Is using wind turbine blade copper caps for lightning protection a sound engineering strategy? Will they solve Vestas’ lightning damage problems? Plus, we discuss Liftwerx cranes and how they can make gearbox and blade swaps a much faster, less costly procedure for wind farm operators.
Learn more about Weather Guard Lightning Tech’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!Â
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EP27 – Wind Turbine Blade Copper Caps for Lightning Protection? Plus Liftwerx Cranes for Up-Tower Repairs
All right. Welcome back to the uptime podcast. In today’s episode, we’ve got a couple of topics today. First, we’re going to talk about Vestas. Obviously they had $175 million lightening damage problem. And it appears that they’ve tried to solve a lot of those problems with copper sleeves. So we’re going to talk about that retrofit and how that might be working and some of the engineering behind it.
Uh, we’re also going to talk about some different crane options. Um, you know, Liftwerx is one of the crane operators out there. That’s sending these small cranes up to the top of turbines to then, you know, swap out gearboxes, swap out blaze doula. It’s a really interesting repair work. And then we’re also going to chat a little bit about small wind turbines, which will be a recurring theme on our side.
And today we’re gonna talk about, uh, my best watt. Which is a pretty interesting company out of Europe that allows you to kind of custom design a turbine for your piece of land, which is a really interesting solution. I mean, it sounds almost, I don’t want it to be good, too. Good to be true. That you could have something that customized on.
I don’t know when you get these industrial size. Solutions. They don’t seem to be customizable to that extent. So Allen let’s jump right into Vesta. So obviously they had 175 million million dollar lightening problem. And what are they doing to solve it?
Allen Hall: Well, just keeping our ear to the ground because Vestas didn’t really describe where this problem was or what they were doing to correct it.
But some of their suppliers looked like they were starting to talk a little bit. So there’s a discussion a little bit. Thing on LinkedIn talking about putting copper sleeves on the tips of blades. And I’ve had seen that for investors in the past that Vestas had created this. Um, no, we’ll probably put it in the show notes here, but essentially they got asleep probably about, Oh, how about a half a meter or so tall?
And it just slides over the end of the tip and then ended up getting grounded to the receptor that’s near there. So they have to stop the turbine. Try to put this copper premade sleeve over top and attach it to the tip. And, uh, grounded from what I’ve seen, I’ve only seen it. I’ve seen a couple of things online talking about how they do this.
So, um, I’ve seen adhesives also seen at one place, it looked like there was fasteners going into the, to the, to the blade. So that basically what they’re doing is taking, replacing the receptor with a copper cap. Uh, and so you look at some of the newer blades and they have these little, they have these copper caps on them too, as it’s sort of the.
Does lightening protect. And does your, uh, the only issue with it and investors has done it for a while? So I think I’ve seen it all the way back to like 2005 or seven, something like that. So they’ve been doing this for a long time. So I w I wonder one, if they were having good results from it, they say they had good results from it.
There was a, uh, there was a discussion in the United States. When you propose to put in a wind turbine installation, you usually have to go in front of a governing body and describe what you’re doing. So you, you see in different applications talking about. The wind turbines. And in this particular application, I think it was in Colorado.
They were talking about the Vestus wind turbines and the lightning protection system where it had a copper cap on it. And that they have used that cap, um, secondarily to increase the lightening protection or reduce what was the word. They reduce the lightening protection damaged by our blade damage by 90%.
So it’s still not a hundred percent, but it’s pretty good. Uh, which makes all make sense. So I wonder if they’re putting copper caps on a lot of these blades. Cause there’s, there’s, there’s like two, two different things you see from Vestas right now, in terms of like mods. One is the copper cap on the end of the blade.
And the second is like this, uh, copper. I want to call it a band. I mean, it looks like a band it’s kind of cerated a little bit, uh, like you could roll it up sort of thing or fold it up. In a, in a, uh, a accordion fashion is kind of what it looks like. So it’s got these little ridges to it. And from looking at the, the Vestus patent for it, what essentially is doing is they can put this, uh, Copper strap on the surface of the blade.
And because it undulates up and down where underlaid goes down, they lay that against the receptors. So they got some pressure against the receptor and so sort of complicated, but essentially it’s just a big piece of it. Copper to attract lightening to the receptor. That’s what’s like a, it looks like a bandaid.
It probably is a bandaid. Uh, in a sense, in terms of it’s an engineering. Correction for an issue that they didn’t foresee. Yes. So, gotcha.
Dan: Yeah. So can we start, as far as fastening these caps, that seems like it’s going to be a, uh, tough, uh, go there. I mean, is he, is he poxy gonna work longterm? I mean, number one at the tip of the blade, it’s subject to obviously like huge centrifical force and 150 to 180 mile power tip speeds.
