Aerones is making robot repairs of wind turbines a reality. Their new robots repair leading edge damage, apply leading edge protective coatings, measure LPS resistance, and even clean towers. Dainis Kruze and Greta Krumina discuss how Aerones can dramatically reduce maintenance costs and improving performance of wind turbines all over the world.
Aerones – https://aerones.com
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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Aerones
Allen Hall: We are here at American Clean Power 2023 in New Orleans, Louisiana. With Aerones, and if you don’t know Aerones, you have been missing out on a lot because Arons is the robot repair company, company four blades and towers now. So I have Dainis Kruze and Greta Krumina here to tell us all the great details that have happened over the last year and all the new technology because we are looking at your booth things.
And there are 5, 6, 7 different robots here. This year, which some of them I’ve never seen before. So you would’ve described what you have brought to New Orleans?
Dainis Kruze: Yeah, we brought our internal crawler and we brought our cleaning robot and all of the set for leading edge repair. Okay. And since the leading edge repair needs like lot of steps to do the jobs, yeah, we help.
Lot of attachments for the robot to do those, those steps.
Greta Krumina: Basically, a modular system for the leading edge repair. That’s what we have launch now in the
Allen Hall: us. Okay, so let’s talk leading edge repair. As we know across the United States and the world leading edge repair damage is so widespread that basically every winter has some level of leading edge damage.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s say if it’s level, like if you build a new turbine Yeah.
And it doesn’t have the leading edge, like protection. Our technology is faster for application of the leading edge protection than for the humans on the ground, like uptower, we can do the job uptower faster than the humans on, on the ground. Okay. So
Allen Hall: you’re saying if you use like the, the 3M tape kind of material that we’ve all seen, or the shells or the other possibility there, you’re saying your system can, you can put your system on faster on turbine and they can’t put their shell system on on the ground.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah. Wow. That’s if it’s level zero, like, like basically new turbine, if it’s level one erosion, like new turbine a few years. Level one, level two. We need approximately one to maximum two days to restore the leading edge and apply a new layer of leading edge protection to, to protect the, the, basically the blades.
Okay. And if it’s level three, we will probably need two to three days because there’s a little bit more of sanding, a little bit more of fill application and unevenness. Yeah. So to make it even and smooth again. Okay. And so on. So it’s fairly, very, very fast. Process apply.
Greta Krumina: What I’m saying and comparing to is that instead of having two human arms, you have at least four human arms working at the same time.
That that’s what the robot does.
Allen Hall: So there’s, there’s a, there’s a stage process to this, right? We, you’re going to try to fix the damage that’s there. I assume you’re gonna apply some sort of filler and try to provide some, get the aerodynamic smoothness back. Yeah. And, and is that one robot application to do that?
Dainis Kruze: Yes. Okay. Yes. So the robot has a lot of sensors like laser sensor to, to determine like the shape of the leading edge. So we don’t measure by the eye, we measure by the laser. We know where it needs to be sand off, where it needs to be applied a little bit more and so on. Okay? And so it’s very, very precise system.
You can’t do that by hand. You can’t do that by eye.
Allen Hall: Okay? So then if you get the surface, basically reestablish, get it back to some normal shape. Then you’re coming back over top of that with a leading edge protection material. Yes. And that’s a separate robot application.
Dainis Kruze: We have two separate robot applications for for leading edge protection.
One is sprayable, which Reto says it’s like which sprays even layer of leading edge protection. Okay. Another one is, Like APU system similar when you are applying filler, but it’s a little bit different. Okay. But then we apply leading edge protection in very smooth layer of leading edge protection.
Also very even layer of leading edge protection. It’s
Allen Hall: a two stage process, so you could either do a spray coating or a liquid coating liquid, and that’s sort of, it’s applied a little
Dainis Kruze: more. Basically any coating, which is applied by, by roller, yeah, we can apply with our system. Okay. A little bit different way.
Sort of like a Spatula way application. Yeah. Okay. But it gives that, the surface afterwards is not like an orange peel, but very, very smooth. Yeah. Which is very good for aerodynamics. Yes.
