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Amin Ahmadi of AP Renewables discusses how their new SCADAScope system uses data analytics to enable faster wind turbine troubleshooting and reduce downtime. Check out AP Renewables at https://aprenewables.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 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 the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with co host Joel Saxum. Our guest is Amin Ahmadi technology lead with AP Renewables is based in Ontario, Canada, our friends up north. I was first introduced to AP Renewables because of their SLPS system, which is a grounding brush upgrade kit to reduce static and lightning issues in a bunch of Gamesa turbines. So it basically gets rid of the air gap on TikTok and LinkedIn from static electricity jumping inside the turbines. They also have a new product now called SCADAScope, which provides insights and diagnostics for Gamesa and a bunch of other turbines. So we're really interested to hear what Amin has going up in Canada. Amin, welcome to the program. Amin Ahmadi: Thank you. Allen Hall: Let's, let's talk about the lightning issue that the Gamesa turbines had and the little spark gap they built into that wind turbine and what it means to the SCADA system because it did cause a lot of problems. Amin Ahmadi: Yeah we started in fact as a consulting and we started noticing a similar problem coming up, different problems having these phantom noises and I don't have a lightning background like you do, but I saw the problem from. Random unexplainable electronic faults and escape on calm losses that could only be mapped over weather events and then you go back to building codes and other things like you got a lightning system. You got a ground that thing really good. And this particular design wasn't grounded really good. So we decided to take the we decided to solve a bunch of problems through a single common design, which was a brush that installs quickly and makes a lot of problems go away. And and what we liked about it was how very quickly you get a lot of gain. The return on investment was huge on it. And to be honest, I designed a very elaborate thing. I send it to a wind farm we work with. He's this is not installable. And my partner who has a design background, not engineering, he looked at it. It's this is bad. This is bad.

This week's episode covers Eversource exiting offshore wind, delays at Dogger Bank wind farm, honorees of the Queen Elizabeth engineering prize, and the return of Wind Farm of the Week featuring Kay Wind farm. Allen and Joel also look forward to attending ACP OMS in San Diego! 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: Joel, I think being in the podcast business is a lot easier than being in the AM radio business, clearly because down in Jasper, Alabama the station was alarmed by some guys taking care of the grounds. They had come out to, to mow and weed whack and whatever they're going to do. And. At the tower site. And when they got there, there was no tower. The tower was gone. I was left with a bunch of cables on the ground. And so the tower evidently was stolen. And the station manager at down there in Alabama doesn't have any leads. They can't figure out where this, all the equipment went to. And it wasn't like it was a little tiny. 20 foot tower. It's like a 200 foot tower. So talking about taking down a really big structure and somehow dragging it off into the woods and never to be found again. So there's a, that's a big problem. If the people are starting to steal your radio tower, you got Joel Saxum: issues. I just can't see what anybody would do with it. You're not going to cut it up and sell it for scrap. Like every If this is national news now, every scrapyard is going to know. First off, look, so what are you going to do with it is one, if, and if you reinstall it eh, we're going to install it so we can get TV from fricking Germany. I don't know. But if you're going to reinstall it, someone's going to see it. They're going to be like, there's the 200 foot tower. So I don't know, unless it's just a really extravagant prank that someone's pulling, I'm not sure what you're going to do with this tower. But kudos to the people that pulled it down. I don't know how you did that overnight. Allen Hall: They don't have any insurance coverage, because who would steal a tower, right? So now the station's in trouble because the FCC which license all the radio stations in the United States has pulled their license. So they had an FM station and an AM station, the AM station got stolen. The FM station evidently is still operational, but the FCC told them to turn it off. So now they're stuck. They gotta go buy a new tower.

