AC883’s Lars Bendsen chats with Allen and Joel about their LiDAR systems for turbine alignment, drone inspection services including ultrasonic blade scanning, and expansion into internal turbine inspections using drones. AC883 continues bringing new wind turbine technologies to North America and allowing wind farms to keep producing energy. Reach out to Lars! lars@ac883.com

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, and I’m here with my co host, Joel Saxum. And we brought along a friend, Lars Bendsen of AC883. We’re still in San Diego, so we’re a long way from Canada, where AC883 is based. Lars is always full of information about what’s happening in the wind industry and what’s happening on the repair side and the technology side.

Because he’s been involved in wind since the dawn of wind, pretty much. Lars, welcome back to the program. Thank you. So there’s a whole bunch of things going on right now. We’re at ACP OMS. We’ve been together all week. You had a ton of traffic to your booth. A lot of customers trying to sign up for repairs this season and learn about all the new technology that’s going on.

You want to just talk to what you’re seeing?

Lars Bendsen: Yeah, I’ll try to do that. Thank you for having me on. We we seem to be getting busy. Yeah. There’s a ton of interest for our blade program, which differs clearly from the rest of our good colleagues, the way we’re approaching it. Yeah. We are building a new website because we have so many offerings now.

We need to be more, we need to be more clear in our communication.

Joel Saxum: Confirmed new website. We just confirmed it.

Lars Bendsen: Confirmed, Yeah. And AC83, that name will remain, but it could be the set AC83 wind repair, wind whatever something. We’re going to rebrand that a little bit because it can be a bit confusing.

Okay. Because we have so many offering in. As an ISP part, but also as a new technology provider, which is the DNA of the company. That’s how we started.

Joel Saxum: Right, so let’s talk blade repair real quick. You guys it’s mid February right now. Usually when we start to see tenders come out from the big operators or even smaller operators, they come out in November and December if they’re on the ball.

Yeah. If they’re on the ball because you want to get your blade repair, basically capacity ready for that next season, because there’s, we all know there’s a limited amount of it capacity in the Yeah. And in Canada, your season’s really short, so you’re like end of May to mid October.

Lars Bendsen: Maybe It is mid May to worst case scenario end of October.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, people want have us out of the door and end of September if they can.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So if you, if the, so what it looks like right now, are you see, did you see a lot of tenders come through in the Canadian market?

Lars Bendsen: There’s a ton of ten, not, there’s a ton of rough cues out there, but it seems like the decision has not really been made.

Hasn’t been made yet? Some have not. And a bit of a mystery to us, why it’s dragging out. We know our colleagues have not gotten it either, it’s not because we haven’t gotten the work. Yeah. It simply hasn’t been awarded.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Which is odd, because it’s like, we’re coming on the end of February, so there’s really only You know, two months to get ready to get those technicians suited up and booted up and ready to go.

Lars Bendsen: Yeah, normally you can say that technician who is available in June in Canada, we do not want to have him. There’s a reason why I don’t have a job in June. Yeah. So therefore, there’s really fighting for the good resources. Yep. We have built our division up a little bit different because the season only is for five months.

Yeah. So we have a combination of Canadian crews. It’s a little base crew. We have all our management, of course, product management, quality, all the job. We own the project, but we have a staff coming in from Europe with, of course, adequate work permit and all that jazz. They’re all GVO trained and we’re only working with our rather certified manpower companies.

So we do the quality control and we’re exactly what we’re getting. That means we have qualified. 10 years from day one, where our good colleagues that has their own employees, we let them go end of November and then had them back in May and 50 percent not coming back. They’re starting up with a carpenter.

He’s not afraid of heights, so he can work in ropes. That’s, I think that’s our advantage that we are building. We try to build our teams to the scope we are getting. The flip side of that is we need a little bit more prep time. Yep. Yep. Because we want them to show they have the adequate, certificates when I have the best of the people, and we also make sure we get the work permit. It just takes time. And it’s out of those guys. They’re really in, in it’s all, it’s a global thing that there’s simply not technicians enough. So if we don’t assign them now, they go somewhere else.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. So these RFQs that are sitting out there, they need to be let soon. They have to give somebody a job

Lars Bendsen: at a certain point.

Yeah. And that’s not only us. I think that’s a cross to you. Yeah that’s my two cents.

Allen Hall: Because AC883 doesn’t do work just in Canada. You’re doing it all over North America.

Lars Bendsen: You do it all over North America, but that also get the work company into us. It’s not necessarily easier than this to get into Canada. That’s true. It’s just a process in time, right?

Allen Hall: Yeah. And then you got to get organized. And I know one of the discussions I heard on the floor this week was essentially power loss because you’re not sure where your turbine is pointed.

