Monitoring Solutions for Aging Wind Turbines: eologix-Ping

Allen Hall and Joel Saxum interview Matthew Stead, co-founder of
eologix-Ping, about the company's growth, industry challenges, and
their innovative sensing solutions for aging wind fleets. They
discuss the benefits of eologix-Ping's acoustic sensing, lightning
detection, and blade monitoring technologies. Sign up now for
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technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with co host Joel Saxun.
We are in Minneapolis for the 2024 American Clean Power with the co
founder of eologix-Ping, Matthew Stead. Matthew Stead: Thank you,
Allen. Allen Hall: Matthew, welcome back. Matthew Stead: Thank you.
It's great to be here. I actually was here with you a year ago.
Allen Hall: Oh, that's right. In New Orleans. Yeah. So it has been
a year since the merger of eologix and Ping. So a lot has happened
over that time year's time span? Matthew Stead: Absolutely. Allen
Hall: Uh, we should touch upon that. I want, first want to get your
opinion of what this convention has been relative to New Orleans
last year, what your thoughts were, what the interfaces have been
with your customers. What'd you think? Matthew Stead: Yeah, I think
industry's growing, fleets getting older, design issues, Every
month, every six months, every twelve months, there's more and more
challenges we're seeing, and I think that was reflected in the
discussions we had here. Joel Saxum: I think you're getting that,
it's just being communicated, right? Yeah. Hey, we have this
problem, what can you do to fix it? I sat with someone last night
at dinner and they literally just said I've got this. I want to do
this. I want to do that. I want to do that. Who can do that? I said
nobody can do all three, but this company can do this and this. I
said, Pingmealogic can monitor for this and we can, you can do this
for this. And there's some gearbox stuff for that. So people are
looking for solutions for their plaguing problems. And I think that
is exactly what you said as the fleet ages, right? It was before
everybody was just like trying to catch up. And now you're getting
engineers into places. We do talk to a lot of people that are
hiring engineers. Hey, this person's brand new to our team. Whether
it's from the insurance side, asset owner side, even ISPs. I talked
to an ISP. Hey, we got a great new blade engineer to help bolster
our ability to repair blades. It's oh, that's fantastic for you
guys as well. So more engineering help. And that's just giving more
bandwidth to the basically the stakeholders in industry to solve
these problems. Matthew Stead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're all here
to help. Joel Saxum: Yeah. For sure. This is the place for it.
Allen Hall: We have seen a lot of engineers this week with specific
problems. Mostly blade problems, occasionally bearing problems,
even though it depends on the platform. There's some platform with
a lot of bearing issues at the moment. And we have seen a narrowing
down of the possible solution companies. And that's what I noticed
this week. The number of drone companies has really diminished
robot companies way down. It's around pretty much left, right?
Because there's so dominant in that market space. And then when it
comes to acoustic sensing, remote sensing, continuous monitoring,
that's the logic's ping at the minute because of the, Really gets
down to cost, right? And what the product can do. So you packed a
huge amount of information in this little tiny package that doesn't
require any wiring. And that just has opened up the opportunities
for eologix-Ping. I think it, there's, everybody was talking to,
what can we do? And when they come to our booth, we say,
eologix-Ping has the most cost efficient, readily adaptable, on the
go product. That's awesome. Just stick it on and go. And which is a
game changer, right? So the continuous monitoring systems that we
were, we're seeing a year ago that were these big monster boxes
with the wires everywhere. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Allen Hall: They're
essentially gone. Joel Saxum: They're for engineering projects.
