Uptime Power-Up: Wind Energy Innovations

Welcome to Uptime Power-Up, our new show focused on the latest and
greatest wind innovations that push the industry forward! This
week, Allen and Phil explore FabricAir's system installation tool,
Itrec's offshore wind blade lifting method, Beridi Maritime's
floating wind structure, and a new way to enjoy your favorite
summer treat. To learn about these technologies or inquire about
more new tech, contact IntelStor at https://www.intelstor.com/.
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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, Alan Hall, and Itasaur's Phil Totaro, as we discuss
the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge
your energy future. All right, Fabric Air Canada. Phil, our friends
up in Canada have been working on some tools for their game. The
icing systems. Philip Totaro: Yes. And what's really interesting
and novel about this is they developed a system that allows them to
punch holes into some of the bulkheads and ribs along the length of
the blade so that they can actually install this. If you're not
familiar with fabric air, they have this kind of fabric tube that
runs the length of the blade and circulates hot air to be able to
de ice the blade. But in order to install it and retrofit it on
older blades, you have to have a way that you can drill, drill a
hole through some of the bulkheads and the ribs in the blade. And
so their, their latest patent that came up in our technology trend
watch and research this week indicates that they've, developed a
new system that could even be remote operated by a little rover
drone that they could send down the length of the blade and have
this thing drill out the, the bulkheads. Allen Hall: And that tool
can be used for other things besides this de icing system, right?
If you're putting holes in blades Allows access for a lot of other
things to go up in a blade, right? Philip Totaro: Including repairs
on a lightning conduction system for example, or just running any
other things that you might need to down the length of the blade.
You may need to install some arrow updates that would require some,
some work in turn on the internal shell or the inside of the shell
of the blade and so this would also facilitate facilitate that, so
it's it's pretty clever. Allen Hall: The technology they describe
in their patent is focused on Senveon blades, but this could be
used on almost any wind turbine blade. Philip Totaro: Oh,
absolutely. Yeah. The, the reason that they did that with Senveon
is because they actually are working with up in Quebec, which if
you're not familiar, the independent research organization that
actually has to send beyond turbines at their facility where fabric
air through this partnership with with actually tested this this
technology. So. It's pretty great. Allen Hall: Next up is Itrec
from the Netherlands and they have a offshore blade installation
technique or tool that they developed. And it, well, the way I
looked at this, it looks like a praying mantis almost that grabs
onto the tower and then you take the blade on the back of the
praying mantis up to the hub and plug in. Philip Totaro: What's
unique and interesting about this innovation is what they're doing
is they've created a system where you can actually have this crane
structure on the service and operation vessel. The vessel comes up
to the turbine and the foundation kind of clamps on and then
deploys this railing system that'll clamp up to the upper part of
the tower. And then you can have, the blade, which is, in this
clamp run up this little track that's a removable this removable
track, and then, like you said, it'll, it'll spin the blade around
and orient it in, in the right position in order to, to get it
installed and hooked up into the, into the hub. So of all the ideas
I've seen. About having this kind of construction or service and
repair type of system. This is actually one of the more clever
ones. But keep in mind that this company in Holland that's
developed the technology, they, this is just a patent at this
point. They are trying to get somebody interested in prototyping
this and, and actually commercially developing it. So we hope that
they're successful with it. Because this actually is pretty, not
only pretty clever but it's, it's something that's probably a
little easier to implement and safer to implement than some of the
other concepts that we've seen. And we're going to move down to
Spain now, Allen Hall: Phil, with Burriti Mint Marine Time. And
they have a patent that just come out, which talks about building a
floating structure, a floating wind turbine structure. But it's a
series of walls that get assembled into like this triangular shape.
And you Philip Totaro: want to describe this a little bit. It's
modular in the sense that they, they can do something key side
where they can assemble, whatever the structure is and with, the
levels of buoyancy that they need for, for, the, the size of
turbine they're going to install. They can assemble this quayside,
and then bolt it together as it's going in the water, and then you
can take, with your quayside crane, and plop the turbine, fully
assembled on this thing, and then float it out. So it's, it's
pretty clever in terms of what they're doing, and then the way
they've designed it, it can either serve as a, a moored floating
structure, or kind of like a, almost a tension like platform, where
you would have different legs, tethered legs, basically coming off
the bottom of this thing. This is a very early stage innovation at
this point, and we hope that they can, can pursue it. There's
obviously a lot of different floating structure designs and
concepts out there already. But this is one that actually has some
promise based on the modularity of it and the fact that you could
actually assemble it Keysight with whatever. Structure you needed
to, to be able to assemble for, for, something that's purpose built
for a particular turbine model. Allen Hall: Last Philip Totaro: but
Allen Hall: not least, Phil, the motorized ice cream cone. Hey,
this patent technology needs to be applied rapidly because, based
on what the sketches Philip Totaro: show, this is pretty cool.
Alright, so this isn't, strictly speaking, wind energy, but we're
gonna try to find some of these fun patents that people have come
up with over the years. So, this one, it's, it's real interesting.
There's actually, basically the premise of it is, you can have your
ice cream in a little cup on top of your cone, and the cone has a
little gear mechanism in it, so that I, sorry, I can't even get
through this without laughing, but, it'll, it'll automatically
rotate, The, the, your ice cream so that you can just stick your
tongue out and lick and you don't have to hand rotate Your ice
cream cone and worry about the ice cream dripping down on on your
hands So, I I've I've seen lots of things that are over engineered
in my time This is probably one of them But this is also You know a
pretty clever idea. I don't know that the world needs this Alan
Allen Hall: There's upsides and downsides to this bill. One is that
you don't have to Do anything to heat your ice cream, I guess,
besides hold it. Downside is you need a battery, right? So without
the battery, this thing doesn't go. So it doesn't, didn't seem to
have a USB port to charge it. That's the next patent, a USB
chargeable ice cream cone. There you go. Like everything else in
the world. Heh heh heh heh heh. You think the Europeans are gonna
make us use a USB C or a USB lightning cable? Huh? Which one is it?
Philip Totaro: USB C. Nah, they've already decided. Everything,
everything's gotta be standardized. Allen Hall: Well, there you
have it. There's three really interesting wind patents and one
crazy patent for you this week. Thanks, Phil, for bringing these
ideas to the table.