And. My first thought was Lars knows. Yeah. He’s probably one of the few that can actually find out. The complaint we’re hearing is we’re not generating enough power. Is it the wind resource? We had an engineer come up talking about wind resources. Or is it the turbine themselves? And I think it’s maybe a combination of both.

But we ought to be able to eliminate the pitch angle of the blades and the yaw. Yeah. And point the thing in the right direction. It seems like the simple thing. You would think. But it’s not easy to do, actually.

Lars Bendsen: No, but it’s interesting. Again, I think we spoke about it a few times. The new technology, 90 percent of it is coming from Europe.

Yeah. Oh, sure. That’s the nature of the beast. Because that’s where the fire started.

Yeah. That’s how it is, right? And now we’re here in the ACP and just the Danish booth on the Hamburg exhibition is bigger than this complete exhibition. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: In Hamburg, it’s other 100 some odd companies.

110 Danish exhibitors last year.

Lars Bendsen: Yeah. So just to give a perspective. Yeah. And there’s all new technology coming out. It’s coming out there. There are a few coming out of North America. One of them is here. But I’m just saying that. 90 percent is coming out of Europe, that’s just a fact. And so the whole control philosophy and the accurate alignment of turbines is also coming out of the German world or the Danish world.

The DTU, the number of spin offs of DTU into the wind industry is crazy, insane.

Allen Hall: And that, that ability that AC883 has to go off and look at pitch alignment without touching the turbine, right? It’s all crazy. Lasers and magic. Yeah, it’s lasers. Lasers and magic. Lasers and magic.

Lars Bendsen: Lasers and magic.

That’s the new website. That’s what we do. No, we’re back to, to the saying I started I think last year I said the rotor is the motor.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Rotor is the motor.

Lars Bendsen: And as everybody is talking about, gearbox is not yes, if a rotor is not aligned, It could be on the pits. It could be on. on the yaw, whatever, if that’s not aligned, or you have leading edge erosion, then of course the turbine is not performing.

Then you start talking about gearbox, it doesn’t really matter. The trouble starts at the root, because it comes from the rotor, in nine out of ten times.

Allen Hall: So that leads into the question about LiDAR. Yeah. Because there’s more discussions, you read through the magazines, go online, there’s a lot of new LiDAR systems that are out there.

But you’ve actually applied LIDAR to some particular OEM turbines that needed help. They weren’t pointed in the right direction. You want to explain like how that, what that is and how it works?

Lars Bendsen: It’s interesting because just to briefly touch on the pitch. I talked to some people, oh, it’s a new technology.

No, the system is actually 15 years old in Germany, but it’s new here. And on the LIDAR system, the cell based LIDAR, we introduced it in 2014. Yeah, it’s not new. It’s just new here. Yeah, it’s been in China for the last 10 years It’s proven but even China’s ahead of the curve that we are here.

Sure. So but also in all fairness in 2014 I call it a green banana Might be not a hundred percent developed. Now the banana have, mature to be a yellow banana. So it’s working now. And I’ve been through that painful process.

Joel Saxum: So they don’t follow the TRL scale. No. Zero to nine technology readiness.

It’s how green is the banana?

Lars Bendsen: But I had hair when I started this show.

Yeah, it’s been a learning curve. It’s been good. And now they know what’s running, been rolled out. to more than 200 turbines in Canada. Oh, wow. And it turns out that one of the specifics, it works on all stall regulated, pitch regulated, but it seems like the older stall regulated turbines have a problem really being well aligned towards the wind.

And that’s one issue they have. The other, there’s a natural, there’s a cell transfer function that means the true wind speed that the light is measuring 80 meters in front of the turbine. Okay. That’s the true wind speed. It’s not the same on the anemometer. The back of the nacelle. It’s actually, it’s always hunting the wind because it registered wind after it happened.

And it’s in a, what do you call it, in a not clean air flow. Yeah, it’s dirty back there. Yeah so that’s one of the issues. Another issue that turns out, there was also a steep learning curve, that the stall regulator, once they hit the rated wind speeds, they can actually get more alarms. So I can’t remember what the alarm code is called, but I get more alarms when you hit the rated wind speed when you’re 100 percent aligned.

So what we do above rated wind speed, we actually misalign it one or two degrees. And then we get less alarms on the turbine and we take the loads off the tower. Sure. By misaligning it above wind speed. It’s not logic. It was only by trying it so many times that misaligned it one or two degrees. Once you get above rated wind speeds, but the ramping up, you want to align as precise as we can.

Once over, we we switch to avoid the overspeed and then we are misaligning a little bit. And that’s with stall regulated turbines. That’s all regular turbines. Okay. Okay. It’s not the same on a pistol regulator. It’s just a regular, we want to make sure that we have a accurate angle towards the wind.

We want to be that as close to zero as possible. So in a Lehman’s way, you can say we have a better average. Because it’s all based on average. The same with the anemometer behind. It’s also based on average for the mid wing. We just have a more precise average. Because now we have two lasers, plus or minus 30 degrees coming out.

