AC883’s Guide to LiDAR and Pitch Alignment

From the surge in lightning strikes damaging wind turbines to the
game-changing potential of nacelle-based LiDAR systems, Lars
Bendsen of AC883 shares insights on wind farm maintenance. Lars
describes how LiDAR installations can boost power output by 3.5%,
and warns how ignoring simple pitch alignment issues leads to
catastrophic turbine failures. Fill out our Uptime listener survey
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Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia!
https://www.windaustralia.com Lars Bendsen: Welcome to Uptime
Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators.
This is the progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Welcome to the
Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall.
Today, we're diving into the costly challenges plaguing wind farms
with Lars Bendsen from AC883. From a surge in severe lightning
strikes to devastating turbine misalignments, Lars reveals why
seemingly minor issues can lead to catastrophic failures, and how
cutting edge solutions like nacelle based lidars are transforming
maintenance strategies. Plus, discover why Lars believes too many
industry tourists are making decisions that cost operators millions
in unnecessary repairs. So get ready for a no holds bar discussion
about what's really happening in wind farm maintenance. Lars,
welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. Thank you so
much. Appreciate it. Well, you've had a busy blade season and
you've had crews all over Canada and parts of the U S what kind of
problems were you solving with your blade crews this year? Lars
Bendsen: That was, that was a crazy repair season. Um, and it's not
to feed directly into, but it, we had a ton of lightning strikes
and lightning repairs higher than I would say the average. And some
of the strikes were severe. So I don't know, uh, you probably know
better than me if the weather pattern has been leading up to better
or worse. Um, what we do know, we had a really, um, wet summer. We
had a ton of weather delays. We had a ton of high winds. We have a
ton of rain. Uh, so we had our, our standby time, time was, was
higher than usual. And it's annoying for everybody involved. Owners
don't get their job done and money is flying out the window. So.
And we don't get the job done either. So, so, so it's really wet
that way. So I don't know if that's the aftermath was going on over
the winter. I have no idea because you can't really see when this
like was there. Uh, and, and the owners, the owners have a system
that can measure when it comes. But. I don't think they're looking
at it. Allen Hall: That's, that's true. Uh, we are seeing more
lightning strike damage over this past summer. It's been really
bad. I, I think it's just the, the set of storms that came through.
But in, in your case with AC 8A3, when you have technicians on
site, you're bringing high quality sort of apprenticeship plus
technicians that have a lot of training so that when you get into
these complicated repairs, you can actually accomplish them
properly. Lars Bendsen: We are, we are getting our people from
mostly from Europe, uh, simply because there's no cable, there's,
there's no, uh, availability for, for staff in Canada. Uh, so we
get them in from Europe on a proper work permit, simply because we
are short staffed. Uh, we do pay more. We also get, uh, GWO
certified technicians, all of them. And, um, last year we had about
60 percent that could do. Cat 4, Cat 5. Next year they're all doing
Cat 4 and Cat 5. That means on some simple LEP work we could maybe
be either be earning less. Or we might be a little more expensive
on regular LEP work because it is highly trained technicians. Uh,
we learned from last year based on the percentage of Cat 4 and Cat
5 damages. We simply need to have more flexibility so we won't, we
will only have Cat 4 and Cat 5 technicians. Allen Hall: Do you
think there's more Cat 4, Cat 5 damage lately? Because that's what
I think. I've seen a lot more Lars Bendsen: over the last couple
years. From, uh, from, uh, 23 to 24 there's a significant increase.
Uh, if it's really high, uh, lightning strikes, uh, damages from
tailed headspin, everything. Allen Hall: Yeah. Is that driven by
just the lack of understanding that what looks like to be maybe a
small pinhole in a blade is really much larger and the operators
don't catch it early enough or is there other factors involved
there? Lars Bendsen: I don't know. I think it might be that, um, I
mean, everybody knows that all the engineering departments are all
owners. are really lean or in best case lean, but mostly
understaffed. So that means the poor guys, they are struggling to
keep up with everything. They can't see it. And, um, and, uh, I
have, I have a strong, I think I have a strong opinion about the
drone inspection all the time, because the AI and the pictures,
it's, it, you cannot run an autopilot. You cannot just take a
picture, see that's it. You can't, you simply have to get up there.
