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EP43 – Angela Krcmar of Firetrace on Fire Suppression Systems for Wind Turbines

Angela Krcmar firetrace

Angela Krcmar, Global Sales Manager for Firetrace International, joined us on the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast to discuss the relatively unknown danger of wind turbine fires. A fire occurs in 1 out of every 2000 wind turbines, on average, and with the cost and size of these machines rapidly increasing, the need for fire suppression systems is growing.

Ms. Krcmar has recently written a pair of articles on wind turbine fires: The Burning Issue of Wind Turbine Fires (Powerengineeringint.com) andThe True Cost of Wind Turbine Fires & Protection (windpowerengineering.com).

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. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 

Transcript: EP43 – Angela Krcmar of Firetrace on Fire Suppression Systems for Wind Turbines

All right welcome back to the uptime podcasters episode 43 and on today’s episode we’ve got a great guest Angela Krcmar from Firetrace is here and she’s going to talk to us all about fire suppression technology in wind turbine cells well and just in wind turbines in general so alan is a great conversation with Angela what were some of your takeaways from it well i didn’t realize the number of fires that were happening in wind turbines it’s a lot more than you think just because it’s hard to keep track of their random events and so you just don’t see them all the time but fire traces suppression systems are amazingly one simple and effective and and so as you as i essentially was describing how the system worked and how it was laid out and how it didn’t affect electronics afterwards and it didn’t infect any employees that were could have been in the area at the time the fire had started and suppression system kicked off you realize like this system is really well thought out and effective and it’s surprising that it’s not used in many more places than it is today and so the the hope is that as fire suppression becomes standard and wind turbines as we go forward because it’s just one of those systems you really don’t want to do without yeah well and we’ve talked at different points uh about insurance claims and force major and all these different aspects of owning and operating a wind turbine and as they get uh bigger and more expensive and especially as they’re located way offshore it’s just really hard and this is one of the kind of not funny but you know she’s just talked about hey if you don’t have a fire suppression system or if you have a assistant that alerts you but doesn’t actually put it out you’re just going to get a notification that your turban is going to burn to the ground it’s just like you’re just not going to be able to get there and do anything about it it’s just going to burn out of control if it gets to that point which is crazy to think about because these machines are so expensive so it was really interesting to hear just about the solutions the way they’ve evolved um how it is pretty friendly because like you said if you sort of think of some of these uh retardant foam situations where they’re just like filling a room full of foam but that’s not what they do at all they do something that’s way cleaner and simpler and and uh safer than that so it was a really interesting conversation well i think as you as you listen to the episode you realize that fire safety is just one of those aspects that we need to be implementing and i hope that a lot of operators around the world hear this and can reach out to fire trace and understand how that system works and how it can be used on their particular site all right so again our guest today is Angela Krcmar she is a global sales manager at fire trace international she’s been with the company 12 plus years she’s pre previously a senior business development manager and uh she just has a ton of expertise we read a couple of her different articles uh watched one of her webinars she has an article at uh powerengineeringint.com called the burning issue of wind turbine fires also another great article she penned on wind power engineering the true cost of wind turbine fires and protection so really just an industry leader and just very very knowledgeable on fire expression technology and just the statistics all the different stuff involved um as she just helps fire trace you know spread their message and and their solution for just keeping these assets running so without further ado we’re going to kick it to our conversation with Angela Krcmar from fire trace

All right Angela thank you so much for coming on the show we’re excited to have you today no thank you i appreciate the invitation so we’re gonna start pretty general here and uh because i think this is something that flies under the radar and this is something al and i talked about on the podcast before when we actually mentioned your company fire trace is that wind turbine fires either spectacular i mean not in a positive way but they’re i mean wow what a thing to look at when they do happen i know one happened recently but they also don’t seem like they get as much news or as much press as maybe they are actually as frequent so there’s obviously thousands and thousands of of wind turbines in the united states and all over the world but how many wind turbine fires are there in the world each year and how many in the united states so it’s a really good question and you’re right it is spectacular when you see a video showing you know a catastrophic fire event with a wind turbine it’s pretty significant and it does make the news or youtube for example but the the studies show um that there are about one in 2 000 wind turbine fires a year and that study varies though you could see you know some reports say one in ten thousand turbine fires a year so the reason there’s such a variance in the number of fires reported is because there isn’t a central repository of information there isn’t one way that a fire in a wind turbine would be reported locally for example to local fire officials some of the some of the early investigations that i did actually in calling california fire authorities and asking them how many incidents they’d seen the only way that they report a wind turbine fire is calling it a building so you can imagine how many buildings you have in the state of california if the way that you’re reporting a wind turbine fire is the same as the way that you would report a building fire there is no differentiation so um the the difficulty in understanding how frequently the fires occur is really about the industry being willing to share the data and and there’s a reluctance i’m sure you can appreciate that like most that you don’t really want to talk negatively about certain things that happen but as an industry as a whole um you know power generation appreciates the use of you know fire safety and fire fire protection so it’s no different really that’s such an interesting distinction that i never thought about that you know if you think of a solar panel on someone’s house like a solar panel is a device right that’s sitting on someone’s house or any other you know you have a you know old potbelly stove is a device in your house that produces heat but a wind turbine is you’re and this i don’t think this was a two year point but it is probably in that unique strange category where it’s it’s a structure but it’s also a device it’s also a machine that’s weird that california reports it as a as a building i mean that what would your company if you guys had your way and you could make the new standard would you just say hey call it a wind turbine or is there some other category that it would fit into that