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David King from Gulf Wind Technology discusses RootFusion, their up-tower blade root bushing repair method. By eliminating the need for cranes, the solution reduces costs and operational complexity. And their NDT diagnostic process allows for non-invasive inspection and repair.
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Allen Hall: David, welcome to the podcast again.
David King: Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It’s an exciting event that we’re here at. So we’re really looking forward to this.
Allen Hall: There is so much happening at Gulf Wind at the minutes. Uh, just been watching some of your intellectual property pop out and some of the new things that are at this show.
Uh, all kinds of areas that you’re investing in, in terms of blade repairs that have been needed for probably two or three years and. At this point you, you have good solutions. The one I think we’re most interested to hear about is the blade route, bushing, or insert. Repair that happens of tower because
Joel Saxum: everybody’s asking about it.
I think that’s the important thing there is, first off, we need to get some common language around what this problem is. Yeah. So everybody’s calling it root, bushings root and this infusion like, ah, what are we actually calling? What are the terms, how you brand this? Exactly.
David King: Yeah. I mean, just you say it’s really been a long time coming.
It’s something we’ve been involved with now for well [00:01:00] over. Three years, and we got introduced originally as an RCA. And so, you know, when you get into something like a root cause analysis, you know, one of the first things you gotta do is actually establish the terms you’re gonna use, establish the definitions, create a common framework that you can communicate around.
And so when it comes to this particular issue, a lot of it really starts with how do customers get sensitized to this? We’ve seen everything from some customers getting sensitized through, uh, unfortunately a blade failure. A blade that ends up on the ground.
Joel Saxum: Yeah,
David King: that’s probably the worst scenario. We’ve seen others where they’ll see things like.
Dust, uh, on the outside of the gel coat that’s starting to build up, uh, gapping, where you have fundamentally a, a visible gap forming between the blade root and the pitch bearing, uh, where you see visible daylight in some cases. Yeah. Um, you really want to try and catch things, obviously much earlier than that, but kind of the, the, the common themes here all around a loss of connection between the metal root bushing and the composite laminate, which caused the blade to become loose from the pitch bearing.
So just kind of walk through that system maybe a little bit. Um, you’ve got the composite blade which has to transfer [00:02:00] load into a metal pitch bearing,
Joel Saxum: right?
David King: Metal pitch bearing’s gotta be able to spin so the blade can pitch, produce, power, and do all the things we need to do. And it’s one of the most complicated parts of the blade really.
’cause you’re trying to transfer load from composite to metal and you have this massive stiffness difference between metal. And composites. And so it takes some very clever engineering to bring those things together and, um, get an even load distribution. And so the way that’s done today is through a metal root bushing.
So it’s essentially a, uh, precast metal piece, um, that has geometry to it that allows both mechanical and a chemical connection between the composite, the metal bushing. The metal stud, which is threaded to the metal bushing, and then that stud goes back to the pitch bearing. You joint all that together with some, some wedge lock washers and some nuts, and, and you’ve got your, your root connection really, and that’s what’s fundamentally breaking down here.
Allen Hall: Okay, so the, the breakdown is occurring. Where in that assembly? Is it where that bushing meets the composite? Is it the composite itself? The way the composite is sort of wound [00:03:00] around that area and how it’s strengthened? Or is it that we’re pulling on the studs too hard and basically pulling that bushing out of the composite?
What are the, what creates a scenario why I need to be paying attention to this?
David King: No, absolutely. One thing that’s I think quite fundamental to this is actually separating damage and defect. And so I’ll talk a little bit to the damage, ’cause that’s what you’re observing when you see this is the damage that’s resulting in this loosening effect.
And so fundamentally what’s breaking down is that metal bushing with that geometry that’s making the physical connection to the composite is, uh, funnily lost. Its, its pretension on it. So it relies on both mechanical connection. So you’ve got this. Basically sine wave looking, uh, um, you know, geometry that you’ve got composite laminate going into those grooves of that sine wave and you’re getting a, a physical compression joint connection there.
