Uptime sits down with Chris Cieslak of BladeBug to discuss the latest additions to their revolutionary crawling robot platform. Then, Greg Lorenz of DroneBase lays out the latest in world-wide wind turbine imagery and data management.
BladeBug – https://www.bladebug.co.uk
DroneBase – https://dronebase.com/industries/wind
Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. 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. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Allen Hall:Â This is a special bonus episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. Listeners to the podcast know we love to speak with the movers and shakers in the wind industry, and while attending the Wind Industry Hamburg Exhibition, Joel and I sat down with a number of terrific guests. And now we are bringing them to you.
Our faithful listeners. First up is Chris Che, director at Blade Bug, and Chris brings us the latest news on the Blade Bug Inspection Robot and how Blade Bug is the perfect solution for detailed ultrasound inspections for blades. And then Greg Lauren, senior product manager at Drone Base updates Joel and me on the latest in drone inspections and how to manage the massive amount of inspection data.
This is a great episode, so stay tuned.
I’m here with Blade Bug Director Chris Chest, like thank you very much from the uk
and you have brought over Blade Bug. This, so I, I actually got to see the Blade Bug robot for the first time in person, but I’ve only seen it on YouTube . But it is impressive. And, and, and you made some. I’ll call item improvements more, more like modifications to them.
What’s, what’s the, what’s the new pieces to a blade bug at the moment?
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so we have the, we’ve brought with us the new sort of proof of concept robot, which is essentially the same robot that we currently have for field trials and testing. Yeah. But we’ve been working with a Danish or Scandinavia and industrial design company called Egg Designs.
Yeah. Based in Norway and Denmark. Okay. And they’ve been working with us to. Understand things like user journeys and basically enable them to help us cover the robot in a casing to give it weather protection, environmental protection, but also ergonomic design. So it’s got handles handless. Yes.
I notice how easy it’s it, it’s for us. It shows what the, the products of. Blade bug will look like. Yeah. And it just means that people can join the dots of go, okay, this was the prototype, this is now what the, the product can look like. And it’s, yeah. It’s been really fantastic to have the physical robot here and to show people such as yourselves what it is, because people see, people have seen it for quite a while on, on YouTube, or they might have seen a, a photo of it, but I think people love to be able to physically see it and see the scale of it.
The scale of it. Yeah. See it is the size of a hat. No, it’s not the size of
Allen Hall: a hat, but no, it, it is a decent size though. I think when you put it in perspective of Blade, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That the size you had chosen and it, it, it has evolved quite a bit from, I first saw it and it’s now I think in, in two the, Hey, let’s get it out there in the world and, and do some damage with it.
The, the, the one thing I was noticing at your booth there is it has add-on capabilities and, and like a payload. To do ultrasound measurements. And that is fascinating because there really is, isn’t anybody in that space yet? You want to describe what you can do with the robot at the moment?
Chris Cieslak: Yes, 100%. So blade Bug itself is a robotic platform.
Yeah. So it’s been designed to be really agnostic to what activities it performs on Blade, so be it inspection tasks or repair tasks. And yeah, we’ve developed a few different options, but the one that we are really pushing and, and. Going a hundred percent ahead with is, is this ultrasonic non-destructive test of blades.
Right. It’s a capability that I think over the course of these four days at, at the, the show in Hamburg, 90% of inquiry is about N D T. Yeah. Everybody has blade damage, but they can’t see it. Exactly. So this is, this is fantastic. You know, it shows that we’re working in the right area. Yeah. And yeah, so we, we’ve, we’ve got two systems that are currently trying and integrated into the system.
Right. It’s about having a tool which solves people problems. So we we’re not NDT experts, right? We just enable people to perform these inspections remotely and safely. There’s a limited number of rope technicians. There’s even a smaller number of rope estheticians who can do N D T, right? Inspections.
So we can do the inspections. And then the experts who don’t have to be rope access strained, can analyze the data and tell you what’s going on with your
blade,
Allen Hall: right? So in, in a sense, it, it has become somewhat about speed. A lot of the discussions we’ve had earlier on the floor are, well, how fast can you do x?
How many trips can I do in a. Blade book’s really set up for that, the way it’s set up. So you, you have gross movements with a cable, so you can raise the robot up and down, but once you get on, on location, I’ll call it Yeah. It, it maneuvers on its own. You wanna describe like, how it moves and, and, and what the technique is to grab yourself onto the blade?
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so, so that’s exactly right. The, the, the robot is not designed to do global inspections or, or repairs or, or tasks and blades. It’s about localized detail. Follow one, so, right, right. The, the example I use is always that you have these drone inspections, they’re fantastic. Oh, sure, sure. Inspector drone.
Inspector rotor in 30 minutes. Sure. Identify you’ve got a defect here, here, and here. We can put the robot onto those locations quickly. Quickly, yeah. And identify if it’s a real problem, if it’s a smear of Greece, if it’s a crack, if it’s a crack, are there delamination, subsurface that you can’t see? And the way we do that currently is by essentially following the same process.
