Lasse Hietikko, Business Development manager at WICETEC, joined us to talk about the big problem of wind turbine blade icing, and how their WIPS wind turbine blade heating systems can prevent it. In Texas, the lack of foresight for potential freezing conditions led to disaster, causing wind power to come to a halt with ice-covered turbines.
✅Learn more about WICETEC and their WIPS technology here.
🖐Connect with Lasse on Linkedin here.
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TRANSCRIPT: EP51 – Wind Turbine Blade Heating – How Does it Work? with Lasse Hietikko of WICETEC
welcome back to the uptime podcast i am your co-host Dan Blewett no Allen hall on the show today but we’ve got a great guest Lasse Hietikko from WICETEC is here and he’s going to talk to us about blade heating technology so obviously we were looking for someone for the show to talk about you know some of the issues that happened in texas right obviously terrible disaster with you know all forms of electrical energy of electricity going out in texas obviously wind uh turbines were a part of the problem right they iced they had winterization issues they froze and uh they lost power so we want to have someone come in who actually has a solution to this so Lasse is the business development manager for WICETEC and WICETEC is a Helsinki Finland based company and what they do is they have blade heating technology so it’s essentially a carbon fiber mat that they lay on the leading edge that has you know resistive heating similar to what’s in the rear view windshield of your car where they’ll kick on when temperatures when you know the sensors on the turbine say hey this is a icing condition you know those will kick on and they’ll prevent ice from forming on the basically two-thirds of the blade the most important aerodynamic region so not the root but the outer two thirds almost all the way up to the to the very tip so it’s really interesting um the fact that this is a it’s been out there this is not new technology um and he as he he speaks to that this is something developed in the 90s and they have the IP this at WICETEC but it just isn’t always deployed in all these new sites so a lot of it’s done in the factory they do a lot of installations in the factory and they’re just now getting into retrofits which is obviously going to be of of significant interest now that we’ve had this texas disaster we’ve seen the damage it can do um if uh you know winterization is a problem and you get one of these sort of black swan event kind of uh winter storms so you know Lasse has a uh he’s a masters in mechanical engineering from what is now Aalto university in in Finland um and you know he’s an expert on on this technology on blade heating on the economics of it and whether it’s going to make sense for either a new win site in development because this probably does need to be part of the discussion going forward right hey are we going to have icing issues and also companies that are having you know wind turbine issues with icing with winterization they’re getting more and more calls daily now because of obviously people don’t want this to happen on their site so we’re really excited to have Lasse here so without further ado we’re going to jump into our conversation with Lasse Hietikko from WICETEC in Finland
so Lasse thank you so much for joining us on the podcast really appreciate it good to have you thank you very much for uh inviting it’s really nice to be in here yeah so obviously there was a really big incident in texas here in the us and so we’re you know looking of you know who are the experts in this field and you know with wind turbine blade icing and de-icing and trying to keep them winterized and keeping them running i think that’s a big it’s a pretty pertinent topic right now here at early 2021 so we’ll get to the texas thing a little bit more as as we go um but first you know as as a member of weiss attack can you talk a little bit about you know why do wind turbines sometimes stop running in the winter what are some of the issues and why does that happen why do they stand still the turbine blades are of course when the weather gets cold uh the blades get cold and they are heating the uh like moisture or small water particles that are on the air are or in the on the clouds and uh therefore eyes starts to accumulate on on the blade surface or the icing ice on the blade then uh destroys the aerodynamics of the blade and therefore it’s not that the wind turbine is not producing any more power so it it doesn’t need to be a lot of ice there that it starts to bring the power down so so we’ve had an aerodynamics expert um nicholas galdern from power curve on the show and he talked about how you know with turbine blade erosion and accumulation of dust and dirt even just a little bit can some like you said ruin the aerodynamics and they can hit their like their stall point and now they just won’t turn so it sounds like that’s pretty easy to that same problem happens with just even a little ice accumulation is that right yeah it doesn’t need need a lot when you already have like minus 550 percent or even minus 70 percent so it doesn’t need much eyes yeah and i think that’s the that’s the really confusing thing for the public here in the us where they think about these wind turbines like why would they stand still like ice isn’t that heavy um but it’s the same thing with a with an airplane right like you have to de-ice airplane wings because they’re just not gonna fly at all without it it’s just their dynamics are shot yeah because yeah if there’s uh even a little bit ice on the on the blades of or on airplanes it’s the same same thing that air dynamics is not working