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Weather Guard Lightning Tech

The Blade Whisperer Returns with Morten Handberg

Morten Handberg, Principal Consultant at Wind Power LAB, joins the show to discuss the many variables within wind turbine blades that operators may not be aware of. From design to materials and operation, understanding your blades is crucial to making informed decisions in the field.

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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program.

Morten Handberg: Thank you so much, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back. It’s, uh, I really, really happy to be back on the show to discuss blades with you guys. 

Allen Hall: So you’re a resident blade whisperer, and we wanted to talk about the differences between types of blades even within the same manufacturer, because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding if I buy a specific OEM turbine that I’m getting the same design all the time, or even just the same basic materials are that are used.

That’s not the case anymore.

Morten Handberg: No, I mean, there’s always been variations. Uh, so the B 90 is a very good example because initially was, was released with, uh, with the, with the glass fiber spark cap. [00:01:00] But at later iterations it was, then they then switched it to carbon fiber for, for, for larger, for larger turbines, for higher rated power.

But it, it, but it sort of gave that you were not a hundred percent sure. When you initially looked at it, was this actually a ca a glass fiber, uh, beam or a carbon fiber was only when you started to learn the integral, you know, what, what to read in, in the naming convention that you could understand it.

But it caused a little confusion about, you know, I’m looking at glass fiber blade or, or a carbon fiber blade. So it’s been there for a while, but we’re seeing it more and more pronounced with, um. Uh, OEMs changing to signs, uh, or OEMs merging together, but keeping their integral design for, for, for various purposes.

And then for the, for the, for the people, not in, uh, not in the loop or not looking behind the curtain. They don’t, you don’t know, know, know the difference. So I think it’s really important that we, that we sort of highlight some of those things to make it easier for people to, to, to know, to know this.

Allen Hall: There was a generational change. [00:02:00] Uh, even in the 1.5 megawatt class. There were some blades that were fiberglass and then they, there was a trend to move to carbon fiber to make them lighter, but then the designers got better and started putting fiberglass in, where now you have 70 meter blades that are fiberglass worth 35 meter blades, may have had carbon.

Yeah, it’s hard to keep up with it.

Morten Handberg: You know, it’s really difficult to know. I mean, for, for, for the longer blades, it’s becoming more and more pronounced that they will be, uh, there will be carbon fiber reinforced. But a good, uh, example of where it doesn’t really apply is actually with, uh, with Siemens cesa.

Because if you look at Siemens, Cade said, you know, it’s, it’s Siemens, uh, the original OEM Siemens at the original OEM Cade that merged. Quite a few years back, but you know, we still see the very sharp, uh, difference between the two different designs because whenever you install a Siemens Esso turbine offshore, it’s the Siemens integral blade, it will.

And, and they kept that, [00:03:00] uh, and that blade is produced in one cast, it’s called the Integral Blade because that’s their inherited design. And there are no adhesive bond blinds in that. Uh, so all laminated is consolidated. It’s all cast in one go, and then whatever kings and small, uh, defects there, then repaired on factory before they ship offshore.

These are pure glass fiber plate that has not changed at all. So that’s sort of the, uh, how do you say, uh, the one that, that, uh, that is outside the norm that we see today. But the Gaza part of it, they, they’ve kept for onshore purposes, they kept their design using, uh, adhered shells or adhered bond lines.

So they would have two, uh, share webs and then two shells, uh, that are then, that are then, then, uh, glued together, uh, at the bond lines, on the share, on the trading edge, and on the leading edge. With carbon re, re reinforcement. Um, so that is a massive different design within one [00:04:00] OEM and often when people say, well, we have a problem with the Siemens commes blade, which one?

Uh, so then it’s very, very important to understand, you know, what blade type, you know, what, what, what turbine model it is because then we can pretty easily drive it, or even for just know the wind farm because. If it’s offshore, we pretty much, you know, we can, we, we know already. We just need to know the what, what, what size of turbine is, and derive what blade type it is.

Onshore becomes a bit more pro problematic because then you need to know, you know, at what, when was it erected, because then, you know, it can be both, but. If you don’t know, then it will just be presented as a Siemens cesa. So it’s really important to keep, uh, in check, uh, when, when, when, when, when looking at that.

So that’s a, so that’s a very important distinction that, that we need, need to understand when the child, when determining blade damages,

Allen Hall: right, because the type of damage, the integral blade would suffer really completely different than the sort of the ESA bonded design. I was looking at blades in Oklahoma recently that were integral from like a two megawatt machine, and it, it [00:05:00] looks completely different when you walk up to that blade.

You can tell that it’s cast in one piece. It’s very interesting to see, but that makes it, I think the, the thing about those blades is that it’s a little more manufacturing cost to, to make ’em that way, but. They are, uh, tend to be a little more rugged out in service, right?

Morten Handberg: Well, they’re, they’re definitely heavier because of the, the manufacturing process that they go through.

Um, they’re more robust. We, I think we can, we can, we can see that from a track record, uh, in general. Um, but they’re, but the trade off is that they are a lot, they’re heavier. So that means that the, that the components that are used in the Drivetrain Tower Foundation, they’re equally heavier. So you pay the price in the, uh, in the cost of the turbine.

But, uh, overall on the, on the mainland side, we do see less, at least some structural damages and if something really bad happens, so, uh, the trailing edge more often, not it’s kept to the, to the tip or on that part of the trailing edge. So, so, uh, so [00:06:00] the, the, the blade structure keeps together better, um, because of this consolidation of the laminates.

Allen Hall: Right, and the, the traditional ESA design, I’ll call it, has been a bonded design for a long time. The issue with bond lines is there is no peel ply stoppage, so there’s no fasteners in it, in case it starts to come apart, it’ll continue to peel, and that’s what we typically call a banana peel when it really goes bad.

The blade splits in two. Once it starts, it really doesn’t have a way to stop. And I think that’s why inspection is so important on those bonded blades. Right?

