frequently fossil gas plants, that they have to turn on and off to meet fluctuating demand. Utilizing smart technology to manipulate demand times (say, by charging an electric car overnight or using self-generated solar energy during high peak times) flattens the load curve, making the entire system more efficient. An integrated home that has its own ability to generate power and store power can – with time of use rates – become a helpful participant in the utility’s load issues.

The Evolving Role of the Electric Car

When we leased our first electric car, a Nissan LEAF, we had only our grid-tied 7.13 kW rooftop system, and charging the car at home is primarily what drove our consumption out of the range of net zero, making it a challenge for our attempt to maintain a net zero home. Today, we have two Teslas in my household, each with a 75 kWh battery. These two cars can store 150 kWh, almost 6x the storage of my two Tesla powerwalls, without any additional upfront expense or need for storage space (you are going to have a car, right?). At the ‘typical’ household demand of ~1000 kWh of electricity per month or ~30 kWh / day, a car with a 75 kWh battery could power your home for two days. As technology advances and we move toward smart homes and vehicles with two-way power integration, electric cars will be an important component of a carbon-free lifestyle.

Solar + Storage: An Effective Solution at the Micro & Macro Level

I like to think of all of these components as increasingly integrated – my home, storage, electric car, and solar panels are part of a single system giving me, the homeowner, maximum flexibility in managing my own reliability, environmental attributes, and, especially with time-of-use in place, my utility bill. Basically, this gives me the capacity to control my own energy destiny.

Solar + storage works on a micro level at my home. It can work on a macro level as well. I have said many times that I truly believe it is a crime to burn fossil fuels during the daytime when the sun shines on us. Now, with storage technologies and infrastructure increasing so rapidly, excess can be captured and dispatched at night or at peak times at the utility level as well.

Summary: Each Individual Step is Part of the Collective Solution

As part of the Clean Energy Generation, we’re all looking for ways to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. But you don’t have to do everything that this house has incorporated – remember, we did everything step by step, not all at once. This blog and video are just opportunities to see how clean energy home technologies integrate. You can take each individual step as part of the solution, and those steps really matter – especially with energy efficiency, because the greenest electron is the electron we never use. Now that we’re starting to have access to more solar technology, electric vehicles, storage, and smart meters, and utilities are starting to offer time of use rates, it all integrates so that we can become part of the solution in a comprehensive, collective way. Take it step by step. Do the things that make sense that you can afford, starting with energy efficiency.

Watch the video in full here, or watch some older videos highlighting different components here:

The Clean Energy Generation is Embracing the Challenges & Opportunities of Our Time

Our generation stands at a defining fork in the road forward. The preferred path is what we are calling the “Clean Energy Generation.” As members of the Clean Energy Generation, we acknowledge the moment we are in by choosing action over despair. This Clean Energy Generation embraces both the challenges and opportunities of our time. And as plentiful the challenges are in today’s world, the opportunities are just as many, and growing by the day. Technology is developing at an exponentially rapid pace, and favorable policies that encourage and favor adoption and growth of clean energy resources have a multiplier effect.

It’s our generational challenge to confront climate disruption together, coming together to respond to the greatest challenge of our time.

By supporting favorable policies, and at the same time embracing the ways we can – as individuals and collectively – join the movement, we will help speed the transition and bring it to the scale on the timeline we so desperately need. Our homes can generate power when the sun is out and decrease demand on utilities to help keep our bills down, and at the same time help utilities lower their costs and demand on their equipment. Technology is available – today – to make our homes more efficient and reliable while moving away from our need for fossil fuels completely. And with policies driving prices down and technologies becoming more widely accessible, our homes can be microcosms of what our larger utility-based electric system needs to become.

Solar + storage, if scaled properly to the utility level, can offset the need for fossil fuels.

To create thriving communities, we must recognize the urgency of the moment and take decisive action together now. The Clean Energy Generation is choosing action over despair and gaining traction toward a healthier and more sustainable, enjoyable world than we’ve dared to imagine.

Make Your Next Step Your First Step

Do the things you can afford and feel good to you. Energy efficiency is the most important first step in upgrading any home, and efficiency improvements come in all shapes and sizes and price tags. Remember: “The greenest electron is the one we never use.”

