In this BONUS episode, Joel and Allen discuss blade pitch alignment with Lars Bendsen of AC883 and blade structural damage with Morten Handberg of Wind Power Lab. Pitch errors create power losses AND bearing damage. Lars explains how a simple laser alignment check can save operators big sums. Resident Blade Whisper Morten Handberg gives us the latest on structural blade issues and the most recent technology to help detect and possibly repair blades.
Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
AC883 – https://www.ac883.com
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Allen Hall: This is a special bonus episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. While Joel and I were at the Wind Energy Hamburg exhibition, we had the opportunity to sit down with Lars Benson of AC 8 83. Lars is based up in Canada, and Lars talked to us about blade pitch angle measurements and how to correct them and why pitch angle measurements are so important to extend the lifetime.
Of your wind turbine. And then I meet with our resident Blade Whisperer Morton. Hamburg, a wind power lab. And Morton provides an update on blade structural issues, leading edge erosion, always a problem, and how robots can help improve blade damage inspections. So stay tuned for a large and Morton. This is a great episode.
We’re here with my cohost Joel for Wind Power Lab, and we have a special. Quasi Canadian guest, but , I don’t
Morten Handberg: know if you’ll claim that. I don’t think you’ll claim
Lars Bendsen: it either. Canadian. Dans. There you go.
Joel Saxum: Canada with a K. Exactly. ,
Lars Bendsen: yeah.
Allen Hall: This is Lar Benson from AC 8 83 and Joel and I have talked about Lars as this company a number of times on the podcast because Lars does pitch alignment and pitch measurements that dramatically reduce damage to wind turbines.
And so we thought we saw Lars here in Hamburg. And we thought what was just corner and find out all the details. So lar walk it to
Lars Bendsen: the program. Thank you so much. So
Allen Hall: can you explain a little bit of what Pitch Alignment is and why it is so
Lars Bendsen: important? Yeah, I think it’s thank you for inviting with this podcast.
I think it’s critical that you need a role that is in balance. Yeah. So all three blades have to have the same pitch angle to keep the road I balance. So there’s the aerodynamic balance, and then you have a mass imbalance. Right. They’re equally bad. Right. But we can measure it both if we have a mass imbalance on aerodynamic balance, it’s important to to distinguish those two things.
Sure.
Allen Hall: So how are you actually making those measurements? I assume it was from the ground. I said that’s, how about explained to me what is
Morten Handberg: all involved in
Lars Bendsen: this? Yeah. It’s a it’s a German developed 15 years ago, laser. Ah, two lasers, one in front of the tower up wind. Mm-hmm. and measuring on the root max.
Root of the blade. Okay. And on the blade tip. Okay. And that means every time the blade passes the tower, we scanning the blade on the max and on the tip, every time it pass passes the tower. Okay. So
Allen Hall: why, why there?
Lars Bendsen: Because we need to have the laser pointing at the tower as well, because then we are measuring the tower.
So as soon as the blade is not in front, the laser, our laser points at the, the, the tower and there we measuring operations and it’s way of the tower. So you can
Joel Saxum: actually measure the oscillation of the tower moving back and forth
Lars Bendsen: as
Morten Handberg: well. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Wow. Does that tell you anything
Morten Handberg: to
Lars Bendsen: sway the tower? Yeah, it does.
It could be a lot about our mass imbalance. Oh, sure. Say if you have a, if you have a ton of vibration or lot of sway, it can be an indicator of mass imb. Okay. Makes
Joel Saxum: sense. I know Lars, we were talking one time about you guys finding some damages as well. Yeah. So not only is there the pitch alignment misalignment, but if there’s a structural damage or something, the, the differences in the laser measurements
Lars Bendsen: can, can pick that up.
Yeah. We have a few products where we the customer challenge us a little bit. Yeah. Don’t telling us that they have those structured damages, but we are telling after say, okay, well you found it. Yeah. We. And they can see it because the tell tip between the the angle on how to explain it on the max and the tip.