Morten Handberg: Yeah. Actually, 1, 1, 1 1, 1, 1 small thing. Uh, peel ply is actually something that’s used in laminate production to, uh, to you apply it when you’re casting, you laminate typically for repair.

Then when you peel it off. The surface is fresh and clean, and then you can, you can continue working it, adding more, more mobilely or, or new coating. So it removes some, uh, lamination or some grinding process that will otherwise be needed, has no structural purpose in it, [00:07:00] uh, just to kill that myth of, but you’re right.

Uh, when you have an adhere blade for any, for any manufacturer, for any purpose. If you have a, uh, if you have a deep bonding that starts, then it can, it can, depending on the location, it can grow really fast because you don’t have the same consolidation. You do have some bike layers that would add over, but it doesn’t have the same integral strength that you would see with the, uh, with the consolidated laminate.

Allen Hall: So that’s a big difference. And if you’re looking at blades, and if you haven’t. Looked inside of a hub and looked inside the blade. You, you may not even know. And I think that does happen to a lot of engineers that they, because they, they’re dealing with a thousand blades a lot of times the blade engineers, it’s crazy what they’re asked to go do.

You just can’t know all the details all the time. But just knowing these top level things can really help you suss out like where to start. And, and, and even on the inspection res regimes would on an integral blade type design, are you doing different kinds of inspections than you would do on a standard kind of.

Mesa bonded up design?

Morten Handberg: I would [00:08:00] say not actually. I mean, you would still, you would still do, uh, you, you’ll still do internal inspections because, um, you can still have defect developing. They would be, uh, slower, uh, growing in general, um, compared to a, uh, to a more thin skin laminate, uh, type blade. But, but the inspection methodology is, is more, less the same.

You would do an external inspection to check for lighting damages wearing of, uh, coating. So erosion. Any kind of structural damage in developing over the shell, uh, surfaces. And internally, you would check the bond lines, uh, because even though they’re consolidated, there is still, uh, they, they, they still have a, have a bonding, uh, an in laminate bonding.

So you want to check if that is okay. Um, and you wanna see if there’s any, uh, any defects developing in the shoulder area from breathing or from, or any kind of manufacturing defect. So it’s not that. Not that you will. Yeah. That you will then, you know, set it up and then you can let it run forever without looking at it.

You d do need to do maintenance, [00:09:00] um, but if you do proactive maintenance, you can then, then you, you will detect it in time and you can do more, uh, reactive repairs.

Allen Hall: Yeah. And what’s the difference in repair costs between a integral blade where it’s all cast at one time versus a, a bonded design? Does it tend to be a little less expensive because it’s maybe a little localized than a.

Uh, a bonded type shear web design.

Morten Handberg: Well, if the damage affect multiple parts of shear web and, uh, and beam and shell, it will always be a very extreme, very costly repair, regardless of what, whatever blade type it is. Integral blades, I would say typically will likely be more expensive if you have a structural damage, but that’s just because of the sheer number of flies that will be affected because for a, for a thin skin laminate blade.

While the damage can be, can be much larger, the amount of layers that you need to remove will be less. So I would, I would always, I, I would, I would consider it more likely that the repair costs for, for a, [00:10:00] uh, for adhesive bond line blade to have a lower repair cost for the same type of damage that we see an integral blade.

But the integral plate will more, will, will, will have less of them, and you will also be able to detect them earlier. So the chance of preparing. Is higher on an integral plate is what I would normally that, that, that’s how I would normally, you know, pro think of it.

Allen Hall: Okay. That’s that’s good to know. Can we talk carbon protrusions and knowledge of them because it, it has seemed like over time there was, they were really hot in like the mid two thousands, into the 10 20, 10 20 12, 20 15 ish, and then it kinda went away for a little bit ’cause of the cost and now they’re coming back again because of the links.

It’s really. Important that you know if your blades have carbon in them, correct?

Morten Handberg: Yes. Um, one because, uh, carbon is more rigid, um, than, than than glass fiber. It is, uh, it is, it is multiple the times, multiple times stronger than glass fiber. That’s also why it’s favorable to use, [00:11:00]because you can produce a, a longer blade while, um, minimizing the weight increase that you would have.

Um, so that is a very, uh, that is a very appealing trait to have. The problem with carbon is two things. One, it is a, uh, conducted material, which means that it does, uh, create a, um, a mag, uh, how do you say, magnetic seal, if there’s any kind of, uh. Lightning activity if there’s any static develop, uh, uh, buildup inside the blade.

So that can be, that can cause its own set of problems and something where you have to be very observant of what, what kind of LPS system you have and what, what kind of lightning conditions you have. The second part is. Carbon fiber is so rigid. Then that also means if you have any kind of manufacturing defect, the effect of it is multiplied.

Um, because carbon fiber doesn’t, it doesn’t have the same elasticity. Glass fiber is very forgiving if you have a defect there. While it will develop over time [00:12:00] at some point for a large part of the time, they, because it’s so elastic, the loads they get distributed better. For carbon, it will centralize around the, the manufacturing defect and will just grow.

And once it starts growing, then it will, it will expand rapidly. So that’s also why when we see a, a, um, a blade damage where the defect started in the carbon spot, the the blade is simply just cut off. It’s simply like someone just took. Took a, uh, took a hacksaw and then cut the, the blade, uh, blade, blade section off because the, the, because of the rapid growth of that defect.

Um, so that, that’s sort of the, the trade off, but that’s also why we have to be even more observant. If an OEM is using carbon fiber to reinforce it, that they do NDT off their, um, off their blades before sending ’em out. And they do quality control off the protrusions when they receive them so that the owner doesn’t take over an inherited risk.

So that, I would really say that if you have wind turbines with carbon fiber, [00:13:00] if you’re planning to build them. You should make sure that there, that NDT is done, because you cannot verify this by visual. It’s, you know, if you can see them, that’s great, but it, it’s not a guarantee that there is nothing there.

Um, and the amount of defect that we see out there that does suggest that this is, this is not a, uh, a nice to have. It’s an absolute must to, must, must do to do NDT.

