Power-Up: Fillable Blades, Up-Tower Gearbox Repair

This week on Uptime Power-Up, an idea from Takkion for re-boring
the gearbox and adding an insert without needing cranes and a
method from Alliance for Sustainable Energy for a fillable wind
turbine blade. Plus a way to rest your head while standing up. Sign
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wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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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 idasaur's Phil Totaro, as we discuss
the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge
your energy future. Alright guys, this week some really interesting
ideas on the docket. This first one has to do with replacing parts
of a gearbox. If you've been around gearboxes long enough, you
realize that there's a nice set of bearings in them and sometimes
the bearings get overloaded. And they start to spin inside the
housing. When that happens, it creates some unevenness and you
essentially have to pull the gearbox out of the turbine, sit on the
ground and work on it or replace it. But this idea from Renew
Energy Maintenance, which is a part of Takkion now, I believe, has
a way of basically taking some, some machinery, some equipment up
tower and re boring. This gearbox, we're putting an insert in or a
sleeve in so that the bearing can be set properly so that the
gearbox then functions correctly. Now Phil, this is a big money
saver, right? To have a piece of equipment that saves you from
bringing in a crane? Philip Totaro: Well, it, and it's not only
that, it's the fact that, on site maintenance is something that's
always subject to a certain level of precision. But when you start
talking about doing gearbox repairs and replacements, and this is,
as you're mentioning, if you basically have a situation where the
bearing raceway kind of machined itself out, you're probably gonna
have to fit something new in there. But in order to do that, you've
got to kind of refresh the bore. And so what this idea is, is
effectively a tool that allows you to rebore this hole and stick a
sleeve in there, then put the bearing, the new bearing raceway in
there so that everything still kind of fits in a, in a compliant
way. On the original gearbox housing. But it's doing so, like you
mentioned, in a way that it doesn't require a huge crane for
lifting the gearbox out and lowering it to the ground, where you
would normally want to do repairs. Of this level of precision when,
when we talk about doing up tower repairs on like a blade, you
might be able to, to get away with, shaving things down up there
and while guys are dangling off and ladies are dangling off ropes
and, and whatnot. These, these technicians. The, the reality of
that is there's a, there's a certain level of precision involved
with that, and you can probably get away with, minor idiosyncrasies
or minor variations in, in the quality of that type of work. When
you're talking about boring a new hole in the gearbox housing, it
has to be done with a certain level of precision in order for
everything to still, fit properly, like the bearing raceways, the
sleeve that they're talking about in this patent application.
Everything's gotta be able to fit in a certain tolerance level. So,
the fact that they've invented this tool that's gonna allow for,
this repair that would normally involve a large crane pick, or,
even if it's a turbine level crane pick. You're starting to talk
about, extra tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of
thousands with a big crane to be able to pick the gearbox out,
well, pick the nacelle off, cover off, pick the, the, the gearbox
out of the nacelle lower it down to the ground, repair it, then put
it all back. This is something that you can basically, pull a few
things apart up tower and, and do this machining in situ which is
a, a pretty attractive capability to, to have, or any, any kind of
repair, so, kudos to Renew Energy Management. Joel Saxum: What this
looks like to me is the fact that even if you're a little bit off
in your machining and you got to redo this every two or three
years, you're still going to be money ahead than you were coming
out with a crane if you have to redo this process here and there.
Now, when you get into anything, just like Phil said, the precision
of. machining out anything for a bearing or any kind of rotating
assembly. I used to do so I've done not used to do, but I've done
some high performance engines in my past. And if you get something
just a little bit wrong, like you're it's toast, right? So the fact
that they've figured out a way to do this, Fantastic. I think this
could be a good, really big boost to the industry. I don't know
personally if Renew is doing a Renew Energy Maintenance is doing
this out in the field or not, or if someone else has licensed it
from them or not. I do not know. But I hope they are. Allen Hall:
Well, our friends at Alliance for Sustainable Energy have a patent
out that talks about basically a fillable. So the concept is you
build sort of a superstructure of sense and within you cover it
with fabric and inner and an outer fabric cover. And haul this
lightweight, inexpensive piece all the way out to site. And when
you get to site, you can assemble it. But then at the end, you fill
the two fabric layers between the two fabric layers with foam to
then create a wind turbine blade shape. And there's been a number
of ideas like this, like GE had something similar to this, where
Had a fabric covered sort of superstructure to lighten the blade up
and to make it shippable. There's been a couple of attempts at
this. This one is a little more unique, though, Phil, in the sense
that they're using a filler or foam to create the final shape.
Philip Totaro: The, the Alliance for Sustainable Energy part of
what they do is they serve as the holding company for the
intellectual property assets of the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory in the United States. And so this technology is
something that not only was developed with government funding but
is theoretically, able to be licensed or sold to to anybody in the
industry that, that would want to try to, to build and implement
this, or at least partner with NREL to kind of further this this
area of research. So, while this is a clever idea, and I use this
term quite a lot, I think this is clever, that's clever. It is
indeed a clever idea in that, the engineers came up with a unique
solution to something that is a challenge in terms of
transportation and logistics. Do I really like this though from the
standpoint of it could be used in industry? Probably not because
this is a little too, there's too many kind of unknowns as well as
differences from conventional technology that, you don't win prizes
for, for, clever ideas really at the end of the day. Supply chain
companies that build and sell components for wind turbines, they do
so on the premise that It's part of a system that can be, looked at
as financeable by both the development community and the financial
community and the insurance community for that matter. This doesn't
necessarily fall into that category of, it's, it's unfortunately a
bit too radical or it's too much of a departure from conventional
technology, I think, to be really widely used in industry. Is there
some type of application that this could have in the future,
potentially? Even potentially from the standpoint of repairs,
because you could, you could see designs being tweaked in the
future to allow for, a cavity where you could have some kind of,
foam core that could be pumped in and, and could solidify into. A
cavity that could provide some kind of structural support or
something like that, that, if you detected there might be an area
of cracking or damage around the tip, maybe you could have
something where you could, pump in some kind of foam core or foam
supportive material So there could be aspects of this that could
eventually be used in the industry. Do I see this replacing
conventional blades in 10 to 15 years? I do not. Joel Saxum: In my
mind, I could see this working for like, an off grid application
with a seven meter blade or something of that sort. But when you
get to utility scale size, there's just not enough consistency to
be had with it. And if it fails, that failure is just too damn
expensive. To rely on a technology like this. That's my opinion.
Allen Hall: Well, they say necessity is the mother of invention.
And this is the case with this particular patent and our fun patent
of the week. It's an apparatus that sticks to the bathroom wall
above a toilet, urinal, or some sort of shower head if you're in
the shower. And it allows the user to lean their forehead against
it while using the facilities. This is obviously you can imagine
this in pretty much every bar and casino in America. Phil, I think
this has inherent problems. Now, if you're leaning forward and
putting weight on your forehead while maybe inebriated, let's just
say it seems like you could stumble and fall and really hurt
yourself while you're trying to use this device. Philip Totaro:
That is, that is a possibility, but I, I actually think this is
something, I, I can't imagine if, if the, whoever invented this
hasn't sold, like, millions of these, I don't know why, because
this sounds, as you just mentioned, like it would go into every,
public space imaginable,