Polytech Unveils Flexible, Easy-to-Install Leading Edge Protection Solution

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Thorbjørn Rasmussen and Michael Drachmann Haag of Polytech discuss the company’s new onshore leading edge protection (LEP) product, designed to be more flexible and easier to install than their previous offshore version. Get an inside look at the technical details and customer-focused approach behind Polytech’s latest wind industry innovation. Visit https://www.polytech.com/ for more!

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Joel Saxum: Okay, guys, we’re recording here. We’re live right now at blades USA 24. We’re sitting in the area where there’s some coffee and some conversations, ISPs, asset owners, some blade design engineers, and of course, a lot of solution providers. I’m here with Polytech came over from Denmark on a world tour.

You’re heading back to Denmark. You’re going to OMS in San Diego, so we’ll be over there. Okay. So I’ve got Thorbjørn Rasmussen, chief commercial officer over at Polytech and also Michael Drakmann Haag. I got it, right? Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So chief technical officer. So we have two of the great minds from the Polytech team here right now.

Polytech, while they do a lot of different solutions they have some lightning protection things, they sell to OEMs, sell to asset owners, all the above, out of Denmark. They’re really known for the L shells. L shells is a product that if you’re dealing in wind turbine maintenance at all, you know that the leading edge is a problem and the L shells were developed for offshore use originally, correct?

And they have been installed some onshore turbines, some high erosion areas, or even people that are like, you know what? I think this is the solution. I don’t have to touch my leading edges for 10, 15, 20 years. I’m putting the big stuff in. So you guys have been behind the scenes, behind the curtain, working on another kind of version of that, but adjusted specifically for onshore.

Yes, tell us about that.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah, so we’ve taken all of the great learnings that we’ve had on the yellow onshore, offshore products, and then we’ve taken and built. On those innovations. And then we designed a product that then is easier to install comes at a lower price point as well. And really sets aside from the more, you could say more complicated stuff that you get out in the industry.

But while still having the the great performance and also then we don’t need the material to cure at site, which we often see with coatings and other products. So I think we really try to say that. All of the good things we have from the offshore, we build in that, that into an offshore product.

And yeah.

Joel Saxum: So I would say, as you thought, so driving this market, primary market research, as we call it, of course, in the commercial world, did you have asset owners come to you and say, hey, this is great, but we’d like this?

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Absolutely. We have been cooperating a lot with the ISP out there, getting feedback for installation method and and what was actually difficult or less easy for the, let’s say the premium version.

And then asset owners is when they, Take the decision very shortly sometimes they want to run a campaign So it should be easy accessible and so forth and all that feedback has gone back to Michael and the department and try to make sure that was incorporated in the solution And we can elaborate more on this one.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah, but I would say that it’s feedback from the last five years from the field all over the world. Yeah, the best kind of feedback. X. What’s happening. Empirical data from the field is what we want to change things on. Exactly. We could test in a lab all day, and that’s great. We need to do that.

But when we get results back from the field, that’s what we want. So let’s talk a little bit about the differences between the new Onshore product and what the L looks like. Offshore product was or is still, of course it’s still offered.

Michael Drachmann Haag: I think that the primary part that really sets it aside is the thickness of the material itself.

So the thickness of the material on the offshore product is thicker and thereby also having high performance, but it also entails that we need to tailor make that product into the specific blade. So it really provides a high performance, the highest performance in the industry. But it had to be tailor made to a specific blades.

Now we set aside with a thinner product that is more flexible and can be installed faster and can actually also be installed. Let’s say it’s a more, it’s not going to be tailor made to the specific blade, meaning it can be installed on all blades directly out of the box.

Joel Saxum: Oh, that’s fantastic.

Michael Drachmann Haag: And that’s, I think that’s really is one of the things that sets aside.

What we then took as innovations as well is that we have the split liner on LA offshore. And we took that great innovation and then we transferred that to a lawn show for ease of installation as well. That’s huge.