Next, find out what your utility and state offer: does your utility offer time-of-use pricing? Is it better to sell back generated power or keep it at home? In many of our Southeastern states, unfortunately, utilities aren’t paying a good rate for power from rooftop residential systems, meaning that oftentimes solar+storage is probably the best option for homeowners here.

It starts with small steps – asking questions and joining together as neighbors, students, and friends to decide which specific climate actions could benefit our communities.

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The post Take a Video Tour of a Clean Energy Home appeared first on SACE | Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Take a Video Tour of a Clean Energy Home

Renewable Energy

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Published

14 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Bret Tollgaard from Sunrez joins to discuss UV-curing prepreg that cuts blade repair time by up to 90% and has recently recieved OEM approval.

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!

Allen Hall: Brett, welcome back to the program.

Bret Tollgaard: Thanks for having me again.

Allen Hall: So a lot’s happening at sunrise at the moment. Uh, there’s, uh, activity with sunrise materials on a lot of blades this year.

Over the last couple of years actually, ISPs, operators, OEMs, are realizing that UV curing is a huge advantage.

Bret Tollgaard: Turns out there’s a lot of value added, uh, to the entire process when utilizing UV cure, uh, pre-req.

Allen Hall: So the, the pre pres are, have been available for a couple of years. The qualification though was always the concern.

Has the OEM qualified this material? Are they gonna give you the blessing? Does this show up in the manual? If I call the OEM, are they gonna say they have talked to you guys? A lot of those hurdles have been cleared at this point.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, great question. And we are happy to announce that we have finally been approved by a large OEM for use on the epoxy blade for now all general kind of repairs.

We have several more OEMs that have already passed their phase one mechanical testing, and we’re iterating through now [00:01:00] their, uh, secondary and tertiary kind of tests. And so we do expect to be fully qualified by several OEMs before the end of the year, which should make the ISPs integration and utilization of our materials much, much easier.

Allen Hall: So the, the, the problem you’re solving is repairs in the field for the most part, or sometimes in the factory. Mm-hmm. But a lot of times in the field that those repairs. It happened quite a bit. They’re the same repair, the same area, the same kind of thing over and over and over again. And wetting out fabric on site takes time.

Particularly if you’re using standard materials, you have to bag it. You have to apply heat in some cases to get it to kick, and then you have to wait several hours for it to cure. So in the repair cycle time, most of your time is waiting.

Bret Tollgaard: It sure is. Uh, and on top of all that, we all know that there aren’t enough technicians in this industry to even do all the repairs, uh, that would like to be done.

Yeah. And so to really kind of streamline all of that, [00:02:00] uh, we’ve rolled out a couple of new things and we’ve had a lot more interest in some pre consolidated preki patches for customers. Uh, if a particular blade model has an issue that is a standardized kind of repair. We’re actually now building custom prepregs, or we will build the appropriate width length, stack it, consolidate it, uh, wrap it between our films.

So then all the customer has to do when they get on site is, uh, you know, do do the appropriate surface prep. Scarfing, apply a little bit of our UV surface primer to the backside of that patch. But now they can go up tower, single peel, stick, roll out, and then they’re cured.

Allen Hall: And that’s a. How many hours of saving is that?

It’s gotta be like six, 12 hours of saving, of, of

Bret Tollgaard: labor. It’s upwards of 80 to 90% of the labor that’s gonna actually need to be done to apply that. Otherwise, and then same thing too. We’ve had a couple instances where we took a several day repair down to one, to two to three hours. And these are multi-meter long repairs that were fast tracked because we pre consolidated preki [00:03:00] everything.

Some were in flat sheet forms, some were much longer on rolls, where you’re actually then rolling out with a team. Um, and so we’ve been able to demonstrate several times, uh, over the last 12 months, uh, the, the value that a UV cure preprint.

Allen Hall: Well, sure, because that, that would make sense. The issue about wetting out fabric in the field you just done in the back of a trailer or something, somewhere like that.

Usually it is, it’s that you’re never really sure that you got the fabric wetted out. The experienced technicians always feel like, have done it enough that they get very consistent results. But as you mentioned, getting technicians is hard and, and there’s so many repairs to do. So you’re doing those wetting out composite things takes practice and skill.

Just buying it, preki it, where you have control over it. And you guys sell to the military all the time. So that, and you’re, are you ass 91 qualified yet? You’re in the midst of that?

