Our interview with Prometheus Wind Founder and CEO Will Friedl touches on the somewhat inspirational nature of the industry (really) and explains the literal nuts and bolts of keeping turbines in good working order. Understanding the difference between torque and tensioning is just the beginning. 

Also in this episode, Allen describes some of the chemical and mechanical engineering innovations Siemens Gamesa has employed to make recyclable blades, which are expected to be installed this summer. Rosemary expands on what Australian election results may mean for wind (and other green energy efforts), and Joel has some serious questions about the ESG rating system. 

Visit Prometheus Wind here – https://www.prometheuswind.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! 

Will Friedl: [00:00:00] So my background is in the Air Force. I started, uh, once I graduated the Air Force Academy in 2012, I started out as a combat rescue officer. And, um, my job was obviously working in personnel recovery and working with small teams, kind of geographically separated and doing some really fun things. Um, were jumping out of planes, riding in helicopters, um, doing all the things that, you know, you associate with, uh, you know, military special operations.

And it’s a really good group of guys to be a part of

Allen Hall: Welcome to the uptime podcast. I am your co-host Allen hall here with Rosemary Barnes and Joel Saxum. And we have a really packed show today. We are talking about the Siemens Gamesa recycled wool blade. That’s going to be put out in the [00:01:00] ocean off the coast of Germany coming up this summer. Uh, the Biden Harris administration is proposing offshore leases off shore or California.

And then we have a really interesting guest will Friedel CEO of Promethease wind will be here, and he’s going to be talking about tensioning and torquing, a Boltzmann like tower bolts that are super 

Rosemary Barnes: important. And then after the interview, we’re going to talk a bit about the, uh, Australian election that we recently had a change of government.

And I explained a little bit about some of the unique features of the Australian electoral system. So how led to that. And then we talk about ESG ratings and how it can be that a green sort of company like Tesla can get kicked out of the S and P 500, whereas fossil fuel company like Exxon mobile can, um, ExxonMobil can remain within it.

Allen Hall: Can I see him as can Mesa is since we’re producing the [00:02:00] first recyclable blade and actually going to deploy it off shore now, uh, there are factory in whole, in the UK, which is a big factor for Siemens Gamesa in terms of blades is the one producing it. And they’re, they’re, they’re using that, uh, recycled blades technology, uh, and when the blade is finished, it’s going out to RWS installation in cus cockies cut costs, cuts, cuts, see?

Oh, sure. Wind farm Ks, K a S I C I don’t know. Oh, yeah, it’s missing a consonant somewhere in there. So it’s in the German, German, north sea. It’s going out there this summer, Rosemary. So like, like, like it’s soon, right? Uh, the resin system is created by here’s another name I’m going to murder Adida, Burleigh, advanced materials so that they created this resonance system a while ago.

Evidently. And if you go onto the website, like I did, you can actually see some pretty cool, uh, description of what it is, but it does. It’s what Rosemary has talked [00:03:00] about and explained to us before Joel, which is you can get a thermoset and it sort of interlinks together. And then you can magically throw some chemical at it and it own links and shake and break the components apart again.

So that’s the technology. So this wind farm where this blade is going to be as a 342 megawatt wind farm, uh, which has going to, which will have 38 Siemens Gamesa, wind turbines with a output of up to nine megawatts. That doesn’t sound right. It sounds like there must be nine megawatt turbines. That doesn’t sound right either, but maybe it is.

Uh, so this, this site has a couple of other innovations, which I think are interesting. They’re using collared monopiles for the turbines out in the ocean, and they’re using ive vibrating Powell driving system. So instead of dropping the massive weight on top and sort of hammering the, uh, piling down into the C4, they’re actually sort of vibrating it down, which is, uh, another technique.

So it’s sort of like this collective of different ideas that [00:04:00] RWE is going to be involved with and Siemens committees can be involved. So it’s not just the blade recycle a blade, but there’s a lot of other new technology going in. One place question is, do you think Siemens Gamesa really has this figured out enough to actually deploy.

A recyclable blade in the field. 

Rosemary Barnes: So, Alan, maybe you saw some different information to me because, uh, from what I have read, it’s very vague about, um, the, the resin being used and the recycling process. Did you say that you saw it was a thermostat or a thermoplastic? Okay. 

Allen Hall: It said it was both. Okay. So if you go on to the manufacturer’s website, it says it’s a thermal set that also can be made into a thermoplastic.

And I don’t know if that means the two individual components are thermoplastic and then it turns a Turo Thermo set the way they’re doing it. But the, it read like it acts works like a Thermo set, but it was actually a thermal plastic. So there were some sort of transformation happening in the middle of that.

Does that make any sense? Because that’s 

Rosemary Barnes: what the websites, it doesn’t currently make sense to me. Um, [00:05:00] it could be that I don’t, I don’t fully understand it cause I just found like a sales brochure that, um, is very, very vague in its wording. Just talks about why we need to recycle blades a lot. And that’s, um, that’s understood.

Um, and then it says the recycling process is that they will immerse the blade into a mild acidic solution. Um, hatred, a hated, mild acidic solution, which also separate the resin from the fiberglass, plastic, wood, and materials. Now I’m imagining that they are not going to be, I mean, the resin is going to be dissolved in this heated, mild, acidic solution.

Right? So the resident cells doesn’t sound like it’s going to be recycled. That it’s about recycling the fibers and all the other stuff in there. Um, is my, my guess, um, which would maybe explain why they’re a little bit further ahead than some of the competitors. Cause everyone’s trying pretty hard to make a recyclable blade.

And [00:06:00] until now the most exciting progress was this LM blade where, you know, they just made it a one-off bladed and now doing testing with it. Where I say, Ms. Gomez has said that they’ve already made six blades and yeah, they’re going to install a couple of, um, demo turbines actually offshore. So, you know, that puts them a fair bit further along if they already understand this material well enough to be installing it on turbines.

That’s that’s that surprises me how, how close they are, how ready they are to that. Because usually it’s a long process to qualify. It’s not just a new resonance, a new type of resin. If you want to make it fully recyclable or yeah. Change for both Emma, then we’re set to a thermoplastic. So it kind of implies that it’s a smaller change.