anymore so uh yeah well we have a we have had a like pictures of uh wind turbines that have a lot of eye eyes but we have lately decided try to like void of using these pictures where there’s this massive load of eyes because uh the small amount does the same yeah yeah they’re there’s not needed yeah i’ve seen some of those pictures where they’re just like just tons of it built up and you’re like yeah i guess that makes sense um but it’s yeah like you said just a little bit is all that’s really needed and especially out towards the tip so can you talk a little bit about the root versus the tips of the blade i mean is there a difference in um you know does it matter if there’s ice near the root or is it matter most towards the the tip of the blade typically in our design we have the blade heaters in roughly two-thirds of a blade length and not at all on the root part of the blade as the aerodynamical critical areas are the first two-thirds of the plate okay so you’re not really focusing too much on on the roof aerodynamically yeah so our aerodynamical point of view it doesn’t matter if there’s some ice on the root part gotcha um before so i want to hear how your your solution works to keep ice off these blades but before we get there how do does the turbine have anything anything to know when there’s ice accumulated uh is it just a visual thing or is it just like it stops because of the aerodynamics or is there some other way are there sensors i mean how does that work well many turbines are sensing from the the power curve like you yeah like you said or there are many kind of sensors on different types of turbines uh they might sense uh vibration there are many many types of sensors in turbines and when they like start to think that there might be eyes on the blades and then many like many of the turbines just stop their sails like automatically gotcha there’s no one to shut it off okay um so tell me about weisstein so your your whip system uh wips what does that do how does it work where do you install it what’s the process like can you kind of walk us through it a little bit well our technology is uh invented already in on 90s so it’s a not something really new so it has been there for over 20 years already and it was originally invented in on a finnish national research institute but nowadays our company weisteck is owns the ipr for the technology and is further developing it today so this uh technology has been installed to uh many different types of turbines on new ones and lately also as a retrofit to the existing turbines yeah and the technology is a carbon fiber mat on a leading edge of a wind turbine blade and it it works as a like resistive load so it heats up when we connect electricity to this carbon fiber okay so you take the carbon fiber mat and you’ve got a you know lay it all along the leading edge of the blade and i assume you have like a resin system or something that you you know epoxy it down um and then so it sounds like it works kind of like the um you know the the little little screen that they put on windshields like rear windshields and cars to defrost is that sort of a similar is that a decent analogy yeah so it uh it heats up pretty quickly and so when the carbon fiber is it’s really close to the surface of the blade so it brings the heat quickly and efficiently just where it is it is needed and even if it’s uh only on the leading edge it also keeps the trailing edge pretty much clean of uh of the eyes hmm how how is it why does it do that uh it it heats up a little bit uh the air that is uh flowing along the the surface of the blade and it is uh it is also a matter of uh design and calculation so that we that the size is correct so that it needs to be right size for the for the blade so that it keeps the trailing edge as well free of eyes gotcha and so it doesn’t sound like this is like a de-icing solution as much as it is this is just gonna keep ice from ever accumulating is that right yeah we we call our system on the icing system so uh we get a signal from uh ice detector typically we use a laptop ice ice detector and when the icing conditions are starting then the heating is switched on and that that happens totally automatically and the control software takes care of the heating and the overall process so that the heat the heating is on uh as long as needed and uh then it turns off automatically when it’s not not anymore needed and uh so so that the heat before the icing starts or before the ice starts to accumulate on the blade surface okay so it sounds like that could be used in a situation like texas is a good example where it’s not really that cold most of the year and maybe you know it’s it’s not gonna need to be on and waste electricity powering the the whip system but if it does drop cold enough then it will kick on and keep the blade free from ice all right yeah and this uh this technology prevents uh like the massive amount of wind turbines uh shutting down at the same time as uh they are they are the blades are staying uh free of ice or at least a minimal amount of eyes but but they still still stay operational so uh when when there is bigger amounts of renewable energy and wind power uh on grid so uh it becomes more important to keep your turbines uh operating even in icing conditions yeah so i know we’re going to get a little more to the economics of it and back to the texas thing in a little bit i still want to hear a little more about the installation all that stuff so you said most of your installations now are on in done in the factory i know you’re you know like many companies you’ve got ndas so you can’t disclose lots of details about companies you work with and all that stuff