Matthew Stead, CEO of Ping Services, joined us to talk about the Ping Monitor, a device that attaches to the bottom of a wind turbine, listening to the sound of the blades as they rotate past. The Ping system compares the baseline sound to each pass of the turbine, and alerts wind farm operators when changes are detected. The Ping Monitor is so advanced, it can even differentiate and predict which types of damage have occurred–or are occurring–with high accuracy. Watch today’s episode on YouTube here.
Follow Ping on Linkedin here; Connect with Matthew on Linkedin Here; Visit them on the web here.
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!
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Transcript: Matthew Stead, on how the Ping Monitor Can Change Wind Turbine Blade Monitoring
Dan Blewett 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.
All right, welcome back to the uptime wind energy podcast. I’m your co host, Dan Blewett. On today’s show, we’ve got a great guest, Matthew stead, CEO of ping services is here to talk about their ping monitor system. Allen, really interesting conversation with Matthew today, what were some of your takeaways from it?
Allen Hall 1:15
Well, ping monitor has a great audio recording system, basically data data analyzer system that just magnetically stick to the side of the wind turbine and takes really important data. So you know, if your wind turbine blades are having problems, it’s the thing about this. And talking to Matthew is so fascinated, it seems like it’s such an obvious solution. But no one’s done it until we got to ping and it’s it’s a fascinating device. And it really interesting company. And if you own or operate wind turbines or repair wind turbines, this is a good a good one. Because not only do we get to see the technology, Matthew actually shows you all the innards of these of this ping monitor, but also describes how the system works. And that’s what you need to know.
Dan Blewett 2:02
Yeah, it is a really cool system, because you think of you know, like drone technology is becoming ubiquitous, right? Like camera technology in general. All those things seem to be like the go to for assessing damage. And of course, they still are. But you know, so the ping monitor system, if you’re unfamiliar, it’s, it’s a little dome about this, it looks like at about the size of a, like a fire alarm in your home. And a large part of that dome is just the windscreen. So it’s preventing any excess noise just like you see on our microphones here, the the the foam pop filter, and so it listens to the wind turbine blades as they come through their cycle. Every time it goes whoosh, whoosh, it’s, you know, it’s listening to that sound creates a baseline. And then over time, it’s comparing that baseline to the new normal. So if you’re, you know, when Tim gets struck by lightning, if it has leading edge erosion a couple years later, it’s gonna sound different. And as you’ll hear in this in right, from the get go in the podcast, you know, they got the idea from that winter oven, technicians could hear the difference themselves. So again, we can tell like this, something’s up with this blade. Like it sounds weird. And again, that’s something that you hear in like the auto industry. You hear it everywhere, like everyone knows, like, yeah, my dishwasher is making a weird sound something broken, right? But you really take that for granted. And it’s such immediate we really do as humans use like all five senses and just navigating our world and figuring out what’s going on and when things I mean even like your own stomach, your stomach gurgling you’re like oh, no, I ate something. So it’s a really it is it’s like one of those Why didn’t that get thought of sooner solutions? That makes a lot of sense for continuous monitoring just to get ahead of something and say hey, maybe we should deploy a drone company to check out this blade because it sounds different. And it sounds consistent with you know, leading edge erosion or a lightning strike you know, puncture damage to this blade,
Allen Hall 4:01
so not only can they detect that there’s a problem they can actually predict what that problem is like Lady leading us Russia like that’s about it. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s a really powerful device. It’s so small and so powerful in its it, it’s going to change the way we monitor wind turbines it totally well. So that’s what makes us interview so fascinating.
Dan Blewett 4:24
It’s it’s just really like one of those interesting, like I said, why didn’t we think of this sooner kind of things that’s going to clearly make an impact on the wind industry, especially as you get offshore, where, like we’ve talked about in other podcasts, you don’t want to be sending people out there to maybe, you know, find something like you want to know for as certainly as you can before you send people off to these in hospital environments in hospitable environments. You know, way off offshore, the
Allen Hall 4:49
uptime podcast is here to to introduce those new technology breakthroughs and those new ways of looking at old problems to get them solved. That’s what this whole podcast is about and I really like when you can bring new tech and describe it, show it, show it like on our YouTube channel so you can actually see the technology because of that you really not a lot of times get to do that. And I think for the engineers and us techies of the world, it’s a really cool thing to see.
Dan Blewett 5:17
Yeah, so without further ado, we’re gonna jump to our conversation with CEO Matthew stead of being services.
Dan Blewett 5:32
Alright, so we’re gonna jump right into it. Matthew, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, I guess I could take it across the pond. But I think you’re our longest i mean is what is this is just across the world. I mean, hello from from Australia, um, in the future? Actually, it’s tomorrow. You’re right. This is our first inter inter dimensional podcasts. Pretty amazing. Well, funny story. A teammate of mine a long time, because I have a sports background, a teammate of mine had a quick puddle jump, or not a puddle jump, but a very quick flight. And he was going right across the times and like a 45 minute flight, and he was gonna land earlier than he arrived. Or he was gonna land earlier. The laugh He’s like, I get no, no time machine. One of my favorite, just random quotes from all time. But yeah, we really appreciate appreciate you being here. Very cool that we got to connect with you from just, you know, from Australia from so far away. And you guys obviously have a great a great product that’s that’s starting to really take off. So let’s dive right in. So that the ping the ping monitor system, your background is is in in sound and acoustics. So tell us, you know, kind of how you got started and where this idea came from?