And then there’s a little bit of chemical connection as well. And so as that. Breaks down over time. You get the composite that’s inside those grooves actually forming into [00:04:00] a dust and eventually loosening and slowly sliding out.
Allen Hall: So is there fiber
David King: inside of those grooves or is it just resin? That’s the goal.
So the goal is to have fibers inside of that groove, basically, if you’re going to. Have a metal bushing and you’re gonna have composites around it that you want to perform well, you’ve gotta have the right, right fiber, weight fraction, the right combination of fiber and resin in that area to really get the best strength out of it.
One key piece there though is, is that we talked earlier about compression strength, and that means that you’re relying on the resin strength, which is the weakest part of any composite. Uh, and that’s really where the challenge is.
Joel Saxum: So, so is the issue that we’re seeing in the field now. Is it from manufacturing incorrectly or is it just from wear and tear?
Or like why? Why is this thing rearing its head or is it materials?
David King: Yeah, I mean, these are all great questions and really there’s a variety of answers to those questions that are very dependent on which blade type it is. What the fundamental problem is, it really comes down to having a proper root cause [00:05:00] analysis or RCA on that particular blade type.
And, and you know, in our experience it’s usually a combination of many things. Um, you know, these, these, uh, uh, blades are incredibly difficult to manufacture. They’re complicated, they’re incredibly difficult to design, they’re incredibly difficult to maintain. And it’s really a combination of all three of those things that fundamentally leads to really any problem in this industry.
And so to solve it, you know, you’ve gotta have a creative solution, but you also have to be addressing those three or four different things. And so you really need that proper root cause analysis. I dunno if you’re familiar with the eight D kind of process, but. You know, having something where you’re really trying to look at this holistically and address each of those things you just mentioned and asked about,
Allen Hall: what are the first signs that an operator has this issue?
Is it just seeing the dust on the outside or is it something you can hear as the tire as it spins or what? What’s usually that first like uhoh with the technician? Yeah. It’s kinda
David King: like, you know, put your yourself in the shoes of the technicians, the operators who are trying to face this challenge, right?
And trying to manage risk ultimately, right. Is, um, you really don’t obviously want your first knowledge of this [00:06:00] to be a blade on the ground. You want to catch this earlier. And so just as you said, dust that’s forming on the outside is, is one big, big telltale sign. The other one is, is if you’ve got, uh, visible gapping where you put that blade in the six o’clock position, technician can go up there, feeler gauge.
And measure that, that gap that’s starting to form do something about it. The, the other thing is, you mentioned audible. You can, in some cases hear this, you can hear that blade moving, but that’s a very, um, let’s call it mature damage. You really wanna be catching it before that, uh, just because you’re, you’re getting into a risk profile where there’s a lot of uncertainty, whether or not you’re gonna catch it in time.
And that’s really important. ’cause we, we don’t want blades on the ground. I think especially in today’s environment, we’ve gotta do right and wind.
Joel Saxum: So an operator comes to you and says, Hey, we believe we have one blade doing this. Is the next step to do NDT work on the whole fleet or on that whole wind farm to understand what the risk actually is to that wind farm or what, how does that process move?
David King: Yeah, so you know, really it comes down to understanding that operator’s business case, because everybody’s gonna have a different risk profile. [00:07:00] Everybody’s gonna have a different approach to whether, are we trying to repower in a couple years? Are we trying to get 20 years and we’re only 10 years in? Is this something that’s only two or three years old and we got another 17 years to go and there’s a variety of different solutions.
So maybe I’ll go through a couple of those if it’s helpful. Um, you know, we’ve seen everything from continuous monitoring systems. There’s some great solutions out there when it comes to acoustics, accelerometers. Gap sensors. Um, you mentioned ut we found UT to be quite good when you’re, it comes time to actually doing the repair pre and post.
And if you wanna do a sampling, uh, you know, it’s very hard to justify doing ut across tons of 300 blades. Exactly. Yeah. It’s
Joel Saxum: expensive
David King: and you really have to have done the diligence on the front end with, uh, UT as well. I think UT is, it’s one of those things that you have to have, have really approach it in a fundamental way where you understand the defect, you understand.