Working platforms or baskets are used. So very simple riggin process. Right. A tried and tested process. Yeah. A process which the owners and operators have seen and trust and, and believe in. Right. And all we’re doing is picking up our 25 kilo robot right. On the same ropes and rigging. So it’s a very good way of putting people’s minds at ease that what we’re doing is novel, but elements of it are very well proven and tested and verified.
Sure. So we are able to, as you say, we are able to do gross movements of the robot by putting it up to a blade very quickly. An area of. , well just unknown. Yeah, just unknowns. And then once we’re on the blade, as you say, it’s the robot’s free to do what it wants to do so the robot can move up, down, left, right.
It can crab. And the way that we’ve actually designed the robot is that the body itself is six degree of freedom end effect. So Right. We don’t need any additional robotic harms to control tools. We mount the tools in the robot. And then the robot body then controls how those tools are manipulated over the surface of the blade, which might be a bit kind of it’s different.
Difficult, difficult or different to imagine how it’s done. But it, it works really well and it explains why we’ve gone down this road of this six legged walk-in robot. Cause the flexibility in the adaptability of, of what it can do on the blade when it’s there. Yeah. And the stability,
Allen Hall: right? Because if you’re doing ultrasound measurements, you need to be stable, right?
Mm-hmm. and other platforms that we’ve seen, Tend to be a little more rope based and are not position sensitive. When you’re doing an ndt, you need to be present sensitive and you need to lock yourself in place, which what Blade Bug does. Yeah. It locks yourself in place. And, and, and it’s if, well, well guess we’ll just add some video to this and, and show the movement of Blade Bug.
How can move left? Right. And we need to do that for LinkedIn and YouTube. But that gives you just really unique capabilities. and I’m, I’m guessing as, as the industry progresses, they’re just knocking your door more and more. It, it, it seems like the ultrasounds are becoming more commonplace. What?
We’ve talked to a number of companies that, that do that, but they just are swamped with work and they can’t put a technician out there and do those tests quick enough. Yeah. And, and it, it just becomes really cumbersome. So as an. . I, I, you know, what do I do? Yeah. Do I spend three months doing N D T on all these blades?
Or is there another option? Is Blade Bug finally, that we open the door to where we can actually do N D T, which we haven’t been able to do on a blade. And can it be done inside the blade too? Can you do outside and inside?
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, so it, it’s, we are getting a lot more interest in, in, now that we’re, we are saying that we can do the ndt.
So just to caveat, we’re we’re not fully there yet. We’re not a commercial product. Right. But we are close to, and what we need is, is customers with problems that wanna work collaboratively and help us actually make sure that that. Product that we are developing solves their needs. Sure. Because as a company, we’re a robotics company.
We will want to provide the best tool to the industry to solve. Oh, sure, sure. Everyone’s problem. So we’ve got some, we’ve got some good clients and relationships that we are, we are working with. Nice. We’ve done a, recently performed a trial in France. Nice. Off the back of that. They’ve invited us back for a long extended trial.
Okay. So things are moving indefinitely in the right direction. That’s good. Which is, which is fantastic for us. Yeah. And I think just on, on the whole of, of robotics in general, just walking around the show. I came here back in 2016, there was no robotics automation. Oh, I’m sure. Very little. Yeah. And now there’s a movement and it, to me, it’s fantastic.
It’s really showing the industry is moving in that direction. It is. For a long time, as a, I’m sure you know myself, Arone Rope Robotics would’ve seen, you know, they, we, we are trying to break down barriers into an industry which doesn’t have that. mindset. Yeah, well, yeah, sure. And so we’re all helping each other.
It’s a really nice thing to see. We’ve all been to each other’s stands and we’ve all had a chat and it’s great. You know, we have all very different solutions, very different systems. Oh yeah. And they are different. And fundamentally there’s a big market out there. And yeah, everyone’s gonna have a really interesting future.
Well,
Allen Hall: I think wind has a, has is very similar to aerospace actually, in that there is this and smart widely wisely. So I think operators have realized there’s tends to be some flyby. Companies, especially earlier on a couple years ago, there’s a lot of them and they were patient. Mm-hmm. . Let’s just see the technology developed.
Let’s just see who’s staying here when it gets to 2022. Yeah. And let’s just, let’s see what the technology is. And it has totally flipped. It was sort of what robots are interesting, but we don’t think it’s the future. Mm-hmm. to. , it is the future. We need to get on board. We need to start site and contracts.
We need to get some out and do some, some test runs like you’ve been doing. And just demonstrate the technology because it’s beyond theoretical. Yeah, it’s real. And as, as this market has grown, I think there’s gonna be just a lot of opportunity. What are the, what are the key pieces that we’ve seen at this show?
The show is the amount of offshore. Mm-hmm. versus onshore. Previously had been mostly onshore. With the offshore piece, how does Blade Bug fit into that offshore piece? We’re doing an NDT on a blade or anything on a blade. It’s just a, you know, a 10 x factor in cost. Does, does blade bug really break that dynamic a little
Chris Cieslak: bit?
