Crane-less Wind Turbine Repair Solutions with LiftWerx

In this episode, Glenn Aiken and Eelko May from LiftWerx share how
their pioneering, crane-less wind turbine repair solutions are
transforming the industry with cost-effective, eco-friendly, and
efficient approaches to major component exchanges and offshore wind
maintenance. Visit https://liftwerx.com/ for more! Sign up now for
Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind
technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show
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show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
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 my co host, Joel
Saxum. Today, we're joined by Glenn Aiken, president and co founder
at LiftWerx, and Elke May, managing director at LiftWerx. Based in
Canada, LiftWerx is leading the way in developing craneless wind
turbine repair systems. As many of Turbine repairs have
traditionally depended upon large cranes that are difficult to
transport and are vulnerable to wind delays. And this is where
LiftWork comes in because they are disrupting the status quo. They
have pioneered ingenious smaller lifting solutions that are cost
effective, efficient, and eco friendly. Glenn and Eelko welcome to
the program. Thanks, Al. Yeah, thanks very much, Al. So as we all
know doing major component exchanges is a difficult task. And, or
doing a rotor removing the rotor, those kinds of things usually
involves massive cranes. And in the United States, and even in
Europe times getting a hold of a crane big enough to do the job is
one expensive and two, usually there's a narrow window when you can
actually get access to that crane. This is where LiftWerx comes in
and I really want to hear about, it's really a couple of different
things you're working on. Obviously the gen hook and the rotor
hook, but now you're into offshore. So I think that's a cool
offering because there's going to be a, not a lot of work offshore
in the United States coming up in which is going to need help. So I
want to hear about what you guys are seeing out in the world and
how LiftWerx fills that void. Glen Aitken: If I look back 10 years.
Because I've been working in wind energy for around 20 years we've
seen a massive rapid growth in the size and weight of wind turbine
components we've also seen just a huge volume of wind turbines
installed over the last decade and quite frankly, crane
requirements have also, You're you know, increase just to meet the
demand. Both, both the, demands in height and weight, but also just
the volume demand. Um, myself I came out of the heavy crane
industry. I worked there since the early 90s. And, Really started
to see customers were in a lot of pain over, over crane costs and
also crane logistics. And so we, we tried to come up with a
solution that would solve a lot of that pain. And what we're seeing
now is that there's a huge transition going on especially in North
America at the moment where we're seeing that probably 50 percent
now of major component replacements are being done with uptower
cranes as compared to traditional cranes. Joel Saxum: It makes
absolute sense, right? So you guys have developed this technology
based on seeing the struggles of asset owners and other, ISPs and
stuff in the world, because, hey, we've got to swap this one
component out. We've got a crane, over here, it may cost you 50 or
75. I've seen insurance cases where it's a hundred thousand dollars
to mobilize a crane, right? And that's just to get it there. And
once you get it there, then it's day rate after day rate. And then
if you get a little bit of wind and it's stand down. And so those
are things are painful, but it also affects, the business
interruption and getting those assets back up in order, getting
that energy onto the grid. So it affects all of us. It's not just
a, a little bit of a money problem for one person. You guys have
developed your own solutions in house. If you need to make
adjustments, someone has a specific problem, there's a new model
out or something of that sort. You're engineering it yourselves.
But the way you guys got to being a company like this is you Seeing
the pain points of the wind industry and adjusting to it. Glen
Aitken: Yeah, that, that's correct. For me personally, I before
starting Lift works I I met a customer that was in a tremendous
amount of pain having just exchanged a gearbox on a GE turbine.
Something that's being done every day. But it walked me through the
woes of this particular gearbox exchange where. It wasn't just,
winter time. He was on a wind farm where they had like close to 20
feet of snow accumulation over the course of the winter. So it's
not just the getting the crane mobilized. It was also blowing about
a quarter million dollars worth of snow. Just to get the crane in
there. And it goes on and on. And at the time I was the R& D
director at Mammoet, which is a, Dutch global heavy lift
contractor. And he said to me, he says, Glenn, he says, can't you
figure out a way to exchange a gearbox without a big crane? And
that, that question really had a huge effect on me. Yeah. Why not?
This customer clearly wanted that and needed that. And. Just
thought about the scalability of that. If it can solve his problem,
it could solve the problems of a lot of other people as well. Joel
Saxum: Your technology, you guys are using it onshore, offshore,
and Eelko will touch on the offshore side of things as well. But,
you're designed to solve problems. One of the ones that always
comes to my mind, and this is the exact thing you talked about. I'm
from the northern part of the United States, up in Wisconsin. I
deal with road bans and freeze and all these different things,
right? And or, you get into the western states, like in the BLM
territory, where you have certain bird species that you can't, or
raptor seasons, you can't go on, you can't leave the pad. I don't
need to leave the pad with the LiftWerx crane. I can roll up with
just a couple pickups, or pickups, bigger trucks. But I don't have
a, to put crane mats out and all these different things. So you
guys are solving a lot of problems here. In the onshore world, this
is a curiosity for people listening as well. When you show up with
a crane, a big crane, you show up with sometimes 10, 12 truckloads
of stuff and moving materials and mats and you have to sometimes
mobilize other equipment just to build the equipment. When you guys
show up onshore, what does that look like? Hey, LiftWerx is here.
They're rolling into site. What kind of equipment do you show up
with? How many trucks does it take? Glen Aitken: It also varies.
Small repairs require less equipment, larger repairs require more
equipment. I think our smallest footprint is if we're just doing
something as simple as a generator exchange for generator changes,
it's one truck. And it's a truck 40 foot container on the back. And
in that container, we've got all the tools all the interface
equipment and all the crane equipment to exchange a generator. You
don't need any permits because it's, nothing's oversized, nothing's
overweight. So we can just mobilize and go. And for customers, they
can just call us up and if they want that service, it's like
ordering pizza. It really is that simple. We just have to get in.
In a driver and hop in the truck and drive to that site. And what's
interesting, when it's that minimalistic, we can drive from
Massachusetts to California in four days and we can still do the
job more cost effectively and more timely than local contractors
can do in California. Just because we're coming with so little
equipment and we're so nimble for bigger repairs. If you're doing
something like pitch bearings where the rotor has to come down, we
still need a small tailing crane. Cause you have to, you have to
trip the rotor. So you are coming with a small crane but that small
crane is usually just a couple of trucks. We're coming with a lot
of other ground tooling, like hub stands, et cetera. So I think. At
the very most, like all the crane equipment up tower and down
tower, it might be about 10 trucks. But by comparison, if you're
doing it traditionally, you would be there with maybe 25 trucks. Or
more like what we're seeing on really big turbines now, it could be
50 trucks. If you see some of these big roller cranes coming with
all kinds of superlift, canoe weight and everything else, like it's
for big turbines that the repairs require big cranes. Eelko May:
And I think That's a key pillar of our business that we show up
with maybe a fifth or even a 10th of the equipment that you would
need with traditional cranes. And that's true for both onshore and
offshore where, you need to mobilize huge vessels, huge jackups,
huge cranes to change a really small part. And yeah, but in, That's
just not right. If you can minimize that, then there's always a
good business case behind it. Joel Saxum: Okay, Eelko, so let's
talk about that offshore game a little bit now. We're sitting in
North America. Glenn, you're in North America as well. So our
offshore industry is very early game, right? I know I've just seen
some videos from South Fork, and you look at it, and you're like,
Oh, fantastic, we've got some utility scale wind farms out there.
But it's just one right now, right? They're coming. Now, you guys
over in the North Atlantic, Northern Europe, you've been doing
offshore wind for a long time, so you guys have got quite a bit of
experience over there. There's a big,