Published

2 years ago

November 21, 2023

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Thanksgiving Special: A Reflection on 2023

In this Thanksgiving edition, we reflect on the past year in wind energy. We’re thankful for positive trends like capital changing hands, companies addressing the technician shortage, and growth of our podcast! The Uptime team sincerely appreciates the partnerships, experts, and audience feedback that have made this podcast possible. As we look ahead to next year, we invite you to continue engaging and let us know what topics you want us to cover. And most importantly, we’re thankful that we can keep having insightful discussions about the wind industry!

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

Allen Hall: Welcome to this special Uptime edition during Thanksgiving week. And Phil, Joel, and I, are going to reminisce about the past nine months and what’s been happening for 10 months, 11 months, however long it’s been. I guess we’ve been looking at it 11 months, going to what’s been happening in wind.

I think there’s been a number of changes over the last six weeks that will have implications over the next couple of years. And. I know, Phil, we’ve been all going back and forth about where offshore wind is headed. I want to kick off first by looking back on onshore wind and let’s say something positive here about what has been happening on onshore wind because there has been really good things happening.

Philip Totaro: We’re poised at this point of the year, we’re poised to see, a, potentially a new installation record, in the United States this year, still to be determined whether or not, they’re going to get there by the end of December. But, I think the certainty that has been provided by this extension of the production tax credit through the, Inflation Reduction Act has helped.

The investment tax credit as well, and I think it’s provided, a lot of people, even though they haven’t released the full IRS guidance and everything yet. I think it’s provided a lot of people some certainty. I think you’re gonna see floodgates open when they do finally release this IRS guidance, but based on what everybody’s anticipating, There’s been, a lot of, companies getting back to business.

if you remember this time last year, we were talking about how GE was going to shut down the factory and, everybody was financially insolvent. And, it was just terrible. And, now, things are actually on an upward trajectory. So I think you know, it’s an industry getting back to business and, there’s talk of new factories in the United States.

The super secret Danish project in Colorado, economic, advisory council or whatever, announced. that their, LM was basically a contender for, for a factory potentially there. Yeah, I’m, optimistic about, onshore wind. I’m actually, surprisingly, I’m actually optimistic about offshore wind, because I think we’ve now, at this point, suffered through the last five months of nonsense, and, we actually have, something good on, on the horizon.

Joel Saxum: There’s a couple of… trends that I want to touch on if we’re just talking about trends and things that have happened in the last year. One of them has been the large sums of capital changing hands. A lot of Duke Energy with their big sale of assets and you saw some Algonquin and Liberty Power and some of these other ones.

And I think it was Con Ed got bought up and a lot of money being changed hands. And the reason that money’s changing hands is because companies are basically divesting from older assets, selling them the older. They have a good track record. They’re moving there. They’re, grooving and taking that capital and using it for reinvestment.

So whether it’s building solar or building renewables, looking at some hydrogen projects, there’s a lot of moving and grooving going on a lot of, corporate mergers and acquisitions with these, producing assets. And that capital is being basically reused in the market to build more wind farms and, more renewable generation.

So that’s a trend I think is positive and I’m happy to see that happen. Another one that I’d like to just touch on is we talk about it a lot. The tech problem in the United States and I’m very happy to hear the last few weeks. I know Allen and I have been talking with quite a few ISPs.

And without being prompted for it, a lot of them are talking about what they are doing to try to help solve the tech problem. So while everybody will say, yes, we have one, we have a tech problem. And of course, as, a company, people want to hire the, the, trained and the, the experienced people, the experienced, wind technicians or solar technicians or whoever that may be out there.

But there’s a lot of companies that realize that’s a problem, that we can’t just cannibalize each company back and forth, and we need to add some, new, basically, powder to the mix, right? We need to be training more people, have that, military transition idea to get more, some, of our, servicemen and women once they leave active duty, into the workforce. So a lot of companies that we’ve been talking to on the side and are like, little innovation pieces and stuff like that on Thursday episodes have been talking about what they are all individually doing to try to solve that technician problem.

So it’s nice to hear.