Allen Hall: Yeah, the carbon protrusions, if you looked at that process, it’s not a easy process, but they’re trying to orient the fiber in one direction all the time, and even slight variations can reduce the strength inside the protrusion.

So it becomes critical that the quality of the protrusion is good and, and the reason they. Make protrusions is to lower the cost. So the protrusion itself is really set into this fiberglass shell. So you’re really, you have merging two technologies together, which always doesn’t always work as well as you would want it to work.

But it has gotten, at least in my opinion, Morgan, and that’s why I’m asking you. Has it gotten better over time that we’ve gotten used to using [00:14:00]protrusions and are better at and applying them and in and maintaining them? At this point?

Morten Handberg: I think the OEMs are really good at using them in designs. I think they’ve done a really good job at using, utilizing the carbon fiber to its maximum potential, uh, to build blades that are plus a hundred meters.

Uh, what we have to be make sure is that whatever we then do in manufacturing quality control, operation maintenance. That adheres to the, to the same standard that would apply in design. So, you know, that that’s sort of the, that, that, that’s sort of the crux of it. Because if you, if you, if you design something perfect and then you have more, you know, how do you say it more, you know, less, uh, pristine approach to when you’re manufacturing or when you’re servicing it, then you know it, then it causes problem down, problems down the line.

Um, because. It will need maintenance, it will need very strict project control. So that’s why we have to be very vigilant.

Allen Hall: And I wanna talk about the difference between box beams and sort of standard [00:15:00] share. Web I beams, I’ll call ’em, that we typically see a lot more of today. There’s a number of blades, particularly early on that were box beam.

And when I talk to operators of these terms that have box beams and I say, Hey, do you have a box beam? I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know. Uh, but those blades act uniquely different than sort of the blades we’re buying today, right?

Morten Handberg: Well, the B Beam is still in production. You can still acquire a turbine with a box beam in it.

It’s a, uh, it’s a investor design. It’s something that they invented, that they’ve used for ages, uh, decades. Uh, uh, think that goes all the way back to some of the first way business space. So it’s a very, uh, it’s, it’s a very strong design that they’ve utilized for, for. For the history of Vestas. Um, and it was originally a carbon based spark cap in a box beam.

There was a, it was a closed square that was a elongated. So, um, and then narrowing as you get further to the tip, uh, and then later on with the B [00:16:00] 90, they introduced carbon fiber protrusions instead of glass cyber in it to make it stronger and also enable building longer blades, but while keeping the low weight, because that’s really where they won a lot, is that they could keep extremely low blade weights.

And thereby very light turbines. Uh. While still, uh, uh, uh, how do you say producing, uh, having the same rated power as an equivalent turbine from any other m So that was really a, a, a, a unique design that this they had or have. Um, so the, if you want to know, if you have a box beam blade or an SST blade, you simply just have to look inside the plate.

It’s very easy. Uh, if you have a bucketing plate, all you will see is a, is a, is a square. Um, where at and, and you know, at, at a large tunnel and nothing else, if you have an I-beam with one or two share webs, if you look inside the blade, you will see, see these two share webs, but you also see the chamber and the trailing edge.

And in the leading edge. And that’s because it’s an open design. [00:17:00] So it’s actually very easy to detect if you have one or the other. But they’re very different from each other, uh, in a lot of other senses. Um, the. The box beam design is inherently non-structural shells. The, the blade shells are really, really thin, also very easy to repair because they’re so thin, but they’re very thin because the, all the loads is taken up by the box beam.

For the SST or the eye beam design, the loads are, while still thin skin relative is taken up more load. But, and, and in the design, they’re considered as being part of the load carrying structure. So you have to be more observant of maintaining the shell structure as well as the, as as the, the, how do you say, the low carrying structure on an, on an, uh, SST or I beam Blade.

Then you had to on a, on a box beam. And a good example of this is that you sometimes see that blade shields coming apart, coming apart on, um, on, on, on blade damages. And what is unique for [00:18:00] the i, for, for the box beam is that the box beam will just stay in place. It doesn’t it? It’s. Basically the, the turbine doesn’t seem, seem to care if it’s there or not.

It will just continue operating. Uh, so, so you can have, uh, shells, uh, part of the shell missing for a period of time. And the you, they only notice because, you know, you look up and then, hey, part of the, part of the blades look like it is looking like a, like a pine cone, a squirrel chew that, uh, because the part of the, the, uh, the shelves are missing and it, it’s quite weird.

Um, but, but that, that is how it is.

Allen Hall: Box beams. SST, that all makes sense to me. Uh, one of the things that we’re running into more recently is as blades get longer and the costs go up and the risk goes up along with it, as the blades get longer, of course, uh, there’s there’s much more instrumentation going on to the blades in the manufacturing process.

So now we’re seeing. Uh, thermal couples being applied during the manufacturing process to verify that [00:19:00] everything is cured out properly, which is a wonderful thing to do, honestly, in the manufacturing area, but. If they’re not removed, and I think more recently we have seen some thermocouples left in blades.

It can become a problem later on in life.

Morten Handberg: Well, I mean, uh, it’s actually something that’s been used for, for quite a while. It is, uh, thermocouples is something you would use to verify that your adhesive have seen the right curing temperature to make sure that it has the right mechanical properties. Which makes a lot of sense.

Um, obviously, you know, as an electrical engineers, you are, you know, you, you would know that, you know any, any, uh, conductive material. Whenever ex uh, and lighting expert, then when exposed to a lightning current will start to generate its own ma own magnetic fields that will, uh, that will on its own, uh, create a potential problem because then the, um, then, then they will start to react with each other.

And that can cause, um, that can cause risk of flashover, uh, it can cause lighting attachment [00:20:00] on its own. And that really applies to any kind of conductive component that you would have in your plate. Including your carbon beams. Uh, it’s not something that is unique for, for cabling inside the blades. It’s actually also something that if you have sense installation that you have to be very concerned about, you know, if you’re installing it.

How will it then, you know, react with the LPS system so that your census don’t start to become a flashover points that you introduce that. So that’s something that typically, uh, especially OEMs, they’re very concerned about, uh, that how will it interact with the LPS system and how will it interact with their carbon reinforcement?

