In this episode we discuss Vestas’ recent press release about a partnership with resin manufacturer Olin, and their excitement over new technology to break down wind turbine blades into, essentially, their original materials. Is this possible? Plus, we chat about the recent approval of the Vineyard Wind Project in the United States and talk about SkySails and KiteMill kite power generation technology – is it a viable power source for the future?
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. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Transcript EP61 – Vestas Blade Recycling; Vineyard Wind & Kite Powered Turbines?
0:00
This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we make lightning protection easy. If your wind turbines are due for maintenance or repairs, install our StrikeTape retrofit LPs upgrade at the same time. A StrikeTape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic long lasting boost to the factory lightning protection system. Forward Thinking wind site owners install StrikeTape today to increase uptime tomorrow, learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast.
0:37
Welcome back. I’m Allen Hall. I’m Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
0:57
All right, welcome back to the uptime wind energy podcast. I’m your co host, Dan Blewett. On today’s show, we’re going to talk a little bit about the vineyard wind project just approved here. In the US we’re going to chat about drainage hole cleaning and some of the lightning implications for drainage holes and the water that can be potentially kind of reservoir up inside of a blade. We’ll talk about kite power, which is something obviously it’s not. It’s wind energy just have a different type. And we’ll also talk a little bit about some new blade recycling tech just announced by Vestas. So, Alan, let’s start with the vineyard wind project. So obviously, this was a big thing with the beide administration. And this got approved pretty quick. And it’s going to bring a lot of offshore wind power to your neck of the woods. Yeah. And off the coast of Massachusetts and New York and all the eastern seaboard states is that if you’ve ever been out there, it’s kind of windy, especially to get off shore a little bit this like constant wind. So it has been talked about for years, at least 10 years now about having some wind turbines offshore.
2:07
Off coast, Massachusetts, because the winds are just good and stable. And it’s it’s finally happening, there’s been a lot of resistance in the state about it, particularly
2:17
from fishermen, from people own land on the along the ocean, I’ve been complaining about it for a long time. So to see it, at least start is a good sign. But until it’s in, I kind of wonder if it’s really going to happen. So it has a long way to go. I think before we get through all the little tiny details about the the site and what’s going to happen and what’s going to be installed and how it’s going to be installed and what effect that it has on the local economies. And all those things haven’t been settled yet. So there’s still details to go through. But it’s it’s a good start. It is a good start, well, potentially up to 4000 megawatts of capacity. And the 800 megawatt of vineyard wind project is going to be a piece of that. But so it’s a lot of wind power coming to the US. So it’ll be interesting to see how just how fast that comes together. And
3:11
like you said, some of the industrial changes that are going to have to happen in factories and all these jobs, they’re going to come to fruition, they’re up in the northeast, there’s going to be a ton of new jobs and training going on. And it’s going to create its own local economy. It’s essentially what it’ll do.
3:31
But very little that infrastructure is there right now. So it’s all created from the ground up, and then that’s going to be the hard part. All the details are going to be the hard part. Yeah. And of course, there’s probably not like you said, there’s probably more challenges to it. I don’t know. I mean, now that it’s proved, I don’t know how far they can go. But sure, that’s not the end of some of these high powered residents up, you know, yeah, Nantucket area. There’s a lot of money out there. So yes, sir, is Yeah, and there’s obviously Martha’s Vineyard. And I think people will probably have some worries again, like the very high wealth residents of these areas that it’s going to maybe bring people they might deem undesirable to their area, like more blue collar workers. And so this very closed door, you know, white picket fence kind of area. And that’s, I think that’s a disappointing attitude. And I think that’s why a lot of these products get fought, you know, for their, their for their view and view and Atlantic Ocean, right? Sure, well, you pay a lot of money for it, when you want to maintain that that value that you add, and if it takes away from future buyers, that’s, that’s a problem. Because it decreases the value, especially in such a fine sliver of how the housing market and land market, you’re playing these really volatile ends of the market. And little changes like that can increase or decrease value. So then, you know, people are rightly concerned about it, but as time goes on, the stress level has come down again.
5:00
But I don’t think you’ll see such huge fights about it like we were 10 years ago, but they’ll still be fights.
