Blade Failure Alert: How ONYX Prevents Million-Dollar Disasters

ONYX Insight's ecoPITCH system prevents catastrophic wind turbine
blade failures caused by pitch bearing issues. Forrest French and
Martin McLarnon reveal how continuous monitoring and early
detection can save wind farms millions. Contact Martin McLarnon:
martin.mclarnon@onyxinsight.com 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
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YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Allen Hall: ONYX Insight's ecoPITCH
monitoring system has become crucial for wind farm operators facing
blade root insert failures. These failures start invisibly but can
end catastrophically with blades detaching completely. This week we
speak with Forrest French Senior Project Engineer, and Martin
McLarnon, sales Director for North America at ONYX Insight. Their
ecoPITCH system detects dangerous movements before visible signs
appear as Forest notes in the interview. By the time you can get a
feeler gauge measurement, it's probably too late. So join us to
discover how data-driven monitoring is helping operators make
smarter maintenance decisions preventing million dollar disasters
and keeping turbines spinning safely. Welcome to Uptime Spotlight,
shining Light on Wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the
progress powering tomorrow. Allen Hall: Martin and Forest.
Welcome to the [00:01:00] show. Hello. How's it going?
Thanks for letting us. Yeah, we're really interested to, to talk to
you today just because there's so many blade root issues from pitch
bearings and blade bushings or inserts as they're called sometimes,
and a number of other issues. And when we talk to operators, what
they tell us is, oh, we, you use ecoPITCH. And they love that
system. But I want to, I wanna back up first and talk about what
are some of the operators experiencing out there in the field And
ecoPITCH system was originally developed to look at pitch bearing
problems and forests. What are some of those pitch bearing problems
you're seeing out in the field today? Forrest French: Yeah, so
it, it, it's a funny story. It was originally developed for pitch
bearing, uh, applications. Um, the industry as a whole started
experiencing this root insert issue, so we were able to, we were
kind of in a perfect position, right? It was, it was a, it was
a [00:02:00] really serendipitous thing that we, we had
just developed this product and we could easily pivot. To measure
both the pitch bearing and this root insert issue. Uh, the, the
pitch bearing issues are admittedly the, the more difficult, uh,
issue, right? To measure. Um, there's, there's some, some great
opportunities for value and there's also some really good
challenges to come along with that. Um, pitch bearings, uh, they,
they don't rotate quickly. Right. Uh, when, when we talk about
typical CMS typical vibration monitoring, you're looking at a very,
very fast rotating, uh, shaft or bearing, et cetera, and you're
able to pick up on those frequencies as they revolve. You don't get
that with a pitch bearing. It's a very slow moving, uh, slewing
bearing. Um, so picking up. Noise through vibration can be very
difficult, uh, because again, you don't get that frequency of
that [00:03:00] rotation, so you're left with nothing but
uh, a bunch of noise. Right. And you're hoping that that noise
floor is low enough that you might capture a bit of crunching of
cage material or anything like that? Right. The alternative in
what, in what we use ecoPITCH for is it's very simple. We, we point
a an inductive displacement sensor right at the pitch bearing
itself. Typically the inner ring, depending on the type of turbine.
And what we're looking for is any kind of slop or displacement
between the inner and outer ring. And there's always gonna be some,
right. Uh, but, but what we're looking for is. Is a change in the
amount of, of movement between those two rings, which may indicate
falling or, or other failure modes within the raceways. The
challenges come along when you have failure modes that maybe, maybe
don't show themselves right through that displacement because it's
absolutely possible to, to completely lock [00:04:00] up
a bearing while, while showing almost no displacement. So there's,
there's, there are challenges to come along with this, so, so.
ecoPITCH is great for pitch bearings, but it really needs to be
coupled with good visual inspections by the sites to make sure that
that bearing's not spitting out cage material right. And something
that, that maybe isn't being seen in the data. Allen Hall: So
those measurements are important. Right? And it's very difficult to
go up there every month or two and try to take those measurements.
