Do wind turbines get damaged by high humidity levels? What can be done about it? This week’s guest, Michael Holm from Cotes, explains that humidity control is often overlooked but very much a factor in driving energy costs down. Learn more about Cotes here. We also discussed the GE vs Siemens Gamesa patent lawsuit, pile-driving noise, and more.
Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
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EP79 – Wind Turbine Humidity Issues with Michael Holm
This episode is brought to you by weather guard lightning tech at Weather Guard. We make lightning protection easy. If you’re wind turbines or do for maintenance or repairs, install our strike tape retrofit LPS upgrade. At the same time, a strike tape 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 strike tape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast. Welcome back. I’m Dan Blewett
I’m Allen Hall,
and I’m Rosemary Barnes,
and this is the uptime podcast bringing you the latest in wind energy, tech news and policy. All right, welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your co-host, Dan BlueT, on today’s show, we’ve got an exciting episode.
First, we’re going to chat through a couple of different environmental issues. Missouris been having some issues with bats. Amran, which is one of the big electrical utilities out in the Midwest, has had to shut down some turbines due to bats.
We’ll talk about some of the issues there. We’re also going to chat a little bit about pile driving noise as it relates to offshore wind construction, which is a big issue with the R friendly undersea mammals, because obviously sound travels very fast underwater.
And while driving is very, very loud. We’ll also chat a little bit about a interesting case in Australia where a man living in a remote. Off the grid cabin is suing one of the wind farms out there for just the essentially the wooshing noise that comes from these blades tearing through the through the atmosphere.
So we’ll talk a little bit about that and what might come of it. And then we have a great friend of the up time podcast today. And Michael Holm from Cotes is joining us to talk about humidity issues and wind turbines.
So look for that in about 15 minutes. Great conversation with him on all the ins and outs of humidity and what damage it can do to wind turbines onshore and offshore and some of their technology behind it. And then lastly, we’ll talk a little bit about the GE Siemens Gamesa patent lawsuit, which has just gotten a new
ruling. And, of course, Siemens Gamesa is going to appeal that ruling. We’ll talk through some of the implications there at the end. But a very full show today. And our first friend of up times, we’re excited to talk to humanity expert Michael Home and a little bit.
But before we get going, let me remind you one last time. Sign up for uptime tech news, which you’ll find in the show notes or description of this podcast. And again, that’s our weekly update newsletter where you’ll just get hey, here’s the new podcast.
Here’s some great insider news around the the wind industry and renewable energy industry. And you can sign up for that in the show notes of this podcast. A great way to stay connected. If you enjoy the show and want to stay up to date on everything, wind energy, renewable energy and tech.
No, Rosemary Barnes today, she’s out of the office, but we’ll look for her in next week. And, of course, be sure to sign up for her YouTube channel, subscribe in the show notes as well. So let’s start with Missouri.
So one of their largest wind farms is not running at night because they’ve had issues with bats and they don’t want to kill. There’s an endangered species out there that they don’t want to kill. So kudos to Amron for making the decision to to shut these off.
They’ve said it seems like they’ve taken the high road and say, yeah, we’re going to we’re going to err on the side of caution and with this species. But people are not happy that because they’re not running 24/7, they’re losing a signal, a significant amount of capacity that it sounds like everyone wants to pass on to ratepayers
. So, Alan, this seems like it’s a pretty big issue.
Yeah. And it’s this is going to grow in terms of an issue, particularly in the United States, because there’s such a wide variety of of of wildlife, birds, bats that are around wind turbines. Quite a good bit. And as the number of wind turbines increases and the density of them increases, you’re going to find places as now
birds and bats are sort of migratory creatures. When you initially cited the wind turbine location, you had done a survey. Obviously, you do surveys of bats and birds in the area and things change over time. So now Amran is forced to shut down their wind turbines from essentially dusk until dawn, which is then, you know, they are
losing a big revenue source from that because they’re not creating power and selling power, and yet they have this capital expense of all these wind turbines. So now Amron is going back to the ratepayers and saying we need more money to cover our costs because we can’t generate as much electricity.
There’s sort of a circular fight that’s going to develop here. The you have to wonder if something in this equation is missing right now. You know, what’s what’s the dog that’s not barking in this little bit of a fight, which is there are means to mitigate bats and birds around wind turbines.
We’ve we’ve talked about them on the podcast a couple of different times. And you wonder, have they implemented some of those changes? I know there’s been some researchers down at Texas State University. I believe that’s where they are.
They have done a number of studies of how to repel bats away from wind turbines and to mitigate some of the losses there. But none of the articles we’ve seen talk about that, which is a little strange because maybe Amarin is playing the longer game here and is is going to want to implement something like that.
But they’re going to obviously have to seek regulatory approval before they go ahead. In a stall bat repellant or bird repellent systems. And in Missouri, right. So don’t dandy see how this gets like super complicated, really fast. And then eventually it all seems forever revolve around the money.
Yeah. I mean, because if Amron said, hey, you know, this was going to be the rate based on 24 hours of production per day and now it’s at sixteen. That’s yeah. That’s a big rate increase for them to make things add up.