What you’re looking for and you’ve done blind trials to make sure you, you’re not giving false positives or anything like that. So, you know, kind of, you know, I don’t want to jump straight into the repair just yet, but we, we can get into that maybe in a minute or [00:08:00] two. But one of the key elements that repair is doing a pre NDT before we go do anything, and that’s built into the repair service we offer, is we do a pre and post NDT.
That’s our quality check.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. If you’re gonna get, if you’re gonna get surgery done, you get x-rays or an MRI done before. So you know what, so the surgeon knows what he’s getting into before you open it up. Same concept.
David King: Exactly right. You gotta know what you’re getting into. You gotta know where you’re going and you really want to, you know, not go in blind.
And so, you know, what we’ve seen is, is operators will go through and they’ll do maybe. Feeler gauge, dial gauge measurements throughout their farm. That’s a, you know, low cost, low barrier of entry type measurement that their own technicians can be trained on. And you can kind of have a standardized approach to.
Sometimes they’ll implement condition monitoring systems to try and again, start, um, best utilizing their, their operation and maintenance fund. You know, how am I gonna prioritize if I’ve got some blades that are really far along, some that aren’t, I’ve gotta save some for next summer. CMS really has some great solutions there, but then when it comes time to repair it, we, we do really need to get the ut and get that pre x-ray, post x-ray and, and [00:09:00] go in not blind.
Allen Hall: And the bushings that have the most problems tend to be on the leading edge and trailing edge, or that’s the, the two areas you need to focus on. If you’re doing ut.
David King: No. So, you know, it’s kind of interesting. It’s again, by blade type actually. So what we’ve seen is, is there are a variety of, uh, damages and defects out there.
And, you know, you can kind of group it. We, we group it into kind of static and fatigue. There’s stuff that’s happening in the first couple years on, on newer, uh, turbines. And there’s stuff that’s happening in 10 to 12, 13 years on older turbines, and based off of which population those blades sit in, there’s gonna be a different, uh, patterns where the damage is.
So sometimes you see that damage, like you said, in the leading edge, trailing edge. Sometimes you see it over the spars, and sometimes you see it in the, I call it the corners. You know, between the leading edge and the spa cap. Yeah. Um, there is a pattern though. You just have to know what population you’re looking in to make sense of that pattern.
If you look at it too holistically, you’re just gonna go, well, they’re everywhere. You know, it seems random, but if you know what I’m looking at, it’s a fatigue problem. Is this a static problem? Is this a, uh, a particular blade variant? You’re [00:10:00] gonna start to find those pattern areas. Um,
Allen Hall: okay, so then if you generally know what the blade model is, then you know what bushings you’re looking for.
Generally we using
David King: the whole thing as well. That’s the other thing. We’ve, we actually have, have pulled in, uh, some UT equipment we’ve been working with now for about 10, 15 years. But it comes from aerospace where, uh, this, uh, hardware was originally designed to actually NDT, uh, uh, blade Wing. So it’s a very effective, fast way of getting a lot of information around the whole blade route.
And so we, NDT, every bushing on the blade route. Okay. And then we can go dial in. We kind of know before we get in there which ones we suspect are gonna be problematic, but we want to verify with that, with something quantitative.
Allen Hall: So what percentage of the. Blade bushings are going to be bad in like a moderate case.
You detect it relatively early. Is it five? Is it
David King: dead? Is it half of them? Yeah. So I mean, you know, if, if you’re talking about something that maybe let’s say has, uh, 64 bushings on it, you’re probably talking 10 to 15. If it’s a 90 bushing plus, you know, maybe you’re getting into 20 bushings. And again, they’re always [00:11:00] gonna be mirrored.
So if you’ve got 10 on this side, you probably have 10 on the other side. That type of a, a situation really. Okay.
Allen Hall: So the, the scope of the problem is not as bad as I thought because I, I heard operators. Talk about this saying, well, I gotta replace all the inserts, and my first response is like, that doesn’t seem right to me.