Matthew Stead 6:48
Yeah, so I’m an acoustician. So I specialize in sound. And through that work, have done a lot of work with wind farms. So environmental noise, compliance, testing, siting, all these sorts of things. So a lot of work with wind farm operators. And through that process, we got to know a few operators and one operator, in particular, basically challenged us. So the challenge was technicians on site, as I travel around, can hear blade damage, you know, they might stop, get out of their track, have, maybe take a phone call, and then have a bit of a listen. And when I have a bit of a listen, if there’s blood damage with quite often I can hear it. So the challenge he made to us was that, you know, if technicians can do it, why can’t you make a machine that can also do the same thing? So that was the point of what we’re doing. And yeah, so we’re listening for wind turbine blade damage.
Dan Blewett 7:52
Yeah, that’s such an interesting idea. And it’s such a common one, right? Like, you know, you you take your car to the shop, auto mechanic, let’s Iran and he knows what the knocking sound, you know, a little pinging sound the really subtle sounds like I was listening to a bike, go down the street and electric bike here in Washington DC the other day, and it was screeching, I’m like this poor guy, you know, making a delivery on it. But it’s like, something’s very wrong with your bike there, sir. It sounds like it’s gonna explode at any moment. Yeah. Those are obviously extreme examples. But I mean, what is what I mean, obviously, these winter in blades are going so fast, and they’re so big. So there’s a pretty significant sound. And, and your monitor is, is tell us a little bit about how it works? I mean, where’s it attached on the turbine? And what is it kind of doing to separate like the noise from essentially like the the signal?
Matthew Stead 8:42
Yeah, and that’s one of the hardest thing is that there is a lot of sound around wind turbine. So it’s not just the turbine making sound, it’s you know, birds, you know, wind in the grass, yeah, sometimes cattle, whatever, aircraft. So, I’ll show you a bit of a prop in a minute. But what we do is we basically synchronize our listening with the sound of each blade as it comes past. So what we do is we work out how fast they’re coming past, and then we only listen for things that are occurring with that frequency. And that way, we can exclude the things that are short term that only occur periodically, and only listen for the the nice regular blade, pass by sound. So that’s the basic principle. There’s also you know, different damage has different characteristics. So, you know, erosion sounds very different from a crack or a hole. So we’ve got different algorithms to you know, listen, police different types of damage. And, you know, this is the device. This is our listening device. And then that goes in In our windshield, and that’s attached to the base of the turbine, with magnets. So it’s Yeah, sort of a ground level, you can be a bit higher if there is risk of theft. But yeah, so that way, by being down near ground level, we
Dan Blewett 10:19
can hear each blade as it comes past each winter is different, right? So the heights different the difference between the hub and the ground is different. Is there like a like a butter zone where you want to make sure your devices X amount of meters from the blade tip itself? Like How close do you need to get the thing?
Matthew Stead 10:36
Well, we found about, you know, for most well, for all models that we’ve tested so far, as long as we’re sort of between that 1.5 meters and four meters above ground, we’re getting, you know, getting good, good results. So yeah, with those arrangements, it’s working great for us.
Allen Hall 10:54
So Matthew, the actual device is about the size of a small iPad or a large iPhone, it’s Yeah, it’s incredibly small, for for as much technology is packed into the things, what is all inside of that unit.
Matthew Stead 11:08
So this is the actual sensor itself. So we basically got a microcontroller, we’ve got a bit of memory with the SD card, and we’ve got like a connected device and some some microphones. So this is the brains. And this is the thing that’s doing the listening. So it’s doing the processing on here and then sending us the results separately,
Allen Hall 11:31
there’s a cover that goes over top of that electronic piece, which is what you see.
Matthew Stead 11:36
Yeah, yeah. So this is the windshield. So effectively, it’s windy around wind farms. And so this is all the the pure task of this is to keep out wind noise pronoun microphone. So actually, yeah, there’s a lot of this is just empty space in here.
Dan Blewett 11:55
Yeah, just like with our mics to, you know, keep those sweet plosives out Sorry, sorry.
Allen Hall 12:03
How’s it unit powered? How do you power this unit, it’s so small and compact, and you got this nice microphone when protector, what powers it what makes it go
Matthew Stead 12:16
the other part, which is attached to the sensor, this is our parent communication module. So it’s perhaps a bit hard to see. But in here, we’ve got a solar panel. So we’ve got rechargeable batteries solar panel, and also some cellular technology in here. So this is actually the bit that gets our data off. And then it goes up to the cloud. And in the cloud, is where the monitoring occurs. And that’s where we can then alert our customers from from the cloud itself.
Allen Hall 12:45
So this whole unit is requires no wiring, absolutely no drilling of any holes in anything. It basically is like you talked about it magnetically sticks on to the turban, and he doesn’t walk away from
Matthew Stead 12:58
Yeah, do we use the plug and play terminology? Which is? I’m sure someone else in med did that. But yeah, so it’s plug and play. So just basically plug it together and throw it on the wind turbine, I think I think we’re sort of timed at the fastest it can be installed is near less than a minute.
Dan Blewett 13:18
As far as you know, the communications go. I mean, kind of walk me through like the whole process. So obviously, it’s really quick to just, you know, stick it to the bottom of the turbine, and then it’s doing its thing. But then where’s the data going? Who’s it going to? Is it all AI powered? Is there manpower? I mean, who sifts through the data and, and, and listens for the relevant signal.
Matthew Stead 13:41
So all the algorithms are built into our device. So the device, you know, basically does the listening for us. So there’s no, no technician needed to be listening, thankfully. And so what our device only does is son, yeah, does the analysis and then sends a summary. So it’s basically a daily summary of the condition of the blades that appears in our cloud. And then that can be trended. So what’s happening is we’ve got a level of damage reported each day. And then if there are changes, or if we, you know, if there’s a bit of a step change, I more damage has occurred, or it goes above a certain threshold. The cloud system that we’ve built up, then sends the customers or the operators, an email alert or an alert to show that, hey, something’s changed here. And you might want to go have a look at your, your, this turbine to see if something’s happened. So perhaps a good example might be if there’s a lightning strike, so your storm comes through lightning strike. I think you guys understand a little bit about lightning. Oh, yeah. But you know, some blades get damaged. And what that does is if it’s, you know, surface damage, it makes a sound our device pixel out, and then you know, then we can get an alert out to our customer. So that, you know that damage doesn’t go on for too long before it’s addressed to them.