And of course, the pushback is that, hey, you guys knew where you’re building this wind farm and you knew what potential environmental risks there were when you got this permit. And they did get you know, they got a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services to operate in a way that was going to be eco friendly
. But they still. Yeah, they knew there. So it’s like, why should we pay for your mistake if you didn’t, you know, figure this out ahead of time or why you just put the somewhere else? You know, there’s other land like Missouri has quite a bit of flat land, as you know, growing up in which Tom and I
lived in Illinois for many years. That’s not to say it’s not owned by someone, obviously. But, you know, there’s a lot of places you could potentially put a wind farm, but they settle on this one and it’s not working out that well.
So there, you know, why should the ratepayers fix and pay for their mistake? That’s the big the big question. All right. So moving on and a somewhat similar vein, just a different sort of scenario. Is it? We’ve got to figure out a way to mitigate sound when and in doing these offshore wind installations.
And, you know, marine animals are having a tough time coping with some of these human stressors. So there’s a lot of technology out there that needs to be improved, needs to be developed to attenuate some of this noise.
Because, I mean, Alan, have you heard pile driving? Is there any like major construction around you? There’s some here in D.C. that I walked by. I actually walked by a a new building where they were driving piles. And, of course, it’s like a they have like an explosive shot that drives the piledriver.
So every, you know, hundreds of times a day is there as they’re starting the foundations of these building sets. You hear this little mini explosion. Sounds like a very loud gunshot followed by this piston kult, you know, colliding at high speed with this steel beam.
Right. It’s incredibly loud. Like I don’t want to even be a couple of blocks from it. So you can imagine some of these whales, animals that have incredible you know, they they navigate the world through sonar. Right. This has got to be incredibly disruptive to them.
I mean, if not just downright harmful. So some of these systems where they’re encasing the piles, almost like give it a sort of like a barrier. So they’re driving the pile inside it and they’ve gotten this sort of this tube around it to help attenuate some of it.
They’re trying gravity based foundations. There’s a lot of efforts to make to reduce this. But, you know, pile driving is over 200 decibels, which is, again, crazy, crazy, loud. I mean, how much do you feel like we can actually do this, though?
I mean, driving Pyles into the earth about whether it’s subsea or not or otherwise is is it takes a lot of energy to do that.
It does. And that’s why it’s it’s so noisy. Right. Is that you’re trying to drive an object in the ground and the ground doesn’t want it in there. So you just have to overcome it with force. And that force creates obviously a lot of noise.
And the the difficulty onshore and suburban environments and big cities is it does create so much noise that they actually limit the times in which those things can operate. Right. So they don’t operate them at 10:00 at night, for example.
So humans do not like the noise. And obviously, wildlife and creatures in the sea are not going to like it either. I think this is a one of those pieces of technology we don’t think about very much. Right, that that the wind turbine industry in general is is is looking out for the wildlife and the environment in
which there are operating in. So they’re trying to develop different pieces of engineering to to dampen the noise as they put these pilings into the ocean. And it makes me wonder, with this advent of and the the proximity of floating wind, that because this noise of driving the pilings and doing all this work can be rather difficult
. Does it make sense that to to move to something like a floating wind platform where you don’t have to drive pilings in like that just because one is probably cheaper to to do in terms of, you know, driving pilings.
But secondarily, the environmental aspects may overcome the sort of the the technical aspects where you’re going to have rules at some point that are going to limit how much noise you can make when driving are piling into the ocean floor.
That will happen in the United States, I guarantee it. And don’t you think it’s going to happen in Europe if it hasn’t happened already?
Yeah, probably. And of course, that sounds like these. Gravity based foundations are like the way to go because you’re essentially just sinking a gigantic concrete block that’s going to sit on the top of the seabed. And if it’s big and heavy enough, that should do fine, right.
I actually heard of a fun fact about our capital that on top of the Washington, D.C. capital building, there’s a you know, there’s a statue. I don’t I can’t remember the figure who’s up there. I think it’s still like a lady.
Lady Liberty kind of thing. Don’t quote me on it. But apparently it’s so heavy that it’s not actually anchored. It’s like solid cast iron that it’s so heavy that it didn’t need to be anchored. So it’s just like, wow, many, many tons don’t matter how hard the wind blows, it ain’t moving.
Right. So kind of the same thing. And obviously, if you’re just thinking stuff. But, you know, one of the challenges that that those gigantic gravity base like blocks essentially would need to be manufactured locally. But again, 3D printing, you know, like that could be, you know, and making these these things at the port is going to make
a lot more sense as we continue to push towards like the local materials, local workers, you know, 3-D printing, where you can just make some of these things a lot easier without having to build a gigantic concrete plant, then hopefully that will probably win out because.
Yeah, you just think about. Yeah, you make a bridge, you’re going to drive pilings for a while, but then you’re going to stop if you’re installing 100 turbines offshore, for example, which would be a really which would be a really big farm in one location.
Yeah, of course there could be thousands. In the grand scheme of things. But in one location, you’re driving pilings for years on end, maybe. Right. Like just continuing to drive pilings. And if there’s whales and all these bigger creatures in that area, not the smaller creatures don’t matter because they do.
But I mean, you could see like there could be tons of whales turning up dead on a on a beach because this relentless pounding over many, many months and years could just ruin 10 minutes. It’d be really sad.
So hopefully, yeah, they can figure this out because, of course, with aircraft industry. It’s a constantly trying to reduce some of that noise, and there’s huge environmental studies, if you want to put a another runway into an airport, if you want to increase the capacity to an airport.