Bret Tollgaard: So we, I mean, a, we just got ISO certified, uh, at the end of last year in December. So our [00:04:00] QMS system and everything like that’s up to date, that’s huge.

Another big qualification for the OEMs that want to see, you know, true quality and output.

Allen Hall: That’s it. I, if I’m gonna buy a preki patch, so, uh, uh, that would make sense to me, knowing that. There’s a lot of rigor as a quality system. So when I get out the the site and I open that package, I know what’s inside of it every single time.

Bret Tollgaard: Well, and that’s just it. And like we got qualified based on the materials that we can provide and the testing that’s being done in real world situations when you’re wetting out by hand and you’re vacuum backing and you’re trying to cure. It is a little bit of an art form when you’re doing that. It is, and you might think you have a great laminate, you got void content, or you haven’t properly went out that glass ’cause humidity or the way the glass was stored or it was exposed.

The sizing and the resin don’t really bite. Well. You might think you have a great repair, but you might be prematurely failing as well after X cycles and fatigue. Uh, simply because it’s not as easy to, to truly do. Right? And so having the [00:05:00] pre-wet, uh, pre impregnated glass really goes a long way for the quality, uh, and the consistency from repair to repair.

Allen Hall: Well, even just the length of the season to do repairs is a huge issue. I, I know I’ve had some discussions this week about opening the season up a little bit, and some of the ISPs have said, Hey, we we’re pretty much working year round at this point. We’re, we’ll go to California. We’ll go to Southern Texas.

We’ll work those situations. ’cause the weather’s decent, but with the sunrise material, the temperature doesn’t matter.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct. And I was actually just speaking to someone maybe half hour ago who came by and was talking about repairs that they had to do in Vermont, uh, in December. They could only do two layers of an epoxy repair at a time because of the amount of the temperature.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Whereas you could go through, apply a six or an eight layer pre-reg cure it in 20 minutes. Uh, you know, throughout that entire length that he had and you would’ve been done. That’s, and so it took several days to do a single repair that could have been done in sub one hour with our material.

Allen Hall: I know where those wind turbines are.

[00:06:00] They weren’t very far from, we used to live, so I understand that temperature, once you hit about November up in Vermont, it’s over for a lot of, uh, standard epoxy materials and cures, it is just not warm enough.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, we, we’ve literally had repairs done with our materials at negative 20 Fahrenheit. That were supposed to be temporary repairs.

They were installed four or five years ago. Uh, and they’re still active, perfectly done patches that haven’t needed to be replaced yet. So,

Allen Hall: so, because the magic ingredient is you’re adding UV to a, a chemistry where the UV kicks it off. Correct. Basically, so you’re, it’s not activated until it’s hit with uv.

You hit it with uv that starts a chemical process, but it doesn’t rely on external heat. To cure

Bret Tollgaard: exactly. It, it is a true single component system, whether it’s in the liquid pre preg, the thickened, uh, the thickened putties that we sell, or even the hand lamination and effusion resin. It’s doped with a, a variety of different food initiators and packages based on the type of light that’s [00:07:00] being, uh, used to, to cure it.

But it will truly stay dormant until it’s exposed to UV light. And so we’ve been able to formulate systems over the last 40 years of our company’s history that provide an incredibly long shelf life. Don’t prematurely gel, don’t prematurely, uh, you know, erode in the packaging, all those

Allen Hall: things.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly.

Like we’ve been at this for a really long time. We’ve been able to do literally decades of r and d to develop out systems. Uh, and that’s why we’ve been able to come to this market with some materials that truly just haven’t been able to be seen, uh, delivered and installed and cured the way that we can do it.

Allen Hall: Well, I think that’s a huge thing, the, the shelf life.

Bret Tollgaard: Mm-hmm.

Allen Hall: You talk to a lot of. Operators, ISPs that buy materials that do have an expiration date or they gotta keep in a freezer and all those little handling things.

Bret Tollgaard: Yep.

Allen Hall: Sunrise gets rid of all of that. And because how many times have you heard of an is SP saying, oh, we had a throwaway material at the end of the season because it expired.

