CICNDT Prevents Hidden Blade Failures

Jeremy Heinks, owner of CICNDT, joins the show to discuss the
benefits of non-destructive testing (NDT). The conversation covers
the impact of storage conditions, transportation damages, and
emphasizes the importance of proactive inspection practice for
ensuring blade quality. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on
Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
Tomorrow. Allen Hall: Jeremy, welcome back to the show. Thanks
for having me. Well, the recent changes in the IRA bill are.
Pushing a lot of projects forward very quickly at the moment, and
as we're learning, there's a number of safe harbor blades sitting
in yards and a rush to manufacture blades to get them up and meet
the, uh, treasury department's criteria for, for being started,
whatever that means. At the moment, I think we're gonna see a big
question about the quality of the blades, and it seems to me. The
cheapest time to quickly [00:01:00] look at your blaze
before you start to hang them is while they're still on the ground.
And to get some n DT experience out there to make sure that what
you're hanging is appropriate. Are you starting to see that push
quite yet? No, not not at  Jeremy Heinks: the level we'd
like to see it. Um, as far as getting the inspections in, yeah, we
have been seeing the push to get the, get these blades out. Uh,
but, uh, the, the, the few that we have been able to get our eyes
on aren't looking good. The quality definitely down. And we've just
had a customer site come back with some, some findings that were
surprising for a brand new blade that hasn't been the up tower yet
and in use. So, um, it is much easier for us to get the, uh,
technology and the personnel to a blade that's on the ground. It's
cheaper, it's quicker. We can go through many, many more blades,
uh, with inspections. Uh, it's just access is just easier. Always
comes down to access.  Joel Saxum: That customer that you
had there, like what was their [00:02:00]driver? Right? Did
they feel the pain at some point in time? Did they, did they have
suspicions of something not right? New factory? Like, I don't know.
Why would some, why is someone picking that over someone? Not
because like you said, overwhelmingly. The industry doesn't really
do this. You know, even just getting visual inspections of blades
on the ground before they get hung is tough sometimes with
construction schedules and all these different things, moving
parts. So you had someone that actually said, Hey, we want to NDT
these blades. What was their driver behind that?  Jeremy
Heinks: So we, uh, we had done a previous, uh, route of
inspections on some older ative of theirs that were,  Speaker
5: um,  Jeremy Heinks: getting. Kinda along in the
tooth, if you will. Uh, so they've added some experience. They saw
what we could bring to the table as far as results and, and, and
information and data on those blades. Uh, and it all turned out to
be, um, pretty reliable. So, um, you know, we educated them on, you
know, if you have new blades coming in or even use the blades
coming in for replacement, that it's not a bad idea to get at least
a, a sample it. And, uh, [00:03:00] basically that's what
they call us in to do. They had some brand new blades come in. For
some new turbines they're putting up. And, uh, they wanted the
sampling. We did a sampling and the sample showed that, uh, they
have an issue of these, these brand new blades.  Joel
Saxum: So, okay, so what happens then? Right? Because I've
been a part of some of these factory audits and stuff, and when you
catch these things in the factory, you're like, Hey, where we got
these 30 defects? And then the factory goes back against their
form, their form, you know, their forms and they go, okay, material
checklist is a, we'll fix 24 of 'em. The other six are on you or
whatever that may be. What happens when you find these things in
the field at a construction site right? Then does that kick off a
battle between the, the new operator and that OEM or, or what's the
action there? Jeremy Heinks: Yeah, so we've been on the OEM
side and been through what you just explained, um, multiple times
and helped a bunch of the OEMs on that stuff, that stuff. But
unfortunately, when you're in the field and you find the same
thing, it's, it's a whole different ball game. Um, they typically.
We won't see any of that. We don't, we won't be able
to [00:04:00] see what the OEM actually does unless we
have informa, you know, information or channels that, that are a
little bit different, uh, than normal to, uh, get that information.