which is totally fine um but you do a lot of it in the factory um but you’re now starting to move into retrofits is that right so can you tell us a little bit about it sounds like the process is a little bit labor intensive but you’re starting to to to figure out the retrofit situation or trying to streamline that process is that right uh yes we did 2016 first retrofit installations at the site Lac Alfred in in Quebec canada since that we have done total of 28 retrofit installations to the same site and this summer we are doing 14 new retrofits to get canada but to a different site uh yeah so um until now we have uh brought the blades down and then transported to the temporary factory uh where the this heating element has been installed to the plate surface but uh we are at the moment developing our technology so that we are able to uh make this installation up tower so that the blades will not not need to be lower lower down anymore yeah it’s it’s a cost saving and it’s also a matter of crane works there’s uh sometimes can be tricky to get the cranes on on the side and uh needs possibly uh permissions for cranes and so we are really really looking forward this uh up to our development it will be uh enable for uh get this technology to do many different sites in the future yeah because i imagine the really cold sites that you probably can’t do work on them until you know it warms up in the summer right and then when that starts to happen i assume there’s tons of moisture on the ground the ground’s really soft so that probably makes getting a crane up there pretty pretty difficult yeah many many sites that are our customers there is the long winter and so when the snow is melting away so it ground stays pretty wet for a long time so as far as you know like you mentioned the black alfred wind farm i mean you said they’re one of the probably the roughest wind farms in the world as far as ice conditions and snow and all that stuff and there’s a lot of wind turbines running in really rough environments what was unique about lac alfred why did they decide they needed needed help well uh they are up in the mountains the site and uh there is a proximity of uh atlantic ocean so there’s a continuously moisture rising out the ocean and then the wind wind is blowing up to the mountains and bring the moisture there and with moisture together with the cold weather where it just like brings the eyes to the wind turbine blades and there’s like the winter time production losses are pretty big on that side and we are happy to to help our customer on their on their uh production so do you feel like there’s are there a lot of sites like that one that maybe didn’t install blade heaters from you know the factory that you know it seems like maybe that environment would have been a good indication for it because i mean that that seems like a really you know like you said a really rough environment for me i’m thinking of like chicago here in the us chicago is you know it’s got the you know lake michigan right there so there’s tons of moisture in the air there’s tons of like sideways rain and sideways snow and as i know they’re going to start putting you know wind turbines in some of the great lakes here in the u.s and so for me thinking oh yeah that seems like that same kind of environment very cold very windy very wet are you seeing more and more customers saying yeah like this seems like a need we should definitely install heaters on these blades um from the beginning yeah we see definitely uh like increased uh like a number of inquiries for the technology and uh well the kept area is uh really prone to icing it’s not not just the lack alfred on the area there’s several sites uh around the the quebec and the uh like north east usa like new hampshire vermont maine and new york state of new york there are sites where uh icing is uh seemed to be quite big issue and uh in in general uh the higher higher you go up to the mountains the more issues you typically have plus that’s going to make it really tough for them to you know if they’re all the way up in the mountains they want to probably keep them running obviously well they’re always going to want to keep them running but they want to keep them running as much as they can with as little down time as they can so you think really planning ahead and saying hey in the planning process what are the what what what things could you know cause these to stand still like for example like we talked about earlier if you’re in india where there might be tons of dust and dirt you know they might need some solution to clean you know the blades more often and they need to probably plan and budget for that so imagine that this would probably be a big budgetary concern early where hey if we’re going to put them up in this area like a de-icing system you know preventative icing systems got to be um in the works in that budget so that i mean that seems like a no-brainer from an economic standpoint
okay so if i if i own the wind turbine site now and i’m now worried because of the texas incident with the huge power outages and all that stuff um hey how would i know if i need this right is this something that you know like i know texas has pretty fair weather right they don’t get a ton of really cold storms like they did this one was an anomaly um so as an owner you might say do i need you know the cost of this retrofit is this or do i need the cost of this out of the factory um or am i only going to get a potential ice situation once every 20 years where it’s just not going to make economic sense how do you advise companies as far as when they probably need this and when they don’t and if they’re having problems what is that conversation typically look like if it’s a new site then of course during the development phase you should have your eyes assessment done