Allen Hall: And sticking with the onshore theme for a minute, our business, Weather Guard Lightning Tech is a small business. And we talk to a lot of other small businesses in wind, mostly outside the United States, couple in some in Canada, right? Our friends up north. And I think in general, one of the things I think has been positive and thankful for is a lot of those businesses have made it through the year that early on the beginning of this year, the first quarter of this year was a little rough for many of them, and they seem to have weathered the storm.

Now, we lost some of the good ones, right? We lost Rope Robotics, which was a little rougher. Pretty sad, actually, but everybody seems to be getting back on their feet, thank goodness, but some of the other players that were teetering seem to have weathered it, and there’s a lot of good technology out there, right?

We saw the merger of Ping and eologix, that was a good sign for the marketplace. We saw, Aerones really go after it this year and, has been doing really some fantastic work on robot designs. Those are all small businesses. Maybe Aerones wouldn’t consider a small business anymore because they’ve grown so much, but there’s still a lot of small ISPs out there, and I think that they’re getting their act together and have weathered the worst part of it.

I agree with Phil. There’s some good upside news that is going to happen. I think once the taxes have all been figured out in the United States, you’re going to see more repowering happening. You’re going to see more new development, particularly in the Midwest. Maybe in places like where Joel is up in Wisconsin, that would be nice to see.

And we’re going to see some transmission build out. So the small companies that really depend on the infrastructure of Onshore Wind to, grow and to develop, are, following, right? So they’re benefiting from some of the things that are happening. And it’s not just United States.

I know we’re all based in the United States, but I see the same thing in Europe too. There’s good stuff happening in Europe at the moment. There’s good things happening in Brazil. Our friends at Arthwind have done a tremendous job over the last 12 months and are growing substantially. And those are really great things to see.

So I always look at the health of an industry by looking at who the small players are that live sort of month to see how they’re doing. Gives you a better sign of where the industry is headed. And I think there’s a good science for that. The remainder of 23 and looking into 24. So let’s talk about some things we’re thankful for, and we can go around the room and highlight them.

I’ll lead off. I am really thankful for some of the partnerships we developed over the last 9, 10, 11 months. We have traveled. all over Europe, it seems like. And we’ve been all over the United States. We were in Canada recently. We’re going to be heading back to Europe by the end of the year.

And, we have met so many great people in wind and we built a lot of great relationships, through those connections and expanded our, our sphere of, what countries we’re touching and, where we have some, be able to give some advice. We’re a lightning protection company and our, thoughts are in demand because lightning is a big problem in the world.

And, I’m really thankful if some of those people have been willing to open the doors to us and welcome us in because we’re Americans. We’re outsiders. We know it, We do not fit the Danish norm in a lot of sense. But yeah, no, we’ve been really appreciative of that.

And I do think the other thing too. We’ve, in terms of, the podcast and what things have happened here, we’ve had so many good guests on. And I know we do take some time, we take time out of their schedule to sit down with us and to talk about what’s happening in their world and to give us some insight and a lot of things you hear obviously on the podcast, but some things that happened behind the scenes that we learned a little bit what’s happening in the world that maybe the world hasn’t, doesn’t have a view on directly.

We’ve, I’m really thankful for that because it really is an education for me is. Being relatively new to this industry, I’ve been in it about 10 years, there’s things I’m learning all the time, the nuances, and Phil’s been really good and giving me insight. Joel, you’ve given me a tremendous amount of insight. Rosemary, just bonks me on the back of the head once in a while and says, Hey, this is how it works.

Those are really interesting and good experience. they’re painful at the time when, it happens. But, I do think, we as a company and, hopefully our listeners have learned a lot over the last a couple of months. I will say, uh, one thing about the people who have come into the podcast, man, they are brings us a wealth of knowledge.

It is people contact us. It’s, and Joel, we’ve been to a lot of trade shows and people come up to us, Joel? And they’ll say when they want to take selfies, which is a little weird. I’m not used to that still, maybe, Joel is. But the thing they’ll say is you guys changed my life. I’m like, whoa, we’re not here to change anybody’s life.

That’s not what this podcast is about. But a lot of, young engineers have changed their pathway into wind and renewable industry because we have offered them a view into what is happening at the sort of the lower levels there. These are what the companies are doing. This is where the industry is headed.