Yeah. We, we started off offshore first. Okay. So our very first blade walk was on a seven megawatt offshore turbine in Scotland. There you go. It’s been designed with the challenges and, and the complexities of, of the offshore market. Yeah. Because that’s where the biggest opportunities lie. For sure. Sure.
Yeah. That being said, there’s a huge opportunity onshore, and for us it’s, it’s the best place to, to test and validate the system. Oh, quickly, the logistics are way, way down. Yeah. But also the offshore market isn’t ready for it yet. You know, there’s, we are, we are trying to really focus on the new installed turbines offshore.
The floating offshore wind in particular, I think is where we see the biggest. Because of the challenges that we are not even aware of or that the sector’s not even aware of, of maintaining their blades, trying to maintain a moving structure on ropes even so, you know, people get seasick very, very quickly or motion sick within these, within the cells of those turbines.
Sure. People get thrown off the blades on the ropes. Sure. Having a, having, and of course one of the, the key problems that you have is, or key risk errors is transferring crew from a, a CTV onto. The turbine, right? When they’re both moving in different dynamic motions, that problem is even enhanced. So yeah.
You know, we are developing and, and conceptualizing blade bug where you don’t have to get any people onto that turbine at all. Oh wow. So this is about really, you know, this is not about job displacement. This is really about, there is a shortage of of rope access techs. Yeah. Let’s use ’em for the really big jobs.
They’re gonna do Right. And let Blade Bug do a lot of the, the inspections and the maintenance. Sure. So this is about, you know, really preventing early signs of damage becoming a big problem. Mm-hmm. requiring big campaign. So for us it’s about, that is where we see a really big opportunity, but onshore over the next few years is really proven.
The, the, the capabilities and, and, you know, viability of blade bug. And then we need the offshore market to be aware of us because they need to factor in how they’re gonna be scheduling their on and. Task in the future. They can’t use the same, we’re always gonna use rope access technicians. Sure. We have to in five, 10 years time.
Yes. The landscape’s gonna be very, very different. And so they need to be aware of that because you know it’s gonna drive cost down. It’s gonna have different efficiencies. Right. And they need to be aware that these technologies are coming up. And they need to be aware of it, but they also need to help us as well.
This is, you know, it is a two-way thing. You know, we, we need assistance to, to prove the tech we need to get on turbines and, you know, we need people who own them, who operate them, who manufactured them to be on board with, with what we’re trying to do. .
Allen Hall: Yes, definitely. So, yeah. When I was at your booth today, I tried on some 3D goggles.
Mm-hmm. . And and Blade Bug has a couple of cameras in the front of it, or May or is it just in the front of the robot? Weather’s? Cameras or there or there? More cameras. We
Chris Cieslak: have five cameras. Oh, you’re kidding. Yes. We only saw the ones. So we, we have cameras that look forwards backwards at the legs. We have lidars.
We scan blade as we are, we are walking, we, we map the surface that we’re walking on, which enables us to calculate how to place a piece. So there’s lots, there’s lots of systems that you can’t see from. If I’m just visually looking at it. But yeah, there’s lots of cameras on boards. So again, it’s being designed to be operated beyond the visual line of sight.
So you have to have a number of cameras to make sure that the, the operator you know, can maneuver it. Right. And then in the future, a lot of it’ll be automated, I’m sure, but there’ll be a person in the loop bit on an onshore service center somewhere whilst the robot’s hundreds of miles off the coast.
Yeah. And people just keep in a loop just making sure everything’s working as it should. And so you’re
Allen Hall: gonna have, the expert doesn’t have to be on. much like x-rays today. When you have an x-ray taken, the person’s reviewing it could be in Israel, could be halfway around the world, could be in Australia, it could be in the uk.
And yeah, you’re just sitting in the United States, in my case, United States, and you think it’s happening next door and it’s not. It’s happening half a world away. So you’re Blade Bug is set up to have the expert interact with the robot live.
Chris Cieslak: 100%. That’s one of the key features. So I, I go, I’ll go back to the trial that I mentioned in.
We were performing some non-destructive testing ultrasonic scans of a blade in France. Yeah. 80 meters from the ground remotely. None of us are N D T experts. We had an N D T expert dial in remotely interpretate, or, you know, read the, the scan data, make the necessary corrections, and then say that this is good to go.
And so this is, this is exactly how we see that system working. You know, you have these experts who are in short supply, right? They can be. , you know, in their co home. In their office, right? Being fed all this high quality data and then, you know, being able to tell the customers what their blades are doing.
That’s amazing.
Allen Hall: Yeah. That’s amazing because you’re right, I think you answered two problems. One, getting ultrasonic testing done on the blade, but two. The limited number of technicians and ultrasonic inspection. Yeah. Technologists, I’ll call ’em the people who interpret those re , those signals are incredible.
I’ve seen it for a number of years. I still can’t figure it out. Yeah. So that really cups down the cycle time to figure out what’s happening with your blades tremendously. That’s a, that’s a game changer. And, and what’s next? I mean, you, those are some barriers and I think we could break. So what’s next?