You know, I had a friend who did these environmental studies and they had to figure out how much noise if we want to add a runway or we want to increase how many planes can land here each day.
What’s that going to do to the noise, to the surrounding communities and the wildlife? So it’s a really complex problem. So so moving on here, this is an interesting trial over in Australia. There’s a Victorian wind farm that’s been a nuisance to some neighbors.
And one of these neighbors bought a property in 2008 with the knowledge that a wind farm would be built there. So the farm was approved in 2004. Construction started in 2011. And again, this man bought the property in 2008.
And, of course, it was started operating in 2015. And now he says he can’t sleep, often has to sleep in his car, kind of drive far away to get to get away from them. And it’s just this is kind of like the human equivalent of the pile driving, right?
I mean, a whale might not be able to get away from from this. That’s like their native area. So what do you read this article? What what do you think about this situation? Obviously, it’s difficult. This man is living off the grid in a cabin he built really kind of out in the wilderness.
How how how can a person coexist with a wind farm like this? And is it is it kind of a he said she said thing?
It is. It’s very similar, I think, to people who buy a house near an airport and then complain about the their air traffic over top of the house. You know, you know, it’s there. And, you know, that’s going to be airplanes flying over it.
But you still decided to to buy the home knowing that. And then you want to complain all the time and close down the airport, which has happened multiple times in the United States, where they have closed airports are limited airports.
California comes to mind where they’ve limited airport access to certain times a day because the neighbors are complaining. OK, and winter is are going to go through that same sort of evolution. Now, they haven’t had a universal edict like airplanes have, like airplanes manufactured.
Any part of the world have noise requirements like as part of getting certified to be an operational aircraft, you have to meet certain noise requirements. Wind turbines haven’t done that yet. Well, we’re rapidly getting on that pathway, and if we’re going down that pathway, that means we need to develop quieter Bladen systems.
Right. Because I think this kind of problem that’s highlighted in Australia is going to is repeated all over the United States right now. You see all kinds of complaints about the noise flicker and those need to work themselves out.
Right. But I think as as the industry, the wind turbine industry evolves, there’s going to be certain things that we do to make the blades quieter, very similar to what we do. And and sort of jet engines. I know that the technologies are different and the environment is different.
How they operate different. Right. But we have made a lot of progress in terms of the way the aerodynamics on a winter and blade even work. We’re using supercomputers to design them now, which we used to do. So, you know, they’re getting better.
The question is, are you in a going to end up in court all the time for these noise issues? And I you know, I feel sorry for this guy and not Australia. What are you going to do? All right.
I guess you’re going have to move yourself away from the situation, which is not not ideal.
Yeah, it’s hard to know because one person’s experience, like no one’s privy to the way he internalize it. You know, whether it’s as loud as he says it is like that. They’re roaring. I mean, knowing no one can say so.
Really, at that point, it’s like. Well. Should you have built your house here? You know, knowing that this wind farm was approved and this could be a potential thing, which it turned out to be, so. Yeah, it’s complicated.
But again, like you don’t know, everyone could internalize a different I mean, I had a similar problem. I had an apartment where a nightclub moved on underneath it. I had to move to. Two months later, it was incredibly loud.
I think most people would have had the same issues that I had, but not everyone. Some people can sleep through, you know, a freight train rolling down the street, you know, and so it’s it’s hard to know. Go to it again.
Like we don’t know what the whales underneath the sea, how they feel about while driving. We don’t exactly know this man’s experience. So there’s definitely some some give and take there. So we’re going to transition now to our conversation with Michael Holm from Cotes.
He is the chief commercial officer for Cotes And of course, if you don’t know much about Cotes, they do commercial dehumidification drir systems for lots of different industries, one of which is wind. So they’ve got some really interesting tech.
And of course, with offshore being such a big deal and such a boom in offshore development now and with such a harsh environment over, you know, of offshore. This is going to become more and more of a of a significant conversation with insurance underwriters between the manufacturers and operators just to make sure these machines can operate not
just for the first couple of years without problem, but, you know, along into the future. And one thing to note, you know, we’ve had a lot of guests on the show and, you know, Al and I are wearing our our collars here.
But Michael Holmes, a fun guy, and his rocking his AC DC T-shirt for the interview because he’s more than just a suit. He knows his stuff, but he went Iraq, as has AC DC. So we appreciate that about him.
So without further ado, we’re going to kick off our conversation with a friend of uptime, Michael Holm from Cotes. All right, so we’re here with Michael Holm from Cotes. Let’s talk a little bit about humidity. We’ve chatted about getting ready for this episode, about it being a bit of a hidden devil.
One of those things that kind of gets tossed aside, not as much considered, and some of the planning and some of the construction. And one of those things like, you know, why do we need that? But obviously, not everything can be coated inside of a wind turbine.
Right, whether you’re in the nacelle or the tower. Not everything can be galvanized, like not everything can be, you know, weatherproof from from humidity, which is, you know, as a gas is just going to reach out and touch pretty much any surface within these.
So. So what do people need to know about the components that are maybe at the highest risk from, you know, some sustained humidity within within a wind turbine?