Right. But also like. Say it’s epoxied well into place. Lightning strikes the copper. It immediately heats up. I mean, how fast is that copper going to heat up to what, what temperature? I mean, is it gonna melt? I mean,
Allen Hall: Oh yeah. Some part of it’s going to melt, no matter what you do with the, where the lightening attaches, the heat is so intense.
They are. So intense that it will melt copper and no sweat. Uh, so the lightning strikes, these things are going to get hot and the heat is going to be distributed. Some part of that is gonna be distributed into the blade structure at the tip. And then, yeah, there’s not a lot of adhesives like it, yeah.
That hot. So if you’re, if you’re, and they must have some sort of adhesive in it to keep water from accumulating in the thing and some sort of drain hole too, you would think otherwise water would accumulate in it. And the freestyle freestyle it. Try to crack it off. So I think the one I saw that was bolted seem to make a little more sense to me, but you still got it.
Seal us saying and provide some sort of connection. And I think everything’s going to get hot because the lightning strikes are really, really, really hot, like 10,000. It’s a degree Celsius hot. So you, there’s not much that can take that, uh, in the world. Right. There’s very few, very few metals that can take those kinds of temperatures without melting.
And I think that’s where longterm, you gotta wonder like, well, You know, for a couple of strikes, probably cool. But for a lot of strikes, maybe not depending on where you’re out in the world and whatever’s holding this thing on, is it going to still remain there? Because the cap is about, I’m going to speak in American terms here about five pounds.
I don’t know what that is in kilograms, but it’s about five
Dan: pounds, two and change.
Allen Hall: Okay. To a change, right? So a little over two kilograms. So five pounds smooth it out in 180 miles an hour is a lot of
Dan: force. Yeah, you can Chuck that thing, like a quarter mile top know, there it goes a little, yeah, a little kid and all of us want to see that happen at least once into like the ocean safely, you know?
Sure.
Allen Hall: Just one so we can put our YouTube, uh, but, or tick-tock I guess, so,
Dan: yeah.
Allen Hall: So it comes with the, you know, the, the logic from the lightning protection side is like, well, can I add basically a copper cap? What can go wrong with that? It’s not the copper calf and light protection side. It’s like all the heat and all the stuff you’re gonna apply to that cap.
And how does it, how does it carry all that? And how long is it going to last and all the water and stuff
Dan: different. So obviously with strike tape, you know, weather guards, a segment of lightning, diverter, those are really thin. And so, you know, The engineering there’s a suit. It seems like, well, why couldn’t this five pound chunk of copper handle a lightning strike when this tiny, thin little metallic strip can.
I mean, what’s the difference there?
Allen Hall: Well, one of them is carrying the lightening, current, the other one’s letting the air carry all the lightening current. So for a solid conductor, all the current is in the con is in the metal. So all the currents running in the metal itself in the metal house, some resistance, uh, and it gets hot.
It just does a, on a lightening diverter segment, a diverter 99% of the energy is up in the air. It’s not actually going through the device itself. So it’s actually taking the air above it and turn it into the conductive plasma and letting all energy travel in that plasma, which doesn’t care how to get its air.
It doesn’t matter, right? It’s not, it’s not structured or it’s not attached to the blade. So, uh, so these two separate things are happening. One, you can, you can fight a lot of copper and try to keep the temperature down, which. Five pounds of copper is a lot of copper, but it comes with other drawbacks and you got weight and momentum and things that want to fall off.
Possibly. You got to just worry about it and not say you can’t design against it, but you know, it’s something to think about versus like a segment of diverter, which ways absolutely nothing, um, is less than a millimeter thick and doesn’t carry a lot of the lightening energy. It just directs it to where it.
Where it needs to go to the receptor. So there’s just different design philosophies. Maybe at the time to, to cast a piece of copper was five pounds. So what do you got 20 bucks in copper, plus the guy that’s going to cast it. Plus the sh probably the shipping six pits, everything and the person to install it.
And the time it takes to install it. So you start adding up the cost. So the copper itself and. Is relatively inexpensive. It’s all the other stuff that comes with it that starts to add up in cost. So you get to this, is it financially worth it to do it that way? Or is it cheaper to do it another way? You know, everybody’s going to still have the debate.
Everybody has an opinion about it. Welcome to the lightening protection community,
Dan: right? Yeah. Well, one also seems like this is a solution where, I mean, have these been used for very long? We had it, they know this is going to make it. 10 years, right?
Allen Hall: Uh, like I said, I think I saw this like 2007 or five the first time I saw it.