What’s next for Blade Bug? If you’ve done all this already, I just, you remind us we’ve gone a thousand miles an hour on mm-hmm. where you can go with this. What, what’s coming up?
Chris Cieslak: Yeah, you’re right. This is just the start. So, so I said blade bug’s a repository platform. Yeah. The rest is . Exciting. So the inspection element, so we, we can use existing industry proven tools in the robot.
Yeah. We’ve already sight to scratch the surface of what those tools are. And then you add in the repair capabilities. So we are starting to look at repair. Yeah. The repair’s gonna take a bit longer just because it’s a robotic process. There’s not a a standard that we can follow to say, no, this robot can now perform that lead edge repair.
because they don’t exist. So what we’re trying to do with following the standards that humans have to follow now, right? And we’re trying to understand, okay, what is the landscape like to look like? Because there will be legislation, there will be, there will be, everything will catch. It’s coming, coming.
And so we wanna be involved in that and, and sort of help drive that forward because it’s really key to show that the benefits of robotics and automation mean that you get a higher level of, or high quality and more repeatable process for your tasks. . And for us, that’s key. You know, we wanna be driving that forward and showing the industry what the benefits of this robotic solution are, because we have to do it in baby steps, right?
You know, this industry, whilst it’s still relatively young, it’s still fairly conservative and so cautious. They It’s cautious. It’s cautious. It might be, so, you know, these, these are big, expensive assets and you don’t wanna just put things on which then fell quickly. So we, we are trying to really. For us, evidence are repair capabilities, sort of in the background.
So when we are ready and when the market’s ready and when you know, certification’s ready, we are there ready to go, but there’s so many facets and, and areas that we can sort of navigate and pivot to. It’s just really exciting. But for us, the NDT is the real key thing at the moment. It’s a really hot topic.
It’s a really big problem and for us, that enables us to really get play bug out there. We are pre-commercial at the moment. We we’re gonna be changing that next year, but for us, it gives us the ability to, you. Show the market or show investors actually that blade bug is viable for us. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of still developed to do for us in terms of like building manufacturing capabilities and everything else.
So,
Allen Hall: but that’s all natural. Yeah. Everybody has those. Yes. Right. It seems like you’re clearly at an investment stage. The robot I saw today, it’s had an in adjustment stage and it makes sense to start looking your way. I, there’s a lot of renewable. Venture capital funds that are looking to invest in new technology.
Blade Bug is clearly one of those leaders at the moment. And, and next year are you going to, are, are, are you at another funding round? Are you close to another funding
Chris Cieslak: round? Yeah, we, we are, we are raising imminently. Like, we’ll we’re doing a pre-series A now. Oh, good. Yeah. So we are, we are raising Fantastic.
Yeah, we’re raising now. , the reason we’re not doing a Series A is because, again, with that still pre-commercial stage Sure, sure. We wanna wait until we get the contracts and really justify Sure. Justify the raise that we’re trying to do. Sure. But we’ve got, we’ve got a good bunch of investors at the moment that are keen to follow on, but we are looking to get new ones in as well.
Yeah. So for us, it’s about, for me, my, my role is definitely as a, has changed from, you know, from the technical side of things, more, much more to the, you know, making sure that we’ve got the funds in, in order to, you know, really reach the potential that we. . So how do people get
Allen Hall: ahold of you if, if if investors in Silicon Valley and, well, investors in, in, in renewable energy are in two places in the United States, mostly, maybe three.
Yeah. Boston, Houston. And then so does Silicon Valley. Those are, those are the kind of the hot three in America. And they listen to this podcast cause I really regularly interact with them. Yeah. So if you’re all listening out there Yeah.
Chris Cieslak: please get in contact. Yeah. How do they get in contact with you?
Yeah, so probably LinkedIn is a, is a good, is a good place to call. Okay. We, we’ve got a blade by page. I’m there as well. We also have our website. Yeah. Blade bug.co.uk. Okay. There’s an investment email as well. So invest@bladebug.co uk as well. So, great. There are options and I’m, I think if you do a search for Blade Bug, you’ll probably find me or Stacy, who’s our business fellow manager.
You know, there will be ways we we’re fairly easy to find which. That’s great.
Allen Hall: Well, Chris, I appreciate you stopping by. No, I appreciate it. It’s great to see you in person and it was great to see Blake Bug in person, so it was fantastic. Brilliant. Right.
Chris Cieslak: All right, thanks.
Allen Hall: We have a special guest, Greg Lorenz from Drone Base. He’s a senior product manager at Drone Base and we’re still here in Hamburg. Beautiful Hamburg. Where it’s about 45, 50 degrees outside Fahrenheit.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s just started raining too. It’s been decent all week, but now it’s turning into hammer. Yeah.
turning into what, what? What’s normal to Its, yeah, to its roots, right? Showing us it’s real colors. So
Allen Hall: we’re here to learn a lot about drone bass now at this expo. We must have walked around 20 different kinds of drone scenarios. Yeah, there’s a ton. There’s a ton of ’em. And a lot of ’em are relatively new.