We compare the angles, and that way we get the correct the correct turbine angle.

Allen Hall: So if you’ve proven now the technology on the pitch the Stall regulator. Stall regulator turbines. Yeah. That seems and we vetted the thing, it’s now a fully ripe banana. Or does that mean this is going to come into the United States?

And a lot, because there’s a lot of little wind farms. You can just drive around Texas. You can point to the turbines that aren’t pointed in the right direction.

Lars Bendsen: I’ve been to wind farms where literally you can see driving by it as 30 degree difference. Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t get it, but seems until you don’t do anything, seems they don’t do it.

You can see it with your eye just driving by. Yeah. The anemometer is the worst.

Joel Saxum: That information’s back in the remote operation center too. Yeah. Someone’s looking at it.

Allen Hall: So what does that mean then? Is that mean that the industry as a whole, which is relying on anemometers, which is not a great measurement and it’s in dirty air and they apply a lot of.

Averaging to it because they don’t want the turbine hunting and pecking all the time Because that just wears and tears on the turbine. Yeah, because they don’t have something very accurate So is the move then to go to something like a LiDAR system? Even if it’s like one every other a turbine or one every five turbines.

I’ve heard some operators talking about that. Is that the move?

Lars Bendsen: I think it’s a matter of the turbine age and also The PPA you have? Sure, because there’s an ROI on it. On the on the installer c it’s depending on your PPA it’s about 3% power. Whoa. That’s a lot. 3% power for an investment on, I’m just saying between 15 and $20,000.

That’s all, that’s what those, that’s all it cost. Okay. That’s, so they are less than I thought. And it takes an hour to install, so it’s not a big.

And you can either do that. The problem is to get them into the, to the Wi Fi system on the turbine. Sure. And no one had that. So we actually installed it at the SIM card and it goes straight to Denmark.

We don’t even touch, we don’t even need to touch the.

Joel Saxum: So you’re not even touching the electrical system.

Lars Bendsen: Just need power. That’s it. That’s easy.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Because that’s always a big thing when it comes to control systems or sensors or whatever is cybersecurity with wind turbines. Nobody wants to really.

Lars Bendsen: People freaks out just on it. Can we get access to your internet on the turbine? People start freaking out already then. Yeah. Some customers now, we are potentially going to install in U. S., fingers crossed this year on quite a few turbines. So it’s coming also on the solar turbines in the U.

S. Wow. For Canada, Canada has more than 200. Installed.

Allen Hall: That’s amazing. Okay.

Lars Bendsen: But also think it, so back to, so I go back to the PPA and the lifetime of the turbines, right? Because we are turbines are getting know a hundred dollars or more from megawatt. Yeah. That’s easy to justify right? Where go down on the spot market in Texas get 20, $20 megawatts and the turbine is 16 years old.

It’s a harder, it’s a harder sell or a harder business case to make.

Joel Saxum: If you think about this too that LiDAR system can go, if there’s a, if there’s a repower situation, whatever, you can pop it off, put it on the new one.

Lars Bendsen: We are on projects now, what is it called, repower, IRA? IRA. Yeah. We are on already and verified there.

One of our clients got us in there. So they are doing a power upgrade. Yeah. And putting a LiDAR on. Wow. It’s there. So we are in that ballpark. But there’s a lot of, there’s so much noise on the, so much noise on the communication again. Sure. Because there’s all control systems, they can do better.

There’s three control systems down there, retrofit controllers, and they claim they can do it. Yeah. And I can’t say if they can or not. There’s a lot of noise on the communication line. But it, the wind vane is the wind vane. So you can’t change that. Yeah. So that wouldn’t solve the other thing.

You’d have might be have better, your algorithms. that there’s on the controller today. But I, I can’t tell if I don’t think they can gain the same. And then you’re also back. Now we are trusting people’s turbines, trusting people’s controllers. And now it’s a harder sell all of a sudden.

Now there’s more to have a say.

Allen Hall: Yeah, sure. But with any sort of newish technology, it’s just because it’s not being deployed yet. as widely as it possibly should. There becomes an opportunity, especially with the repower situation, where you’re putting, instead of putting up a 1. 5, you’re putting up a 2.

3 or God forbid a 3. So what else is cooking Lars? What else you got going?

Lars Bendsen: We have a ton of stuff going with our new partners in the control. That’s a drone company. They hate when I say the drone company, because it’s a trains, planes and automobiles, because they can on helicopters or airplanes or drones.

But they could do more than just, taking pictures of blades. It’s the most boring thing in the world now. There’s more than 20 suppliers, so we try to get away from that market.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Was it, I was talking with Yannick on your team, I think yesterday, and he said that they saw a 14 drone providers respond to an RFQ.

Lars Bendsen: It was FQ for the 17 companies. 1714. Were bidding on the same work.