Yeah. If that’s twisting too much, we can measure the twist. Oh, wow. Okay. Because if it can matter, we have two measurements Yeah. On the, on the root and on the tip. And if gray is twisting, Right then that could be an indicator that’s structured damage.
Joel Saxum: So the measurements that you’re getting outta the system are I’m just trying to, to picture everything so that we can tell it on the podcast.
Right? So the blades, if they’re angled towards the tower or away from the tower, And what the deltas are between all three as they come around? Yeah, that’s one of them. We are measuring
Lars Bendsen: the delta, not the absolute angle. Okay. It’s only the delta between the three blades. Okay. Because usually the turine will figure out the absolute angle anyhow.
Yeah. As turine control either on talk or speed. Mm-hmm. . So the control will affect that part. We just have to make sure it’s the same angle on every one of ’em.
On
Joel Saxum: every one of them. And then it’s, and then it’s also pitch rotations on the blades? Correct. Yeah. Okay. And then the torque, you said you mentioned
Lars Bendsen: as well torque.
We, no, the turbine is torque. Of
Joel Saxum: Right, but the torque on the blades, like they’re twisted. Yes, exactly.
Lars Bendsen: Okay. Because of that wind speed, then we will get a twist on the blade. So if
Joel Saxum: you guys go out into the field and do these measurements say you, you create a report for the client and you say, this is what we found.
This one’s a little bit out here, this one’s good here. What’s the next step?
Lars Bendsen: The next step is depending on if it’s an aerodynamic imbalance. It’s quite simple on modern turbines today, you do an offset in the. Like a c, a b go plus there, go minus there. And they were doing remeasure to make sure it’s aligned.
Okay. So it’s, it’s quite simple when you go into mass imbalance, we can only tell there is a mass imbalance. We cannot tell how much Right there we are working with different engineering firms. Sure. Excuse me. They can go in and quantify by the SCADA data how much massive melons do. Okay. That could be, that could be, that could be water inclusions, right?
It could be a heavy repair. So all the sudden you have 10 kilos more on the tip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Than we didn’t have before, right? Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. It’s common. We had a I think, interesting case study we did with with a company. They do analytics. We measured the turbine, the plate chip on one.
Was 900 millimeters further towards us. I mean, away from the tower. Mm-hmm. than two other ones was, that was the delta of 900 millimeters. Wow. Almost a meter in difference. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we were preme three or four times because now we start doubting our own system. What’s going on here? ? Yeah. Yeah. It can’t be.
Yeah. Yeah. But we can also base on something called sharing. That means every time the the the blade passes the laser. That would be 120 degrees in between. Right, right. But cause of the weight and massive balance might be one is coming faster down than two other ones. Oh my gosh. So we could share that ankle.
We could see that was actually two degrees difference. Right. Again, one or two blades are heavier than the other one. Yeah. Right. And this one was sticking out so much. So we had a mainly, it actually turns out by numerous studies, it was almost a year there was 80 kilos missing in. Because they have changed the blade because of a damage.
Okay. Show a new blade on did not follow the weight certificates. They did not follow the weight certificate. They had their own idea. That was better. Yeah. Now, one year later put 80 kilos in in the second chamber. Now we are measuring again. All a sudden the blade tip was in where the rest is and is completely, I balance now.
Wow.
Joel Saxum: Wow. So besides that special case, right, that’s a, that’s a really cool. But on a normal measurement campaign, what are the benefits that the asset owner is getting out it when you guys are done?
Lars Bendsen: Generally speaking, we find this, and the numbers, numbers came on up to four year old turbines.
We find 10 to 15% of the turbines misalign. Really, when you’re four to eight, your 20 30% or 80 years old is close to 50% of the three ones and not when. Right. The damage is one thing is ap, that’s AP loss. Sure. Oh yeah. That’s a minor part. Right. The major part is the imbalance you are creating on your road, on their bar vibrations into your drive train.
Right.
