Why Two-Piece Blades Create Massive Engineering Problems

Register for the next SkySpecs Webinar! We discuss China's new 20MW
floating turbine by CRRC, and Nordex's patent application for
modular blade assembly. Plus HeliService USA's offshore ambulance
service and the recent construction delays at Atlantic Shores and
Vineyard Wind. 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! Allen Hall: Our next SkySpecs webinar, if
you missed the last one, about lightning protection and how to use
SkySpecs, drone imaging and data, and the EOLOGIX-PING Lightning
sensor to help yourself on the lightning side. You can actually
watch that on the SkySpecs. Just go to SkySpecs and you can see
that webinar. It's free. All this stuff is free. It's all great
stuff. All you need to do is register. You can get all this
information. The next one is coming up on June 25th, 11:00 AM
Eastern Time. And this next, webinar is gonna have Liam McGrath
from RWE, who's a blade engineer there, and Tom Brady from
SkySpecs, who handles all the cool drone technologies. So if you
haven't met Tom, you need to go to this webinar and find out what's
going on. And Michael McQueenie from SkySpecs. It's the rule.
Subject is when should you be scheduling your drone inspections and
you shouldn't be doing it in the spring. That's really important.
If you wanna save some money on your operational aspects,
your [00:01:00] o and m budget, you need to be thinking
about how to get your inspections done, when to get your
inspections done, and what tools are available to you at different
times a year. So there's optimal times to get your drones inspected
and there's suboptimal times. Suboptimal times is like March. Don't
do it, then do it the previous fall. and so Joel will be there. I
will be there. Don't miss it. It is June 25th. 11:00 AM and you can
sign up in the show notes below.  Speaker 2: You're
listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by
build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy
Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here's your hosts.
Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. 
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I have
Joel Saxo along and Rosemary Barnes from Australia and I've. Just
been digging through all the news over the last several days.
Really disappointing news to the United States, but
over [00:02:00] in China. TRRC has unveiled a 20 megawatt
floating wind turbine, and it's, has a rotor diameter of 260
meters, which is not really outrageous. The CRRC press release,
which is a little outrageous, let, me read you some of this, and
it's called The Key Hung. wind turbine, the key Hung, integrates
multiple innovative control technologies offering four core
advantages. High intelligence system, modularization, full chain
collaboration. And Joel, don't we all want that? And exceptional
stability. It incorporates various intelligent controls, sensing
and detection technologies that design further enhances the unit's
flexibility and efficiency by modularizing key system interfaces
and structural components. So there are a lot of words in this
press release, but they don't say, actually say anything at all. So
that's why we have Rosemary here to suss  Joel
Saxum: out.  Allen Hall: What is happening with CRRC
and a [00:03:00] 20 megawatt floating turbine? Is it
really needed, Rosemary?  Rosemary Barnes: Yeah, I think
I've made my thoughts clear about the, like bigger, kind of pursuit
of, offshore wind turbines. And I think that a lot of it is about
prestige to be the, first with the biggest. and so I guess that
this is the, first with the biggest, floating offshore wind
turbine. I, yeah, I don't think that we're really ready for, that
with floating offshore wind. Floating offshore wind is still in the
period where we're trying to figure out what are the really
important design requirements. How are we gonna deal with some
special, issues that floating offshore wind finds. So if you
combine all of that with floating offshore wind, or there's all
the, like the, yeah, the floating platform, the mooring mechanisms,
control systems, any weird aerodynamics that are happening because
of slight tilting or whatever. There's all that sort of stuff. It's
still being, learned about. [00:04:00] And at the same
time, you're gonna combine that with all of the really huge blade,
really huge turbine problems. I, think that. It's a little bit
crazy if this is intended as, being a commercial offering, it's
probably not, it's probably a learning exercise and a publicity
exercise more than that. And, maybe from that point of view, like
if you go into it trying to learn everything that you can about
what would happen if we, eventually go this big, then I guess that
there's some value in that. but yeah, I, don't think that we're
ready for, just rolling out thousands of these off the end of a
production line. Joel Saxum: Yeah, if you, I'm of course not
an expert in Chinese maritime, GE geology. Sorry. But, there's not
a whole lot of super deep water right off of the Chinese coast. The
Chinese coast is all 200 meters, like in every place that you'd put
like a max step in every place that you'd put a wind turbine. So if
this was to be built for a, a [00:05:00] larger. Rollout.
