As spring approaches and wind turbines are repaired, which robot is the best solution for your next job? Joel and Allen discuss the options.
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152 Bonus
Allen Hall: Welcome to this bonus episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with Wind Power Lab’s, Joel Saxum, and Joel, you and I were talking about all the different robot options on the blade repair side. Mm-hmm. and in the spring gets closer.
There’s a lot of research going into these companies, and I thought it, it’s a good time to, to highlight them and discuss where their strengths are and maybe where their weaknesses are. Mm-hmm. . And if you’re in a, if you’re in the market for like a leading edge repair, what are some of the things you sh consider?
From these robot
Joel Saxum: companies? Yeah, absolutely. As as it’s February, right? So in most of the northern hemisphere or the further southern hemisphere right now is the time everybody’s getting. getting geared up for the spring to let loose and repair season to start. You know, if you’re one of those, those lucky companies or lucky asset owners that gets to work on their turbines year round, you don’t have that pain.
But I know all of my counterparts in the industry and and friends that I talk to are deep into the tender process. And even at this point in time, right, it’s February 10th today, so the tenders. They’re coming out, right. They’re coming out with, with decisions because you’re, you’re starting to get, if you haven’t got your tender in back in, you know, December or January, the, it’s getting slim pickings for, for blade techs.
So, yeah. Like we, like we talk about a lot on the show as the blade technician pool gets it, it’s, it’s hard to build it. It gets smaller and smaller as the the global fleet grows. So all of these companies that are starting to develop robots for, whether it’s just for leading edge repair or something that has classically been a technician job like like the Valero guys doing the LPS measurements, and they’re.
Other than that, you’ve gotta send guys on ropes to do that, and it becomes very expensive and very time consuming. You can’t get that much done. Now, doing it with a drone makes, makes a huge difference. So a lot of guys out there, or a lot of companies out there coming up with new solutions and think there’s some that are.
A little bit earlier in the game and a little bit more developed and have been out in the field getting some, some time up on blades. And those guys are just like, when we started the, you know, the first autonomous drones out there, there was a lot of people kind of working on it. And then of course, you know, like our, our, the people that we know over at Skys specs, they jumped out and started just, just hammering away once they had a really good solution and they, they quickly became the, the top of the heap as far as.
Inspection numbers. I think we’re gonna start to see that here soon with the robots. .
Allen Hall: Yeah. So the, you know, I think the industry leader right now in terms of at least public ations and maybe even contracts mm-hmm. is Aerones. Mm-hmm. be, be my guess. They’re all, all over the world and they have, they, their robots do many different things.
Right. They have done LPS measurements, they’ve made a lot of LPS, measurements. Mm-hmm. They’ve done some repairs. They’ve done. Blade cleaning, tower cleaning. Mm-hmm. . So they have a, a multipurpose robot where the other solutions tend to be more focused. Let, let’s just kind of break it down a little bit.
Yeah. So, if I wanted to do a leading edge repair mm-hmm. , what are, what are my options
Joel Saxum: today? . So your options today, leading edge repair would be Aerones, of course. Yeah, they’re limited to just the leading edge. And of course they’ve got some other robot. They’ve got a bunch in their fleet, right? They could do internal inspections.
They have little crawlers and stuff. But, so leading edge, you’ve got Aerones, you’ve got Rope Robotics the, the Vestas group that, or the funded group of Blade Robots that just came out from, from their, I don’t know what you wanna call that one incubator or whatever. They’re, they’re doing some. L e P stuff as well, but they’re brand new, right?
Like Rope Robotics and has been around for three years. Aerones a little bit longer than that even, but I think, I think Rope Robotics has got a little bit of the corner of the market as far as been around a little bit longer doing l e P stuff. But Aerones has got more time up tower on the robots.
Other than that, you have, you know, there’s the, the, the Dutch group air tub that’s building some things, but I don’t think they’re quite commercially ready. Right. They’re in the testing phases. Clo clo biotics, same thing. I think their first iteration of a robot is going to be leading edge repair, but I think they’re more in the the early stages BladeBug.