Joel Saxum: So you’re wearing out bear, you’re wearing out generators, wearing out all
Lars Bendsen: the above. Yeah. There are numerous studies made. One of the main NLS institute in the US mm-hmm. on their artificial turbines. The 1.5 megawatt three megawatt, five megawatt. And overall, I have a, I have a report. You’re welcome to have it if you promise, if you promise to read it.
But generally speaking, 1.2 degrees delta between the three blades. Yeah. Takes six years of lifetime out lighting. Wow. Oh, because of the increased loads on the components, vibration, et cetera. Right. Wow. It’s quite significant.
Morten Handberg: That’s a,
Allen Hall: yeah, that’s definitely a life shortener that, well, I, I know one of the questions when we talked about pitch alignment ran, first I was talking about pitch alignment and they said, well, is it something that they just do right on site?
Like the, the data comes into your system, your laser system? Mm-hmm. , do you have an answer just spit out immediately and, and you know what to do? Or do you have to go back and process it and come back? How fast
Lars Bendsen: is that process? We are, our campaign takes roughly, depending on wind speed, about five minutes per turbine.
Whoa. And I press, I press report and have all the readings out there. Wow. So if the client have a technician on site Yeah. And it’s only aerodynamic imbalance, then it’s easy to the offset. Right. Run the turbine and measure again as relative
Joel Saxum: simple. Yeah. So if you’re on site, you have technicians there, you do the control system updates, or if you go have an extreme case, you might have to, you.
Put any shims in some
Lars Bendsen: blades or anything. You ever had to do that? No, never shims. Okay. It’s usually on the on the controller on newer turbines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Older, the eighties. Yeah. They have to go up tower and mechanically on the torque arm to different up there. It’s more pit of a hassle on the older turbines put the newer turbines.
It’s pretty simple.
Joel Saxum: So the AEP increase it can. Yeah, quickly, right? Like, so as soon as the thing is done, we do these adjustments. We’re getting some AEP increase. We’re we’re adding some life back into our bearings and drive train to what the design was. So when I think about it to someone who’s not very bright like himself, I’ll
Lars Bendsen: say that.
Don’t be, don’t be so hard on yourself. .
Joel Saxum: It’s It’s like having a car, right? You’re driving a car. Yeah. And the tires are, the wheels shimming a little bit. You bring it to the garage and you get in alignment. Otherwise, you’ve gotta put new tires on. You’re wearing out your ball joints and your tire out
Lars Bendsen: ends and all this stuff.
Sure. As simple as that. Actually, same thing. Doing the same take, take it bicycle wheel and spin it. Yeah. And make it. Like that in the ocean, like that corporation does give you, it just, it’s basically as simple as that. Yeah. So why aren’t,
Joel Saxum: why isn’t everybody doing
Lars Bendsen: this, right? Why not ? Well, the thing is, why do we have those misalignments in the first place?
Installation. Sure. They only have some serial marks made with a, with a pen. Yeah. Right. That’s not accurate. Yeah. and sometimes even get one hole. Yeah. So actually one boat circle is, one hole is line from other ones. Oh, sure. You see that too? Sure. And then the most common one on, let’s say 80 old turbines is we have a cylinder that’s leaking.
Ah, yes. Internally leaking. That means the blade can move Right. Without the control of pixels up. Right, right. So it’s actually a, so the hydraulic Hydraulic and electric and, and the and the and the and the hydraulic. Right. It happens both. Oh wow. So that’s where we. And,
Allen Hall: and the OEMs are not requiring pitch alignment as part of the standard inspection during warranty periods.
It seems like something that should be done during the warranty period in
Lars Bendsen: particular. Yeah, but it, but it’s continues, right? Yeah, course. Yeah. Even you do it in the warranty, two year warranty, right. Then it’s 80 later you still have it. Right. So, so some, some OEMs have it part of their service that they have to check it.
Good. That’s good. That’s good. Yeah. And some of them do it and some don’t. Yeah. But there are some. I won’t enter name. They don’t have it as a part of their maintenance scope at all. Mm-hmm. . And that’s, that’s disturbing, I find. Yeah. But also the way they do it is a mechanical bracket they put on again.