Um, yeah, it would be really interesting to talk to an engineer involved in this and not, um, uh, you know, the communications department. So take on it. 

Allen Hall: Well, I wonder if they’re talking because when I went to their website, the manufacturer’s website, they’re not using it just for wind turbines, they had other [00:07:00] industries that were using this same sort of resonance system.

Why would it. Just limited to wind turbines have to be almost all thermal sets in theory could use this recyclable resin system. 

Rosemary Barnes: Yeah. Does it 

Joel Saxum: reference anything besides resin? Does it reference any of the, the gel coat or the, the, you know, fiberglass in lays its synthetic glass or, you know, there’s a boat manufacturer out there right now that’s doing, uh, uh, using glass or a flaxseed or flat green boats for, um, their, uh, matrix.

But does it doesn’t mention anything like that besides the resin? Is it, or is it, oh, I, 

Rosemary Barnes: it explicitly says the only difference is the resin. Um, okay. Yeah. So I guess that the challenge is going to be then, uh, it’s not a hundred percent new. We have been able to dissolve resin away from composite fibers for a while.

Um, and even, you know, um, natural materials like blacks, that’s, that’s not, not new in the composites world. Um, it’s just, you know, usually economics that’s preventing [00:08:00] that, but the challenge with dissolving the resin away from the fibers is then, you know, what do you do with these fibers? Because the, you know, the strength and all of that.

Amazing properties of composite materials come from these long, long fibers. And they’re, um, you know, they’re, they’re thin enough that they contain no, no flaws in them. So, you know, glass is usually a very brittle material, but if you bank it in a very, very thin fiber, there’s no space for a, you know, an air bubble or a crack or something.

And so you get these really amazing properties, but you need the long fibers to actually take advantage of that. If you have in your recycling process, if you end up damaging the fibers and shortening them, then you really downgrading the structural properties of that. It’s it’s really interesting, um, to make a recyclable blade, but it’s also very fuzzy what recyclable means, because I mean, you can already take a wind turbine blade and shred it and turn it into, you know, material to make a, [00:09:00] uh, a deck out of, or, you know, a car dashboard out of, or something.

Some low structural requirements application not already exists. So what I want to know is what are they going to be able to do with these fibers after they recycle them? And that’s the interesting point? 

Allen Hall: Well, I can make it into the cell, right? I mean, then the cells are usually made out of chop fiber, at least the ones I’ve been around.

So you could actually take the blade, pick the fiber, chop it, and then catch yourself in the cell or make a surfboard or whatever else you wanted to do with it. But at least you have the ability to, to recycle that component. And it sounds like they want to Joel, they want to reuse the resident. Like they want to split it apart, put it back in the barrels and then build something else.

Yeah. Well, you could use it for him to sell. Maybe you could, those are a poxy resin systems of some sort. So they, it 

Rosemary Barnes: doesn’t sound like they’ll be out it’s one. If they’re dissolving it into an acid bath, then how are you going to re re get that resin out of the solution? Again, [00:10:00] I think that there’s some advanced that’s been made here, but I think that if you read between the lines, it, a lot of it is maybe creative marketing of the term.

Recyclable might not mean what you kind of interpret it to mean, but if they are able to, um, take the, the glass fiber or carbon fiber and turn it into something as useful as an ASL or a surf board, then that will be a step up from where we are today. So, um, at the Bowman, you know, usually you’re shredding it so small that you, you wouldn’t be able to do something like that.

So, yeah, it’d be interesting to get more details. If I 

Allen Hall: can get a Dita Burleigh on the podcast. If I got, if I could get a DDA Burleigh on the podcast, Like if I could twist some arms there and convince him to come 

Rosemary Barnes: on, um, all this stuff I can see, see what they’ll tell me. 

Allen Hall: Okay. I think that’s, I think it’s a fair, fair trade.

Let’s see if we can make that happen because everybody wants to know what this is cycling material is and how it breaks [00:11:00] down in your right. I think your question about the epoxy, how it breaks down with this, I’ve heard the acid described as something equivalent to lemon juice. It’s not lemon juice, but something similar to break this up.

Boxy part, I think we all want to hear with that is the next topic Biden and Harris administration proposes the first ever California offshore wind lease sale. And as we talked to Kevin Ewing a few months back about the leases on the east coast, it’s a long involved process, but there are talking about really two separate areas from what I can tell sorta like central California and Northern California.

They’re not really discussing Southern California. Probably one of the more major energy users in the country. Uh, but they’re opening up, uh, a couple of, couple of sites that in theory would be about four and a half gigawatts of wind, which is pretty massive. Actually that’s a lot of wind turbines. Uh they’re they’re thinking that there’s, there’s going to be this lease process.

Like there [00:12:00] was on the east coast for a bite and a couple others that’s generated a couple of $4 billion. So I’m guessing that California and the federal government in particular is going to be making orders of magnitude more than that off of these, off these leases. But a couple, a couple of things about these leases, which are, I think are unique or unique to me.

Uh, first obviously, Joel. Floating wind turbines. That’s the first thing because 

Joel Saxum: yeah, it’s a cost to California’s much like the coast of Norway, right? There’s not a whole lot of offshore wind along the coast of Norway. Cause it just gets deep too quick. So you’re going to have the same thing out in, uh, out in this, out in the California side.

Allen Hall: So they’re like the federal government is giving credits and this is, this is interesting because it’s sort of a loaded system on the, on the bidding. Um, you get a two and a half percent bidding credit, uh, for bidders who have S cater to commit, to executing a community benefit agreement with the [00:13:00] community or ocean users.

Who’s an ocean user besides the fisheries, right. Um, who go, we’re gonna use that area so that if you work with the local fish fish fisheries over there, uh, yeah, the community you want to get two and a half percent credit, you get a 20%. If you commit to invest in programs that will advance us offshore wind energy, workforce training, supply chain development, or a boat that’s a 20% is huge mess.

So who’s not going to do that, right. I mean, that’s going to decide the winners and losers right there. And, uh, the requirement that the leasees make every reasonable effort to enter into a project labor agreement covering the construction of the project is basically means I think that there’s that coded words for Joel, you can tell me, is that code of works for connecting with a union to install the turbines.