Are there signs on the outside that everybody should be watching
for? I know when we were on site a number of times. If there's a
pitch bearing problem, you typically see grease on the outside of
the blade, near the root area. Is that the, the main source of
detection at the moment?  Forrest French: Yeah. And, and
you know, I think, I think every operator's gonna have a different
way of looking for this stuff. It's, it's not there, there's not a,
uh, a very uniform strategy, I would say. Um, but really what
they're gonna be [00:05:00] looking for yeah. Is, is
exactly that. It's gonna be grease purging out of the seals. Um,
it's gonna be the seals themselves blowing out. Right. Um, that's,
uh, cage material. Coming out of the seals is a, is obviously gonna
tell you that you've got some, some, uh, some balls inside your
bearing that are getting locked up and pulling the cage to bits,
right? And that's what's gonna happen when that displacement I was
talking about gets severe. So you get severe displacement. It jams
up a ball, but you continue to pitch. So other balls continue to
move and you kind of shred that cage and it starts spitting that
material out, damaging the seal. Um, so it's, it's a whole process.
Yeah.  Allen Hall: So if you see grease on the outside,
the seal is blown. And more than likely, if you look on the ground,
you're gonna see metal shards.  Forrest
French: Potentially, yeah. Depending on what kind of collars
and stuff you have. Uh, but, but yeah, usually a lot of those, a
lot of those shards and, and that, that metal material is gonna get
captured in a lot of that grease. Um, so really it's just gonna
turn your [00:06:00] hub into a greasy metal mess. Right.
It's, it's still fun to be in those, those hubs. For sure.
Well,  Allen Hall: let's talk blade uh, inserts or
bushings. What do you typically see if you're walking around a
farm? When a blade bushing is starting to fail, what's the
indicator from the ground? Forrest French: From the ground?
It's difficult. Um, what, what we've seen typically is you're gonna
see a, uh, and, and again, this, this depends on the turbine, uh,
whether it's an electrically driven turbine or a hydraulically
driven, uh, pitch bearing, sorry. Um, with the electrically driven
pitch bearings, it's a little bit easier to spot these issues.
You've, you've got. Uh, when, when the bushing starts to fail, it
will basically spit out some of this, they call it dust, like a
metal dust basically. And that dust will kind of make its way out
onto the outside of the blade usually. So. From the Nelle, for
example, you might pop your head out the hatch, do a visual
inspection of the outside of the root, [00:07:00] and you
might see some of that dusting heading down, down the blade. That's
a good indicator that, that you've potentially got an issue. It's,
it's not a, a, a, a sure thing at that point. Right. Um, because
there's a lot of places where metal can can make its way into the
system with the hydraulically driven turbines that. Indicator gets
a lot more difficult. Um, if anybody, you know, and I'm sure a lot
of the folks on the call have some of these turbines, they're a
mess usually, right? Um, if, if, if any bit of debris gets loose,
it's gonna knock off a bunch of hydraulic lines and it's gonna make
an absolute mess. And any material that's being spit out by those
bushings, it's just gonna get. Caught up in all that hydraulic oil,
and again, it's just gonna turn into a mess and you're not really
gonna know one from the other at that point. You're really just
left with, with uh, uh, kind of your more rudimentary ways of
looking for this and some of your [00:08:00] more labor
intensive ways of looking for this  Allen Hall: force.
There's a lot of ways to inspect the blade root insert. Bushing
issue as the blade moves around and I, I've seen some of these, uh,
sites where they got a technician who climbs up in there and he is
got a feeler gauge of some sort. Is that really an effective way
to, to even measure that problem?  Forrest French: Yeah.
The, the feeler gauge method is. Is better than nothing. Right?
You're, you're doing something at that point. What, what we've
found historically is that by the time you can really get a feeler
gauge measurement, uh, it's probably too late. At that point, you,
you're seeing a significant enough gap that you can get material in
there. It's, it's a, you've got a big problem on your hands. We
also see paired with that, um. We see folks doing a dial indicator
measurement, right? Where you're taking sta uh, dial indicators,
you're placing them around the circumference of the blade, and that
usually involves pitching the blade out, cantilever, and then you,
you just rotate the blade, and that's in that [00:09:00]static
position. You're not actually rotating the hub. That is, is
definitely better than something like a feeler gauge methodology.
The, the, the,