We also seent put that bracket upside down and make it worse. And only it was . So, I mean, it’s, it’s, and again, I think in this industry, skilled labor is a is a problem. Yeah. Regardless if.
Joel Saxum: Skiing fast. You’re one of technicians.
Lars Bendsen: It is a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. But at least you have a bracket. If you put it right, you get somewhat in, not, not a hundred percent, but you get
Joel Saxum: okay, but you’re not gonna be able to know if the weights are off or those kind of things.
Right? So if I put myself as in sit in the asset owner chair I would want this done right after commissioning. I would, more than likely, I would probably check it yearly, but I would make sure I had it done right before my end of warranty, period.
Lars Bendsen: Yeah. As a part of that endo
Joel Saxum: for sure. Yeah, a absolutely.
And then, you know, as a part of the strategy, so we’re putting together, hey, we do blade inspections at these dates. We do bearing inspections at these dates. We do pitch alignment at these dates and people, the asset owners should be having as a part of their stove
Lars Bendsen: three to five years. Yeah, I would do it.
Morten Handberg: Wow. On
Allen Hall: feet. Yeah. AC 8 83 does more than just pitch alignment. Yeah. You’re into repairs now. Yeah. And can you describe some of the repairs you do when
Lars Bendsen: you’re out in the field? Yeah. We have a kind of a two tier strategy. The way we started, we’re helping Europeans technology companies Yeah. Into North America, but we started our ISP arm as well.
This is the Pittsburgh alignment? Yeah. And then great repairs. Okay. Regularly p work, structural. Okay. Working with different companies who can do us when they come to severe for our pay grade, we have a contract to help us out. Okay. When it gets you complicated.
Morten Handberg: Yeah,
Allen Hall: sure, sure. So you’re kind of a one stop shop a little bit and your, in your mobile.
So you’re out there doing pitch lineage may see there’s some issues on the blades. You can go out there and fix the blades at the same time. Yeah, you must be. Whoops. All year round, at least is when it’s not snowing. Or maybe you’re doing this when it’s snowing too. You can do pitch alignment when it’s cold
Lars Bendsen: outside, right?
Yeah, as long it’s not too heavy snow, we can do it. So usually do plates in the summer and do pitchman alignment in the winter. Wow. Okay. Because we want to have a constant wind speed when we do it. Oh sure. You don’t wanna have low winds. So we are chasing the turbine every time they joinin. We have to move our equipment.
Right, right. And that’s that’s painful in the summer . And we cannot drive on the field cause we have crops in the ground. Right, right. Yeah. So therefore in the winters fantastic. Get frost. We can just drive on the fields and get, get them hammered out.
Joel Saxum: You’ve solved the problem for blade companies.
You’ve got your technicians busy year round.
Lars Bendsen: Yeah. Right.
Joel Saxum: Patented stamp on it. Lars has had it
Lars Bendsen: figured out, right? I’m not sure. Can patented it, but yeah, . So keep Cuban busy. Not a patent, I guess. There you go. .
Morten Handberg: So we’re
Allen Hall: coming up on the winter season now in North America. Everybody’s planning for the wintertime.
I think a lot of people don’t think about doing any kind of repairs in the wintertime unless it’s really mandatory. Yeah. Yeah. So now it’s a good time to think about pitch alignment and to get that on your schedule. How do they reach you? What’s the best way to reach? Well,
Lars Bendsen: ACA three.com Okay. As one of them.
Okay. But yeah, we are scheduled for five or 600 tur and just winter. Whoa. We did 700 last winter. Nice. Whoa. We’ll do sitewide turbines or run through all of them, and in the meantime, from number one to number six. Take it and do the adjustment. Then we come back and start all over again on remeasure, because we don’t have to measure the whole f again.
We only, we only remeasure on those that need the adjustment. So between 10% and 50% of the turbines really?