Yeah, but first of all, let me say, you know, maybe you also you also you good to go in the first couple of years because you won’t see any problems. So you won’t see any humidity issues before in, say, four or five years down the road.
Typically after warranty runs out when the turbines. But after that, then you will even say the long term effects and that, you know, electrical systems are the most the items are the components that you, of course, have to be most critical about, because, you know, water and and chronics don’t mix very well.
But then it also goes into and it could be on some of the mechanical stuff, because then you see you start to see corrosion. And also from a health and safety point of view, you’ll see mold growth.
So this is something that people definitely need a plan for the future. Like like you said, they’re not going to see any any issues in the first couple of years. But what are some besides corrosion? I mean, Art Flash’s, is that something that people could potentially worry about
in terms of access? And of course, if you have a lot of humidity, you can see these kind of things happening. And we have seen, you know, transformers are converging milage. It’s basically blowing up due to high humidity.
And that’s just when it starts to condense. Or is it the humidity itself?
That is, of course, you have high humidity levels. And then, of course, then you will see when you start powering up that that turbine or that component, then, you know, the power will simply just jump, you know, and do a shortcut because, you know, water leaves electricity.
Simple as that.
Allan, you’re an electrical engineer. I mean, is this something that’s been plaguing a lot of industries? Is this new tool to wind turbines? I mean, you know, you’ve been obviously dedicate a lot of your career to lightning protection, but how much of the environment do people need to worry about any like heavy machinery
and any large piece of machinery, water and condensation are a huge problem. I know we talk a lot about aircraft on our other podcast, but aircraft accumulate water in in buckets. Gallant’s on a on a flight from condensation.
And it’s a it’s a tremendous problem there on wind turbines at the same sort of issue. But it’s slightly different in the sense that a lot of wind turbines are located near the water or in the water. And there’s so much electrical equipment, particularly expensive electrical equipment in a wind turbine today, condensation and water accumulation combined with
dirt and salt, leads to electrical problems throughout the turbine. So it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when these problems are going to occur. So keeping that humidity controlled inside of the winter is really critical for that long service life.
And so, Michael, I mean, a lot of a lot of services are coded, right? I mean, are there any so services within a term? One, there’s the tower than a cell that that aren’t coated, that are maybe getting touched by humidity and then seeing that corrosion later on?
I mean, why couldn’t they just coat everything?
Yeah, they could. But that’s also a cost perspective into this. And, you know, in the leg of, say, knowing better, I know people have just noticed doing, you know, five or Seifi even. Yeah. See five offshore on the in terms of a turbine because they didn’t know any better.
And that’s just driving up costs on unnecessary. So if you can control the environment, you can go for a accuracy class or you could go for lower AP classes or do electrical electrical components. But then people just try to, you know, to protect themselves in the best possible way and then they know knew how to solve it
. Can you speak a little more about that? About that? So I’m not that familiar with the different classes of coatings and corrosion protection. So what you said, a lot of people just try to combat this from a coding standpoint and just throw the thickest like most protective coating on, is that right?
Exactly. They could probably go a little cheaper and make it easier on themselves just by the dehumidification.
Exactly. So we see this, you know, in other industries where, you know, inside on the inside of bridges, all the big constructions that don’t even paint and just keep it dry because they’re able to save them at, you know, tons of paint.
So it will lighten the weight of the structure, but also in terms of owing them and maintenance. And also just imagine that, you know, you have a guy, a service technician crawling up the inside of the turbine. He chips the paint.
Then you need to send out a new guy to to a to repair this this damage. And so it’s just layer after layer after layer. But I’ve been into the wind industry for 13 years or so. And, you know, I think you in some time to know some kind of environment that, you know, at that point when
you start doing this, you know, you had other bigger issues or battles to fight. And now this comes up.
Yeah. So it’s one of those things is kind of insidious where you don’t think much about it. And then five weeks later, you’re like, man, we’ve got a lot of issues.
And like 15 years ago or 20 years ago, you know, a turbine was built like, you know, John Deere tractor. Old school kind of thing. You know, it was no heavy duty metal and not so much electronic components.
And that has now changed. Mm hmm. But you still live, right? You know, with all the science. Yeah.
So the more mechanical systems probably were much more resilient to the humidity and some of these other environmental conditions. Yeah, that makes sense. So, OK, so so what does an operator do if they don’t have a dehumidifier installed?
Like is there has there been sort of like a like folk solutions, like they turn up the heaters like or do they ventilate? Like what are they they do if they are, what are some of the things that people do that maybe work or maybe don’t work or they maybe just sort of trying hope, hoping to get
some sort of result from it?
Exactly what you are saying, you know, follicular solutions like, you know, getting, you know, you know, external here to try to blow up the the tower, to dry it out are big fans of ventilators in some parts. They also in some also install small, you know, what is called heating elements inside the electrical electrical cabinets, you know
, to heat it up and, you know, make the water evaporate. The downside to that is, of course, your stress, the electronic components, because you start heating them up, you can, in fact, retrofit a turbine with a dehumidify. It’s not a big deal.
Gotcha. So those those I mean, are people starting to get away from those solution? I mean, is that going to make it sounds like that exacerbate the problem, because I don’t know, Allan, is the cocktail what humidity plus salt plus heat.
That’s probably like the the worst cocktail, am I right?