maybe like maybe with other things i mean i think if you called it a wind turbine that that would be sufficient right there’s enough especially in the state of california there’s enough wind turbines in certain areas you know they’re not in every part of california but in certain areas like tehachapi for example where those fire officials could easily differentiate between the two by just simply calling it a wind turbine versus a building and wind turbines are certainly not nothing like a building so the way that you’re applying safety and response to those as you called it a device the way that you’re responding to those would be far different than you would respond to a building although they treat them you know maybe a little bit differently now but they don’t treat them any differently in terms of how they report them huh that’s really interesting so as far as the one and two thousand one in ten thousand number with the reporting really varying do you have an idea of of which is more accurate or i mean do you at fire trace do you take a like a an average of the average where do you guys fall in that so i think the one in 2000 is an accurate reportable number we you know obviously have information in the industry for those that are looking to protect their equipment or have had an experience where it’s not necessarily a news reported event that you see like we were talking about earlier a catastrophic event it could be a much smaller fire incident that has a result and a failure in a wind turbine that’s costly but doesn’t make the news it’s not that again large catastrophic event in that case you know there’s more frequent events but there isn’t a again there’s no central repository even with us we don’t get all those phone calls so even with us it’s difficult to say what the exact number is we we’ve worked over the last probably six months to collect data from insurance companies and things like that those that would have good data especially on their own customer base and we’re waiting for them to kind of release that information to us so that we can make that more public but the industry as a whole just needs to get more comfortable and talking about it and if we do then things will just it’ll just move the system along a little bit smoother well let me ask a a question that’s tied to the how many turbines have usually catch fire in a year what is the method of extinguishing a turbine today because you watch these videos on youtube and it seems like it’s just to let it burn to the ground or to let it self-extinguish is there even a way for a local fire department say in kansas or oklahoma to extinguish a a fire right now on a wind turbine the simple answer is no if you don’t have active detection and an active suppression system in in the nacelle or the downtower space there isn’t anything that you can do today to extinguish a fire from outside you you simply do as you just suggested stand by uh you do debris management which is really important obviously you have a turbine that’s 300 plus feet up you’re just managing um what what could be falling and you hope that it’s not a windy day obviously wind turbines are put into windy spaces and so you just hope for a not so windy day so that you can manage the debris falling but that’s basically all you can do is watch and watch and wait because we have seen on in some news articles where they talk about the area around the winter moon farm catching on fire from the wind turbines so they’ve had large brush fires particularly where it’s dry lake in texas where some of that debris hits the ground and not only have a wind turbine problem on fire you also have a large swath or acres that are burning at the same time risking other assets on this site is is that more of the norm that especially because the just the remoteness of many of these wind turbines if if if i’m out in west texas and a wooden turbine catcher is on fire there isn’t like there’s necessarily going to be a large group of firefighters it’s going to be a local group of firefighters volunteer most likely to go out there and try to extinguish that fire is it is it just at that point it’s just management just don’t let it go any further than it would it should is that where we’re at that’s exactly right wow yep that’s exactly right so you know you are looking at a volunteer fire service typically because you are in a remote location you’re not in the city so you have the volunteer fire service responding as they can with the equipment that they have available and typically it pulls in a number of local fire locations and local fire authorities to come in and help manage what’s happening but yes indeed it’s it’s um it’s small and select few that are actually able to respond and respond in a timely manner so you know luckily there hasn’t been a large catastrophic wildland fire caused by a wind turbine but you can see large swaths of acreage lost you know you mentioned texas there’s there was a fire recently with 3 200 acres lost wow and that has to be managed by the local fire officials to ensure that it doesn’t spread it’s significant and your business is sort of tied into the code of fire safety is are there existing codes right now that drive any level of additional fire safety compliance or or even on the on the volunteer fire department do they have special training to deal with wind turbine fires they must have some sort of training that goes on i’m not even sure what they what they know before they show up on site yeah so there is some you know working at heights and training that’s being conducted now for some local firehouses although i will say you know depending upon the location and the number of turbines in the area that’s going to drive the the response of that local firehouse to train their personnel on what to do but again most of it is just simply managing and um ensuring that there isn’t a fire spread beyond the turbine itself wow you do have to you know you do have to be careful obviously what you said too about the spread to other um other towers or other areas within the space all that all that makes sense it just seems like we’ve been in the wind turbine industry in the united states has been going for 30 40 plus years at this point we haven’t really moved the marker that much in terms of fire safety and fire suppression on wind turbines right we’re basically where we were in the 1980s roughly yeah i will say that you’ll see some local authorities requiring additional fire safety measures for example in california there are projects where there is a you know high fire risk there are projects that require additional fire detection and suppression similar to some of the solutions that fire trace offers to ensure that there isn’t that additional spread some of those regulations also exist in new hampshire for example they have anywhere in a forested area that you might also include detection and suppression actively within the within the nacelle and in some cases in the downtower space we find in europe and germany it’s the same it’s the same case so i think there are some authorities that look and understand the value and the simplicity of just adding detection and suppression you know at the onset of a project versus trying to do it later it’s a lot easier to do in the beginning stages of a project than it is later and there are some authorities out there that are certainly appreciating that yeah so the the existing code structure in the united states is particularly diverse and what i mean by that is that adjacent towns can actually have different fire codes so it is developed locally and i was involved in a project that in the united states where we were touching a different bunch of different fire codes in relation to