Mm-hmm. . In my opinion, don’t have the assets to do large projects. Exactly, yep. Drone Base is not one of those. You guys are, are positioned in many different markets at the same time, and you’ve been around for quite a number of years. So you wanna just describe, just generally what Drone Base does and particularly what’s happening in Wind?
Greg Lorenz: Yeah. So obviously, you know we have five different verticals and we. We talked about that a bit but, you know, digging into win specifically you know, we, we are a flexible platform. We’re able to be basically intelligent imagery, right? Yep. You know, we have drones as like one arrow in our quiver.
We are flexible to do other things. And I, and also I think the key thing for us is operational excellence. You’re believe talking about, you know, our technicians are trained, we’re able to train on a large scale mm-hmm. , Where our hardware solutions is flexible, so it’s easy to get into certain countries.
So for example, Having custom hardware is challenging. Importing into Brazil is challenging. We already, we are, our hardware platforms are readily available, easily implemented, and we can scale super quick. And we have a very, very large pilot network. And I think that really helps us expand quickly and, and meet our customers needs.
Our customers are a lot of global, you know, OEMs, operators, and I think us able able to scale quickly in our operational excellence. Mm-hmm. is one key differentiator. I think another, a key part, and from what I saw in my time in. A lot of these companies want their data and their systems. Right.
That’s right. You know, we think we have an excellent platform, super easy to use and helpful. But our customers in the end need to get their data to their platform the way they want it. Exactly the way they want it. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we have, you know, some, some customers who are using our platform to manipulate the data, add defects cause it’s easier to use than their existing platforms.
They have these large companies, it’s hard for them to like digitally innovate. We’re able to take that data, send it into their. So they work in our system, it goes and gets stored in their system. Oh, okay. Sure. And all the records are stored. It’s following their processes and I think that’s a really critical part.
Partnering with our customers and enabling them to keep their workflows similar, but improve them, improve the workflows.
Joel Saxum: Question for you, I’m gonna dial back just a little bit. You said getting CU equipment into Brazil? Mm-hmm. . So my, a past life of mine, I worked in oil and gas offshore, and we always said if you’re sending something to.
You’re probably not gonna get it back. Yeah. So you just plan on it. So I guess I’m, the next question to that is, is drone based of course a a large global organization. I know you guys have quite a few of your, your management team and whatnot in the us, but what markets are you guys actually working in?
Greg Lorenz: Yeah, so we’re working for, for wind specifically, or obviously North America. We are, we’re entering Brazil. Okay. We’re, we’re doing inspections I believe this week or next week in Brazil. Oh, fantastic. And we have, we have a lot, a lot of the European countries were pretty covered. The Nordics as well.
Yeah. That’s a usually a challenging environment to operate in. Oh yeah, absolutely. . So yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re obviously there. And then like, you know, Northern, Northern England as well, Pharaoh Islands. We’ve done some inspections up there. Mm-hmm. . We’ve, we’ve done inspections in Africa. We’ve done inspections in South Africa specifically.
Oh yeah, Australia. The Taiwan. So we’re, we’re basically, we’re completely global. We’ve hit every single major economy wherever there’s wind market. You guys are there. We’re there, yeah. We have a, you know, we have, you know, teams based out of India Germany, the us, Brazil, obviously we, we started a new office there and those are our key major hubs.
So we do have a, a team here in Germany supporting, and, you know, we’re, we’re flexible. We’re, we’re all over the world. We’re all in all different
Joel Saxum: time zones. So speaking specifically to wind is, of course, this is what you’re product manager for. Yep. Onshore and.
Greg Lorenz: Yep. Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.
I
Joel Saxum: mean, I mean, offshore is a, is a tough, tough environment for drone companies. We’ve seen some of them we, we use the term baptize their drones . So I hope, I hope Drone base hasn’t had to baptize a drone yet.
Greg Lorenz: No, but it happens. Yeah. Yeah. Again, and I think, yeah, Offshore’s a really challenging environment and really minimizing cost to the customer.
And you know, I think, you know, drone base, we have drone in our name, but we are really thinking about intelligent imagery. Mm-hmm. and Right. And thinking about, you know, we talked about, you know, mark was talking about solar previously with you Yeah. And how they’ve changed the game. We’re, we’re really thinking beyond just drones.
How can we meet our customers’ needs best? Right. How can we. Keep the power running, still get high quality inspections. And, you know, that’s, that’s what we’re looking at. We’re looking to try to innovate and expand. And when you’re talking about offshore, you know, if you can, you know, have some capture system when it’s what’s, you don’t have to get off the boat and things like that, it could be a huge game changer.
So I, I think, you know, that’s, that’s where we’re taking, yeah. We’re taking. You know, I think a lot of companies will say, Hey, drones are the best and we need to use drones. And Sure. We, we use that as an arrow in our quiver. Yeah. But we really want to be open to all technologies all different options.
Joel Saxum: So, so whatever can collect inspection data, high quality data, high quality metadata, but if it’s a robot, a crawler cage drone. Yeah. The, the drone system that you guys have does autonomous flights or, or something we don’t know about yet. We don’t Oh, sure. Yeah. You know what I mean? It could be, it could be something like the blade.