But BladeBug is more, they’re more towards inspection and N D T a fantastic n D T delivery tool, right, cuz it can pinpoint where you want to go, but they’re not into the in inspect or the l e p repair place. So, Rope Robotics, Aerones are your two really right now from, from, from what I can see in the
Allen Hall: market and products are using to apply to the blades they differ on Aerones has chose in Akzo Nobel.
and Rope Robotics is using Teknos, right? Yep. So they’re just two different manufacturers of, of, of repair material. If you have a particular blade. Is there any reason why either one of those would not work? Does it matter all that
Joel Saxum: much? You know, it’s, it’s all in rigging. , right? So how a or how quick they can move and how easily they can move up.
They, they do it a little bit differently, right? Like the Rope Robotics robot is, uses suction to stick to the side of the blade, whereas the Aerones robot uses more, and I’m not a hundred percent sure on these ones, so don’t, don’t crucify me, Dan Cruz and team. But they have the, the taglines with the automatic kind of motors that, that, that help move it.
So, E either, either one of ’em. If you’re using, the first question that they’re gonna ask is what exact model of turbine you’re using? What’s the tower? Because and, and because they need to know the geometry of the way the nelle fits with the spinner, fits with the hub, fits with the blades. Because I know like Rope Robotics, when they’re rigging on certain platforms, it’s really easy.
Boom. You connect to the, to the D rings up on the top of the niel over the, throw the lines over. The hub comes down and you shoot right up. Some of the other ones are a little bit more difficult. You have to come underneath or, or poke a hole in a cell or something like that. That sort, so there’s, it’s, it’s all in how the rigging goes.
And then of course, because all of them have, you know, they’re coming, they’re, you know, coming from the ground up. Don’t believe, and don’t quote me on this, but I don’t believe any of ’em have really specifically nailed down a process for offshore that is spot on. No, not yet because you
Allen Hall: need not yet.
It’s still a prototype and what I’ve seen is still prototype and we don’t have a lot of winds in the state, so you and I wouldn’t see it. Yeah. , I’m sure maybe in the North Sea there’s a lot of activity there. They may have a lot more knowledge of that. Yeah. Which we just haven’t
Joel Saxum: seen it. Yeah. I know the role robotics crew right now as well, like they’re, they started as an LEP robot with that Tekno solution, but they’re a part of a project that’s, I think funded by.
Maybe EU D P R or something like that, but some foundation. But there’s a bunch of other players in it that they’re actually gonna be doing like a, a robot that can do scarfed repairs. And they’re using some, some, they’ve got an AI group in there to, to help them with that as well. So they’re, they’re taking their robot that does leading edge right now and expanding it’s, you know, solutions, its offerings.
Like Aerones did the same thing. Aerones can apply the phase break nine ice, you know, anti icing coating with theirs. They can do all kinds of different things, right. .
Allen Hall: Right, right, right, right. So yeah, the an anti ice de-ice coating mm-hmm. , the only one I’ve seen do that so far is Aerones in terms of an application robot.
Otherwise it’s a technician Yeah. Based system. Yep. Right. So if, if we’re talking about blade structural repairs, what are your options right now? Yeah. Sort of non-leading edge stuff is, is it all just focused on leading edge in terms of
Joel Saxum: repair as it sits right now, commercially available? I think it’s all leading edge.
The only thing else on the list that could probably help as well, like, I know the Rope Robotics solution because they use that technos techno blade 9,000. It ha it’s a. and L e P and like all in one, right? So they can do leading edge if you can put your fist through it, they can’t do it, of course, right?
That’s then you’re structural. You need to get some technicians up there to fix that. But if you’re down, if you’re above like the surface mat, you can get those guys to fill in and an LEP coat quite a bit, like a surprising amount. When you show them some inspection images you’d be surprised at, at what they can actually take on.
Martin and Christine and the team over there. . You know, another thing to think about here, no matter who you engage with is, is just this, is knowing what their capabilities are. Like if you bring the Aerones team on site, right, man, they can check your LPs, they can clean the tower, clean the blades, put a, you know, possibly put some l e p on, do a ice deicing coating, I guess to, to an operator, to mobilize one team to do all of that stuff.