Yeah. So the data actually shows, it’s just certain areas that have this issues if you catch it soon enough. So I’ll put that caveat on
David King: there. If you wait too long, it does go progressive. You’ll eventually get every single bush failing and you’ll end up with the blade on the ground and the bushing’s still up tower.
So it’s uh, yeah, unfortunately,
Joel Saxum: will it be like, uh, the adjacent ones? So if you have three, four of ’em here, then the next ones go are. The ones adjacent to that, adjacent to that, adjacent to that? Or does it start to show itself in different spots?
David King: No, it’s a great question. And what we see is we see that mirroring effect, right?
Right. So you see it on each side. And let’s say it’s centered on a, a grouping of three bushings on each, each side, that will then start to grow, just as you’re saying, kind of this unzipping almost of the, the blade roots. And eventually, uh, in extreme cases, what the other thing we’ve seen is you’ll see the crack where we.
Do what we call turning [00:12:00] the corner. So it goes on the outside of the blade and you see a crack in the gel coat. The first meter meter and a half of the blade has a gel coat crack. And that crack will have gone through the blade route, through the protrusions. And that’s unfortunately most likely a scrap blade at that point.
Allen Hall: I’ve actually seen that
David King: up close.
Allen Hall: So once, yeah, once you start to crack the blade root, is there really a way to recover that? Is that worth even playing around with? Yeah. Or is it just like, Hey, it’s such a repair, it’s so intensive, high load area, it’s not. Worth.
David King: I mean, we always say, you know, it comes back to the business case, and I would say most of the time it’s not worth it.
Um, all composites can be repaired. There’s, there’s not a single, I mean, you could rebuild the entire blade if you wanted to, but it doesn’t make cost sense. And that’s really where the business case needs to be brought in. We need to understand what are you trying to get out of this? Is there available blades?
And this is where sometimes there can be some special cause situations where maybe it does make sense to bring that blade down tower, do a very large cut and grind operation, and actually fix these bushings and get that thing back to normal health.
Allen Hall: [00:13:00] Okay. So the issue is pretty prevalent from what Joel and I have seen.
Yep. We talked about our operators that have it. There’s a solution now that Gulf Wind has developed to repair these bushings up tower, which means no cranes. And that’s huge. A lot lower costs. What does that repair look like? Or I need you to walk through it with me because Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot when I talk to operators, the first thing they say is, well, I, I don’t wanna touch it because I gotta get a crane.
We have to wait until August when the crane’s gonna be on site. So it just turns into this big fiasco and how Right we and how, so we’ve had this
Joel Saxum: conversation like, yeah, you can fix that up tower. I said that to somebody. They’re like, no, you can’t. It’s like, yeah, yeah, you can, no, how? It doesn’t make any sense.
I’m like, talk to the people that know.
David King: Right? Yeah. So I mean, we’ve got a huge passion for composites of Gulf Wind technology. I mean, you know, our, our history and our legacy has been doing composites, whether it’s aerospace, wind, auto bodies. So we love composites. So three years ago when we got this problem statement originally.[00:14:00]
We, um, you know, really wanted to approach it from a fundamental point of view, and, and it developed something that was again, listening to the business case. And immediately we became apparent. You can’t bring cranes in, you can’t bring this thing down tower, you gotta address this up tower. And you’ve gotta do it in a way where you can send a crew up with some bit of kit, some bit of equipment and get this done in, uh, a weak or less really per plate.
Otherwise, again, the business case just doesn’t make sense. And so what we’ve done is we’ve really developed a, uh, what I like to call, kind of like a laparoscopic surgery almost. So, um, you know, you might be familiar a little with the medical industry where you come in, you try and be as minimally invasive as possible, try not to disturb other things that aren’t broken.
You know, it’s kind of the, the, the, uh, doctor’s motto, do no harm, right? Yeah. We don’t want to go in and just upset all this great fiber that was originally infused in that blade. We don’t want to mess any of that up. We’ve looked at everything from cut and grind to boring bushings, out to bringing things on tower when we were.