Well, being cool is tends to be the worst because it’s a condensates. And then you have these conducta that’s created by the salt and the and the water. But Michael’s right. The heater implementation, which I’ve seen on electrical cabinets, has its own problems.
And it really decreases the lifetime of the electronic electrical electronic components. Transistor type equipment doesn’t like to be hot. And so the more it’s hot, the shorter its lifespan will be. So it’s going in the wrong direction and fixing one problem, but it’s creating probably a more expensive problem.
Secondarily, which is not the right way to go, you need to remove the water from the air. That’s what you need to do.
OK, so when you know, if you’re an operator and you get your turbines from gear, Suzlon or Seamans. Hamas or whoever Vestas is it as a highly site specific or is there like a suggested, you know, keep your turban?
Either this well coded or at this humidity level and don’t acceded or or how does that dialog go about, you know, the difference in installing a turbine in one site versus another and then maintaining the right humidity level where, you know, everything is going to go according to plan over the lifetime of that turbine.
So if seismic, if site specific. So the OEM would then suggest, you know, for this side you need a seifi C for corrosion class. And I think that’s you know, I think they agree all in, say, unsay on their local weather conditions.
You know, they look up into some weather data and say this is a C5 environment or whatever. So but on the other hand, we actually see now some developers and operators now start setting demands. And you say humidity, climate criteria.
True. The turbine, so sorry to the OEMs say, OK, you have to control the humidity on the inside and during transport, construction and operation of the turbine. So we don’t accept, you know, anything above 60 percent relative humidity because and then, you know, we are afraid that this will harm our product.
So and then as a from an owner point of view, it’s like I don’t care how you solve it. Mr. Oium, you just need to solve it.
Whether that’s coatings or humidifier or detoxify or whatever.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Gotcha. And then that makes sense, because as a manufacturer, you don’t want to have all these warranty claims that you’re like, hey, if you’re taking better care of this, this wouldn’t be an issue. Like we wouldn’t have fried electronics if there wasn’t all this condensation inside the turbine.
Exactly. And also on the side here, you have the insurance companies say we will not insure also, you know, the banks will not finance this project unless this turbine has a certain know, a specific corrosion class or any kind of protection into it, you know.
Also simple as that.
OK, so let’s talk a little about the the onshore versus offshore. Obviously, offshore installations, they’re much more aware of of the harsh environment. What are some of the pieces that are especially at risk in an offshore offshore installation?
It’s more or less the same. It’s just on a bigger scale. It’s more remote. It’s you know, it’s it’s less accessible. You know, you could be 50 miles offshore and you only go you can only go to the side, you know, two or three times a year.
So if you have failure, you don’t want to go out, you know, now and then and stop the turbine. It’s too expensive. So you say the stakes are simply just higher, but the same thing can fail.
And what would there be more protection like? I mean, the foundations like transition pieces, the substations. I mean, it’s got to be everything, right? Yeah.
So often, of course, on the Internet, on the externals, everything is, you know, see five or six Karros, you know, offshore corrosion class, it’s like in the oil and gas industry and on the inside, they’re also try to protect us much.
We work with some of the OEMs and say with a dehumidifier, we can then go for Sifre or C karoshi glass, because that’s a huge cost out opportunities in lowering your corrosion glass on the internal side. So if you have a well, they function and say climate protection system inside your turbine, you could go down to a
low corrosion glass. And that’s you know, that’s that’s backed by industry standards here
and then onshore. Obviously, the the the environments can be very different, but also are still highly variable, whereas they’re almost there might be even a little more consistency in the fact that the environment’s always harsh out at sea.
Right. But if you have a turbine and, you know, somewhere really north, you know, humidity might be much less of a problem. I mean, what what differences do you see in different parts of the world as far as onshore and what they have to do to to protect from us?
Yeah, I think we see different symptoms. But, you know, I’ll say more or less all over the world. Onshore turbines also have a humidity climate challenge. And the issue, you know, you could find turbines in California or in the Gobi Desert that they know they are in a very nice and dry environment.
They don’t need it. But if you go to to the Mexican coast, to Texas, I know. No, to inland climate, hot days, cold nights, you will see condensation building up, as you know, as the temperature rises throughout the day.
Yeah. You go to here in Denmark, you know, and you have, you know, lots of rain, more than 100, 100 days a year. You know, you also have high humidity issues. So, yeah, going to the Philippines and Vietnam, I’ve seen, you know, onshore turbines, you know, being put up.
I know. And say on a rice fields, you know, if semiofficial. Right. So it’s everywhere. And actually, on the on the onshore side, you and I could be I could be a little bit off here, but they’ll say you actually have, you know, offshore climates as much as you know.
15 to 20 miles inland, because of all the salt and the wind coming in from the from the sea.
I want to discuss the the internal factors like mold and mold, mold is a big growing problem in industry because now we realize the health consequences of of workers around mold and bumping into mold that they didn’t expect was there and causing breathing problems and actually long term health consequences from some of the particular kinds of molds
like black mold. And are we seeing more of the industry drive to make sure that the air inside of a turbine doesn’t have mold, that they’re actually not just worried about the turbine itself, but worried about the people who are going to be working inside that environment?
And has that changed? Is that sort of regulation and thought process changed recently?