So they must have data with it. But I think the big thing is the big bud here. Uh, Where did you try it first? And is it universally applicable? Is it work as well in Japan, in the wintertime, as it does, uh, in Spain, in the summertime, it’s just, there’s a lot
Dan: offshore versus onshore.
Allen Hall: And I mean, the, the environments are so different and we’re expanding where we’re putting wind turbines and they’re getting bigger and being a burglar, obviously that the environmental effects get to be more of a.
Threat to the lightning protection system. The lightning is, and yeah. How much experience do you have with that? And that was the problem with the United States that a lot of wind turbine manufacturers in the States was they initially started out in California and in Northern California, or at least until recently there weren’t many lightning strikes in California.
There just are not that many lightning strikes. So lightening wasn’t an issue. So they didn’t worry about it until. And they expanded out. They expanded their area coverage and started moving to the middle West, particularly Texas. And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Take on these lightning strikes like, Hey, what the heck’s going on?
Right. Well, because you got used to one environment doesn’t mean you can adapt that to everywhere else in the world that there’s just two different things. And hopefully, you know, invest, it’s a big company, they got smart engineers. Hopefully they thought through this a little bit, but $175 million. To me.
It sounds like a lot, unless you replace some blades, like you’re taking one blade off and putting another one on it. Doesn’t that seem like the way to you. Cause you can buy a lot of copper tips for $175 million.
Dan: Yeah. It’s only like a couple bucks a pound. So obviously with engineering and all that stuff, but it’s still, yeah, it doesn’t seem like that much money.
Allen Hall: The engineers, all those rich engineers.
Dan: Gotcha. Gotcha. But I mean, the, uh, you know, the, the wind turbine blade, copper tips, it’s an interesting thing. And you just wonder, I think the, for me, the fascinating just seems like the toughest thing, you know, obviously. Probably don’t want to shoot bolts through it and then bolts through the blade itself because that’s going to let water out.
It’s going to have its own its own issues. So it seems like it’s gotta be epoxied on there. Some other fascinating system. And that seems difficult. Or maybe they have like a, a little bite in the blade. Maybe, maybe they’re doing, you know, like the way they install teeth caps. Like when they install a crown down and snap it permanently into place.
Pretty smart. I don’t know.
Allen Hall: Yeah. There’s just
Dan: technology. They made different ways of getting it done.
Allen Hall: I think on a CA on a con here’s the problem with composite parts? It’s not always the same. Always come out the same amount out of the mold. Not always exactly the same shape. There’s always just like these little stresses and things build up in parts.
And so when you actually pull the. Bleed out of the mold. It doesn’t always look the same as, and after it’s been spinning for a while, it tends to want to creep and crawl a little bit. So if you predesigned this cap, when you get up there, I’m not sure it’s going to fit all the time. That would be mine.
Dan: Alright. So in our engineering segment, we’re going to talk about Liftwerx and their crane operations. Also, we’re gonna chat a little bit about. Uh, some small wind turbines. So Allen let’s start with Liftwerx. So they’re one of a couple of companies. Uh, they have a great, great website, which, um, always appreciate good design, but they have a bunch of different models of cranes that all have different applications.
Um, some are bigger, smaller, you know, just depends on the job, but. You know, their technology’s pretty much all about bringing a small crane up to the top of the nacelle, where it can also be bolt where it could be bolted down and then essentially be the chief crane to, you know, swap a gearbox, swap a blade, do all this stuff and then send the crane back down when they’re done.
And then everyone goes on the way, rather than having a big crane, you know, like a boom arm, crane, 180 foot bucket or whatever. On the job for, you know, a week or two. So which obviously gets really expensive and all that. So what do you think about this, uh, this technology and these solutions?
Allen Hall: It’s a good engineering solution, right?
Cause I think what the driver is just the cost and the availability of the larger cranes to show up on site in any one time. And if, if you have a lot more flexibility in terms of timing, uh, or you need it, like, yeah, it has to happen this week and that crane has already booked at the next wind turbine site and you just don’t have access to it while what are you gonna do?
Well, these sort of mobile crane. Uh, erector set kind of thing. It’s what kind of, what it is. Cause slick engineering wise, how that, how they. Assemble it on top of the NSL. It’s pretty, uh, yeah, there’s a lot to, it. It’s a lot to it because you’re sort of the crane, the nerve cells tend to have hoists. They have to have hoists in them because you’re trying to lift components up right.
To the nacelle or lower them down. So there’s already some sort of hoist system in most of them, uh, at least the ones I’ve ever been in. So it sounds like they’re using that hoist to like bring up some part of the crane. Get some parts assemble and then use that to then lift more parts of the crane up to, they get the whole assembly up there and it’s kind of matted up top.