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, tremendously

Allen Hall: amount of, hundred of thousands of dollars of material, [00:08:00]

Bret Tollgaard: and I would probably even argue, say, millions of dollars over the course of the year gets, gets thrown out simply because of the expiration date. Um, we are so confident in our materials. Uh, and the distributors and stuff that we use, we can also recertify material now, most of the time it’s gonna get consumed within 12 months Sure.

Going into this kind of industry.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, but there have been several times where we’ve actually had some of that material sent back to us. We’ll test and analyze it, make sure it’s curing the way it is, give it another six months shelf, uh, service life.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, and so you’re good to go on that front

Allen Hall: too.

Yeah. So if you make the spend to, to move to sun, you have time to use it.

Bret Tollgaard: Yes.

Allen Hall: So if it snows early or whatever’s going on at that site where you can’t get access anymore, you just wait till the spring comes and you’re still good with the same material. You don’t have to re-buy it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And with no special storage requirements, like you mentioned, no frozen oven or frozen freezer, excuse me, uh, or certain temperature windows that has to be stored in, uh, it allows the operators and the technicians, you know, a lot more latitude of how things actually get

Allen Hall: done.

And, and so if. When we [00:09:00] think about UV materials, the, the questions always pop up, like, how thick of a laminate can you do and still illuminate with the UV light? And make sure you curate I I, because you’re showing some samples here. These are,

Bret Tollgaard: yeah.

Allen Hall: Quarter inch or more,

Bret Tollgaard: correct. So

Allen Hall: thick samples. How did you cure these?

Bret Tollgaard: So that was cured with the lamp that we’ve got right here, which are standard issued light, sold a couple hundred into this space already. Um, that’s 10 layers of a thousand GSM unidirectional fiber. Whoa. This other one is, uh, 10 layers of, of a biox. 800 fiber.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, those were cured in six minutes. So you can Six

Allen Hall: minutes.

Bret Tollgaard: Six minutes.

Allen Hall: What would it take to do this in a standard epoxy form?

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, hours,

Allen Hall: eight hours maybe?

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah. About for, for the, for the post cure required to get the TGS that they need in the wind space, right? Absolutely. And so yeah, we can do that in true minutes. And it’s pre impregnated. You simply cut it to shape and you’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: And it looks great when you’re done, mean the, the surface finish is really good. I know sometimes with the epoxies, particularly if they get ’em wetted out, it doesn’t. It [00:10:00] doesn’t have that kind of like finished look to it.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And the way that we provide, uh, for our standard, uh, you know, pre pprs are in between films and so if you cure with that film, you get a nice, clean, glossy surface tack free.

But as more and more people go to the pre consolidation method down tower, so even if they buy our standard prereg sheets or rolls, they’re preki down tower, you can also then just apply a pre, uh, a peel ply to that top film. Oh, sure. So if you wet out a peel ply and then you build your laminate over the top.

Put the primer and the black film over when they actually get that up on tower, they can then just remove that fuel ply and go straight to Sandy or uh, uh, painting and they’re ready to rock.

Allen Hall: Wow. Okay. That’s, that’s impressive. If you think about the thousands and thousands of hours you’ll save in a season.

Where you could be fixing another blade, but you’re just waiting for the res, the cure,

Bret Tollgaard: and that’s just it. When you’re saving the amount of labor and the amount of time, and it’s not just one technician, it’s their entire team that is saving that time. Sure. And can move on to the next [00:11:00] repair and the next process.

Allen Hall: So one of the questions I get asked all the time, like, okay, great, this UV material sounds like space, age stuff. It must cost a fortune. And the answer is no. It doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s very price competitive.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really is. And it might be slightly more expensive cost per square foot versus you doing it with glass and resin, but you’re paying for that labor to wait for that thing to cure.

And so you’re still saving 20, 30, 40 plus percent per repair. When you can do it as quickly as we can do it.

Allen Hall: So for ISPs that are out doing blade repairs, you’re actually making more money.

Bret Tollgaard: You are making more money, you are saving more money. That same group and band of technicians you have are doing more repairs in a faster amount of time.

So as you are charging per repair, per blade, per turbine, whatever that might be, uh, you’re walking away with more money and you can still pass that on to the owner operators, uh, by getting their turbines up and spinning and making them more money.

