Weather Guard Lightning Tech
The Perfect Gift for Wind Industry Friends: “Where the Wind Takes You”
Allen and Joel chat with Alex Pucacco, an engineer in the wind industry, about his new book, “Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer”. The book shares real-life stories and anecdotes from Alex’s 10+ years working as a wind turbine technician and engineer, set in the days of the “Wild West” in wind. It follows an apprentice wind tech named Aaron as he tries to get experience in the industry. Each chapter features trips to different wind farms around the world where Aaron encounters colorful characters and gets into humorous scrapes and mishaps while working on turbines. Tales of issues like missing tools, breaking down vehicles, and adventures at local hotels highlight the lifestyle of constantly traveling techs. If you’re looking for a holiday gift for your wind industry friends, this is it!
Buy the book!
Alex’s Website: https://windyproductions.com/product/where-the-wind-takes-you/
Amazon: https://a.co/d/9xiMHLN
Allen Hall: Our guest is author Alex Pucacco. Alex is based in Nottingham, England, and is an engineer by training, working in the wind industry since 2011. Alex is the author of a brand new book about being a wind turbine technician and engineer. It’s called “Where the Wind Takes You: Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer”.
Alex, welcome to the program.
Alex Pucacco: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Allen Hall: So there’s very few books about being a wind turbine technician or engineer in the field. Yours is interesting because it’s based on real life experiences. And I know you’ve changed the names to protect the innocent quote unquote, innocent, right?
It’s, but it’s really based upon on some level, your interactions and working in winds, you’ve been in wind over 10 years. And you went through some of the, what I would call early times in wind, when wind started to become big. And Scotland and it looks like most, mostly Scotland early on, at least some of the book is about that.
I want to hear some of the details, like how did you get into wind? Why did you get into wind? What was some of those early experiences because there’s a that at that time it was a difficult industry to get into.
Alex Pucacco: It was and I think it still is to a degree and as I would say it’s better to be lucky than smart. I did I wouldn’t say mine is a conventional route. And I think since releasing the book a lot of people have approached me to ask desperate to get into wind, what’s the best way? So I guess in repayment for that I have I’m putting together an article at the moment to help young people get into wind because it is very competitive and difficult despite us crying out for more technicians. So yeah, I did a engineering degree at the University of Nottingham, which was completely useless.
Didn’t pick up a spanner in the entire time. Graduated into a recession ended up working for a small UK manufacturer of off grid wind turbines, the tiny ones on the back of boats. Did a bit of residential solar for a bit, and then I went to California Wind Tech, which was like a two month course they did in California, just as an introduction to electrical and hydraulic schematic reading, and then I got a real lucky break.
I applied for a salesy operations job, which was a real sort of dog’s body type role. And they gave me a chance at a wind turbine gearbox consultancy that was just starting up in wind. A load of people had left on maternity leave. We didn’t have enough people. And, we had more work than we could deal with.
So very often there’d be a shout around the office, who wants to go to Australia, America, Scotland, to do whatever job it was, main bearing inspection, portable vibration demonstration, something like that. Stick my hand up. Yeah, I’ll go. Get yourself booked. You travel. Off you go. And that was it.
You were gone for two, three weeks. And it was fantastic. I was very lucky.
Joel Saxum: So this must have been before kids and wife, right?
Alex Pucacco: Yes, this was yeah, this was very much before B. C., as they say, before children. So I’ve got two young kids now. So those days of carefree travel without permission slips, signed, sealed and delivered very much before that time.
But I think that’s true of a lot of people’s experiences within wind is that especially if they work for OEMs, where they do a lot of travel, the story of the traveling technician is a very frequent one. And how they progress into sort of working at a particular wind farm or getting two feet across where they get employed by the wind farm owner.
So it’s a fairly familiar journey, and then they progress design manager, et cetera. So as I traveled around these places, visiting different wind farm site owners, lead technicians, everybody that worked in wind all over the world, I started getting talking to them, ask about their back story and usually you could get them go in telling stories quite easily and as somebody that get bored and there’s a lot of dead time and waiting around in wind as anybody knows.
Whether it’s for a boat or, for wind or weather or parts there’s loads of waiting. So you can usually get people talking and understandably quite a lot of the subject matter within the book, where the wind takes you is about going to the toilets and those idle hours. Spent talking absolute nonsense, pranks, getting into shenanigans, crashing pool cars, everything you would expect of unsupervised men alone, a hundred meters up in the air uh, ex squaddies, obviously they’ve got a very interesting approach to work great sense of humor.
So it’s. It’s a very male orientated book, I’m sorry to say, although there are female characters in it. But because of that, a lot of the humor is very male. So it’s very good value for that. There are 11 chapters in here, which are essentially each of them is a trip to a different wind farm in a different country.
And it follows the journey of Aaron, who is a wind turbine apprentice, him trying to get his feet on the rung of the of the wind industry. As he progresses, as he his way through every scenario because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And just him desperately trying to blag any type of competence or perceived competence.
As he figures out what it is he’s supposed to be doing. And all the colourful characters that he meets in wind turbines, completely unsupervised and alone. It’s really his journey. But a lot of the stories, whilst the places are real, the people are real, it’s all based on my experience. A lot of the stories, especially the anecdotes, are borrowed.