lightning protection and i was shocked that it really wasn’t controlled at the state level it’s really can be town by town by town across the united states and so as a as a being in that fire suppression safety business every little town across america or a large city like new york city is going to have some different angle on it how does that impact fire safety at your level as you try to address all these varying factors and different codes and different people you have to deal with it does become about education so in some cases the local authorities don’t even know it’s an issue until it’s an issue which is is quite typical in in the fire industry that it’s reactive versus proactive so there’s a lot of education that we do to you know let people know one that there’s an available resource for detection and active suppression that having that resource available is really important but it is about it is really about the education of the local authorities as well as um wind farm owners but you touched on something really important that there’s code structure that’s available for for most applications like a building application and you know one of the things that you have to be careful of and that as an industry we want to be careful of is that you don’t look at a wind turbine like you would look at a building because it’s not an occupied space so there are you know there’s the nfpa 850 which has recommendations for wind turbine fire protection but like with any power generation you look at that and it’s a recommendation so then it’s up to the local authority to evaluate and interpret what that means for their area and decide how how much do you want to require that local wind project to include fire detection fire suppression could it be additional water features those types of things but it is really open to the interpretation of the local authority to decide which does create i would say some confusion because again you don’t want a wind turbine to be considered a building you really want it to be its own standalone power structure and how do you manage that in terms of fire safety it does leave it to their does it really it’s to their discretion and that drives back into again on the reporting side because you have so many localities making independent decisions and you’re right they’re pulling in different nfpa code as they see fit that just also drives into the reporting side of that you just don’t see a national database of fires for wind turbines there’s no way you can google that right now there’s no way you can access even state databases so much to say how many wind turbine fires has there been in ohio this year that’s not a that’s not a searchable item today because of the way the fire departments are are organized so to speak and it seems strange in a post 9 11 world that fire departments aren’t a little more integrated together and standardized to some level but here we are and it it from your business standpoint uh does that just drive the complexity of trying to get the message out that you have to just go to locality locality locality and keep preaching that message of hey wind turbines are just like a large high tower building that’s kind of what they are they need some level of fire suppression fire safety is that what happens out in the real world so from from our perspective it’s more important that we’re educating the end user owners of of how to incorporate fire detection and suppression into their into their equipment whatever that asset might be and for from whomever they’re getting it from the you know the end users and the owner operators all also have an appreciation for safety you know they want safety for their staff and they want safety for their equipment having the availability of a solution for them at the onset of a project is is really key so over the last 12 years since i’ve been working with fire trace that has evolved where you know initially there weren’t necessarily options that customers can select and today there are options to select and i think that has come a long long way not necessarily based on a local authority saying you must have but more based on the end user owner operator realizing if i simply add this safety feature i’m going to remove this additional risk which is really really important sure well that drives into as we get to uh essentially more and more turbines the winter market is not going to decrease it’s only increasing as we go along and it’s getting uh we’re going to larger turbines now offshore and and as the the expanse of where we’re putting turbines has grown substantially in the last 10 years how does that change the the fire aspect and what i mean by that is are we seeing more specific types of fires because the turbines are getting larger are they generated related are they gearbox related are they electricity power distribution related how and with because we have so many turbines now what are those key fire risks risk points that exist today so that’s a good question and there are you know a number of areas in any one nacelle that could be a fire risk i think the the leading cause of fire in a wind turbine is lightning which i think you guys are you know you have a good understanding of that so i’m not going to touch on that the second leading cause of fire is an electrical malfunction whatever that could be an arc flash of some sort just a malfunction within the component that’s the second leading cause of fire and it’s also something that we hear most commonly is the area of concern so where you have uh the power connections coming together in the converter space in the transformer space where you can have those connections as well generate an arc flash anywhere where the kind of power is coming together and being moved is where you could have a potential failure and that’s not unique to wind that is generally just power generation as a whole so those areas of protection like the converter cabinet or capacitor cabinets those are some of the areas that we focus on also the transformer space you know we we learned just recently in some of the conversations that we’ve had with dnvgl for example that you know up tower transformers have a high fire risk and what what does that mean well it’s what they’ve seen in terms of frequency um in the cell investigations that they’ve done wow which you know again it’s where the power comes together and where it’s being moved how it’s being converted where those connections are those failures aren’t aren’t unique to wind it’s just where they’re placed you know some 350 plus feet in the air that creates a different complexity that you don’t have in other power generation facilities and could you touch on the lightning aspect a little bit obviously we do talk about lightning a lot in the show but for anyone who might be new and just tuning in maybe this is their first episode is is lightning causing fires because it strikes blades because it strikes in a cell or a specific spot within the cell itself so what i’ve heard and what i’ve learned so far is that it’s mostly the the blades right that the blades have they’re obviously turning and moving and there’s lots of things that happen when the when there is weather in the area but a lightning strike is one of the again it’s one of the leading causes of fires although i’m not an expert on the lightning side of things so i’m not sure i’m gonna do a great job of describing that for you unfortunately alan doing away in here well sure there there are really two big areas and as angela was saying there’s the the blades that can catch fire which i think is not super common as much as you you’re shoving huge amounts of electricity into control cabinets and distribution centers and overwhelming electrical components which and then cause those components to fail and fail in a in a way in which they’re overheating and then all the catastrophic things happen after that and so the lightning is the trigger for the event but a lot of times especially in the cells lightning has intended to hit the nacelle as much as it’s pushed so much energy into electronics and circuitry that it’s overwhelmed it and that starts to fire