Allen Hall 15:16
So the genius behind this is because the, the, the circuit board has the brains in it, you’re not transmitting tons and tons of data up to the cloud, you’re only really transmitting those those little step increments of what’s happening, which simplifies the system immensely. But it requires a really powerful processor to do that. Right? You mean, you’re doing a lot of analysis on the board itself? Is that how it’s set up?
Matthew Stead 15:44
Yeah, exactly. So you know, we measure to a certain frequency around 2030 40,000 samples per second. So you can imagine, you know, that many samples per second is a lot of data. So we have to really process processor on our device. So, you know, we take that audio data process on our device, and then only send the summary. So yeah, the actual summary is in the bytes, or kilobytes, rather than megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes. Sure. Yeah. terabytes if he kept it going. So yeah, so the this is really the brains behind the whole, the whole process.
Allen Hall 16:26
So the thought processes from the owners side, it’s really inexpensive to maintain these things, you’re not using a bunch of data, to upload constant streams information, it’s sending little packets like there’s was a there was a change made to this, this happened to this particular blade on this particular turban, you may want to check it out. It’s not like you see some of these systems where they’re constantly streaming data and data and data and data and someone said, how overwhelming they go through this data? And what’s the point of that one, you can have a very smart processing system on site to do 99% of the work. That’s that’s a brilliant way of approaching this problem, because I think a lot of the technologies just don’t do that today. It’s, that’s amazing.
Matthew Stead 17:13
Yeah. And so our system is operating. You know, we’re coming up to towards 300 systems now. And, yeah, there’s that that whole process is automated. So we don’t need to have an oversight as to the actual data processing. Yeah, we still keep an eye on it for our customers, because we want to make sure that if anything happens, you know, you know, where they’re seeing those things. But we don’t need to be part of the chain of the data analysis and then showing the results.
Dan Blewett 17:42
Well, and what’s really interesting about solving this problem of, you know, continuous monitoring, is that you couldn’t like optically do that, that well, with these blades going so fast, like you couldn’t set up a camera system to effectively, you know, take a snapshot every time the blade goes by. And obviously, you don’t want to stop them and send technicians up there either even stop them just to, you know, get ground based or or drone footage, I mean, that just it’s really interesting that this probably makes the most sense of any of those solutions, you can just kind of Listen, you don’t have to get to the more complex stuff. Even though camera technology and drone technology has changed so much into so much more effective and cheap. It’s so much easier to deploy. But it’s still not that easy to because again, these blade tips are going 200 plus miles per hour. That I mean, there’s just no good way to like check them all out as they’re going by. So that’s it’s really interesting, like sort of widen, I think of that kind of solution, that it’s probably the simplest of all those continuous monitoring ideas. And we like to use the analogy of a technician. So you know, I like I said before our technicians have years, they can hear the most damage.
Matthew Stead 18:50
But the visual aspect is still very complimentary, but just not every day. So yeah, we’d like to think of ourselves as a early warning system. So we can flag something’s changed early on. And then then the detailed visual can occur, but in an optimized way. So there’s no point inspecting towers that don’t actually have anything wrong with them. So it’s a good way of sort of getting the most bang for buck out of the visual inspection process.
Dan Blewett 19:22
Can you go over? I mean, there’s a bunch of different types of damage, I mean, you can essentially detect most of not all of them, is that correct? I mean, root cracks, cord cracks de lamination. I mean, what are some of the other ones that your system will will pick up?
Matthew Stead 19:34
Yeah, erosion is obviously a big one, though, you know, lightning damage. And so, really, for us to pick it up, it has to be on the surface, and it has to be disturbing the airflow, so it’s the disturbing airflow, which makes us sound and that’s that’s what we pick up. I guess one little caveat there. So for root cracks and transverse cracks. They are a bit harder for us to hear and so We tend to focus on the outer two thirds of the blade rather than the root zone. We have detected some root cracks, or transverse cracks. But really our system is focused on the outer two thirds of blade with the bulk of the damages. But your ears can also detect like creaking and changes in that kind of stuff, too, right? Yeah, I will actually perhaps I should sort of talk about something that we’re working on, it’s a system actually listens inside the blade. So, you know, for any creaking groaning, we can listen inside the blade. And then then we can listen for more of the transverse cracks, the root cracks and creaking and groaning these sorts of things. So while there’s some university research, university, Massachusetts, there, they’ve done a lot of work to prove out this sort of approach, and we’re looking to work with them to take that further.
Dan Blewett 20:55
Yes, let’s talk about that for a minute. So, obviously, your systems are getting adopted more and more each day. But how did you go through this validation process? I mean, we talked about this with other, you know, CEOs of companies, and how it can be tough to say, hey, let me on a turbine, so we can test our technology, because obviously, these are expensive assets. And, you know, it’s just kind of a hands off thing. And unless, you know, they know you well, and they know the technology, and it’s not gonna have any, you know, downside risk. How did you, you know, what, what are some of your kind of your case studies? How did you guys get to where you could, you could validate it, I think,
Matthew Stead 21:32
probably from our background, because we’re fairly well known in the Australian industry. So, you know, the operators knew who we were because we’re working on their wind farms from an environmental noise point of view. So from an introduction point of view, that that made it a whole lot easier. This second thing was that, just that that, yeah, the operators know that the technicians can hear blade damage. So it was a very easy discussion. And they just, you know, they just got it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I get it, I see what you’re doing. And so that made it quite easy. And then the final thing was that, you know, we weren’t really messing with the devices, we weren’t hooking into any power. We weren’t trying to, you know, connect to the comm system. So it was completely non intrusive. So actually, I’m very pleased to say that it’s actually not been a problem for us. Yeah, we Yeah, we’ve, we’ve been validating our system. I’ve lost count of how many countries now that I think we’re probably hitting the nearly 10 countries. Wow, where we validated what we’re doing.