They’re all true, 100 percent true. And I think that’s what I really enjoy about the book is that these are all real people. And I think that some of the best feedback I’ve had from either the people who have donated stories or the people who have read it, have they said it’s very true to form.
It’s relevant. It’s a representation of their life. And they can pick out not so much the people, because as we say, we’ve anonymized everybody to protect everyone. There’s still people, some of them in very senior corporate positions now that have contributed to this book. And and they’re all here and they’re all very recognizable.
Even if they don’t know the particular person, they will know someone like them, I would guess.
Allen Hall: It’s a real life look into wind industry of that time. And I think that’s what’s fascinating about it because it’s was difficult. Everything about it was difficult. Running around in a van, a couple of guys in a van with a bunch of tools into a muddy field or icy field climbing wind turbines turning over sheep that have flipped over in the field and yikes.
Alex Pucacco: It’s I mean it’s very easy to be unprepared because the nature of wind is very changeable. Anyway, when you couple that with the facts, you’re trying to maintain a turbine where all of the paperwork you’ve got is beg, borrowed, and steeled. The tooling is modified ad hoc, it’s, you have to be incredibly adaptable at the same time squeaky clean from a health and safety perspective and it’s completely impossible.
Allen Hall: Speaking of squeaky clean, a lot of the book is about everybody being dirty. Or greasy. Covered in mud. At that time, that’s what, that’s how it was. It was a very unregulated, so to speak, industry. Things needed to get done. So it took tough people to, to get it done. And that’s the thing that stands out about the book.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, it is the wild west. I like, there are some stories in here which go all the way back to sorts of, the engineering hippie days of the late eighties where, lattice towers, everything else. So there are, even though most of the story is based on the two megawatt platform, the sort of early to 2010 3s, this type of thing. He’s, there’s a real span in there. And despite us having the wind turbine safety rules now and, we know better and everything’s in the spotlight. We have oil and gas and some very established financial players at the scene, especially in offshore.
It’s still the Wild West, what happens up tower still stays up tower, and there’s a very, there’s a very big gap between those that finance and those that maintain and I think the stories still keep coming. I was worried, especially now the introduction of turbine toilets into sort of some of the newer machines.
That’s the end of it. There’s no more good stories to come, but good to hear that even on the Hallye platform, absolutely covered, it’s got more CCTV in that 15 megawatt turbine than the City of London. Still no toilets. So it just means that when you are going to the toilet, you put your thumbs up to everybody at Marine Coordination who’s looking at it.
So it’s we’re still not learning our lesson, still reinventing the wheel. And I think that’s part of the fun of working in wind.
Joel Saxum: There’s a major difference that you see between the the shiny, clean exterior that, that the, is portrayed in branding or marketing or in the media or whatever, and what’s really happening.
If you look at a technician’s phone and his videos and stories and things that are going on there look at this one. Look, we were installing this tower before it had, the viv protection under something and the towers up there swinging them a meter per second. There’s guys holding on up there and stuff like, so there’s a lot of things that happen behind the scenes.
And I think the book dives into those stories and gives it gives a. Almost like a picture of what’s really happening under the hood of this vehicle out in the field.
Alex Pucacco: Yes, very much. And I think I think that’s where the most fun is had, I think as well as where the, as the old saying goes, if you want a clean paycheck, you need dirty hands.
And some of my stories are just the sheer silliness of it. And this story I’m about to tell isn’t actually in the book, but it’s it’s from a Siemens 2. 3. So it’s got these lovely sort of clamshell nacelle. Open roofs where you’ve got like it, so you’ve got a complete vista either way and what a couple of technicians did was that they worked it out, they measured it up and they strung up hammocks between the top of the clamshells.
And beautiful sunny day. So stripped off to their boxers. Lunchtime, they’re ahead in service. It’s a very slow day. So they’re lying there in the sunshine, reading a book. You’re drinking their cups of tea. And then one of them gets up and he sees the other guy’s
clothes and he just launches his clothes over the side of the clamshell. So he stood up there, just in his pants. So it, as a kind of act of revenge, the guy gets out of his hammock and he throws his mate’s clothes over the side as well. So they’re both standing there with their boxes and they’re laughing, obviously they’re just boys, they’re being silly.
And so they finished the day’s work, beautiful sunshine, 25 degrees, late eighties, American money. And they think okay, put their harnesses on. So they’ve got just their pants, they’ve got their harnesses on. So it looks like they’re wearing bondage and they climb, the climb down tower. And they step out into the field and they come across this border collie and they’re like, what’s he got in his mouth? So the border collie’s got this guy’s t shirt in his mouth. And this farmer comes out of nowhere and he’s Hey there. And they, and this farmer clocks these two semi naked blokes stepping out from the tower door and he just looks at them and he just shakes his head.
And the, it’s, as you say, it’s where else could you do that?
Allen Hall: For anybody that’s worked in wind, For any length of time, being in a car or a van or a truck is just part of that lifestyle because you spend so many hours in there. And that’s a great deal about the book. There’s two places where the technicians are spend a good bit of time.
In a vehicle stuck or trying to get a wounded vehicle back to the hotel. And then the second is the hotel that how many nights you spend away from home and the different crazy places you end up spending a hotel night. And UK hotels are a lot different than American hotels. There’s a lot. They are more integrated into the fun part of life is built into the hotel.