well so my next question here because i like the way we’re progressing uh how does the fire progress within because when you think of a wind turbine right like the the blades are composite but you know the towers are are steel or steel and concrete or concrete depending on where they’re made and of course the nacelle is going to be mostly like heavy machinery we think you know solid metal so angela where where did the fires originate and where do they really explain is there a major accelerant within the nacelle itself is there a part of it where it’s like we just hope you know the arc flash doesn’t hit this spot because then it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot i guess what i’m getting at is it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of you know like in a house there’s you know a non-commercial house or a non-commercial building there’s wooden studs right and so if you fire gets to the curtains if it gets through the drywall gets to the wooden studs and then it’s over right but is is there a part in the in the wind turbine that really burns well what’s interesting so if you if you have a fire in an electrical cabinet the thing that continues that fire would be all of the plastics that are inside of that cabinet so as it starts to heat and warm things start to melt and drip and you you then could have situations where dripping plastics and dripping metals especially if it’s a hot enough fire are dripping onto the fiberglass and then you have a fiberglass nacelle that then propagates into a much larger fire so it typically starts off quite small even as you described what happens in a lightning event inside of a component it starts off inside of a component and then eventually will spread beyond that if you don’t have any anything to have that early detection and then early suppression of that space right well sure everything just gets overheated right the i do think you’re right in the inside the cabinets you have a very unique situation where if you do have a fire start in there there are plenty of things that will uh will eventually burn it’s just a matter of time and heat energy and the the issue uh in the in the cell itself because the the whole shell of the cell is made out of fiberglass epoxy or something that’s this burnable not the fiberglass but whatever that resin system is once you start that on fire it’s pretty hard to get that out uh those kind of fires don’t settle down on their own it’s in like we do a lot of work with aircraft on aircraft there’s a lot of testing that the the components and the plastics and the things inside the aircraft don’t drip or catch fire or cause smoke that’s on an industrial side that’s not the case at all those components are chosen those plastics are chosen because of the cost and the lifetime durability of those components there’s not a lot of testing done on the fire side to suppress a fire so if a component lets go inside of a turbine there’s really no way to stop it besides something some sort of early detection system that’s really the only way to do it cables also play a role too so if you think of the plastics burning cables that are you know carrying all of the things within the the wind turbine those cables also even though they would have you know a high fire rating that they shouldn’t burn if you have burn and so they also sort of they they trail throughout the entire winter by nacelle and then down you know down the towers for example and so once you’ve once you’ve started those on fire you’re you’re in a it could be a serious situation really that’s right that’s right it’s all a matter of temperature right everything burns it’s just a matter of what the temperature is and if you as things get hotter particularly in like a fiberglass epoxy fire those fires are hot and they’ll tend to want to burn anything else that’s around them and catch them on fire too because it’s just a matter of time as we’ve seen it’s just a matter of time okay so we’ve kind of so we’ve kind of settled on that you know unless a fire department has a significant amount of equipment and they have this active detection system where they can get over there really really fast this fire is either going to a burn itself out or b you have a suppression system in there so so how does your company what how does your suppression system work what kind of how does it how does it put one of these these things out and how long does it take to put it out yeah so it’s early detection so we’ve talked about that already early detection inside of a component those those two things together are are very important to ensure that it doesn’t spread spread beyond really so we have a linear pneumatic detection tube that is routed throughout a component that could be an electrical cabinet that could be inside of the transformer space that tubing will detect high heat or flame and when it does it ruptures and triggers the event to activate the suppression solution so that could either be through the tubing the tubing can be an active detection and suppression delivery method or through strategically placed nozzles in the transformer space for example where you really need to focus the agent delivery to the top side of the transformer when you have that early detection having it inside of the component and that early suppression cooling environment happening within the space you have an effective means to suppress the fire if you wait for a much larger fire for detection or if you only have detection you’ve lost the element of suppression you no longer have the means to actually suppress the fire any longer if you don’t have the active suppression system yeah that’s a rough text message hey hey john you’re uh your wind turbine’s burning down i just wanted to let you know no you could do it that’s what you get now you know what’s happening and now you can watch it angela how does that pneumatic system work i’m just trying to envision this there are lines that are routed in the nacelle that are filled with air is that the concept yeah so it’s all based on pressure so you have the it’s a it’s a linear detection tubing it’s routed inside of a converter cabinet for example and only inside of the converter cabinet and then you have a suppression cylinder an extinguishing cylinder nearby let’s say on the side of the cabinet where where there’s a fire the tubing will rupture and the agent will deliver via the tubing so the key is to have the tubing inside and closest to a potential fire source as possible so you serpentine the tubing throughout a component to give it that much earlier detection and then active agent delivery and then the tubing itself uh senses basically melts and then the the agent is released inside the component inside the cabinet is that the or the special nozzles or just physically what does this look like so inside of the cabinet you would have the tubing only it would be a tubing based system tubing throughout serpentine throughout and then the agent would actually deliver through the tubing because it forms a nozzle in the tubing where it detects the heat or flame okay and then right in an open space like the transformer space you would have the same tubing same detection method but the agent would actually deliver through strategically placed nozzles so you can direct and fill the volume of the