We discuss an offshore renewable insurance consortium launched by SCOR and Acrisure Re and EDPR's acquisition of Australian renewables firm ITPD to expand in the Asia Pacific. Plus, a look at the rising budget costs for clean energy tax credits in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and what it could mean for the growth of wind, solar and electric vehicles. 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: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at IntelStor.com. Reinsurer SCOR has launched a new offshore renewable energy insurance consortium with partner Acrisure Re. The consortium increases SCOR's total deployable capacity to over 180 million dollars. SCOR says. Its technical expertise and understanding of client needs positions it as a leader in providing insurance. To the growing offshore wind industry. So Phil, another insurance company hopping into the offshore market, there seems to be a lot of people putting their toes in the water at this point on offshore. 180 million is not a lot of money in that marketplace, but it does seem like people are testing the waters. Philip Totaro: It's an interesting thing. Certainly good to do with a partner. The challenge with offshore is obviously with the scale, like you're saying, 180 million and deployable. Capital is not going to really make that much of a dent in the overall global market, which is, well over, a trillion dollars in investment even at this point. The reality is that, insurers have seen a lot of losses onshore and offshore. It's good that you're getting, new companies involved. It's, score is increasing the scope of their. What they're able to address. The challenge is that, I think these kind of partnerships. Are going to be necessary moving forward because insurers and in particular reinsurers have had a really rough go of it. With some of the catastrophic losses that they faced, particularly in offshore over the years where, entire projects have had to have, the main shaft bearings replaced on the turbine or. You've had other kind of significant fleet wide issues in, in some cases. Overall,

CEO Josh Riedy explains how Thread's UNITI software platform enables intuitive data management and analysis for drone inspections at wind farms, creating integrated "electronic medical records" for turbines. Visit their website: https://thread.one/ 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 the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. If you've been paying attention to the drone inspection business, you may have noticed some significant changes in the last couple of years. The amount of data being acquired is astounding where the industry once lacked sufficient data. Now we're overflowing with it and new ideas and businesses are trying to solve the data overload problem and bring more of a uniform approach to inspections. Be that wind turbines, transmission lines, substations. Our guest today is Josh Riedy CEO and founder of Thread, and Thread is based in North Dakota in the central part of the United States. Thread has developed some really interesting products and is really simplifying the way that we handle data. Josh, welcome to the program. Josh Riedy: Thank you, Allen. Glad to be here. Allen Hall: So we have a massive problem that the industry is going through at the moment where we want to acquire more data and that's what Thread does in their platform. And let's talk about that in a moment here, but I want to understand the scope of the problem because we, Joel and I have been around talking to operators lately. And here's one of the things they tell us, and it happened this morning, actually, on a zoom call they want to acquire more data. They want to acquire the wind farm, the turbine, the blade, but also the transmission line, all the substation. They want to gather drone images of all of it. And the problem they were having was what to do with all the data that actually happened today. Joel Saxum: Yeah. How do we manage it all? Allen Hall: Yeah. And this revolve back to our conversation about what Thread is doing to answer that call. So maybe you can describe what you're doing to answer the call of we have a lot of data. Josh Riedy: Allen and Joel. Thanks for having me again. And you touch on the heart of the problem.

This week we spoke to Alex Fournier, a field operations manager who works on wind turbines in frigid temperatures, about the safety precautions and practices technicians need when doing turbine maintenance and repairs in extreme cold. Recommendations such as heated gear, taking breaks to warm up, and using procedures to mitigate risks like icefalls are only a few ways that techs could keep safe in winter temperatures. Visit https://www.fabricair.com/ice-protection-systems/ 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 the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. In this episode, we explore the unique hazards faced by wind turbine technicians working to keep the turbine spinning during extreme cold weather events. As renewable energy expands, more wind farms are located in remote areas with harsh winter conditions, placing technicians at risk of frostbite, hypothermia, and injury. Joining us to discuss cold weather safety is Alex Fournier, field operations manager at Borealis Wind, which is a division of FabricAir now. Alex is based in Quebec, Canada, and has been working in the wind industry for seven years. Alex will share his insights on the precautions technicians should take when performing maintenance and repairs in cold climates. Alex, welcome to the program. Alex Fournier: Thank you guys for having me today. Allen Hall: So it's been really cold in Canada and the United States. There's been we're expecting a snowstorm tonight. So we're battening down the hatches. But as the wind turbines must keep running. And I was recently down in Texas when a cold front was coming on. Coming through there and the technicians were really concerned about it because it's something that doesn't happen very often They're not really prepared for the cold weather to stay any length of time And I thought Alex does this all the time. He lives in this kind of environment That's my day today and with Borealis, Borealis obviously creates the de icing systems for wind turbine blades And so Alex is up and down on wind turbines all the time putting systems in and keeping blades Turning, I thought this is a good opportunity to talk about wind turbine safety and cold weather conditions and some of the things that you do and your technicians you work with to keep yourself safe in this col...