Dan Blewett 22:39
And so what is the what is like, the breaking in process is probably not the right word. But you have to get a baseline, right. So with each new turbine that you’re on, they’re gonna have different, obviously, blade lengths, blade geometry, blade tip speeds? I mean, what does the system do to initially get that baseline? And how long does it take? And, you know, as far as a wind farm operator, how long before this is up and running? And send me those sort of daily, you know, report packets?
Matthew Stead 23:07
Yeah, I mean, the Daily Report packets come straight away. It’s just that after approximately a two week period, we’ve seen enough wind speeds and wind directions, that we get a good handle on what we call a scaling effect. So our scaling factor, so after a couple of week periods, we can apply a scaling factor to see sort of benchmark that against other wind turbines we’ve already measured on. So thankfully, thankfully, for us, there’s actually not a not a really large variation from turbines. turbine to turbine. But yeah, it’s pretty much after a two week period, we can do that calibration process. The other thing. Yeah, some, some operators like to see the numbers lower. And then if it if it jumps, it’s more visible. And some of them like to calibrate it a little bit more to their own their own, you know, rating system. So we’ve got a bit of flexibility on how we set the levels up.
Dan Blewett 24:12
And then so you mentioned that it’s typically on every single turbine and that that makes sense, right? I know some of these, like we talked with Jeff Grabner of techno Stroh, when they’re not going to put a beacon light on every single Terminus saralee in a formation, because it just needs identify where the website is. But these need to be on pretty much every turbine to the techs that turbines, unique Siemens or even if it’s not that different, because they’re all the same, you know, making models that
Matthew Stead 24:39
right? Yeah, correct. So we’re we’re only listening for the turbine that we’re on. We don’t actually try we exclude sound from the adjacent turbines. So we’re just just focusing on the turbine that were on. There was one site where we were doing a pilot and sort of validating our technology where there was actually The blade deliberation on a tower, two turbines away. So. So we we looked, went back looked at all the data looked at a bit more detail, and we couldn’t hear it. So we really aren’t listening to the tower that we’re we’re working on.
Dan Blewett 25:19
Yeah, it’s interesting. In the I lived in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which is a place here in, in the US, that’s close to Camden, New Jersey and Camden was is a really interesting program with the police department where Camden had a really high per capita murder rate for a long time. And one of the solutions, besides a lot of just like good community policing, and just like a good just relationships between the police and the residents, one of the things they installed were a lot of cameras and a lot of listening devices into Camden where they could triangulate the sound from gunshots. And they can send police around a little more. And I’m sure all that stuff is, you know, it’s really complicated, obviously. But I find it really curious. I mean, would there be a place in the future where, you know, you sort of have like noise cancelling technology where you can ignore this, but you can also listen for different types of things. I mean, I’m sure there’s lots of different applications for like acute acoustics. And I mean, what are some other maybe peripheral secondary technologies kind of like that, that might be areas? Is there anything on your radar for the future? Yeah, there’s
Matthew Stead 26:29
a few areas that we’re looking at. When you we love wind, like, don’t get me wrong, we love wind. But there are a few other applications. And one obvious one that we’re working on, we’ve actually already started pilots with some customers is around mining, and conveyor belts. So I think like you mentioned before, you know, bearings and mechanical pads, if they’re starting to fail, they can start to squeal and make sound. And that’s, that’s what we can pick up on conveyor belts. So yeah, there’s a whole lot of conveyor belts in the world, and we can save a lot of waste. So yeah, conveyor belts is one. We’re doing some work with a water utility. So for looking at cracks and leaks in pipes, because, you know, water, spraying out pipes makes a bit of a sound. There’s other applications in rail. So like, you know, the wheel wheel, what wagon bearings and wheels on the wagons. So there’s a number of other applications like that. But where you’re we’re definitely all wind at the moment.
Dan Blewett 27:46
While I’m sure those translate to win pretty well, right? I mean, there’s up in the nwsl. There’s tons of obviously, electronic components, there’s bearings, there’s all sorts of stuff. I mean, have you a minute, is that is that something that’s on your radar as well,
Matthew Stead 27:59
we have been asked, actually a number of times about your monitoring the main bearing and the gearboxes and so forth. I guess, with condition monitoring, you know, the approach of monitoring, there are a lot of assets where, you know, oil samples, or vibration, or temperature are perhaps better than sound. So, traditionally, I think vibration is perhaps a better method for condition monitoring inside the nwsl than sound. We can certainly do it. But I think there are probably better other technologies which can be used in that scenario,
Allen Hall 28:41
Matthew, the amount of processor you have on board, it’s really impressive. And as you try to install the system in different places around the world, obviously, there’s a little bit of tweaking that’ll have to happen over time. is the is the board updatable? Can you update the board and make it more powerful? Kind of like you do with your iPhone? You know, it just updates overnight, and boom, you got the next version?
Matthew Stead 29:05
Yeah, you’ve exactly got it. So through using the cellular technology is a two way communication path, isn’t it? So yeah, we send up small packets of data, but we can update our firmware. So your firmware is aware, all the analysis is done. So yeah, we can definitely update our software. So just want a little story. We had a pilot going on, and we weren’t able to update our software remotely. So I basically had to fly to from Australia to West Virginia, just to update software on a number of devices. So that was not an easy task. And I don’t want to be flying for 20 hours. Just update software.