Joel Saxum: I want to touch back on the point of being able to install on different parts of a fleet.

So in the United States, of course, we have large wind farms. That’s a hallmark of kind of the market over here. And in those large wind farms, you’ll see sometimes, we deal with it at WeatherGuard quite often, you’ll see sometimes, four different manufacturers of blades and two or three different subtypes of blades in a specific wind farm.

And we just dealt with this one in an on one product. So if you have say let’s take an example of GE, the new GE generation turbines, the two Xs, right? Two five, two eight twos. They’re regularly come with 116 meter blades and 100 or 116 meter rotors, not blades, sorry, and 127. And Within those two sub models, you also have TPI can make your blades, LM can make your blades.

There’s a bunch of different manufacturers and there is little discrepancies between them. So if you had to have a custom made solution such as the L shells, the or the offshore shells, it would be a little bit more difficult. Now with the onshore version, you’re saying, Hey guys, you want to do a capital campaign?

You want to install on a hundred turbines? Here’s the product. It’ll work on every one of them. Yeah.

Michael Drachmann Haag: You just need to order the number of meters you need. And then the final adjustment right at the tip where there’s a big curvature on the blade. Yeah. That’s the point where you do a small modification, but that modification can be done on site.

Perfect. So perfect. That really either blade make or turbine model. It really just can be fixed on anything.

Joel Saxum: So let’s talk a little bit more about the technical details of leading edge protection. From an expert’s standpoint, we regularly hear, you should put on four meters, you should put on six meters, you should put on 10 meters.

You could do two meters of shells or three meters of shells and this much of a tape or this much of a coating. If you were, if you had a wind farm, and I know every one of them is different, say I’m going to put you in the middle of Texas. How many meters of this new product do you think you’d put on?

Michael Drachmann Haag: It really depends on your specific turbine, right? So the bigger turbines will also require more, a bigger length, a longer length of protection. But what we typically do, and we can do that for any site in the world, we can offer a calculation, a specific calculation for that specific site, that specific turbine, that allows you to exactly predict What do you need?

And we will then be able to sell you exactly what you need. No more, no less. Then there might be some some campaigns where you fix it, fix the number to installing 10 meters, because that fits within a day of working day. And then it might be that is the right option for that specific site. It really depends based on the customer.

But I think we try to deliver the calculations behind, but also the product that can then fulfill that.

Joel Saxum: So if an asset owner or an ISP or an asset owner and ISP in conjunction, contact Polytech to say, Hey, we’re looking at your leading edge protection solutions. You guys can also offer the customer success first support part of that too.

Hey guys, we believe through calculation that this is how much you need. So when you’re contacting you guys, you’re contacting experts in LEP.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Yes. They’ll get a report that then says what is the expected length you need, but also what is the expected repairance was. If there are any repair intervals.

So that means that they can already now plan the predicted maintenance. Yeah. So when do you need to go and look at the blade again?

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Michael Drachmann Haag: And when do you then need to maybe plan for repair?

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Okay.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Again, depending on site conditions and terminal conditions.

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Just a little caveat to this calculator. It’s based upon two heavy input.

The one is 20 years of weather data from NASA. Simply put into a database. And then correlate it with many hours in the wind erosion tester, sorry, the rain erosion tester. And then combining, of course, with verification on let’s do this. And according to the new standard and then having feedback from certain areas of the world saying we calculate this on this coordinate, how does it actually look after seven years?

Joel Saxum: Ground truthing it. Yes.

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: And then the service department or OEMs, the asset owner has then feedback to us and then correlate it together with us. Yes, it actually matches what we’re seeing out there. A little bit less or a little bit more, but more or less matches. We are pretty sure this tool is is the right one for the acetone.

And the great thing is there’s no price tag to it because we offer it for free. Everybody likes free.

