Blades USA Focuses on Future of Wind Energy

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

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,