They, it’s really hard to get that information. I think if we can be a conduit for that’s great. I’m not responsible for your decision to enter renewable energy. That’s on, yourself. cause we know how hard it can be. Joel?

Joel Saxum: Absolutely. I’m going to say a piggyback on that as well, Allen.

We talk about having guests on. Not only do we have these kind of conversations with our team here with Phil and Rosemary, Allen and I, Claire, of course, in the background that you can’t see usually, we have amazing conversations off air. With the get with our guests, the, amount of things that are the shared and the opinions and the thoughts.

And when you can just sit around like a couple of people sitting around a table, just, BS. And the amount of knowledge that’s shared. And some of the things like Allen said, you hear on the program come right from, I would recount, like, when we were in Canada, we were sitting around a booth.

Just randomly having a conversation with, some really smart developers and engineers within the space. And they brought a new thought to my eye. We, I was talking about technicians, oh, we don’t have enough capacity to train wind energy technicians. We don’t have enough capacity. There’s not enough community colleges getting people in and this, and then, and the gentleman that was sitting with us said, I would like to see more people that have a broader sense of training, like maybe they’re trained like a millwright, or they’re, they have an electrical background, or they have, they can weld, something like that. That skill gets them in the door, but that skill then doesn’t pigeonhole them into being a wind turbine technician the rest of their life.

So you’ve now, you now have a person that’s a little bit more rounded, that has a little bit more training, and if they want to move on from the wind industry to do something else, they have built a set of skills around what they can do to jump into a different industry and stuff. And it’s man, that’s a good way to look at the, technician problem that we have, is we just need to grab people from a broader. A broader background with broader sets of skills, pair them together, and then we’re not so specifically horse blinded into we need wind turbine technicians. We just need good mechanically inclined people.

Allen Hall: And that discussion really came out of some of the talk we’ve been having on the podcast. And even, Joel, when you gave the description of how you should employ technicians year round, Uh, that was a really good episode.

I, thought that was fantastic. And we’ve heard a lot of comments back from that, and that’s a good place to be, right? I’m really thankful for the comments you received back on that, and how that approach could work. there could be some improvements on it, and The industry is actually talking about that, and that, those ideas get bounced around and they don’t just die, right?

Because we do need some of those things. And I think the wind industry in particular, unlike some of the other industries that I’m familiar with, is very open to change and is very open to making itself better.

Joel Saxum: It’s a young industry. It’s not super mature. Yeah.

Allen Hall: And Phil and I both work in a mature industry.

We both work in aerospace for a while. I still do. it’s a very mature industry and it’s not really open to ideas because things work and they don’t wanna change it. But in wind there’s still a lot to happen here.

Philip Totaro: And I’ll tell you what, Allen looking forward into 2024. I see a lot of potential innovation in things like material science and still more work to be done on kind of data science application, if you will.

So leveraging information, SCADA data, CMS data, et cetera, to actually improve performance. Not everybody’s drinking that Kool Aid, so to speak, yet. and I think it’s starting to happen, though, that companies are starting to get the picture, Hey, you know what? Our operations and maintenance cost doesn’t have to be as high as it is.

Not only is there benchmarking data out there now, And, we’ve seen prices tend to increase and a lot of it’s being driven by OEMs getting very expensive long term service contracts to try and make up for some lost margin. But in reality, the independent service providers that are out there, I’m thankful for them. Because they have actually provided a service where they’re taking over assets that might be 10, 15, whatever years old. And, normally especially in the United States, and it’s part of it’s because of the production tax credit, any piece of industrial equipment, as it ages, you’re going to see a drop off in its performance.

It’s just inevitable that things wear out. But independent service providers oftentimes get involved on projects where they prevent the thing from seeing a more precipitous drop. The asset might, without the ISP being involved, if you went to a self perform and maybe the asset owner or operator doesn’t really have the resources or even care to invest in maintaining that asset, you’re going to see a precipitous drop off in performance.

Particularly after 10 years, again, a lot of that’s driven by production tax credit. But, we’re in a position now where independent service providers have taken over a lot of projects and helped sustain the, asset. And helped sustain the profitability of a lot of those assets by ensuring that, the thing keeps, the turbines keep spinning and the thing keeps producing revenue for the asset owner, even absent the production tax credit after the first 10 years of the life.

if you’re not going to repower, you need to talk to somebody competent and there’s plenty of folks out there who are, but you need to talk to somebody competent about. How to get involved in helping to, maintain your spare parts inventory. How to actually service the turbines, they’ve got experience in, the manufacturer says that you’ve got to do this, that, and the other once a year.