Allen Hall 29:55
Those are the hard lessons you learned, right? I mean, that’s that’s how the engineering world works. You Get stuck in an airplane for a full day you think I’m never doing that again, and then you make the hardware work. But in that particular case, I think it’s very fascinating because there’s so many different parts of the world. And as we, as we start growing into offshore wind, the environment out there, I’m thinking off the coast of Scotland, or the coast of Massachusetts, where I live, or even off the coast of Australia, there’s just different noise signature wind profiles, animals, sea life, boats, whatever. Yeah, how do you do you have to sort of fine tailor that as you get in different parts of the world eventually, just because it’s, they’re just so different.
Matthew Stead 30:42
Yeah, so actually, we coincidentally, we’re having our first offshore wind farm deployment of Scotland, I ride it, actually, maybe tonight, my time tomorrow. In the future, for both of us, we’ve got some of our devices going to an offshore wind farm, to basically test, we’ve some made some changes to our system, to anticipate where it’s going to be like offshore, but it’s gonna it’s gonna be a learning experience for us. That I guess the good news is that we’re worked out ways of excluding the sound, we don’t want to listen for onshore, and things like the birds, but their birds, I’m sure there’s birds offshore, I think it’s probably the waves, the waves and waves sound is the thing that we’re not familiar with. Someone told me some we’ve got to validate this pad, the typical wave frequency, like a wave will come past every eight seconds or so, say eight seconds. Also, there’ll be another way of coming through. However, you’re the blade is rotating roughly every, you know, one to two seconds, or whatever it turns out to be. So we can still separate the sound from the blades from the babes. So we’re, we’re, we’re quite hopeful that system will work without much modification. Well,
Dan Blewett 32:11
what were some of the other challenges that you had to had to implement to get yours ready for offshore? Because obviously, I’m sure you can’t put it in the same four meter off the ground location, right? Because obviously, the you know, the turbines have that big base, and they’re out projected out of the water a certain amount, but you still got to make sure you’re out of salt spray, and a lot of those different hazards can be what are some other considerations getting it ready for, for the ocean?
Matthew Stead 32:36
Yeah, probably the corrosive environment. See, yeah, Russ, everything. Well, we can can’t be rested. So trying to minimize the steel content, use stainless steel instead. So that we’ve we’ve made some changes, they’re sort of the coating metals. So we’ve we’ve painted the metal rather than just using straight Chrome. So offshore, we can’t use this Chrome. Yeah, it will rust in in a day. And then also coating some of our electronics. So some parts on here. Yeah, quite susceptible to corrosion. So
Allen Hall 33:22
we’ve applied some additional coating to that. So there’s some other things that we’ve done to to address this corrosive environment. When you go offshore like that. And you have sensors monitor monitoring a number of offshore turbines, you still have the insect and bird issues where critters like to make homes and devices like yours or put a nest on it. What is the design incorporated to prevent that from happening?
Matthew Stead 33:51
Yeah, we’ve been very careful about that. So who wants getting my free stories here on another site? We went back there. And ladybirds had found their way into our windshield. So we had some holes, they found their way in Okay, so ladybirds found their way in. And then what happened, some flies, found their way in as well somehow. And then finally, spiders on their way. Once again, we learned the hard way. We had a little whole ecosystem going, but they couldn’t get out. It was quite ridiculous. But yeah, it was sort of his spiders following their prey. So once again, lesson learned, no holes, make sure everything’s sealed up. So we really worked hard to, you know, address those sort of in, you know, environmental challenges. So it’s funny how we’re doing acoustics, but some of our biggest problems have been not the acoustics they’ve been other things goats cattle? Yeah, some people say there’s a lot of other Sure. Well, I
Dan Blewett 35:06
imagine, you know, your anti theft system is just like, what is it the Naval Academy Allen here in the US that does that where they grease the statue and everyone has to try to get to the top of it. So I guess I just read you guys greasing the bottom of other turbine to steal your device.
Matthew Stead 35:22
In Germany, the wind turbines tend to be like your one turbine. That’s it. It’s not a farm. It’s a single turbine. And I’ve seen pictures of one, one of our installations in Germany, and the whole base of the tower has got graffiti everywhere. Obviously, very accessible. So what we’ve done, yeah, once again, our devices high enough that, you know, they can’t climb up the tower.
Allen Hall 35:49
Well, those are the things you learn through hard knocks. And I know you’ve been working on this project for several years how, from sort of starts today, how many years of effort have been into this product?
Matthew Stead 36:03
is actually around eight years. So the first challenge was eight years ago. Yeah, we had to do research into was that a real problem? Was it worth solving? Was it something we could actually listen for and pick up? And then the other thing that sort of, we had to work through? It was just I think, Alan, you’ve already mentioned on a couple of times, just the processing power, and to get the batteries, right, you know, so eight years ago, you know, these things were consuming a whole lot more power than they are now. And it wasn’t really feasible. So yes, the technology has caught up to where we needed it to be. And so yeah, it’s been an eight year journey.
Allen Hall 36:50
Well, as an operator of wind farms at that’s probably the most important salient fact of the discussions A lot of times, particularly like in a product like ours is lightning protection is, well, how long has it been in service? And who’s tried it? And have you proved it out and wait for us? Yeah, we’ve been out there about 10 years, and we’ve been on hundreds of turbans, and we’re having great results, you’re kind of at that stage right now, where you’ve got a couple 100 units out in service, and that next stages, it’s no longer validation, it’s implementation. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a big transition, or can be a big transition for a company in terms of just starting to mass produce support? Are you going through that transition out? What is that, like, as you start to expand your reach around the world? What is What is that like, as a company to do that?
