Polytech acquires Fos4x – what does this mean for the company? We discuss a broken wind turbine blade in Ohio that smells fishy, and chat a bit about the often overlooked small wind turbine market – can farms and small businesses actually sustain themselves using micro turbines?
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Full Transcript: EP26 – PolyTech Acquires Fos4x, the Small Wind Turbine Market & Broken Turbine Blade Causes
All right, welcome back. This is the uptime podcast. I’m your cohost Dan Blewett. And I’m joined here for episode 26, remotely with our lightening expert Allen hall. How are you? Great, Dan. Hey, uh, Just some interesting news out of Germany, about some of the low frequency testing of wind turbine noise and potential health effects.
Uh, sounds like a couple of years study just got finished up. So definitely want to talk about that one today. Yeah. We haven’t had as much research on the show of late, but I figured you were probably snooping around research gate and, and all those others for, for something. It couldn’t have been long. So here we are.
Uh, also on the show today, we’re gonna talk about, uh, A broken blade in Ohio, which you think is probably lightning related, but they don’t really have a strong cause yet. So that’s pretty interesting, a really big lightning strike court in Florida. Something like almost off the charts, a little bit of a offshore wind news, uh, from New Jersey.
And a big acquisition between Polytech? Uh, well, not between, but Polytech acquiring a Fos4x, which is a sensor technology company. And lastly, we’ll talk a little bit about that low frequency noise, uh, study, and just talk a little bit about a small wind turbines because that’s one we haven’t covered too much.
We’ve covered different types, like the typhoon turbine and sort of different variations, but the small one turbine market is. Out there and it’s growing and it’s becoming more and more viable as technology increases. So we’ll chat a little bit about that. So let’s start with this broken blade. So you kind of have like this theory, um, and it doesn’t seem like they really know what’s going on yet.
And like, they just have like one drone photo and they’re doing some, uh, but it’s, it’s a pretty impressive photo. Like the blade broke off very close to the root and it was only what, six months old. So this really should really shouldn’t happen. So what’s your, what’s your take? There was some discussion online about it and, and they were talking about possible overspeeds.
An overspeed condition happens when there’s large wind speeds, the control system for the turbine. Doesn’t address those high speeds and essentially feather the blades and slow down the rotation. Right? Overload structure, overload conditions. That doesn’t seem likely, uh, just because the blade, well, it’s a new turbine.
So usually overspeed conditions happen on failure modes on older turbines as systems don’t work like they were intended because of design problems or aging problems. Right. Uh, so to have it happen on a relatively new turbine is unusual and it’s a , which is a pretty good size wind turbine. And what we have.
I noticed on some wind turbine blades over time. Is that when. A lightening can occur to those blades. And if you happen to damage the carbon fiber, a lot of these have carbon fiber in them. If you damage the carbon fiber spar or the main internal structure inside of it, you can get this delayed damage effect where as it, as a blade continues to span, you got this, this fracture happening and eventually the, the blade let’s go and.
That is not, especially a couple of years ago, there was a lot more common. So it’s, it’s surprising to see that now, Dan, it kind of works like this, you know, and we were talked about in previous episodes of all the structural testing that happens on winter and blades. Right. So they design them to take at just absurd levels of wind and rotational speed.
Over-designed right. So the over-designed. Yeah, they test them. They don’t put them in the field and find out they actually take them to a facility and they band and try to break blades. So the have. Blade break, like that says it way, exceeded its structural limitations. Um, design limitations. It’s either did that.
And then maybe there’s some huge wind effect, but only affected this one turbine. Or there was some sort of manufacturing defect in the blade. Right. There was some kinking of the, of the, of the fabrics and side and some sort of stress loading at this down near the hub and that caused it to fail. Or you’ve had some damage from a lightning strike and it’s just sort of delayed effect.