Working through the business case, we looked at everything. Okay. You know, you could cut the root off and put a new root on all sorts of, you know, really out there. Ideas, uh, and really what it came down to. [00:15:00] Is a series of process trials where, again, everything at Gulf Wind, we, we kind of root in this idea of we build up what’s called a process map.
We understand the inputs outputs, we break it down into its critical steps, and we develop a, a series of critical to quality measurements. So we really dial in what does the process need, and then we go run our process trials to dial it in. And the result of all that work over two or three years is this method in which we go up tower with, uh, three personnel.
Uh, three technicians with a piece of equipment that’s maybe about 25 pounds or so. Uh, a bit of material. And uh, I call it kind of our, our go box or a go bag. This is kind of kit about 40 pounds more of material. They go up tower. They’re up tower for about three to five days, execute the repair, and they come back down.
So what do they do? Up tower, that’s the question You’re really after. Um, step one is we, ut coming back to what we did originally. We do this, this pre-inspection, get the x-ray, we know which, what we need to do as far as, uh, targeting, bushings, that sort of thing, and doing no harm. We don’t want to necessarily over repair.
Uh, there’s no [00:16:00] damage if you over repair. Again, the process is, has been designed in such a way that you’re not gonna break anything if you over repair. But again, it’s wasteful. And then we basically are able to, um, get in with this piece of equipment, to that interface with very, very minute holes and basically, uh, um.
Uh, inject or create a, a quite a significant amount of pressure, almost similar to hydraulic fracturing and achieve a, uh, repair that gets the material into this broken down interface, and we can put a material into that interface with this, this pump, this equipment. Um, you know, in such a way that we’re actually able to purge out any sort of contaminants in there, dust oil, anything that might be preventing chemical bonding from occurring or preventing proper curing from happening in the adhesive.
And, um, yeah, we, we replace the broken material. We replace it with a far superior material that we’ve developed. That again, is, it can actually be mixed one-to-one with oil. So this material, we’ve done a lot of lab testing on where we’ve actually mixed it with, uh, you know, one part uh material, [00:17:00] one part oil.
To make sure that it can cure properly and not lose strength. Uh, but we do purge that out with the material and we’re basically able to get this almost dialysis like effect through that root bushing and get that cavity, uh, back into good shape. Um, with this piece of equipment.
Joel Saxum: What kind of pressure are we talking?
Um, so where’s that secret sauce? It’s, it’s a little bit
David King: secret sauce, but I’ll say it’s significant amounts of pressure. It has to be very tightly controlled. We’ve, we’ve done. Probably thousands of process trials to dial in that pressure. I would say it’s significant. We’re talking, uh, way in excess of something you would see in an infusion or a vacuum, but it’s quite key because we don’t wanna do any other damage while we’re in there.
So again, we’ve developed a lot of very um. Uh, I guess proprietary, uh, methods of actually being able to get that material without damaging the surrounding composite. The composite, that’s good. And really only attack the bad stuff. It’s kind of, uh, another, another analogy in the medical world might be like a root canal.
We don’t want to go messing up the gums or anything else around the tooth. It’s still healthy. Just get that one spot in two. Exactly. And so it’s about pressure, but pressure in the right space. [00:18:00] Very similar to hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas business.
Allen Hall: Okay. So you’re taking that existing bushing, you’re drilling some small holes into it.
Mm-hmm. You’re forcing an adhesive up through, through the interface, the mechanical interface, and then, then you’re gonna actually flush out the debris that’s inside of this to the front of the. Blade. The bottom of the blade or the root of the blade? I guess it’s gonna come out the front. No. So we actually, or does it just, everything
David King: is done internal, so nothing is gonna be introduced into the pitch bearings or anything else.
It’s all done from the internal side. And it’s this dialysis like effect where we’ve got a way to bring material in and a way to bring the material out of this cavity. Okay. And clean everything up. You know, we got, um. Good material coming in, you know, and then we, we basically purge out. You’re pulling it out on the same side.
Exactly, yeah. Basically.