It’s not just a sleeping space. So it’s more of a relaxation space too. You want to talk to what those experiences were and how much time you actually spend in a car. Some of the adventures in those that happen in those places.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, sure. Inevitably a huge part of the job is travel and in your twenties is fantastic because you’re partying around the world on the company dime, which, can you really put a price on that?
But in the UK, all of our wind farms, they’re fairly remote. It’s not like Texas or Australia where you’ve got fairly hubs, if you will, and lot larger populations as well. So you’re looking, you’re thinking rural Wales, rural Scotland, and some of the places that you stay have a lot of how we say character.
So usually there’s one person in the pub that does front desk. Cooks the meals, serves the drinks, turns the beds. And you’re there for two or three weeks stinking up the
place. And if, and if there’s two or three of you or six or 10 of you on a job, you descend and take over this whole establishment, like it’s your house for the week, basically.
And especially some of the more, shall we say, testosterone, and, the more blokes you get in one space, the more ridiculous it becomes. Because you’re always pitching to the lowest common denominator. I think that’s, a lot of it is about male camaraderie. Drinking far too much on a school nights.
Yeah, that type of thing. But yeah, the travel aspect as well cultural observations as somebody that had not seen much of the world before working in wind, uh, going to Australia and observing for the first time that no, actually the wind turbines do spin in the same direction. It’s still, still a wind turbine.
Desperately trying to walk and walk whilst not being able to talk the talk. And I think that’s what Most people enjoy is that everybody was new once and this is very much somebody that was just starting in wind. And we were not just within wind at the time, but the company that was working for as well.
We were making up as we went. And I just could not imagine doing that now, especially when you consider the size of the companies that operate these wind farms absolutely huge utilities. And you’ve got a bunch of chances just walking in and just but yeah I don’t know, I’d like to think we have matured and some of that stuff which happened then wouldn’t happen now, but yeah, it still happens definitely.
Allen Hall: The other thing that stood out was the number of times you’re looking for tools, particularly sockets, that there’s always a missing socket and you find tools in the most, in the weirdest places. We want to talk about some of those situations.
Alex Pucacco: Yeah, it’s the classic meme of the lost 10 mil socket, and I think Aaron actually finds one during one of the stories, which is just goes to show how lucky he is.
But yeah, misplaced tools. The main tool of my trade was was an endoscope, which was an incredibly unreliable piece of kits because they were supposed to be designed for more. Inspecting squeaky clean off the production line, Rolls Royce jet engines. We used to stick them in all the gearboxes and main bearings all the time.
And understandably they broke quite often. So you’d be left on the other side of the world with a very expensive, but broken bit of kit. And it happened a lot.
Allen Hall: Who has to deal with all the technician silliness that’s happening out on the wind turbines themselves. The people who manage these guys must have incredible stories. And just probably just wait for the telephone to ring.
Alex Pucacco: I’ll tell you what, they have some of the hardest jobs. It makes me very thankful that I don’t work in operations and maintenance anymore because it’s like having a second family. Like you have uh, one of the stories is about a site manager in in Illinois somewhere.
He has a hundred and something plus turbines and a similar number of landowners on the cornfields. Farmers that, that own the land and therefore get a bit of a kickback from the turbines. And it talks about his relationship with his many bosses that he has, these sort of slap jawed farmers that sort of complain when his turbine’s down or it’s being maintained or something like this.
And he doesn’t really need to look at SCADA because his phone will ring and the farmer will tell him that the turbine is off. So it’s and a lot of the best site managers used to be technicians. And because of that, they know exactly what the techs are up to. They know when they’re taking the pace when they’re taking too long on changing the brushes or inspecting the filters or whatever is the task that they’ve been given.
And they are the kind of teenagers amongst toddlers really is the best way I could describe it is that they, they have to give the appearance of maturity, but really, they’re the earliest opportunity that, hats on their up tower as quickly as possible. And the best site managers always used to be technicians, but at the same time, they’ve also got to wear half wear the corporate hat and do the reporting and everything else. But, very easy to draw them into storytelling mode. And especially when I was driving around America doing quite a lot of sales and main bearing inspections and stuff, very easily, you could draw people into storytelling mode.
And I think that’s, I was quite lucky that Especially seeing how America operates window and I’m compared to the UK where we have. denser population, smaller turbines, smaller wind farms as well. And you’d be driving through a wind farm in Texas and you’d just hear this dung. But there’s nobody around to hear this wind turbine that’s got two teeth missing on the IMS.
And you’re like it doesn’t really matter because, you don’t need condition monitoring. Just drive around with the truck window open and you can see which one’s hanging. And, that’s just Texas. The whole, yeah, the earth smells of oil. There’s nobody around to hear it.
And when in an agronomic regulated market, the price of power drops to 17 a megawatt, unsurprisingly, you’ve not got gearbox, so that’s how it runs. And just to see, something that’s come from the UK, especially offshore where everything is, downtime is expensive. Boats are expensive.
Power is king. And because of that, damn the cost of everything to go to the U S where it’s just yeah, just keep it running, give it a go. Probably just needs a lick of oil, slap it. It’s good to go. It’s interesting to see how. depending on the market drivers, the turbines, the wind farms, how different countries operate.
And that’s, again, that’s another piece of insight that the book provides as well. But, uh, there, there’s pictures in here as well. Some of them based on my own photographs, others, which are borrowed really if. It’s coming up to Christmas time now, if there are if you have somebody in your family that reads Daily Telegraph and still calls them windmills, it might be a quite nice little eye opener for them.