transformer space much more effectively with the strategically placed nozzles and it’s in an open space so you want to make sure that you’re directing the agent to where it needs to go sure so absolutely so that wherever there’s heat essentially you’re going to put suppression on it heat is where that tubing is going to detect heat and open flame is where that tubing is going to activate and so it will rupture and trigger the system discharge so that’s a relatively simple system how reliable is that system it sounds like there’s since there’s really no moving parts there there are no moving parts which is what makes it you know it’s really really good for the wind industry because it doesn’t expect anything from the wind turbine to function which is important so there’s no power required for the system the the piece that’s also important is the connection into the turbine controls so that you get the signal that something has happened but again it’s not activating the fire suppression system the system is active all on its own so you know at the start of the wind turbine when you’re re-energizing the wind turbine that could be a more common time that you could have an issue a thermal event in the space the systems are always active it’s not looking for power of any kind to tell it what to do which is really really important the only thing it does then it sends a signal to the turbine controls to say the system is detected and it’s suppressing and shut down because that’s obviously another really important part to effective suppression is the shutdown of the component so essentially to the controller in the turbine or the scada system however it wants to interface it’s just saying that hey the system is ready to go or the system has pressure properly it’s just saying the system’s pressurized everything’s a-okay if the pressure were to drop it sends an alarm off saying hey i’m delivering suppression somewhere in this turbine come check me out that’s right is that the sort of the logic of it okay wow yeah that’s right so it’s monitoring you know it’s monitoring the pressure from a service point of view and it’s monitoring the pressure from an activation point of view so that you know that the system it’s continuously monitored at all times this is brilliant so what kind of service do you need to provide to that system once it’s installed is there really any service just to make sure that the system is pressurized is that it it is it is an active fire suppression system so you do have service requirements it’s relatively simple it’s inspection of the system to make sure that it has pressure but you do have to do that on an annual basis inspecting the tubing to make sure that there’s not any unforeseen damage because again the tubing is an active detection system you want to make sure that there’s not damage happening to the tubing other than in the event of a fire which is is key but the the service intervals it’s pretty simple it’s you know every six months or annually you would inspect the system but you can do it in conjunction with other already operating service operations and maintenance activities that are happening within the wind turbine so in conjunction with that the person who does that servicing does it have to be a local fire official or is it is it the wind turbine technician who’s normally on site that does that inspection who who’s involved in that so you can have a combination in some cases and in some places it’s okay to have a local technician be the one performing the service and investigation the inspection of the systems and in other cases you might have to have a local authority or someone who um is licensed to perform a service and inspection it every every state varies which i think you were talking about before code enforcement is tough so in this case in most cases it’s it’s the service technicians that are doing the the inspection and the service that’s brilliant because that’s exactly the way i would what it’s set up and is there is there a way that if the system does go off and there happens to be technicians around that turbine or in the turbine that when it goes off is there an audible system that goes along with it that says hey we got to fire somewhere in this turbine we need to get out of here yeah so there is so one of the things that we do with the systems to ensure the safety of staff if they were physically present in the space is to we do some specific calculations with the agent and the volume of space knowing that there’s a lot of airflow and ventilation there isn’t a concern necessarily for the safety of staff in the space in the event of a discharge of a system let’s say if it was an accidental discharge of the system there isn’t any concerns for their safety and it’s based on those calculations so we keep those things in mind temperature matters uh airflow and ventilation matters it also matters when you’re trying to effectively be suppressing a fire within the within the space so those calculations are really important yeah you actually beat me to a question which was because al and i had talked about this on our aerospace podcast we talked about foam and some of the advancements in fire retardant foam and airplane hangers and people have died where the whole hangar goes off by accident and someone gets stuck in there and that’s an awful way to go but it sounds like you’ve got that already solved or that’s just not an issue yeah i mean you when you’re using a we use clean agent systems there are you know a number of clean agents out there the clean agent system that we we use currently for the wind industry is a an agent called 3m novak 1230 and so it is it’s intended for use in occupied spaces and again we’re talking about local application of the agent so we’re not talking about flooding the volume of the nacelle like you were just describing in a hangar you’re talking about flooding the volume of the cabinet within the nacelle or the transformer space within the nacelle and you know the presence of personnel if they were there based on the calculations they wouldn’t have any safety concerns about evacuating the space safely which is i mean really that’s so important especially in in the wind environment and so i want to go back to why companies hadn’t been installing these in the first place so obviously in one of your articles you talked about the cost uh the cost benefit analysis of it and how with wind turbines getting so darn big that it doesn’t make sense to not have this in there right so my question is who’s on the hook for insurance um you know if they’re if their wind turbine catches fire and then if we had that situation where you know burning debris caught um you know the landscape on fire is that the wind turbine i mean is the wind turbine operator going to get sued for that is that their uh is that a financial burden for them as well if they cause uh sort of you know a fire on the uh you know wildfire it does so it varies there isn’t one answer you know it’d be easy if there was just one path but you’re right the cost of the wind turbines are increasing the the value of the assets are increasing so if you’re talking about a million dollars a megawatt if you have a wind turbine that’s four megawatts you have a four million dollar asset times however many you have at a at a at a fleet and it can vary in the us maybe much larger than in europe that cost is significant if you have a loss so you know what we’ve learned and what we’ve found is that if you do have a loss of a nacelle the cost of replacement the cost of downtime the cost of the fire investigation for that matter could be somewhere between seven and eight million dollars before you have that wind turbine back up and operating again that’s