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The wind industry relies on heavy lift cranes and transportation equipment to construct and maintain massive turbines. Our guest today is Brian Thomas, Vice President of Business Development at Barnhart Crane & Rigging. Barnhart specializes in providing crane services for some of the most challenging lifts in the wind industry, from blade replacements to initial turbine assembly. Brian discusses Barnhart’s specialized engineering capabilities, their work erecting some of the earliest US wind farms, and innovations like their “tri-block” system for more efficient tower lifts. He also provides an inside look at logistics challenges as turbine sizes increase, the complexity of repowering projects, and Barnhart’s focus on safe lift engineering. As offshore wind ramps up in the US, Brian shares how Barnhart is partnering to bring their onshore expertise to this new frontier.
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!
Barnhart Crane – www.barnhartcrane.com
PES Wind – www.peswind.com
Pardalote Consulting – https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com
Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com
Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com
Barnhart Crane
Allen Hall: Welcome back to the Uptime Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall. Heavy lift cranes and transportation equipment are vital to the construction and maintenance of wind turbines. From hoisting colossal tower sections to delicately placing turbine blades to the hub, people who operate these massive machines are the unsung heroes in the wind turbine world.
Our guest on this podcast is Brian Thomas, Vice President of Business Development for Barnhart. And Barnhart began as a small family-owned company in Memphis, Tennessee, but has since grown to be a major player. And the heavy lift and transportation industries with operations. across the United States.
For over 20 years, Barnhart has provided major maintenance services for blades, gearboxes, generators, yaw bearings, basically anything that is really heavy. And Barnhart has also assembled wind turbines and worked directly with the OEMs to construct some of the early wind projects in the United States.
Brian, welcome to the program.
Brian Thomas: Allen, it is a treat to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having us on.
Allen Hall: So I’m not a crane expert and so it’s great to talk to someone who is just because. It is true, the cranes, without the cranes, wind industry doesn’t exist, and without that expertise, we would be nowhere. And you want to describe some of the early things that Barnhart participated in in the United States in terms of wind turbine construction?
Brian Thomas: Sure, I will tell you that our, our, for being a crane provider that really came out of the heavy industrial market where we were operating in refineries and power plants, nuclear plants. And then we get to a wind farm and they say, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to put up this turbine here and then you’re going to walk across this field and, and put one up on the, over there.
And I’m like, excuse me, you don’t walk across the field. And, and so the early days that where we stepped in was in the, kind of the 1.5, 1.8 megawatt range. They were still erecting V47, you know, the 640 kilowatt machine, and that was a con, typical construction crane, like an M2250, like a, you know, 250, 300 ton crawler.
And those would generally be more favorable to to walking across the field. But you know, it obviously turbines have grown you know, to. amazing heights and sizes now. And so, you know, just from being a, from a crane provider perspective, that’s been, it’s been very interesting to watch. And it’s probably, it’s the riskiest thing that happens on a wind farm is walking a crane from pad to pad.
Allen Hall: Oh yeah. And it is so complicated. Some of these projects, especially early on they were not in the easiest of locations. I don’t even know how you even access some of the early spots. You know, West Texas and out your way and on the sort of on the East Coast, those are not easy places to put up wind turbines.
Brian Thomas: They’re, they’re not, and, and we were probably skewed early. Our, our first project that we were really even introduced to was a project right in our backyard in, in East Tennessee called Buffalo Mountain. It was in Invenergy’s first foray into, into wind. And, and so it was up on a mountainside, up on a ridge, ridgeline where we erected 15 of, of the Vestas V80s, actually had to build a special blade trailer to kind of go up the switchbacks to even get the blades up to the top of the mountain, 20 percent grade, you know, grades getting up there.
So with that kind of skewed our perspective as to what’s typical in the wind industry early on, but, but that, that has really kind of birthed an amazing an amazing business segment for, for Barnhart. You’re.
Allen Hall: Seem to be pretty busy in the wind sector and what are some of the early things that you learned from doing those projects and and you work directly with some of the OEMs on those projects to correct.
Brian Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. We probably did 90 percent of the Vestas EnVentus. The turbine supplied install agreements in the early 2000s. And I think what was really interesting for us is there was a lot, you know, it was really dominated by contractors, you know, who were very good at what they do. And there’s been some just, you know, the major players in the industry are amazing.
But it was really fun for us to come in as a really a crane provider. But not only that, you know, Barnhart has very much reputation for innovation. For engineered tools, engineered solutions, and it was, we were very fortunate in the, and with that OEMs gave us the opportunity to innovate, you know, to create a special lifting gear you know, we, we came up with a method to lift a tower section by, you know, with one crane using a, the whip line kind of, we call it the tri-block.