That’s pretty amazing. , you know, when it comes to structural repairs, BladeBug is your answer to, to get into those a little bit. Right? So if you want to know, hey, we’ve got a bad repair here, but we don’t, you know, or we have a bunch of turbines that we need to check this, this certain thing on, they can get up their up tower and do some N D t looks as well.
A bit faster probably than some rope access guys can. So they can help in that, but they can’t do the, the repair itself. Oh, I wanna
Allen Hall: switch gears a little bit. Mm-hmm. and talk to Lightning Protection Systems and. Is offered today. You know, we, we talk a lot about LPs. Systems need to be measured in some parts of the world, it’s required.
Mm-hmm. , you need to measure it. Mm-hmm. in the states, not so much, but we’re finding such a, mostly Aerones is published data where like 20% of the L ps systems are not functional. The resistance is too high or it’s broken internally. This seems to be a good number of those. What are you, what are the options there in terms of LPs?
Who, who could you offer to, to get out there besides a technician to. Measure a bunch of LPs
Joel Saxum: systems. Well, I know that you’ve seen a lot if you, you know, follow LinkedIn, any press releases and stuff. Right now, the Valero drone they have been out doing some LPs measurements and they’ve been partnering with up with Skys specs.
I mean, Skys specs is a massive. Massive pool of of clients, right? So it’s a great vehicle for Lo Valero to get in there and, and do it. But they’ve got a really cool, if you look, if you’re into drone technology, the way that their drone works is kind of nothing like you’ve ever seen before. The whole, the whole body of the drone can rotate as well as the rotors themselves.
So then you can get at certain angles to your, to angles of incidences. You call it like, right? So if you’re measuring an NDT or something on a tank, they can go in at any. And get a contact measurement so that leads directly to, okay, no matter what angle the blade is at, we can get in there and get a good contact measurement.
So they’re doing LPs via drone. That’s an option. I think that’s probably the quickest one, right? Aerones has got the LPs measuring robot, but they’ve got to rig up with the taglines and all that stuff. So it’s, if you’re having, sure, if you have Aerones on site doing some other things, it’s probably fantastic.
Hey, just swap. , you know, modular head out, do the LPs measurements while you’re up there. But I think Valero is probably the fastest one on this list that we’re staring at. I could see BladeBug possibly offering that in the future. But I don’t think they do right now. Yes, that would make sense
Allen Hall: for Blade Book to do it, right?
Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But in, in all, in all these measurements I prefer just because I’m an electrical engineer, I prefer to do a four, four point measurement instead of the two point measurement. So a four point measurement takes the, the measurement leads in all the meter inaccuracies out of the picture and get a real accurate.
Resistance value for the down conductor and all the connections inside the blade. Aron is definitely four point. I’ve watched that robot work. I did double check on the Valero system. It actually is a four point system. There you go. So Valero and Arron are using a four point system. Mm-hmm. . And that’s good.
Joel Saxum: You know, not to be missed here as well. Alan is we’re talking robots. So, you know, we’re, we’re more focusing on robotics rather than drones here, but, internal inspection. So whether it’s with a cage drone, whether it’s with a crawler or something of that sort. So when, when the wind power lab side, we, we do the cage drone thing and then do the analysis of it.
But we also use all kinds of other things that talk with the Rons on some stuff as well. But visually you can look internally a lot and see what’s going on at the LPs system. Right. We’ve seen a ton of them old, like the GE one five s, where they just have like an aluminum bar. That blade, the blade’s flex, right?
So if you have a bar in there, eventually over time they pop connections and you see a lot of them. It’s really surprising. Yeah. How many open circuits we actually do find doing internal inspections on l ps systems without even doing the, an actual elec electrical test. And then
Allen Hall: the last one I want to hit on here is ultrasonic inspection of the composite structure.
