Show notes
Nicholas Gaudern, CTO at PowerCurve joins the show to discuss advanced blade upgrades that improve turbine performance and reduce noise. PowerCurve's technology helps operators make smart decisions about maintenance and upgrades. Gaudern explains why combining repairs with performance enhancements is a cost-effective strategy that benefits both operations and community relations.
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
Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxon. Today, we're diving deep into the world of wind turbine aerodynamics and blade optimization with one of the industry's leading experts. Our guest is Nicholas Gaudern, the Chief Technology Officer at PowerCurve, a company that's revolutionizing how we approach wind turbine performance through advanced Aerodynamic solutions.
Now, Nicholas has over 15 years of industry experience and his journey includes significant roles at industry giants like Vestas, where he led the design of next generation blades. And as CTO of PowerCurve, Nicholas and his team are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in wind turbine optimization.
They've developed innovative solutions like AeroVista, which helps operators make data driven decisions about blade maintenance and upgrades. Their work spans from custom designed vortex generators to trailing edge serrations, all aimed at increasing AEP while reducing turbine noise. So please welcome to the Uptown Wind Energy Podcast Spotlight, Nicholas Gaudern.
Nicholas Gaudern: Thanks, Allen. Yeah, good to see you as well, Joe.
Allen Hall: We have a lot going on in the United States in terms of rotors on the ground. Variety of reasons, but anytime that Joel and I are running through the Midwest, we see rotors down, and when I run into those people, I always ask, why are you not putting arrow improvements on your blade?
It is the lowest cost way to do it. There's an opportunity there Nicholas?
Nicholas Gaudern: Yeah, there, there really is, and I find it very surprising as well, because whilst you can put upgrades on at lots of different points in a turbine's life cycle, if you do have that roach on the ground it just makes everyone's lives that bit easier, and also it's going to save you a lot of money on installation costs.
So yes, I think it's a great thing to be considering because you can be working on different parts of the blade at the same time. And if you're going to increase the AEP with those devices you put on, you can consider that as a way of paying for some of the other work you might be doing while the rotor's down.
Allen Hall: Yeah. And we've run into many operators that have talked to us about noise of all things in the middle of the United States where there's not a lot of neighbors to them. But neighbors are concerned about the noise produced by the turbines and in very windy places. Yeah. like Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, there is blade noise.
It's there. And most of the equipment out in service does not have trailing edge serrations. And I'm beginning to wonder if that is trying to be, if there's needs to be an adjustment made there that you may not technically need trailing edge serrations for noise quieting, but to be a good neighbor.
To everybody around you, you may want to consider it
Nicholas Gaudern: or especially if you have blades on the ground. I think we should see more serrations out on the blades because as you say maybe it's not about a regulatory thing Maybe the turbine is producing a an acceptable noise level to the letter of the law in that place But it is about being proactive and being a good neighbor and I think now Serrations have been out there from lots of different OEMs, lots of different turbines.
To me, they're a proven technology. Serrations work to reduce noise. And now the actual magnitude of that noise reduction can vary from turbine to turbine and site to site. But you should easily be looking at getting one and a half to two decibels of peak noise reduction if you're applying serrations.
Joel Saxum: I would say almost all of the new turbines that we're seeing, like Allen, you and I just took a trip last week, right?
And we were bombing through, we were up in Kansas, a little like right near Kansas. We went through Oklahoma and we actually ran into a two piece GE blade on the side of the highway. So we stopped to take some pictures of, cause of course that's who we are. And that, that blade had serrations on it.
And almost every blade I see, or that you see going down the highway on a truck, it's got serrations on it. So proven technology. People understand that it's probably easier to do during a capex phase than applying these things on uptower. Now, Powercurve, from your guys, from your armchair, you've been putting dinotails on, we call them dinotails in the field, right?
Yep. Dinotail serrations. You've been putting these things on for years as a retrofit. You've also sold them in during the capex phase. And I've actually worked with you guys in the past, in my blade life during a repower which is, that's the extreme version of what we're talking about here.
When you drop a rotor, of course you drop a rotor, you're going to drop a ton of them during the wind farm. Or you're putting new blades up. It just makes sense to do it during those stages because Let alone the, what you're doing for the neighbors, right? You're keeping things quiet.
There's also some efficiency increases with serrations too, isn't there?
Nicholas Gaudern: Like with anything, there's lots of ways to define efficiency. So with serrations, I think one of the big gains you can get is if you're in a site where the turbine is curtailed. So if it's having power reductions in order to reduce noise at certain times a day, often called noise modes.
And different OEMs will have different kinds of noise modes available. That can cost huge amounts of AEP. For every one decibel of noise reduction, you might be looking at a couple AEP loss, depending on the turbine and the specific noise mode. So you can imagine if you can apply serrations to a blade that are going to take a couple of decibels off, and that means you can escape a noise mode.
That can give you some massive gains in annual energy production. And yeah, as you say, Joe, we've been retrofitting serrations for a while now. We've done it on lots of different turbine models often models where the OEMs may not support that particular blade with a dedicated serration product.
And that's where we can really help because we can design serrations for any Yeah,
Joel Saxum: I know working with you guys in the past on many projects there's a really intense way of getting things done at Powercurve. It's done the right way. So when you're looking at whenever, if you ever watch a commercial and you see something cool like wind tunnels and race cars and stuff like that's Nicholas's daily life.
So is that you guys are out there getting 3d models of certain blades. You have a library of 3d models of blades, and that's what you build your products off of, because it's all about aerodynamics.
Nicholas Gaudern: It is. And it's really important when you're putting something on a blade that you know how it's going to perform over the whole blade system.
So when you put a serration on its job is to reduce noise. But it's job is also to not break the blade that you're putting it on. It's job is also to not fall off. So it's very important when you design a serration that you tailor it to the blade you're working with so that you're not changing the loads in a bad way.
And it should also be designed to interact with that blade. So it's a robust product over the lifetime of the turbine. So there are lots of different ways you can design serrations. Some people claim that serrations can directly increase AP. That's not an untrue statement, but it's quite a subtle statement because serrations Can act a bit like flaps on the back of a blade if you angle them relative to the flay.
And if you angle them, maybe you can get some more lift. And maybe you want more lift. But sometimes you may not want more lift. I'm very cautious of making blanket statements around serration as directly increasing AP. Because there's some subtleties around how you do it and whether you are concerned about loads or not.
As a general rule, at Powercurve we design our serrations to be load neutral, i. e. they won't increase or reduce power. Their job is to reduce noise. Now, if there's scope to do other things, we can talk about it, but yeah, please think about serrations as a noise reduction tool. If you want to change lift of a blade, there are some smarter ways to do it that are a little bit less invasive.
Allen Hall: Because The serrations by the different manufacturers are not all the same. We obviously see them from the side of the road or if you're out of sight. They just look like triangles on the back of a turbine blade. But they're not all made the same. And some more recent news from PowerCurve is big noise reductions because of the specific design that PowerCurve has invested in.
Do you want to talk about that a little bit?