IWTG Consulting Insights: Blades, Bearings, and Big Data

Allen and Joel sit down with Jonathan Zalar, Managing Partner at Independent Wind Turbine Generator Consulting (IWTG). With over a decade of experience at GE Renewable Energy, Jonathan shares invaluable insights on recent wind turbine issues, including blade defects, bearing problems, and the challenges of rapid rotor size increases. This is a must-listen episode for a deep exploration of wind turbine maintenance, data analytics, and the importance of thorough inspections in the ever-evolving wind energy industry. 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 Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxon. Today, we're joined by Jonathan Zalar, Managing Partner at Independent Wind Turbine Generator Consulting, or IWTG. With over a decade of experience at GE Renewable Energy, including roles in root cause analysis and systems engineering, Jonathan brings a deep industry knowledge to his consulting work. We'll discuss recent events that we have seen in the field. Explore how his expertise is helping wind turbine owners optimize their assets and tackle some industry challenges. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So you've been around looking at blades and turbines for the last several months. Thanks. Thanks. And we've been in contact a little bit about what you've been seeing. Maybe just give us a brief description of what's happened this summer in terms of blades and turbines. A lot of Jonathan Zalar: customers are starting to realize that there's some, some bigger issues that are coming to a head. And the need to like, look more is becoming more apparent. So, just because you have an external crack and you're about to go repair, it doesn't mean you shouldn't. Maybe take a look inside, especially if it's easy to get to. I have a few customers that are finding, internal cracks and needs to monitor some internal. Issues more and more. So, relying just on drones is maybe not the best thing anymore. Allen Hall: Yeah. Let, let's, let's talk about that because we're seeing a lot of internal cracks. It doesn't, the manufacturer doesn't seem to be important here. It seems to be universal. the crack situation. Operators don't really have tools to go do that themselves besides, and they've been using drone inspections forever. So they, are they interpreting drone inspections external once it looks good on the outside is probably good on the inside. And is that the right Jonathan Zalar: move? In most cases, it probably is, but depending on the type of crack you have and potentially like some history on the particular blades, you might want to start taking a look inside. And I think More, I think as I don't know, the industry keeps going with the blade repairs, they're going to start finding that, some of these might have started on the inside versus the outside. I mean, historically, most of the stuff that's starting on the outside, I mean, you got a lot of, the coding coming off the small stuff that, cat ones that you can steal with later, but as some, so you can cat fours and fives. They started somewhere and if you're not confident it was the outside, spend the extra money, look on the inside. Joel Saxum: So, someone like yourself who's got experience like you, you have experience from GEs, right? So you've been around the block for most all the, the last ten plus years of GE turbines. You,