If, they can actually talk to you about your job rather than just asking the usual sort of, uh, benign questions of feigned curiosity. So it’s fairly accessible, anybody that’s either worked as a technician or if they have a white collar job now, or if they want to reminisce about when they used to have to get their hands dirty. Or indeed, one thing I would suggest, though, don’t give it to your kid if they’re young, because it’s fairly it’s 18 plus. So a couple of people have asked me that it’s not really age appropriate, as well as the representation of how what it’s like to be a female engineer within wind as well, which is compared to other industries, I think we’re pretty awful at in terms of representation.
So that’s touched on as well. So there’s lots of themes, something for everybody. But it’s very light. It’s a very easy read and it’s hubris. So it’s not that serious.
Joel Saxum: So where can people get the book, Alex? What’s the easiest way to buy it?
Alex Pucacco: There’s two options. So the book is in aid of Mental Health Charity.
So this was written for MindUK and it’s really to support young people into help building their confidence, overcoming issues of anxiety, depression, anything really that’s going to, prevent them experiencing and enjoying life. From a mental health perspective, if you want to support mental health charities, it’s available through my websites, which is windyproductions.com
if you go to the book section it’s within there and if you are less bothered or if you want something a bit more accessible, it’s also available through Amazon as well. So “Where the Wind Takes You” is the name of the book and “Adventures of a Wind Turbine Engineer” is the subtitle. Please do buy it on there.
Leave a review if you like, and please do enjoy, give it to your friends family.
Allen Hall: So “Where the Wind Takes You” is just full of unfiltered, true to life stories about the wind industry, and it’s a great gift for the wind technician or engineer in your life. And honestly, how many times can you gift a Lego wind turbine?
This is something different for the holidays. yoU can go on Amazon, go on Alex’s website and order the book because it is a really good read and it does give a lot of great insights about the wind industry. So Alex, this has been fantastic.
The Perfect Gift for Wind Industry Friends: “Where the Wind Takes You”
Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage
This exclusive article originally appeared in PES Wind 4 – 2025 with the title, Operations take center stage in wind’s next chapter. It was written by Allen Hall and other members of the WeatherGuard Lightning Tech team.
As aging fleets, shrinking margins, and new policies reshape the wind sector, wind energy operations are in the spotlight. The industry’s next chapter will be defined not by capacity growth, but by operational excellence, where integrated, predictive maintenance turns data into decisions and reliability into profit.
Wind farm operations are undergoing a fundamental transformation. After hosting hundreds of conversations on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, I’ve witnessed a clear pattern: the most successful operators are abandoning reactive maintenance in favor of integrated, predictive strategies. This shift isn’t just about adopting new technologies; it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we manage aging assets in an era of tightening margins and expanding responsibilities.
The evidence was overwhelming at this year’s SkySpecs Customer Forum, where representatives from over 75% of US installed wind capacity gathered to share experiences and strategies. The consensus was clear: those who integrate monitoring, inspection, and repair into a cohesive operational strategy are achieving dramatic improvements in reliability and profitability.
Takeaway: These options have been available to wind energy operations for years; now, adoption is critical.
Why traditional approaches to wind farm operations are failing
Today’s wind operators face an unprecedented convergence of challenges. Fleets installed during the 2010-2015 boom are aging in unexpected ways, revealing design vulnerabilities no one anticipated. Meanwhile, the support infrastructure is crumbling; spare parts have become scarce, OEM support is limited, and insurance companies are tightening coverage just when operators need them most.
The situation is particularly acute following recent policy changes. The One Big Beautiful Bill in the United States has fundamentally altered the economic landscape. PTC farming is no longer viable; turbines must run longer and more reliably than ever before. Engineering teams, already stretched thin, are being asked to manage not just wind assets but solar and battery storage as well. The old playbook simply doesn’t work anymore.
Consider the scope of just one challenge: polyester blade failures. During our podcast conversation with Edo Kuipers of We4Ce, we learned that an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 blades worldwide are experiencing root bushing issues. ‘After a while, blades are simply flying off,’ Kuipers explained. The financial impact of a single blade failure can exceed €300,000 when you factor in replacement costs, lost production, and crane mobilization. Yet innovative repair solutions, like the one developed by We4Ce and CNC Onsite, can address the same problem for €40,000 if caught early. This pattern repeats across every major component. Gearbox failures that once required complete replacement can now be predicted months in advance. Lightning damage that previously caused catastrophic failures can be prevented with inexpensive upgrades and real-time monitoring. All these solutions are based on the principle that predicted maintenance is better than an expensive surprise.
Seeing problems before they happeny, and potential risks
The transformation begins with visibility. Modern monitoring systems reveal problems that traditional methods miss entirely. Eric van Genuchten of Sensing360 shared an eye-opening statistic on our podcast: ‘In planetary gearbox failures, they get 90%, so there’s still 10% of failures they cannot detect.’ That missing 10% represents the catastrophic failures that destroy budgets and production targets. Advanced monitoring technologies are filling these gaps. Sensing360’s fiber optic sensors, for example, detect minute deformations in steel components, revealing load imbalances and fatigue progression invisible to traditional monitoring. ‘We integrate our sensors in steel and make rotating equipment smarter,’ van Genuchten explained.