Allen Hall: Okay. And are, what’s the base material? I know people ask all the time, what’s the, what’s the l e p material you’re using?
Is there a certain terms of technos? Is it
Dainis Kruze: We work with Axon, Nobel, and Kovich right now, but we are open to work also with other manufacturers. Okay. We believe, like what we see in the industry that it’s sort of religion of the materials which perform best. Like you go one customer and they say that this.
Manufacturer is the best. This material is the best, and this is, no, this is completely bad material. And then you go to another one and he says like, no, no, no. This is the good, the best one, and this is the bad one. So I believe it’s because the history of the application of of the materials has been, has always gone through without determining where and how it should perform.
Yeah, like you can put, you can put one material on the same type of the turbine in two different places, but in one place the tip of the speed, the speed of the tip will be one and another place another. And rain amount in the year will be also different. Yeah. So this is why there might be mixed. You know, like feelings about the materials and so on.
What
Greta Krumina: I also think it depends on the application, because yeah, not always, it has been the perfect application method in a way that, you know, there’s still human error and, and you’re still affected by the humidity and the weather around it. So I believe if you’re not applying the material as it should be applied, then don’t expect good results in the end.
And this is where the robotics really play a big role because we don’t have that human error. Everything is programmed set as it should be by the parameters and, and yeah, I think this is a great stuff where the robots really benefit the
Dainis Kruze: industry. So
Allen Hall: consistency on leading edge protection material is really key to being successful with it.
I’ve seen some images where they’ve done it by hand that it looks. Sort of wavy and a little uneven, and it looks like they’ve touched it up a little bit, so it, it’s not what you would hope for. Yeah. But the robot eliminates
Dainis Kruze: a lot of that. Yeah. Not only that we know situations when the guys are eyeballing the material mm-hmm.
We know the situations when they are applied in temperatures, which there shouldn’t be applied for the center. Oh, sure. So when we, when the robot applies the material, it has 12 cameras. Sensors of the humidity, sensors of the temperature on the surface of the of the air pressure of the air. So even if something fails after the air or two, we can go back in time and analyze the date about every square millimeter, how it was applied, what could possibly go wrong, right?
And so it’s an open book, okay. Rather than, Yeah, the material’s bad.
Greta Krumina: Okay. So, and you have only one report in a PDF format, which doesn’t
Dainis Kruze: help. Yeah, it
Allen Hall: doesn’t help. So the, yeah, that gets us the benefit of having so much data because we’re still early in this process of leading as protection. We don’t know what we don’t know.
Obviously the, the manufacturer of the material has recommendations about the temperature, humidity, and all those things, and so you wanna make sure you’re operating within that window. But not necessarily. That doesn’t mean everything is always gonna be perfect, but you at least can go back and look and refine the process as you go.
I, I know a lot of things that around us is done is you’re just gathering data, right? You do hard things. You go do these campaigns, you learn a lot, and you do a lot of trials and you’re bring that knowledge back for the next season. You’ve been doing that for a couple of years now, and it feels like just even looking at the robots now from a couple of years ago, Are much more refined.
Yeah. It, it’s like you, you know where the issues are going to be when you’re out in service and how to avoid the, so your, your reliability must be just going through the roof right now in terms of repairs
Dainis Kruze: and there are like half a million of turbines all around the world, right? Yeah. So actually even less so the quantity is not the key performance indicator for us.
Okay. Quality and the speed. So, We believe that the turbines are be, we know that the turbines are becoming bigger, so they’re becoming more efficient. So the countertime more expensive. And also the seasonality when the job should be done is actually, should be extended not only in the summer season.
True. So the robots can help to do that. And and so we are building, our motto in the company is every next robot has to be better than the previous one. Not the quantity, but the quality and how well they’re made, how efficient they are. Sure. How they’re doing the job. Like better and better and better.