Well, based on experience, maybe we need to inspect, every six months or even more frequently for certain makes and models of products. This is that kind of knowledge base and experience base that a lot of companies have that they’re able to be to bring to the table, but they’ve got to be engaged.

One thing that the wind industry is, in addition to being young and, open to change, etc. We’re also very cost verse, unfortunately. And it’s because at the end of the day, you and I, as. electricity consumers don’t want to really pay more than what we already do. But it’s also a quality thing, you it’s you get what you pay for and just a little bit of investment in, whether it’s an ISP or whatever, any kind of maintenance is better than no maintenance. So you’ve got to make intelligent choices. And I think there’s plenty of good people out there that then that can help.

Allen Hall: Joel, I think, a lot has happened over the, even the last two months, right? You’ve taken a new position with us, which we are super thankful for. And, we have seen a market increase in sales and productivity on our side, just by having you join the company.

So we’re super thankful about that. And, we are, if everybody doesn’t know, I know we seem like a big conglomerate, but we’re just a handful of people, doing a lot of hard work day and night. And this podcast is one of those outlets where we get to talk about, show the ins and outs of that business and the ins and outs of the industry, right?

And I would say that, having Joel involved with us has been a real bonus for us. Having Phil join the podcast on a more regular basis has been a really good bonus because he is so insightful in all the things at Intelstor. And even though Rosemary is not here, at the moment, we like having Rosemary here.

She provides a lot of great engineering insight and opinion. Very opinionated, which I like. And she, but she’s super knowledgeable, right? And she keeps up on all the stuff that I don’t have the time to keep up on. Some of these crazy wind projects that are happening, or some of the solar things, or electrolyzers. And the hydrogen, and the green hydrogen, and blue hydrogen. Yeah, I think between the… and having Claire as our producer, why, that’s just a miracle, quite honestly. Between the five of us, we’ve been able to pull off this podcast. And I will say, Joel, and we have seen a rapid increase in the number of YouTube subscribers, we’re up to 275, 000 subscribers on YouTube for this crazy little podcast, and we’ve crossed 200,000 downloads on the audio platforms. The number of people listening every week has really gone up a lot since we hit the, the winds, conference tour this summer. Man, it’s just been explosive levels of growth. And really, I’m one person, I can’t do all this stuff. What makes this podcast interesting, in my opinion, is a variety of voices.

Everybody comes in with a certain expertise. But is willing to mix it up and to go at it about the subjects that matter. And that’s what makes us different. We’re not talking about policy. And Phil, we’re not talking about policy every week. I just don’t care what’s happening at some conference.

Where they’re all flying in on the Gulfstreams. That’s not my thing.

Philip Totaro: Allen, just ask me about the Jones Act, though. then I’ll really go off on it.

Allen Hall: So the, but the thing is, that we are able to talk about, hopefully, more sort of ground level issues. What is impacting technicians and engineers and operators and…

The OEMs and, talk about what is happening in the industry, not what’s happening at the government level. And hopefully that’s where the podcast will remain, over the next year. I’m expecting to see more growth and we’re going to be traveling a lot. Our, Joel, we’re going to so many places over the next couple of months.

it’s going to be astounding. I’m not going to be home for probably two or three months out of the year.

Joel Saxum: We’ll be talking about all that stuff on LinkedIn too. So if you’re wondering where we’re going to be or anything like that, or if you’re, you know what, if you’re, if you listen to the podcast and Hey, we’re going to go to Amsterdam and you think there’s something cool there that we should check out, drop us a note on LinkedIn, send us an email.