Yeah, I think so. I think, you know, far, far for a long time, you know, larger corporations are by operators. You know, they have a zero tolerance when it comes to mold. And then it’s just a matter of, you know, dictating it.
You know, how big should this blackspot be before we see an issue? Some are super concerned about this. Others say let’s wait until someone complained. But all in all, you know, it’s not acceptable.
Yeah. And just dehumidify. That can really control the amount of mold that would even occur. So once it starts, it seems like it’s very difficult to get rid of. In fact, if you have a mold problem inside of a wind turbine, you have to call a special company to come in to remove it.
It gets very expensive very quickly. And it would seem like the cost tradeoff of having someone come in cost or remove mold versus have a a dehumidify system doesn’t even make sense. Right. Do you mean a fire is such a lower expense lifetime versus the constant risk?
Right, exactly. And of course, now once you have mold, they know. Do you mean if I cannot remove it? So you need someone who can clean it up, then you can install dehumidifier to prevent it from coming again.
And that’s also another thing. It’s like, you know, we don’t like water inside the turbine. So why do you go there and start renting it off? You know, with the with a with a power cleaner? You know, it’s.
It makes no sense to me.
Yeah, those all seem like pretty really terrible to has to go back to wash with some disinfectant. All the internal services looking for mold. That sounds
awful. And just imagine if you also have to go out and do this offshore. I didn’t know the cost of no incremental in this. You know, it’s it’s unbelievable. Yeah.
Michael, the the the technology that you have is really interesting, because one of the things I would worry about having a two you metafiction system in a wind turbine, particularly offshore, is how many how reliable is it can stay out there for years at a time and not need servicing.
And just looking at your technology, you have a very maybe simplistic from the outside. I’m sure it’s complicated on the inside technology, which like to explain how that technology works and how that system works generally. Yeah.
So, yeah, we do what is referred to as absorption dehumidifier. So you have different ways of you can you can dry out stuff. You probably know, you know, the dry back from Home Depot. They have some kind of silica gel in them.
The downside to these is like once they’re full, they’re full, and then they actually work as a sponge and you need to go out and replace them. Then you have something what is referred to as a condensation dehumidifier that has, you know, a cooling surface.
So you need to cool the air in order to get the water out. When you go below around 15, 20 degrees Celsius, it becomes very energy inefficient to to cool the nuclear, to get the water out. And then we have this absorption technology that has been around for 70 years.
So we take the silica gel and put it into a big rotor that only rotates like seven or nine rpm a minute. And then we pull the human out through that. And then the silica gel will absorb all the water and the air.
And then we distribute the dry air into the turbine onto a structure. And that’s this, you know, big rotor slowly rotates it it it it passes by a heat exchanger or heat module. Sorry that Molins evaporates. I can say a burns off the water that we have just assault and then send that hot and humid air outside
the structure. And this can go on and on. You know, we have we have some of our machines been running like, you know, 60 or 70, you know, a thousand operation hours. And then you need just to go out once in a year and replace and replace a filter.
So that’s within the service manual. And the if you offshore, you know, that’s not a lot of dust in the air, then you can look at the filter, maybe just know, put it back, but then otherwise you replace it.
Occasionally there might be a drive built or fan or something that, you know, that test out after. I know 40, 50 thousand hours. Then you can replace that. So in short, these machines, new news inspection once in a year.
And so doing the math here, my head running 24/7 for a year is about, what, seven thousand five hundred hours or so. So you’re talking about.
But not these. Yeah, exactly. But these machines don’t necessarily always run, you know, 24/7, so. All of that come with the high grossetête and then you can say if if humidity reached a certain limit, then the machine starts running for a few hours, stops again until the humidity drops.
And then, of course, no bills, Adobe again. So it can maybe run three or four hours, you know, within, you know, 24 hours, something like that.
OK, so you’re saying with a 60, 70000 your life, that’s maybe 15 years. Yeah.
You could do that anyway.
How often they’re doing it?
Yes. Well, if you want to run it 24/7, we have a technology where we where we create actually a pattern technology, where we create an overpressure inside the turbine. So we actually know then we then we put a little bit of our outfit in from the outside, drive that and then send that in and that into the
into the turbine. So with that overpressured, more or less, we seal off the entire turbine and all the dry air will travel up through the tower and then, you know, you know, sneak out around the yard or whatever.
But instead of, you know, having other, you know, they say polluted air coming in, that has to run 24/7. But we we sell that to our and say different OEMs. And and with a service manual, they’ll have to go out, you know, once every year and maybe even five years, replace some of the main components.
And then it should be fine for 25 years.
Wow. And so what? Talk a little more about the overpressure I mean, what’s the main event that just I mean, just sort of like pushing the elements out? Is that a simplistic way of viewing it?
Yeah, because if you don’t have this overpressure, you know, Profar, you know, fire financial turbine, for instance, then you need also for an off the top. I’m sorry. Then in order to distribute the air properly, you actually need to have a 100 meter starting all the way up and then have the dry, modest, drizzling down through the
structure. If you have the overpressure, the dry air will climb up itself. So you you don’t need to install all of this, you know, extra pipes. And then so you have that debt ceiling and offshore when we do this, we can also 100 percent efficiently dissolve the air, because if you just put a filter to get the
salt out, that will not work. And in best case, that manure filter will clock. And then you have a problem later on when we have this, when we do the overpressured pulling the out from the outside. We will be semi dry the air, so to speak.
