After more than six years performing wind turbine blade repairs on ropes and platforms, Alfred Crabtree founded Blade Repair Academy, a controlled training environment to bring up new blade repair technicians.
Lightning strikes are occurring at a much higher rate than initially predicted by the IEC 61400-24 standard. Here’s what to do now to protect your wind turbines.
What’s harder to predict than how the wind will blow? Well, money, people and technology come to mind. So, these aren’t predictions; they’re trends …
Trends in the Wind Industry 2024: It’s complicated Read More »
What skills are needed to become a wind turbine technician in 2024? See what the job market is like and how new technologies like drones, robotics and AI changing the role of wind technicians.
Will more monitoring lead to better lightning protection of wind turbines? Well, monitoring for the right things could certainly help. This article provides practical steps that owners can take now to get data they can act on and better protect their assets.
The IEC 61400-24 Lightning Protection specification is in the process of being amended. Public comment runs through November 2, 2023. The proposed update would likely increase LCOE and would not offer any new or actionable data for the wind industry.
Around 1 to 3 percent of lightning strikes to wind turbine blades result in blade damage. However, this figure can vary significantly, depending on the location of the wind farm, lightning strike characteristics, the type of turbine, and other factors. Let’s look at a few of the variables that contribute to the higher blade damage rates
In rare instances, when lightning does tremendous damage, experts may say “it’s force majeuere.” But we know lightning is just air – so what really matters in turbine lightning protection?
Only 1-3% of lightning strikes to wind turbine blades result in wind turbine blade lightning damage – some catastrophic, some not worth repairing. Find out how to minimize your losses and understand when repairs are really needed.
It’s springtime in the northern hemisphere, which means more lightning strikes to wind turbines. Most of the time they can handle the strikes, no …