Allen Hall: So you have, you have inputs and outputs like a U around the bushing. Right? Okay. So you’re bringing it in, flushing it out, pulling this material out, and at some point you go, okay, the material we’re injecting in is coming out, so there’s no other debris. We’ve [00:19:00] gotta, we clean this thing out and then under hydraulic pressure.
You disconnect that adhesive system hardens, and then what?
David King: And so it’s got strength, well in excess of the material that was originally there. And so what it allows us to do is return both the chemical and the mechanical connection that that bushing really needs to perform well. And so that, that’s fundamentally, again, what we’re, what we’re diving into here is, is trying to return that, the state of that connection to better than it originally was.
And that’s what we’re, we’re ultimately doing with this. And so. We, we’ve got that material in it cures, you know, we get to the right spot. We come back in with the UT and we verify that we’ve done what we said we were gonna do. We were gonna replace this surface, get the connection back in there. And what we can do is compare pre and post UT and, and really, uh, cement the idea that, look, we know what we did.
We can see it, we can prove it. We’ve got the quantitative data, show it, um, and we’ve got a record of it. And that allows us too, to come back if we want, three months later, six months later, 12 months later, and compare. And that’s something [00:20:00] we’ve been doing really over the last. Uh, 12 to 24 months. We’ve now deployed this, uh, quite significantly, I would say, across a variety of turbine OEMs, blade types, different operators.
Uh, we’ve done it internationally now as well. Uh, so we have quite a, a, a strong deployed base, uh, uh, really where we’ve got a lot of experience now doing this across a lot of different varieties of, of hub style blade type. Um, and we’ve gone and done follow ups, right? So anytime we do testing, we start out with doing our, our coupon testing, all the basics that you’re used to.
We do sub-component testing, we do full component testing, and then we do pilot, um, series fleet leaders, that sort of thing. We’ve done a, a huge amount of those over the last, I would say again, 12 to 24 months really, where, um. We’ve then gone back and actually with UT again, done a three month inspection, six month, 12 month inspection.
The main to really ensure that, you know, we, we fixed it, but then we’re also double checking to make sure there’s been no issue. And today we’ve seen no issue and that’s why we have a lot of confidence. Where we’re at today is we’ve got that. [00:21:00] Full testing pyramid, really built out from coupons, sub component, double app shears, um, all the way up through actually proven, uh, um, you know, flight hours basically.
Right? At the end of the day, that’s what people care about. Flight hours.
Joel Saxum: I think an important thing to touch on here, and you did a little bit ago, is the fact that for a lot of people they think I have to replace this blade. So you’re thinking. Crane costs a hundred fifty, two hundred, two hundred 50,000 bucks for this blade.
But you guys are fixing the problem by having a three man crew in that blade for three to five days. That’s, I don’t know what your, the cost model looks like, but that’s not expensive compared to what we’re, we’re used to. Like I’ve seen three to five days people just being inside of a blade. Fixing a shear web de bond or something like that.
Right? Like so that cost is something that’s not crazy to the industry. It’s doable.
David King: No, exactly. And I, I’ve gotta say a big thank you to our process team and the, the process team at Gulf Wind Technology has got just decades of experience and process and what we’re really about. It’s trying to take out the complexity composites, right.
You, we’ve probably heard [00:22:00] in every conference we’ve been at, it’s very hard to manufacture these plates. It’s hard to repair these plates. Anytime you’re working with wet chemicals, grinding, doing anything like that, it’s very complicated and very difficult. Very heavy on the, the, the human aspect as far as keep maintaining quality science meets art.
Exactly. And so what we really have done is tried to eliminate as many of the variables that are allowing, you know, the, those sort of, um, errors to creep into the process. And that’s what all that stuff about process, maps, inputs, outputs. We really fundamentally believe that and try and build that into our process, whether it’s the equipment we build and, and, and create the materials we select.
The way we drop down our process, the way we do our work constructions, we really want to do it in a way that keeps things simple, keep things easy for the operators. You’re not reliant on, you know, the, the, the person with 20, 30 years developed the process, but now the person executing can be somebody that’s, you know, fairly new to composites maybe, but, but has experience, has a little bit of training.