And then once it’s up there, And they can lift off like blades and lower blades and I’m like,
Dan: wow,
Allen Hall: obviously the tower can take it. Cause the tower has already taken the load. Right. So there, they’ve got some sort of load path that they’ve defined all the way down to the tower, but, uh, just the, the simplicity to it, it looked like at least.
Watching some of these things go, there’s some YouTube videos of similar things where they, the hoist, these things, it doesn’t take all day to do it. Uh, it looks like within a couple of hours, they’ve essentially have a crane on top of the nacelle. Amazing. Right?
Dan: Yeah. That’s, that’s pretty cool. And I’m interested to see how they actually get the crane itself up there because that’s one where there’s other competing companies.
I’ve seen some videos, but, um, The just, the whole thing is kind of fascinating where suddenly there’s a crane up top, like had, like you said, it has an internal crane, but I’m personally, uh, I gotta do a little more digging on YouTube and find out how they would get up there. Like start to finish. I’d love to see a time lapse of how all that Lworks, but yeah, I mean, the speeds for the, for the crane itself, when they’re hoisting, you know, components that they’re swapping, it’s like 30, 30 feet per second, or so.
Wow. Or sorry. No, no, no. 30, 30 feet per minute. And this book, right. Um, yeah, it makes more sense. Um, but still pretty fast. Yeah. And, you know, just doesn’t, like I said, doesn’t have to have that really expensive. Cause I think, you know, the key here is if they’re probably not doing gearbox swaps on a whole farm, obviously, but you know, they might have to hit a couple.
Right. And so then you want to have one of these incredibly expensive boom cranes on site for. Multiple days or multiple weeks or right. Or whatever. And like you said, there’s just limited to go around. So especially in some remote areas, where do you even get a crane of certain size out of some remote spot?
Like, that’s why I think this makes a lot of sense where they can just truck it up there in their, uh, in that it’s a really new, unique, just like a shipping container and then they just deploy it and go. So it makes a lot of sense.
Allen Hall: It does. And like, if I’m on an Island or I don’t like a state like Hawaii or Puerto Rico, What would you do, right.
Are you going to, it’s hard to get a crane on a boat out there to go do the lifting. That’s makes a lot more sense where you could put in a shipping container, send it over there and assemble it. It’s just less stuff. Yeah. It’s pretty cool technology
Dan: yeah. So let’s shift here, uh, to our final topic today. So. This company, um, my best watt, they are out of the, the, or throughout Europe, but they’re out of the Netherlands. They will allow you to. So if you’re a farm owner or you’re a small business owner or whatever, you can just kind of customize your own wind turbine so you can pick a permanent base or a more temporary base.
So that’s good. It’s going to change the architecture of it, whether it’s like sunk in a little more into the ground where they’re going to pour it, or just bring a really heavy. Base and leave it there temporarily. You can change the color so you can get a colored blade, colored tower. Um, you can change the size of the cell and you can also customize some other things like how it ties into your overall energy system on your piece of land.
So you can have solar tied into it. You can have a generator, some energy storage, uh, different battery options. So. It’s a really interesting solution. We’re like I said, when you think of an industrial things like this, usually they only come in one color, right? Like, right. There’s no real customer. It’s just like galvanized.
There’s just white, right? I mean, it’s aesthetically pleasing. I mean, What first down, what color would you get for your, for your piece of land? Up in the, up in the mouth.
Allen Hall: If I had my
Dan: bright pink, bright pink purple rain,
Allen Hall: I’d probably be red. And the engineer in me says red is the color. So you can see it, right.
You want to be able to see what’s going on up there? Uh, I wouldn’t paint it light blue, so I couldn’t see it against the sky. Right. But I think local ordinances would force people to paint them certain colors. Uh, especially up in my neck of the woods. Well, in my neck of the woods, you can’t have a wind turbine in town.
Uh, which is insanity. Okay. So, uh, but in a left to prone devices. Yeah. I mean, you, who wouldn’t, if you let the kids pick out the colors, they’d be rainbow colors and all kinds of crazy things, which would be awesome. Right. I mean, it just kind of lighten up the, the, uh, wind turbine world a little bit. But it is, it is interesting that they it’s like, um, construct your own systems sort of thing.
Like what it’s like these little building blocks of, of energy creation and storage, which I hadn’t seen before, because I, maybe the problem they ran into is when they started. Talking to potential customers, that everybody’s situation was so different. There’s not like a one size fits all.
Dan: Yeah. It’s gonna be a lot harder in the consumer market for sure.