And variety of other tools so that we really saw a lot of opportunity for, for innovation kind of for better thinking. And that, that really kind of helped us be successful.
Allen Hall: Well, the OEMs must have seen something in you. And I know you Barnhart has done a number of really complicated projects before.
Vestas knocked on your door, so they, they probably understood that you could do some really crazy things.
Brian Thomas: Correct. You know, we, we enter this competition every year, the Rigging Job of the Year, with the SC&RA. It’s kind of the… the fraternity of crane and transport people, the specialized carriers and riggers association, and we’ve won this award called the rigging job of the year or the hauling job of the year.
It’s kind of fun when you get back on an airplane with a trophy and the flight attendant goes, what’s that for? It’s like, well, we won the rigging job of the year. And they kind of go, huh, that’s nice. Okay, take your seat. But the but we really have an amazing fleet of engineers in Memphis and spread out around the country that all they do every day is.
Is try to come up with engineered solutions that serve our clients needs and so the power industry has been You know, it’s given us lots of opportunity to exercise that and be successful, you know, be it a feed water heat exchanger replacement or a vessel installation or you know, even within the nuclear space There’s all kinds of opportunities for special special toys as we would say
Allen Hall: Yeah, and in the United States, you know, we’ve kind of hung around the two megawatt region on wind turbine size onshore, but that seems to be changing more recently.
You starting to see fours and fives and sixes.
Brian Thomas: We’ve actually had the real privilege of being involved in a lot of the prototypes that have kind of come to market and we were able to we were on the first SGRE. The SG 145, 4.5MW Siemens platform did a project up in New York and then turned around and we’re in, we’re actually helped out on the the first EnVentus platform that came to the U.S. and and then we were the prime erector of the first Cypress. Which is the, you know, the, the large GE 5. 6. I guess now it’s a six megawatt platform. So it has been you know, the turbine hub heights are obviously getting higher and taller, not, not as crazy as Europe, but, but we’re approaching that.
And but the complexity of the turbine is one of the things that. You know, the OEMs have done an amazing job, you know, doubling, almost tripling the megawatt output, but, you know, there’s a lot more that goes into the installation. And, you know, I think I’ve appreciated the OEMs saying, okay, can we, can we call timeout, slow down, and let’s camp right here.
And get really good at improving this four and a half to, to six-megawatt output range. And, and so I, I think that’s, will be wise and helpful for everybody.
Allen Hall: Give us some behind the scenes here on how this works. So let’s just pick an OEM for a minute. I’ll just choose GE because they’re close to us here.
So GE has come up with some new wind turbine. Let’s say it’s a 20 megawatt or whatever it’s going to be. And you know it exceeds your current lifting capability or maybe the equipment required you’d have to sort of build and think about. How soon do they contact you in the design phase so that you can actually assemble them.
Brian Thomas: Sometimes they do.
I will say that. But and, and, and I would hand it to the OEMs. They, they have some really smart guys within, within their organizations that know cranes. Obviously they’re renting crazy amounts of cranes these days for be it O& M services, you know, major component replacements. But, you know, and again, I, I just had the privilege of being at Liebherr last, last week, and they will come and meet, meet with the crane manufacturers and have conversations about where they see the turbine platforms growing.
But I’ve also been really impressed. The OEMs have, have really done a good job of modularizing the nacelles. And so it’s not just one big lift. You can have, you know, the powertrain, drivetrain, you know, can, can be a separate lift with the hub and they’re giving the, the, the erector the contractor, the ability to kind of really pick and choose an erection strategy.
And that’s been very, very beneficial. And so that, that way you can, according to the, the crane assets that are available in the market. To the particular project, maybe on a ridgeline or it may have a lot of crane breakdowns. And so a smaller crane with more picks may be more beneficial versus an area where you have very few crane breakdowns and you want to make, you know, you want to make hay.
And the big crane is, is the way to go because you just don’t have the cost of, of crane moves.
Allen Hall: Does the OEM then, when they’re designing the turbines, also look at the maintenance aspect in terms of lifts? Like on gearbox replacement, are they, are they designing that into the assembly, so when you get there, you can actually do those…exchanges much more quickly than in the past.
Brian Thomas: Yeah, correct. And I think that there are obviously a lot of non-crane technology that’s coming to market as well that, you know, to be able to do, to do that replacement as well, especially as the turbine heights get taller. On conversation today with one of those providers.