And I think that’s fair. Um, how widespread an issue it is that we see flashover, I don’t know that many cases, but again. We don’t want to just install a lot and then find out there was a problem later on. You know, that’s really what we as an industry cloud should start to move away from. So I think there’s lot of good sense if you want, you know, I’m a big proponent for condition monitoring, but I [00:21:00] also am a big opponent that we need to verify things and understand the risk before starting to instrument their left and right.

Um. And for carbon fiber, fiber blades, you know, if they’re not integrated into the LPS system, that means that then they will, they will have their, they, they will create, create their own magnetic field during a lightning search. And that can then cause flash overs that we’ve seen with some, uh, historic and some, uh, current.

Models. Um, but the problem is, is is there for any carbon blade if the LPS system is not designed with intent, that to handle any, um, any lightning issues in, in the carbon fibers.

Allen Hall: And I think it gets down to inspection and regimes and timing depending on what is inside of your blade or, and even how it’s constructed.

In my opinion. I think what I see from operators is based upon their knowledge of what is happening in the blade. They’ll, uh, add a internal rover or drone, not internal, maybe sometimes internal drone, but usually a rover, [00:22:00] uh, will go inside the blade and start taking pictures. That has become more prevalent, I’d say in the last two years where you hear of full campaigns, and I know down in Brazil, earth, wind does them all the time down in Brazil because the, they have a capacity factor over 50%, so the blades are really getting used.

Those internal inspections have been eye-opening in, in terms of. Detecting problems early, and is that, is that where we’re headed right now is that we just need to know visually what’s going on more because the, the blade variations, OEM to OEM and factory to factory, that we just need to have a little more monitoring for a while until we get into an alignment.

Morten Handberg: I think that inspections is a symptom of not having the right tools to, to monitor. Not wanting the right tools to monitor because if we had condition monitoring and every blade, and every blade was fitted at with it from birth, we would know a lot more about what’s going on in the blades from day one.

And that will also mean that we would know if [00:23:00] two or three or five blades in a, in a 15, uh, turbine wind farm had problems we could focus on inspection regime on that. So, but right now, because we don’t have that, then we need to, to roll out a very large, very complex, uh, inspection regimes that takes a lot of downtime, is very expensive because we don’t have the necessary dataset to, to, uh, to, to determine accurately which turbines are actually at risk.

So I think it’s more of a symptom of, of the need for, for, for CMS. Um, I’m not, I’m not have nothing against rovers. I think they’re great for what they do, but I would prefer that we use them for these specific issues instead of having it as a, as a, as a major rollout over the entire wind farm.

Allen Hall: Oh, I, I agree with you there.

I think CMS is getting utilized more and more and more, and, and in fact, uh, as we talked to operators this year, because of, of rule changes in the United States, a lot of operators in the United States are now moving to a CMS system that they previously probably wouldn’t have done, [00:24:00] uh, because of the lifetime of the blade.

Right. So that, that’s something that I think. Uh, Denmark and Europe has done so much better. And Morton, you’re in the middle of all that, being based in Denmark, that CMS is a way of life, uh, on a lot of turbines in Europe and, but in the States and other places, even Australia, it, it may not be that widely used.

Morten Handberg: Well, I would say for the Australian market where we’ve done some work, they are, uh, very positive towards CMS and we know, we know quite a few operators that are actively either looking into it or looking at it from the, from day one in their wind farms. Uh, operators in Europe, I would say we we’re still not there yet.

Owners, there are some owners that are installing it, um, actively. It’s not something that, you know, we’re not seeing on the majority of the wind farm shed. It’s not, it’s not commonplace. It’s still, I would say, compared to the amount of turbines we have, it’s still a novelty. So our, I’m, I’m still, I’m, it’s still one of my, uh, my, uh, month, uh, how do you say my, uh, catchphrases [00:25:00] when I come out to onus and we’re talking about the problems, is that, you know, you can hand your blood damages, uh, on X, Y, and z.

You know, going forward, if you want to catch ’em early on or you want to understand them better, how they affect your blade, you need to look into CMS. Um, and again, it’s, there are a lot of good CMS options out there. A lot of them have actually been, been verified and, uh. I would say, you know, some higher tier systems, they make a lot of sense.

They give you a lot more data, but it’s, you know, something is better than nothing. I would say, let’s get some data in, let’s get started on the process. Let’s get some learnings, and then we can develop the technology. If we’re always waiting for the perfect system, then we’ll never get anywhere.

Allen Hall: I’m gonna bring up zero defects because I think this is all headed towards zero defects and we’ve, we’ve talked to a number of operators in the last six months who say to themselves.

In my, uh, TSA, I had a serial defect clause, but we missed the window opportunity. Usually it’s a year or two and you have to show a certain percentage. It’s like 25% have this [00:26:00] problem. If you’re not measuring a turbine or blade or anything on your, you will never figure out if you have a serial defect, and, and particularly if you don’t know what the architecture of each blade is, you won’t be able to connect the dots of these blades made at a particular factory, have this issue.

CMS becomes really vital in, in that aspect. As we’re putting billions of dollars into a farm, the value return is very high.

Morten Handberg: Yes, I would say so. The problem is that for a lot of operators then the operational margins, they’re very low. So if you don’t get it installed, uh, during CapEx, then to find budget for it during oex is something that’s really, is really hurting.

Uh, the budget and, and, and, you know, with elec the electricity prices in a lot of places being really low, then there might be a need for it, but it’s really difficult for to, to find a, a budget for it, that, that can then send that investment unless there is some really something really critical where it says it’s a do or die [00:27:00] thing.

Um. So, so I would, I would agree with you, yes. For, you know, it’s something that can help us identify if there is, uh, serial issues, because then the defect will develop and, you know, even if there is a serial issue, it can help us prevent the worst case scenario that the, that we see blade collapses, blades being replaced.

