PowerCurve – Turning Blade Photos into Power

For our bonus this week, Allen talks with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve, at WindEurope 2023. In a new breakthrough process, PowerCurve leverages drone inspection photographs from SkySpecs and 3D laser scans to create highly accurate aerodynamic models of wind turbine blades. These high-resolution models allow PowerCurve to predict the AEP of blades in-service. This new offering is being used by operators world-wide to leverage blade aero upgrades and leading edge protection devices.

PowerCurve – https://powercurve.dk

Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com

Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com

Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com

Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

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PowerCurve

Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, president and CEO of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and we are here in WindEurope 2023 in Copenhagen with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve. Welcome, 

Nicholas Gaudern: Nicholas. Hey, Allen. Nice to you. Back on with you. 

Allen Hall: So the, there’s a lot happening in Copenhagen this week. there are so many operators here. And, and OEMs. so the first time we’ve seen GE Renova show up and, and a number of shows, but I’ve met so many new operators or, and that are really just diving into when they’re buying assets and they’re now, they’re trying to figure out how to maximize those, those, assets.

And one of the things that we hear at our booth is we need to get the aerodynamics cleaned up. Yes. And I said, well, you need to go down a couple of. Blocks in this conference center and talk to power curve because, power curve knows about your blade and can make them more efficient. So I, I know you guys have been totally busy.

We’ve pretty much give, got handed out. Every handout we brought, it’s already been distributed. This is only the second day of three. so it’s been a tremendous conference. What, what are you hearing from some of the operators in OEM this week? 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting and, and, yeah. It is a huge conference.

The attendance is great. I think the atmosphere is really nice. There’s a lot of positivity, I would say around the industry at the moment, which is really nice to be part of. I think one of the biggest things we’ve been discussing with, with people visiting our booth is how do you understand, how best to manage your blade over its lifetime?

So there’s a lot of attention being paid to. So how’d you get the most out of your blade at, at all points of its life? So not necessarily, you know, getting the very best blade at the beginning or the end, but just, just kind of tracking progress, tracking performance, and taking appropriate mitigation methods at, at the, at the best possible time.

And that’s something that we’ve been focusing quite heavily on for the last couple of years. So if you understand the. The blade aerodynamics in, in great detail, you can start to map on the impacts of the real world blade conditions. Yeah. So when a blade’s out in the field, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s suffering.

It’s suffering. It, you know, it’s in this really a aggressive environment sometimes, particularly offshore. You’ve got heavy wind, rain, dirt, bugs, ice, and all of these things are, are really. Challenging from a performance perspective, and if you want to optimize how much energy that blade’s producing.

Yeah, yeah. So one way you can, look at that is to take, inspection data from a blade. So drone inspection data, preferably because that is close the blade, high resolution, lots of detail. Right, right. And, and then what we do at power Curve is we build an aerodynamic model of the specific, turbine model in question.

Okay, so we do laser scans and CFD analysis. Build this really big picture, sorry, detail picture of blades. 

Allen Hall: Yeah, so let’s just talk about that for a second. Cause I don’t think, when I talk to people about laser scanning their blades, I get a lot of puzzled looks like, well, why would I need to laser scan my blade?

Don’t, can’t you just tell by looking at it what they aerodynamics are that they’re all a generic blade shape? Are they not? 

Nicholas Gaudern: unfortunately not. Okay. Unfortunately not. I mean, that’s the thing with blades, a lot of them, they look, they look really similar, right? Yes. They’re, they’re big white blade like things, but the subtleties of the aerodynamic performance, are critical.

And the only way to really understand that is to, is to have a detailed geometric model of the blade, which can obtain by laser scanning. So if you take a slice through a blade, a cross section, that air full profile that you see, will be different, all along the blade. Sure. And it’ll be different between blade manufacturers, so that’s why we do the laser scanning to really understand that level of detail.

Do you see 

Allen Hall: differences between the save blade, same blade manufacturer made with the blade made at different factories, or is the, or the molds pretty close? 

Nicholas Gaudern: The molds are very, are very close. Okay. I think, you may get some subtleties in. The fact that blades in a, in a way are handcrafted products to an extent.

So the way it may have been ground or finished, you may see some, some subtle deviations, but fundamentally the bulk shape of the blade is, yeah, it’s a molded product. Okay. 

Allen Hall: It’s, so I have somebody come out and scan the blade with a laser and, and get really, specific measurements of what that shape is.

All those, all those subsequent airfoils. Yep. You take that data and then what happens with it? What can you do with 

Nicholas Gaudern: that data? So what we do is we build a, a CAD model of the blade, and that allows us to then have this really great foundation to build an aerodynamic, model of the turbine. So we can build a nice cab model, slice that cab model up, and for every section of the blade, we can produce an aerodynamic data set.