We put our contact information all over everything we do, so LinkedIn, the Weatherguard Lightning Tech website, which is weatherguardwind. com. We’re, contact us through there, uptime@wglightning.com. We’re always looking for feedback, from all these, from anybody that listens, hey, you guys said something wrong here. You said something right here. Phil is the best dressed on the show, whatever it may be. Send us some feedback, tell us what we’re doing well, tell us what we’re doing bad, or things that we should include, and chat about, that, that are, topics that the industry cares about. Topics that technicians care about. We want to, we do this podcast, not so much to, to be out there, but to provide a service for the industry, really.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we don’t like listening to our own voices. We want to hear your voice, through us. That’s what we want to do. and. to, to some discussion out there because it does move the industry forward. And we know that a lot of the companies we’ve had on the podcast have had a lot of feedback, that they’ve, brought in some new customers.

They’ve connected with people they haven’t been connected to before. That is the goal of the podcast. We don’t sell anything on this podcast. I guess we kind of market our Weather Guard products, but …

Joel Saxum: We gotta eat.

Allen Hall: Yeah, we gotta eat a little bit, right? Food is still important, but we’re, doing it as a service to the community.

And maybe at some point we, will start to advertise. Maybe we’ll get big enough we’re, you know that’ll happen, but that’s not today. And I do think, our, reach out into the world has been substantial. And I want to mention one more that comes to top of mind, PES Wind Magazine.

All right. So everybody at PES Wind has been kind enough to let us write an article for their quarterly magazine and to get that out into the world. So we have been doing that every quarter. And it’s been actually a tremendous amount of work goes into those, articles. PES Wind, I appreciate everything they’ve done for us over the last several months.

Hopefully we’ve garnered them some more eyeballs to the magazine. And we’ve, introduced a lot of people to some subjects in lightning they may not have heard of before, and they may be… Got a little bit out of it, right? But I will say, working with PES Wind, they are phenomenal to work with.

I’ve worked with other magazines in the past and it’s not been as smooth or as well done. And that crew worked really hard to produce that magazine. And I know if you’ve read it, you realize the effort that goes into it. So I do want to say a shout out to them and appreciate the partnership we’ve had with them over the last several months. It’s, I think it’s been tremendous.

Joel Saxum: So we’re nearing the end of the special Thanksgiving, US Thanksgiving. That’s maybe why Rosemary isn’t here. but this, end of the special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. And again, we want to thank all of the listeners and the YouTube watchers and the, the people that are commenting on the LinkedIn posts. And, all the engagement from, those out there that we’re making the podcast for that you guys are listening, and sharing the feedback.

So thanks again, guys. We’ll be another year until we do an episode like this and, we hope you’re still listening at that point.

Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Thanksgiving Special: A Reflection on 2023

Renewable Energy

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Published

23 hours ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

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

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Allen Hall: Brett, welcome back to the program.

Bret Tollgaard: Thanks for having me again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allen Hall: Yeah.

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

Allen Hall: I know where those wind turbines are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allen Hall: things.

Bret Tollgaard: Exactly.

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

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

Bret Tollgaard: Mm-hmm.

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

Bret Tollgaard: Yep.

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

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, tremendously

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

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

Going into this kind of industry.

Allen Hall: Yeah.

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

Allen Hall: Sure.

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

Allen Hall: too.

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

Bret Tollgaard: Yes.

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

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

Allen Hall: done.

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

Bret Tollgaard: yeah.

Allen Hall: Quarter inch or more,

Bret Tollgaard: correct. So

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

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

Allen Hall: Okay.

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

Allen Hall: minutes.

Bret Tollgaard: Six minutes.

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

Bret Tollgaard: Oh, hours,

Allen Hall: eight hours maybe?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bret Tollgaard: Correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So they’ll

Allen Hall: look yellow,

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

Allen Hall: Yeah.

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

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

Allen Hall: well ship

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

Allen Hall: Yeah.

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

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

Allen Hall: Yeah.

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

Allen Hall: I just solves all kinds of problems.

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

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

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

Allen Hall: Okay.

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

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

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

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

Allen Hall: because it’s all about speed,

Bret Tollgaard: it’s durability.

Allen Hall: All about e

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

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

Bret Tollgaard: correct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Allen Hall: Sure.

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

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

Bret Tollgaard: e Exactly.

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

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

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

Bret Tollgaard: A hundred percent appreciate the time.

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

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

Sunrez Prepreg Cuts Blade Repairs to Minutes

Renewable Energy

Infringing on the Rights of Others

Published

1 day ago

March 19, 2026

Alice Rush

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

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