They are. And you're not going to roll, you're not going to roll
that out. Fleet wide recalls. Yeah. Yeah. Cause at the end of the
day, this is what we need to be able to do. We need to enable the
guys in the O and M building to know what they need to do and
prioritize. So like the lightning strike. I don't need to know
every bit of metadata about that. I need to know which turbine got
hit. Matthew Stead: Did I get hit? Which one? Joel Saxum: Go look
at it. Yeah. Or is there an issue here? Because at the end of the
day, every CMS system tells you at one point in time, go look at
the turbine. So if you can do that in the most cost efficient way,
that's the answer. Allen Hall: Even the number of engineers that
were here, when we talked to them, and how many assets do you have,
how many turbines do you have? We have thousands. How many blade
engines do you have? Two! Matthew Stead: Not enough. Allen Hall:
There is no way you're going to be able to monitor that many
turbines without having a tool. Yeah. There's no way. Too much
data. Too much data, not enough simplicity to it, and you can't
quickscan, which is the problem I see. That eologix-Ping is fixed,
is the quickscan, Matthew Stead: What's the hot list? What's the
top 10%? What's the top 20%? Allen Hall: Yeah, you got to get to
that list really quickly, every morning. Joel Saxum: And you can
take a look. And you can scale and install on a wind farm in a day.
The way I look at that is I could, if I got my shipment of ping
sensors, right? Of the acoustic ones, and I had, here, boys, put
this in the back of your truck, and we'll put this on every tower
we have out there. Okay, they're done at the end of the day. And
all of those turbines are now monitored. Whereas if you have to
install, Get up in the blades and this and that. It said the
ability to scale up the monitoring effort is not there. Matthew
Stead: Yeah. And that's where we started. So I think when I founded
the business, I didn't try and design a product and then try and
sell it. I spoke to the customers, what can you afford, what are
your challenges, what do you need? And then we designed a product
to suit that. And that's the way it should be, right? It should be.
That's a huge problem. Joel Saxum: Okay, so this is a conversation
I have regularly. I'm a bit plugged in some of the the VC world and
the tech world in Houston. And there's people that go to these
places, Greentown Labs, the ION, that walk in there and just say
Hey, wait a minute. Do you have basically a development partner?
Have you talked with some, instead of breezing by a bar room
conversation of primary market research, are you actually engaged
with these clients and solving the specific problems they have?
Otherwise you're making a solution for a problem that doesn't
exist. It doesn't work. Yeah. It doesn't work that way. Matthew
Stead: Yeah. So I'm really pleased that you're relaying what we set
out to do. Yes. Joel Saxum: Yes. Matthew Stead: Yes. It's been
worth the effort. It's been worth the effort. Allen Hall: I took
that tour along with Joel. If you've been listening to the podcast
very long over the last month or so, you've heard about our travel
log of going through West Texas and up through Oklahoma and looking
at all kinds of turbines. There are problems everywhere. Cranes are
out right now fixing blades. There's a lot of pitch bearing issues.
There's a lot of structural issues inside. And then when we had
stopped to talk to the OEM supervisors and managers of those sites,
they're saying, Hey, We have so many problems, we can't monitor it.
And some of them we just need to monitor. We just going to have to
put a monitor on and they're looking at solutions or trying to
figure out how to monitor a hundred turbines that have some sort of
internal blade issue that they know of. How are they going to do
that? Either you're going to send a technician around to do that
every couple of weeks, which just kills your technician. They're
already killed. Yeah. Yeah. They're already stressed. You're gonna
have to bring in some outside crew to go do it. Super expensive.
Yeah. Or you're gonna put some sort of continuous monitoring system
in. Now, when we stopped at one of those offices, we said the
internal blade monitor From eLogic's ping is the quick solution
because it does so much and everybody is just mind blown. There's
no wiring. Do you want to describe how that system works? Matthew
Stead: Yeah, so there's two parts. We have the listening sensor,
which has got a lovely windshield, which looks beautifully black.
So that's intelligent listening sensor and now we have the power
and comms module and power and comms module power. but also the
lightning detection sensor. So putting them both together. So we've
got the intelligent listening sensor and the power and comms
module, and we just plugged them together. It turns it on and slap
it on with the magnets onto the tower. Allen Hall: And so that's
the internal internally inside the blade, which is where the
technicians were going with me that are saying, okay. Yeah, but I
can't really see in this dark blade. How am I going to monitor it?