Where is the US wind industry now? What do project pipelines look like today? To what extent will the talk of the offshore wind boom become reality? How are new regulations like the IRA  impacting project development and product innovation? How large will wind turbine blades become? How will deep grid decarbonization impact wind turbine and blade design?

Improving the interpretation of collected data to better inform repair strategies by better managing data in flow, successfully running cross-platform data analysis and appropriately evaluating different pieces of data to how to prioritize and respond.

As of 2022, EPRI began collecting data on wind turbine blade anomalies (which includes damages and defects) and failures. The anomaly data in the EPRI blade database is primarily acquired via drone-based visual inspections, and the failure data is primarily obtained from failure reports, repair reports, and root cause analysis (RCA) reports. The collected data includes images, severity ranking, and other vital anomaly descriptors for over 11,000 wind turbines across the globe.

The most recent updates and major findings from EPRI’s blade damage and failure database will be shared, including a breakdown of the most common anomaly types in the database by severity, blade length, and damage location. Empirical blade failure data and Weibull statistics will be shared where applicable.

EPRI’s proposed blade nomenclature dictionary of commonly encountered blade anomalies will be shared, based on the current state of the industry.

The results of this study are intended to be utilized for better understanding of best practices in wind turbine blade O&M. The goal of this presentation is to illustrate the necessity of the development of a structured approach to understanding blade condition, identifying anomalies, and prioritization of repairs driven by data, knowledge, and experience.

Take a look at pros and cons of ending a long-term FSA, what strategy we took and how it has worked out so far.

Ensuring that you are on top of your turbine performance is key to intervening before a full-scale shutdown. How can you best evaluate damages? How can you better catalog and track defects? How do you best protect from lightning, ice and other adverse weather? Ensuring you know when it is advantageous to shut the turbine down vs letting damage run. Make sure you are up to speed with using automation, drone-based inspections, blade modifications and predictive maintenance tools to inform proactive repairs.

Leading Edge Erosion (LEE). An industry challenge on blades as tip speed increases and turbines operate under even more extreme weather conditions. Listen to the market leader in Leading Edge Protection Polytech and Material Scientist Michael Drachmann Haag on what drives LEE, how many turbines worldwide are affected, the benchmark of different LEP solutions, and how Polytech tests and verifies its solutions.

Assessing what new tools, equipment and solutions are available now like new materials, robotics, standardization and automation to reduce downtime when repairs need to be made. Short presentations will be followed by a joint Q&A session. 

One challenge facing the wind industry, maintaining blades in operating order, has proven to be bigger than expected. With growing backlogs of highly specialized composite repairs and more predictable maintenance issues, It’s apparent a major bottleneck is a lack of qualified composite technicians operating grinders, performing quality scarfs and chamfers.

In this talk we discuss the lifecycle of a blade technician career, and the challenges of hiring, training and retention. Calling for a paradigm shift, we discuss strategies to recognize talent and maximize knowledge and skill attainment. Solutions explored include rural sourcing for talent, mitigating the seasonal nature of the business, and collaboration with blade manufacturers to develop best practices at the repair type or campaign level.

"A Blade Coating that Reduces Wind Turbine Blade Damage Caused by Lightning".

Lightning damage stubbornly remains a major O&M expense for wind farm owner-operators. Damage such as blade skin punctures, shell delamination, split trailing edges, and occasionally catastrophic destruction are costly to repair and cause significant downtime. Arctura’s new ArcGuide® blade coating improves the effectiveness of the surface-mounted lightning receptors, making it more likely that lightning will attach safely to the receptors and less likely that it will attach directly to the down conductor or other internal blade components. In this presentation, Chris will review the genesis of the concept, the development and validation process, and he will review our ongoing wind farm field tests.

With blades being the least green part of a wind turbine, how could circularity be achieved in the future? Are new materials the answer? If so, where are we with that research? Is recycling technology for waste management of traditional blades feasible? How would the LCoE be impacted by measures to make blades circular? How will upcoming repowering affect the future of blade disposal? How are US regulations changing?