So, so there’s a lot of, you know, downstream, uh, um, advantages of, uh, of installing CMS and I, I truly believe that it will help us with the green transition as well, because as you know, with the number of blades that we’re replacing right now, you know, you know, scrapping blades is not green transition. If we can prolong lives, if we can repair them in, in, in due time, that’s how we get to, to, uh, to a green transition where the, where wind industry becomes profitable and affordable and where it’s, it, you don’t create an issue for some part of the industries, uh, because it’s a big problem for owners.

It’s a big problem for insurance [00:28:00] companies that we see this big turnover of blades because of, of catastrophic damages. So more, the more we can do to prolong life of blades. Prevent damages from happening or capture damages early on, and then get them repaired, will, will really help that, uh, uh, that move moving forward.

Allen Hall: Wow. That’s why we love having you on Morton because you can explain the complex and simple terms, and I think you’re right. You, you’re moving the industry. Uh, you’re recommendations are, are being heard by operators and by OEMs. I think. The industry is changing, and that’s great to hear. Morton, how do people get ahold of you?

Is it best to reach you on LinkedIn?

Morten Handberg: Well, either LinkedIn or you can also reach me on my, um, on my company email, MEH, at wind power app.com. Uh, that, that would be the, the far easiest way to get in. Hold me to, uh, uh, uh, where we can discuss any kind of late issues you might have. Always happy to, to support any owners or insurance insurers.

Allen Hall: More than I love having you on. We gotta have you on sooner next time and, and keep talking to these issues because a lot of [00:29:00] operators are struggling and there’s so much technology being applied to blades. We need to have you back on pretty soon.

Morten Handberg: Absolutely. I would love to be on to, uh, uh, to, to explain more complex issues and to puncture more, more myths.

Let, let’s do it.

https://weatherguardwind.com/blade-morten-handberg/

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ECO TLP Brings Concrete Foundations to Floating Wind

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ECO TLP Brings Concrete Foundations to Floating Wind

Nicole Johnson Murphy, CEO of ECO TLP, and Gordon Jackson join to discuss concrete floating wind foundations, production-line construction, and markets from Hawaii to Japan.

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: Offshore wind obviously is a big deal right now. There’s a lot of, uh, countries looking at it and investigating it, doing it, uh, but not really at scale yet. And this is where ECO TLP comes in and. Nicole, let’s just start there with a background. What problem were you trying to solve when you started Eco TLP?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah, so, so we were designing for, uh, a site off of Hawaii in 2011, uh, for the Hico RFP. And so we were designing for 300 meter water depth from the beginning. Um, so we were always trying to find a way to work with the ports, with the vessel, with the infrastructure that was existing off Hawaii. And with, and that worked with Jones Act vessels.

So we were always trying to meet that [00:01:00] requirement with, you know, and meet the cost, try to, we saw there were much tighter margins in offshore wind than in oil and gas, for example, at that water depth. So we’re trying to find something that was cost effective.

Allen Hall: Next question, obviously is what makes those deep water foundations so difficult?

Gordon Jackson: Well, it’s the water depth, uh, primarily, um, you know, uh, you need to put foundations down in, uh, extremely deep water. Um, and they’re gonna be pretty flexible. Um, so you’re trying to control the, the amount of motion that you get at the surface through your, uh, uh, you know, your deep water, uh, facility. So, um, it’s really.

Really that challenge, you know, and, uh, you know, the weight of components through the water depth, like, um, you know, likes of chain would be completely impossible. Um, in 300 meters of water. Uh, you need to use something that’s a little bit lighter. Yeah, to mow you to the, uh, to the seabed

Allen Hall: [00:02:00] because it does seem a little odd just not to make the foundations taller, basically.

More steel drive it down in, we know that process, we understand that process. It works offshore, uh, near shore in a, in a lot of locations. But once you get to what depth as it becomes financially or engineering wise, impossible

Gordon Jackson: for offshore wind, fixed, fixed structures in, I mean, maybe a hundred meters of water are gonna be.

Economic. Um, but you know, they’ll be costly compared to what’s been done now because, uh, you know, of all the extra structure you need for the, uh, for the deeper water. But, uh, I think you’ll see, you know, a crossover between fixed and floating, you know, around the, um, you know, 70 to a hundred meter water mark.

You know, that’s sort the range.

Allen Hall: Well, and that leads to the next question, which is. It’s all financial, right? At some point, the numbers [00:03:00] don’t work. If the cost of foundations don’t come down, especially in fixed bottom offshore or floating offshore, we lose a lot of offshore wind resource. Uh, Nicole can, can you gimme a scale at what we’re missing if we don’t get to a more economical solution for floating offshore?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: So we’ve estimated for our market for, um, a very deep water market. So we, we now actually have a, a solution that goes across all water depths. So we’re starting with, um, you know, this, this gravity based structure now with, and, and Gordon’s team has been really involved in that, uh, development. And then now we can take that same slip form, concrete cylinder.

Format and take it across all the water depths. So, so we basically can hit every water depth now for a very low cost. It’s a very simple, just, you know, local, regionally designed and built, uh, system. We, we crowdsource the labor and the inputs. Um, and so we [00:04:00] try to, and we also try to give the procurement team of our clients their, you know, an ability to do their job and, and be able to bid out aspects of our design, um, across.

Different vendors. So you always wanna give, in construction, you always wanna give, uh, the procurement team a job to do so they can actually get that price, keep that price down on the installation.

Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s a unique look that eco TOP is putting to this problem. Which is moving away from steel, which is expensive obviously, and it’s sort of difficult to transport at times to a more localized solution, which is concrete.

And thinking about the problem a little bit differently, does that open up a number of doors then in terms of the countries that can get involved in, in floating or near shore, uh, wind projects, but just because you’re driving the cost down?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Absolutely. And I’ll let Gordon speak to the ax. He’s worked. His whole career in offshore concrete.

But I think it’s, I think it’s a, it’s a great, it’s the only way we would do it. We actually have shipyards in our companies, our partners own [00:05:00]shipyards, and we, we just would never probably ex try to try to create this many units across the world and scale and steel. We’d only do concrete.