Allen Hall: That many? That’s a lot. Yeah. Think of all the AEP you’re, you’re losing when you do that fleet wide too, right? Yeah. It’s fleet wide. Yeah. It’s not just one turbine. Yeah. 10%, 15% of your fleet. Yeah, it could 10, 15 turbines in some of these large farm.
One
Lars Bendsen: thing is to. One or 2% AP on the site. Yeah, that’s course interesting. But it’s more interesting that you have 50% that cuts out your, your main banks, right? Yeah. So now we have 50 main banks. We have gearbox where you take six years out of each of them. Right. So I think that’s even more interesting than the ap.
Yeah. And also some of the Midwest, $30 per megawatt. Right. 1.5 megawatt. Yeah. Now that’s important. Right. Carbon Canada, we fed half $140 per maket and three mega. Now become interesting with a Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Well the AEP immediately can do it, can pay for the campaign.
Lars Bendsen: Absolutely. Oh sure. Absolutely. The cost of the six year is harder to measure the actual, it was actually easy, but it’s harder to sell.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: Wow. Well, I know largely we, we wanted to have on the podcast for a long time, so , I’m glad we had to hold you down for a few minutes. You’ve been very busy. How has the show been in Hamburg?
Lars Bendsen: It’s been good, new opportunities. We are still working on the blade part of the, the equation. Okay.
That might be some gearbox main bang we are going into as we have some technology. See if we can can choose the convey market a little bit. There you go. Nice.
Allen Hall: Yeah, well continue success clearly. Thank you. And thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the show. Okay,
Lars Bendsen: thanks Adam.
Lightning
Morten Handberg: is an act of God, but lightning damage is not
Lars Bendsen: actually, it’s very
Morten Handberg: predictable and very preventable. Strike tape is a lightning protection system upgrade for wind turbines made
Lars Bendsen: by weather guard.
Allen Hall: It dramatically
Morten Handberg: improves the effectiveness of the factory LPs so you can stop worrying about lightning
Lars Bendsen: damage.
Visit weather guard wind.com to learn more. Read a case
Allen Hall: study and
Morten Handberg: schedule a call.
Allen Hall: We have our resident Blade Whisperer, Morton Hoberg from Wind Power Lab. The Hamburg Wind Energy Show, which has just been fantastic this week. What have you thought of the show? We’ve been here today’s Friday, so we’ve been here for four solid days.
How, how
Morten Handberg: has it gone? Yeah. Well, we, we started Monday evening with the reception and and then, yeah, been here for, throughout the entire, entire event. And it’s just been fantastic. I mean, the amount of people who’s been by the booth discussing with us on blade issues, lighting light lighting damages and various approaches to.
Late maintenance and understanding the, the root of the problem, that has just been enormous, the, the attention that we’ve had. And then it’s also been really really I impressive to see the amount of new technologies or new opportunities that are with within wind. And I’m really just, you know, thrilled to see that it’s still growing, still expanding.
Still new, new ideas coming, coming to life. Yeah,
Allen Hall: we just walked through just one of the buildings here to have lunch. Actually, this is the first time I’ve had lunch in this building. It’s been so crazy. The, the, the lunch lines are just super long. There must be 10,000 people in just one of these buildings at a time.
It’s been remarkably busy. The things, just walking to lunch here today, I noticed there’s new technology I hadn’t seen for the previous three
Morten Handberg: days ,
Allen Hall: so it’s, it’s been a very fascinating show that way. What are some of the things that you’ve seen this week that stand out?
Morten Handberg: Well, I agree with you that you, you, you walk the same path and then suddenly you see a new company that you, that you hadn’t noticed before because you’re looking at from a new angle.
But I’m, I’m really excited about some of the new l products that are coming to the market, both on, both coding wise and also also new, new shells that will double, double change the landscape of, you know, opportunities. How you can do maintenance and, and what products you can actually use. And I think also one of the, some of the autonomous blade repair solutions that are there, I’m really excited about.