Other companies are deploying acoustic systems to identify blade delamination, oil analysis for gearbox health, and electrical signature analysis for generator issues. Each technology adds a piece to the puzzle, but the real value comes from integration. The impact of load monitoring alone can be transformative.
As van Genuchten explained, ‘Twenty percent more loading on a gearbox or on a bearing is half of your life. The other way around, twenty percent less loading is double your life.’ With proper monitoring, operators can optimize load distribution across their fleet, extending component life while maximizing production.
But monitoring without action is just expensive data collection. The most successful operators are those who’ve learned to translate sensor data into operational decisions. This requires not just technology but organizational change, breaking down silos between monitoring, maintenance, and management teams.
In Wind Energy Operations, Early intervention makes the million-dollar difference
The economics of early intervention are compelling across every component type. The blade root bushing example from We4Ce illustrates this perfectly. With their solution, early detection means replacing just 24-30 bushings in about 24 hours of drilling work. Wait, and you’re looking at 60+ bushings and 60 hours of work. Early detection doesn’t just prevent catastrophic failure; it makes repairs faster, cheaper, and more reliable.
This principle extends throughout the turbine. Early-stage bearing damage can be addressed through targeted lubrication or minor adjustments. Incipient electrical issues can be resolved with cleaning or connection tightening. Small blade surface cracks can be repaired in a few hours before they propagate into structural damage requiring weeks of work.
Leading operators are implementing tiered response protocols based on monitoring data. Critical issues trigger immediate intervention. Developing problems are scheduled for the next maintenance window. Minor issues are monitored and addressed during routine service. This systematic approach reduces both emergency repairs and unnecessary maintenance, optimizing resource allocation across the fleet.
Turning information into action
While monitoring generates data, platforms like SkySpecs’ Horizon transform that data into operational intelligence. Josh Goryl, SkySpecs’ Chief Revenue Officer, explained their evolution at the recent Customer Forum: ‘I think where we can help our customers is getting all that data into one place.
The game-changer is integration across data types. The company is working to combine performance data with CMS data to provide valuable insights into turbine health. This approach has been informed by operators across the world, who’ve discovered that integrated platforms deliver insights that siloed data can’t.
The platform approach also addresses the reality of shrinking engineering teams managing expanding portfolios. As Goryl noted, many wind engineers are now responsible for solar and battery storage assets as well. One platform managing multiple technologies through a unified interface becomes essential for operational efficiency.
The Integration Imperative for Wind Farm Operations
The most successful operators aren’t just adopting individual technologies; they’re integrating monitoring, inspection, and repair into a seamless operational system. This integration operates at multiple levels.
At the technical level, data from various monitoring systems feeds into unified platforms that provide comprehensive asset visibility. These platforms don’t just display data; they analyze patterns, predict failures, and generate work orders.
At the organizational level, integration means breaking down barriers between departments. This cross-functional collaboration transforms O&M from a cost center into a value driver. Building your improvement roadmap For operators ready to enhance their O&M approach, the path forward involves several key steps:
Assessing the Current State of your Wind Energy Operations
Document your maintenance costs, failure rates, and downtime patterns. Identify which problems consume the most resources and which assets are most critical to your wind farm operations.
Start with targeted pilots Rather than attempting wholesale transformation, begin with focused initiatives targeting your biggest pain points. Whether it’s blade monitoring, gearbox sensors, or repair innovations, starting with your largest issue will help you see the biggest benefit.
• Invest in integration, not just technology: the most sophisticated monitoring system is worthless if its data isn’t acted upon. Ensure your organization has the processes and culture to transform data into decisions – this is the first step to profitability in your wind farm operations.
Build partnerships, not just contracts: look for technology providers and service companies willing to share knowledge, not just deliver services. The goal is building capability, not dependency.
• Measure and iterate: track the impact of each initiative on your key performance indicators. Use lessons learned to refine your approach and guide future investments.
The competitive advantage
The wind industry has reached an inflection point. With increasingly large and complex turbines, monitoring needs to adapt with it. The era of flying blind is over.
In an industry where margins continue to compress and competition intensifies, operational excellence has become a key differentiator. Those who master the integration of monitoring, inspection, and repair will thrive. Those who cling to reactive maintenance face escalating costs and declining competitiveness.
The technology exists. The business case is proven. The early adopters are already reaping the benefits. The question isn’t whether to transform your O&M approach, but how quickly you can adapt to this new reality. In the race to operational excellence, the winners will be those who act decisively to embrace the efficiency revolution reshaping wind operations.
Unless otherwise noted, images here are from We4C Rotorblade Specialist.
Contact us for help understanding your lightning damage, future risks, and how to get more uptime from your equipment.
Download the full article from PES Wind here
Find a practical guide to solving lightning problems and filing better insurance claims here
Wind Industry Operations: In Wind’s Next Chapter, Operations take center stage
Weather Guard Lightning Tech
BladeBUG Tackles Serial Blade Defects with Robotics
Chris Cieslak, CEO of BladeBug, joins the show to discuss how their walking robot is making ultrasonic blade inspections faster and more accessible. They cover new horizontal scanning capabilities for lay down yards, blade root inspections for bushing defects, and plans to expand into North America in 2026.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering Tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Chris, welcome back to the show.