We had minimum Minimum of 10 blades were simply just a grease spot
that was categorized as Category 4. We also had the opposite, where
just a grease spot was actually a lightning strike. So we had it,
we had it all over the place, so you cannot, you cannot run an
autopilot. Allen Hall: That's interesting because I, I've heard
that same discussion from a couple of operators about whether the
drone inspection categorization has been correct. But I think as
the lightning strikes, uh get more frequent. We're seeing what
looks to be smaller damage further down the blade, which would
typically be grease. If you, especially as you get closer to the
root of a blade, you always think, well, that's grease from inside
the nacelle that's fallen onto the blade. Don't worry about it. But
in reality, I think we're seeing more lightning strike damage in
more critical areas that lead to this cat four and cat five issues.
Lars Bendsen: Well, uh, you've seen it very often as well. It's a
small lightning strike. Once you start opening it up, then you are
16 layer deep. Just an example, right? So we had some of them that
looked very small and then you're ending up in a 78, 000, 100, 000
bill, right? Even though it looks very small and therefore, yeah,
good. No, I'm just saying, that's why I don't, I personally, I know
it has a ton of opinion about it, but I personally don't think you
can run on autopilot, which also go back to the, you know, we've
been involved in robotics as well, robotic repair and all that
jazz, and I know there's a place in the market for it. Absolutely.
But based on our experience, pure LEP and nothing else is only
having, might be 10 percent of the blades. There's always something
to look for. There's always an extra damage. There's always
something. So we have to get up there anyhow. Allen Hall: Is that
because the industry for the longest time has only inspected like a
third of the farm at a time. So it'd take three years to really get
across the whole site. So if you did have damage. It may have sat
there for two years before anybody even could identify it. Isn't
that changing a little bit though, that meeting operators that are
doing a lot more inspection and trying to catch these ideas, you
know, these problems early? Lars Bendsen: No, and I, I agree. And
I, I agree. And during the drone inspection, do drew your whole
fleet every year? Just do it. It's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's
peanuts compared to whatever, but on that said, I think it's great
with drone inspection, but you cannot rely on a hundred percent
outer pilot. Somebody has to look at it. With qualified eye to look
at it. And it's better to climb one, one blade. Too many than one,
too less, too little, so. Allen Hall: So the question in my mind
when it comes to lightning damage up in Canada is because it's so
cold and there's so much freeze thaw that happens. As part of the
issue that once you have this wound in a blade that just the freeze
thaw over a year or two can really expand it and then cause
trailing edge separation and all those sort of horrible things that
happen to blades? Lars Bendsen: Well, I guess as soon as you get
more intrusions, uh Uh, then of course, uh, up here, uh, water had
a chance to get stiff under zero degrees C. So, uh, so of course
then you have a, uh, have an issue. Allen Hall: That leads into the
discussion about, well, it's cold in Canada, which means you guys
get the winter first and then it comes down our way, uh, because
we're getting close. Which then gets me into, it's pitch alignment
and sort of yaw alignment season for you. Because it's nice to have
the fields sort of knocked down and everything frozen. Pitch
alignment is a huge problem and what balancing is a huge problem
too. What are you seeing out in the field right now? Lars Bendsen:
Well, I'm seeing that owners relying on OEM statements that we can,
we can do a. We can do pitch correction without control, we can do
x factor, we can do automatic, uh, yaw alignment, which is, um,
which is questionable, when put it that way. And, um, I said, uh,
my new word is, uh, there are so many tourists in this, in this
industry. They're tourists. They simply don't know what they're
talking about. They come and look at it. It looks nice, but they
actually don't know what they're talking about.