if you have a complete catastrophic failure that’s significant and who’s on the hook for that that’s a great question it could be it could be the end user it could be the insurance company that is you know partially responsible for the the payout it could be the oem that’s also partially responsible for the payout and the repair and the replacement but it varies it depends on the age of the fleet it depends upon the agreements that are in place between the the owner operator and the oem and then their own insurance company so in any case it’s very expensive so you know how are insurance companies responding to that they obviously have an appreciation for you know fire safety measures like we’re talking about i’m sure the same applies to your you know the lightning equipment that you also supply and support so i think i think that there’s an appreciation there but what does that or how does that translate to an end user or an oem in terms of you know a return on investment it depends and i know that you know nobody wants that answer but today that truly is the answer it depends it depends on the customer it depends on other risks that they’ve had if they’ve had other fire events then they might be considered high risk and as a high risk insured what other things are you doing to ensure that that doesn’t happen again i think there’s there’s a lot of players um that play a role but in terms of the availability of an option for protection i think that was one of the things that you know 10 years ago was lacking there wasn’t an option for somebody to consider the inclusion of any kind of measure frankly you know talking about arc detection condition monitoring fire detection like we’re doing with you know an active suppression system many of those things weren’t available 10 years ago as an option and they are today and i think that’s you know that’s where the industry is evolving which is really really good

so along that line i mean i think some of the the curious insurance language and this is what we talked with our guests from uh from dnvgl a couple months ago was you know what is force major and when is it not force major and so you start to look at the causal chain of these things so like a light lightning strikes in the cell the cell catches on fire debris falls down onto the brush brush starts a wildfire like is that force majora did nature cause that or did the demand cause that by putting this wind turbine up it seems like a like a really complicated question are you are you seeing are you getting questions like that we’re like who who who caused this you know where where’s the chain of uh of causation you know it’s interesting the way that you just presented that and i think i’m gonna need to use that as an example when we’re talking to insurance companies with some of our customers to say okay who’s at what point are you responsible so that we can help to alleviate this for yours and our customer i i don’t know i don’t know that i have a good answer to that from an insurance perspective again they appreciate the idea of having additional fire safety measures and some of that is because of the payouts that they’ve experienced themselves over the last 10 years as they’ve grown and as we’ve seen even just in this last year the frequency of wildfires in california the cost of that is significant and how and who ultimately ends up right and who who ends up paying the cost of that it really does then come back to you know those end users maybe that haven’t even experienced a fire but obviously somebody has to cover the cost and where does that go we’ve seen an increase in premiums over the last few years by about 30 percent and some of that isn’t necessarily related to what’s happening in this industry it’s just what’s happening overall where the catastrophic failures and where is the payout yeah you know you have to balance the value it’s definitely complicated because you see that you know well a you know your wind turbine is going to get struck by lightning every year right alan so it’s going to take a certain amount of lightning strike so if you know that and you know that a lightning strike could cause a fire and yet you chose to not have fire suppression you know was that negligent was that a negligent decision to leave that out like i don’t know but you know it seems like a lack of forethought maybe but it is it’s just a really that’s a really complex question you know i wonder if the industry realizes how frequently lightning happens and that the result is a you know could be a fire right i don’t i don’t know if if the industry as a whole is fully aware of even that specific that one topic well when you talk about one in two thousand catching uh fire every year like you said in like in california there’s thousands upon thousands of them so then if you’re the state of california you’re like all right well we know there’s 20 000 wind turbines in an area where there’s a lot of combustible brush and we know just based on the odds that 10 are gonna catch fire this year are we okay with that that seems that seems like pretty simple math i you know especially in a state like that that’s been hit so hard by it and lost so many lives from it yeah i think they’ll start to pay it’ll it just brings more attention to it i think that’s what just happens again it’s more of you know a reaction versus a pro-action and i think generally that’s just how the industry functions and so and that’s not the wind industry that’s just as a whole as it relates to fire safety you put out the fires in front of you well how does this work uh do you see a difference in offshore versus orange shore obviously uh there’s not gonna be brush fires uh in the middle of the ocean but the wind turbines are way more expensive right so can you tell us how offshore how is the offshore market compared to the onshore market right now for fire suppression so offshore you’re right offshore it is extremely expensive to you know put into place an offshore turbine that’s you know 12 megawatts and the output of of of power that comes from that is significant as well the the industry is responding like they do for onshore so there’s all kinds of condition monitoring there’s art detection in some cases there’s there’s smoke detection and active suppression that can be a part of it but it it’s still again an option to the customer to incorporate it’s not necessarily a standard offering but i will say the cost of downtime while you know while you’re not concerned with a wildfire the cost of downtime is more significant in the offshore side because of access to the space so you obviously have to have special ship special personnel specially trained in order to access you have to hope for good weather which you know you hope for good weather onshore but it’s a little bit different offshore so there’s a you know there there is a need to ensure that the uptime is there it’s just a little bit different and does that does that change the way the installation is onshore to offshore in terms of the time it takes to install it it’s just just on a 12 megawatt machine you just need more suppression system more plumbing more stuff or is it relatively the same it’s just the fundamentals are roughly the same yeah so the risks are the same obviously the size of the nacelles could be far more significant so you’re right you could need more you know you might need more additional tubing for example maybe a little bit more agent for the space but ultimately it’s the areas of concern are the same on and offshore how you protect them is essentially the same as well and so if you come in post uh installation of the turbine itself and you want to add fire suppression active fire suppression to a turbine what are we