Chris Cieslak: It’s great to be back. Thank you very much for having me on again.
Allen Hall: It’s great to see you in person, and a lot has been happening at Blade Bugs since the last time I saw Blade Bug in person. Yeah, the robot. It looks a lot different and it has really new capabilities.
Chris Cieslak: So we’ve continued to develop our ultrasonic, non-destructive testing capabilities of the blade bug robot.
Um, but what we’ve now added to its capabilities is to do horizontal blade scans as well. So we’re able to do blades that are in lay down yards or blades that have come down for inspections as well as up tower. So we can do up tower, down tower inspections. We’re trying to capture. I guess the opportunity to inspect blades after transportation when they get delivered to site, to look [00:01:00] for any transport damage or anything that might have been missed in the factory inspections.
And then we can do subsequent installation inspections as well to make sure there’s no mishandling damage on those blades. So yeah, we’ve been just refining what we can do with the NDT side of things and improving its capabilities
Joel Saxum: was that need driven from like market response and people say, Hey, we need, we need.
We like the blade blood product. We like what you’re doing, but we need it here. Or do you guys just say like, Hey, this is the next, this is the next thing we can do. Why not?
Chris Cieslak: It was very much market response. We had a lot of inquiries this year from, um, OEMs, blade manufacturers across the board with issues within their blades that need to be inspected on the ground, up the tap, any which way they can.
There there was no, um, rhyme or reason, which was better, but the fact that he wanted to improve the ability of it horizontally has led the. Sort of modifications that you’ve seen and now we’re doing like down tower, right? Blade scans. Yeah. A really fast breed. So
Joel Saxum: I think the, the important thing there is too is that because of the way the robot is built [00:02:00] now, when you see NDT in a factory, it’s this robot rolls along this perfectly flat concrete floor and it does this and it does that.
But the way the robot is built, if a blade is sitting in a chair trailing edge up, or if it’s flap wise, any which way the robot can adapt to, right? And the idea is. We, we looked at it today and kind of the new cage and the new things you have around it with all the different encoders and for the heads and everything is you can collect data however is needed.
If it’s rasterized, if there’s a vector, if there’s a line, if we go down a bond line, if we need to scan a two foot wide path down the middle of the top of the spa cap, we can do all those different things and all kinds of orientations. That’s a fantastic capability.
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, absolutely. And it, that’s again for the market needs.
So we are able to scan maybe a meter wide in one sort of cord wise. Pass of that probe whilst walking in the span-wise direction. So we’re able to do that raster scan at various spacing. So if you’ve got a defect that you wanna find that maximum 20 mil, we’ll just have a 20 mil step [00:03:00] size between each scan.
If you’ve got a bigger tolerance, we can have 50 mil, a hundred mil it, it’s so tuneable and it removes any of the variability that you get from a human to human operator doing that scanning. And this is all about. Repeatable, consistent high quality data that you can then use to make real informed decisions about the state of those blades and act upon it.
So this is not about, um, an alternative to humans. It’s just a better, it’s just an evolution of how humans do it. We can just do it really quick and it’s probably, we, we say it’s like six times faster than a human, but actually we’re 10 times faster. We don’t need to do any of the mapping out of the blade, but it’s all encoded all that data.
We know where the robot is as we walk. That’s all captured. And then you end up with really. Consistent data. It doesn’t matter who’s operating a robot, the robot will have those settings preset and you just walk down the blade, get that data, and then our subject matter experts, they’re offline, you know, they are in their offices, warm, cozy offices, reviewing data from multiple sources of robots.
And it’s about, you know, improving that [00:04:00] efficiency of getting that report out to the customer and letting ’em know what’s wrong with their blades, actually,
Allen Hall: because that’s always been the drawback of, with NDT. Is that I think the engineers have always wanted to go do it. There’s been crush core transportation damage, which is sometimes hard to see.
You can maybe see a little bit of a wobble on the blade service, but you’re not sure what’s underneath. Bond line’s always an issue for engineering, but the cost to take a person, fly them out to look at a spot on a blade is really expensive, especially someone who is qualified. Yeah, so the, the difference now with play bug is you can have the technology to do the scan.
Much faster and do a lot of blades, which is what the de market demand is right now to do a lot of blades simultaneously and get the same level of data by the review, by the same expert just sitting somewhere else.
Chris Cieslak: Absolutely.
Joel Saxum: I think that the quality of data is a, it’s something to touch on here because when you send someone out to the field, it’s like if, if, if I go, if I go to the wall here and you go to the wall here and we both take a paintbrush, we paint a little bit [00:05:00] different, you’re probably gonna be better.
You’re gonna be able to reach higher spots than I can.
Allen Hall: This is true.
Joel Saxum: That’s true. It’s the same thing with like an NDT process. Now you’re taking the variability of the technician out of it as well. So the data quality collection at the source, that’s what played bug ducts.
Allen Hall: Yeah,
Joel Saxum: that’s the robotic processes.
That is making sure that if I scan this, whatever it may be, LM 48.7 and I do another one and another one and another one, I’m gonna get a consistent set of quality data and then it’s goes to analysis. We can make real decisions off.
Allen Hall: Well, I, I think in today’s world now, especially with transportation damage and warranties, that they’re trying to pick up a lot of things at two years in that they could have picked up free installation.