Well, the same applies
Greta Krumina: to the service itself because when we started out with lacking protection systems test, for example, we were doing one turbine a day and we moved to two turbine today and, and now we are doing sometimes fire turbine today. Wow, okay. But for us, the goal is not to use the quality. At that point where we are making, you know, when we are going for the speed and, and I think this is, yeah, this is one of our goals and, and where we are keeping ourselves on track that okay, we want to improve that speed.
We want to lower that downtime of the turbine, but we never want to lose the quality of, of what
Dainis Kruze: we’re getting. Exactly.
Allen Hall: That is a nice transition to lightning protection systems. Today, I was telling you earlier that insurance people have come by our booth. We do lightning protection obviously, but.
And when I say 20% of the LPs systems are broken and they’re just astounded, and they say, well, how do you know that? I says, well, because NUS has gone off and measured thousands of blades and realized the data says roughly 20%, maybe more are broken at any one time. That’s a huge problem still, and I think that from the insurance industry and from the operator standpoint, You, you either get one of two options.
You send a technician up with a meter and you try to measure the resistance, or you put something robotic up there and do it a lot faster. Yeah, and I, I am assuming that based upon all your previous history, that that LPs measurement is becoming more routine or more accepted. Gotcha. Mm. So it should be more accepted.
There’s just no way we can have 20% of LPs systems broken. That seems like a real industry problem from the insurance side to the operator side. It is.
Dainis Kruze: It’s not only industry problem, but it’s also our problem. So what we understood, like over the years that we are doing so many like these light infection system tests, and we are just bringing bad messages, right?
So like, Hey guys, you have 20%, you have 15, we have 25%. We are the bad news in the industry. Oh, sure, yeah, sure. Yeah. So we understood that industry needs a solution. If you’re just bringing the bad news, it doesn’t help. It just, it doesn’t help. And, and many customers were just coming back and just saying like, okay.
20% are broken. So, so what, so what should we do next? Like we don’t have the budget, we don’t have any, you know, like programs how to treat this problem at, at, at all. Sure. And, So we are now implementing that robot. For example, if it’s open circuit, it searches where exactly it’s broken. We are developing the system to change the receptors.
We have a lot of receptors with increased values, you know, like in, in resistance for basically open circuit in the receptor. Okay. We are building up the systems how to improve lighting protection system by. Adding these diverters on, on the close to the receptors. So, so the lightning, you know, gets a smoother way gets to the receptor.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. To, to the receptor and to the ground. Yeah. And if we see oxidations, we have this oxidation curing system, like when we insert thousand Ts and increasing the, the amperage and removing the oxidation and so on. Yeah. So now we’ve built the best and the fastest like lightning protection system, measurement system.
Sure. But now we are on the verge, like we’re traveling the past, like how to solve that system that problem as well. Yeah. We see that there’s a problem, so there should be a solution. So that’s a motive. Now
Allen Hall: what percentage can you clean up repair on site and which ones where you just have a broken connection?
Someone’s actually got a physically get in there
Dainis Kruze: and fix it. I would say half and half. Oh, okay. Half and half. And and the most ridiculous thing is that when it’s open circuit and it’s broken cable, It is just like half an hour to go into the root of the blade and connect the wire back, which is like half an hour.
Oh, so it’s broken at the,
Allen Hall: not at the tip end, but at the hub
Dainis Kruze: end. In most of the cases, the cable is broken in the hub not hub, but but in root of the blade. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Right. And yeah, and there are turbines where, which are broken. The cables are broken in the tip area of the blade, but still you have big percentage, which you can repair right away.
In the same mobilization, just a half an hour staying on that turbine for half an hour longer. Okay. That’s it. Okay.
Allen Hall: Okay. Well, it seems like a, a big money saver if, if you just need to connect the wire together. Yeah. And it’s, it’s a accessible, that seems like a real simple fix that Yeah. You may not have ever caught.
Before. Okay. Well, alright, that’s remarkable. So, a couple of other things that I know you’re up to and I wrote a recent article in P e s Wind Magazine talking about internal blade inspections with Joel Saxon, the Wind Power Lab. And one of the key points is, hey, we gotta be able to look inside these blades and see where there’s structural deficiencies, there’s where there’s cracks, or maybe there’s a, a bond joint that’s let loose you’re.