Is that what that means? Absolutely. Yeah. And then the, it just seems a little odd [00:14:00] otherwise. And the last one is requirements for the leasees to engage with tribes under served communities, ocean users, and agencies, leasees will be required to report on their engagement and make reasonable efforts to implement their projects in a manner that minimizes.

And mitigates their projects, adverse effects, if any, on these parties. So it sounds like you have to have a community get together to decide if your wind turbine project off the coast of California is going to affect anybody. I don’t know how you come to an agreement there, but it’s a requirement. So there’s a lot of things.

And just besides, we’re going to put some terms out in the water out here, and I’m going to pay you a couple of billion dollars for that spot. I’ve also had some obligations to work with the local community, work with unions and, uh, not be a nuisance. I think that’s what they’re saying. So is it. Is this auction going to be as massive as the one on these coasts?

I think that’s the 

Joel Saxum: question. Well, I think like, so to your points are the two and a half percent bidding credit for the [00:15:00] community benefit and the 20% for bidders who commit to invest. I think those are very solid metric based things. The next points where they say, uh, well, you have to do your best efforts to do this.

That’s kind of wishy washy. And, and I’m not sure how much that will fly, but yeah, you’re going to see the same things on this, on the west coast, as he did on the east coast, uh, involvement with the unions, um, too. So they can bring in some high paying jobs, uh, totally understood. But I think the difference here between the two is the whole world right now is looking at floating wind.

How do we do it efficiently? What are the best models are the best ways to do it? And we do a spar. Do we do this? So there’s all kinds of different designs out there. Uh, the east coast. When they did all the auctions there, that’s existing technology, you know, your monopiles or jackets you’re out in S you know, what is it, 20 to 65, 80 meters of water that, that can be done right now.

So there’s not as much risk to that, that auction and that $4.1 billion or whatever we saw go for the New York bite. Like that was [00:16:00] very high, but I don’t know if you’ll see that level of, um, involvement in the California. One for two reasons in my head, one reason it’s all floating, right? So the technology isn’t quite there where it’s not, it’s not mature.

We don’t know exactly, uh, what, the best way to do that. Uh, and the second one, all of these companies just spent a pile of money on the east coast. So th so there might be, and you saw the, you know, the, the, uh, auction that was just in the Carolinas, uh, didn’t fetches higher prices as the auction up in, uh, the Northern part of the east coast.

So, uh, while I I’m, I’m happy to see this happen. Um, the, the, uh, regulatory climate of the office off the California coast, I think is going to be a little bit more intense, uh, than some of the stuff you’ll see on the east coast. So is it going to be. Eh, the same kind of timeline that the, you see the developments going from, from auction to, to first energy coming to shore.

I think it will be longer over there. [00:17:00] I could honestly think that in my mind, the California lease sales might go first, but I could see wind in the Gulf before that, just because of the regulatory environment. And technical and technology 

Allen Hall: ping monitor is a continuous bleed monitoring system, which allows wind farm operators to stay ahead of maintenance.

Wind techs can often hear damaged bleeds from the ground, but they can’t continuously monitor all the turbines. They also can’t calculate how bad the damage is or how fast it’s propagating based on sound but pink. Ken Ping’s acoustic system is being used on over 600 turbines worldwide. It allows operators to discover damage before it gets expensive and prioritize maintenance needs cross 

Will Friedl: their fleet, and it pays for itself the first time that 

Allen Hall: identifies serious damage or saves you from doing an unnecessary visual inspection.

Stop flying blind out there. Get pings years on your terpenes. Learn more@pingmonitor.co I have with me today will Friedel, who is the CEO of Promethease wind based in [00:18:00] monument, Colorado. Welcome to the program. Well, 

Will Friedl: thanks for having me. 

Allen Hall: Hey, so there’s a lot to discuss today and you’re in a unique situation because Prometheus’s as a small business, you’re, you’re getting into wind and you’re, you’re similar to our company actually in, in terms of probably size as, so we can kind of go back and forth about the different things that are happening on the small business in, uh, being in wind as some of the difficulties, and also want to learn some of the things you guys do in regards to, uh, tensioning and torquing, a bolt, which is something I don’t know anything about.

So I want to have a little dialogue there. So what got you started in wind energy and what makes you want to start a business? So my background 

Will Friedl: is in the Air Force. I started, uh, once I graduated the Air Force Academy in 2012, I started out as a combat rescue officer. And, um, my job was obviously working in personnel recovery and working with small teams, kind of geographically separated and doing some really fun things.

Um, were jumping out of planes, ride in helicopters, uh, [00:19:00] Doing all the things that you associate with, uh, you know, military special operations. And it’s a really good group of guys to be a part of, you know, um, and you know, more recently when I decided that I was going to get out of the military, um, you know, I took away the thing that I, that I got up from the military, um, throughout that whole experience is that I realized that, that the things that were really fun about the military were great, you know, they, and they really provided a lot of value, but what I wanted in the next job in the next step of my life was to have a really strong connection between how I was spending my time at what I was doing and what was valuable to me, you know?

And so I was willing to do something that’s not quite as fun, but, um, probably a little bit more purposeful. So, um, so working in the wind industry, you know, our, our mission set is really to kind of save the ecology of the earth, you know, and, and that’s, that’s something that’s like, you can’t really get.[00:20:00]

That’s another really awesome mission set that that’s very motivational and, and it’s not, um, the only issue is that it’s kind of ethereal, you know, it’s not like, you know, you do a lot of activity. You don’t, you don’t like, look at, look at your watch and be like, oh nice. That’s a, it’s a half degree saved right there.

You know? And, uh, so, so it’s like really hard to, to grasp onto. So what actually is what I find the most motivational and, and what I have that the strongest connection with is, uh, very similarly to the military. Uh, the wind industry has a lot of, you know, young adults who are coming into it and they’re, they’re pouring their lives into this industry.

You know, they go out and especially the traveling technicians, anybody working in construction, they go to the sites and the work there, and, you know, 60, 70 hours a week, they don’t have a whole lot of other things going on, you know, and it kind of becomes this, you know, consuming environment for them. And, uh, and if you set it up well, like there’s a.