Joel Saxum: I didn’t know there was that many drones. I didn’t know that many still around.

Lars Bendsen: And it’s just a beaten down market, so it’s not even interested. But those guys can we’re working now on doing ultrasonic testing on the blades. Sure, yeah.

So when we’re up on the blade, we see a lightning strike, we want to check, what is it? How deep is it going? Is it just a scratch? Or is it really doing some damage? We do the ultrasonic, then we can give a more accurate quote to the customer. Because now we know what it is. Instead of having to grind into it.

But right now it could be between 2, 500 and 60, 000. The last one. The same picture. One was literally 2, 500 and the next one was 6, 000 to 5, 000 for the same picture.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, because once you start opening it up, that’s a problem with all the blade repair campaigns. Oh, it’s the same. It’s hey, bid on these, and you’re like, I don’t know, it could be 10, 000 to 50, 000.

Lars Bendsen: Janick spent a month and a half, he couldn’t go to Calgary last year. He was sitting a month and a half and he took 400 and somewhat. Damages. Give me a price on that. Good job, Yannick. Thank you. He’s losing his hair from that, too. So it’s basically a qualified guessing competition. Yeah. There’s not really any merit to it.

Joel Saxum: And then when procurement steps in, it’s a qualified guessing competition for the lowest price.

Lars Bendsen: Yeah, then again, so we’re not bidding on the same terms. What if one of our competitors say, best case scenario? Sure. And we have a realistic, and we have a European square brain, so we do the worst case in the area.

Yeah. $50,000, 2,500 go. Those guys. Everything is done on t and m anyhow. So you to get an extra bill. Where we are more real, more realistic or trying to be more, you’re getting closer to what their budget is actually. Yeah. We trying to get more well leveled. Yeah, true. And again, it is a qualified guessing competition, but now new technology coming in.

But that also sonic scanning with a drone, flying a drone up on the blade, and also sonic scanning. That’s cool. That’s cool. They do x ray of transmission lines, all the splices.

Allen Hall: Oh sure, that’s where the failure points are.

Lars Bendsen: They have to be x rayed. So they’re flying an x ray with a drone.

Allen Hall: Oh, okay.

Lars Bendsen: And they’re starting a new project now, we have two drones.

Because when you get x rayed in the hospital, there’s a back plate. Yeah. So now they’re flying two drones, one upside down, and one here. And doing the lines. And scanning it. Are they going to bring that to the blade room? They have it already. No not the x ray part.

Joel Saxum: If you get x ray blades, I looked at a project like that about six years ago.

And we were like, ah, it’s difficult because those have to fly in unison. The base plate cannot move because then it gets blurry. But if you can figure that out for blades.

Lars Bendsen: I don’t know if they, on the blade side, but they’re doing a ton of stuff on the same transmission lines to doing a foundations.

Yeah, those are big areas. I’ve even developed a system that would blow my mind. So you’re flying with a drone in the tower, inside the tower, to check the foundation there. You open the hatches and it flies directly up and do internal inspection of the blades. You’re flying with a drone from the ground.

From the ground? From the ground. You’re flying inside the tower with a drone.

Joel Saxum: We’ll have to get those guys on the podcast. Yeah, I haven’t seen that. So that’s what I’m saying.

Lars Bendsen: As the A people based on bringing new technology in. Yeah. So that’s right down our DNA get totally excited when I see that.

Yeah. Because, and we have brought in, we talked about last time, 27 or 30 companies over from Europe to North America the last 10 years. Yeah. But that’s something that, that triggers me. But they’re not American. They’re Canadian, so everyone Right.

Yeah. That’s, so that’s what’s going on. And that’s why we need to be more clear now. communication because we have so many offerings. That’s an ISP with a different approach and then our optimization, I would call it, and new technologies.

Joel Saxum: And you guys doing spare parts and stuff too.

If you need something figured out, you’re call ours. Yeah. He’ll find you brake pads and gear oil and pitch alignment. I’m so happy.

Lars Bendsen: We have people in the office now helping out. So yeah, we increase our staff for 40%.

Joel Saxum: Shout out to Sydney, the new office manager, who keeps these guys in line.

Lars Bendsen: Absolutely. Absolutely. She is amazing. This would not be possible at all without her. She’s annoyingly organized.

Allen Hall: So Lars, how do people reach AC883? Because you’re such a wealth of knowledge and AC883 is starting to get really busy. So people gotta reach out.

Lars Bendsen: Gotta reach out. I was about to say our website, but that’s going to be renewed. It’s Lars, lars@ac883.com.

Allen Hall: There you go. Lars, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

And thanks for sharing a booth with us this week at ACP. And yeah, we’ll see you next time.

Hopefully in Hamburg.

Lars Bendsen: We will see in Hamburg, September latest. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yes. Thank you