talking about in terms of time to to do that and and is it a week is it a day what’s all involved in that so it’s relatively simple if we think of the areas of potential ignition if you’re talking about control cabinets and the transformer space for example so you have two areas of protection and two different system configurations that are used to protect that space it would take you maybe two days to do an installation as an what we would call you know an aftermarket or a bolt-on solution once the turbine is up and running it’s a relatively simple implementation so if you have one to two days that includes you know weather for that matter which is also a factor when you’re doing any kind of implementation in an active wind turbine fleet but it’s relatively simple to implement and does fire trace actually send trained personnel to install it or is it like in a lot of other fire suppression systems local locally trained people do the installation it’s a it’s a combination right so fire trace is a manufacturer of the solution we aren’t necessarily an active installer but we do have you know partners that we’ve worked with over the years that help us to implement the systems that are trained obviously in fire choice equipment and also trained in climbing and um working at heights which is really the most unique part of you know being in a wind turbine is that you’re able to safely evacuate and if there is something that goes wrong and are any oem’s uh wind turbine oems installing fire surprising system at in the factory like before it gets on the truck and goes out to the site is that something that’s happening today or is it just all aftermarket installations no it’s a combination of both so you you have you know there are some large oems that have it as an option and some large oems that don’t currently have it as an option but they certainly have you know it’s all customer driven so you as a customer have the means to say this is a thing that i want i want you know this this detection and suppression or i want you know this condition monitoring system whatever it might be the customer is really going to be the driver but all of them have no options to consider in terms of active suppression as well which is good so say a system detects a fire and it goes off and it you know sends its payload of suppression out what happens next i mean is so in the aircraft world a lot of times those aircraft were damaged in the hangar right alan and and like that stuff was especially back in the day used to be really toxic and uh if you touched an aircraft part it had to be basically thrown out and you know a new one thrown on so is that the case here is anything that the the suppressant touches is it gonna have to be your place obviously there’s gonna be some damage because a fire started but how much needs to be replaced and and how much uh can be saved well i was going to say the fire whatever the fire was is obviously the first part of damage so if you have the suppression and it actively suppresses it especially in that in the early stages there isn’t anything that you’d have to replace that wasn’t damaged by the fire so the agent that we’re using is meant to be used in electrical components it doesn’t leave a residue there isn’t any uh cleanup of the of the agent itself which is really really important so you you would you know you would need to replace whatever created or caused the fire and then replace the fire suppression agent as well as the tubing in the area where it was detected and utilized for detection it’s a relatively simple it really is a relatively simple change out we have a you know a really good example of a customer in california that you know had a fire in their converter cabinet and they were up and running the very next day replaced the system replaced the component that failed and they were they were right back up and running which is a really good it’s exactly what they wanted right yeah the first time it didn’t go that well is it like a is it like a carbon dioxide is it or is it in my head i’ve been picturing a foam this whole time but it sounds like that’s not really accurate is it no it is not a phone and that that’s a really good question so it is a clean it’s considered a clean agent gas and what that means is it’s electrically non-conductive it doesn’t leave a residue after discharge and it’s actually now like i mentioned earlier safer staff if they’re physically present based on the way that the calculations are done for the space that we’re protecting so it there isn’t anything left over from the agent itself um obviously you’re going to have you could have fire effects with the agent but again you can easily replace the component that caused the fire and then get right back up and operating again there’s no other failure points which is good yeah definitely not like a foam system that can be very damaging yeah with uh you know you have a bunch of wind techs with a 48 pack of bounty paper towels wiping down all the foam you know 200 feet up in the air no that’s definitely not what you want to see nobody wants to do that great this thing didn’t burn but now we’re going to be here for three days we’ll be out wiping yeah you know if you were using like it’s the same if you were using a dry chemical powder you know an abc dry chem handheld extinguisher they don’t typically use those in the wind turbines as well they use a clean agent gas like a co2 so that you avoid that very scenario that makes sense makes sense so speaking of you personally what do you and you don’t obviously work exclusively in the in the the green energy industry but um you know a lot of people that service wind turbines or or attach them in some some way professionally you know they have a emotional attachment to green energy into our planet are you um what a how do paul got put are you a greeny angela do you yes if that’s how you describe a greenie yes indeed i am i think you know we all need to power our electronics on a daily basis in our homes and our buildings and if we can do it in a clean green way i i don’t think there’s anything better you could do yeah and it just seems like a lot of the people we’ve interviewed had get a lot of strong sense of purpose from not just their individual solution or their individual job but just from uh also just being a part of a a good solution for the planet right and for providing green energy for the future and being on the forefront uh because you know wind power is a significant part of the energy grid today and it wasn’t like that 20 years ago 30 years ago and that’s changing a lot obviously with electric cars and all these other technologies it’s uh i think it’s probably feels pretty rewarding to be a part of that where you’re helping these things run more efficiently and helping green energy be a major part of our daily lives it is it is very rewarding i will say that i think you know the first time i ever went to see a wind site i sadly i fell in love with how wonderful it looked and i thought oh this is great look at how cool this is yes we need to save these and make sure that they’re operating at full capacity at all times and that was you know 10 years ago for me and how how different the industry has changed just in 10 years and you know the wind industry has grown to be not just a renewable but really a part of the overall portfolio of many operating power generation companies out there which is significant it’s wonderful to have seen it evolve like that so as we start to wrap up here one of the questions i like to ask our guests is for any advice obviously we have a significant role within within fire trace what advice would you give to um young professionals who look at what you’ve done and they say wow i’d