So the lift and the drag characteristics of that section. And they are what dictate the turbine performance. Okay. So we understand the lift and the drag, we know how the blade performs, and that’s the building blocks of all the stuff we’re doing here. Okay. Get that baseline, baseline blade performance. 

Allen Hall: So, you know, that’s the old garbage in, garbage out.

You gotta have really good data on the blade itself before you can do any analysis on it.

Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah. Yeah. Ab absolutely, because if you start, making generic models of blades, You know, you can use some rules of thumb, but it’s, it’s not good enough. Blades. Blades are, are different and they’re subtle, and you need to understand that if you’re looking for that last 

Allen Hall: one or 2%, you need to have the real blade model.

I, I’ve seen other companies not to mention that are here, that look like they’re taking generic blade shapes and then trying to do some analysis on it. And that to me, if I’m, I, that can’t be very accurate. 

Nicholas Gaudern: No. Okay. No, no. And, and I think if, if the data source is available, Then you should use it and that will give you, that’ll give you the best, the best 

Allen Hall: possible model.

Yeah. And, and taking laser measurements of the blade is sort of a one day event. Yeah. Yeah. You 

Nicholas Gaudern: can easily do it within a day. Yeah. Can you do it with the 

Allen Hall: blades still attached to the turbine? 

Nicholas Gaudern: Yes. Yeah. The blades, can be on the turbine or on the ground, and the, the laser scanning device would be, would be on the ground itself.

Okay. So it’s, it’s a pretty straightforward, process. I think the real skill comes in. The details of how you set up the scanner, the number of scans you take, how you align them, and then going on to build a CAD model that is really nice and, you know, tangentially consistent and smooth. Sure. Yeah.

Okay. So 

Allen Hall: there’s a little bit of cleanup that happens even from a good laser scanner. 

Nicholas Gaudern: Oh, absolutely. You, you need someone who really knows blades to build your CAD model. It’s, it’s not good enough just to be a, a good CAD engineer. You, I think you really do need that experience of blades and airflows.

Yeah. Okay. 

Allen Hall: So everybody listening, scan your blades. That should, that should be, realistically, that should be something that the operator owner should have in their 

Nicholas Gaudern: files. We, we are seeing that more and more. We’re, we’re talking to operators who just as a matter of course, are looking to obtain as much geometric data as they can around the blade from the start.

Right. Because you never know when you’re gonna use it. Maybe it’s aerodynamic analysis with, with us. Maybe it’s for building a, a blade yolk or a crane handling. Yes. You know, all these things require CAD models and, The OEMs sometimes aren’t so, aren’t so keen to share. No. so yeah, as an operator, I would recommend that you obtain geometric data.

And I think the methodology we’ve developed, we’d be very happy to discuss that and say, well, what’s, what’s the best way to do it? Because we’ve seen how not to do it. Well, 

Allen Hall: obviously with the blades on the ground, so you’re, you’re, you’re putting blades under in a new installation when the blade’s on the ground, that’s gotta be the easiest thing for that’s crime time.

Yeah. Or, or a repower. Or if you have a spare blade in the yard. That’s, that’s the one you would choose. Right. It just gets a little more complicated from there. Makes much, much easier. Right. But for a relatively tiny amount of money, which is what it is. Oh, it’s insignificant. Yeah. Right. You, you have that data point, and then when problems pop up, now I, I don’t have to mess around.

I can get, start working on a solution. Yes. Which is, I, I think key as we get going forward, more people need to know. What’s going on with 

Nicholas Gaudern: their blades. Yeah, absolutely. So, and, and that’s, that’s what we’ve been doing. So taking that model that we’ve just described, how we, we construct, and then every single damage that we see, from a drone inspection.

And we have a, a really nice partnership with SkySpecs at the moment. Mm-hmm. So we’re using the SkySpecs drone inspection data, and then we couple that with our aerodynamic model. And the result is, what we call the AP Loss Analysis Tool. So this is an offering between Power Curve and SkySpecs.

That uses the real photographs, the real inspection data of the blade. The real geometric and aerodynamic model of the blade measures those two things together automatically and gives you an AEP loss expectation from all the damages that are present in the blade. Okay, let, 

Allen Hall: let me ask about that because I had someone ask us, I, I was trying to explain this to somebody today and they go, the response was, well, is it just, isn’t it just ai?

Like I just put in the chat G p t and it spits out a, a AEP loss.

Nicholas Gaudern: That would, that would be lovely. I mean, may, maybe give it a few years. We might be all out of jobs, but at the moment, it needs some real engineering skill and experience. Right. Cuz 

Allen Hall: you, you’re able to, to look at really minor levels of damage into a bigger picture to then come up with an AEP.