Those are kind of your three options there. Now I think the thing about this one is there hadn’t been a lot of news about it. Besides the, it, it fell off, right. It didn’t didn’t really fall off. It snapped and it kind of snapped in and fell against the tower. And it was just dangling there. Um, which has got to make it exciting because someone’s got to get that off.
Right. So someone’s got to say, you gotta get a crane up there. You’re gonna try to pull that off and not drop that. Massive blade under the ground. I have it like bang into the tower or do something even worse. So if it had fallen and hit Atlanta on the ground, you’re kind of like, Oh, okay, it’s off. So we can take the crane up and pull the rest of the assembly off.
With that blade dangling there. It’s kind of P uh, some interesting days and some engineering work to, to figure out how to get that safely down and then inspect it. Yeah. I wonder if, what do you think Spiderman’s hourly rate is here? Probably he’s probably pretty expensive. You can get, but that seems like the move.
You just cut it loose, then he grabs it and just lets it gently come down, like swings it down. That seems like the monument tons, I think is, yeah. It’s that blade a Spiderman. We’re talking about. All right, come on. You can do anything. Um, but no, that does seem like, like a really difficult rescue for this turbine.
I mean, to go up there and then I guess some guys would be on lines and hack it for, you know, that seems really does. You’re going to have to try to secure that dangling blade. Or hope that it falls off on its own. Try to secure it somehow, maybe secure to the tower and try to bolt the rest of it. That thing is so fraught with highly loaded composite structure.
I w no one wants, it’s going to be one to get around that with it not being secure. No. Right. Yeah. You think of like song, you know, cutting down a tree with a chainsaw. Yeah. You know, when it starts to go. I mean, these having all these, like you said, these. Crazy. Some elastic, some less elastic materials in there.
All of her load. Just that seems terrifying. So yeah, at the Hacksaw or at least I hope not. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. That’s tough. So, all right. Well, I guess we’ll keep monitoring that one and see what happens and maybe your hypothesis will be brewed to be true, but it does, it does seem suspect that. Such a big thing.
That’s going to have so many quality checks would have such a big internal defect of the factory. It would be unusual to snap like that. I mean, that definitely happens, but you just never know, I guess, I mean, even buildings, even building some times of, you know, uh, uh, well that wasn’t quite inspected.
Right. And just like wasn’t quite there. And then over time and. You never know, but it does seem unlikely. I always try to equate it to other industries that I participate in. And obviously I’m tied to the aircraft industry. Think of this thing, like an aircraft wing, an aircraft wing, doesn’t just fold like that.
There would be no possible way that that wing would fold. And so you have. Some weird failure mode that’s going on here that needs to be addressed. Uh, because in any event it’s a control system. Like there’s some control logic in the cell and then the cell that let the rotors overspeed, that should not happen.
That should be doable fault redundant. Right? It’s there’s just. Multiple layers of protections that should be built into the thing. So that never occurs. And so either you, you blew by all those and had this blade come apart or something significant as happening in it. I know on a previous episode, we talked about the number of blade failures, like a half a percent.
Per year? Well, that’s think about, about half a percent of the airplanes coming off, the factory just fell out of the sky. Randomly. We kind of had that on some level with the seven 37 and look how the world’s stopped flying seven 30 sevens. Now those people on them that makes it, it makes a huge difference, but it’s not, you’re not introducing a whole different.
System a logic when you try to make sure that these events don’t happen, you should, you should be having, um, on the engineering side, it must be going through some sort of safety process to make sure these events don’t happen. So that’s why, that’s why I think it’s something abnormal, like a lightning strike event and then delayed failure or, or damage and shipping, right.
Something that you just don’t have a lot of control over sometimes. Um, Man. You just hate to say this things happen because now, now with this opposition to some wind turbines up in the great lakes region, Ohio was on the great lakes. So you just, you know, you kind of built yourself, uh, an a, an icon for the opposition to winch Arbenz to just keep holding up, like, Hey, look at this wind turbine came apart.