love to be in her position at some point um and really make a name for themselves not only in the in the green energy industry but just you know in the industrial sector in general um what advice would you give to young professionals coming up who um want to make a name for themselves i think you first have to look for something that you really enjoy which you know that sounds silly but it’s important if you really enjoy and have a passion for whatever it is that you’re doing you’re gonna do a much better job of it and i also think that you do have to be tenacious in any job that you do and so again if you have that passion you’re going to be able to drive through some of the things that might typically shut you down and keep you kind of moving in the same direction find that purpose and stick to it i mean i have a ton of questions about the way the systems work uh and is sort of where the next step is in fire suppression particularly for wind turbines because it seems like it’s just uh uh so many terminus have essentially zero fire suppression systems in them where are we going are we going to get to a point where we’re going to see at least some minimum level of fire suppression as particularly as the terms get older and probably have or more at risk of having a fire are we are we getting that way are the insurance companies forcing the marketplace that way or are we just as turbans exit out because of age the newer ones will have fire suppression systems in them you know it’s interesting because i think there’s a lot of things that could drive the incorporation some of it being the local authorities as we had discussed earlier or insurance companies doing things to incentivize the inclusion of fire detection and suppression but i think you know generally people’s experiences in the industry are also going to be a big driver how you know have you experienced a fire event how do you ensure that that doesn’t happen again i mean that’s the typical driver for most inclusion of fire safety as a whole insurance companies i will say have the appreciation for the inclusion of fire suppression will they require it that’s going to be dependent on the customer and the customer’s existing risk so there isn’t kind of a one one answer one path for how that’s going to happen i think as an industry knowing that we’ve gone from not necessarily even having an option to currently having an option and some you know being implemented in some cases as a standard previously then things are evolving to the point where customers will be able to say i want or i need and there’s an easy solution to that which i think is important but you don’t see in the next couple of years the need for or the emotions towards a national standard for wind turbines and fire suppression is is that even on the radar screen right now no not today i think the closest that you get is what the nfpa has put together with 850 which is the recommended practices for you know power generators and that that’s where wind turbines and solar applications fall in line with all of the other power gen so as the industry continues to grow and see themselves as you know general power generation some of those safety measures are really more of a standard organically that you know it’s not a question anymore it’s simply that you just include and i think that’s i think that’s what we’ll start to see as time goes on is that the industry will continue to evolve and look to have those safety measures as just a standard so the nfpa is obviously in the united states is that sort of viable for fire safety for all kinds of aspects and the way that the the local code officials rely on is they basically incorporate those nfpa suggestions as standards they say we’re going to apply them and enforce these as a standard is 850 going to become that sort of standard where the local code officials are going to go okay there is a standard i’ve done my google search i know that there’s a standard out there and i’m going to apply that to these next generation of wind turbines that come into my county i think it’s the closest thing we have today so you know there are some local authorities as we talked about earlier in germany where you know it is required that fire detection and suppression be a part of the wind turbine how it gets applied is open for interpretation but that it’s required so i i do think that the the 850 document is what is official today will other standards evolve over time perhaps but today there isn’t anything out there and as part of this as a wind turbine asset owner manager you already have a whole list of things that you have to know right from employee handbooks to safety to government and local government officials all these different things 850 is going to become one of those standards that as a site operator i’m going to have to know something about right do you is that where we’re going that we need to have some basic understanding of what 850 is saying today i think so i you know it’s hard to say you’re right that the the operators all have a lot to think about and a lot to be concerned with but as as the incidents continue to occur the the means to solve the problem also have to happen and so if you know if you look at nfp 850 recommendations and how how fire detection and suppression is handled with that platform they’re going to be looking for something to give them the answers and so far that’s what we’ve got well angela this was a great talk and we really appreciate you coming on the show i i know i personally learned a lot and uh i know alan you’re asking how long was that i think still has like a like at least two dozen questions left on just the engineering of these systems but we’ll have to have a talk offline yeah allen wants uh he’s gonna use his erector set to build his own um but uh we really appreciate appreciate you coming on the show is there anywhere you’d like to point uh our listeners to follow you on the web or your company oh yeah that’s great well i appreciate being here thank you so much for the invitation this was really fun and yeah we can have offline conversations as well but if you go to our website firetrace.com there’s a number of links on there you can certainly you know reach out to us that way and we’ll we’ll answer any additional questions that come up from anybody including alan all right well we’ll put links uh in the show notes to fire trace and all of their social media accounts and again we want to thank Angela Krcmar for being on our show today and we will see you here next time on the uptime podcast all right we’re going to wrap up today’s episode of uptime if you’re new to the show welcome if you’re a regular here thank you for your continued support please subscribe to the show and leave a review on itunes spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts don’t forget to check out the weatherguard lightning tech youtube channel for video episodes full interviews and short clips from each show for alan and all of us at weatherguard stay safe and we’ll see you next week is downtime causing you financial pain and putting a stop to your power production for months on end it’s no secret lightning strike damage is a major cause of wind turbine downtime this damage is preventable with our easy to install strike tape lightning protection system for wind turbine blades our incredible engineering build quality materials and edge sealants withstand up to five times more abuse in the toughest weather and lightning conditions and we’ve got the research to prove it if you’re tired of constant downtime we can help reach out to us at weatherguardwind.com and schedule a free call we’ll get your uptime back in no time

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