And so that with the fact that it’s, it’s an amazing stat. There are 45 900-ton hydraulics in the United States right now, 45 of them and with another five coming. So 50 of this you know, it’s a, it’s not the largest all terrain crane out there. It’s a 1200 ton model, but this 900 ton is you can move it very efficiently, you can assemble it pretty quickly and, you know, we, we have a couple of them and they’re just a great machine that can really handle that, you know, that, that below you know, 110 meter hub height type typical O&M, O&M lifts, so.
It’s yeah, so there’s still quite a bit of Korean assets out there that are able to to do the major component replacements.
Allen Hall: How far out are you guys typically scheduled? I know one of the big concerns in the industry is, I can’t get a crane, I can’t get a cane, they’re locked up for six months.
Is that generally the case at the moment?
Brian Thomas: You can find a crane, you know, and sometimes it is expensive to mobilize, and that way the, the wind farm owner may decide going, okay, I can, I can spend the extra money and bring the crane a greater distance, maybe several states. Or, I can wait and then I may have a couple of other turbines that may need work, and that way I can really amortize that, that large mobilization out over a handful of turbines.
You know, in terms of construction there’s still a lot of assets that are currently in, in the country, and more coming in daily. So, yeah, it’s, you know, I’ve, I’ve seen years, you know, lots of years where they’re going, oh, gosh, we’re going to run out of cranes. I’ve just never actually seen it happen.
And, you know, I’ve seen, you know, assets come from up from Mexico. We’ve, we’ve brought some assets up from Mexico or, you know, assets come from Europe and so that is, I just, some, in some way crane providers go, Oh, there’s needs in the United States. Let’s go see if we can have a, have a piece of the pie.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And Barnhart has engineers on staff to handle some of the more complicated lifts and, and handle the, the unique situations. And I wanted to ask you about how many, how many engineers do you have on staff at the moment?
Brian Thomas: We, we would say roughly about 65 a majority of those guys are in Memphis. We have an engineer sales service department, a project engineering group and and then an R&D group.
And those guys really just kind of developing tools. But you know, if, if if a, if a customer had a compromised rotor. Compromised nacelle, thermal event that where you’re kind of going, okay, now the typical way of, of, of safely lifting this turbine or component is no longer available. We have a variety of ways that we can engineer.
A safe lift. And that’s what we have a lot of tools, spreader bars so that, that can, you know, make, even if we’re not sure of where the CG is now, because it’s it’s, it’s off center we’ve got ways to compensate, you know, for that. So it’s, It’s one of the things that it’s really nice. And then we have engineers kind of spread out throughout the branches.
And that, that’s a nice thing because you’ve got some some folks that are, that are close that can they can run, take a look at the turbine and, and we can, you know, again, provide a customized safe solution for the, for the. Well,
Allen Hall: I think that safety is such a key here because you’re lifting such heavy objects and sometimes they are compromised and recently on LinkedIn, I think there’s some video and I don’t know where that was from, but it wasn’t in the United States.
Of a lift of a compromised blade and it letting go and guys are standing on the ground like way too close to that situation. You know, how much effort goes into those?
Brian Thomas: The fact that they put wind turbines in windy places, you know, it’s like, come on, you know, cranes don’t like wind and they don’t like, you know, handling, you know, objects that have a big cell area like a rotor.
And so that, there you go, that challenge number one is we’re you know, especially with the turbine heights getting tall you know, it really depends on, you know, the, the, the winds in your face or in your back, it’s a whole lot safer than if it’s coming at you from the side. There’s a lot of a lot of challenges when it comes to really performing things safely.
And so that, I, I think we are a mature enough industry and, and you kind of look at the numbers that there’s not a lot of cranes that have gone over. And when you do see the ones that have you can kind of point back to they probably shouldn’t have done that. And, and so we, we are, we know I think the industry is really, is pretty good about going, okay.
Okay. This is the line. We don’t cross that. So it’s, it’s, I think that’s why you, you see is, I mean, there’s anyway, thousands of lifts. Yes. Thousands of lifts and it’s safe lifts. industry and and they’re, they’re tough, challenging lifts out there. And, you know, there’s a lot of really, really good crane providers and and maintenance contractors as well that, that are, that are doing it safe.
Allen Hall: And how much prep work has to happen before you come onto a construction site in terms of like even the geology? Is, is the ground firm enough to handle the crane, especially if it gets windy or, you know, a rainstorm’s coming? What do we do? Is, I assume that’s all planned out weeks or months in advance.