And also the ability to do NDT while on the blade. That is huge. You know, that we don’t have to take the blade down, we can actually go onsite to, to check it. That would, that would be a game game changer, especially when we’re, if we have a blade where we have suspicion of de-boning, but we can’t. , then being able to go out, send a drone down, do do, do the, do the inspection and give us a reliable result back to do a pass or fail o off the blades.
That would, that would really change change a lot of things for the owners because you can remove some of the risk. Yeah. And some of the concerns that that, that is growing in your mind. If, you know, I might have a blade that fails tomorrow, you know? Right. Yeah. It’s.
Allen Hall: A lot of it’s about speed. It is because we’ve grown as an industry from a few thousand wind turbines to now hundreds of thousands of wind turbines.
And so the scale, the scale is there, and so speed becomes of the essence. We can’t spend a day on a turbine anymore because we ha need to, to rapidly keep track of all the things that are happening. So what are some of the, what were some of the LEP solutions? I, I saw a couple. Some liquids, some shells.
It seems like liquid. The, the, the paint solutions are starting to take more prominence. Have, is that what your thought is?
Morten Handberg: I think that it, it will always be a combination. So, so shells have their their, their place and they’re, they’re here to stay. Coatings, I’m, I’m seeing some more positive things that, you know, they are working with, making them more reliable, easier to process.
But I. When I’m looking at combining it, doing an L solution for, for, for a blade, I think going, I, I, I don’t think I’ll go back to choosing just one solution over the other. I think I, I will look, I will continue to look in combinations so that you can, you can harness, you know, the, the strengths of the coding.
So some are difficult to put on. Excellent erosion probabilities. Others, they’re easier to process but have less erosion protection. But if you then use that outside of the aggressive erosion zone, then, then you have a really good combined product that, you know, reduces the maintenance campaign, but avoids a lot of process failures.
Right,
Allen Hall: right. And I think some of the coatings are being developed mostly for robotic applications. I’ve seen more coatings that are Amen. To just not having a technician there, but using a robot to apply it, which has, it’s been a big shift. Yeah. Because it was about how technicians could apply it and apply it reliably, and that seemed to have moved to, I need to have a solution that I can.
Plug into a robot system and get it done
Morten Handberg: faster. That’s definitely something that de coding manufacturers and developers, they’re thinking about robotic solutions when they develop it. That’s easy to see in Yeah. In the way that they’re, they’re yeah. In, in, in how the products, they, they, they look now because they, they need to be able to also apply with a role by, by a robot.
And, and that’s the way we’re going to go because there’s not enough resources to have guys hanging in ropes all time. They will always be, You know, the backbone of the blade maintenance industry, the experts, but Yeah, exactly. And, and they, they can do, they can do all the, all, all the different repairs, all the complicated things.
But the more we can move into the robot, into the automated robot, the, the better we’re, we’re going to be off in the long run because there’s more than enough work to go around. I mean, there’re blade preparers that aren’t being done because you don’t have the manpower. So you can, if you can move that to getting a robot to do the, the menial coding repairs that would that, that would save up a lot of resources to actually do, do, do the critical repairs that are needed.
Yeah.
Allen Hall: I, I agree with you there. In the, in this week, in the booth, I just, a number of times people have come by with blade issues, structural issues. I was astounded how many times that. It seems like it’s just an industrywide thing, and maybe it’s more prevalent now because the blades are bigger or because we’re just rapidly producing blades, but it seems like most operators have some significant blade issues.
What, what were some of the highlights you heard
Morten Handberg: this week? I, I think, I think the reason why they are is because they have been, they’ve become better at looking for them. Oh, sure. That’s true. Early they were relying on what the OEM was telling them. Sure. And how they deal with it, so they didn’t. Think too much about it.
Sure. But now it’s front and center because they have to deal with it often because they’re not, they’re either not covered or it, it turns into big repair costs and so they need to deal with it and they need to, to find out a way to, to mitigate it. And thenand, what do I need to repair when? Right. I think some of the, some of the, the play times that we’ve been, that we’ve been looking at is as always de bonding, de bonding issues and then obviously lighting strike damages.