but uh if it’s a existing site then we typically first ask that okay what is your what is your loss what is the number of uh how much are you losing and some sites know that they have good idea of the icing losses but some sites do not know what is their yearly icing loss so of course first thing is to uh like analyze your uh how much you are losing and what comes to the what comes to the uh icing it’s uh there’s much more bigger variation than in the for example in in the yearly winds that wind wind variation is much more smaller than variation in in icing or always there is the business case in in some point where you need to consider doing uh something for your issue is there a tip is there a rule of thumb like is it a couple percentage points AEP is it one two three four five percent what does it typically look like where they say hey we looks like we’re losing x amount where we think we maybe need this for new sites uh it’s two to three percent for from AEP when you should consider blade heating or for existing sites uh it is more expensive as to do as a retrofit and uh then there you can’t direct say like like what is the percentage there’s so many uh different like uh factors are that are affecting but of course if you you start to go over five five percent uh then i think it starts to be good good to figure out how to how you can solve it start to be a lot of money well so i’ve heard some you know depending on the municipality or the part of the world that some companies just seem to overlook um they just seem to overlook the icing issue like they just sort of maybe they have power generation from nuclear they have a little bit from you know hydro and then maybe they have some wind power um and maybe they’re like uh you know yeah we have icing issues and our turbines they stand still you know for like a month every year but yeah it’s not a big deal when they turn off we just kind of divert and we get more power from nuclear um do do many site owners have that attitude where you know they they just see it as like a a thing that happens and they’re not overly concerned about it but i mean it seems like from my perspective they should want to have no downtime whatsoever it doesn’t matter what the conditions are i mean where does where do you stand
yeah well from the like great point of view there’s uh yeah like you said we have heard these kind of stories that it okay it doesn’t matter if if the turbines are iced up as yeah can always use some other other source available but um yeah but like from the right point of like owner point of view of course uh
unlike any owner should be interested uh how much they are earning and then and during the winter time the prices are high and the air density is higher so you get like double production in winter time compared to the summer so it’s it’s really valuable time to make make money so you shouldn’t like as a wind farm owner you shouldn’t lose lose your like valuable time of production during the winter time okay so you’d get a surge anyway because of the air density you’re saying typically in cold areas the winds are higher and and the air density is higher so that’s that leads to a higher production gotcha gotcha um and let’s talk about the size of turbines obviously they keep getting bigger every year um where you know we’ve had other guests on from different companies where they’re saying yeah you know the fire suppression systems from um fire trace were a good example where it’s like yeah you know for a two megawatt wind turbine five years ago maybe the cost was a higher percentage to get all these different add-ons installed but now when you’re talking about a 10 12 15 megawatt turbine that these are you know 15 million dollar machines it doesn’t even make sense to not install some of the things that are going to keep them running because they generate so much power and they’re so expensive so um do you see the the heated blade technology being more often adopted now that these things are so big and they just do not want them to stop well uh at least here in finland i see that there’s many many projects that will be installed with the this service based heater and uh the potential loss is just so big with the with the new big turbines that uh they are not or i heard that from one developer that they just were like not like afraid they couldn’t take the risk or to do to leave it out yeah and uh when also when the big turbines are more expensive the relatively like cost of blade heating is is smaller also when the turbines are bigger and and and they go more often sweep higher and uh on the for example in in the clouds so then it also leads to the situation when when these turbines are more prone uh for icing because uh more blade tip more often hits to the the clouds when they reach higher and uh that’s really interesting i never thought about that but yeah to icing but so the shorter turbines are kind of staying in slightly warmer air where there’s you know obviously like you said not reaching into the clouds but when they get to a certain size that tip is a reaching through colder air and sweeping through clouds where there’s more moisture and it’s almost like it’s able to reach up and and like grab and find icing conditions that’s really interesting to think about yeah for example on the same side if you are like rip off your old small turbine and uh replace with the big modern turbine with the old small one maybe did not have any icing issues but uh the big one might have as as it goes so much higher yeah and uh yeah that’s interesting so