Gordon Jackson: Yeah. My first concrete project sort of broke the mold of how you do, uh, construction of concrete offshore structures.

Uh, it was entirely built within a dry dock and, uh. After we’d gone on and delivered that project, um, that was in the late eighties. I spent the next 10 years, uh, working on projects all around the world, looking at doing the same sort of thing in different countries. Um, because you, you only needed, you know, 10, 12 meters of water, um, at the shore and you could, um, build a structure and um, you know, get it out there in the water.

Um. It really opened up the market for, for offshore concrete structures that, uh, that, uh, first project that we did.

Allen Hall: So using that first project as leverage and knowledge of how to do these things, how much advantage [00:06:00] does concrete give you over steel?

Gordon Jackson: It, it’s difficult to say because it bends country to country.

Um, and, um, you know, quite often you’re competing against, um, you know, steel built in some, uh, very low cost fabrication countries. Um, so if you’re in a high cost, you know, high labor cost country, like, you know, I worked in Australia, um, and um, you know, the labor cost there was extremely high. So concrete wasn’t particularly cheap, but the overall solutions that we came up with, um, were cheap.

You know?

Allen Hall: So does that involve basically like slip forms or how are you, how are you thinking about that problem? Because it’s a huge engineering task and you only learn. By doing it on some level because all great plans, uh, always run into trouble as soon as you try to implement them. So you took all that previous knowledge and then applied it to this problem, and now you have, uh, uh, basically [00:07:00] trimmed or, or slimmed, uh, the design down into, you have a, a very economical model, even in more uneconomical economies because of labor laws and cost of labor and access and those kind of things.

What does that look like now? And what’s your thought process on, Hey, this is what it’s gonna look like? Can we get, uh, keyside, how do we do this and how do we keep this thing simple?

Gordon Jackson: Uh, well the key thing is we’re looking at, uh, a production line approach, which has been, you know, it’s tried and tested for, um, for marine, for marine concrete construction, you know, construction of key walls and um, and you know, the like, um, we’re using exactly that same system.

We’ve just been tried and tested to create a production line of, um, eco TLP units or eco GBS units where we’re building, you know, onshore and where we’re going from station to station, doing a task at each station. [00:08:00] So it’s exactly like a production line, um, you know, that you’re be familiar with and, you know, you load out the completed structure onto a, a barge, um, and then you.

Submerge that barge and your structure floats off and that’s, that’s the real key to getting the, uh, the economy from the, the concrete basis.

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah, and I’ll say that the opex is really something we focus a lot on because it’s, it’s not just what you’re doing on the CapEx and the development and the port, it’s actually that 30 year lifetime maintenance.

And this is a, when you, we fully submerge our floater, which is basically inert in the ocean. It’s, it’s very eco-friendly with the ocean. There’s no paint, there’s no, you know, maintenance on the floater over the lifespan. You’re, you’re monitoring those, the moorings and the, the weight of any marine, you know, buildup on those moorings and things like that.

But generally it’s a very low maintenance solution and it’s very heavy and kind of like a comfortable car [00:09:00] ride for the turbine. It, it really has slow motions. It, it’s, um, almost like a, you know, a high skyscraper in the water. You know, you’re just the top of that skyscraper is moving a little bit. But you’re, um, you’re really giving it that comfortable, slow ride over its lifetime.

It’s not hitting a lot of turbulence, like a, a different type of odor.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It is a different concept, really, right? That you have this mass at the bottom and you have this mass at the top, which is the, the cell on the wind turbine. And if you can design it just right, everything dampens becomes stable.

Even in turbulent water. How long did it take you to figure out that aspect of the design? Because it does seem like a lot of projects hit a, an end point right there because the motion of the turbine is not good for the lifetime of the turbine.

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: We, we look at it as a, a kind of hybrid spar, CLP, so, so the original design came from my late father who was, who had designed echo fis for children’s [00:10:00] petroleum in the early.

Uh, late sixties, I guess. And, um, so he’d come from oil and gas and he’d come from that concrete, uh, construction background. And, and he is very comfortable with it. And I think, um, Gordon, that’s part of why I like working with Gordon. ’cause Gordon has that same, uh, sort of long-term view on, on these construction principles.

Um,

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: and I think that, that what we saw though is the margins are so different from oil and gas, and so you have to have almost a poor man’s TLP is what we would call it because it’s. It’s gotta be a very simple version of A TLP that can roll out in mass quantities. And, and as you know, coming up with a company that, you know, business plan, you’d wanna be able to, to really scale the business.

And so we had to come up with something that you can make. In different parts of the world at the same time, you’re not tied to one shipyard or one construction.

Allen Hall: Well, even in terms of ship usage, you’re going to reduce the size of the ship considerably. You’re not using big dedicated ships that are really [00:11:00] expensive to operate or to keep in the area, even just to have them there as a lot of money.

You’re thinking about, uh, a different design in terms of. Simple ships that you can find locally. How much does that really lower the cost of deployment?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Quite a lot actually. I, I mean, it depends on, you know, so the other, there’s this other, other aspect of installing the wind turbine on the foundation. So we have this fixed to fixed platform concept where you come further, a little bit further offshore and, and give you that, that draft depth that we need.

And then we have a fixed platform that just stays in place and, and we bring the turbines to it and, and float them out. It’s all a self floating. Unit, whether it’s the GBS that, um, Gordon’s been working with us and or the eco TLP. So we, so we we’re really independent of those large vessels. Um, for the most part, you know, we’re, we’re really try and then you, once you install the turbine, you can tow the entire unit out with two tugs.

Two to three tugs.

Allen Hall: That’s remarkable. So essentially because you [00:12:00] used, uh, a basic. Uh, Henry Ford type process to, to create these foundations and to think about the problem differently. Not only can you deploy it, uh, easier than a lot of things we’re doing right now on top of it, it works over a variety of depths and I think that’s a the hard thing for people to grasp because when we talk about offshore particularly start getting off the continental shelves here, you’re talking about.