Exactly. Loss number. And, and, and there’s, there’s some AEP loss numbers. Typically less than a percent where you probably just don’t do that much with that doesn’t make sense to, yeah. when we were at, Blades USA Conference a, a couple of months ago, or maybe a couple of weeks ago now, I’ve lost track. RWE gave a really interesting presentation about leading edge erosion and how much a e p loss there was and what that meant in terms of revenue. And then the numbers were astounding. So scary. Yeah. a couple of percentage points, it’s hundreds of thousands 

Nicholas Gaudern: of dollars. Yeah. And you, and if you don’t, if you don’t know, you don’t know.

So I think a lot of blade repairs are focused around structural defects, structural risk, which is clearly important. But if you combine that with aerodynamic assessment, aerodynamic layer, you can make a much more joined up decision about performance loss, revenue, structural risk. Tie it all together to, to optimize your r and m campaign over the whole site.

Right. 

Allen Hall: So you can actually, because not, not all the blades are the same, right? So in, in a particular farm, you’re gonna have some blades that are just being terrorized by Yes. By rain. And some that look probably 

Nicholas Gaudern: pretty good. Yeah. And we find that really quite large variation across some sites. So again, this is, I think, where this method comes into its own, because you, you are looking at every turbine individually. with, with the real arrow model. Yeah. So you can determine those differences across the site and prioritize what to fix first, what your potential recovery and gain is going to be, and just make a much more data-driven decision. You know, take, take the guesswork out of it. Yeah. Yeah. 

Allen Hall: I, I think that makes a lot of sense.

Are you seeing a lot of people start to pick up this activity as an operator to say, I, I, I need to understand what’s going on. I, I need to be able to make some financial decisions here. I have a, a, a certain amount of budget. Do we go put on leaning edge protection? Do we not, do we just, just tell me what the financial impact is and so are, are operators really starting to, to see the 

Nicholas Gaudern: lights, so to speak?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, you know, we’ve run, a couple of really nice projects now, with Sky Specs with some big operators. In the s a we’ve run, I think, nearly 2000 turbines through the system. And the data is, is, is great. And it’s providing deep insight and we are getting some, some very nice feedback as to what the potential value is in terms of Yeah.

How you manage your o and m. Yeah, sure. programs. Yeah, 

Allen Hall: sure. Okay. So there’s, there’s a lot more to come. I, I, I, I, I’m just talking to you this morning. You have a number of blades already in your database. Yeah. But there, there is always a need to put 

Nicholas Gaudern: more into that database Of course. So whenever we have the opportunity, we’ll go and scan a blade, but, Yeah, we have, I think it’s around 30 blades in our scan database so far, and that covers a pretty big chunk of the install capacity and say the usa Right.

So we’ve tried to target obviously the, the top use models. Sure. and yeah, we’re, we’re always looking for expanding that library. 

Allen Hall: So how does, how does an operator or an owner reach out to you to, to implement this AEP loss model with, with Skys specs? Do they contact, Power curve or, or how, how does this happen?

How 

Nicholas Gaudern: do, how do you start? so I think if, if the customer already has a, a relationship with Sky Spec, if, if they’re using Horizon, then I would say reach out to your, your contact at Skys specs. Okay. You know, who you’re working with. You’re also always very welcome to, to come to Power Curve directly.

Okay. That’s fine too. And between us, we’ll, we’ll make sure you speak to the right people to, to get this set up. But from power curve perspective, you’ll often talk to me. from a technical, from a, for the technical stuff, we Good move. Yeah. And Skys specs will then be leading on the, on the commercial side of things as Okay.

As a general, 

Allen Hall: so Power Curves website is Power curve.dk. That’s correct. Correct. Okay. I wanna make sure it’s, 

Nicholas Gaudern: it’s Denmark. Okay. Power curve.dk. you can also find myself and my colleagues on, on LinkedIn. Yes. You’re always welcome to send us a message or get in touch with us via the website and we can, We can decide how best to, to help you.

But I think the more data that we see in the system, the more we’re absolutely convinced that this is what operators should be doing. Yeah. You know, it, it’s the best way to, to optimize your decision making. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. No, I, I, I agree. I think more operators are gonna be using this to, to plan. Yeah. That’s what it’s used for.

Yeah. No, that’s fantastic. Nicholas. Thanks so much for being here today. we’re about to get run out because there’s a, a big awards ceremony going on next to us and a saxophone player from the Polish delegation. He’s gotta start up here in a minute, so. Wonderful. Yeah. So thank you for being here and, yeah, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll have you back on in, in, in a couple months.

I know we’re gonna see you in New Orleans, so, yeah. that’ll be exciting.