5:08
It’s inevitable. Well, and one of the things I had been hearing or reading just various articles on different perspectives, just that already, there’s fights like in New York State about how much, you know, of the materials and of the machines themselves should be shipped in from overseas, like, should we be sure manufacturing them all here in the us is that realistic, like, and one of the things that was cited is that even in the UK where there’s obviously a ton of offshore wind, it still doesn’t make sense in all situations. And in fact, in a lot of situations to throw up a factory, even right there, like it still makes financial sense to ship them in from China or from somewhere else, depending on just the complexity and the size, and the cost and the overall scope of the program. So from that’ll be another interesting battle, because there was like, why we’re doing this here in the US, like, why aren’t we doing all of it here in the US, but sometimes, just like, you know, with a, you know, with a company, sometimes it just makes sense to bring in a contractor, bring in a consultant, rather than train all of your people and get all the systems just like, let’s bring in someone who’s already got this up and running, if we’re going to try to get this out the door on time. And you see that with the aircraft sector, right? Oh, sure. Sure you do. I mean, Boeing, you think like Boeing or Airbus, like when these huge aircraft companies just make every part of the plane, right? Like, that seems like an outsider’s perspective, like, Why don’t they make their own engines? They’re paying, you know, $20 million for an engine, like why don’t they make their own, but it’s just so expensive to get the plants and the factories and the workers and the people. That’s, that’s the problem. In Massachusetts, it’s in a little bit of a weird spot, in the sense, the government, pretty much run son, the more liberal side democrat side,
6:53
which usually comes along with support of union jobs, that those two have been in place for a long time, like when they had the Big Dig, when they basically restructured all the roads in the center of Boston, that was a billion was a roughly a billion dollar event. And there was a lot of interesting, connected into that politically to get there, part of that pie, and I don’t see this, the wind turbine ever been really any different. I think it’s gonna play out in a similar way as milaana, Massachusetts backroom deals that you’re not going to hear about. But
7:29
when there’s such a large pile of money on the table, and politicians have some way of influencing where that goes, they will, obviously well. So that’s where the the fight starts is that the sort of the common citizen is fighting against their own state government, which is what’s going to happen. And we saw them in the big day, when I saw that other things with roads in Massachusetts and numerous other large projects in the state. I just don’t think this is being any different. You just prepare, it gets to be just commonplace, he, oh, he can almost check the boxes, okay, there’s going to be this lawsuit, then it’s going to go away. And then the unions are going to ask for their share of the pie, and they’re going to get it and
8:14
the changes rolls on, you know, it’s just what’s going to happen. So yeah, we will, we’ll keep our ear to the ground with that. And then there’s gonna be so many developments with those projects over over a long period of time, but they are putting in the GE Haliade-X, which I’m excited about, because it’s got the best name in huge offshore wind turbines. Well,
8:34
they are American. Yeah, it’s an American company. So where’s G’s headquarters at? And, you know, I think No, I think they I think they were gonna move to Boston. At one point, I don’t remember they actually tid. I remember at one point, they had bought a lot of land right down on the, on the water to move their headquarters to Boston. So it’s not surprising that that has happened, right? You’ve already got sort of GE clawing their way into that territory. So yeah, sure. But yeah, that’s the way those things go, you know? Alright, so let’s move on here to drainage holes. So, you know, these things have to be cleaned. Just part of the regular maintenance of these wind turbines, and they can fill you know, the blade tips can fill with water. And over and Aerones they’ve got some interesting technology with their robots helping to clean those out. But, Alan, what’s the big deal with drainage holes? I mean, is that a big lightning risk? That’s the angle I want to kind of chat with us today? Is it that big of a deal if your drainage hole is if you got a little water inside? Does it really need to be cleaned that regularly? I mean, is this going to increase the likelihood of lightning damage and severe strikes? It can. The general thought about it is if you have water trapped in the tip area of the blade, and there’s a lightning strike that that water’s going to evaporate and then create all this internal pressure and then cause a blade to split. Now, in theory, I guess that’s possible. I haven’t seen that in any sort of laboratory testing played out by
10:00
I’ll tell you what the water does do lunch I know is a problem, which is it causes a bunch of corrosion. So anytime you have corrosion between electrical joints, it just creates Arkadin sparking and bad stuff to happen. So the the water starts to eat away at metal components like the lightning receptor and all the cables and things that are inside. And that just leads to a degraded lightning protection system. So when Aerones goes out and starts measuring these lightning protection systems, and they find high resistance values, that’s one of the reasons why is that there’s just a corrosion issue. And there’s water trapped in there is this eating away at the metal components. That’s the first one this this. The second one is, I think it’s the water if when it’s trapped, like that starts to weep places, if it happened to freeze and you got a really big problem. But it tends to weep into the structure and so the structure distorted absorbs it. And it’s not as dialectically strong, it’s not the ability to for lightning to puncture through it is less than if it was if it was dry. And that’s a problem. So you don’t want water trapped in in the blade very long you want it to drain out and what Aerones is finding as they start cleaning out these trade halls isn’t there getting leaders gallons of water to pour out of these blades pretty regularly. I’ve heard stories of