Lot of opportunity to create, [00:21:00] um, mentorship and growth in these individuals and really take them, you know, through the struggles of, uh, of, uh, you know, that everybody deals with, you know, going through life and, uh, you can give them lessons learned. You can give them tools that, that they’ll use for the rest of their life.

You know, they’ll get out of wind eventually, as you know, especially with the traveling, a lot of guys, you know, they’ve only got five or six years in them as travelers, and then they go and they transitioned to a different stage of their life. But the things in the lessons that they learned in the mentorship that they get, there’ll be able to use that forever.

And then, you know, hopefully, maybe even pass it on to their, to their kids. And so it’s a it’s, um, it’s that, it’s that environment that, you know, everybody’s working towards this goal, very, um, you know, putting a lot of effort into it and, um, and that creates a sense of comradery 

Allen Hall: and it’s all work. It’s all working for.

Right. It’s all working towards a purpose. Yeah. It’s all 

Will Friedl: working towards the purpose. And, um, you know, you’ve got the, the purpose of the work that you’re doing, and then you’ve got the growth that comes from the [00:22:00] experience of, of, of having that, uh, having that 

Allen Hall: purpose. So, yeah, you’re right. I think wind is challenging.

It’s gotta be somewhat like being in the military services that you’re kinda out on your own. A lot of the time and the work you have is challenging in front of you and in your, it, it isn’t like you have 50 people, Stanley are willing to help you. You’re you’re out there with, you know, two or three people working on wind turbines, trying to figure out how to make this thing go.

It, it takes one, a lot of, uh, intestinal fortitude, and a lot of knowledge of what you should be doing. So it’s challenging. That’s good. Right. That’s good. What should I get, I guess, lead you into. Why do you want to start a small business? Because we’ve already had the challenge of being in the Air Force, which is challenging enough.

And now you want to transition over to starting a, a wind business. Uh, what are some of those challenges that you have just starting up? Getting that business going 

Will Friedl: it’s a little bit non-standard. I would say my challenges are kind of different, um, because of the Air forces background, [00:23:00] you know, the Air Force, uh, almost does itself a disservice in that it, it really invests a lot of people and it’s, oh, sorry.

I’ll invest a lot of, uh, energy in developing its people and, uh, specifically leaders. And, um, and so, you know, you go through all of these different experiences in order to gain these, um, capabilities. And at the end of you’re like, man, I could do anything. And then they’re like, all right, your contract’s up, do you want to stay?

And I was like, so, so, um, my last experience, for instance, I was working at the Air Force Academy and, um, and my job was to, to run summer programs. And so, um, essentially we would work all through the school year. It was just me and a small team and we would develop, uh, the different training operations that would happen in the summer.

And then, you know, in the spring time when school finished, we would take six. People. So we take 400 students, 200, uh, permanent party, and we would train them up on this new job that they would do. That’s not something that they do in their day to day. And then we, you know, once they were ready, [00:24:00] we’d bring in a thousand students and we would run the 1600 person operation through the summer, you know, doing all the same, same stuff that you do in an organization, you know, trolling controlling for quality, controlling, for safety, managing HR, all, all the different things that the activities, it was my, my team’s responsibility to design the systems that did that, you know?

And so, you know, having gone through such a large scale, uh, essentially intrepreneurship experience, I re I realized that like I would, you know, I really had a passion for it. I really enjoyed it. Um, I really got to see the fruits of the design. And even though it took a long time to get there, and once everything came together, it was really, um, just an amazing experience.

And so. Um, so, so when it comes to, when you, the question, you know, come back to the question, you’re like, well, what’s, what’s the, the challenges that I’ve run into. It’s not the, it’s not the systemizing. It’s not learning how to delegate. It’s not the things that, you know, you hear from a lot of different entrepreneurs.

For me, the challenge, [00:25:00] the biggest challenge by far is, is getting access to decision makers and understanding their perspectives and being able to communicate value to them because I have zero connections in the wind industry, you know, we started off and I was like, all right, let me, let me check LinkedIn to see, you know, who do I know in this industry?

There was nobody, you know, I, there was, there was one person, you know, who’s a slight leader, um, for a company that there’s no way that we can, you know, as a startup. Uh, a customer for, you know, and he, he gave me a little bit, but that was it, you know? So, so it’s like starting from ground zero, trying to figure this out.

My brothers have lots of experience and they have lots of, um, contacts in the industry, but all of their contacts are mainly at the technician level. So they, we know a lot of people who are really good at getting a lot of work done, but we don’t know the decision makers. Um, you know, we D we don’t know the project managers, we don’t know the, we don’t know, uh, the program managers, we don’t know the executives.

And so like trying to get to the people and be, and be [00:26:00] able to communicate the value that, that we have and, and, you know, in a way that allows them to, you know, to take the financial, uh, leap of faith in order to, to test this out, just to has been something that we’ve been, um, working on for a long 

Allen Hall: time.

So what are the, what are some of the ways that you’re reaching out right now to connect with some of those, uh, procurement people and the, the engineers. Uh, running around trying to keep all these wind turbines running. They’re really busy people. How are you trying to connect with everybody? It’s 

Will Friedl: networking by force, I guess, you know, so like going, doing as many, you know, going through as many, you know, I’m not super, I’m not an extrovert, you know, I, you know, I, I don’t, I’m not like one of those natural connectors.

And so it’s been a challenge for me, but it’s been something obviously that I’ve needed, needed to do my brothers and I, all of us. And so we’ve gone to networking events, you know, the, the, the conferences, you know, especially once COVID ended, we’re like, all right, let’s take advantage of all these things, you know?

So, [00:27:00] so OMS back in, uh, so we did OMS back in March, before that we did, um, a ACP. Uh, we went to the blades con we’ve been to the blades conference, you know, for our blade repair, uh, department. And, um, and then, you know, we’re going, we’re going to have her presence in, um, And the ACP that’s coming up in. Um, what does that two weeks from now?

