GE Cypress Blade Tip Swap-out, Vestas Load Probability Control Method

This week on Uptime Power-Up, a method from Vestas for modifying
control of a wind turbine using load probability, a blade tip
swap-out for Cypress turbines from GE, and a wind turbine tower
with solar panels installed. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
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Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the
new, hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow
along with me, Alan Hall, and idasaur's Phil Totaro, as we discuss
the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge
your energy future. Well, our first idea is from Vestas, and it is
an idea where they're monitoring the Turbine tower loads for
natural vibration frequency, and you say, well, why would you want
to do that? Well, of course, as things change on a wind turbine,
maybe something goes wrong. Those frequencies of vibration are
going to change, and the system will detect those and say, hey,
something is wrong. Here's probably what it is, which is a smart
way of detecting failure modes in the turbine fill. But the other
thing it could do, is push the turbine harder if it's not being
driven hard enough and creating enough power. Philip Totaro: Yeah,
and this is actually really fascinating because, again, this might
not sound like the world's most revolutionary, innovation, but it's
a practical solution to a challenge that is faced out there in the
field when you're operating a wind farm. And specifically, in
addition to just monitoring the, the tower loads and vibration over
time, they have the option to monitor the max extreme load in
relation to the original design load limit and readjust that max
extreme load value over time as there's an evolution of the, the.
Mechanical performance of, of the turbine. And that to me is, is
really clever way of approaching this challenge of having
additional safety factor. Or as we see in the United States where
turbines get run a lot harder. Than they were potentially designed
for. Sometimes because companies are trying to maximize their
production tax, credit revenue. This is a way for a company like
Vestus to keep an eye on whether or not they're exceeding a. Safety
criteria, or by how much are you exceeding a safety criteria of,
the design load limit versus the max extreme load limit, which will
necessarily change over time. As components wear and, and as the
tower sees certain load cases on it. So I, I like this one a lot. I
think, again, this is a really practical and clever thing. It might
not be, or sound like the world's most revolutionary. Invention
ever, but I, I like stuff like this. This is a really great one.
Joel Saxum: I think it's a functional way of ensuring the safety
and operation of the turbine. Right. The, the ability to adjust and
to understand what kind of loads are being sensed and of course,
When we talk about load changes in turbines, it's every component
is completely different, right? The loads in the blades and fatigue
loads over time and what can be and can't be exerted on them. To,
to look, like a 20 year old blade is a lot different than a one
year old blade and a 20 year old piece of drivetrain is a lot
different than a 20, a one year old piece of drivetrain. So
adjusting those load limits by calculation and understanding as the
turbine ages and operations change. It's something that should
actually absolutely be done. So I'm, I'm with Phil. I think this is
a good one. Allen Hall: Our next idea is from G. E. in Spain. And
G. E. is noted for their two piece blades. Well, the, the issue
with the two piece blade is you want to replace the tip, you have
to physically bend it. Get a crane up there and remove the tip.
Well, this patent allows the blade tip to be lifted and just, and
drop with a cable running through the center of the blade. So it's
sort of a unique way of dropping in a damaged blade tip and putting
a new blade tip on. It has a sort of a coupling mechanism to carry
the loads. But Phil, this is a really slick idea. If you're going
to do a two piece blade, the reason you do that, so you can swap
out the tip. You need a way to do without involving a crane. Philip
Totaro: Yeah, and, and look, single blade swap outs, an idea that's
been around for like 12 or 13 years or so and has been commercially
tested and is commercially used by a few service companies and, and
even EPC contractors when they're doing an initial blade install,
they, if they don't happen to have a crane, they might be able to
do the installation of a third blade by using uh, either a turbine
based crane or a ground based crane with a winch system that allows
you to hook up this harness that'll, that'll suck the blade up into
the onto the hub. Now, this invention is for swapping out the tip,
which is kind of an interesting use case on a GE Cypress blade,
wherein if they happen to have either, let's say, lightning damage,
or some other kind of tip related issue they can literally debolt
the I don't know that they successfully explained how that happens,
by the way. How you get down into the blade deep enough to be able
to, unbind the, the joint in there to be able to, to get the tip
off. But once you've, once you've unbinded Unbolted this this tip,
doing a quote unquote, single blade swap out with just the tip
portion is is certainly a unique approach. So, assuming that they
can resolve some of these other operational challenges and like how
you actually, implement this and from a practical standpoint, I
think this is, this is interesting. But like we've talked about on,
Power Up and the Uptime Winnergy podcast before, not everybody's
using a two piece blade and not everybody's going to use a two
piece blade. So whether or not this patented innovation gets used,
universally, we'll, we'll have to see. Joel Saxum: I like anything
that can be done without a crane in the wind industry. Without a
traditional crane, right? You have the lift draw, the lift works,
those guys doing certain things, but something that can be done
maintenance wise that traditionally would have taken a crane that
you can't, or that you don't have to? Fantastic idea, right? The
two piece blades are built for a couple reasons. The main one being
logistics and transportation. But the second one is, is that idea
that Phil has talked, that talked a little bit about, about the
idea behind operations and maintenance of, hey, tip's got bad
leading edge erosion or a bad lightning damage or something, boom,
just swap the tip out. It makes sense from a practical standpoint,
however, have we seen it actually happen in the field? Not yet, to
my knowledge if anybody has done these things. Please get a hold of
us so we can learn a little bit more about it. But yeah, there's
some challenges there because you're gonna have to probably either
use a lift truck to get people up to the joint to remove the they
put a seal around it and some other things and, but once, once you
get past that, the ability to swap that tip out without a crane is,
could be, could be game changing for these Allen Hall: two piece
plates. Our last idea is a solar powered wind turbine tower, and
it's from Heliotech over in Germany. And the patent idea goes like
this. I have this long tower that sits pretty high above the
ground. If I can cover that in flexible solar panels, I can
generate some electricity. That can go along with the wind power
being generated. So the, the, really the concept is focused on the
flexible design. So it doesn't have a lot of air resistance and
cause the tower to rock around this fill though, doesn't seem like
you'd make enough power to be worth it. Philip Totaro: Well, okay.
Let's start by giving some context to this. I will agree with that
statement, but I'll come back to why in a minute. So, Heliotech is
a company that makes these kind of flexible roll up, almost like
you're rolling up or rolling out a piece of carpet these, these
kind of solar panels that are really designed for industrial
purposes Specifically on the top of, your warehouse building or
other industrial spaces. They're meant to serve as a an alternative
to a rack mount system a rooftop rack mount system. Whereby you can
just physically attach these solar panels, these flexible solar
panels to whatever roof surface you want. surface you happen to
have. Now, that said, why do I not think this is a great idea for
wind turbine tower? Well, first of all, they are literally the
ninth company to propose this type of invention, this generic type
of invention of mounting, some kind of solar panel, flexible or
otherwise, on Either the tower, the nacelle, or there have been
patents by people talking about literally co covering the blades
with solar panels. Sounds like a good idea but the other issue with
doing this is that you don't really You know, it's, it's an
efficiency thing, right? We, the reason we don't put a lot of wind
turbines in the state of Florida is because it's not windy enough.
And the reason that you wouldn't necessarily put these solar panels
all over the, the tower is, like Alan mentioned, you're not really
getting enough power out of it. The only thing you'd be able to do
with this is maybe power your, your pumps, your motors and your
fans cooling fans for, some of your electrical systems.