Yeah. Or lifting of the blades. That world is changing very rapidly. I think a lot of operators are getting smarter about this, but they haven’t thought about where do we go find the tool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And, and I know Joel knows that, Hey, it, it’s Chris at Blade Bug. You need to call him and get to the technology.
But I think for a lot of [00:06:00] operators around the world, they haven’t thought about the cost They’re paying the warranty costs, they’re paying the insurance costs they’re paying because they don’t have the set of data. And it’s not tremendously expensive to go do. But now the capability is here. What is the market saying?
Is it, is it coming back to you now and saying, okay, let’s go. We gotta, we gotta mobilize. We need 10 of these blade bugs out here to go, go take a scan. Where, where, where are we at today?
Chris Cieslak: We’ve hads. Validation this year that this is needed. And it’s a case of we just need to be around for when they come back round for that because the, the issues that we’re looking for, you know, it solves the problem of these new big 80 a hundred meter plus blades that have issues, which shouldn’t.
Frankly exist like process manufacturer issues, but they are there. They need to be investigated. If you’re an asset only, you wanna know that. Do I have a blade that’s likely to fail compared to one which is, which is okay? And sort of focus on that and not essentially remove any uncertainty or worry that you have about your assets.
’cause you can see other [00:07:00] turbine blades falling. Um, so we are trying to solve that problem. But at the same time, end of warranty claims, if you’re gonna be taken over these blades and doing the maintenance yourself, you wanna know that what you are being given. It hasn’t gotten any nasties lurking inside that’s gonna bite you.
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Chris Cieslak: Very expensively in a few years down the line. And so you wanna be able to, you know, tick a box, go, actually these are fine. Well actually these are problems. I, you need to give me some money so I can perform remedial work on these blades. And then you end of life, you know, how hard have they lived?
Can you do an assessment to go, actually you can sweat these assets for longer. So we, we kind of see ourselves being, you know, useful right now for the new blades, but actually throughout the value chain of a life of a blade. People need to start seeing that NDT ultrasonic being one of them. We are working on other forms of NDT as well, but there are ways of using it to just really remove a lot of uncertainty and potential risk for that.
You’re gonna end up paying through the, you know, through the, the roof wall because you’ve underestimated something or you’ve missed something, which you could have captured with a, with a quick inspection.
Joel Saxum: To [00:08:00] me, NDT has been floating around there, but it just hasn’t been as accessible or easy. The knowledge hasn’t been there about it, but the what it can do for an operator.
In de-risking their fleet is amazing. They just need to understand it and know it. But you guys with the robotic technology to me, are bringing NDT to the masses
Chris Cieslak: Yeah.
Joel Saxum: In a way that hasn’t been able to be done, done before
Chris Cieslak: that. And that that’s, we, we are trying to really just be able to roll it out at a way that you’re not limited to those limited experts in the composite NDT world.
So we wanna work with them, with the C-N-C-C-I-C NDTs of this world because they are the expertise in composite. So being able to interpret those, those scams. Is not a quick thing to become proficient at. So we are like, okay, let’s work with these people, but let’s give them the best quality data, consistent data that we possibly can and let’s remove those barriers of those limited people so we can roll it out to the masses.
Yeah, and we are that sort of next level of information where it isn’t just seen as like a nice to have, it’s like an essential to have, but just how [00:09:00] we see it now. It’s not NDT is no longer like, it’s the last thing that we would look at. It should be just part of the drones. It should inspection, be part of the internal crawlers regimes.
Yeah, it’s just part of it. ’cause there isn’t one type of inspection that ticks all the boxes. There isn’t silver bullet of NDT. And so it’s just making sure that you use the right system for the right inspection type. And so it’s complementary to drones, it’s complimentary to the internal drones, uh, crawlers.
It’s just the next level to give you certainty. Remove any, you know, if you see something indicated on a a on a photograph. That doesn’t tell you the true picture of what’s going on with the structure. So this is really about, okay, I’ve got an indication of something there. Let’s find out what that really is.
And then with that information you can go, right, I know a repair schedule is gonna take this long. The downtime of that turbine’s gonna be this long and you can plan it in. ’cause everyone’s already got limited budgets, which I think why NDT hasn’t taken off as it should have done because nobody’s got money for more inspections.
Right. Even though there is a money saving to be had long term, everyone is fighting [00:10:00] fires and you know, they’ve really got a limited inspection budget. Drone prices or drone inspections have come down. It’s sort, sort of rise to the bottom. But with that next value add to really add certainty to what you’re trying to inspect without, you know, you go to do a day repair and it ends up being three months or something like, well
Allen Hall: that’s the lightning,
Joel Saxum: right?
Allen Hall: Yeah. Lightning is the, the one case where every time you start to scarf. The exterior of the blade, you’re not sure how deep that’s going and how expensive it is. Yeah, and it always amazes me when we talk to a customer and they’re started like, well, you know, it’s gonna be a foot wide scarf, and now we’re into 10 meters and now we’re on the inside.
Yeah. And the outside. Why did you not do an NDT? It seems like money well spent Yeah. To do, especially if you have a, a quantity of them. And I think the quantity is a key now because in the US there’s 75,000 turbines worldwide, several hundred thousand turbines. The number of turbines is there. The number of problems is there.