Allen Hall: Right. And that’s what happens now. You see in today’s world, companies ISPs that are proposing [00:12:00] using UV materials versus standard resin systems, the standard residence systems are losing because how much extra time they’re, they’re paying for the technicians to be on site.

Bret Tollgaard: Correct.

Allen Hall: So the, the industry has to move if you wanna be. Competitive at all. As an ISP, you’re gonna have to move to UV materials. You better be calling suns

Bret Tollgaard: very quickly. Well, especially as this last winter has come through, the windows that you have before, bad weather comes in on any given day, ebbs and flows and changes.

But when you can get up, finish a repair, get it spinning, you might finish that work 2, 3, 4 later, uh, days later. But that turbine’s now been spinning for several days, generating money. Uh, and then you can come back up and paint and do whatever kind of cosmetic work over the top of that patch is required.

Allen Hall: So what are the extra tools I need to use Sunz in the kits. Do I need a light?

Bret Tollgaard: Not a whole lot. You’re gonna need yourself a light. Okay. You’re gonna need yourself a standard three to six inch, uh, bubble buster roller to actually compact and consolidate. Sure. Uh, that’s really all you need. There’s no vacuum lights.

And you sell the lights. We do, we, [00:13:00] we sell the lights. Um, our distributors also sell the lights, fiberglass and comp one. Uh, so they’re sourced and available, uh, okay. Domestically, but we sell worldwide too. And so, uh, we can handle you wherever you are in the world that you wanna start using uv, uh, materials.

And yeah, we have some standardized, uh, glass, but at the same time, we can pre-reg up to a 50 inch wide roll. Okay, so then it really becomes the limiting factor of how wide, how heavy, uh, of a lamette does a, a technician in the field want to handle?

Allen Hall: Yeah, sure. Okay. In terms of safety, with UV light, you’re gonna be wearing UV glasses,

Bret Tollgaard: some standard safety glasses that are tinted for UV protection.

So they’ll

Allen Hall: look yellow,

Bret Tollgaard: they’ll look a little yellow. They’ve got the shaded gray ones. Sunglasses, honestly do the same.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: But with a traditional PPE, the technicians would be wearing a tower anyways. Safety glasses, a pair of gloves. You’re good to go. If you’re doing confined space, work on the inside of a, a, a blade, uh, the biggest value now to this generation of material that are getting qualified.

No VOC non [00:14:00] flammable, uh, no haps. And so it’s a much safer material to actually use in those confined spaces as well as

Allen Hall: well ship

Bret Tollgaard: as well as ship it ships unregulated and so you can ship it. Next day air, which a lot of these customers always end. They do. I know that.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so next day air, uh, you know, there’s no extra hazmat or dangerous goods shipping for there.

Uh, and same thing with storage conditions. You don’t need a, a flammable cabinet to actually store the material in.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

Bret Tollgaard: Um, so it really opens you up for a lot more opportunities.

Allen Hall: I just solves all kinds of problems.

Bret Tollgaard: It, it really does. And that’s the big value that, you know, the UV materials can provide.

Allen Hall: So. I see the putty material and it comes in these little tubes, squeeze tubes. What are these putties used for?

Bret Tollgaard: So right now, the, the existing putty is really just the same exact thickened, uh, resin that’s in the pre-print.

Allen Hall: Okay.

Bret Tollgaard: And it’s worked well. It’s, it’s nice we’re kind of filling some cracks and some faring, some edges and stuff if things need to be feathered in.

But we’ve [00:15:00] been working on this year that we’ll be rolling out very, very soon is a new structural putty. Okay. So we’ll actually have milled fibers in there and components that will make it a much more robust system. And so we’ve been getting more inquiries of, particularly for leading edge rehabilitation.

Where Cat three, cat four, even cat five kind of damage, you need to start filling and profiling before any kind of over laminates can really be done properly. And so we’re working on, uh, rolling that out here very, very soon. Um, and so that will, I think, solve a couple of needs, um, for the wind market. Uh, and then in addition to some new products that we’re rolling out, uh, is gonna be the LEP system that we’re been working on.

Uh, the rain erosion testing showed some pretty good results. But we’re buying some new equipment to make a truly void free, air free system that we’re gonna it, uh, probably submit end of April, beginning of May for the next round, that we expect to have some very, very good, uh, duration and weather ability with,

Allen Hall: because it’s all about speed,

Bret Tollgaard: it’s durability.