We’ve seen quite a few owners come, come by. With problems like that. And then it’s just, it’s really, it’s really helpful to, to, to know that Yeah. We, we can actually now do in the team inspections on the blade so we don’t have to guess which blades that are affected. Right, right. Or send in crawlers through the blade where we can actually do something externally.
So, so yeah, that, that, and, and it’s been been, but I’m also. That owners are feeling comfortable to come over and talk about the blade issues at the booth. And I think that’s also kind of a change that it’s becoming, well, it’s always been acceptable, but they’re less afraid of discussing their issues with us.
That’s true. Even in an open setting like this, like ours.
Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the discussions were not limited to certain manufacturers. I think that was one of the things I picked up this week is, Every manufacturer has some sort of unique blade issued based mostly on the design, some of manufacturing, but it seems like a lot of it may be design related in some, some level.
As, and there’s been announcements about bigger blades this week. Are those are those sort of manufacturing slash engineering issues just gonna continue because the blades are getting so much massively bigger as we have seen this week.
Morten Handberg: I think actually one of the things that I was really positive about is that it seems like the OEMs are actually starting to realize we need to push the brake a little bit.
We can’t keep continuing developing blades and, and part of that, well, like, it’s likely also a cost out issue because Oh sure. If you keep producing new blades but never maturing. The co, they, you’ll, you’ll never see them fall in cost because of process improvement. So the fact that they’re starting to consider keeping the blade models for a longer time will do, will do cost reduction for them, will also improve the, the quality that we’re, that that’s being pushed out there.
Sure. And as you know, that, that’s one of my. My, my big issues is, you know, blade quality and in blade, so, right, right, right. So that, that’s, that’s something that, that really that, that really makes me hopeful for, for the coming years when when the new turbines are getting up. Yeah. And I, and we
Allen Hall: were talking earlier today about if you have a blade that has been severely damaged and you need to replace it, It may take 12 months or longer to get a replacement blade now, or you may not be able to get a replacement blade from the oem.
So it, it, it starts to make a little more sense because of the rapid development, the tooling is gone. So your, your OEM may not have the tooling or, or may not have the time to make you a new blade. Yeah. It makes a lot more sense to maintain what you have. So how, how critical does that become because of this 12 month plus to find a new blade situation?
Well,
Morten Handberg: you know, with the, with the current electricity prices, then owners, they are very reluctant to have turbines in stock, and especially for, for a year. But it is an issue if, yeah, if and that is, that is also true with new plate types, that if you, if you have a plate that fails, then you need to replace it.
The OEM is not going to just stop their, their current production for a site for building a replacement plate that that’s not going to happen. So they have, you have, you have to wait until the. There, there’s a gap in, in production, then they candu your blade and then get it shipped. But again, that can take months.
Months, yeah. And we have, we have multiple cases where it’s a year that where of downtime. And then if you have an older turbine where it, the, the blade’s not being produced anymore, then you have to find a replacement blade and you have to rely on that. It actually, it’s fitting within the plate set.
And otherwise you would ha you’d need the OEM to, to brush out their old molds and then get that into production, but they’re even less encouraged to do that. So, so, and that would come at a, at a great cost. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: And we had general last night just thinking about great cost. We had a, a general last night.
At a, what would you call
Morten Handberg: it? It’s a hoof pal house. It’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s a brew house in Germany with long tables, very traditional. Yes. Loud music from the, from the, from the eighties. So a lot of fun memories. . Yeah, there’s
Allen Hall: a lot, a lot of fun being out there. And we, we were having dinner with.
The renewable energy loss adjusters, is
Morten Handberg: that right? Yeah, so we, we, yeah, so r loss adjuster Real from from, from from London and per se in the insurer. Right. And then bro Robotics from, from, from the fair. So, so yeah, it was a, it was a, it was a good mixture of different different companies and, and and cultures.
