Equinor Stabilized Floating Wind, Vestas Custom Root Angles

This week on Uptime Power-Up, Equinor's system to keep their offshore floating wind platforms stable, Vestas's patent for customizing blade root angles, and fresh air breathing device for emergencies. 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.comJoin us at The Wind Energy O&M Australia Conference - https://www.windaustralia.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 IntelStor's Phil Totaro, as we discuss the weird, the wild, and the game changing ideas that will charge your energy future. Well guys, our first idea of the week is from Equinor, and they have developed a system and patented a system about trying to keep their offshore floating wind platforms stable in rough seas. And that technique involves using the turbine blades to actually control the blade angle and the generator torque to counteract the motions of the seas to provide stability. There's a lot of rotating mass on a wind turbine, obviously, so the moment of inertia is there and it's kind of self stabilizing to a point. But the seas are massive, and they're still gonna cause the, the floating platforms to bounce a little bit. This is an interesting patent. I always wonder about these systems, what the effectives on the mechanical system, on the rotating equipment. Does it start to wear on bearings? Does it cause problems further downstream when you try to actively control a turbine from swaying? Phil, this one is interesting in terms of its approach. It's a relatively new patent though, right? Philip Totaro: Yeah. So this, this was just issued a couple of weeks ago and that's why we, we tagged it because we're tracking, new. Patent publications and application publications on a weekly basis. We've cataloged something like 60, 000 plus at Intel Store at this point. But this one stood out because, first of all, it's patents from owner operators and independent power producers are, are usually rare and it's the bigger companies that tend to get them if they get them at all. So the fact that Equinor actually made it a point to, to patent something in general is, is noteworthy. The other thing I take from this is that they originally filed this. In 2019 in the UK and that was the jurisdiction that they claimed the, the patent priority filing in. The Highwind Scotland site was originally commissioned and started producing power back in 2017. So, the fact that they came up with this concept. And wanted to basically, I mean Joel will be able to explain this in, in a bit more detail, but it's almost like they wanted to use the turbine as a giant gyro stabilizer on this floating platform. Joel Saxum: So some quick math here on what this looks like in the real world. In the North Sea, the average wave period is about seven to nine seconds. So period of a wave is between crest to crest. So if we're talking about trying to counteract what a platform might do between a wave, you're talking seven to nine seconds from crest to crest. Okay. And now you look at the these larger turbines and you're looking at about the same RPM. Six to nine RPM, something like that. Six to 10 RPM. So you're talking, and what I'm trying to get to is, is if you're going to use a part of the turbine as an act, an active part of the turbine to counteract some of this movement,