No, San Antonio. So we’re doing that. We’ve done a lot of, we’ve done a little bit of LinkedIn. I’m not a social media guy myself, but, uh, what we’ve done, we’ve built a presence on LinkedIn. And then, um, and then we’ve done a lot of sales trips, you know, knocking on knocking on doors and just, you know, telling people, Hey, this is what we’re about, you know?

Um, do you think this is a service that’s valuable to you? You know, and then R and then going to the next place and seeing what we can drum up from there. But, um, but it seems like you got to tell the whole world that’s a good, that’s a good way to do it. When you’re a small business, you got to sift through like a lot of people in order to find those early adopters, because they’re, they’re definitely a few and far between, it 

Allen Hall: seems.

Yeah. I think the hardest part in [00:28:00] wind is everybody’s so busy that it’s hard to, to meet up with people because they are so active right now that getting someone’s attention for just a couple of minutes is really hard. And you’re right. I think going into those comments, Is probably the right place.

Cause it’s probably the only time a lot of the technicians and staff and engineers get a time to slightly decompress. Whether they know they’re going to be somewhere without the phone ringing every five minutes, it’s probably the place to be. So that’s good. You know, that’s, you’re you think you’re doing the right thing.

Yeah. So your company has done a lot with, uh, tensioning of bolts or retentioning of bolts, sort of the checks that happen there. Uh, and I, I, that’s a fascinating area for me because it’s something that I’m not familiar with at all, but I know watching the industry, there’s, there’s a lot of effort into making sure the bolts are tight and that they remain tight.

And we have had seen issues with that [00:29:00] more recently with tower bolts come loose or they’ve had been some sort of, um, upset or the vibration where this caused damage. Uh, so what are some of those issues about bolt tensioning or retentioning that you see out there in the field and why would it be. As massive as some of these bolts are ever come loose.

Will Friedl: There’s a lot, there’s a lot of different reasons. It’s all one site that my brother was at the, uh, when they were doing the construction operations, uh, they were torquing the bolts and they got the wrong torque specs. So they over, torked all of these different bolts, you know? And so they had to come back through and sweep and, you know, and if you leave a bowl over torked that too much, it’s going to it, you know, it has a potential to just snap clean in half, you know?

So obviously that’s something that that’s a huge, you know, failure mode there. Um, then you’ve got the, the, just the vibration, you know, these things are swaying back and forth. They’re, you know, they’re moving with the wind [00:30:00] and, um, and just that movement, the vibration of the, of the machinery, um, can, can allow that, uh, bolt to loosen up.

You can have the material degradation where, you know, it just doesn’t. You know, it’s been stretched and it, but that stretch doesn’t maintain the a hundred percent of the tension over time. Um, you know, specifically for the baseball. So you can have the grout, uh, start to degrade. You can have those bolts move a little bit.

So, um, there’s all kinds of things that can happen over time. That kind of require you to check the bolts, just to make sure that they’re, um, operating within the same capacity. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. I, when we talked to a couple of weeks ago, I decided to actually look up on YouTube. Like what is bulk tension? Even look, look, I didn’t realize it.

It’s, it’s a complicated procedure. There’s a lot to it. Uh, it’s a hydraulic system that puts pressure on the bolt and actually he elongates the bolt and puts, puts the joint together to kind of squishes the joint. [00:31:00] It’s not straightforward. I thought it was just a bunch of guys out there with wrenches tightening things down.

It’s not like that at all. It’s much more complicated. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Will Friedl: no, definitely. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. So how well, how, how often do you do that? How often should those, those tower bolts be checked? Um, 

Will Friedl: you know, uh, so I’m not an engineer, uh, basically in accordance with the engineering specifications, you know, different manufacturers have different practices that they use different timelines.

Um, and those are the bolts within the actual turbine. And then, um, the foundations also generally have their own, um, you know, tension check schedule that they go through. So it all depends on basically when the, when the turbines handed over to the owners, the owners get the meeting schedule and they’ll have, you know, it’ll tell them, okay, this year do this, you know, this operating year, do this.

And. And generally every year, there’s some sort of tension check that’s being done. 

Allen Hall: Do then every OEM that all the OEMs have the same procedure, or they really have varying [00:32:00] procedures. I can’t imagine all the OEMs have their own special niche. Right. And it seems like everybody’s doing things slightly differently.

Are they all tensioning bolts or some of them torquing, bolts? What are, or is there some consistency between the OEMs? 

Will Friedl: They’re definitely not getting together and having a committee on how to do this. So I’m definitely doing their own thing. Um, you know, different manufacturers have their, uh, you know, some manufacturers they like to the, to torque all of the bolts, um, you know, and th there’s some benefits to that.

Uh, the idea behind twerking by the way is, is, um, you’re trying to, uh, basically who is the nut in such a way that it creates a certain amount of tension within, you know, the. Okay. So at the end of the day, what you’re trying to get is an accurate tension read. Um, so you can either do that by stretching the bolt and then, you know, and then seeding the nut and that’s that’s called tensioning, or it can do it by [00:33:00] torquing, which is where you’re just taking the nut and, uh, and twisting it until it reached a certain true value that then translates in an ideal world into attention value.

Obviously like if you put, if you put grease between the nut and you know, the flange, then obviously there’s going to be a different tension value, or if there’s dirt or there’s not. So there, so torquing isn’t as accurate, but, um, But it’s a lot easier to, uh, collect that data. You know, the torque guns are usually electric and they’ve got a, you know, you go through and, and, and the electric gun tells you the torque data for every single, you know, bolt that you touch.

The tensioners are not electric. They’re they’re hydraulic. And you just have, you know, you go through it and you, and you mark the ones that you mentioned and, um, you trust that the person actually, uh, the person who’s got the machine in the sand is actually going through intentioning each of the bolts that he touches.

Allen Hall: So do the OEMs or do the owners? I would imagine because it’s a critical piece. Do they require a [00:34:00] calibration of the tools and certification of the tools and what’s all involved there to make sure you get an accurate tension on a bolt. 

Will Friedl: Yes. The answer is yes. Um, every system that you use has to be calibrated, um, you know, with different, different timelines based on, uh, what you’re doing with it.