Ha ha. You know, these things aren’t ready for prime time. Well, that’s not true, but we can’t keep giving everybody ammunition like that either. We got gotta. Stop doing that. Yeah, that’s true. Well, so other interesting stories. So this is a, I guess, more of a LinkedIn post from scientific lightening solutions.
So a 200 kilo and lightning strike. And they’re saying this is kind of rare because it’s a negative polarity lightning events. So can you talk about this a little bit? Um, what’s the difference between negative and positive and negative moose? How abnormally big as this. Okay. So from. Aircraft certification standards.
Uh, 200 kale lamps strike is like a less than 1% event, half a percent event. I have to go back and look, but it’s pretty rare, particularly in the United States. Um, And that’s why when it popped up on, on new sources, I thought, wow, that is pretty rare. So you don’t see that a lot. You don’t see photographs of it very often either.
So a negative lightning strike is you’re moving negative charge from the cloud, which is usually in the bottom of the cloud down to earth. So that’s the most common form of lightning strike in the United States. And around the world is this negative charge of the Bible in the cloud. Um, Discharging it into the ground.
So that’s normal, but the amplitude, and this is why they, they mentioned it was, it was, it was a 200 kilowatt negative strike, which is pretty rare. And then it had, I think had four subsequent flashes. I think there are a total of five strokes in, in the, in the lightening event and their system, because there’s there’s, this is down at, uh, Such a Cape Canaveral, right?
And they’re, they have a system down there to monitor lightning strikes around the Cape, because it’s important to know if your rocket has gotten struck or has been a near strike to the rocket. You need, they have procedures to go evaluate those things. So their system caught, it caught all this lightning strokes and then.
Uh, they were making a comparison to other, uh, electronic means lightning strokes. It wasn’t as accurate as their system. So they were just trying to play off the fact that they had a more accurate system for this, or that’s not. It’s not rocket science. It’s just, if you’re focusing on one particular area and that’s all you do, then yeah, sure.
You’re going to have better access, better representation than a global lightning protection lightning detection system that can check lightening anywhere. It just is not going to be as sensitive to what you can pick up in one location. So, yeah. Okay. I get it. But, uh, you remember that down in Florida, at least pre COVID, uh, there was, there are a lot of light.
There are a lot of lightning strikes the aircraft down there. And there’s a lot of flights, right? Everybody wants to go to Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa. So there are a lot of lightning strikes in the summertime and to see one of those strikes reach that. Which would be the FAA peak test level, which is 200,000 apps strike.
Uh isn’t I would say it’d be unusual, right? We, we, we always test things in wind turbines. We test the 200,000 apps, uh, with an action and a goal of, of. Up to 10 million, eight to 10 million and the FAA world airplane world. And IASA all the airplane stuff is taught assesses to 200,000 apps and extra growth, 2 million.
So it’s about one fifth, the energy, and to have those have a strike actually recorded like that in a place where aircraft flight or wind turbines are installed, is it really tells you like, Hey, we’re not necessarily testing above what is actually occurring. Which is like, when we’re talking about the winter and blade blade coming off, you always want to test to higher levels than, yeah.
Right. Sure. So yeah. Now we’ve got a re a record of a lightning strike that is equal to roughly what the requirement is for aircraft and wind turbines. So there may not be a lot of design margin in that. That’s that’s, that’s what kicked with me when I saw this. Like, Ooh, usually you don’t let negative lightning strikes for like 30 to 40,000 amps non-state so, you know, you’ve tested a 200 most structure in the 30 to 40,000 amp range.
And then you see one at 200,000 apps like, Ooh, uh, yeah, that’s going to do a lot of damage, a lot of damage. So I think in the lightening community, there’s been a lot of discussion, particularly with, um, uh, some of the Japanese recorded lightning strikes that the, uh, the Japanese have done a good job of measuring lightning strikes for a number of years.