Joel Saxum: So speaking about executing as well now. Golf, wind technology is taking problem [00:23:00] statements in designing engineering fixes for them, but you’re also deploying in the field, so it’s your technicians go into the field to do this. Correct?
David King: Yes. Uh, yeah. So, you know, anytime we deploy something, you know, I always say the, the most difficult part is the ramp.
Right? You know, a lot of people like to focus on the, the developments and you know, all the testing and the hard work that engineers to do to really. Create a robust product, but the hardest part is actually the ramping part. And so what we’ve been doing over really the last, uh, 12 to 18 months is the ramp, and that means putting our technicians in the field to make sure that we’re getting the feedback, you know, understanding of the problem statements fairly early on in the deployment that might be happening.
Even just simple things like, Hey, it’s difficult to get this piece of kit through this hatch that’s in this particular turbine type. All sorts of things like that. And being able to build that back into how we fundamentally approach. Uh, doing this process. But, you know, speaking to, you know, models we’re looking at, we’ve, uh, again, everything we do, we try and make it so it can be, uh, done in a kit.
So it can be FedEx, so it’s equipment that can be leased, rented, uh, people that can be [00:24:00] trained and certified in the process. Um, but the only way we could do that is first deploying with our crews, build the training material, and that’s what we’ve been doing really the last 12 months. So where we’re at today is we have been starting a training of third party crews.
Actually, we do have, uh, we’ve trained 20 people through the, uh, the, the training center at in New Orleans, uh, on this particular process to date. Uh, we’re gonna continue to ramp that, um, and get more people familiar with this process. Trained, certified, um, you know, and, and basically able to troubleshoot, able to really understand if there’s, there’s anything going wrong with the process.
You know, really trying to build in the robustness from the training side, uh, so we can execute this well.
Allen Hall: Is there a model in this where you would want to look at. Blaze pre-installation that, you know, this particular kind of blade is gonna have that problem because it’s, it’s a design issue or manufacturing issue that you would do this kind of repair on the ground preemptively while it’s less expensive to do.
’cause the blades are all sitting there. Is
David King: that something you’ve looked at and. [00:25:00] Going forward? Yeah, I mean, I think it’s extremely dependent on exactly the type of defect and damage that we’re talking about with, uh, with the, uh, the blade type. So it’s something that we would certainly entertain. I I think it’s very case by case dependent.
True. Um, you know, yeah, I would say, you know, it’s not something we’ve seen really on the very, very front end of things like, um. You know, you do have to generally have something to repair. There’s a few, you know, I call ’em outlier cases out there where you can’t repair something very early on, but, right.
Uh, for the most part, you, you need damage to have occurred, to have something to repair.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, just the discussion with some of the operators that have that issue with a farm and they’re repowering with the same equipment, with the, basically the same blade. And the discussion I’ve heard is. Well, why would I put that blade up if I know I’m gonna have this problem?
Can I do something on the ground before it goes up so I can just prevent this all together? It’s a lot less expensive to do. Pre-installation then post.
David King: Yeah, I mean, so I think with the, uh, 2, 2, 2 approaches there, I guess one of them is, is um, you know, I think the [00:26:00] timing and the cost model that we’ve been able to create for this does allow you to do the UPT Tower in a very competitive way where it actually, to be honest with you, we’re pretty agnostic.
If it’s down tower or up tower, it’s uh, in some cases, uh, dare I say actually easier up tower because we can take advantage of the pitch system. Uh, when we’re actually doing the repair. So, kind of funny enough, we in some ways prefer up tower. Um, but, uh, and that’s odd. It’s not normal. Yeah. But then coming back to your question about what can you do on the front end, um, you know, one thing that we’ve seen a lot of interest in is what I typically call owners engineering due diligence, doing factory audits, doing manufacturing inspections, doing firewall audits, all these sorts of things.
They’re, they’re really key. It’s important to get, um, experts. With eyes on your blades and, and really do, um, due diligence on things. Yeah.