Brian Thomas: Typically it’s weeks. But that, that is one of the first things that, that obviously we, we check is, you know, is there a geotech report and, you know, geology report of the crane pad? Can it withstand the, the loads that we’re going to put on it? And, you know, how, how do you match? An efficient matting scheme with what’s currently on site, or do you need to come in and have civil work done?
That’s, that is something that, that is typically done, and then you, then you’re looking at, you’re obviously constantly watching weather and, and wind data. So that’s that’s very, definitely goes into the planning, and then you’re kind of going. Okay, that combined with, you know, the, how safe of, or how risky of a lift is it?
You know, if you’re pulling a generator and you’re well within your chart then yeah, that’s, that’s a much less complicated event than a compromised rotor where the, you know, the, the wind farm was installed, you know, 15 years ago and nobody’s been on this actual crane pad with a heavy lift crane.
And so those are two different extremes that you have to, you have to pay attention to.
Allen Hall: Well, that gets to my next question, because I wondered about that. On the repowering situation where you had an existing site and it’s been there 10 plus years and now they’re repowering it and putting a slightly bigger generator in it typically, but also the rotor diameter gets much bigger.
Do you have to go back and, and kind of re engineer and look to see, we, we can still use that site or we got to upgrade the site to bring in a bigger crane to handle the rotor size?
Brian Thomas: Yeah, you do. And I think that there is, well, and I think it depends, you know, it depends on did they pull the crane pads out, you know, after the, the construction of the wind farm and a lot, and that happens a lot.
And so you kind of have to rebuild that crane pad anyway from an O&M perspective, you know, sometimes they’ll, they will have had big hydraulics that have come in and into in there. And then maybe you’re looking at a larger maybe a lattice boom crawler that is now going to be performing the, the repower scope.
Allen Hall: It seems to, it seems to be really complicated, but the, the the, the pace in which you guys must be getting called at has to be increasing all of a sudden because the IRA bill and all the, the money on the repowering side alone and, and plus new construction that’s happening. There seems to be a great deal of, a great deal of of desire to get things done quickly because the tax incentives are there.
How does that affect you and the operations you’re doing in the wind industry?
Brian Thomas: That is true. I, I will say, you know, Barnhart is a little bit of a niche contractor because we, we are not a full BOP provider and, and the and so that’s, so we’re a little bit of a niche market. We, we do think Repower is in our sweet spot.
You know, the, the obviously compromised turbines, thermal events, things like that are very much in our sweet spot, but, but we, we, we will perform a handful of wind turbine construction projects, you know, greenfield turbine erection, we’re doing a repower right now on the West Coast in California, you know, took down some vintage V47s and erecting some V150s and I heard the V47s were, and operating unbelievable.
So, so if you want to buy one, they may still have a few for sale. I think they are kind of finding their way to a new home to, to continue to generate electricity. But but yeah, the activity has been interesting in that we were hearing 25, 26, 27 and even
Getting some you know, some projects that are even booked out that far and trying to get agreements, you know, by the end of this year, that would involve you know, contracts that would be executed in 27. So that. It’s a little bit of a, it’s a really interesting dilemma that I think folks are in, because it’s, and then projects push.
And so it’s like.
Allen Hall: And speaking of project push what is happening with offshore and how are you getting involved in that? There seems to be a lot of port activity at the moment. A little bit in the water, but mostly on shore.
Brian Thomas: We’ve had privilege to kind of partner in JV with a company called Elevon and they’re, they’re deeply tied to maritime operations.
So it’s, it’s more of a marine logistics plus the, the hub operations is kind of what we’re saying is, is what we can provide. We, you know, we’re a crane company that has over 600 cranes up to 1400 ton. Even though that’s not big enough and in a lot of, of a hydraulic platform trailer, we have, you know, six or seven hundred lines of hydraulic platform trailer and those two particular tools are very key and we’ve, we’ve partnered with some, some crane providers that have, you know, the really mega cranes, the 2, 500 ton, 3, 000 ton crawlers and Buckner is kind of who we’ve kind of partnered with.
So it’s, yeah. But the offering I think we have is again, it’s, you know, the large offshore projects in Europe have been, you know, like, up to a 6 megawatt, you know, 9 megawatt, and now all of a sudden here in the U. S., let’s just start at 12. Let’s just go big. And and then go to 15. Okay. Well, let’s, let’s not start it, you know, let’s not, you know, so that has been you know, we are handling the U.
S. market is going to be handling the largest offshore wind turbine components, you know, in our hemisphere, obviously, you know, and between Europe and the U. S. But we, we are looking to try to see, you know, we think our expertise is, you know, you’ve got really large turbine components. And very small plots of land and how do you most efficiently use.
