Show notes
Thorbjørn Rasmussen and Michael Drachmann Haag of Polytech discuss the company's new onshore leading edge protection (LEP) product, designed to be more flexible and easier to install than their previous offshore version. Get an inside look at the technical details and customer-focused approach behind Polytech's latest wind industry innovation. Visit https://www.polytech.com/ for more!
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Joel Saxum: Okay, guys, we're recording here. We're live right now at blades USA 24. We're sitting in the area where there's some coffee and some conversations, ISPs, asset owners, some blade design engineers, and of course, a lot of solution providers. I'm here with Polytech came over from Denmark on a world tour.
You're heading back to Denmark. You're going to OMS in San Diego, so we'll be over there. Okay. So I've got Thorbjørn Rasmussen, chief commercial officer over at Polytech and also Michael Drakmann Haag. I got it, right? Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So chief technical officer. So we have two of the great minds from the Polytech team here right now.
Polytech, while they do a lot of different solutions they have some lightning protection things, they sell to OEMs, sell to asset owners, all the above, out of Denmark. They're really known for the L shells. L shells is a product that if you're dealing in wind turbine maintenance at all, you know that the leading edge is a problem and the L shells were developed for offshore use originally, correct?
And they have been installed some onshore turbines, some high erosion areas, or even people that are like, you know what? I think this is the solution. I don't have to touch my leading edges for 10, 15, 20 years. I'm putting the big stuff in. So you guys have been behind the scenes, behind the curtain, working on another kind of version of that, but adjusted specifically for onshore.
Yes, tell us about that.
Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah, so we've taken all of the great learnings that we've had on the yellow onshore, offshore products, and then we've taken and built. On those innovations. And then we designed a product that then is easier to install comes at a lower price point as well. And really sets aside from the more, you could say more complicated stuff that you get out in the industry.
But while still having the the great performance and also then we don't need the material to cure at site, which we often see with coatings and other products. So I think we really try to say that. All of the good things we have from the offshore, we build in that, that into an offshore product.
And yeah.
Joel Saxum: So I would say, as you thought, so driving this market, primary market research, as we call it, of course, in the commercial world, did you have asset owners come to you and say, hey, this is great, but we'd like this?
Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Absolutely. We have been cooperating a lot with the ISP out there, getting feedback for installation method and and what was actually difficult or less easy for the, let's say the premium version.
And then asset owners is when they, Take the decision very shortly sometimes they want to run a campaign So it should be easy accessible and so forth and all that feedback has gone back to Michael and the department and try to make sure that was incorporated in the solution And we can elaborate more on this one.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah, but I would say that it's feedback from the last five years from the field all over the world. Yeah, the best kind of feedback. X. What's happening. Empirical data from the field is what we want to change things on. Exactly. We could test in a lab all day, and that's great. We need to do that.
But when we get results back from the field, that's what we want. So let's talk a little bit about the differences between the new Onshore product and what the L looks like. Offshore product was or is still, of course it's still offered.
Michael Drachmann Haag: I think that the primary part that really sets it aside is the thickness of the material itself.
So the thickness of the material on the offshore product is thicker and thereby also having high performance, but it also entails that we need to tailor make that product into the specific blade. So it really provides a high performance, the highest performance in the industry. But it had to be tailor made to a specific blades.
Now we set aside with a thinner product that is more flexible and can be installed faster and can actually also be installed. Let's say it's a more, it's not going to be tailor made to the specific blade, meaning it can be installed on all blades directly out of the box.
Joel Saxum: Oh, that's fantastic.
Michael Drachmann Haag: And that's, I think that's really is one of the things that sets aside.
What we then took as innovations as well is that we have the split liner on LA offshore. And we took that great innovation and then we transferred that to a lawn show for ease of installation as well. That's huge.
Joel Saxum: I want to touch back on the point of being able to install on different parts of a fleet.
So in the United States, of course, we have large wind farms. That's a hallmark of kind of the market over here. And in those large wind farms, you'll see sometimes, we deal with it at WeatherGuard quite often, you'll see sometimes, four different manufacturers of blades and two or three different subtypes of blades in a specific wind farm.
And we just dealt with this one in an on one product. So if you have say let's take an example of GE, the new GE generation turbines, the two Xs, right? Two five, two eight twos. They're regularly come with 116 meter blades and 100 or 116 meter rotors, not blades, sorry, and 127. And Within those two sub models, you also have TPI can make your blades, LM can make your blades.
There's a bunch of different manufacturers and there is little discrepancies between them. So if you had to have a custom made solution such as the L shells, the or the offshore shells, it would be a little bit more difficult. Now with the onshore version, you're saying, Hey guys, you want to do a capital campaign?
You want to install on a hundred turbines? Here's the product. It'll work on every one of them. Yeah.
Michael Drachmann Haag: You just need to order the number of meters you need. And then the final adjustment right at the tip where there's a big curvature on the blade. Yeah. That's the point where you do a small modification, but that modification can be done on site.
Perfect. So perfect. That really either blade make or turbine model. It really just can be fixed on anything.
Joel Saxum: So let's talk a little bit more about the technical details of leading edge protection. From an expert's standpoint, we regularly hear, you should put on four meters, you should put on six meters, you should put on 10 meters.
You could do two meters of shells or three meters of shells and this much of a tape or this much of a coating. If you were, if you had a wind farm, and I know every one of them is different, say I'm going to put you in the middle of Texas. How many meters of this new product do you think you'd put on?
Michael Drachmann Haag: It really depends on your specific turbine, right? So the bigger turbines will also require more, a bigger length, a longer length of protection. But what we typically do, and we can do that for any site in the world, we can offer a calculation, a specific calculation for that specific site, that specific turbine, that allows you to exactly predict What do you need?
And we will then be able to sell you exactly what you need. No more, no less. Then there might be some some campaigns where you fix it, fix the number to installing 10 meters, because that fits within a day of working day. And then it might be that is the right option for that specific site. It really depends based on the customer.
But I think we try to deliver the calculations behind, but also the product that can then fulfill that.
Joel Saxum: So if an asset owner or an ISP or an asset owner and ISP in conjunction, contact Polytech to say, Hey, we're looking at your leading edge protection solutions. You guys can also offer the customer success first support part of that too.
Hey guys, we believe through calculation that this is how much you need. So when you're contacting you guys, you're contacting experts in LEP.
Michael Drachmann Haag: Yes. They'll get a report that then says what is the expected length you need, but also what is the expected repairance was. If there are any repair intervals.
So that means that they can already now plan the predicted maintenance. Yeah. So when do you need to go and look at the blade again?
Joel Saxum: Yeah.
Michael Drachmann Haag: And when do you then need to maybe plan for repair?
Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Okay.
Michael Drachmann Haag: Again, depending on site conditions and terminal conditions.
Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Just a little caveat to this calculator. It's based upon two heavy input.
The one is 20 years of weather data from NASA. Simply put into a database. And then correlate it with many hours in the wind erosion tester, sorry, the rain erosion tester. And then combining, of course, with verification on let's do this.