Where is it to sell to? Brazil? Oh, Brazil. Sure. Brazil. That
would make sense. That could be right. but I don't think, like if,
China has very ambitious wind goals. And of course if you watch
the. Any kind of news, you can see them rolling out large wind
farms, left and right, onshore, offshore, all kinds of stuff. But I
don't think they actually need the floating technology to be honest
with you. So it might just be a show of force.  Rosemary
Barnes: And also depths of 200 meters, that is challenging or
maybe that's, I think that exceeds the current, maximum depth of
fixed bottom, you could get there, but it, uses heaps of steel, the
fixed, bottom, Yeah, design compared to what we assume that
floating is gonna eventually achieve it. It should use less steel.
But it's funny because that's one constraint that probably China of
all countries doesn't really have because they have this, like glut
of, steel in China or they're winding down with their, their
construction. [00:06:00] industry. So they have an oversupply
of steel. a lot of countries are experiencing China, selling their
steel, into those countries at really cheap prices as tariffs
around the, world, not, just from the us. and in fact, the US
tariffs on Chinese steel predate the Trump administration. yeah, I,
think that. Steel is one thing that China doesn't have a huge short
supply of. I would agree with you that this probably isn't
primarily aimed at their own domestic market. It's probably more to
do with the fact that China has dominance in, every, or at least
nearly every energy technology at the moment. And looking forward
if floating offshore wind is gonna grow, then they probably wanna
maintain, wanna be dominant in that as well. But I think the main
markets that you see talked about for floating offshore wind, yeah,
South Korea and Japan, some other, places around that area where
they don't [00:07:00] have a lot of good, renewable
resources they can exploit. And then there's quite a lot of
interest in Europe as well, probably as much because they're just,
really aggressive with their, renewable plans in general. 
Joel Saxum: Just to highlight the difference between Western
countries and how China operates. One of the things they brag about
in this press release is the fact that CRCC, the China Railway
Construction Corporation, that single entity is saying, we have a
complete wind power equipment supply chain, as in we don't need
anybody else. We've got it all solved ourself, and that's. Very
unique 'cause you're just simply not gonna have that el elsewhere
in the world. now can they execute on that? I don't know. But it's
an interesting, it's an interesting take  Allen Hall: and
talking of offshore, if you haven't received your latest PES Wind
Magazine, the new edition is out and on the cover is hella service,
USA, talking about their ambulance service that they're offering on
the east [00:08:00]coast of the United States. And we were up
there a couple of months ago when we met with everybody. Michael to
Paul Russo, Dr. Kenneth Williams, who was with Brown University and
had done all their ambulance work there. And obviously Sophie
Crane. If you don't know Sophie, you're missing out. She's, she's
really good, with, hella service USA, but they're offering an
ambulance service. And the thing that Joel, that blew our mind when
we were there, and if you can read about it in the article, it says
there's essentially two helicopters that service. The northeast of
the United States from the US Coast Guard. So if you flip over your
kayak in the ocean, rosemary off the, the coast, New Jersey, it may
be a while, it may be several hours where someone can, help you and
the US Coast Guard is just gonna pick up your carcass and take it
and leave it at the front door of the hospital. They are not
skilled to provide any role paramedic services at
all [00:09:00]besides just first aid care. but hella service
USA is, it's a completely different model and it's, it is still
shocking. At Rosemary, we were talking about. Australia, how those
helicopters everywhere off the coast of Australia.  Rosemary
Barnes: Yeah. any nice day when you could be at the beach in
any part of the country, even where I go is the South coast and a
lot of people there. and yeah,