Allen Hall: All about e

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly. And ease of use by someone in the [00:16:00] field. Yeah. Or OEMs on, you know, in the manufacturing plant. Um, there has yet, in my opinion, to be a true winner in the LEP space. That is just the right answer. And so by applying our materials with the really high abrasion resistance that we expect this to have and be as simple to do as it really appeal, stick and cure, um, we think it’s gonna be a bit of a game changer in this industry.

Allen Hall: Well, all the sunrise materials, once they’re cured, are sandal

Bret Tollgaard: correct.

Allen Hall: And I think that’s one of the things about some of the other systems, I always worry about them like, alright, they can do the work today, but tomorrow I have to come back and touch it again. Do I have a problem? Well, and the sun rests stuff is at least my playing around with it has been really easy to use.

It’s, it’s. Uh, things that I had seen maybe 20 years ago in the aerospace market that have they thought about using the material not only [00:17:00] in the factory, but outside the factory. How easy is it to adapt to, how easy to, to paint, to all those little nuances that come up? When you’re out working in the field and trying to do some very difficult work, uh, the sunroom material is ready to go, easy to use and checks all the boxes, all those little nuances, like it’s cold outside, it’s wet outside.

Uh, it’s, it’s hot outside, right? It’s all those things that, that stop ISPs or OEMs from being super efficient. All those parameters start to get washed away. That’s the game changer and the price point is right. How do. People get a hold of you and learn about the sun rose material. Maybe they, you can buy through fiberglass or through composite one.

Mm-hmm. That’s an easy way to do, just get to play with some samples. But when they want to get into some quantity work, they got a lot of blade repair. They know what they’re doing this summer or out in the fall or this winter come wintertime. How do they get [00:18:00] started? What do they do?

Bret Tollgaard: Well, one of the first things to do is they can reach us through our website.

Um, we’re developing a larger and larger library now for how to videos and install procedures, um, generating SOPs that are, you know, semi, uh, industry specific. But at the same time too, it’s a relatively blanket peel and stick patch, whether it’s a wind turbine blade, a corroded tank, or a pressure pipe. Um, and so yeah, www.suns.com Okay, is gonna be a great way to do it.

Uh, we’re actively building more videos to put on, uh, our YouTube channel as well. Um, and so that’s kind of gonna be the best way to reach out, uh, for us. One of the big things that we’re also pushing for, for 26 is to truly get people, uh, in this, in industry, specifically trained and comfortable using the products.

At the end of the day, it’s a composite, it’s a pre impregnated sheet. It’s not difficult, but there are some tips and tricks that really make the, the use case. Uh, the install process a lot easier.

Allen Hall: Sure.

Bret Tollgaard: Uh, and so just making sure that people are, are caught up on the latest and greatest on the training techniques will [00:19:00] go a long way too.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s only as good as the technician that applies it

Bret Tollgaard: e Exactly.

Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s great. Uh, it’s great all the things you guys are doing, you’re really changing the industry. In a positive way, making repairs faster, uh, more efficient, getting those turbines running. It’s always sad when you see turbines down with something that I know you guys could fix with sun.

Uh, but it does happen, so I, I need the ISPs to reach out and start calling Sun and getting in place because the OEMs are blessing your material. ISPs that are using it are winning contracts. It’s time to make the phone call to Sun Rez. Go to the website, check out all the details there. If you wanna play with your material, get ahold of fiberglass or composite one just.

Order it overnight. It’ll come overnight and you can play with it. And, and once you, once you realize what that material is, you’ll want to call Brett and get started.

Bret Tollgaard: A hundred percent appreciate the time.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Thanks Brett, for being on the podcast. I, I love talking to you guys because you have such cool material.

Bret Tollgaard: Yeah, no, we’re looking, uh, forward to continuing to innovate, uh, really make this, uh, material [00:20:00] splash in this industry.

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Renewable Energy

Infringing on the Rights of Others

Published

19 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

I agree with what Ricky Gervais says here; I would only add that there are dozens of ways religion impinges on others.

In my view, the most common is that it impedes our implementing science in things like climate change mitigation. If you believe, as is explicit in the Book of Genesis, that “only God can destroy the Earth,” you have a good excuse to ignore the entirety of climate science.