11:22
technicians, guys on ropes that are cleaning out these externals, that says, well, there’s 3040 gallons of water, and they’re like 40 gallons, is a lot of water to and stress mighty and it’s heavy, it’s heavy, right? And you’re slinging this thing around at some pretty high speeds. So it can’t do good things to the blade structure. And you need to make sure those holes are clean, because as we’ve seen, in many cases, if the blades are stopped for any length of time, insects are going to be right up in those holes. And like in Texas and other places where there’s all kinds of great Hornets like to make nests and bees like to make nests up in these holes. It’s just a continual problem. And at least Aerones is addressing it in a logical sense in this manner, which is I don’t have to have a technician a rope to clean those out anymore. I can do it with the biscaya robot system and do a lot of them fairly quickly, which is the beauty of Venus’s and Aerones approach is the quickness of it. And they can because you can do it so quick, you can cover a lot of territory, which means you can come back in a year or two and do the same thing again, because it’s so inexpensive to do. And that’s the bonus I think so a lot of the measurements that Aerones making for lightning protection system resistances will start to clear up as they get the water out of the blade. So moving on. I want to chat a little bit about Vestas. So they’ve made a big announcement this week, unfortunately, a little bit vague. I was hoping to get a little bit of a deeper dive into what they’re actually doing. But Vestas has announced a partnership with oehlen, which is a, you know, like a chemicals company, they specialize in, like resins and resin systems, stuff like that, to break down old blades and recycle them, essentially into what they’re saying is virgin materials. Again, not exactly clear what that means.
13:09
But, you know, so I have two questions for you here. Number one, you know a lot about composites. Having worked in, you know, in aerospace for a couple decades. Is it easy to put to take these apart, obviously, you know, chemical producer olan has, you know, a specialty in resins, right, but right, it doesn’t seem like this has been done before. And now they feel like they found a way. And my second question to you is, if Vestas is invested in this, is this something that’s going to be available to everyone else? like is this going to be proprietary, kept close to the vest, unintended SS? That’s great. You want the whole you want the whole industry to be able to do right because you don’t want to only be able to recycle Vestas blades, but all blades. So here is how that would play out in the future. Oh, yeah. I wonder if there’s a licensing play that Olins going to be involved with. I don’t know it because it is a dramatic statement to say, you’re going to take a thermo set. And what they’re saying is they’re using they’re basically pulling the thermoset resin out of an existing blade or a future blade is that they can break that down, get the fiber out and reconstitute those chemicals that made that epoxy or that hardening system thermal said happened. So thermal said it’s a chemical reaction that occurs to make like basically take two chemicals and make him into a liquid chemicals into a hard stable, durable, solid. So there’s a chemical reaction that happens and you put fiber inside of that to tighten it up and make it very, very strong, right. So to undo that chemical reaction, and to get back to base components, again, is hard to do. I saw there’s no details and I was thumbing through patents to to see if I could see an application or something’s got to be somewhere where that where the magic lies, and
15:00
haven’t seen it yet. So it must, must be pretty close to the vest at this point. But you’re right, Dan. And it’s such a game changer in terms of reuse, recycle. It would be a shame if that technology doesn’t transfer out other than to the GE ease and to the Siemens, Gamesa is and all the other companies that are making wind turbines because it’s not just needed in one manufacturer that’s needed. That’s a worldwide solution to a problem that needs to occur. So we’ll have to see Yeah, then of course, not assuming that a won’t be right. I just there just hasn’t been any word about it. And of course, you know, you’re one of these big winter and producers. And you, Hank can make a partnership like this. And you can find a solution or you jump on it. So there’s no No, no reason to assume that Vestas wouldn’t, you know, share those or license that or whatever. But obviously, it makes good sense for them to jump on it. So again, that’s just a question. whether or not there should be a ubiquitous technology where everyone can can use in the future for it, even
16:01
if it makes sense to do that, because it might take tons and tons of like, factory and labor to get this done, where it’s gonna make sense to, I don’t know, economic figured I’d be there. Yeah, to stand this whole project up might take a lot of work, only they’re really poised to do it. Once they get it going. You never know. Yeah, but yeah, a lot of turbine blades coming online, so they got to go somewhere. And they’re gigantic. We all know this, I still vote for some sort of like mechanical creature, like a, like a king kong kind of thing to just smash them. Then we can like create a huge arena and just watch them to snap them like, you know, like chopsticks. That’s my vote personally thing, just stop them into into submission. But I digress.