And then the water sorry, the soil in the air changes form and crystalizes. And when we dry it, I think it’s below 55. Five percent. And then we can more or less and say pull the salt crystals out in a trade and then we can say we can send salt free air into the offshore turbine.
And so the dry air climbs to the top naturally, just because it’s less dense than than the humid air. Is that right?
No. It just because you have the overpressure, then it will climb up.
So the salt system doesn’t have a filter on it as much as just the particular to actually fall out of the air so you don’t clog anything. Is that the the design of the system? Yeah. Wow. That’s a really clever.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these systems sound so remarkable. And I think one of the questions that I’ve heard from people I’ve talked to in the wind turbine industry is, well, how big is the system? Is that some massive piece of equipment or what relative size they’ll have like a one two megawatt kind of wind turbine.
What size is is the system and where is it installed inside the turbine?
So depending on what you want to protect, so, you know, everything goes to like, you know, this kind of, you know, box like, you know, is maybe like a moving box, cardboard kind of thing, size and up to, you know, American and American sized refrigerator, you know, double door.
And that’s that’s that that’s the size of the the unit we do for for the wind industry. We also do for other industries. And then we are up to 40 feet container sizes. You know, if you want to dry, if you want to.
That’s typically Fujino for pharmaceuticals or for the for the lithium battery productions, where you need to have a lot of dry air in order to protect the quality of the batteries. But for turbines. Yeah, it’s it’s this know this this a range of sizes.
Your normal will install one in the bottom of the tower to protect that entire. And depending on the design of the turbine, maybe you want to install a dehumidifier also other than the nacelle to protect some vitally important components.
And we also some OEMs also want to put a dehumidifier into the hub. If you have a direct drive, for instance, you know, you have the data. And so that’s extremely critical. And that could also be cases where you may want to say keep the inside of the blades dry as well, because there’s a tendency of a
lot of, you know, a lot of mold building up into the blades.
Gotcha. And so I assume most of the work is done in the factory or are are some companies retrofitting this? I’m sure if it’s offshore, they’re taking care of this before it ships out. Right.
So that’s a part of the integrated design. And we all show with the OEMs. Of course, we need to understand, know how the cooling works. And there are other design specifications, because if they if they’re could the entire nacelle and just no Poulan you and say gazillions of cubic meters of air on an hourly basis.
Of course, our dehumidifier cannot say a win over that system. So that’s something we need to discuss. But then, you know, it can also be retrofitted if we can fit it through the door, you know, into the tower.
So we talk we are now doing some retrofits with various clients. And then basically we give them a manual to the service technicians and then they can go out and do it themselves. It’s not complicated.
So, Michael, where are you selling the system to now? Are you selling it directly to OEMs or is it mostly to operators? And what parts of the world are you selling the system to?
So we’re selling this, you know, this system globally, and we work with most of the OEMs. And then we are now starting up, you know, Clim really, you know, in starting a business with some of the larger asset owners as well that also have their own service organizations, they are extremely keen on extending their the lifetime off
of the turbines. Now, some even have a strategy that goes up to 40 or even 50 years a lifetime on the turbines.
So my last question here for you, Michael, is that, you know, we know we have some folks who work in insurance trying to just like stay ahead and do their due diligence, do and do their due diligence. So it sounds like this is another one of those pieces that is definitely something that is going to be on
insurers. Radar already is, obviously. But, you know. You see this continuing to be more of a of a of a requirement of something that’s just like, look, this is going to make financial sense in the long run, like when you talk about savings for codings and then obviously just hedging your bets in the future for not having
some of these issues, like you said, chipping at, you know, taking a paint chip off while doing a repair that is that that little inroad for rust to just go crazy, right?
Yeah, I’m basically I just have, you know, know one good piece of advice to, you know, to the insurance companies and also to the financiers and the owners engineers. And that is put in a simple line into your requirements, a clause saying that relative humidity should never exceed 60 percent during transport, construction and operations, then, no, let
the owner or the OEM decide on how they want to solve this issue. And then you can sleep, you know, you can sleep well at night. And having this GLOSSON
that makes you know, that makes sense is that there can be different solutions for different people. And but as long as that’s there, then they can figure out how they want to take care of it.
Exactly. And we see, you know, if you have humidity above 60 percent, that’s where you see mold start building up. You see corro should you will also see, you know, the, you know, electric failure start no starting at that point.
And by just putting in, you say a speed limit of 60 percent. You should be OK.
Got it. Got it. That’s good advice. Well, Michael, where can people follow up with you and with Cotes?
Yeah, you can check us out on our website Cotes.com. And there you can also find us on our Linkedin company page.
All right. So for everyone listening, we will link in the description below no matter where you’re listening or watching. So you can follow up with Michael Holm and learn more about Cotes. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the show with us and chatting.
Thank you. My pleasure.
All right, so moving on, we got one last topic here for today, we appreciate Michael’s time, the great, great talk with him, really in depth about humidity because it is a big deal. We’re going to talk about GE and their lawsuit against Siemens Gamesa.
So looks like a preliminary ruling, which Siemens Gamesa is going to appeal, that they’ve infringed one of these two patents held by G.E. here in the U.S. as far as a zero zero voltage ride through. So the patent number here is a case.