Auto sort of robot car camera system. I don’t even know what to call it anymore. Yeah. Because it’s got so much, so many brains on this, on this vehicle is really critical to that, to know what’s going on inside structure. You wanna just generally describe what this, what do you, what do you
Dainis Kruze: call this creature?
We started with basically with RV and the camera and Okay. Soon enough we understood that we find problems inside of the place and how big it is. Yeah. Yeah, you can’t measure. So we added up the lidar, so, which is actually creating a 3D model inside of the blade. And so, okay, so when we see a crack, we can measure it with a precision of millimeters.
And afterwards we understood that some of the pictures are overexposed or too dark, right over exposed. Like, like the light were too dark. Sure, too bright or too dark. And then we created the system that very powerful light. Which is controlled by the lids, so it’s like dimming and adjusting the light based on how far and then or close to the walls it is.
And in the end, like many of the turbines, how when they can’t put the blade like completely horizontally, so we add up like jet engine to, to crawl up. Oh my god. Lot of times it does have a jet engine on the back end of the, then it is one in
Greta Krumina: here. And, and in a lot of times, like you have actually a lot of oil inside of the blade, which is of course not good.
But, but that’s the situation, right? So in order again, to push the crawler forward, we need extra power.
Dainis Kruze: Yep.
Allen Hall: So it’s like the Batmobile in a sense where it’s got the rocket motor in the back of it,
Dainis Kruze: it has the gyroscopes, which is basically checking out if it’s slipping or not, like, and the angle and compensating the gravity automatically.
And, and, and all four wheels are also turning. So, because some of the turbines, like particularly investors, they have these counterweights and you have to go around them. Oh, sure. So it can go around them smoothly as well. So camera. Looking up front camera, looking back, like QR code distance measurement with the radio signal, not with the, you know, like how many, you know, the, the wire is, yeah, yeah.
Is, is out and so on. Well, all of those things are
Greta Krumina: crucial. I mean, if you don’t know the distance where you are in the blade, then
Dainis Kruze: almost what’s the point? Yeah. You know what you don’t know. Yeah. Where you need to cut off, open the blade to repair inside. Yeah. And, and, and then we got to Mexico and we started to do the job and you know, like it’s too hot inside of the blade.
Sure. And so we added up like the cooling system so it’s not overheating and we can perform the job also in Texas or Mexico. So, so that’s basically step after step, but it’s the most advanced, like internal inspection crawler now in the industry. And also the another problem was that we were doing the inspections and.
A vast amount of data, like 30, 50 gigabytes. Yeah. Were gathered from one blade, not blade, but turbine. Mm-hmm. And how to upload the data and verify the data and so on. So, and now all of the crews have like 5g modems, like starlink internet connections to upload the data. And so we can deliver the reports like in three days.
Okay. After the inspection is done. Because if you think the
Greta Krumina: turbines usually are, Nowhere. Like in a place where, where, you know, you don’t have the five 5G internet and things like that, right? So we have the data, but how do we get to the data, for example, from our headquarters in Europe, you know, like, so this has been also I think another era of errors to figure it out.
How do we get the data in minutes and, and how do we analyze it? Yeah. So
Dainis Kruze: it’s not just the technology of the crawler, but the process itself, how to work out the process. Right. It’s very so. Like, yeah, it’s, it’s good for the customer. So this
Allen Hall: vehicle, which has more technology in it than the cyber truck, right?
I mean, Elon Musk’s gotta look at this and go, well, you know, someday the cyber truck will get to this level. Yeah. Maybe we’ll put si lidar on a cyber truck, right? Yeah. Put a jet engine on the cyber truck.
Dainis Kruze: But he did actually yeah, yeah, he had not on the cyber truck, but he did on Tesla. Like, I don’t remember the, which one, but he.
He made a jet engine to make it even faster. Really? Yeah. Well, okay,
Allen Hall: so there’s the, all this technology is through this, what we call in America, the school of hard knocks. Right. You, you, you, you learn as you go, but it looks like at this point you’ve learned plenty. Yeah. And then you accomplished you took it in that data made adjustments to where you have a very robust system.
