Power-Up: Vestas Lifetime Extension, GE Heating Systems, and More!

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week on Power-Up, we discuss Ventus Engineering's monitoring system which improves power production, GE's system for finding broken blade heating systems, and Vestas's lifetime extension strategy. Plus an interesting approach to diet control... Check out IntelStor's IP Prism offering and more! 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! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome to Power Up, the Uptime podcast focused on the new, hot off the press technology that can change the world. Follow along with me, Allen Hall, and Innosaur's Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future. Hey Phil, we got Joel Saxum here for our look at some really interesting wind ideas. And the first one is from Ventus Engineering. And it has to do with a monitoring system for wind turbines, which uses multiple data streams and looking at generator power output, mechanical measurements, torque, cell direction, and some meteorological conditions. And this is all processed real time using a computer to then assess where the rotor and the blade should be. to improve power production and the condition of the tower. So it's usually a combination of, from what I can tell, SCADA, LiDAR, and a lookup camera to watch the rotor essentially. And, and Phil, when I reviewed this patent, I thought, man, that seems pretty complicated to, to do this. Is this. Is this idea going to move forward, do you think? Philip Totaro: This, so this company that's developed this concept they are trying to commercialize it, and they, the real interesting thing about this, and the reason I wanted to talk about it on the show was, the, this combination of the lookup camera combined with SCADA data and LIDAR is, is a little unique, so the lookup camera idea for helping to improve rotor imbalance or, or pitch calibration issues that's been done for, I don't know, about 12 or 13 years now in the industry. Obviously using a nacelle mounted lidar is not a new idea and, and certainly SCADA data monitoring, not a new idea either, but the combination of all those, I don't think has actually been done before in this kind of specific implementation where. They are intentionally trying to visualize any kind of issues that might cause these kinds of imbalances that would impact adversely impact performance. So this is a, it's potentially complicated, but it's also a level of sophistication that the industry is now capable of, of implementing because we've got a reasonable degree of maturity with all those three different concepts. So again, the skated data, the LIDAR system and the lookup camera. So Joel, I, what, what do you think about the commercial viability of this? Joel Saxum: So this to me is a CMS system on steroids that has multiple sensors and can give the operator more data. So I think that there is a, there's definitely a possibility for back office engineers and people that are responsible for the operation of these turbines, a safe operation and efficient operation of turbines to use something like this. Allen Hall: Our next idea comes from Stefan Klumper for General Electric over in Spain. And it deals with failures in the blade heating elements. And the one thing we know about blade heating elements is they like to break. And when they break, they can become very difficult to detect where that break occurs. So what. This concept is,