Yeah. For torquing there, you’re basically going to send that in the manufacturer is going to, uh, you know, check the tool, make sure it’s good. And then send it back to you. Um, For tensioning. Um, the whole system has kind of built off of, um, the way it works is you, you pump hydraulic fluid in, at a certain pressure.

And that goes into what’s called a head. And that had, um, based on the surface area of the hydraulic pressure, like the, of the head that, that pressure translates into a certain amount of tension, a certain amount of expansion force that turns into attention for the bolt for that device. Everything is basically measured by the pressure that’s in the system.

So the dial, the gauge, the pressure gauge, that’s it? Sorry, [00:35:00] that’s the one, that’s the only component that could send in and they check that to make sure that’s good to go and then send it back. So 

Allen Hall: what’s the procedure then when you’re tensioning a bolt, I know having gone through aircraft, uh, torquing school, when I worked in the aircraft industry, they taught us how odd.

And as an engineer, you’re like, oh, okay. I kind of understand that, but intentioning which I’ve never done before. Do you, is it, are you tensioning every bolt pretty much, or is it especially for sites that have been around for a little while? Are they doing a sampling? What, what, what’s the, 

Will Friedl: what’s the steps there?

The act of tensioning, a bowl, um, and the, and the attention program are, are kind of are two different things. So I’ll, I’ll go over the act of tensioning a bowl, basically. Um, you know, you put, you put this, it looks like, uh, like, uh, a number 10 can, you know, with a hole in the middle of it, it’s kind of where it looks like, and it’s connected to a hydraulic CO’s and you kind of put that over the bowl, you know, and over the nut that’s, uh, that’s, that’s [00:36:00] attached to the bowl and then you screwed, what’s called a reaction device, and which is essentially just a nut that connects that, that makes it to where that when this can expands, uh, it, it, the reaction to ice grabs the bowl and pulls the bowl to a certain tension value.

Okay. And so, um, And so in order to make that, that tin can the head, that’s what it’s called. Expand. You hook it to a hydraulic hose. You put your pressurize, the hose, the, uh, the, the head expands. Um, and then the reaction device grabs the, the, uh, the bolt pulls it to a specific tension value. And then you just make sure that, um, that the bolt that was originally in place, or, sorry, the nut that was originally in place is still seated.

Um, and some people are like, oh, if you grab that nut and you really crank on it, you’re going to get some, some extra tension in the, in the system, but that’s not, not at all true. Um, because of the high [00:37:00] amount of tension that you’re pulling on that nut, no amount of hand cranking is going to make any difference as, as part of a percentage of the overall force that’s being applied.

So 

Allen Hall: basically you, as you pull at your pole, it, then as you pull it, then if that nuts Lu. If it’s loose, I can’t loose. You would tighten it, but if it’s working properly, it should be pretty snug. Is that what happens? Yeah, because you’re 

Will Friedl: not actually pulling it to a hundred percent of its working value, so you pull it to 90% of the working value.

And so it, so there should still be a lot of pressure on that nut. And so it shouldn’t move at all. If there is pressure on, it’s not on that nut, then, then it’s failed the test, essentially. And so, um, so the way it’s done programmatically is that you go through and you do a 10%, generally do like a 10% sample on, on these base bolts.

And, uh, and if any of the nuts in that 10% fail, if any of the baseballs fail, then you do a hundred percent re retention. And that’s where you’re going to bring it up to a hundred percent of it’s working value. [00:38:00] And you’re gonna, you’re going to make sure that all of the, the nuts are 

Allen Hall: seated. Yeah. It is a device that kind of grabbed into the remaining threads of the bolt and pulls it or pulls it, compresses the joint by polling, the pull in the bowl, which is amazing to think you can pull on that hard enough to make it move.

The these, these tensioners are sort of massive devices. They are big hydraulic presses in a, in a sense. So if you can pull it and it moves, that’d be in the nut moose, that’d be a little bit troubling, right? So at that point, if you, if you’re sampling and you sample 10% of them, and one of those, or two of them, you can really twist the nut.

Now, you know, you’ve got an issue. So then you go back and you tension all the bolts around the ring. Is that what happens? Yeah. A 

hundred 

Will Friedl: percent of them around the ring, um, for that specific tower. 

Allen Hall: And so w how, how many of those towers that you done end up needing a hundred percent? Retentioning 1%, 10%.

It depends on 

Will Friedl: the age of, uh, the [00:39:00] site, how often the site’s been checked before, you know, what are the conditions of the site as well? So, um, you know, it could be from. Five to 20% of them that fail. It happens. It’s definitely something that happens. And it happens with enough frequency that, that this is a procedure that, that should be done.

And I think it’s a well justified 

Allen Hall: procedure. Yeah. Because if the OEMs are calling it out, they realize that there’s a lot of load there and they want to make sure nothing bad happens. So it makes sense to re retention these bolts. So I’d imagine you’re decently busy this summer. There’s a, there’s a lot of wind turbines in the Midwest and you’re located in Colorado.

You’re not very far from a lot of wind farms. And how busy is your summer? 

Will Friedl: We’re actually currently onsite at a 300 turbine site. Um, after that we’ve got, um, three or four contracts that are in the works right now, um, for, for tensioning. Uh, we also have, so tensioning tore contention is the only one of the, the, or scheduled maintenance really is only one of the departments that we’ve got.

We also have, [00:40:00] um, bleed repair and we do construction management as well. And so for, um, our blade repair, we’ve got another. Couple of contracts that are in the works. Um, and, um, but that’s that, that being said, there’s, uh, we’ve definitely not hit capacity for what we’re capable of executing. So we’re definitely looking for more work 

Allen Hall: so, well, how do people reach out to you?

And we can get ahold of Promethease wind, 

Will Friedl: um, reach us at our website. It’s a Promethease wind.com and pro that’s, spelled pro M E T H E U S wind. Um, or you can send an email to our operations at operations. Uh, our email address is operations@prometheasewind.com. 

Allen Hall: Well, Hey, thanks. Well, I appreciate you having me on the program may look to have you back in the future lightening as an act of God, but lightening damage is not actually is very predictable and very preventable.