And because, because of where they are on the earth and the way that thunderstorm is developed over there, they’ve seen lightning strikes 300,000 amps. I. No, 400,000 amps and action header girls that are just off the charts. So, you know, it’s like anything else. It takes industry a long time to get off what they have done to try to adapt to the, to what we now know.
Let’s give me, there’ll be a lot of pushback and I know the Japanese, some of the Japanese winter manufacturers have been really pushing for higher test limits on, on wind turbines. And I think rightly so, because they’re measuring them, they should each you’re rightly tested what you’re clearly measuring out on the, on the ocean, on, on, on shore.
Uh, uh, and I, I, I, I’m pretty sure that Boeing aircraft and probably Airbus are testing to levels higher than what the IASA FAA required. Um, is that philosophy, that engineering philosophy is. Test to the worst case plus margin. So you never have the worst case happened to you. Yeah. Yeah. So these data points are important, really important.
Well, and speaking of which, you know, especially as the U S is getting more comfortable with, especially with offshore wind, um, you know, you just don’t want to see more hurdles like this present themselves were suddenly. Taking more lightening damage and we’re not testing. And we’re about to, you know, so like New Jersey is taking applications now for up to 2,400 more megawatts of wind power off shore, which their governor sounds like they’re all really excited about the project.
Of course, they’re trying to get to 7,500 megawatts of offshore power by 2035, but they think this is a big piece of their covert recovery, which. Seems like a good move for everyone evolve a lot of jobs and, um, good for the environment. So, I mean, do you see it that way? Did they actually say the number of wind turbines they were talking about installing?
Because if it’s a two megawatt, no 1200, now it’s off the coast of New Jersey. I’m not sure how that would work. If there is, there is a boating and shipping happening along the coast of New Jersey. So maybe they’re talking about 10. Megawatt plus 12 megawatt plus kind of wind turbines out there. Uh, yeah, it’s a wind turbines are a large industrial, uh, Business.
So it takes a lot of people to, to, to design and construct and to deliver these wind turbines. So if the, if New Jersey is pro is a proponent of wind turbines, now whether they get the factories to happen in New Jersey, who knows, because there’s a lot about taxation and States like Delaware, and some others don’t have as much corporate taxation.
So a lot of. Uh, there’s a lot of shuffling around that happens up and down the Northeast corridor of the United States based on what the taxes are and what the local situations are. But, uh, I just, you know, it’s Dan, it’s just like, w we’ve had these discussions about some of the larger like automotive companies and well, even like cases like Boeing and that, which is a huge, um, Portion of the United States gross domestic product.
Uh, the time for them to take a spin up is a couple of years to do anything. So if we want to see something out of this New Jersey effort, it’s not going to be in 2020, we’ll be lucky to see it in 2021. It’s more like 20, 22, 23 sort of numbers. So I guess I get the concept and politicians always want to get reelected, but I don’t think it’s going to be an immediate and that’s not going to immediate thing that’s going to happen.
I don’t see it. Yeah. And I’d imagine, I mean, what the average offshore wind turbines, closer to what six megawatt. So I’d imagine that anything new these days is probably going to be closer to double digits, if not, you know, in a noble data. So when I see 2,400, I think of, you know, 200 Hollywood exes are right.
S G 14 two, two, two DDS, you know, whatever. You can’t say that name without that. Right. They got to find another name. I know the holiday Duck’s name so well in speaking of which, so obviously if you, and this is, I think it’s good to the industry, you’re going this way, you know, with lightning protection and better testing and better sensors, you know, if you have a huge win for them off shore, and this is like the first for your state, you know, for New Jersey, for example.
Yeah. They, uh, They need to get it right. And they don’t want to have huge maintenance problems. So one of the, uh, ONM companies, Polytech, they just acquired phosphor ex um, to kind of like round out their portfolio. And I know they’re absorbing like a really good Salesforce and some other things. So what’s your, what’s your take on the Polytech deal?
