Danish Wind Power Academy’s Turbine-Specific Training

Alex Øbell Nielsen, CEO of Danish Wind Power Academy, discusses
their customized, on-site, hands-on training programs for wind
turbine technicians. The academy's comprehensive approach improves
wind farm efficiency and technician retention through targeted
assessments and real-world problem-solving. 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 Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS
retrofit. Follow the show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us!  Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining
Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress
Powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Alex, welcome to the
show.  Alex Øbell Nielsen: Thank you. Good to be on the
show.  Allen Hall: You've been in wind about 20 years,
and, uh, when we had talked a couple of weeks ago now, uh, you were
highlighting some of the challenges that exist in wind energy,
especially on the training side. What are those challenges? What do
you see as, uh, Danish Wind Power Academy as challenges out in the
world  Alex Øbell Nielsen: from a training provider
perspective? Uh, of course, uh, the. The, the great demand for
technicians, not only now, but also in the future, and not having a
formal training, if you like, for wind turbine technicians. Um, we
see that as a challenge. Uh, but of course it's also an opportunity
for us as a training provider. [00:01:00] Um, but, um, I
mean, as you mentioned, Danish Wind Power Academy has delivered
training for more than 20 years. Uh, we do so globally, um,
headquartered in Denmark, but, um. Before I, you know, deep dive
into all our, our trainings, uh, as an example, we deliver
troubleshooting training. Uh, a lot of customers are asking for
that, but we quickly learned that many of the participants didn't
have the skillset to enter or join a troubleshooting training. So
what we begun doing two and a half years ago is to assess, uh,
technicians before they actually go on one of our trainings to make
sure that they have the right skillset. From that, then we've
learned, uh, assessing more than I think 1500, maybe two, uh, yeah,
more than 1500 technicians. Now that we see two or or more
challenges. One is hydraulics. They always score low on hydraulics
and the others and controls where they also score low. So those are
some of the challenges we see and we do [00:02:00] these
assessments globally  Joel Saxum: and I think that's an
important point there globally, right? Because Danish Wind Power
Academy of course, like when you think wind, you think the Danes,
right? The Danes know what they're doing, right? Uh, we're, we're
over here on uh, wind sites in the US all the time and they're
like, yeah, some Danish guy was here last week fixing this. Like
that happens all the time. But I, I, I wanna focus on that a little
bit, saying like, we talk about, okay. The, the, the, the podcast
here, of course, we're based in the states. You can hear it by our
voices, but we cover things globally, right? So we cover from the
eu what's going on offshore, onshore, India, Australia, apac, down
in Brazil, Mexico, you name it. We're, we're covering it. We're
talking to people. The, the tech, the global technician problem in
wind. Is not localized. It is everywhere. It doesn't matter what
locale you're in, where there's wind turbines, there is a shortage
of qualified, trained, and good people. And I think, um, kudos to
you guys for, you know, exporting your knowledge around the world.