This week we analyze recent news from Siemens Gamesa, Vestas, and Ørsted, including financial struggles, layoffs, and plans to regain profitability. The episode also covers offshore wind manufacturing expansion in the U.S., a fallen wind turbine rotor in Norway, and the need for better data sharing among wind farm owners and operators. Plus, if you're attending ACP O&M in San Diego, sign up for the IntelStor event! 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 Joel Saxum: So Allen is in Denmark at the Leading Edge Symposium DTU in Roskilde there with a lot of really smart people talking about leading edge erosion issues. What are the newest protections out there? What kind of projects going on in the world? From our side of view, how does aerodynamics leading edge roughness affect lightning? A lot of really cool things going on there. Of course, DTU is always doing great work. But that's where Allen is today. So this week I'm going to try to be my best Allen. I'm Joel Saxum, the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with international renewables expert, Rosemary Barnes. Plus, wind energy economics and data guru Phil Totaro from IntelStor. This is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. So speaking about offshore wind in the United States and how the IRA bill is interacting and if it's kicking off manufacturing facilities or what's actually happening on the ground, today there was an announcement by US Forged Rings Inc. It'd be the USA's only integrated one stop shop manufacturer for offshore wind towers and steel forging. What they released today in an article was, or in a press release was, the fact that they're going to have two factories up and running on the east coast. One by 2026, one by 2027. And they're going to work together. To build these large scale steel infrastructure that we need for offshore wind in the U. S. So one of one of the factories is going to output towers. They're saying a hundred towers per year with a 35 foot diameter on them and the other factory that's going to be completing 2027. It's for forging and ring rolling, and they can do up to 40 feet in diameter. So what this will do is be able to help the U. S. market create its own transition pieces, its own, bearing races, its own caps for the towers and whatnot. But Phil,

Leveraging new research, this News Flash episode dives into the Australian wind energy market, with insights from IntelStor on capacity, future growth, turbine tech, and factors impacting profitability like PPAs and maintenance costs. IntelStor provides valuable data and analysis on renewable energy markets, including this latest report on Australia. 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: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at IntelStor.com. Well, Phil, IntelStor put out a really interesting report about our friends in Australia and the wind energy down there. A lot of moving pieces at the moment. 12 gigawatts already installed wind. What's the future look like? What's happening? What turbines are working down in Australia? Philip Totaro: Well, thanks, Allen. First of all, I appreciate the opportunity to come on and talk about this exclusively. The Australian market's an interesting one because they've now got 12. 2 gigawatts operational as of the end of 2023. They've got another 4. 4 gigawatts under construction right now, which is absolutely explosive growth from the typical annual capacity additions they've seen. Even last year they only added something like 800 megawatts. But they've also got 8 gigawatts of onshore wind that's consented and hasn't started construction yet, and another 90 gigawatts that is early to mid stage proposed, where a lot of this is tied to additional intrastate transmission lines being built, or even the transmission line they're talking about building from Australia to Indonesia, and so they've got a ton of ambition and a ton of proposed projects.  If a bunch of that capacity does get green lit, that does mean new factories in Australia because they're gonna have more than enough capacity to be able to, Sustain a dedicated factory, certainly for companies like Vestas and maybe even GE. Allen Hall: So the vast majority of the wind energy at the moment is in Victoria, which is down south by Melbourne, right? So they have like a third of the total install capacity. What do we know from that area? What have we learned? Where is Victoria headed?