Matthew Stead 37:39
Yeah. What’s the 10 growing pains. It’s transitioning from maybe 20, or 50, up to the hundreds, it’s quite a transition, we have a variety of supply channels. So we can, we can scale up our supply. So that’s, that’s all pretty straightforward. It’s the probably the people aspect. So people were used to doing a whole lot more r&d, you know, rough and ready. And without, they’ve got to now transition. So our team has to transition to provide more high quality commercial product, rather than something just sort of thrown together. So it’s probably our team adjusting, and the increased testing that we may have needed to do and the change of organization within with our team to shift. That’s probably been the hardest thing actually. You know, I, I can order I can order 10,000 of these tomorrow. Right? Right, right.
Allen Hall 38:48
But that does make a difference, though. I think you’re right, from the engineering staff and all that the mindset has to really refocus, that you can’t just willy nilly make changes to something you’ve proved out, you know, you need to take that to the side product to customers is product to customers, and it needs to be consistent. And we need to know what it is and how it’s going to work, no matter where it’s installed. Right. And so, you know, the engineers, you kind of have to wrap on the head a little bit and say, down down, just, you know, make consistent consistency, consistency, consistency, and from a wind turbine owner operator side, that’s exactly what you want to see. Right? You want to see just consistency consistency. When I take this unit out of the box, put on the turban bam, every time it’s just like clockwork, I know this thing’s gonna work. And that’s a totally different structure, but it’s also a financially aggressive structure in terms of just eating up resources is your company has obviously grown over time, how you handle it, they expansive growth, you have investors, obviously, how is that going from the business standpoint? It’s supporting all this great technology. What does that look like?
Matthew Stead 40:00
Yeah, so we have grown. We do have external investors, like you say, Alan. But we’ve also received a lot of your mentoring and support to help us on the journey. So it’s been a mixture of training, mentoring, finance, has taken more resources. The whole learning process, things better quality control, learning from mistakes. And the team, the team working together, so it’s the I guess it’s like making a perfect cake. That’s not easy. Yeah. with more experience, it gets easier. With the right ingredients, it gets easier.
Allen Hall 40:49
Well, where do you see this going a year from now, just watching from the outside. It looks like it’s it to me, I can’t imagine any new project going on or even existing projects where this technology shouldn’t be at least evaluated or just installed. goodness sakes. What does that next year look like for you? I mean, is it Where do you see this thing going in the relatively near future?
Matthew Stead 41:15
Yeah, right. Today, we’re in the hundreds. We want to be in the 1000s. So in 12 months time, and we’ve we’re gearing up to that we have found that where we provide the best value is the newer turbines with longer blades with higher risk. And some of them might have lightning risk as well. Surely they do. They do. Yeah. So that’s probably the where we’re we’re focusing. I think our numbers are suggesting there’s something like 500,000 wind turbines around the world today. And that’s sort of expected to double in the next 10 years. So yeah, I think we’ve got a great opportunity to help the iron is not Yes, it’s basically helping lower lowering the operations and maintenance costs, which is which is great for everyone.
Dan Blewett 42:21
Well, what does that ecosystem look like? So obviously, you know, if I’m a maintenance company, I’d love to be connected with you, because you’re going to tell people, as soon as they have an issue, right? And I can I can go out and fix it. So I mean, what, what are the partnerships? And what does that whole ecosystem look like? Cuz you guys are, you’re the messenger, right? And you fit in to that whole maintenance cycle. But you know, what does that look like? For you guys in the future? Huh? Yeah,
Matthew Stead 42:49
good question. So initially, we were we were just working directly with operators. So various operators that are doing, you know, self performing blade repairs. So we’ve been working with them directly. And that’s been a really neat fit. But yeah, like you say, we’re, we’re part of the puzzle, but we’re not the whole puzzle. So we’re starting to build up partnerships with a number of other key well known operators in the space. So the, you know, the logical partnerships for us visual inspection companies that we talked about before, because it is complimentary. And there are some very forward thinking, visual inspection companies that see this is complimentary to what they’re doing. They’re also monitoring companies, you know, like we talked about, you know, drive train monitoring, monitoring for condition. So there’s some partners or that we’re looking at, in that space, where it’s complimentary to what they’re doing. So we’re trying to find some arrangements where, you know, the combined companies provide a much better solution for the end customer. So that that’s sort of the approach. We’re obviously also talking to the OEMs, with our ultimate aim is obviously, as we said, to get our device installed on each wind turbine as its installed in the first place rather than aftermarket. So we’re, we’re working this from multiple angles, as you’d probably expect.
Dan Blewett 44:28
Yeah. I mean, I think that makes perfect sense where, you know, at the end of the day, everyone’s systems can sort of tied together where they get an alert, and you know, the drone inspection company can ping the wind farm operator, or owner and say, Hey, we got an alert from Ping. You want us to go out and take a look or maybe they don’t even need to ask for authorization. They just have authorization where when we get an alert, we’re going to send someone out, then we’ll let you know once we’ve like, taken the probability and gotten eyes on it and pay Hear, you know, you don’t have to worry about this. We got a notification, we checked it out there is damage, what do you want us to do about it? That seems like that makes make sense as a workflow, Dan, you
Allen Hall 45:09
know that that next generation of wind turbine monitoring is obviously the ping device, sending out a signal to your favorite a drone that’s located on the wind turbine that just pops up and starts taking pictures. That’s where we’re headed. There’s, there’s no stopping that right now. That is the future because we have the computational ability to handle it, and the processing speed and the battery power. And all those little things you don’t think about are all in place today is, you know, your Condor monitoring the wind turbine concept is kind of aggregate information where you got this listening device, and then an imaging device coupled together. That’s that’s the future. I mean, I think, you know, pigs, obviously set up in the middle of this is in a really sweet spot is you spend so much time developing the proper technology for the right time to connect to the rest of the Eco structure that exists on a wind turbine, and that those relationships are going to be really interesting to watch, because I can, one can only imagine as to what the opportunities are. But those opportunities are gotta be worldwide. And you’re in Australia. A lot of obviously, wind turbines happen in Denmark and Germany. How do you manage all those world connections? It seems like you’re in different time zones, anytime you’re making a phone call?