then and there’s another competing so the the surface heating technology that you use is not the only potential solution for icing um what’s the the main other competing technology um it’s it’s forced air right and how does that work and is it does it have the same effect uh yeah there’s this uh like hot air blowers that uh typically blow hot air inside uh the blade and um many turbine manufacturers uh have this kind of a solution or have had at least earlier available but now when the turbines are getting bigger the blades are getting longer the hot air is not just efficient any like enough anymore because the air air volume is getting so big inside the blade and also uh in many areas uh for where is it’s extremely cold uh the hot air just not is if not efficient enough to keep the turbine like like the blades uh free of eyes yeah plus the uh i mean the materials of a modern blade is made out of you know with carbon fiber spar and just like the thickness and i mean they’re so big and made a car and made a fiberglass it doesn’t seem like it seemed like that would take some really hot air and a lot of it to to heat something that’s that thick and it’s made of a non-conductive material i mean one thing if it’s made of metal or something but the fact that it’s non-conductive seems like that heat’s going to have a tough time getting to the surface of the blade where it’s needed it works uh like the plate material itself uh works as a insulation so so the the heat from the blades even if there’s a uh different kind of technologies uh that is leading the hot air for example the leading edge still uh to to have the heat on the surface of the blade it’s uh not that like efficient compared to this surface-based heaters some manufacturers uh are providing a hot air system that is able to work while the turbine is operating but many of them are de-icing systems so that typically it works so that uh when when there’s icing the turbines are stopped and while they are stopped uh the blades the hot air is blown inside the blade uh only one plate at once is is uh like melted from the ice so it’s it’s not it doesn’t keep the turbines operating all the time but you need to like the icing time so that is that is basically uh the big difference uh compared to to our technology so there’s more like after they’re covered in ice it can help with shed that but again kind of slow one way at a time rather than just keeping it off in the first place okay um so let’s let’s shift to texas here because i know that’s a big point of interest um so from your perspective you know following the story a little bit um what was your i mean how did you feel about just the massive power outages there and it seems like yeah and of course in hindsight right everyone’s a genius in hindsight yeah we should have had these winterized well it’s not completely clear whether they should be winterizing for a you know once twice in a generation storm but at the same time if it has the potential to take your whole grid down or the potential to really cost you a lot of money then maybe it does make maybe it does make sense but what’s your perspective on what’s happened in in texas uh of course uh yeah i find it uh really uh like uh like sad and uh so i feeling really sorry about the people in in texas that this kind of happened but from uh like uh if you just talk about from a wind power perspective until now maybe everybody has had idea that turbines in in texas don’t have don’t need like blade heating but uh now there was a like terrible pro energy price like 9 000 us dollars per megawatt hour so in you know for for average turbine it it is just the payback time for blade heating is just like one or two days and if like if we can avoid uh this kind of outages so it it starts to to to make sense even in in texas made me and many others start to think that okay it’s it’s not that bad idea it maybe it could make make sense also there yeah and in many many other areas as well so it sounds like i mean really more just like as an insurance uh as an insurance policy because again yeah what happened in texas was tragic it was awful um and so even if it seems like yeah we might not need this you know 19 out of 20 years but that 20th year like you said could cost us a ton of money and potentially people’s lives which was awful and just i mean so many people were out of power for multiple days like hunker down their homes um yeah it seems like maybe that insurance policy of having you know blade heaters i know there’s some other winterization things uh that can happen in the nacelle like different types of oils and stuff like that um to help keep them running in the cold because they do run in the cold right there’s wind farms all over the world like you said the Lac Alfred wind farm it runs um and so yeah it it it’s i guess it’s what they would call a black swan event and a black swan event is just something that you wouldn’t have seen coming and just has the potential to like topple all of your sort of existing systems right like there’s been a bunch now al and i talked about on a you know a recent podcast that you know just like a huge tsunami that like wipes out an island you know you like yeah it’s foreseeable that that could happen being that it’s an island but tsunamis like don’t get very often right and so there’s this amount of like how much planning should we do and and when does it make financial sense to plan for certain things that are very unlikely but are very potentially disastrous and this was clearly a disaster here and just with the way their grid was set up and the PPAs and like you said power shooting up to nine thousand dollars per megawatt hour um like you said it’s the payback time of that becomes a very short if that’s the alternative well the blade heating on and the cost associated with it today versus if this happens and now we’re paying nine thousand dollars per megawatt hour for x amount of days it just like makes financial sense so yeah and this this this uh this occurs uh was something like 10 years ago or already or it has i i read that it has has happened like uh once in 10 years in texas that it’s really cold weather and uh was it 2010 when