So we had a really lot. It was really good time. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good, good way to end, you know. The main part of the conference. They a very long
Allen Hall: week out. Yeah. I’ll give you that. The insurance part of, of the blades and blade repair seems to be a standout. I, I lost track after a while. How many insurance people had come by the booth to talk about ideas, to reduce expenditures, right.
Payouts, lightning protection, being one of them. Catching blade damage early and get it repaired sooner. Get it repaired where it’s cost effective. Still, we don’t have to replace a blade. How much has, have you seen that insurance industry start to fill in that void that the OEMs really can’t fulfill in terms of just controlling the marketplace a little bit and, and, and sort of regulating what’s happening out there?
Morten Handberg: So they, they’re trying to, to, yeah. Play catch up to, to the OEM taking. In my view, less responsibility for the product. They, they’re, they’re launching and yeah, either the owner or the insurance companies are, have to pick up that yeah, to fill out that, that void. But it takes a while. But I think one of the things that, that help is that we keep.
Focusing on what is actually the current issues, what can be done to mitigate it. Right. And, and the, and the insurance companies are starting to listen a lot more to us also because they’re starting to see the pain from blade issues. And they’re starting to come to these conferences. Yes. I think they’ve always been here, but I think Blades has always been like, yeah, that’s, that’s not really, you know, that that’s, Yeah, was Gear Boxes for the longest time.
Yeah, exactly. The Gearboxes, cables, foundations. Yeah. So, so Blade was just, you know, it was it was the, the maintenance free component for a long time. And we all know how that went. Right. But, but, but there’s time to, to, to get it, to show a lot more interest in, in Blade and understand what is actually.
Why, what is the difference in, in, in designs and why does that matter? To, to, to the policies that I’m writing, right? What kind of lighting protection system and how can I how, how, how does different ways of doing condition monitoring or a blade improvement, how does that improve? How does that affect my, my risk?
And, and how does, how, how should I how does that affect the premium that I have to have, to have to demand for, for the. Yeah. Yeah.
Allen Hall: It’s a very interesting discussions on the floor here this week. Just learned so much. I, I know when Power Lab had, you guys had a really successful week, . It was
Morten Handberg: insane.
Allen Hall: And that’s, that’s fantastic. So if someone wants to reach out to Win Power Lab, they better get in now for the coming season because you guys are really getting booked up fast.
Morten Handberg: Well, we have a, we have a team looking at it. Yeah. So. We are, we are getting more and more work and we are seeing a lot a, a lot of demand for our, for our services around, around the globe.
So you obviously don’t know when the blade’s going to fail, so you can’t predict that. But but yeah, it’s it’s a good idea to reach out and also reach out to if you wanna understand what kind of blade type you actually have and how that affects your, your risk and what kind of failure, which you could actually look into.
And also just important, how can you actually how can you actually prevent some of it by looking into the pink center or doing an upgrade of the LPs system so that we reduce the risk of a failure happening? Yes. Yeah. Because that, that’s what it’s all about. We don’t wanna, it’s funer it, it’s interesting to looking at damaged blades, but it’s, it’s more interesting to look at how can we actually reduce some of the risk.
Right. It’s
Allen Hall: interesting for Morton to look at damage blaze, but maybe not an owner or
Morten Handberg: operator to be looking at that. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. So how
Allen Hall: does, how do people find you? Where
Morten Handberg: do they go? So so you can, you can always find me on, on LinkedIn or yeah. Send, send an email, give me a call or look up, look up at our webpage@thebpl.com.
Then yeah, then, then it’ll be easy to find, find a way to, to reach out to, to me and my, my colleagues.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And if you do have blade issues, Now it’s like I said, now’s the time because everybody’s getting booked up. It’s gonna be a busy season ahead. So Morton, thanks for being in here. Great so much. See you in Hamburg.
Great to see you in person after all this time. Watch each other Zoom calls forever. So it’s great to see you and yeah, it’s gonna be a great season. So congratulations and we’ll see you soon.
