Blade specialist Morten Handberg on when an RCA pays off, what SCADA data can and cannot tell you, and why erosion gets written off as wear and tear. The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech, creators of the StrikeTape Ultra LPS retrofit. Subscribe to Uptime’s Substack newsletter. And check out Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” Youtube channel. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy’s brightest innovators. This is the progress powering tomorrow Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program. Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. It’s so– It’s, it’s so such a great, great pleasure to be back again. Allen Hall: We have a lot to talk about today because of root cause analysis and the number of operators that are really struggling with RCAs, of when to do them or when not to go down the RCA pathway. It, it– There’s a, a ton of confusion in the industry about it, and we thought, well, this would be a great time for Morten to come back and explain when is the right time for an RCA. So Morten, when is the right time for an RCA? What should we look for? Or wh- how big of the problem sh-should it be [00:01:00]before I find somebody to help me do this RCA? Morten Handberg: So the obvious question is typically when something really bad happens, then I think everyone can agree that, you know, we should definitely do an RCA to get to the bottom of this. And that’s also just from a– It’s both from a technical perspective to sort of figure out, you know, why did this happen, and, you know, um, who… Well, what is the, what is the main cause? Is it, is it something that, you know, it was happening while we were operating the asset, be it turbine or whatever? Uh, was it something that was inert in the bla- in the, in the turbine, the blade, the gearbox that was just waiting to happen? So that’s always very important to know. Also because it tells you what is the chance of this happening again, you know, and, and can you prevent it in a meaningful way? Um, and there’s also a, a safety aspect to it because it’s– so it also tells, you know, uh, what if, you know, you don’t want blade falling left and right. You don’t want gearbox ex- [00:02:00] gearboxes exploding. You don’t want towers to collapse. We can all agree on that. Uh, and you don’t want this to happen because you don’t, you don’t want to run the risk that someone gets hurt, uh, hurt by it. So then RCA is a really important tool to investigate and find out, well, what happened here, and how can we prevent it, and what is the chances that it happens another time? So that, that is sort of the– That we can always agree and we would do it when, when something really terrible happens. Then there is the, you know, not so critical ones where, you know, you are just in time, uh, that, that, that you catch it, and then the question is, what is the– when is then the right time for that? Allen Hall: There seems to be a couple of phases in the lifespan of a turbine where the RCA, it becomes a little more critical. In that first year or two, particularly if the turbine is under warranty or you’re getting close to the end of the warranty, there– at least from a lot of operators I have spoken with, that, uh, [00:03:00] they would like to do an RCA as more of a documentation of what has happened on the site to then maybe claim serial defect maybe l- at another point. There’s just like the record-keeping part of RCAs, which I’m not sure is the right level of effort for what you’re trying to accomplish. Is, is the RCA the right approach there if you have a, a gearbox issue or a blade issue early in the life cycle of a turbine? Morten Handberg: There is definitely before the end of warranty, there is a, there is an, there is an aspect, you know, when should you actually do an RCA? And it should, it, it should benefit you in a way where you can– where there is an economical benefit, because it might not be a massive critical issue, but something that will lead to a lot of maintenance down the t- down the line. Um, but if you want to make it successful in the warranty claim, then you really need to know what is the, what is the cost behind it. Is it wear and tear? Is it [00:04:00] a manufacturing defect? Is it, uh, environmental conditions, uh, that are, that are causing it? And these, these becomes really important. That’s also why you can, you, you can, you can do an RCA on erosion, uh, because it, it can be important if you see massive, uh, erosion degradation that you really want to understand, what are my local conditions? Um, and a good example here is Australia, because Australia doesn’t work like Europe. We– You can take all the experiences we have from Europe, but it does not work in Australia. So you might want to do your, your, uh, root cause on that specific issue localized, uh, to really