Mm-hmm. , which I. Going to become a big player. Yeah. Just because the types of failures we’re seeing on blades, and especially when we get offshore, doing ultrasound on the blade is not the easiest thing in the world to do. No. So if you can automate it via a robot mm-hmm. , it makes a lot of sense. So what are, what are your options there
Joel Saxum: today?
Well, force technology is a Danish company and force technology. I mean they’re, they’ve been around a long time. They’ve been doing stuff aerospace, oil, and gas. Pipelines, all the above. They’re a big N D T company. They put out a lot of good products. We’ve used them in the past that when power allowed to do some RCA stuff but they’re working on a robotic solution to be able to go up tower as well.
I’m not sure along the development stage where they’re actually at with it, but I know they’re working on it. Otherwise BladeBug as well. Right? If you, if you want, if you need to do N D T up tower with a robot today, call Chris and Stacy from BladeBug and they can get you up. They’re using a system, which is really cool.
We’ve, we’ve delve into this one before as well, is it’s the dolphin tech system nd t system. So, and if you wanna know more about the actual Delta tech system, blade buck guys aren’t the answer. Right? You call, call the actual N D T company. But they’ve, they’ve done it to the point where, , they put the blade, they put the bo the robot up on the tower, had the N D T basically box and head modularly doing measurements and remotely connected to an N D T expert offsite.
So you can get a, you know, cuz N D T experts are very difficult to come by, that are certified and are good at their job and know what they’re looking at, especially in blades because in blades with composites, your. , all the different layers, then you’re into carbon, then you’re into up all, then you’re into foam, you’re into, you know, all these different things.
And it’s hard to get a baseline. If you know anything about N D T or or UT testing in the audience here, you know that you can’t, or not that you can’t. It’s difficult to understand exactly what you’re looking at unless you have something to baseline test it off of. And what I mean by that is like if you’re testing steel, you want to get the same kind of steel, then you know, is an inch thick, and you test your probe beforehand and go, okay, now we’re calibrated.
This is an inch thick we can go to. and then we can see the differences. So in composites, it’s very difficult to to do that. So that’s why it’s great to have someone that is, and because of in a blade, the composite structure changes from inch to inch, right? It’s different. Yes. Everywhere. Like if you can put your arms out and lay it on a blade, the composite structure’s gonna be different from arm to tip to finger to finger.
So if you have a really good expert that you can dial into while you’re taking the test, it’s an amazing solution. So BladeBug has done that with Deltech, where they have downsized the, the stuff going up tower to just put the, basically the transducer head and the, they’re what they call their black box and, you know, their, their secret sauce inside of it.
Mm-hmm. . . And then it feeds back to either on the ground with an N D T Tech on the ground and someone else running the robot. Or you can actually, you know, offsite remotely. So that, that’s, those are your solutions right now. That I know. That we’ve been talking to.
Allen Hall: So in, in terms of you know, scheduling some of these robot companies Yeah.
How far do you think they’re out in time? If, if I had a blade that, say I had a blade, I need some LPs measurements or a farm, I needed some LPs measurements on how far out in time am I talking about? Just for scheduling purposes?
Joel Saxum: Well, I know that Aerones was part of their. Push or not push with their newfound capital as well.
The 38 or 39 million that they got this fall. Part of that plan I think was to ramp up with the capability of the ropa or, or the, of the robots. So it was to get more in the fleet. I know Rope robotics as well. Rope robotics right now I think is got. 10 complete systems that they can mobilize around the world.
And, and they’re in the midst of growing as well. So so a lot of people are looking at, because this is early stage technology, right? You’re still kind of, let’s do a trial, let’s take a peak at it. . So like I, I don’t know if there’s any massive campaigns amongst them. I don’t know if I, I, I, we would have to, to to contact them, but I would say if you wanted to, right now, this summer, get one of these systems up on, on Blade.
They either LPs system, ch check or clean a tower or have Rope Robotics, do some l e p or, or BladeBug Boost ndt or even like the, the new Vestas group do something for you. Right. I say that one might be a little bit, bit more difficult, but I’m thinking Vestas is gonna tie that thing up in. They’re, they’re blade robots because they’ve of course got a lot of things to maintain in the world.