And then just like with the, the height of it, it’s like, you might have great wind 30 meters up or 30 feet up or whatever, and you might have to say, okay, well this works for you, but it’s not gonna work for me. So, right. And I guess, you know, if they just have three options, which that seems like that’s what they do.
So like with towers, uh, let’s see what their, their height options are here. Um, you know, their towers are five to 10 meters, 15 to 20, 25 to 30
Allen Hall: cover most situations. Yeah.
Dan: Yeah. I mean, he might be fine with 10 meters and be good to go, or you might get great energy potential where you might just, like, they might say, Hey.
It looks like you can double because what wind power proves by the cube is that right? So if you double your, so I might say, Hey, you could do a 10 meter, but if you jump up to 20, you’re going to double your or cube your power. So
Allen Hall: tons of power probably. Yeah. If you can get to better wins then yeah. You were told that you want to get it higher, right.
If you’re going to do it, do it. And again, it gets, my guess is part of it is local ordinances. And, uh, laws that would restrict height to some of these things and probably color. So you, and then the energy storage systems that go along with them are, are interesting, uh, because it all would based on how much energy you’re going to possibly produce, right?
So you got a great engine. You’re, you’re producing a lot of power. You probably want to store some of it for later on. Uh, so the, the, the variety of that sort of it sort of Amazon ish on some sense, like you can pick what color you want. You can pick the little features you want sometimes at Amazon for something.
Some things, uh, that sort of click into the consumer market of, Hey, this, this is doable and I’m not getting a particular setup shoved at me. I have, because some of my property, I want to have some say in it. This is the way they have their say and get what they want. I’m sure there’s some knowledge has to come along with it, like, okay, you, you’re just not in a winning enough location.
You need to go taller on the tower to get anything out of it. That’s good. That’s good advice. Right. I would want that advice because I wouldn’t know, in my hilly neighborhood, whether I need to go higher or lower and how would you know? Uh, so you just need some advice there, but. It is an interesting concept.
And I, I have, we seen it marketed anywhere else like that, like, um, on the Southern end. Not,
Dan: not, not my research. No, but I’m sure it’s probably not far from being out there. I’m not sure if the U S in general, maybe just not as windy of some spots in Europe. I mean, obviously it’s not Scotland, but, um, but yeah, that’s great wind
Allen Hall: by the way.
Dan: Yeah. Well, yeah, but I mean, is it, is this something you see, you think is going to be more prevalent now that you know, like Tesla’s power wall, their battery technology’s increasing, it seems like there’s a lot of really good minds on battery technology at the moment. I mean, is this going to become more viable where people are like, Hey, you can have a battery system for your house, a solar panel and a small wind turbine.
And in 10 years, if you’re going to be staying put like you won’t have it, energy bill, is that, or
Allen Hall: maybe, maybe the, well, the next. The announcement for batteries is just coming up in the next week or so. Right. Tesla’s making their big announcement about, uh, the next generation of batteries. And I, I’m not sure where that’s going to take us right now.
There’s a lot of talk about the, what it means for all kinds of industries. What I haven’t seen is that. Tesla wall battery, what it means to the test of all battery, because it seems to be that the discussion would be related in two areas. Seeing discussions about the battery, making it possible to make aviation driven by battery.
I’m not sure. That’s gonna happen, but, uh, and then the auto, obviously the automobile, right? So the automobiles, the victim, but there’s, I have not seen much about the battery wall. And I think at some places on the planet, it makes sense to have the battery wall, but they got to get the reliable, the longevity of it up to bring overall costs down.
And maybe that’s where they’re headed is that it can be cycled and cycled and cycle in that I’m not replacing it every. Five years, whatever that lifespan is, it’s gonna live 20. So you can, amateurize the cost out over a longer period of time, which brings down with the effective cost of it per year is so therefore, yeah, I can do it.
Um, so. In the next couple of months, we should know a lot of those details. Cause it seems like it’s not just Tesla’s working on it. There’s a couple of others are chattering online about having better battery technology. So design your own wind turbine, tie it to a, uh, just a more useful form of a battery.
It could be a big boon, right? It could be a big boom for a lot of people.
Dan: All right. Well, that’s going to do it for today’s episode of uptime. If you’re near here. Thanks for listening and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Obviously we’re also on YouTube as well with video versions.
So check us out there. Be sure to find us on the web at weatherguardwind.com, where we have tons of tutorial, videos, articles, or podcasts, all sorts of help docs. And of course you can reach out to us there as well. If you need help with a year wind turbine lightning protection. So thanks again for listening.
And we will see you here next week on the uptime podcast.