So, um, but yeah, so we, we'll give this information over to the
customer. Uh, they'll go to their supplier and then that'll turn
into a. To a dance and, uh, where everybody's trying to pass the
buck, basically, right? So, um, unfortunately that's the way it's
been. We will see how this one turns out. It, it all depends on, on
the relationship between that OEM and the customer and the end
user.  Joel Saxum: So, so this is my, my last question
about this and, and then I want to, of course, jump topics we have
a lot of talk about here today. But the question being, okay, so
say they do repairs. Is it then a good idea to bring you guys back
in after those repairs are done to say NDT? Everything looks good
here. Um, basically clear to fly.  Jeremy
Heinks: Yeah. [00:05:00] So, uh, post inspection on
repairs is always a good idea. Um, the aviation side is, it's
commonplace to, uh, post in inspect repair. So yeah, definitely,
uh, we'd wanna come back. Um, you know, and that's something we're
working on too in-house as a, uh, working on a new training.
Syllabus to where we can give some of the basic NDT tools to, uh,
end users so that if a repair company would come in, they would be
able to have their technicians do a quick, you know, quick test.
Uh, it's what we used to call like an operator level inspection.
And then if they saw some of the stuff we trained 'em to that we
could come back and, and bring in a level three or a level two and
look at their information and then maybe do a reinspection if they
thought they saw something that was bad. Allen Hall
2025: Joel, you and I had discussed a couple of months ago
with an operator in the United States and the Midwest that was
gonna be building a repowering, a wind farm with turbines, uh, that
were a couple of years old. Remember that discussion about what
version of [00:06:00] the blade are those? And it was an
early version. I was surprised how long those blades had been
sitting in the yard, and we said, well, it's gonna have a B and C
problem. You need to get somebody out there to inspect those blades
before you hang them. That's the perfect case for NDT to get out
there and look because it wasn't like every blade had a serial
defect. It was just kind of a random thing that was happening. Do
you remember that situation?  Joel Saxum: Yeah, and it
was really interesting too because you know, we're on like that
specific blade. We're on like version nine of it out in the field
right now. But since I think those were like in 20 19, 20 20, they
had been safe harbored from they, those blades have the advantage
of now having 3, 4, 5, 6 years of. History within the market of all
of the issues that pop up. So we were able to tell that operator,
Hey, since these things haven't flown yet, we know it's this, this,
this, and this. You should have NDT come out here and do this. You
should do this. This basically preemptive repair, this proactive
measure before you fly these [00:07:00] things. Um, and I
think what we see right now, Alan, like you said, just to open the
episode with IRA bill changes and. And these new legislation coming
up, there's a lot of stuff coming out of Safe Harbor that's gonna
get flown.  Allen Hall 2025: Oh, it's gonna have a huge,
uh, amount of blades that have been sitting there for a couple of
years. And, but if you, the operator haven't used those blades or
don't know the service history of those blades, it's kind of a
mystery and you better be calling other operators that are using
them. But ultimately, when it gets down to it, before you hang
those blades, and I know everybody's in a rush to hang blades. You
better take a look at 'em with NDT, especially if there are known
issues with those blades. And the the problem is you can't just do
a walk down, which is what I think a lot of operators are doing
right now. Send a technician down to make a look. Make sure the
blade's all in one piece, like I guess that's where they're at. Or
we'll walk inside and kick the tires and make sure all the bond
lines are there. It's a lot more complicated than that, and
particularly if you know there's a source of problem on a
particular [00:08:00] blade, you can't see it. It can be
buried deep inside. How are you gonna know without having somebody
with NDT experience? Joel Saxum: This is the interesting thing
too, here with that specific case that that developer will call
'em. They said, I talked with the OEM. They said there's nothing
wrong with these blades. And they like, that was like, they're
like, they're like, yeah, we checked with them. They said, there's
no issues. I said, you must have been talking to a sales guy
because anybody from that engineering team is gonna tell you that.
Or maybe they don't want to, right? They, of course they don't want
to come clean with this, but that's why we, that's why we have the,