More than a hundred meters typically of water. But you also have a, the gravity based system and the TLP system are all sort of interconnected into the basic philosophy. Can you, can you explain like the, the, the backbone of how that engineering works?

Gordon Jackson: Uh, well it’s essentially, it’s, um, we’re using the same structural form in both, both fixed and floating.

It’s, it’s basically, it’s two cylinders, uh, you know, one inside the other. A little bit of structure, which joins the two cylinders together. Um, that’s it.

Allen Hall: Gord, you make it sound so simple, but the, the [00:13:00]engineering is complicated to get to that point. And once you get to that level of, oh, that design actually works in a variety of depths, that opens up your customer base quite a bit.

Have you had inquiries from sort of nearshore people? Or fixed bottom people thinking like, whoa, I could actually save myself a bunch of time and money, which is the, the real limiting factor on offshore wind at the moment. Are you starting to see some momentum there that, uh, operators, developers are starting to rethink this problem and not just do what they did last week?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Absolutely. I mean, one of the ways we came about the g you know, taking the Ecot P and transforming it to the eco GBS was, was recommended by a client, was, you know, that was their, their ask actions. That’s, that’s always the best way to start. A product development cycle because, you know, somebody’s interested.

Um, and I think, you know, and part of the reason I found Gordon to work with early on in our, um, the life of our company is, is his background in, in GBS development. He did, he developed the gravitas, uh, GBS [00:14:00] 10 years ago. So I think we, we got lucky that our, uh, civil structural engineering partner with AUP was, was already really comfortable with, you know, looking at this.

Allen Hall: Um,

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: so I think that’s, that’s part of, you know, you always want the clients to be interested, you know, before you start investing. You know, you don’t wanna design a product that’s in your head or your, you know, in your, in your company lunchroom without a real ask for it.

Allen Hall: Right? And I, I think also you have a, once you have the engineering pretty well done and.

Obviously do now you’re trying to touch a number of countries and every culture has its own way of, of one of the construction business to do it slightly differently. South Korea does it different than Scotland, for example. You are working across cultures and trying to make the the same design. Uh, apply to all those different areas.

Are, have you learned [00:15:00] some things from that? Is it, are you able to basically set the same assembly line in every place? Or, or are there different, different kinds of concrete, different kinds of access, different kinds of ports that you have to deal with? What are those variables there that, that change the way you do business?

Gordon Jackson: All the characteristics, ports are, uh, you know, obviously different. Um, but you know, really you just need space. Um. And access to reasonably deep water. Um, you know, from, from that, uh, from that space. And, uh, you know, it can get surprisingly difficult to find that, um, certainly in the UK and, uh, you know, in Northern Europe, people wanna build marines and, uh, waterfront living, uh, rather than having, uh, you know, an industrial facility, uh, you know, on the doorsteps.

So, you know, in, you know, developed countries. Um. It can be hard to find that space. But, um, you know, in some, some parts of the world, you know, there’s lots of [00:16:00] space, um, available. Um, some good port facilities that can be, can be utilized. Uh, and then it’s just in, in all civil engineering works, you know, um, you go to do the job, you go wherever the job is, you mobilize there.

Um. You know, you put in the systems, uh, and equipment that you need to build, build a structure, and then normally you go away at the end of the job, you know, you hand it over to the client. Um, you know what, what, um, what would be good here is if we could set up some regional centers where you’ve done the, done the investment in the yard, um, and then you can, uh, you can amortize those costs of development over a number of projects.

Then you should start to see, uh, you know, real, real good cost savings.

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Just one thing, you know, our footprint of our, of our cylinders is about a third of the footprint of a semi sub, for example. So, [00:17:00] so our footprint on the land port is very small.

Allen Hall: Well, I think that makes sense because if you watch the fixed bottom projects, particularly in the United States.

The first thing they had to do is rebuild the ports. The ports weren’t set for the scale and so they needed to expand the ports. That means you have to acquire land, you’ve gotta develop it. There’s a lot of processes involved. ’cause you’re talking about city, state, and federal government being involved.

Obviously federal in the United States is a problem. Uh, so just getting the port developed was a huge process for. Fixed bottom. You’re thinking about that differently though, because the, the reduced amount of space, the, uh, you don’t have to be in a huge industrial area, but all obviously it would be nice, but you do run against that problem.

Are you thinking, uh, when you talk about regional centers, are you thinking kind of Mediterranean, west Coast, us, Australia, one in Japan? How do you think about that problem? Because. [00:18:00] Once you get a a site established, it does seem like because of the, how fast you can move these things around that it’ll become a pretty good job center for a lot of people.

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: Yeah. There’s a long-term maintenance, you know, crew that needs to be developed while we build these. Um, yeah, I think, I think, you know, it’s been a moving target of what’s really gonna develop in offshore wind. It’s like Lucy and Charlie Brown with football. I think we, we constantly try to, you know, get lined up to, to kick football and then it falls.

It’s more of the developers I, I feel for on that ’cause they’re these investing tremendous amount of money for these, these development sites. Um, so, you know, we are open to any, you know, we’ve been, we’ve looked at, um, some developers are looking at steel production and concrete production, you know, two different reports servicing.

An array and we’re really flexible. It doesn’t, doesn’t matter. When we first started on that Hawaii project, we were gonna do floating pla, you know, floating, um, [00:19:00] barges to slipform. And, and we talked about that with Arab. Some still this floating dock idea and, and submerging that dock. And it’s just a matter of finding the right, uh, a large enough, um, dock for that type of, so then you’re not even using the land base port.

You’re learn, you’re using kind of just to. Maybe a 400 foot frontage on the, on the, along the port.

Allen Hall: Well, that’s amazingly small, right? Because if you look at some of these ports right now that are doing, uh, fixed bottom offshore, they’re massive, they’re huge sites. You’re talking about something roughly a 10th of the scale to get the same end result, which is turbines in the water

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: for our part of it.

I mean, we still, you still have the components and, and those are, that’s a, it’s another logistical challenge, and so I understand why the ports are. Looking at a lot more lay down space and things, but you know, maybe at a certain point these components are so large that they just stay on a vessel and they, and we, we take them off of a vessel directly and load them in.