That crawls up and you need to look at some real course. Yeah. We don’t, we don’t know what it is, but you guys are set up to be able to take in that data. And as a part of the company, you’re looking at innovative ways how, cause I know, I think you have a little bit of an kind of an r and d group that is looking at all kinds of different about this.
What about that? What about this?
Greg Lorenz: Exactly. Okay. Exactly. And that’s, yeah, we’re, we’re continuously, you know, discussing, innovating, trying to get feedback from the all the teams. And while we’re based all regionally and seeing who’s doing what and how we can, how can we be better? How can we deliver that data to our customer?
Quicker, cheaper,
Joel Saxum: faster. Yeah. So I know I was talking with some of your team today over at their booth and they were talking about how you guys are agile. And you touched on this a little bit about making sure that the customer gets what they want. Mm-hmm. , right? You’re not locking them into a system.
You’re not locking them into, this is the way we do inspections. This is how you’re gonna get your data. It’s how can we work together with you guys? What you know, we have, we have some horsepower. Yeah. We we’ve got a great system. We have this. Do you want it? If you don’t want it, no. Do you want to. Yeah, you want us to inspect for you, how do you want to do these things?
So Yeah,
Greg Lorenz: exactly. Yeah. And a wide range of options, right? You can do or where we do everything for you, we do the capture we do the data analysis and give it back to you, and it’s basically hands off from the customer perspective, or you can do. You know, self capture. So the, where the customer is actually collecting their own data, using our drones, using our autonomous flight system.
Mm-hmm. really. So we try to be flexible and then they have an option if we, if they want to do us to do the analyst the analysis they can, or, or they can do it themselves if they have a large engineering team doing that work. Okay. Or, or someone, or something like your company, hey, one parallel allowed to do it.
Yeah. That’s good. That’s fine. If they want, if you have an existing relationship Yeah. Do with you
Joel Saxum: too. So if you were to. Drone based. This is our value add. If you stood in a room with all the other drone companies out there, or or inspection companies out there, what is the value add that sets sets you guys apart
Greg Lorenz: in the market?
So I think a key thing that we touched on already was operational excellence. And, and I think being flexible and listening to the customer need. Yeah. Is the next part, making sure that we. Are listening continuously and continuously updating and innovating our product, right, to meet the customer’s needs.
And then making sure when we’re out in the field, yeah, we’re professional, we’re getting it done safely and quickly and getting them the highest quality data. You know, on top of that, we do data review. Basically immediately when they’re still in the field, they’re uploading the images. That night we have a image uploader super easy to use.
This drag and drop. It goes in there, the pilot reviews the image it’s making. That the images are all good quality and easy to see. Mm-hmm. It, you know, that really helps us, you know, I think just overall, I think our, we minimize reflight, but in case that has to happen, we’re there. We don’t have to remobilize, right.
We’re there and we can react and, and make sure we’re collecting. Oh,
Joel Saxum: there’s nothing more frustrating than that. Is we getting an inspection campaign done, demoing and then finding out You gotta go back. Yep. Yeah. Don’t worry. Or the, or the, the actual, the client telling you, you gotta come back , because I’ve seen that happen before and it’s not, it’s not.
Okay, so we’ve, we’ve got some of their, your value add. What are you guys looking for the future? What’s the, what’s the difference? I mean, we’ve talked about more tools in the toolbox. We don’t know what those are yet. Yep. But the, the future for drone base and wind is, is what? Global takeover.
Greg Lorenz: Yeah, that’s what, that’s what we’re shooting for, for sure.
Global takeover. I, I think the, the one key thing actually looking in the industry is getting buy-in from, from like customers, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you look. Proactive blade inspection, the market penetration is relatively low. So I think that the key thing overall you know, we can talk about takeover and who’s getting what share.
I think the key thing is getting the industry to be proactive. Mm-hmm. Versus reactive. Right? Yeah. My time at ge, you spent a lot of time working to improve that, becoming more. Preventative maintenance and being proactive doing inspections versus waiting for bad stuff to happen. Yeah. Right. Putting people at risk.
Yeah. So I think, I think actually if you’re looking at it like that’s the key thing is getting our, our customers on board and, and how can we help them? Yeah. Get the, be
Joel Saxum: let’s say what, when in the Wind Power Lab team, we call it being a prudent operator. Yep. How can we share the knowledge to be a prudent operator to the market and encourage them to do that?
And it goes by showing roi. How does this. Why if you don’t do this, what could happen if you do this? This is how it will work. Exactly. Yeah. That’s,
Greg Lorenz: that’s where we’re at. Yeah. But, and, and I think we’re looking, you know, we see the, the solar team, what they’re doing and that innovation we’re looking for that game changing innovation.
I think if you look at wind, it’s slightly more challenging with obviously the airspace requirements and things like that. Flying over with an airplane over the solar panels is definitely less challenging technically. Yeah, we are. We are always looking for that, that the next step, changing innovation, that next step change.