But that's something to focus on here, is that
this [00:03:00] is a global issue and you guys are
working to solve that. Alex Øbell Nielsen: We try to at least,
but, but as you said, it is global and we have done these
assessments, uh, globally in 2024. We delivered training in more
than 19 countries. Uh, the assessments we've done for technicians
that work both in North North America, uh, Europe and, and, and the
APAC region. Uh, so, so we do get, uh, you know, uh, assessments
from around the world, uh, covering all these technicians and yeah,
repeating myself, hydraulics and controls are big challenges for
sure. Joel Saxum: What's the, what's the best region? Who's
got the best text?  Alex Øbell Nielsen: Yeah, it, I'm not
gonna go into that. What I can say though is that, uh, I mean, just
briefly the assessment, it's one hour. We ask 40 questions, uh,
and, uh, whoever participates has a link where they, they can spend
this one hour. We asked 40 questions within hydraulics, controls,
mechanics, and electrics. Uh, and, and based on this, uh, we do see
some patterns, uh, also on we ask how many years of, uh,
industry [00:04:00] experience do these participants
have? And, and funnily enough, or maybe not, uh, but those, uh,
with more than 15 years experience score the lowest. So, and there
could be a wide range of, uh, reasons for that, but they score the
lowest. Uh, usually we see the technicians that have between two
and four years experience. They score the best. So, so we, we, we
can see, and I'm sure we can deep dive into the regions, but I
don't have those numbers in front of me, so, um, maybe not, but
what I can say is it's the same challenge. It doesn't matter North
America, Europe, far east. Hydraulics and controls.  Allen
Hall: So what are some of the real world consequences when,
uh, wind farm operators don't invest in training for their
people?  Alex Øbell Nielsen: I'm sure there are multiple,
but at least from our point of view, what we want to do is help
asset owners improve performance of their turbines, of their wind
farms, and we believe you can do so by training. And we have data
to back that up, that between. Point four and
one [00:05:00]point per, uh, 2%, uh, uh, performance increase
you can expect from following training. And, and what we do is that
we, um, we look at performance data before we enter training. We
provide training over X amount of time. Uh, and then of course we
look at performance data from the wind farms following the
training, and we can see a drop in again, let's say it's hydraulics
or any other. Areas that we've focused on, and then we can see an
increase in performance. So I think as an asset owner, you want
performance out of your turbines, out of your assets, and, and if
you do not train your technicians, if they don't have the right
skills, um, yeah, then you, then you potentially will lack
performance and. I also think there's a lot of talk about
troubleshooting being a good troubleshooter, which is great, but in
our point of view, maintenance is where you need to excel. If
you're good at maintaining your turbines, if you're good at
maintaining your assets, then you will require less
troubleshooting, of course. [00:06:00] So maintenance is very
much where we would like to focus. So if you're good at that. You
have less spare parts consumptions. You spend less downtime if you
have, uh, malfunctions or what whatnot and whatnot on your turbine,
and then you increase performance away.  Joel Saxum: I
think that's something that Alan and I both, we talk about
regularly and we can get on board with, and we want to talk to the
uptime listeners and the uptime family uptime network about this
back your business up with a good business case. And that's what
Danish Wind Power Academy has done here, right? They've taken the
performance data, looked at training, and then showed the increase,
boom, business case built. Uh, I love to hear that and I know a
Alan does too. 'cause we, we harp on people about that all the
time.  Allen Hall: Well, there's an performance
improvement aspect, right? That you can get the turbines operating,
uh, more efficiently and have more uptime. There's also, I think
what I see a lot of times in the United States is you don't see
the, uh, ohs and the cost of the U lows. A hydraulic lines
are [00:07:00] leaking down all over the place onto the
tower, right? So now you gotta clean up, you gotta do the same
thing for like, uh, some pitch motors or hydraulic pitch motors
where there's just hydraulic fluid down the blade. Uh, and some of
the more. Catastrophic ones. If you can get more uptime, yes, but
there's also stopping some of the more expensive downtime events
that occur because of maintenance issues.  Alex Øbell
Nielsen: Exactly.  Allen Hall: From a training
standpoint, then you're going deep into how turbines operate and
there is that quiz or test that you provide to potential trainees
before you get into the the details of training. I am not sure that
we have seen a lot of that in the United States at all. Uh, like if
you have basic, fundamental skills, you know how to repair cars,
you've, you've welded before, you've played around in hydraulics in
a previous job. That usually is the qualifications to get started
in the United States, but that doesn't really trend out too well as
you [00:08:00] get further down the line because wind
turbines 10 years ago, pretty standard. You can move between
turbines. I think today when we're talking about. Six and seven
megawatts being the platforms. Those turbine are a lot more
complicated than 10 years ago. And the challenges that brings to
technicians and maybe wanna explain. How much more a technician
needs to know now than even maybe even five years ago. Alex Øbell
Nielsen: Yeah, uh, for sure. And yes, the, the machines are
getting bigger and they're definitely getting more complicated as
well. Um, I have a commercial background, so I can't go into, uh,
specific details, but what I can tell you is that the course
curriculum that we develop over time is getting. Uh, just by the
number of pages they need to go through. Um, on the latest, uh,