Offshore Repair Platform, Adjustable Rotor Shaft, Glowing Tires

This week we discuss Flender's adjustable rotor shaft assembly,
designed to mitigate gear misalignment issues. Then Dolfines'
innovative solution for onsite repairs of floating wind platforms
using a telescoping crane. Finally, we highlight Goodyear's fun and
practical glow-in-the-dark tires, which can help locate your
vehicle in the dark and add a unique aesthetic touch. Sign up now
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technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape
Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show
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YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com 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, Allen Hall, and IntelStor's Phil Totaro, as we
discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will
charge your energy future. All right, our first idea of the week is
an adjustable rotor shaft assembly for wind turbines. And as we
know, there's all kinds of issues with anything rotating equipment
on a wind turbine. Particularly if it involves gears and teeth.
Well, this idea from Flender describes an adjustable rotor shaft
assembly for connecting a gearbox to the generator. And the key
feature is it uses a curved tooth coupling with the releasable
support element which allows the both ends to move relative to one
another, which And a lot of wind turbines, if you've been up in
them, there is a lot of movement at times, and it lets that
misalignment not destroy. The assembly. And this is really slick
because we have all kinds of issues, like I've said, on anything
with teeth, on, on some of these bigger wind turbines as the, the
blades get bigger and they get taller and everything's moving
around. Phil, this makes a lot of sense. I'd be surprised if
Flinders not using this already though. Philip Totaro: Yes, I would
hope so. We haven't been able to confirm it, but presumably for the
turbines with larger capacity gearboxes for the, the larger onshore
machines and maybe even some of the offshore ones. I would hope
that this technology is being utilized because it will absolutely
help make a difference in kind of bending moment and gear
misalignment issues which can create a lot of maintenance work for,
for the turbines. While the services folks may not be happy about
it because they might be losing some, losing some revenue
opportunities the owners and operators absolutely would love this
kind of technology to be implemented because it's it's going to
allow for a gearbox to be able to, to be operated in a slightly
wider loads window which is also kind of an interesting application
to this because, even in a market like the U. S. where we know that
a lot of owners and operators are, are kind of PTC farming. They're
not just wind farming. And what that means is they want to be able
to extract as much out of the turbine as they can. for the first 10
years of, of an asset life. A technology like this might actually
be helpful in making sure that the gearbox lasts the full 10 years
before you see any kind of major drop off in performance. So any
technology where you can accommodate this kind of gear misalignment
is going to be a good one for owners and operators and, and the
gearbox manufacturers themselves. Joel Saxum: Yeah, I mean, if you
have a small rigid component then you can have a fixed gear, fixed
location. It's easy to keep it in line where you don't have a whole
lot of crazy loads on it. But like, Allen was saying at the
beginning of the section here, when you're bent, if you've been up
tower at all, these things are moving all over the place. And when
you start to get to these larger size turbines and bed plates
starting getting really big and things start to flex and move.
Having a little bit of basically give in the connections can go a
long ways to increasing longevity. So, it'd be a little bit more of
a complicated thing for some, uptower technicians if something goes
wrong with it. However, the idea behind the invention is that we
won't have things go wrong. So, this one has some, some good
application in the real world. Allen Hall: Our second idea comes
from Dolfines. And as we know, floating wind is, holds great
promise. And, but one of the drawbacks to it is when things go
wrong with a turbine, you pretty much have to drag that floating
platform all the way back to port and to work on it. And. That can
be a problem at times, as we've seen recently with some wind
turbines over in Northern Europe dragging them back takes a long
time as it's expensive. So, the Dolfines' approach is a little bit
different where they have a crane on the floating platform and with
a telescoping boom on it where they can get access to the blades.
So, the way this, this patent idea works is that, They have some
handling equipment and they can remove and reinstall blades without
the need for any vessels to be out there or the need to tow the
floating platform back to port. This, I think, holds promise, Phil,
in that if floating wind is really going to be economical, the
turbine size is going to have to get big, but that just increases
the complexity, and you really want to repair it on site, putting
some sort of crane on the floating platform. Does make sense.
Philip Totaro: Yes. And this, their, their idea is kind of twofold.
As you mentioned, part of it is putting the telescoping crane on
the floating platform itself, either if it's a a, you're, you're
going to have a bit of trouble if it's a kind of a spar buoy
design, but for, other types of semi submersible arrangements, you
can, you can actually have one of the pontoons actually have this
this crane embedded but they also have an idea to include this
telescopic crane on a jackup vessel as well. And so the, the core
idea of the patent, again, is this telescopic crane, which by
itself isn't necessarily a new idea, but the placement and
arrangement of these, and, and again, keep in mind, Dolfines is a
oil and gas company that's got, decades worth of experience in, in
Europe in supporting that, that industry. So they know how to solve
problems and their, their solution as far as supporting, floating
offshore or even fixed offshore with this kind of, there's, there's
another company that came up with the quote unquote jackup on a
jackup, so we won't call it that, but the telescoping crane on a
jackup vessel is is also a pretty clever way to, to go about it. So
I like it again, keep in mind that this is one they're not actually
using commercially yet, but we think with increasing crane size or
with significant deployment of floating offshore platforms, they
could. Eventually implement this kind of a solution and, and it's
something I'd actually like to see because it, it would help cut
down on, on some, some service and repair costs substantially. Joel
Saxum: When it comes to offshore construction, the two terms that
always get thrown around for op enduring operations is coupled or
decoupled. So when you talk about a decoupled activity, that would
be what we do right now. So you may have a crane on a jackup or on
a floating barge or something, go out to where the monopile is in,
installed into the seafloor, and those two pieces of
infrastructure, the monopile and the vessel are decoupled. They're
not connected whatsoever. So you have to deal with, movement and
moments in both of them. So if the sea settle or the sea floor
settles at all, the jackup can move. Or if the, if you get some
high currents or something or some wind, you can get the, the
monopile can move. And now these two pieces of. of kit are
decoupled. They're not together. So they move independently of one
another and that makes things difficult. This concept from the
floating side is coupling them together because you're putting the
crane right onto the same foundation. Now that foundation is a
like, like for like the common denominator, if you will, that they
move together. So you can now do, do operations in a lot easier
way. Because if you try to go out to a floating platform Your
vessel is not going to be a jackup anymore because the jackup legs
cannot reach the bottom because it's going to be too deep. So now
you're going to have two floating vessels moving in six degrees of
freedom all the time. And it's almost going to be impossible to
swap components out or land studs and bolt holes and those kinds of
things. But you couple them together, all of a sudden you can do
it. So great, great innovation. I think that, like you said, Phil,
if, as we get to floating offshore wind at scale, something like
this has to happen. Otherwise, we won't get to scale. So, we'll see
this one in the future, I'm sure. Allen Hall: Our last idea is a, a
fun patent from the engineers over at Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
Now, the scenario goes like this. It's a dark night. It's raining
outside. You're in a large parking lot after attending a concert.
And you say to yourself, I do not know where I parked. If only if I
had tires that glow to the dark. I could find my vehicle. Well, the
engineers have already come up with this because Goodyear has a
patent for it, where they are putting glow in the dark material in
the sidewall of your tire and it will glow. Now, I, Phil, I do not
understand why this is not being used today because they would
sell, Millions of these tires. Philip Totaro: Allen, I got news for
you. There's, there's two other very important applications and use
cases beyond finding your car in the dark.