LM Wind Power Hybrid Pultrusion Plates, GE Vernova Nacelle Crane Assembly

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

This week we cover LM Wind Power's patent for improved hybrid pultrusion plates for blades, trying to manage lightning. Also GE Vernova's method for placing a crane assembly on the nacelle. And a double cereal bowl for slow breakfast-eaters. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.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 Phil Totaro: This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here's your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro. Allen Hall: Alright, Phil, our first patent of the week comes from our friends at LM Wind Power, and it is for improved hybrid pultrusion plates for wind turbine blades. That's a mouthful, by the way. But what they mean is that they have these protrusion plates that are the main structural element inside of the blade and LM likes to mix carbon fiber with fiberglass is a lot cheaper. So you can actually make stronger structural spars or spar caps by mixing carbon fiber with fiberglass. All that makes sense. The issue is lightning, actually. And when lightning likes to flow down carbon fiber quite naturally if you don't do it right, if you don't mix the fiberglass and the carbon just right and lay them out in certain orientations, you can get carbon sparking the carbon, which can damage the fiberglass, which can damage the protrusion, and your blade falls over. So LM has come up with a really unique way of controlling where the fibers go in a pultrusion. Phil Totaro: Yeah, and this is really fascinating to me because they have been one of the pioneers of developing this hybrid glass and, and carbon blade over the past, you know, decade or more that they've been investigating this type of technology. And what they're specifically doing with this is, as you mentioned, it's, it's really about controlling the temperature. The fiber orientation so that you don't have the arcing issues that you mentioned. But also, you know, when you're passing the lightning current through anything, whether it's copper wire, whether it's carbon or what have you, it heats up and the way it heats up can, you know, with. With this type of an application can specifically weaken or damage or deform the blade. And that's obviously undesirable. So this is really fascinating how they've kind of taken this kind of hybrid material technology to the next level with, all right, well, we figured out how to, you know, orient fibers but we need to tune it. in a way where you can actually conduct lightning that's not going to, you know, overheat the blade and, and damage things. So this is actually really fascinating and I, I hope that they're actually using this in or have this in commercial use because this is it's quite an interesting idea and a really clever approach to You know, be able to address a, a pretty common problem. Allen Hall: Our next patent comes from GE Vernova. It, it's a way of creating a crane assembly on the the cell by using the hub as a means of transport. So the concept goes like this. I have a winch on the hub. I lower that winch cable down, and I pick up this crane assembly and I'll hoist it up to the bottom. of the hub, and I mount it to the bottom of the hub. Then I rotate the hub, so now this crane's on top of the hub. I add some more support pieces into the nacelle,