Um, And tell us a little bit about Fos4x is a technology that they’re acquiring. So fos4X, uh, deals in fiber optic, sensing of all kinds of things. So fiber optic technology has evolved a lot in the last 20 years. It was originally just a means of communication and most likely your internet services provided and some portion by fiber optics and any sort of telephone thing today, uh, because of how much information you can shove through it.
Right. But the other thing about fiber optics is you can also use it to sense, um, stress. Uh, in some cases it can be used to detect things like lightening current. So there are very unique fiber optic light things that can be done to, um, instrument or monitor things like wind turbines. And to think about a wind turbine is if you’re trying to detect early stresses in blades, the way we would do it in.
The olden times back in the eighties, we just put these basically metallic strain gauges around and just kind of glue them onto the blade and then, uh, run some copper wire down to a, essentially a computer that sits there’s a monitors. How much strain is an each one of these little sensors problem is from a lady’s production standpoint.
All these little sensors become little lightning rods. And so you don’t want to do that. If you’re going to have a non-conductive way like fiber optics, then you can get the same amount of information, but not. Mess with the lightning protection system. So the fiber optics knowledge, and this is really technical area.
I mean, yeah. And like NASA has been doing some interesting things. There’s a lot of, um, you don’t see a lot of it, but there’s a lot, a lot of real delicate, uh, engineering going on in fiber. Now, Polytech has already their own little fiber optic detection system, but there must be some sort of technology difference between the two.
So. Polytech grab hold of this additional technology. Plus, um, phosphorus has their own sales staff sounds like you’ve got a hundred employees. So some portion that must be sales staff, which you’ve got to have in wind turbines to promote those things. So it’s sort of a technology agreement, but a sales agreement more than likely, uh, and it’s going to be productive.
The thing about. Poly Tech right now. Like, no, the other news from Poly Tech is they’re building a new headquarters, um, because they’ve been in this sort of a cramp location for a while. So I’m going to build a brand new headquarters, like that’s fantastic. Right? So what’s happening. Like in the winter, been manufacturing area, the, uh, aftermarket OEM, you know, from your five to year 20, uh, port market is consolidating also Poly Tech being one of those players.
You see it in like sky specs and the sort of being that leader of the United States. No significant parts of the world in terms of drone measurements, that industry is consolidating rapidly also. So you kind of get in these larger players popping up around, uh, that are claiming their territory in a sense as to what they can provide.
Now that brings the economies of scales. Obviously it may being more productivity in terms of ideas and concepts, uh, because you have the cash to put in some things like a fiber optic system, which is. Play on fiber optics. It’s not cheap. There’s nothing about that. That’s playing with those things where it’s cheap.
Uh, so it does sort of maybe raise the stakes a little bit so that you will maybe see more fiber optics, which would be great. Uh, and then does it make it less lightening sensitive? Yeah, it’s even better. Right? So. As we talked about trying to get winter and blades from your five-year 20, when it’s outside of the warranty period, having detection methods like this displayed in Ohio that broke.
If they had some early sort of failure, an optical system could have detected that and shut down the turbine and got it and gotten a technician out there to take a look at it. Uh, that’s the, that’s the beauty of this for these fiber optic systems that I think if you’re the insurance companies, you’re going to start demanding.
That there’s some internal monitoring of these winter and blades. We’re not going to just let them stick out there for 20 years and don’t have any inspections or monitoring of what’s going on inside. So Polytech has set itself up to be sort of one of the leaders in that area. If not the leader right now, big change, big change.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like you said, you just don’t want to stick these things out, especially in the middle of the ocean, especially if you’re New Jersey putting all this money into it, for example, And it’s like, Oh, what’s going to happen to them. We don’t really know you don’t hit them falling into the water either.