How do we get, I mean, drones was a huge step change. Absolutely. What’s the next step? Change, right. Is that, you know, is that within drones or is that something else? And I think we’re, we’re looking at all possible options.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I know we were chatting a little bit ago, and of course we’re at Onshore Energy here.
Hammer onshore offshore, big biggest wind energy show in the world. Sure. You’re, there’s a lot of constant monitoring systems out there, right? Yes. You’ve seen a lot of them. Generators and rotating equipment and these things that now you’re starting to see them get into blades. Mm-hmm. I’m staring right behind this chair, behind our friends on the show, ping.
They’re, they’re monitored here in, you know, integrating those kind of data sources to maybe drive a, you know, a hybrid inspection model where you have something that is, is a base filter and, Hey, we need to go inspect these because we’re at this stage rather than just the blanket. We’ve got 4,000 turbines we need to go inspect ’em all kind of thing.
Greg Lorenz: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. That. kind of like predictive maintenance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s where we’re, I mean, that’s, you know, we have, you know, CMS monitoring, gearboxes, bearings, things like that. And that’s where blades need to go. It’s just, it’s, it’s really like challenging. It’s tough to get the buying, it’s challenging, change the mindset and, and it’s really key trying to get it at the, at the when it’s, it’s built, right?
Yeah. So when we are starting to do retrofits, it’s so much more expensive. It’s so much harder to. To show the ROI and the positive roi. Mm-hmm. . But if you can get it installed early on that’s, I think a key, key part in getting that buyin is so tough, right? A lot of the times owners, OEMs, they’re coming to us cuz they have a specific problem or they’re having problems, something in their fleet and so it’s like at that point in time it’s almost slightly too late. Especially if you’re continuous monitoring systems, right? Yeah. You can, if it is a big enough. .
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re looking to, to educate. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , that’s the
Allen Hall: idea. And the, from the technology perspective, it just seems like imaging cameras is where the, the action is now.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah. They, they keep getting better,
Joel Saxum: they get crazy better. Right. You guys have that phase one camera over on your booth here. Yeah, absolutely. So a hundred megapixels or something.
Greg Lorenz: Yeah. It’s crazy’s crazy. It’s,
Allen Hall: it’s insane. Right. So is that the real driver now? It used to be the drones and controlling the drones and all the piloting and things that were happening.
And that seems to be solved, the autonomous nature of everything. Yeah. Most. And I’m not saying it’s completely solved, but it’s
Joel Saxum: it’s not, but it’s in the market. You can go, you can go pay for it right now. Right?
Allen Hall: Yeah. So is, is that where technology is? It’s really in the cameras or, or, or, we have, we plateau there where we don’t really need better cameras.
We’re just kind of there and now it’s just basically delivering of quality information to the. Yeah.
Greg Lorenz: And I think that’s kind of a slight balance too. Like with the flight path you can adjust the flight path to get better quality images. Sure. With Oh sure. You know, a lower quality cameras. Yeah. You know, so there is that, that kind of like balance there on how much you want on as far as a camera or how you wanna adjust.
But yeah, those are kind of small little tweaks. I think, you know, you know the one thing, and I’ve seen a couple items around here, but not a lot as internal inspection and know we went, I’m just doing it. But internal inspection is really interesting when we do an external inspection. It’s just, it’s 50% probably, it’s probably less than 50% of what you’re seeing is internally.
You can see there’s no paint you can see into the laminate. Right. You actually see more internally relax. Yeah. So that’s kinda the one part that, that they’re, I didn’t see a whole lot of like new robotic innovations as far as the internal inspection scope. No, that’s
Joel Saxum: trues very true. But you are seeing in, in that market space, you’re seeing the owners are actually in the last even 18.
You’re starting to see more like, Ooh, we need to do some internal inspections. Right. Because you’re starting to see a lot, you know, as blades get longer and bigger and we trim them down, they’re not so bulky. They’re a little bit more, you know, sports car blades. Mm-hmm. They, they, they develop cracks easier, more.
It’s structural problems in the inside of them. Exactly. And getting, so even here at the show, we’ve had some people stop by where we are at our booth, talked to some other asset owners. Internal inspections is. Becoming paramount on the radar now. Yeah. Somehow. Yeah. So it’d be nice to see you know, what, where that comes.
It might, might change there, but I know on the Wind Power Lab side, we’ve, we’ve been doing it for a few years and, and we get some good results to the clients and for the most part it’s surprising to them. Mm-hmm. , you get, deliver the inspection in and they’re like, whoa, you sheer web cracks and you got this going on.
And that. We do a lot of RCAs as well. Right. So a lot of the RCAs are like, If they would’ve had an internal campaign done, they would’ve found this before
Allen Hall: the blade fold. Little, yeah. I wonder, that’s a good question because do the, did the primary inspections become internal instead of external?
Greg Lorenz: No, I think it’s a mix.
I, I think it’s, it’s like a multifaceted approach. Yeah. With internal, you’re still, you, you have to go tower. It’s expensive. Slower. Maybe you don’t, maybe in the future there’s, there’s coming in with the drone some way outside. Go the Texas panel. Yeah. So really, so I think that is kind of I think, I think it’s gotta be a mix.