I think the same thing from your. L e P system and also the l ps system measurements are just very robust. So you get out into remote areas Yeah. And the system works. Yeah. So that, and that drives Then I want to get to the customer experience. So the customer experience is really key right now. Right?
So the customers, the operators are always in a pinch, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough world out there, and they’re just trying to make sure that the wind turbines are running and that they’re profitable. You come in, it’s, we, we can do these really important measurements, repairs inspections faster with more data, with more be able to resolve issues quicker than I’ve seen from pretty much anybody else.
So from a customer’s satisfaction standpoint, they just gotta be. It’s rail like, Hey, you can do my wind farm, you can measure all my LPs, my wind farm in a couple of days. You can get the l e p system fixed in maybe a couple of weeks. If I have a hundred turbines, whatever it is, that’s gotta be
Dainis Kruze: huge. We believe so to, so so too.
And, but there is a change in the industry, right, which needs to happen like like all the industry is doing, like drone inspections and based on that, the repair campaigns, right? So what to do if we have more data and smarter decisions like the, the industry needs to change as well. The perspective, like sure.
How to actually treat the data, how to work with it and, and how to make the decisions. But as simple as that, like one, one simple example, like if you have just a drone inspection and you see, let’s say half a meter crack mm-hmm. On the blade, you, Hal, options to do. Based on your knowledge Sure. What decisions you make, right?
Based on where the crack is, what type of the blade, what type of what type of the blade and so on. And let’s say we add up like internal inspection. We don’t see anything from inside. Then you have one decision, right? Yeah, you do. But we add up, let’s say we go and do the internal inspection and we see three meter long crack in the same place.
It’s completely another decision, right? So, Right. So this is basically perspective what we see that the industry wants to become smarter and wants to make smarter decisions. So to do smarter decisions, you need smarter technology, and this is what we are bringing on, on the table. Yeah. Also, the LPs, as you know, like the, the industry is not used to 20% bad news, right?
So what should we do? Like, hey, but it’s insured, so insurance will cover this. Tricky insurance company companies are also not stupid. They’re also thinking, hey, right. How such a huge, you know, like expenses because of the lightning, so we should do something about that. Right. And we think that the industry will change for the smarter decisions rather than Yeah.
Staying where it is right now. Well, that’s, that’s totally
Allen Hall: valid. I think. I think you’re kind of getting around the same point that we hear on the lightning side. If I do x. How does my life change as an engineer working at an operator or a technician gonna get an operator. Yeah. If I do this, how does my life change tomorrow, next week, next month?
That, that’s sort of the, the level that they’re at right now. And that’s a reasonable question. If I do these LPs inspections, What happens? Yeah. Well, I, I, I get it fixed and I don’t have all these crazy lightning problems. Yeah. Right. My life changes, but I don’t have to keep fussing with this system that’s making me crazy.
Yeah. The same thing on blade inspections. If I can do this blade inspection and I might know my blades are okay for the next 12 months or six months, whatever the time span is, I don’t have to run around trying to get somebody in here to fix a blade in an emergency situation. Right. Yeah. So it’s that life altering path of.
I don’t have to do X anymore. I’ve taken this off my plate because these engineers and technicians are just too busy. Concern. Yeah. It sounds like this whole array of robots is the intent of all this is to relieve some of that pressure from the operators.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah, of course. It’s faster, safer, sure. Which is also important point in the, in the robotics and, and gives more data as simple as that.
And of course, the human needs time to verify the data, understand the data. Like to put it together and so on.
Greta Krumina: I think in general for the industry, I think we are still a very young industry. Like if, if, you know, we are looking at it and, and there was a point where, where it all just started where people thought, you know, they’re not gonna need to maintain the turbines.
They just build them and they just run, you know? Amazing. Yeah. Great. And, and then afterwards, like, okay, they were doing the visual inspections and then at one point the drones came in and now drones, it’s like, you know, Kind of like waking up in the morning. You know, that’s what you do. Re on a regular basis, you do the drone inspections.