Right. That’s nobody wins and that situation just goes wrong.
all right. So in our engineering segment here, let’s first jump to this, uh, this German study that we referenced earlier. So obviously noise is a major concern, right? And. People are researching this to see if it there’s a impact on wildlife, obviously on, uh, humans, when they’re these turbines are in a community where they’re relatively close to houses and businesses.
So yeah, I’m a major study found that there’s no real link between turbine noise. Um, and harm, but you know, what were some of the methods and what did you take from this? Well, at least they were doing a study and there’s been a couple of studies looking at similar things in the United States. There’s been a couple.
And then this one in Germany, there seems to be. Some concern that the low level vibrations and wind noise are keeping people up at night are given insomnia. And then, you know, that goes, it goes all the way to the extreme stuff. Well, it’s giving me cancer. So sleepless nights to cancer is sort of the realm that you’re trying to deal with.
And trying to see if there’s any correlation now. So far, it’s sort of like the cell phone thing back in the nineties and early two thousands about cell phone risks. Uh, there doesn’t seem to be much of a correlation or any correlation between wind turbine noise and health issues, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t just kind of keep track of it also.
And in today’s Google world, uh, it’s not hard to. To look and, and sort of monitor what’s happening in the area around ya. Cefaly health risks. But, uh, you gotta be careful too, because it seems it’s very easy to convince yourself that, uh, you know, if, if, uh, three people in a miles radius have the same form of cancer or some sort of other disease, uh, COVID uh, that there’s some correlation to an external, an external device, chemical noise.
Uh, and then that may or may not be the case, right? This is why you try to do correlation studies and try to determine cause somewhat of cause and effect, um, because there should be some sort of numerical. A connection between the two and how strongly correlated are those things compared to a whole variety of other variables that are out there.
So rarely is anything, a single variable problem. It’s just just life, right? Yeah. Uh, so you know, to, to get, to get a. Data and to have some studies being done is always good. We can add it to the list of other things that are, that are been out there, but I think everybody should be vigilant, right? No matter what we’re dealing with in wind turbines from, uh, obviously they take, you know, petroleum products, there’s oils, there’s cleaners and stuff using there’s, you know, there’s, there’s current running around on the ground too all the time.
Uh, so, you know, there are things that are happening that are not just like open nature. So I think it’s good. It’s good to be Villa vigilant there. And, and to try to. Make sure. We’re keeping people healthy. That’s the whole point. Yeah. Yeah. And if, you know, if someone’s not doing these studies, like you said, then suddenly we get way far down and it’s like, Oh right.
Something really bad has been happening this whole time. And then that’s also, it seems like ripe for like a coverup early was like, this was, we should have done something about this. And now it’s pretty too far. Too far gone to, you know, it’s good to catch things early, especially when big business and big money’s concerned because these are expensive industry art.
So speaking of which, uh, you know, with as far as turbines within communities, um, growing popularity for smaller wind turbines, especially with farms, communities that are pretty far off the grid. So, you know, these range from. You know, there’s a very popular model of the, uh, the R uh, the air 40 that pumps out 40 kilowatt hours per month, which is not a lot, right.
Maybe 5% of the households, uh, needs. And they go up to, you know, maybe a turbine that old, um, so Britt wind makes one that’ll power, 12 average home for a year. So. You know, there’s obviously some scale from all the way from like almost little toy ones that provide 5% of your monthly power all the way up to ones like the Halle eight X, which will power 300 homes in 24 hours worth of.
Output, which is in sanity. Um, but with these small windmills, let’s just touch on, uh, on a briefly today. But what, uh, do you see these being more viable? I mean, obviously technology is really increasing. Like when you see this stuff Tesla’s doing, I mean, is it, do you think in five years that more of these, we pumping out a good amount of power from a pretty small frame.
Are the generators really increasing inefficiency that fast? Or what do you, what are your predictions similar industry to any other. Um, industry where there’s been a lot of, of as the industry grows, the smaller end of it. It picks up with it. It just takes all the technology that’s left behind from everybody else.