also happened and uh i’ve heard some like stories that even even that time only this event would would have justified uh the blade heating climate change is is reality so what it means that it the like like normal temperature is is uh not not that normal anymore but we have like a high temperature and a low temperature and uh we have this uh more often uh this on on normal bigger fluctuations better phenomenons so who knows if it starts to be like every seventh or every five years when there’s a really cold weather in in texas or it’s like like i heard a story of uh from somewhere in the united states that like two gigawatts of wind power went down you icing event in in 15 minutes or less than 15 minutes and this is just too short time for example for uh like coal power plants to start up so uh if we have would have like uh at least some of those wind turbines installed with the blade heating then the the affect to the crit would not be that massive and and dramatic yeah like like like you mentioned it it’s more could be also thought as a insurance for your crete insurance for your energy supply yeah but the problem problem is is to how to like put the price stack for it if the creed doesn’t require or that you have to produce certain amount of energy or who who would like who would evaluate it or who’s who who should be like responsible for that yeah i think that are like may i think maybe those are the those are the questions that that will be asked uh like in in the in the coming weeks or even now in in united states and maybe everywhere in in the whole world as uh this is widely widely been everywhere in the news yeah unfortunately it does take big events like that sometimes for people like okay well we’re going to start you know we’re developing this new end project we need to have a discussion about ice like is it going to be a problem how much is it going to cost if it does happen should we insure against this you know with blade heating should we you know what are the solutions that are going to be right for us on the site yeah i think that’s going to be and like you said with the bigger turbines reaching higher into the sky you know making contact with clouds all that stuff it’s going to become a bigger problem not a smaller problem and like i said i think that was an interesting point you brought that and thought about just climate change in general that using the past models of this is how often these kind of storms come through here it’s you should probably assume that there’s like you said they’re going to be there’s going to be more extreme highs and extreme lows where yeah maybe if it was every 10 years now we maybe do should just think of every 8 or every 7 like you said because you know like we know hurricane season is getting worse right we know lots of things are changing and we really can’t forecast it well but it probably airs to you know if you’re have a big project like this you don’t want to go bust it’s like hey let’s just air on the side of caution and say every seven years we’re gonna have something like this so what do those numbers look like so yeah maybe that makes sense so i really appreciate your time today um is there any place you’d like to obviously we’ll always link in the description so whether you’re watching here on youtube or listening in itunes stitcher spotify wherever we’ll we’ll link to WICETEC so you can follow up with their company find them on the web linkedin etc but let’s say is there any place you’d like to direct our listeners ways they can follow up with you um anything like that well of course you can find more information from our webpage www.wicetec.com and uh where i welcome everyone to to follow us on on linkedin and you may send a linkedin connection invite to me if you’re interested on connecting through this and or asking some more questions so yeah thanks again for being on the show really really appreciate it yeah thank you very much all right well that’s going to do it for today’s episode of the uptime podcast thank you so much for listening be sure to subscribe share the show with a friend and be sure to check out the description links whether you’re in on a podcast platform or you’re watching on youtube where you can find links to follow up with Lasse on linkedin follow up with the company WICETEC on their website their youtube channel or linkedin as well and follow up with weatherguard lightning tech to sponsor this show through the links in the show notes or the description thanks again for watching and we’ll see you next week on the uptime podcast is downtime causing you financial pain and putting a stop to your power production for months on end it’s no secret lightning strike damage is a major cause of wind turbine downtime this damage is preventable with our easy to install strike tape lightning protection system for wind turbine blades our incredible engineering build quality materials and edge sealants withstand up to five times more abuse in the toughest weather and lightning conditions and we’ve got the research to prove it if you’re tired of constant downtime we can help reach out to us at weatherguardwind.com and schedule a free call we’ll get your uptime back in no time