understand it, and that’s when RCA becomes really strong to sort of find out what are the underlying mechanisms, uh, that enables this. But you can also pour in a lot of cost and effort into relatively minor defects, uh, or issues, um, where it does not really benefit you in the long run, and that will always be a challenge before end of warranty because you don’t really know what will, [00:05:00] what will hit you down the long run, and that’s where you, you know, then, then it becomes more of a strategic decision. You know, breaking bolts, if you’ve seen one, maybe you don’t want to do an RCA on it. That does not really seem to matter to you that much. It’s just random occurrence. But if you start to see it, uh, in, in quick succession on multiple turbines, adjacent bolts, then it’s important for several reasons. One, you might– If you’re still within warranty, you really wanna know why is this happening and, and how do you fix it long term so this not– does not become a headache for the next 25 years? Um, so you want to, you want– you really want to understand that. And two You can, you can live with a few broken bolts on the blade, but there, there will become a critical point where the blade will liberate and then, uh, it will, it will col- it will, it will, yeah, leave the turbine or, or collapse on its own, uh, depending on the turbine model. And, and that is really critical to, to, uh, to avoid and, and to, uh, to [00:06:00]understand that. Um, and maybe the outcome of the idea of the RCA is monitoring, but that is a really important knowledge to have. Allen Hall: That’s a good point about the monitoring aspect because I think a lot of times when a operator chooses to go down the RCA path, what they’re expecting is just to get a report of this is the conditions that created the damage or created the unexpected outcome Uh, it, sometimes you may not be able to get to that final answer, and the answer can be, we need to put conditioning monitoring on to have a better understanding of what the fault is. That’s not a invalid RCA. That’s a really useful tool. But a lot of operators don’t think of an RCA as being that sort of outcome. That, that is actually where a lot of the industry problems can be solved, right, is to get the engineering up in upfront to then maybe have a little longer time or maybe instrument another [00:07:00] turbine to see how big this problem is. I- is, is that the approach that which you would, uh, aspire to apply to some of these wind sites today? Morten Handberg: I think that monitoring, uh, understanding the monitoring requirements is a very critical point, uh, outcome of an RCA. Both– And you can use it both during your investigation to sort of find out when you have, you know, uh, to, to find out how do you detect it efficiently, uh, but also what are the right methodologies and what is it actually that you want to achieve, uh, with mitigating this issue, and then what, what kind of, what kind of monitoring do you need. So for instance, if you have, if you have, if you have cracks starting in your laminate, you know, do you need acoustics? Uh, do you need deflection monitoring? Um, is it es- is it vibration monitoring, or is it, um, or is it some kind of, uh, video monitoring, um, that or, or infrared scan that, that, that you need to, to keep, um, to, to, to ca- And again, the essential [00:08:00] part is then how do you catch it in time that it does not become a critical issue? Uh, and, and then by using the RCA to find out, well, what is the best methodology to, to detect this and detect it in a cost-effective way, uh, that, that leaves you in, in good shape to, to maintain your turbines. That is a, you know, that is a really strong value proposition for the RCA. Allen Hall: Morten, when I talk to a lot of operators about doing an RCA, uh, they don’t have access to high-speed scada, scada data. They, they have access to low speed, depending on what their arrangement is with the OEM. Uh It’s really hard to get the high-resolution data, and they do not have the algorithms that maybe be able to tell them something about the turbine. They’ll just have sort of raw data streams. How important is it to get some of that high-speed data and the understanding of how that turbine is working as a, a fault [00:09:00] happens or s- some sort of failure happens? Morten Handberg: It kinda depends on what it is that you’re, that you’re looking for. So for a lot of… for, for, so for SCADA data, it will, it will give you, um, a more holistic view of what, how the turbine is performing. It will give you the power production, wind speeds, wind turbine, uh, the blade pitching. Um, so it kinda gives you an understanding about how it is, how, how it is operating, but it st- does not really give you any specifics about the condition of, of the blades, of the gearbox, of the bearing, of the m