I would say that if you contact these guys in the next few weeks, they would all be grateful to get out there this, this spring or, or early summer to at least get a trial going and, and show you what their, their capabilities are. I think that gets us into another point too, Alan, that I always like to touch on here is it’s difficult to go to the field with robotic.
So, yes. You know, my past life was a lot of subsea engineering which is full of new robotic technology every week. If, if you’re into robots and you haven’t looked at anything that’s going sub-sea right now, check it out. It’s so cool. Like, just go Gemini, r o v from technique fmc. Look at that thing in the technology unit.
It’s, it’s wildly amazing. But that, that transfer to go from academic funded building a robot. To actually performing at scale in the field is not a hurdle to be dismissed, right? You can have a fantastic team, fantastic engineers, but now you’ve gotta take those people and get trained up people to go to the field and mobilized around the world to do these things.
So that means you, if you’re a robotics engineer, , and you’ve been working in a lab and you’re outta school. You’re a couple years outta school and you’ve been doing these things nine to five and in, in maybe some late nights doing some testing, and then all of a sudden it’s like, Hey, you’re going to Oklahoma for the next two months, , and you’re gonna be underneath a winter.
But like, that’s a, that’s a big difference, right? So it’s difficult to transfer that and, and all the things that come with it, right? It’s not just the idea of like, oh yeah, we’re gonna take our robot and go to the. Now you’ve gotta have an HSE plan, now you’ve gotta have vehicle inspections. Now you’ve gotta have all these things.
Like, it’s not, it’s not trivial. So kudos to the, to the guys who have made it, like, I’ve worked, I’ve personally worked with rope robotics in the field, right? And they work, those guys work their asses off. They, they, they want to succeed. They’re, and they’re, they’re good engineers. They’re good at what they do.
Any issues with robots that popped up? I mean, cuz it, you know, the things are going to happen. They, they’re on it. They were working all night to get these things back up and running for the morning. And they successfully completed some campaigns for us. So just I say to anybody that’s, that’s entertaining this stuff, go to the field, send some people to the field with when you’re doing your trials, when you’re doing your tests, Give these guys some breathing room, but also help ’em along.
Because this is the future of, of the market in, in my opinion, it’s like when drones started becoming mainstream or when they were just barely babies. Everybody’s kinda, I don’t know about this drone technology and I was walking around preaching to everybody like you, it’s like a train. Either get on board or get run over by it cuz it’s gonna happen.
And it did. And it is, drones are everywhere now. Right. And you. Every day you see a new, new capability for them, whether it’s in the wind industry or in the construction industry, or, or you know, Amazon dropping packages at your front door or whatever. There’s, I’ll tell you this one. There is a place in Minnesota that delivers beer to ice fishermen with a drone.
So if you’re out ice fishing on the lake in the wintertime, you call up the bar and say, I need a six pack, and here comes a drone, we’ll come out and drop it to you on the ice . So, so the, that’s but with the shortage of technicians, like it’s going to be a thing. So if also on the other side of it, yeah.
If I was a technician and I was mildly interested at all in robots or, or coding or anything tech-wise, it. If I was a gamer or anything like that, I would be calling up these companies. I’d be digging in. I’d be trying to figure some of this stuff out myself because it’ll be a cool thing to be a part of in the future.
It’ll be in high demand. It’s gonna be,
Allen Hall: well, this has been a, a really good piece, Joel, and I appreciate you data jumping on us because there’s so much. Out there in terms of robots and activity and, and if you’re, if you’re new to this and you haven’t been up close to it, there’s just a lot to process. So yeah, you’re definitely right and robots will be gonna become the future to do some of these routine repairs.
Mm-hmm. and maybe some of the more diffi difficult inspections, robots are going that way. And, and it’s, it’s time every, you know, gets on the internet, checks some of these companies. Gives ’em a call. Yeah. And, and fill ’em out a little bit. See if they, you can use them on your next project.
Joel Saxum: Mm-hmm.
absolutely.