Lightning struck wind turbines in the U.S. over 77,000 times in 2023 alone. Vaisala Xweather Insight experts detail how their advanced National Lightning Detection Network tracks each bold strike in real-time. Learn how wind farm operators tap into this data to optimize turbine safety and uptime during fierce storms. Visit their website: https://www.xweather.com/ and read the report! 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 the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Vaisala just published his 2023 lightning report, and if you haven't seen it yet, better get online and check it out. One of the key items in that report is 77, 000 lightning strikes occurred to wind turbines in the U. S. in 2023. So we thought it'd be a pretty good topic for a podcast because we've, Joel and I have seen a lot of lightning damage across the United States and 77, 000 lightning strikes is probably one of the reasons why. And if you're not familiar with Vaisala, Vaisala is XWeather System, which is where that data comes from is in advance, whether intelligence platform provides businesses and organizations with accurate real time. Weather insights and a lot of sites that we go to, Joel and I go visit, have the XWeather system. And that system integrates data from multiple sources into a sort of a unified view and analyzes current and historical trends and generates hyper local forecasts using artificial intelligence. And as part of that XWeather system is the National Lightning Detection Network, NLDN. And we're going to use that acronym throughout this podcast. The NLDN is a network of over a hundred ground based sensors across the U. S. that detects cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning strikes in real time. That system is operated by VISLA, and it uses sensors to pinpoint lightning strike locations, polarity, amplitude, and other key characteristics like specific energy. And that network provides critical lightning data for early warning systems, research, and weather sensitive operations like wind turbines. With a detection efficiency over 90 percent nationally, the NLDN sets the standard for accurate real time lightning detection and mapping. Our guest today, we have two of them,

This week we discuss Enel removing turbines from Osage Nation land, Dominion's 2.6GW offshore wind farm, delays and fallout from offshore wind projects in MD, NJ and NY, the impacts of long project timelines, energy trading opportunities in Denmark, and differences in mining rights between the US and Australia. 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: Okay, Rosemary, over in Turkey, there was an interesting flight. So they were headed from Istanbul to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the passengers, weirdly, heard somebody in the cargo hold. Yelling for help and I thought oh my gosh. This is a horror movie scene. So the passengers Alerted the evidently the flight attendants or the stewardess is there and then they went to the cockpit and told the pilots Hey, wait, there's somebody stuck in the cargo hold and They diverted the flight and when they got on the ground, they couldn't find anybody. Rosemary Barnes: Anymore. Allen Hall: Oh, anymore which is what didn't what the stories indicate. Rosemary Barnes: Isn't that the obvious Unless someone hit a tape recorder in a loudspeaker in their bag, I would like to think that's what it was, but it doesn't really seem you can divert the flight, but that's surely only going to reduce the risk of harm to this stowaway by a tiny amount. Once you've gone up to Altitude and gone down again, the landing gears come up and gone down and then, yeah, that's horrible. Allen Hall: Yeah, if they're in the landing gear area, that's not a good place to be. Philip Totaro: If it was a stowaway, because there have been cases where baggage handlers have sometimes, unfortunately, been, like, caught in the plane. And that's happened even in the United States. It's extremely rare, thankfully, but that does happen. But to land after everybody's this is like a Twilight Zone episode, Allen. Everybody's like hearing a knock on the thing, and somebody crying for help, and then there's nobody in there? What's going on? Ghosts? Allen Hall: That is so weird. Rosemary Barnes: Was the Twilight Zone always so gruesome? I don't know. This is the way to start in a high note for the episode Allen. Allen Hall: I just thought of you when I was thinking of Rosemary when she flies. She's got to fly for 14 hours at a time. What do you do when you're over the Pacific Ocean and here's everybody knocking fro...

Energy traders in Europe are profiting from electricity price swings caused by fluctuating renewable energy generation. Equinor and BP are swapping their offshore wind assets to maximize earnings growth. RWE onshore wind and solar increased earnings by 50% in 2023. Spanish renewable energy company Ecoener is entering the Greek market with a 350MW, €300 million investment in wind and solar projects. 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: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lighting Tech. And I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com. A new breed of traders is upending Europe's energy markets, making huge profits from the region's transition to renewable energy. In a Bloomberg article, they go on to note that anonymous firms in Denmark are using computer algorithms, weather data, and meteorological know how to trade electricity contracts. So recently, when fog set in over Eastern Europe, reducing the solar power generation, the traders, computers snapped up some contracts, betting correctly that the short term Electricity prices would spike in Hungary, and they made millions of dollars from just a few minutes of price swings until the fog lifted. Now, Phil, this is really interesting because they're up in Aalborg and Aarhus, Denmark, in their offices, with a bunch of computers, evidently, and trading on the electricity market, so it has wide ramifications in terms of, Money exchange and what the average citizen is going to pay for electricity if you have traders with that sort of technology attacking the market. And this is not very different than what Enron was doing right back in California days. Philip Totaro: Sort of, but it's, I would actually say it's more equivalent to what happening with energy traders in, that year cut market in the United States or, other places in the world where they have a pretty well established, wholesale market, this is I'd classify it as a new breed only from the perspective that again, you already have some of the same companies like Dunce Commodities or RWE or Centrica already have energy trading houses,and it's how they balance their own generation and power offtake. but a lot of these companies are coming in,

