IntelStor Insights into Wind Turbine Blade O&M Costs

Phil Totaro, CEO of IntelStor, dives deep into the latest trends
and data surrounding onshore wind turbine blade operations and
maintenance costs. He discusses the strategies and innovations
being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce downtime, and
drive down costs. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly
email update on all things wind technology. This episode is
sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host,
Allen Hall. As the wind energy industry continues to grow and
mature, the focus on reducing costs and improving efficiency has
never Been more important. Operations and maintenance costs can
account for a significant portion of the total cost of energy
production, making it a critical area of concern for wind farm
operators and energy users alike. In this episode, Phil Totaro, CEO
and founder of IntelStor, will share the latest data and trends
related to Onshore Wind Turbine Blade Operations and maintenance
costs, which everybody's wondering about is going to provide some
valuable insights into the current state of the blade industry and
how we manage blades. You also discussed some of the strategies,
innovations being employed to optimize blade performance, reduce
downtime, and ultimately. Drive down costs, so whether you're a
wind farm operator, an energy user, or just simply interested in
the future of renewable energy, this is an episode you won't want
to miss. Welcome again. Thanks, Allen. Thanks for having me. So the
IntelStor report you just published, and there's some news about it
on LinkedIn, is really fascinating because Joel and I have been
wandering around Oklahoma and Texas and other parts of the country
looking at blades. And there is a lot of concern. About the costs
associated with damaged blades and how to forecast that and how to
appropriately budget for them, particularly in terms of all the new
types of blades that are being introduced, the bigger generators,
the three megawatts, the four megawatts, the six megawatt machines
versus the one and a half and two megawatts that we're kind of used
to it becomes really a guessing game for a lot of operators because
they don't have a sense of How much is it going to cost me to
operate this turbine, and how do I manage that, and how do I
appropriately schedule my technicians? Like, how many technicians
do I need for a season? These are subjects that come up all the
time, and, and if you've been around anywhere in Canada or the
United States over the last year, there's so much more talk about
it now. And this is where your new tool comes in, your Onshore
tool. Basically estimator or looking at turbine size versus the
types of damage a blade may suffer. Phil, will you, will you walk
us through what this tool is at the top Philip Totaro: level? Sure.
Of course. So, What we have been repeatedly getting asked about is,
for the ISPs we work with, they want to understand the, a detailed
market forecast. And the only way to get to a detailed market
forecast is, we obviously know based on the work that we already
do, how much capacity we're expecting to be installed. And that's
not based on like estimates, that's based on actual pipeline of
turbines. And so we know in markets like the United States or
Brazil, where, there's reasonably good detailed publication of
those turbine sizes, we, we've built out that, that pipeline. But
what we then needed to do was determine, all right, how many of
those units are going to be online within the next, 10 years or so?
What's the, most importantly, what are the top kind of failure
modes? And then what's the probability and, and kind of the annual
failure rate for each one of those type of failure modes on the
turbine as a whole. And then we started looking at blades in
particular because it, as it turns out, most people will recall
either anecdotally or through some previously published information
that gearboxes were probably the most expensive. Item in terms of
downtime that you could have on a smaller turbine. But as we go
bigger the gearboxes and generators have actually become more
slightly more reliable. You still have, your, your periodic faults
and failures. But they've developed a lot of technology through
either modularization or other up tower cranes and things like that
that allow you to service gearboxes, generators, etc. in situ.
Blades, if you've got a major issue, you probably still need to
take it down. And that can either involve a single blade swap kind
of, crane mechanism or a big crane. And it's basically all that
said, what's happening now with bigger turbines is the bigger the
turbines go, the The more cost is involved because of the amount of
repair time and the crane cost associated with undertaking that
type of repair. So as compared to gearboxes or generators or pitch
systems and, and maybe main bearings that used to be like the, the
biggest causes of, O& M expense and, and the biggest impact on
downtime. Blades are now kind of, unfortunately, taking the, the
lead. And I guess right up your alley, lightning is probably still,
like, one of the number one causes of both minor repairs and major.
Repairs and replacements. Allen Hall: Yeah, so we're seeing the,
the common faults that existed on the one and a half megawatt
machines and two megawatt machines when they move up to three and
four megawatt machines. They didn't always require a crane. Pretty
much when you get to three megawatts, four megawatts, you're going
to require a crane from most of the, the major items. Any sort of
trailing edge bond line on the back end to lightning damage to any,
anything internal. Boy, it just seems like there's a real risk
reward to using a larger turbine at the minute. And, and that's
where I think this data is very interesting because we, we are
moving away from the one megawatt machines. We obviously we're kind
of the one and a half to two range at the moment. Right. And then
we're going to be in the threes. What does that mean in terms of
operational costs? What do we need to be planning for here? Do we
need to be ordering more cranes? Do we need to have other plans
Philip Totaro: to deal with this? So there's a couple of things at
play here. One is Besides lightning damage, one of the number one
expenditures that you're going to have is actually been a fatigue
failure in the route. That's again, according to the data we've
got, as far as the probability of occurrence and, and the annual
failure rate, that's one of the highest impact repairs that you're
going to have. Again, besides lightning damage and followed closely
by transportation damage, which, unfortunately, transportation
damage is just kind of part of the cost of doing business, so to
speak. But it can, it can vary. You can get to site and notice that
you've got a few little things, maybe in the chips in the top coat
that you just need to fix, or you could actually have some some
severe issues with leading or trailing edge cracking or other
things, you might get to site and notice that you've got some,
missing parts or, or things like that. Maybe they're the the root
inserts weren't weren't aligned perfectly correctly or, or
something like that, when you go and try to install. So. There's
all kinds of things that, that can, have an impact here, but those
are, those are probably the, the top issues you've got. And then,
you've, you've still got, while it's infrequent, a full separation
of the blade is probably the, the number five thing that happens in
terms of total cost impact. So we're looking at just for the U. S.
market, by the way this year, it's about 2. 5 billion in blade
repairs that we're anticipating are going to be necessary. By 2030,
we're talking about 3 billion. And by, we, we only did our
projection out about 10 years, but by, within 10 years, it's going
to be around 3. 3 billion. And that's assuming that you have
turbines that have no service lift. For turbines with a service
lift, thankfully and since most, three, four, five, six megawatt
turbines are gonna be installed that way from, from now on We're
looking at, anywhere from about two and a quarter billion up to,
maybe three billion within ten years. So, whether you've got a
service lift or not, we're talking, close to three billion dollars
in, in a blade repair market alone that is Going to need to be
serviced and those costs are continuing to inch up. So the other
aspect of this that, that you asked about was regarding the growth
in turbine size and, and power rating. And what we're noticing is
that it's not necessarily reducing the. The frequency of occurrence
and the annual failure rate for specific failure modes. You're
still seeing lightning damage. In fact, with longer rotors, you may
we don't have enough data, unfortunately, because there's not
enough turbines out there, but you may actually see an increase in
lightning damage as a result of longer blades. So the reality of
this is these, we're kind of considering these estimates to be a
bit conservative at this point. And we're, we're looking at a
scenario where as turbines are getting bigger, Yes, you get more
power out of it but you also get a higher impact on your downtime
because for a single turbine going down, you're not only talking
about the repair cost and time you're also talking about the, the
loss of production. And with that much of a, of an impact on lost
production,