Strike tape has a lightening protection [00:41:00] system upgrade for wind turbines made by weather guard. It dramatically improves the effectiveness of the factory LPs. So you can stop worrying about lightning damage. Visit weather guard, wind.com to learn more, read a case study 

Will Friedl: and schedule a call today. 

Allen Hall: So thanks to well Frito for being on the podcast to hope to have we’ll back on in the near future.

We’re going to shift gears a little bit and start talking about Australian politics. Since we have Rosemary here, even though she is currently located in the United States, basically the birthplace of democracy, Boston, Massachusetts, and so Australia had a bunch of elections and we’re trying to figure out like what the hell happened, because when you open the.

Newspapers in America. There’s like this massive shift in Australia and all the Greenies are now going to lead to this renewable future in Austria. But when I look at things in Australia, it’s kind of like, oh hum, there’s another election. So you want to explain what just happened on Australia? So 

Rosemary Barnes: I don’t think, I don’t feel like it was hard harm it’s it’s, you know, um, we had, uh, [00:42:00] we had a government that was truly terrible for climate change and they wrecked a lot of, yeah.

They just wrecked everything for the last, um, more than 10 years, let’s say 15 years. Um, and so it’s really good to see that gone, but everyone’s reporting it like it was this climate election, but it’s funny because the two major parties in Australia really didn’t talk about climate much. Um, and in fact, I feel like that the government that, oh, the new now current new government, the labor party, um, I feel like they really.

Specifically went out of the way to not talk about it because, um, the last few elections that they’ve lost, that it had the kind of like progressively less, um, less ambitious targets and policies. Um, and they keep on getting smashed on it. And it’s a really big contradiction because, uh, several elections, at least maybe for a long way back every, um, poll, [00:43:00] including the exit polls show that people rank climate change as their number one concern in Australia and then have just consistently bombarded, but, um, a government that is really, really trying hard to do nothing about it.

Um, yeah, so it’s interesting. One, the thing that happened with the election, that was really unusual. Wasn’t so much about the party that won the labor party. The it’s the more progressive party. It was more about how badly the current, the previous government who they called the liberals. But that actually means conservative, um, in Australia.

So that’s probably confusing for you. At one point, they were some sort of liberal, but usually for me, 

Allen Hall: everybody, 

Rosemary Barnes: you, you Americans, they’re supposed to be economically liberal. Um, but it’s, it’s all very jumbled now. Um, so they lost a ton of states to independence and the independence of, uh, people who are [00:44:00] mostly conservative, except for that.

They care about climate change. That they care about, um, women, not just women’s rights, but, um, you know, women’s equal participation in society. So, um, and then the third thing was an integrity. That was the third issue, um, that these groups of, um, independence went on. And so I think it, that’s a really big success story because it’s like, you know, I’m sure you have the same in America in a lot of countries that have like a two-party dominant system.

It feels like infuriating that you just have there’s, you know, like battles that just repeat between two terrible options. And there’s no way to ever change that. But now we have like 10% or more of the seats in our, um, house of representatives. Uh, uh, taken by independence and then the greens party picked up a lot too.

And the reason why they were able to do that, I think is largely [00:45:00] because of the way that their Australian, um, electrical system works. So I didn’t want like, give you a lecture on Australian democracy, but there’s, there’s three, three big things that are different in Australia compared to the U S and I know Europe is totally different again.

Um, so Australia’s system is more similar to the U S but first of all, um, Australia has compulsory voting. So everybody has to vote. We get more than 95. Yeah. More than 90% of people turn out and vote every single election. Um, so that the effect of that is that you don’t have to motivate people to go vote.

It’s not about the, the really, you know, the fringe ideas of people who are really passionate about some, you know, extreme position. They don’t really play. Oh, that didn’t have that much importance in the politics because you need to convince most people, most ordinary people, not just people motivated enough to follow politics, but everybody will vote.

So you need to convince them. Um, second thing is we don’t have [00:46:00] gerrymandering in Australia that, um, the borders of the electorates that set by an independent commission. So you don’t get any weird things where you get, um, yeah. W where you get, you know, like maybe most of the state, maybe a state has, you know, mostly progressive voters, but the electorates are drawn so that they’re all concentrated in a couple of sites and the rest is spread out.

You don’t, you don’t have that in Australia. So I think that, that makes it a little bit more, um, less extreme. But then, then the most significant thing is that we have preferential voting. So you don’t just say, I want candidate X to win is a, I like candidate X best. And if they don’t get in, then I want my vote to go for this person who I like second best, and then the third best, fourth, best with best.

So it means you can vote for an independent or someone that has no chance of [00:47:00] winning. And if they get the fewest boats and they’ll take your boat and put it in a different pile, the pile that you put, number two. 

Allen Hall: So Maria, what does this mean for Australia and renewable projects? Like the star of the south and a couple of the offshore wind projects?

Are they going to get ramped up or is it just less, uh, impediments in front of them 

Rosemary Barnes: now? Labor party, the progressive party. They have a majority in the house of reps, so they, they can, you know, set the direction on their own. They don’t need to form a coalition with anybody or immense any of these independents to vote with them.

Um, in the Senate, it’s, it’s different in the Senate. The greens party will have the balance of power, so they will have to negotiate. Yeah. To, to get things through the Senate. So the actual result is not that different to what we’ve had before. And I mean, anybody listening from Europe will know that, you know, is coalition.

Governments are the norm in most countries over there. And [00:48:00] we’ve had a ministry before too, and it works quite nicely actually to negotiate without the people, to, you know, get your, uh, um, your positions through. Cause it makes them more, you know, probably more broadly satisfactory. Um, so it’s not, not a big difference, but one thing about the labor potties, I quite like that platform actually for climate change, because one, it was a platform that allowed them to get elected.

Whereas, you know, if they had adopted more extreme or, you know, better climate policies, I don’t think that they would’ve got elected. So we would’ve kept that terrible government. Um, And the other thing is that they have that they’re not focusing as much on targets, announcing policies and, um, you know, nice sounding things.

All of their, um, their policies are all to do with, okay, we need more transmission. We need to make it easier to connect to the grid. We need more, um, we need more storage, you know, [00:49:00]distributed storage, things like that. And from my opinion, that’s, that’s the actual things that we need to do to speed up the energy transition is get rid of some of these roadblocks to installing more renewables.