Matthew Stead 46:30
Yeah. Yeah, I think like I said before, we’re nearly up to 10 countries where we’ve deployed. So our our main interest has been North America. A lot of interest through through Europe. But also, you know, back through, you know, Turkey, India, Asia as well. So, yeah, to be honest, My day starts with talking to North America and ends, we’re talking with Europe. and India and Turkey sort of fit in between? Yeah, so. But I mean, from our point of view, it’s the same technology, all over the over the world, our business model is to send the devices to our customers, so they install. So you know, whether it’s in Germany, or France, or in Canada, it’s from our point of view, it’s the same thing. So we’re sort of building up our infrastructure, so we can deal with, yeah, the different customers around the world. But you know, still the same device, still the same listening. So that that’s how we’ve built our, our business model.
Allen Hall 47:42
So when did you know that this is going to be a worldwide thing? How many years ago? Do you realize like that, you know, someone in Australia who worked on wind farms said, we can hear winter and blades with problems, you know, you’re three years into this. And then all of a sudden, you’re getting a phone call from Turkey? Like, oh, what point do you realize, like, wow, this is a global thing. This is not a local thing.
Matthew Stead 48:01
I think it probably started with my first wind turbine blade conference I attended. That was in Denmark. And from that very first conference I attended, the people I met, it became apparent to me very quickly is completely global. So that’s when I knew people just got it. And it’s global. So that was sort of the first inkling. And then, a few years later, we Yeah, once we got the few things sorted out, you know, was that a problem? Blah, blah, blah? Yeah. Then I started making a bit more contact with some of the OEMs and some of the the operators. And to be honest, that were really, really receptive. So that’s sort of I think, when the penny drops, okay, we’ve got something we’ve shown that it works. We’ve got a we’ve actually, you know, are excited about it. And I think that’s that was the point in time. That was roughly around three years ago, where we thought yeah, okay, yeah, we’ve really got to put the foot on a foot on the gas pedal. Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Blewett 49:11
Yeah. So I want to jump back to the automation piece. So obviously, a lot of the jobs that end up getting replaced by automation are like the, the endpoint. So you know, where you have a computer system, and you have a human working the desk to check someone into the system, right? You walk in the door to your you know, whether it’s a gym or an office, and you say, Hi, I’m here, and the human checks them in. Obviously, that’s a job. It’s like, well, let’s just let him touch the screen himself. And replace that that job right, which kind of feels like what I was just kind of alluding to, which is, you know, that your ping system says, hey, we’ve we’ve detected something, there’s a high probability that there’s x kind of damage. I mean, is that where you see this kind of going in the future is where that gap just doesn’t, it doesn’t have to go to a person It just gets closed, where it’s gonna go right to the drone company, or it’s gonna go right to a drone or a robot. And and so it’s gonna you how do you see that that sort of automation ecosystem play out? Hmm.
Matthew Stead 50:10
Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a tricky one. I mean, my my dealings with the blade engineers across the OEMs, and operators is that at the moment, it still requires a lot of human expertise as to, you know, what is the damage? What does it look like? How am I going to prioritize, I’ve got the pain results, I’ve got the drone results, but I’m still going to prioritize and optimize around that. So that that assessment piece is still, I think, super critical. Meaning in some ways, what we want to do is have repairs being done faster. So I mean, ultimately, our aim is to have repairs made when it’s smaller. So we’re trying to save time on Repairs about so I think it was probably the end flow on we don’t know, we want people to be less, having less time uptown. So that’s probably the end end point.
Dan Blewett 51:10
Yeah, that makes sense. Because you’re right, I mean, those higher level decisions. And this was something Danielle’s from sky specs, talk to us about, you know, last year when he was on the podcast was that he, they, they tried to help operators understand, hey, this type of damage is this level of severity. So therefore, you maybe want to prioritize this now, or put it off this one safe to put off for a couple years, maybe let things aggregate and then go up there and do it all at once. That kind of stuff. So yeah, I think that hearing from lots of different people in the industry, it’s not just up, there’s a problem, let’s go up and fix it right now. But it’s like, like you said, that complex decision of, can we lump these together? Maybe How can we save money? What’s really a priority today? What’s not, what’s the environment, like, as if it’s a really harsh, you know, Australian summer, or if it’s a really brutally cold place, maybe that needs to be fixed sooner, because it might, you know, become exacerbated by by the cold, or by the extreme heat, something like that, um, one thing,
Matthew Stead 52:08
I think probably one of the key game changes for us is that, because we’re doing daily reporting, we can actually track the progress of damage, you know, how fast is actually getting worse. So, depending on the rate of damage, if it’s just getting a little bit worse, you know, maybe you can let it go for longer. So, you know, these operators haven’t had this information until now. So, you know, some, some sites, we’ve seen the damage codes, you know, it goes up quite quickly on other sites. And another one, we’ve seen that all damage got worse, and then then flattened off, it didn’t, didn’t keep getting worse. So there’s a whole lot of work that can be done around optimizing based on the rate of change of damage as well. So knowing when it’s occurred, and how it’s propagating is also a very useful, and that’s probably where the Big Data piece comes into it later on for us.