So there’s just sort of falling behind the big players and the blades. The signs are very aerodynamic. They’re using composites and the blade design. That’s what they didn’t use to do that years ago. Uh, these to be well, they used to be on a lot of, are made out of wood and now they use a lot of fiberglass and probably some that are carbon fiber and generators have gotten a lot more sophisticated.
There’s a lot more electronics associated with them for output controls and. Uh, the efficiencies up also, which makes them, and, and at the same time, prices are starting to come down. So for rural applications, it starts to make a lot of sense, like it, particularly for agricultural areas, like if you need to pump water, uh, and you need to pump water on the, on the back 40 somewhere, and you don’t want them to run power wires all the way out there.
Well, what do you do? I mean, Put a wind turbine out there. Right? And then you got power and when the wind blows you, you’re pumping water. Uh, those, those things make a lot of sense. And the little video you pass along to me today w was a talk that was Brit was that Britt powers that with the name of the company was Brit wind.
Yeah. Yeah. So that was fascinating because they’re talking about the difference in wind speeds between Scotland and England, that Scotland basically doubled the wind speeds roughly compared to England. And, and that meant they could produce yeah. Essentially, um, eight times more power, eight, eight times.
So if I’m in Scotland and I, and Scotland, beautiful area, but if it has. Better wins, so to speak. And you, and you’re out in a rural location where you have farm animals and things going on, and you maybe don’t want to pay the electric prices that you pay when you live rurally like that. Then these wind turbines start to make a lot of sense.
And we’ve we as a company, whether guard lightening tech, we’ve gotten phone calls about that. Like, Hey, can you direct us to a company that leases. Wind turbines. We’d like to lease a wind turbine and there’s companies that are leasing wind turbines in Scotland. Right now let’s say you provide the ground will provide the wind turbine.
That’s sort of a great combination. That’s really some forward thinking there that he can provide power to you. They let you, you’re just sort of loaning them the space to put the wind turbine up. Uh, there’s really no lose lose in that it’s everybody’s wins. So there’s some really creative ideas like that.
But I think the smaller winter market, because you got the Vestus is you got the, the GEs and Siemens and mesas and acts and you got, and, and you know, all the, all the winter manufacturers in India and China or, or a huge companies, uh, that the smaller probably, uh, more ubiquitous, uh, wind turbines are on the smaller end.
And it can really make a big difference. So we’re keeping our ear to the ground here a little bit, because as the smaller wind turbines aren’t as small as they once were, they’re getting bigger and bigger and bigger because more, as soon as people realize what they can power with, they want to power more.
Right. So if I can power my pumps and my lights in my, in my barn, why can’t I then not power? Uh, some part of the house with it? Yes. Do my height or my neighbor’s house. Right. It was going at together. It was just share the cost of this thing. So. When that happens, you know, the, the towers get a little bit taller, the blades get more out dynamic.
You gotta get made out of fiberglass typically, and the become lightening rods. And, uh, we’re trying to say, Hey, you probably want to put some lightening protection on these things because you’re starting to depend on them more than you ever have in the past. And if it went down, what does it mean for you?
Uh, so, uh, we’re, we’re keeping track of the small ones to remark it, but there is a lot of interest in, and we get calls, Oh, two, three, four times a week about small wind turbines and, and, and where to find them and how to install them and how to provide light and protection to them. So it’s a growing marketplace.
It’s surprising. Um, uh, how big that is. Yeah. I mean, like you said, with all the advances and with the trickle down of technology and with battery storage, especially getting better, or you could say, Hey, I want to have a power wall in my house. I have all this extra battery case. So the, you know, we’d generate more than we need.
And it just seems like this is all going to sort of start to tie together, you know, economically and, and for the planet. So, so yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting stuff. We’re definitely chat more about that as we, uh, start to investigate more of the different manufacturers and, uh, technologies and stuff like that, but all right, well, that’s going to do it for today’s episode of uptime.
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