Okay. You know, there’s other stuff out there. Thermal too, right? Thermals a big discussion’s. Really building that and, and really understanding your blades and your fleet. And then how you do this building data, right? So you need multiple years of inspection data to do that. And then you can start manipulating, adjusting, inspection, frequ.
Or if you’re using like predictive maintenance and like ping then you’re, you’re able to, Hey, I’m just gonna go and do the inspection whenever I, I get a flag. Right. So I think that’s yeah, I think it’s a, a multifaceted approach. It’s not a one size fits all and, you know, certain blade tapes of certain particular issues which you do need to do internals you can’t see externally.
Right. So it’s, it’s always, you know, I think the key thing is collecting as much data as you can and then be becoming intelligent yourself. Yes. Using the analytics to find out. You need to be looking for, for certain
Allen Hall: blade types. Well do operators come to you and they say, Hey, I have X turbines, but we’re thinking about buying Y turbines.
So they come to you and say, all right, what’s the history on these Y turbines out here? Do we, are they just full of blade issues based? And not even specifically, but just saying, are they generically in a sort of a rating sense? Is this a good wind turbine or does it have a lot of problem? Does that process start again?
So
Greg Lorenz: I, so I believe we’re not able to really share that cause we are using our customer’s data. Okay. So if we were to say, Hey, we collected for asset owner X and we’re telling asset owner Y or, or OEM X or O y and telling that information I think that would be like a, a breach of contract, but maybe, maybe.
Maybe, maybe, maybe not. It could be, it could be challenging. I mean, I think you, you know,
Joel Saxum: we do some advisory on that side of things.
Allen Hall: Okay. Off offshore could be huge that way. I think offshore there’s, there seems to be, from the operator side, a huge amount of risk because especially in the United States, they don’t have any experience in offshore wind and they don’t know a lot of new turbines what’s happening.
Yeah. And the only people will. Are people taking pictures. Right. And And drone base is one of those. It just seems like a logical
Greg Lorenz: extension’s. Yeah, that’s good. And that kind of gets into what Mark was talking about, about solar and being transparent. Very similar things. There may be some, you know, I haven’t Just a rating system.
Yeah. I’ve been drone bass for three months, so I haven’t heard that ask come to me specifically. But it could
Allen Hall: have come to some else. It seems like a logical outcome at some point.
Greg Lorenz: Yeah, yeah, most definitely. And that, that makes sense. And I think, you know, you know, like in the. That’s right. We know what blades are, are you do must not be named conference
Joel Saxum: like, like this.
There’s
Greg Lorenz: a lot of drinking
Joel Saxum: and talking. Some, some winks and some smiles going Exactly, yes.
Greg Lorenz: General knowledge, but bringing that, the analytics and the hard factual data and how, like how that creates your inspection plan and your frequency. Yeah. Yeah. That is definitely, yeah. Something that that needs to, to happen
Joel Saxum: more.
Absolutely. And especially as our global wind fleet starts to scale. I mean, we’re looking at PTC stuff going on in the US right now. The developers are going wild, and it’s gonna just continue to, the, the energy transition is gonna continue, continue. Right now we’re at 71, 70 2000 in change in the us. That, you know, within three or four years that number’s gonna, we’re gonna hit six inch.
Oh yeah, we’ll be a hundred thousand shortly. Yeah. I mean, it’s just, and it’s just gonna keep going. And it’s not just the US it’s South America, it’s Europe, offshore, onshore, Brazil. So there’s, there’s, you’re just not going to be able to inspect every one of these blades all the time. So it’s gonna have to be exactly like you say a hybrid model of let’s monitor them.
Let’s, let’s inspect them when we need to, let’s do these things because. It’s just not gonna be the, the the manpower, the resources to get done. Right.
Greg Lorenz: Right. And I think, you know, the one thing, kind of touching on that a little bit with internals, you know, we, we have technicians going up to our, doing preventative maintenance all the time.
Sure. Being able to build a system that’s super easy to deploy internally. Like, it’s like, you know, you could just deploy easily and it goes and does the inspection while you’re greasing the bearings or something like that. Right. You’re not really wait, you’re not using up any time You’re already ready.
Right. You’re there. Right.
Joel Saxum: So I saw someone one time take a, do you know I don’t know if any of you guys are, , but in ice fishing they have these cameras that have like, they look like a little fishing, dropping down the hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I saw someone putting blades vertically and just dropping one of those down in there.
Do Uhhuh. , absolutely.
Greg Lorenz: Maybe that’s it. I mean that is, yeah, that’s one method, but drop can definitely one method. Right? Yeah.
Joel Saxum: Cool. Well,
Allen Hall: Greg, hey. Yeah, it’s great. Thanks for stopping by. Absolutely. Joe and I learn. From these conversations and I know drone bass is super busy. I just stopped by your booth earlier today and it was insane over there, so I know it’s having a pretty good show.
So congratulations and thanks for being on Uptime. Great.
Greg Lorenz: Thank you so much for having me. It was great talking to both of you.