We're revisiting a great episode with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve, discussing their new AeroVista software. AeroVista uses drone inspection data to evaluate wind turbine blade damage and power production potential. Allen and Nicholas discuss how this technology enables strategic repair planning to maximize power recovery while avoiding unnecessary costs. 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! PowerCurve - https://powercurve.dkPardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen Hall: Welcome back to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and this week, we're going to go back in time to September of last year, where I sat down with Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve. And Nicholas and I discuss a new piece of software that PowerCurve has developed called AeroVista. And AeroVista is a unique tool. It takes your existing drone images and then predicts the AEP for the turbine or the particular blade. A lot of operators that Joel and I have run across recently are interested to know what blades to repair based on the amount of damage. And we see damage from all over the world. And there are blades that have very minor damage that you probably leave alone. There are some with very major damage and those you should obviously fix. It's the ones in between where you're not really sure. And this AeroVista piece of software is a predictive tool. It will help you design your campaign to repair blades during the warmer months. So it's a very powerful tool and a and a well needed tool for the industry. So I thought it was time to revisit this episode with Nicholas Gaudern of PowerCurve. Enjoy. Leading edge erosion is a massive power losing problem for most wind farms. Almost every wind turbine blade that has been in service more than two years has some level of leading edge erosion. I'm your host, Allen Hall, and I'm here with our guest, Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of PowerCurve. In this episode, we are discussing leading edge erosion, how it reduces average energy production, and when to address it for maximum revenue generation. And just a brief background on PowerCurve. PowerCurve designs, manufactures and installs power upgrades for wind turbine blades that help their clients make their wind projects more profitable. PowerCurve's Technology has been thoroughly tested and va...

This is our 200th episode of Uptime! We kick off with a discussion about the similarities and differences between the blade issues at Siemens Gamesa and Boeing's recent door issue. Is engineering for aerospace and wind energy held to different standards? In both issues, who's at fault? Then a review of GE Vernova's Q4 2023 results--what does this mean for the company's future? 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: Phil has a confession to make, and I know we talked about this previously, but we didn't let out in the street because I thought it was too early to shock the world with this, but Phil, would you like to describe who your neighbor was when you were growing up in the Hard Streets of buffalo. Philip Totaro: I was neighbors with musical performer Rick James. And I say neighbors loosely because I lived in a suburb of Buffalo, New York called East Aurora, where, we had 10 acres and he had an adjacent, I don't know, 10 or 12 acres. But he had a house up there, and, back in the eighties, that's where he hung out, and, I don't know, had parties, or whatever he did. Joel Saxum: Did Rick James stuff? Allen Hall: Rosemary, you know who Rick James is, right? Rosemary Barnes: I had to look it up, because I was initially thinking the guy that sang Never Gonna Give You Up, which would be yeah, cool, cool enough. Philip Totaro: That's Rick Astley, not Rick James. Rosemary Barnes: Rick James is super freak, which is Yeah, nah, that's a good song. That that's cool. Allen Hall: No, Rick Astley was just a totally different neighbor than Rick James would be. But Rick James had some pretty wild parties. Philip Totaro: You know what? He had wild parties when he was in LA or New York. I don't know if he came back to Buffalo to dry out, maybe that's what it was. Rosemary Barnes: I think I'd rather go to a Rick James than a Rick Astley party based on the kind of music that might be played. Even though Never Gonna Give You Up is a excellent song. Allen Hall: Super Freak's a very popular song, even today. That guy is super talented. Come on, let's admit it, he's a super talented guy. Joel Saxum: The experience could be akin to the Technotrain. Allen Hall: Rosemary doesn't seem to remember that either,