So I think that we are going to see a lot of action, but it’s not going to come in the form of like huge targets that are gonna make, you know, climate activists happy. But climate engineers like me, we’re heavy. This

Allen Hall: is going to be an interesting rollout. I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on over the next year or two, because if they’re really serious about basically you’re moving regulation is what you’re talking.

Then they’re going to have to get on it pretty quickly because there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Interesting. Thanks George Murray for that. That was good to catch up on that. So if everybody’s been following the ESG discussion in the United States and, and the Elon Musk, uh, really dropping a bomb on it in the last week or so.

So let’s just kind of step back a minute and talk about what ESG is. So major stock [00:50:00] indexes actually track, um, different companies based on their ESG index and the standard. And Poor’s has an ESG index. And what does it ESG? Uh, it’s environmental, social and governance. So there’s like three areas that you can basically put numbers against.

And so what happens is these rating companies like S and B go back and look to see what a company has done in the environmental arena, in the social arena and on government. And then stick a number on top of that. Well, when they did that, it ExxonMobil the great and Tesla got booted out of the ranking altogether.

They got taken out of that index fund and Elan Musk is like, what the hell is going on? Right. Uh, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk call the ratings, a scam, quote, unquote, a scan and the us securities and exchange commission proposed new disclosure rules for funds that market themselves as ESG focus. So basically saying, [00:51:00] Hey, are you guys cooking the books?

And if so, you need to open the books. Nobody can see how you’re creating these ranking systems. So kind of how this goes is Tesla probably does rate very high in a lot of environmental factors, but there was some, uh, discussions about their social and government governments, governance that some analysts are not super happy with.

Um, the S and P lists. Some racial discrimination lawsuits with Teslas, some poor working conditions at a factory that I have into out in California as part of the reason why they fell down and Exxon mobile got ranked near the top. So I guess that leads to the question of there’s a lot of discussion about ESG and do we use it and is it useful or is it just as Rosemary puts it greenwashing of companies to put a nice little label on Exxon mobile and some of the, uh, oil companies.

The floor is open. Uh, [00:52:00] cause I, I don’t know if there’s a good answer. Uh, Doug, 

Joel Saxum: I dug into some of the ESG statements that you see online and then what you start to find when you go industry by industry silo, by silo, depending on who you’re talking about an oil company, you’re talking about a software company, it’s never apples to apples.

And I know like, like you said, like standard pour, they have their, their, their boxes and there are these things. But, uh, you know, when you look at, um, say Exxon mobile versus Tesla, because this is what the article that we’re talking about here is it doesn’t take into consideration any of the after effects of the products when they’re used.

Right? So Exxon mobile gets gets almost like they get it. They get a pat on the back and Tesla doesn’t because they’re, they don’t create emissions when the vehicles are running or we don’t want to putting fuel into things of that sort. Right. So the aftereffects of what their products aren’t taken into consideration.

So you’re not talking apples to apples there. Right. And it’s this it’s kind of the. To me, to me, it seems like, um, when people start talking about [00:53:00] carbon credits and carbon indexes, it’s almost, I’m not regulated in a certain way. There isn’t an actual legitimate market sitting there. So it’s hard to, it’s 

Rosemary Barnes: hard to measure the people that I know that work within this space and, you know, help help with some aspects of these writings.

Pretty consistently think that it’s a joke. Um, the, you know, the ASA ESG ratings rankings. And I think it’s partly because what they’re trying to do, you know, you’ve got the three things, environment, social governance, usually people actually mean when they talk about these things and that’s why everyone’s outraged about Tesla.

Right? I think people know that Tesla has all these problems, um, related to its workforce. And, you know, the, the cases that you mentioned, Alan, about racial discrimination and that sort of thing, um, Are there any different, 

Allen Hall: I don’t really Tesla. You think [00:54:00] Tesla is any different than any other? 

Rosemary Barnes: The impression I I’ve never been tempted to pursue a career at Tesla because it sounds like a horrible place to let to me.

So I think, 

Allen Hall: well, you couldn’t work hard. Sure. I, I don’t, but it is 

Rosemary Barnes: different than any other. Um, yeah, I dunno. I get, I, I mean, I have got bad, bad impressions from it. I have it from what I’ve read, but I’ve never considered working for an oil and gas company. So I can tell you if, um, you know, if that’s that’s better or worse.

And I know in the Australian mining industry, there’s been a huge, huge, um, case where people have suddenly discovered that it’s a terrible place for women to work on a remote mine in Australia. Um, yeah, so it probably is fairly widespread. Um, and don’t think it’s easy for minorities. Most places. But to what extent does it make sense that you lump all that in together?

I mean, if you care about the environment, then, you know, should you just be sure that it’s be [00:55:00] climate friendly companies and should there be about diversity? Should you know, there’ll be maybe be a diversity index instead. Maybe I think it’s kind of complaining a lot of things together. 

Allen Hall: Yeah. Right. I think you’re right about that from working in America for a long time and walking the streets and being in a lot of places, um, Americans are pretty knowledgeable about what’s going on.

It isn’t like these are all hidden. If people know what’s happening inside general motors or Ford or any larger, these, any large corporation where you’ve got thousands of employees, there’s going to be a variety of nonsense things that are going on. And it’s just a conglomeration of a bunch of humans put together.

So there’s going to be noise inside of there for sure. Is it really, are they really different? Do you think that the CEO of Ford is better or worse than the CEO of Tesla in terms of handling governance? I, I [00:56:00] probably don’t see a lot of different series. I don’t see a lot of difference between a lot of these companies.

I think what it comes down to is do you like the products that they make or not? If I don’t like oil then sure. Then are you going to derail ExxonMobil, but do I need an ESG rating to note. Oh, they 

Rosemary Barnes: used to be writing. Wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because they rent companies within sectors and they don’t include scope three emissions.

So, you know, like Joel was saying, um, Tesla doesn’t get the benefit of selling cars that don’t emit CO2 and ExxonMobil doesn’t pay a penalty for selling their product that they, I mean, they know that their customers are going to better. Right. It’s not, not a sacred. So I thi