You want to look it up or you patent nerds. Seven million six hundred twenty nine thousand seven zero five is the patent number. Alan, you pull patents all the time to learn about other companies, technology, which is incredibly nerdy.
But, you know, in in character on brand for you, where do you fall in this patent lawsuit and what’s really at stake here for Siemens Gamesa?
Well, this is really fascinating because usually large companies are very careful about crossing patent territory. And they have typically a staff of corporate attorneys, one or two of which are our patent experts, Sue Searchinger. And if I’m Siemens Gamesa, anytime there’s a Vestre or a GE or a Nord ax or a Suzlon patent that’s published, I’m going
to read it and try to pass it along to the people in my engineering organization and say, hey, here’s the latest and greatest from our competition, just so you know. And that has sort of two effects. One, it gives him in the state of what the industry has and what your competitors are doing.
But two, it tells you where you can’t go. All right. So if you’re if you’re if you happen to be, you know, secondarily developing a particular widget that let’s just say G.E. has already patented. Well, you’re kind of stuck.
So you have to either buy rights to the patent from GE or figure out another way to to solve this problem. So getting into these patent disputes is really unusual between two large, smart corporations that have a lot of patent attorneys and to the letic and secondarily sort of alleged to get to this level of down.
They’re suing each other in a UK court, which is gets to be expensive and it’s in the press and everybody is unhappy. And, you know, you’d like to settle these things outside the courtroom, ideally. So there’s something more to the story that I can’t really put my fingers on yet.
Is it a territorial thing in the U.K. because of the offshore wind development as DJs try to stake its territory and kind of shove Siemens out from even bidding for jobs, which which could happen? Menia, you could get a settlement which would say, hey, Siemens, can Mesos infringe on a patent.
Therefore, they are prohibited from selling a wind turbine in the United Kingdom for five years. That would really hurt Siemens. That would not be good. And and vice versa. Right. That the roles are reversed. GE would hate it, too.
So those are the kind of outcomes here. And you’re really playing with fire because once you bring in a judge in in these patent disputes, you never really sure where it’s going to go. That’s the trouble is that you just don’t the outcome is one of a thousand different ways it can go.
And if it goes sideways on you, if you’re GE and you know, the judge says, hey, this is frivolous and starts levying fines against you, you know, that’s that’s not a good day either. So, Dan, do you see how this why this would rarely get to the stage just because it has so many barriers to to stop
this from happening? It’s fascinating to see it get this far.
Yeah. So you’re saying that internally, like in-house, their lawyers are going to check any new technologies they make to make sure they’re compatible with existing patents? Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you have to. You have to. Because the the downside costs of that are so enormous. And attorneys are always in my opinion, attorneys are always the most cautious people on the planet. Right. So you kind of get this downward direction of of patents at an aircraft company.
It tends to work like this. The patent attorney will see what he’ll say. I work for Boeing and I guess and there’s some Airbus patent and they’re all distributed around saying, hey, guys, this is what’s going on. Make sure you don’t screw up here and cost us a bunch of money because you’re copping on an Airbus patent
. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, that’s why you have those corporate patent attorney people on staff is to avoid hundreds of millions or billion dollar lawsuits. You can break your company and. Yeah, and if you do it well, in theory, steal intellectual property, you should pay a penalty for that.
It’s it’s it’s a it’s a piece of property. It’s sort of a non tangible piece of property. But it’s it’s a piece of property. It’s a result of your hard earned work and. Efforts. And that’s why there’s, you know, the patent law in the United States as part of the Constitution.
So it is so embedded in a lot of different governments that this is taken very seriously. So once you get to this level, you’re not playing anymore. Right. This is this is big time stuff with high powered lawyers and a lot of researchers and supporting cast there.
And you just don’t want to be there. So do you think this is going to go on much longer? Do you think you think after this first judgment? Because it sounds like then it’s not like Comesa or seamers COMEST is going to appeal, like bring it to the next level.
Yeah, they are. There are they do intend to appeal. And of course. So there were two patents. The one I listed, number seven six to nine seven zero five. That one was not infringed. The judge determined the one that was infringed was their low voltage right through technology, not the zero ride through.
So the low voltage patents, six nine two one nine eight five. That one is the one that they said they’ve infringed if you’re going to go for patents. But yeah, it does. You know, I don’t know what the damages would be like, obviously, that they haven’t gotten to that stage of the lawsuit.
But you’re right. I mean, I’m sure they’re nervous about what’s at stake here. And I don’t know. I don’t know how this technology works. So it’s not like I know, hey, there you have to dig up this and replace that or, you know, swap out these kind of I’m not sure how that works, but.
But, yeah, there’s going to be some some significant damage, I guess, if if this ruling sticks. So we’ll have to see how it plays out. So that’s going to do it for this week’s Up Time podcast. Thanks again to our guests.
Michael home from Cote’s. Again, check out the show notes or description where you can learn more about him and their company. Be sure to subscribe to uptime tech news, which you’ll find in the show notes or description of this podcast.
And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes, who couldn’t make it today. But she will be back next week and you’ll find her awesome YouTube channel in the show notes as well. Thanks again for listening. Be sure to subscribe to our show on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, wherever you listen.
And we’ll see you here next week on the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. 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.
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