Allen Hall: And that’s something that Gulf Wind offers, correct. That you, you will come
David King: out and take a look before the blades get installed? Yes, absolutely. We, we inspect a lot of blades.
We go inside a lot of blades. We do a lot of risk analysis factory audits. So we’ve been to a lot of different countries doing these factory audits and, and you know, it’s, uh, it’s [00:27:00] something I think that can give a lot of peace of mind. It can help out with, uh, financing, getting tax equity financing, working with your insurance company.
But then ultimately what it all comes down to, right, is. Being able to predict what’s gonna happen with that fleet. You know, I think, uh, one thing that we’ve gotta be very careful with in inspections in this industry is, is uh, what’s the value of the inspection? If the inspection has to allow us to predict better the risk and the, the way we’re gonna maintain things.
And we can’t just be doing inspections for inspection’s sake, otherwise we’re just building checks. Exactly. Uh, so that’s a really important thing for us at Gold Wind.
Allen Hall: Uh, this is really interesting and good technology. I know there’s gonna be a lot of operators. This summer that are gonna be implementing it, and over the next couple of years, because there’s thousands of lays with this issue at the minute, so you’re gonna be pretty busy sending kits out and sending crews out to go address it.
What’s the next generation looks like? Are obviously, uh, Gulf winds involved in so many different things simultaneously. What are some of the challenges ahead you’re trying to deal with?
David King: Yeah, no, absolutely. [00:28:00] So I mean, and this is one, you know, very, I’d call it acute issue that we’ve, we’ve developed a product for.
We’re obviously ramping teams, getting training set up, that sort of thing. Uh, we, we, um, you know, also are, are very set on, you know, maintaining excellence in composites. So that’s a huge thing for us. We’ve got some really exciting stuff that, you know, at some point I’d love to have y’all actually back out to the facility.
So maybe we can get some hands on with some of these new, uh. Uh, cutting edge things that are happening and in composites. So I think there’s some really new manufacturing technology that’s, um, potentially, uh, uh, ready to, to be coming out very soon, that we can show you all, as far as, you know, fundamental changes in how we deal with materials and fusions, all these sorts of things that, that come in there.
I’m gonna leave that as a little bit of a teaser. Um, but no, we also have some really exciting stuff coming up in the performance world. You know, I think everything we’ve talked about is what I would call reliability engineering, structural engineering composites, that sort of thing. But, um, we also have some really exciting things coming up in performance with, um, ways of, of creating, uh, lower, you know, basically being able to get better capacity factors out of low wind speed sites [00:29:00] really.
Leveraging some exciting technologies that are gonna allow us to expand wind energy. Um, you know, if you look at the map that NREL publishes every year of wind in the United States, you see it’s all concentrated basically from the Dakotas to Kansas to Texas, Oklahoma, and kind of everything in between.
And that’s all the high wind sites, right? And so, you know, I think it’s a country, it’s gonna be really exciting to see where that goes next as we start focusing on potentially the southeast market. You know, what does low wind speed look like in America? And I think Gulf Wind’s got some really exciting technologies that are coming out with low wind speed.
Where, you know, we’ve, we’ve, I I think fundamentally had some paradigm shifts in how we can extract power, um, out of these challenging sites, um, that historically have, have, have not had wind installed in ’em, and with, you know, data centers going in, uh, the, the power demand going up. I mean, Louisiana just had a $10 billion investment and data centers, one of the first wind farms installed in the southeast of Mississippi.
Mississippi just went in. These low wind speed sites are becoming massively critical,
Allen Hall: right? And the population base in the United States is moving to the Southeast where [00:30:00] there’s not a lot of renewable energy, but there will need to be over the next 10, 20, 30 years. So we better figure that this problem today, because I know Gulf Wind Technologies in the forefront of that.
David, it’s so great to have you back on the podcast. And we do need to get back to New Orleans, just not in the summertime. Yeah, let’s go. So hot sometime when it’s cooler. Right? Right, exactly.
David King: So thank you for being back on the podcast. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Maybe we’ll put some smoke in the wind tunnel. That’d be cool.