It makes more financial sense today than ever because drone [00:11:00]information has come down on cost. And the internal rovers though expensive has also come down on cost. NDT has also come down where it’s now available to the masses. Yeah. But it has been such a mental barrier. That barrier has to go away. If we’re going going to keep blades in operation for 25, 30 years, I
Joel Saxum: mean, we’re seeing no
Allen Hall: way you can do it
Joel Saxum: otherwise.
We’re seeing serial defects. But the only way that you can inspect and or control them is with NDT now.
Allen Hall: Sure.
Joel Saxum: And if we would’ve been on this years ago, we wouldn’t have so many, what is our term? Blade liberations liberating
Chris Cieslak: blades.
Joel Saxum: Right, right.
Allen Hall: What about blade route? Can the robot get around the blade route and see for the bushings and the insert issues?
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so the robot can, we can walk circumferentially around that blade route and we can look for issues which are affecting thousands of blades. Especially in North America. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Oh yeah.
Chris Cieslak: So that is an area that is. You know, we are lucky that we’ve got, um, a warehouse full of blade samples or route down to tip, and we were able to sort of calibrate, verify, prove everything in our facility to [00:12:00] then take out to the field because that is just, you know, NDT of bushings is great, whether it’s ultrasonic or whether we’re using like CMS, uh, type systems as well.
But we can really just say, okay, this is the area where the problem is. This needs to be resolved. And then, you know, we go to some of the companies that can resolve those issues with it. And this is really about played by being part of a group of technologies working together to give overall solutions
Allen Hall: because the robot’s not that big.
It could be taken up tower relatively easily, put on the root of the blade, told to walk around it. You gotta scan now, you know. It’s a lot easier than trying to put a technician on ropes out there for sure.
Chris Cieslak: Yeah.
Allen Hall: And the speed up it.
Joel Saxum: So let’s talk about execution then for a second. When that goes to the field from you, someone says, Chris needs some help, what does it look like?
How does it work?
Chris Cieslak: Once we get a call out, um, we’ll do a site assessment. We’ve got all our rams, everything in place. You know, we’ve been on turbines. We know the process of getting out there. We’re all GWO qualified and go to site and do their work. Um, for us, we can [00:13:00] turn up on site, unload the van, the robot is on a blade in less than an hour.
Ready to inspect? Yep. Typically half an hour. You know, if we’ve been on that same turbine a number of times, it’s somewhere just like clockwork. You know, muscle memory comes in, you’ve got all those processes down, um, and then it’s just scanning. Our robot operator just presses a button and we just watch it perform scans.
And as I said, you know, we are not necessarily the NDT experts. We obviously are very mindful of NDT and know what scans look like. But if there’s any issues, we have a styling, we dial in remote to our supplement expert, they can actually remotely take control, change the settings, parameters.
Allen Hall: Wow.
Chris Cieslak: And so they’re virtually present and that’s one of the beauties, you know, you don’t need to have people on site.
You can have our general, um, robot techs to do the work, but you still have that comfort of knowing that the data is being overlooked if need be by those experts.
Joel Saxum: The next level, um, commercial evolution would be being able to lease the kit to someone and or have ISPs do it for [00:14:00] you guys kinda globally, or what is the thought
Chris Cieslak: there?
Absolutely. So. Yeah, so we to, to really roll this out, we just wanna have people operate in the robots as if it’s like a drone. So drone inspection companies are a classic company that we see perfectly aligned with. You’ve got the sky specs of this world, you know, you’ve got drone operator, they do a scan, they can find something, put the robot up there and get that next level of information always straight away and feed that into their systems to give that insight into that customer.
Um, you know, be it an OEM who’s got a small service team, they can all be trained up. You’ve got general turbine technicians. They’ve all got G We working at height. That’s all you need to operate the bay by road, but you don’t need to have the RAA level qualified people, which are in short supply anyway.
Let them do the jobs that we are not gonna solve. They can do the big repairs we are taking away, you know, another problem for them, but giving them insights that make their job easier and more successful by removing any of those surprises when they’re gonna do that work.
Allen Hall: So what’s the plans for 2026 then?
Chris Cieslak: 2026 for us is to pick up where 2025 should have ended. [00:15:00] So we were, we were meant to be in the States. Yeah. On some projects that got postponed until 26. So it’s really, for us North America is, um, what we’re really, as you said, there’s seven, 5,000 turbines there, but there’s also a lot of, um, turbines with known issues that we can help determine which blades are affected.
And that involves blades on the ground, that involves blades, uh, that are flying. So. For us, we wanna get out to the states as soon as possible, so we’re working with some of the OEMs and, and essentially some of the asset owners.
Allen Hall: Chris, it’s so great to meet you in person and talk about the latest that’s happening.
Thank you. With Blade Bug, if people need to get ahold of you or Blade Bug, how do they do that?
Chris Cieslak: I, I would say LinkedIn is probably the best place to find myself and also Blade Bug and contact us, um, through that.
Allen Hall: Alright, great. Thanks Chris for joining us and we will see you at the next. So hopefully in America, come to America sometime.
We’d love to see you there.
Chris Cieslak: Thank you very [00:16:00] much.
Hillsdale College is a rightwing Christian extremist organization that ostensibly honors the United States Constitution.
Here’s their quiz, which should be called the “Constitutional Trivia Quiz.”, whose purpose is obviously to convince Americans of their ignorance.
When I teach, I’m going for understanding of the topic, not the memorization of useless information.
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