Were you at Blades USA last week? This episode was recorded live in Austin!We saw a lot of progress and heard about the need for more data and better solutions, especially for predictive analysis and predictive maintenance. Rosemary and Allen break down how data gathering and management are helping to find blade faults during the warranty period. Which is obviously good for owners and operators, and maybe in the long run, good for OEMs too.

Speaking of OEMs, Rosemary offers great insight into the many ways blades can be at risk before they’re even installed, and what operators need to know, and do, to minimize their liability. She may have a little advice for OEMs, too. Tune in for that, and also to find out what the industry is beginning tounderstand about lightning damage. Our Wind Farm of the Week segment returns next week.

Visit Pardalote Consulting at https://www.pardaloteconsulting.com

Wind Power Lab – https://windpowerlab.com

Weather Guard Lightning Tech – www.weatherguardwind.com

Intelstor – https://www.intelstor.com

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!

Uptime 158

Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m here with Blade Guru and Australian renewable expert, Rosemary Barnes. This particular episode we’re going to dedicate to the Blades USA Forum and some of the, the presentations I have seen today wrapped around sort of blade maintenance and how.

keep your blades as as good as you can, working to produce energy. It’s a tough business if you’re an operator or an independent service provider. It’s rough. There’s a lot of work to keep blades running. So we’re gonna hear about that and, and then we’ll talk a little about some of the secondary.

Problems with blades, mostly lightning, which was a very hot topic this week, so stay tuned and it’s gonna be a great show.

Rosemary, I’m in Austin, Texas for the Blades USA Forum this week. It is packed. And you’re missing out. You should be. You should be in Texas.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Yeah. I I, I’m a bit jealous. But maybe, maybe next year. Yeah, there’s,

Allen Hall: there’s a, a lot of good presentations. This is the first day, there’s another day tomorrow.

So this is Wednesday when we’re recording. And there’s all kinds of. Vendors and different kinds of presentations. And I, I really wanted to talk to you as a blade expert because this is a Blades US Forum, U usa blades USA Forum about all the different activities around blades and whether you can kind of shed some light on whether some of these things are gonna become reality or is it just nice to haves because the presentations were really.

Had a lot of different perspectives. So let, let me, let me give you some, gimme some general highlights. There was a really, actually a really good presentation on all the data and there that seems to be a, a big emphasis here is we need more data. And I came to the same conference last year. It’s in Austin also.

And the, the, the emphasis last year was, Hey, we gotta do two things. We need to get more data and we need to be able to categorize damage. . So that’s like a, a mostly a universal standard to holes in blades. Like is it a level one? Not, so don’t worry about it, I’m just gonna monitor it. Or is it a level five?

I gotta do something immediately. Those are the two big ones. On the data side, it was by getting more drone images and and instrumenting blades. So over the last. , there’s been a lot more drone images and more emphasis on actually putting in sensors in these blades. Now, now, now the engineers who, like you, always want more data and I always want more data.

Now that they have the data, they can’t process it all.

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think that’s pretty, pretty normal situation. , I think it’s

Allen Hall: a little funny cuz it had a chuckle if you have a thousand turbines in your portfolio. It’s almost impossible to sort through all those drone images. And then the, the subject becomes, well, how do we try to categorize all that data so we can actually do some predictive analysis?

Like these particular blades made from this particular factory are gonna have this particular problem in a year. That was where the, the industry ceases to be going, and that from an OEM perspective. Does that make sense for someone who made blades like you, does that make, does that make sense? Is, is that the right approach to what to do with that data?

Rosemary Barnes: OEMs probably don’t like it because if you’re doing that, then you’re finding faults e earlier than they would’ve otherwise, and so you’ll find them within the warranty period when you might have previously found them out of the warranty period. So maybe the OEMs don’t like it, but in the work that I’m doing now, Consulting company, Ute Consulting.

I’m doing a lot of work on, on blade defects, and what I am seeing is that it’s not just about having data and analyzing the data, it’s about the quality of the data as well. Because, I mean, I feel like when you said at the start, we need more drone images and I, I, the last thing that, that I need in the projects I’m working on is more drone images.

What I need is for the drone images to actually. Do what they’re supposed to do and pick up the damage because you know, an, an image that shows that doesn’t show damage that you went looking for is worse than having nothing. At least if you didn’t have that image, you wouldn’t know whether there was damage or not.

But when you have a drone, go up there and say, this, this turbine’s all clear, go for it. And then it turns out later. Oh, actually you, these 10% of these blades do have this defect and they were previously all cleared for it. You know, that’s, that’s obviously worse than, than not knowing anything at all.

So I hope that people aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves, but I. Do think that they are, because I see, you know, some of the projects that I work on or the campaigns that I work on, you, you see, you know, drone images and they go with a different company, then they go with a different company.

And so you know, the, the quality is the quantity. Is too high and the quality is too low Currently, or at least I think that there are some players that are doing good work, but not everybody is, and not everybody is using the good ones. So I, I would like to see some better way to be able to you know, qualify a drone in inspection and, you know, like there could be standardization or, you know, , yeah.

Some, some sort of certification that, yeah, this this drone technology is able to, you know, pick up these kinds of defects and certified by a third party. That would be super, super, super useful. Cause at the moment it does feel a bit like the Wild West where people, you know, seem to pick a drone inspection company at random.

And then yeah, like I said, you end up. A real, a false sense of security, which is, which is terrible because yeah, I’ve definitely worked on many projects that where blades have been cleared as been free of a defect. And then months later when, you know, somebody went up and rope access found that the defect was there the whole time.

Allen Hall: There was a couple presentations showing the progression of damage transverse cracks being probably the biggest issue. Like, what do you do with this? And it. Highly loaded area. You don’t want to go in there and start repairing it too early. And if it, if, if the blade’s gonna survive for its lifetime, probably don’t wanna touch it at all.

And there was some, there were some really interesting photos watching that. But they, they, in order to do that sort of progression study, you need to take drone inspection photographs at least twice a. . That’s the only way you can then predict and create a model. I guess what it sounded like in order to create a model of what that crack is gonna propagate, like you nee...