I will say
Allen Hall: though, on, on the issue of drone inspections, I think that’s an interesting point. Having walked around American clean powder today, there are very few drone companies here. Two years ago or a year ago, even a year ago, we were in San Antonio. A lot more drone companies here. That has dwindled dramatically because the drones only provide.
A snapshot, right? Yeah. There, what do you do with the data? If you can’t get on the turbine and do a repair, do something quick to get the everything back in service again, then yeah, it’s helpful. But is is it as helpful? Is it helpful enough? Yeah, it’s, that’s an interesting observation.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah. Like one of the things, what we compare to like the any industry like health industry, right?
Yeah. So how the health industry has changed with introducing the x-ray. Ultrasound. Yes, absolutely. Mri, et cetera. So this is gonna happen also in the wind industry. Sure, sure. It will lead time. Yeah. But internal external LPs, X-rays ultrasound is gonna happen with the size of the blades with problems, which will, you know, like increase exponentially if there is no technology, which will come into the industry and will not help.
Yeah. Then it’s gonna stop. Trouble slow down the industry. Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Allen Hall: We’ll all be fixing blades all the time and which is not what the point is. The point is to produce power. Now it the, I think your point is well, well taken as we move even offshore. Right. So the offshore, you’re seeing some development this year up towards, yeah, my neck of the woods in Massachusetts.
Offshore, riskier, bigger turbines, little access. It gets harder to, obviously to get to the turbine itself. I know you’ve been working on some offshore concepts. I’ve seen some of them. Where’s the status on the offshore?
Dainis Kruze: June, we are doing tests. Oh, wow. June, we are doing tests. Yeah. What part of the world can you announce that?
In Europe. In Europe. In Europe? Yeah.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Ooh, okay. That’s
Dainis Kruze: exciting. It is. Yeah. It’s. Like, but to be, yeah. By the way, we are doing now internal inspections in offshore. Okay. We have the drone inspections also for the offshore and offs on onshore, like to combine the data drone and internal and Yes.
Like in, in, in one platform. That’s, that’s
Allen Hall: a good idea.
Dainis Kruze: But yeah, everything else, like in offshore, the biggest challenge is leading edge erosion. Of course. Yes. And we are now verifying the technology, like, like scaling the technology in the onshore and. Then that, then that’s the time when you, you need to go into the offshore, right?
Yes. So repair thousands of turbines in onshore and then try to do that offshore. Makes sense. And you test an offshore costs you freaking lot more. Yeah. Yeah. So we want to, to do like verification of the technology in onshore, Sure. And, and then move to offshore. Wow.
Greta Krumina: And I think it’s also gonna be a big help for the industry because if you look at the offshore, the maintenance window, it’s so much smaller than onshore because of the weather.
And again, robots, it’s, it’s a piece of metal, you know, like a piece of steel. It can, it can like swing there as much as it wants, as much as we need. Like, nothing’s gonna happen, probably just couple of hundreds, thousands of dollars, but not a human, like, not a person’s life, you know? So I, I think it’s again, gonna be a complete.
You’re switching the industry.
Allen Hall: I’m really impressed at the number of robots that are here. Just looking at some of the details, just the cameras and the actuators and all the systems and the, I know there’s a lot of engineering involved here, so that, that’s amazing. And it’s where the industry, 80 people
Dainis Kruze: are working day and night.
8 0, 88. Eight zero. Yeah. Oh my
Allen Hall: gosh. Okay. Wow. To developers and they’re all in Lafayette working day and night, I assume, trying to get
Dainis Kruze: these robots literally day and night sometimes. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Okay. All right. Well, I’m really glad to see you. You come to New Orleans, this is fantastic. Really glad to see the robots and seeing you two here.
So thanks for being on the podcast, Breta Denis, this is fantastic. Thank you for having us, and I hope to get the, I hope to get the Lavia this summer. Please.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah, we’re, we’re working on it. It’s an
Greta Krumina: amazing country, honestly.
Dainis Kruze: Yeah.