16:46
Last on the agenda today, let’s talk about kite energy. So if you haven’t seen these, it’s really interesting.
16:54
The it looks like the leader in this division right now is sky sails. And they have sort of what looks like a parachute, and attached to a cable. And it’s essentially just like loops around the sky, and drive the turbine back on the ground, not like a wind turbine, but it’s got its own. Again, the the details of it are, they do a decent job explaining, but it’s not exactly clear to me how that’s converted into electricity.
17:17
But it’s essentially a way to harvest some energy from pretty high up on, like up to four and a meters up in the sky. So SkySail is one company that’s doing this Kitemill is another one, they don’t have a parachute design, there’s much more like an actual physical glider like a hard, you’re going to use imagine, right a glider. And then there’s a now defunct company
17:38
called makhani. And they were I think, doing this about 10 1213 years ago and Google invested in them, but later dropped their investment. So Alan, what what are your initial thoughts about some of the stuff that sky sales and Kitemill are trying to do harvesting these higher? swirling winds? Well, the sky sales is interesting, because it’s essentially
18:01
up parachute. That’s on a cable that’s tied to a generator. So as the as the wind pulls the parachute system or that airfoil further away, it’s been in a generator. So they using that wind to basically tug a line, it’s spinning a generator. So the kicker is that then when it gets out to its full extension, they basically change the shape of the airfoil. And they bring it back down and not use a lot of energy to recall that spool of cable. That’s sort of how it works. So it’s, it seems like they were going to pair them up in ones or twos or threes. So these things, and it seems simplistic enough to work it crazy. It is it is, it seems like it’s gonna work. And they’ve got working systems put together, which is really cool. So I’m interested in it, as it gets out into service is supposed to be q1 and we’re past q1, but it’s got to be out in service relatively shortly. I want to see this thing out of service, I want to see it working. Because I think that the idea is really interesting. If it works, it’s even better, and how how well it works in a variety of environmental conditions is going to be key. So it’s something to watch. It really is. Yeah, well, and there’s some interesting videos, we’ll link below as we always do. But you can attach one of these parachutes to a, not a cruise ship, but just like a freighter out in the middle of the ocean. And it can be swirling around and generating electricity for that ship, which is a really interesting concept. So So yeah, I mean, one of those, you know, early technologies, although again, like the idea has been around for over a decade. And the Google leaders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page are pretty interested in and looks like after they stepped out of Google stepped down from their main major positions that then the project kind of was sent down and other leadership I guess maybe didn’t see the merit. Not really sure what that what why that dissolved, but yeah, there’s a lot of projects like that.
20:00
That’s not the only one that happened to I noticed there were several aerospace type programs that are going on simultaneously, I remember a number of those getting the same sort of outcome when leadership change happens. So that’s not that’s not uncommon. I do think, though, that
20:16
the more you can prove it out in real service, where that’s where the details are, and you show that it works, then you see, a wide variety of customers start to come to your door, it’s the proving ounces, the hard part. Well, and obviously, you know, and they talk about this, as some of the issues are that, you know, with weather, for me, it’s a huge thunderstorm, like they got to bring it in, essentially. And so forecasting, like, not every storm can be predicted 1012 hours at a time where you can just like pull them on end. Sometimes it’s pretty unexpected, especially in some of these tougher environments. So, you know, like you said, getting it out in the field will be crucial for them to figure out, hey, how fast can we bring this in? And how can we avoid damage to it? And how does this whole whole thing work over a given period of years, where you’re gonna have lots and lots of different weather conditions that could affect this right? So Well, that’s gonna do it for today’s episode of The uptime podcast. Be sure to tune in next week, we’ve got a great guest on the show, and we’ll explore some new technology here in the wind energy market. As always, follow us on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, and check out the links in the description below for all the articles you mentioned in today’s podcast, and we will see you here next week on the uptime wind energy podcast.
21:40
operating a profitable wind farm is all about mitigating costs, minimizing risks and being efficient with maintenance repairs and upgrades. It’s incredibly expensive to send a team of rope access technicians up tower to make even simple repairs. We also know how costly lightning damage can be requiring inspection repairs and downtime for even minor lightning strikes. Maximize the time efficiency of your Tech’s and prevent future lightning damage by installing our StrikeTape LPs upgrade the next time your crews are going up on ropes. Learn more in today’s show notes or visit us on the web at Weather Guard wind.com
