Crane-less Wind Turbine Repair Solutions with LiftWerx

In this episode, Glenn Aiken and Eelko May from LiftWerx share how their pioneering, crane-less wind turbine repair solutions are transforming the industry with cost-effective, eco-friendly, and efficient approaches to major component exchanges and offshore wind maintenance. Visit https://liftwerx.com/ for 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 the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we're joined by Glenn Aiken, president and co founder at LiftWerx, and Elke May, managing director at LiftWerx. Based in Canada, LiftWerx is leading the way in developing craneless wind turbine repair systems. As many of Turbine repairs have traditionally depended upon large cranes that are difficult to transport and are vulnerable to wind delays. And this is where LiftWork comes in because they are disrupting the status quo. They have pioneered ingenious smaller lifting solutions that are cost effective, efficient, and eco friendly. Glenn and Eelko welcome to the program. Thanks, Al. Yeah, thanks very much, Al. So as we all know doing major component exchanges is a difficult task. And, or doing a rotor removing the rotor, those kinds of things usually involves massive cranes. And in the United States, and even in Europe times getting a hold of a crane big enough to do the job is one expensive and two, usually there's a narrow window when you can actually get access to that crane. This is where LiftWerx comes in and I really want to hear about, it's really a couple of different things you're working on. Obviously the gen hook and the rotor hook, but now you're into offshore. So I think that's a cool offering because there's going to be a, not a lot of work offshore in the United States coming up in which is going to need help. So I want to hear about what you guys are seeing out in the world and how LiftWerx fills that void. Glen Aitken: If I look back 10 years. Because I've been working in wind energy for around 20 years we've seen a massive rapid growth in the size and weight of wind turbine components we've also seen just a huge volume of wind turbines installed over the last decade and quite frankly, crane requirements have also, You're you know, increase just to meet the demand. Both, both the, demands in height and weight, but also just the volume demand. Um, myself I came out of the heavy crane industry. I worked there since the early 90s. And, Really started to see customers were in a lot of pain over, over crane costs and also crane logistics. And so we, we tried to come up with a solution that would solve a lot of that pain. And what we're seeing now is that there's a huge transition going on especially in North America at the moment where we're seeing that probably 50 percent now of major component replacements are being done with uptower cranes as compared to traditional cranes. Joel Saxum: It makes absolute sense, right? So you guys have developed this technology based on seeing the struggles of asset owners and other, ISPs and stuff in the world, because, hey, we've got to swap this one component out. We've got a crane, over here, it may cost you 50 or 75. I've seen insurance cases where it's a hundred thousand dollars to mobilize a crane, right? And that's just to get it there. And once you get it there, then it's day rate after day rate.