Allen Hall 53:06
Oh, yeah, does that should be, it’s just going to be a huge jump, there’s going to be there is going to be a huge infrastructure, analyzing that data, not just for the obvious things, but the they’re going to start mining that data and mining that data to figure out other things you wouldn’t even consider. And that’s that’s where you’re going to see this industry be created from a sensor is like yours, which is really complicated. But that data is such a valuable piece. And there are so many good analysts in Winterburn industry right now, that can mine that data for all kinds of unique features. And so it’s not just a device, it’s you’re really creating an industry behind you, or internally even that the door is barely cracked on that industry yet. And that’s the fascinating and exciting thing about all this is that we’ve we’ve, we’ve gone from that simple technician looking at a blade or listening to a blade to something that makes a lot more sense in terms of where we’re gonna stick winter events. And we’re just beginning it now. And if as you get more offshore, you’re gonna be pulling more data, what offshore looks like gonna be pulling off data, what with West Virginia looks like and there’ll be two different things and we’re going to find out more interesting things. But is that part of that growth of ping? Is this the data analysis part in the end, looking at those five nuances that may not mean that much today, but could be millions of dollars for an owner a year from now?
Matthew Stead 54:43
Yeah, I think someone one of the operators told me that data triangulation is super critical. So taking a sensor and then comparing to the results. Another sensor, and then tying that to another bit of data. So I think that data triangulation is where the most value will come. So I see us as being part of the ecosystem as part of where I data points that feed into the data pool. So I see us working with partners to get the most out of that data. So I think I think it’s important to know where our boundaries are, and should be, and then work with other people that can take it take it further. Oh, sure. And there are some startups around the world which are doing more and more work in this space, trying to get more meaning from all the data that’s coming from the turbines.
Dan Blewett 55:46
So one of my final questions for you is really just what is a walk through of getting this up and running look like? So I know, it’s a subscription fee. But you know, if I was say, hey, all right, I like the deal signed, like, what do I expect next, as someone who signed up for the the ping the ping system?
Matthew Stead 56:07
Yeah, so our all processes are getting more of a sort of logical float at them. But what the flow is looking like is, we provide training videos on how to install how to set up and some useful information for the site. So we try and send that. So if we, if we get an order with, we ship the devices, and at the same time, we do a few other things. So we ship the devices. And while they were in transit, we provide some training material, we also set up our cloud infrastructure. So when when they’re turned on in the field, they show up, we set up the users, so different users have access to the cloud, so we get them sort of set up. And then when the the ping monitors arrive on site, we provide training, so the technicians who are installing it, we work through, you know, how you install it, how you plug it together, what you do, there’s some lights on the back, what what are the lights mean? And then, then the technicians install, and then we start getting the data flow, then we start to get the results come through. And that’s where we go into that sort of initial sort of scaling benchmarking phase. So we work with the operator, and just, you know, talk through, okay, this is what we’re getting. And we match that against the the latest visual inspections. So we sort of do a bit of a correlation with known conditions against what our system is saying, I get the scaling right. Then the next thing is, you know, fine tuning the alarms that our system sends. So the, we’ve got different settings. So some people just want to see if there’s a very small change, other people just want to only see the outliers. So we work through this alarm setting process. And then what we love to do is just keeping contact. So with a good number of our customers, we’re having fortnightly phone calls just to check in, see how it’s going and keep an eye on things and and then we also get some feedback as to how it’s going for our customers so we can improve the way where, you know, showing data or so one customer in particular said that they’d love to see like a message board. So rather than just emails, they want to see like a message board, which sort of summarizes are these are the last alerts, this is the notes, this has been actioned spending knowledge. So we’re getting some great ideas from our customers now that they’re using our system.
Dan Blewett 59:03
Kind of like a slack feed, maybe something like that, where it’s you can kind of go back through it rather than having to rummage through emails that makes that make sense. That’s like the nice beat out slack is that, yeah, if you you can go back through everyone else’s conversations on it and, you know, run back through a month’s worth of messages pretty easy, rather than trying to find them in your nightmare of an email box inbox. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Stead 59:26
Yeah, there’s, there’s a term of alarm fatigue. Yeah. If people are getting alarms, I switch off. Yeah, they switch off and then. Yeah, exactly.
Dan Blewett 59:39
Well, Matt, this was a great conversation. I mean, it’s such an interesting technology. And like you said, it’s something that’s going to continue to, to evolve as you learn more and more getting further and further out there. But you know, we’ll hope to see you on some of the big us projects coming up because Lord knows we’re moving fast, but and yeah, big offshore. wind farms. And so hopefully we’ll see, you know, ping services out there? Where can people follow up with you and learn more about it and see it in action and all that stuff?
Matthew Stead 1:00:09
Yeah, ping monster CO is our website. So that’s probably the best spot to go. Also, LinkedIn, Twitter, that probably websites for the easiest spot to go, I’m super happy to jump on calls with, with people just to explain what we’re doing and answer questions. And yeah, I love to work with new new operators, new partners all over the world. And I perhaps I should have said, actually, around 80% of our systems are in North America. So North America has been a fantastic early adopter of our technology. So thanks to you and your listeners.
Dan Blewett 1:00:48
So more 20 more 20 hour flights or near futures, what you’re saying?
Matthew Stead 1:00:53
Not maybe not for the little couple of months, but maybe, maybe 12 months into the future.
Dan Blewett 1:00:59
Well, hopefully, right. I mean, I’m sure you’ll sacrifice a little bit of a little bit of sleep to get on some of these huge projects that are in the works here. But yeah, well, thanks so much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Oh,
Matthew Stead 1:01:10
thank you, Dan. Thanks, Alan. really been great to talk to you and share a little bit more about what we’re doing.
Dan Blewett 1:01:17
All right. Well, that’s gonna do it for our episode of The uptime, wind energy podcast. Big thanks again to our guests. Matthew stead CEO of ping services, be sure to check out the description. Whether you’re on iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever. We’ll find links to their company, the YouTube channel, LinkedIn, all that stuff, so you can follow up with them. And be sure to subscribe to the show share with a friend and we will see you next time on The uptime wind energy podcast.
Dan Blewett 1:01:52
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