That, that plot of land in the at the hub, where you’ve got, you know components coming in, you’re staging them, and then those components going out in a timely manner to the installation vessel. And so that, you know, we were we were very fortunate. We were very close at Vineyard. It was hard because, you know, I think there’s a lot of, I think the OEMs are looking at the market going, okay, can the, can the U.
S. contractors. And we resoundingly say yes, give us a shot. But I think it may be, may take a while for, for that, that to, that tide to turn.
Allen Hall: I think that tide is, is changing rapidly just because of demand worldwide. Is that they, they can’t outsource it to a Norwegian company or a Danish company to do those things.
They have to do it locally in some aspects, and tax wise, there’s reasons to do it. But I think you mentioned a really interesting piece about the way we’re building ports and infrastructures, that the landing spots are barely larger than the turbines. There’s not a lot of wiggle room in some of these ports.
It’s amazingly tight. The way they’re designed. And that requires a lot of special engineering, doesn’t it? To sort of plan out how to move product around and get it where it needs to go.
Brian Thomas: It really does. And, and if you think about, you know, you have options of going either storing horizontally or storing vertically.
You think, no big deal. Well, your, your vertical storage all of a sudden you, you’ve got a, you know, a tower that is, You know, 350 ton and it’s pretty tall and you don’t want it, you know you want it stable and safe and, and so it’s obviously vertical storage is much more efficient, but you know, and then when you have a lot of vertical towers, how do you efficiently get that over to where it can be loaded out?
And, and there are some, there are tools out there and means and methods to actually transport those vertical, vertically. Yeah, that’s very, very doable. Yeah, it’s pretty, pretty amazing when you kind of, especially when you look at it on a computer and you’re going, Okay. And then you kind of see video of like, okay, it can be done.
And you can look where the CG is and, you know, it’s, it’s all, it’s again, it’s all engineered. And so you can, it can be performed safely.
Allen Hall: And that’s where Barnhart comes in, right? Is that Barnhart has been doing creative lifts and safe lifts at the same time for a number of years. And particularly as these wind turbines do get to 20 megawatts, that’s coming.
Brian Thomas: And these blades are just going to get incredibly long. It takes a new skill set. I do think the industry is going to have to kind of turn the dial go to a new whiteboard and go, okay, we need to come up with some better solutions. You know, you look at just the installation vessels that. The, the limit of those and you kind of look in the future and go, if everybody wants to, you know, be at the dance at the same time, somebody’s not going to have a partner.
And and so the, you know, can we can we come up with some better mousetraps? But it, you’re looking at such tremendous investment. And so I think you’re going to have to really see owners, OEMs, And folks like myself going, hey, we’re willing to go to think outside the box and we have some, we’ve, we’ve been engaging in conversations like that to go, you know, are there better ways than just the standard, okay, we’re just going to make it, we’re just going to get a big ship and go, you know, and you look at the monopiles as well, goodness gracious, just tremendous weights and, you know, these folks that are installing them are they’re just, we have a tremendous amount of appreciation and admiration for, for those guys.
Allen Hall: Well, I think you come at a good time in the industry because we’ve seen some of those early installations have trouble. And when you get to the United States, what’s really new territory, you don’t have any offshore history to speak of. It’s going to be complicated and it’s time to rethink some of these approaches.
Barnhart is going to be key into that effort.
Brian Thomas: I’m sure we have a lot of amazing folks that have amazing ideas. And and you, you put them all in the same room and sometimes you lock the door, push them pizza underneath the door and some amazing stuff comes out, but it is, there, there is great opportunity.
And and so I think that there’s a lot of folks like myself or, you know, that we will, you know, this is the beauty of of the free market in the US that. We we, we will, we will innovate, we will come up with solutions. And if there’s opportunity to, to do that profitably, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a fun ride.
Allen Hall: Well, mostly OEMs and definitely operators in the United States know of Barnhart, but if they, if they wanted to reach out to you, how do they do it?
Brian Thomas: Yeah, yeah, there’s a couple of ways. You know, we have a website, barnhartcrane. com, and there’s there’s some places where you can put your name and info in there.
Or, real easy, brian@barnhartcrane. com. You can reach me personally, so.
Allen Hall: Brian, thanks for being on the podcast today. It’s really a real pleasure to speak with you. And I’ve learned a lot about the crane industry, the lifting industry. So I want to have you back on when you get that first big offshore project, you get to come back on.
Cause that’s, that’s going to happen pretty soon.
Brian Thomas: I would love that Allen. That would be a treat. Thank you very much.
