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On Power-Up this week, LM Wind Power’s method using thermal imaging to estimate power performance, ZF’s system which allows the generator to be rotated independently from the gearbox, and a patent for a flame-throwing trumpet.
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Phil Totaro: This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here’s your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro.
Allen Hall: First up this week, Phil, is an idea from LM Wind Power, and this idea uses thermal imaging to turbine turbulence and then to use that data to predict the power calculations and energy production.
on an actual wind turbine blade. So this approach is thermal imaging can detect turbulence and losses on a blade. If you can use that data then in a calculation, in a predictive model, then you can pretty well estimate what the power output of a turbine would be. This is a really useful piece of information.
If you’re trying to predict the outcome of a wind farm and what the power production will be like.
Phil Totaro: Yeah. And this is, this is not new in terms of utilizing, infrared technology. We’ve actually done this before in the industry, not only for, remote inspections and things like that.
But to apply this technology to an operational asset where you’re using that output for modeling purposes is unique because what they’re able to actually detect is changes in surface roughness. So when it comes to figuring out leading edge erosion and how much is that actually dinging your performance and your annual energy production, this comes in kind of handy.
But it’s my understanding that, LM isn’t the only company that’s been investigating this, right?
Allen Hall: Yeah. There’ve been several efforts in the EU to do this. We’ve had some of them on the podcast. The technique is very fascinating, because you wouldn’t think you could see turbulence with an infrared camera and, but you can.
And once you do that, then you can use the BEM method of calculating power production, which is how a lot of Blazer design is with the BEM method. The tools are all available. The missing link was just really determining how much turbulence there was on a blade. And this idea makes an infinite amount of sense if it can be put into production.
There’s a lot of theoretical things we talk about on the podcast that are really hard to implement. This is going to be one of them. Getting some real thermal images off of blades is not the easiest thing in the world to do.
Phil Totaro: Yeah, but it makes for a valuable IP for a company like LM to own and there’s a high degree of likelihood that this technology could be obviously leveraged by GE their parent organization, or even licensed to some of these other companies.
Our next
Allen Hall: idea is
Phil Totaro: from ZF Frederick
Allen Hall: Schaffen, AG, and it is a patent that presents an innovative design for maintaining wind turbine gearboxes with integrated generators. Now, the key innovation is a special gearing system that allows the generator rotor to be rotated independently from the gearbox output shaft during maintenance.
And this enables technicians to safely position and lock the rotor for service without having to completely remove the gearbox. There’s a lot of operational improvements. If this could be done, Phil, is this being implemented anywhere? Have you seen it out in the field?
Phil Totaro: Yes, actually. So that’s a really great question because, ZF is obviously a pioneer in gearbox technology and has designed a lot of the going back a number of years, 15, 20 years, they were the pioneer of a lot of the large capacity.
Gearboxes, they famously brought a gearbox for a 10 megawatt wind turbine to the Wind Energy Hamburg event one year. And, we’re starting to get even bigger. But you mentioned something else that was pretty key to this, which is, There’s a lot of companies that are starting to shift towards this kind of integrated semi direct drive, what they call semi direct drive.
It’s basically a permanent magnet generator connected and coupled to a, at least a two or maybe three stage gearbox. So that you can you know, at least get a a decent RPM going. The higher the RPM you can get on the generator, the more efficient and smaller the air gap you can usually maintain on the generator.
So having that technology implemented, but also a way to facilitate service, because as you mentioned, in the past with, without this technology and without this design, somebody wanted to. service a and an integrated generator design, particularly on a larger onshore or what this was originally designed for, which is an offshore machine.
You would have to bring out a big crane. And you might have to actually physically decouple, or you could try using one of these onboard cranes. There’s a few companies out there that are obviously doing that technology as well. But it still meant you had to physically decouple.
So the fact that they’ve designed something that is integrated into the system that allows you to decouple without physical removal of the gearbox or the generator, that’s actually very useful from a maintenance standpoint. And that’s why this is one of the more Useful inventions and clever inventions that is, actually has a practical purpose in the industry.
Allen Hall: Now for our fun patent of the week is a 1981 application that describes a trumpet modified to shoot controlled flames. from its bell. Now the inventor created the system using a butane cartridge mounted on the trumpet’s body with a valve mechanism allowing the musician to control the gas flow and a spark wheel ignition system at the bell that creates an impressive flame shooting out the end of the trumpet.
Now, Phil, in the era of Michael Jackson getting his hair caught on fire from pyrotechnics, this idea seemed that it would have a very short lifetime, because that happened just after this patent would have been released.
Phil Totaro: Yeah, and I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen anybody do this in real life with a flamethrower trumpet, although Ron Burgundy famously did have his flamethrowing flute in Anchorman, cool. Hollywood at least likes ideas like this, and maybe that’s the only way we can ever see it implemented.
Allen Hall: Would they have had to pay rights for that, to put that in the movie? Even though it’s a trumpet that’s shown in the patents, would it have been pretty much any instrument that shot off flames that was blown into a flute or a trumpet?
I
Phil Totaro: mean, the mechanism is still the same. Alan, this is actually a really good and important question for everybody to hear and understand. I actually don’t think so, because the patent application we’re talking about for the trumpet, it’s specific to a trumpet. And so that, that actually comes into play a lot in even, the wind energy sector that we talk about, because there’s all kinds of ideas that people have where they write the patent claims very specifically to offshore wind or onshore wind.
And you’ll also see companies go the other direction where they write something highly generic, whether it’s related to a generator or a blade. They may not say. A wind turbine blade. They may even be talking about utilizing the technology on a fan blade in a turbo generator or an airplane engine.
So to answer your question, no, I don’t think they owe royalties for this guy’s flamethrowing trumpet patent. But it’s, it does actually make a big difference the way you construct your claims because if flamethrower trumpet man had had just been, a little less specific about this being a trumpet in his patent claims, then he might’ve been able to get some royalties out of I think it was Warner Brothers that was the producer and distributor of of Anchorman.
So who knows? Maybe Will Ferrell owns the patent for
Allen Hall: the flamethrowing flute.