Allen Hall: Yeah, I think that’s one of the, the considerations [00:20:00] is do you really tie it to land in, in terms of needing a, a massive amount of space, acres of space, thousands of square meters of space. Do you need that or is this, or can you do it much more efficiently because that overhead adds up over time. Not only are you trying to save on, on the ships and the, especially the dedicated ships, you’re also looking at smaller footprints on shore and doing it a lot more economically.

What does that future look like now, because it does seem like we’re at a precipice where floating wind is no longer just being discussed. In theory, it’s, it’s going to be implemented. What are those next steps here for Eco TLP?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: So next week we’re headed to Tokyo, to Japan for the wind. Expo and, um, Eric is also presenting at the Asia Wind Offshore Show.

Um, I think we’re, you know, we’re, we’re good to learn. I mean, there’s just so much to learn about each culture, and I think this is something that, you know, Gordon and I’ve talked about in terms of these international [00:21:00] projects, you’ve, you’ve gotta understand your culture that you’re moving into and you’ve gotta understand how to mediate across those different companies that come in.

Our company has seven different. Countries represented in our team. So right now, so, so we’re, we’re a US company, but we’re barely, you know, we’re just kind of by name, but I think most of our team members are, are not in the us and, and that’s international collaboration is something, um, I, I really, I really loved working on it.

And I think, so when we go to Japan next week, it’s really mainly just to learn. You know, we don’t. We have a lot to learn about Japan, and, and that’s what’s fun about each of these, these regions.

Gordon Jackson: And that’s where we can help because, uh, you know, we’ve got a presence in Japan. We’ve been doing offshore wind in Japan, so we’re there, we’re there to help eight to eco TLP with our, those little contacts and uh, you know, h do business, uh, uh, in Japan and things like that.

So, you know, [00:22:00] we have a big international network, so you know, it can help. Some, uh, in some areas, you know, open some doors and, uh, forge some, uh, some friendships between, uh, count companies.

Allen Hall: Courtney did a big project out in Perth, Australia, which is a difficult place, right. Australia is a very difficult place to manufacture things.

What are some of the lessons learned and and what was that process like?

Gordon Jackson: So he had a, a client, uh, a very small client who was prepared to. Seed responsibility for delivering his project to a, to a team, an alliance team. Uh, and he just, um, interviewed a number of teams and, uh, we were lucky enough to be selected, uh, as the team to deliver their project.

There was no tendering, uh, it was just done on, you know, how the, how the client felt about the, the individuals that he met. Um, and that, that was [00:23:00] very new to me. Um, and, um, the whole project was delivered, uh, by companies from the uk, from from Australia, from Singapore, uh, from be Netherlands, you know, the Marine, uh, the marine, uh, vessels.

You know, a lot of ’em are coming from, uh, from, uh, Northern Europe, uh, even though you’re in Australia. Um, and, um, you know, every company wants to do things differently and they all want to look after their interests, but the big thing about this alliance project was that, uh, you were, you were focused on one particular project and we were, um, we were coached and, and facilitated, and trained to, um, to throw away our, you know, our company affiliations and work together.

And, uh, you know, to collaborate together. And, um, [00:24:00] you know, we’re all working towards the, the end goal of delivering a particular product. And I think that’s, I think it’s got a lot of, um, lot of potential to be used in the offshore wind sector. This, this was, uh, you know, uh, an oil platform that we were gonna build on the, uh, the northwest shelf of Australia, um, which happened to be built in concrete, um, because the client.

The client came to us with a, with a, a notion of, of doing something in concrete, um, which we, we took his idea, uh, decided we could do something a little bit cheaper and more straightforward and, um, you know, went on to deliver it. We were given the opportunity to deliver it. And, uh, yeah, I, it was my best project.

Uh, it was a tremendous experience for all the companies involved. And you know, everyone made money so everyone’s happy.

Allen Hall: That is difficult, right? You, you do see on these offshore projects, people coming from around the world to [00:25:00] work on this one big effort, a lot of money, and at times, thousands of people involved.

You see companies stu stumble there, uh, obviously because you’re trying to tie cultures, you’re trying to tie companies together, but at the end of the day, you have to get this project done. Are, are there some top level lessons learned from that of, of how to bridge those differences?

Gordon Jackson: Well, I did another project, uh, this was a, a steel project, um, where we had a, a US oil company.

Uh, and, um. The successful contractor was Hyundai in Korea. And they said to, said to me over the course of the project,

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: uh,

Gordon Jackson: we always lose money with, um, with American oil companies. You know, why, why are we doing business with them? Uh, and it, and it all came down to the, you know, the, the approach to the [00:26:00]contract.

You know, um, Hyundai used to. Working in a more collaborative way with our clients, whereas, you know, this project, you know, this is what the contract says, this is what you’ve taken on to do, you know, there’s no negotiation, you know, you’ll do it and that’s how much money you’re getting. And, uh, you know, um, but they find that very difficult.

And, uh, it was at the time when they were sort of opening up their business more internationally. Um, and I think it was a big learning experience for them. Um. So, yeah. Um, I think a lot of the offshore wind tried to follow the same path and, um, yeah, I think more collaborative working is to be encouraged for me.

Um, you know, more talking to each other and negotiating rather than, uh, you know, imposs.

Allen Hall: Where should developers go to find out more about Eco TLP? [00:27:00] Because you have a gravity based system. You got attention lake platform, there’s a, there’s a lot inside of the company. What’s the first stop? Should they visit your website?

Should they connect with you on LinkedIn? Where do they go?

Nicole Johnson-Murphy: The LinkedIn where website is great.

Allen Hall: So go visit Eco TLP. It’s E-C-O-T-L-P. Com, Nicole and Gordon, this has been a great discussion. I’ve learned a lot. It’s very exciting because I think you’re on the precipice of something great. So thank you for joining me today.

Gordon Jackson: Thank you. Thank you.

ECO TLP Brings Concrete Foundations to Floating Wind

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