Joel Saxum: It’s where they get you at the end on the LEP prog. Okay. Okay, so let’s go back to this LEP prog, the new one. You guys have of course been through the rain erosion testing. You’ve done your due diligence in the design phase and in the testing phase.

But you’ve deployed it already as well, too.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah, so we have already installed it in a site in Denmark. That was our first installation. And then later last year, we also installed it in Denmark. I would say challenging conditions in Canada as well, really to get the winter season across, so the cold temperatures.

So we’re going to go and inspect those turbines here in the coming the coming months as well.

Joel Saxum: So another thing I want to touch on here, and we talked about a little bit off air, but we’re all in the wind industry, and when you talk about aftermarket upgrades, if you’re talking about, it doesn’t really matter.

VG panels, our strike tape product, the polytech shells, any kind of LEP, any addition or add on to a blade. They operate in a crazy environmental conditions. If you’re listening to a podcast, you know this. It’s in rain, it’s in dust, it’s in bugs, it’s 300 km an hour tip speeds, it’s all these things. So unless those products are installed correctly, right?

When someone gives you a set of instructions please, this is begging the industry and all the technicians out there, please do it per the instructions. There’s a lot of work that has gone into those instructions to make it so that the products last on the blade. What have you guys done with the new product to make it easier to install in the field to we guarantee that durability, longevity, efficacy of the product out there?

Michael Drachmann Haag: So the split liner is really one of the things where we aid the operator in installing it correctly. What we also do is that we we allow the product to apply with a water film. So you can squeeze out any air that might be there. I think that’s a really benefit for product like this.

And then what we’ve done is that we’ve also selected materials that are robust against these different conditions that might be there. Low temperatures, high humidity. And then one of the other elements that we also found as being challenging is the edge sealant that is being performed on typical mini products that we’ve removed from this product also too.

Make it a fast installation. One less step. Yeah, exactly. And you don’t have this liquid chemical on site that needs to, that needs secure. . So it complicates or removes a bit of complication. In the product and in this, the installation. So less steps, less complicated, easier to work with.

Yeah. Risk of failures.

Joel Saxum: So of course we don’t want to give away your secret sauce, but if you were to give me like. The quick 5 steps. What does it look like to install and how does the product come?

Michael Drachmann Haag: So if we take the product That is right there. Perfect. The product here is that’s the product, that’s the material that we have.

So it comes as a flexible film.

Joel Saxum: Okay.

Michael Drachmann Haag: About 300 millimeters wide and it fits the blade perfectly. Okay. The curvature of the blade. When we look at the the adhesion method, then we have the split liner. Okay. Okay. So it comes here with a split liner that the first parts in the in the sensor is removed and then it’s installed in the center.

And then you have fixed it fixated the products right to the blade. And then you install the sides afterwards. And that can, what we’ve done so far in, in our sort of application environment that we have at Polytech in Bramming is that we’ve installed it in a continuous length as well.

Joel Saxum: So if you’re putting on six meters, eight meters, 10 meters.

You’re getting a roll of this, basically.

Michael Drachmann Haag: You’re getting a roll of that, and then you install it in one piece. Of course, if you’re hanging from a rope, it might be a bit more difficult to do. But but from a basket, we’ve succeeded in installing it in a continuous length.

Joel Saxum: Okay. Like a traditional LEP product, you’re making sure, you can’t have cat two, cat three, bad damages in the leading edge.

Those need to be cleaned up by a technician. Blade preps, we’ll do a little sanding, do a little alcohol cleaning, make sure the thing looks beautiful. Okay. Then from there on, do you need to, is it a spray bottle of water to put on there so you can squeegee it out?

Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah, typically spray water on the blade, but also on the product.

Joel Saxum: Okay.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Because then you don’t have that immediate tack.

Joel Saxum: Yeah.

Michael Drachmann Haag: And then you, this allows you to squeegee out any air bubbles that might be. It’s like putting window tint on. Exactly.

Joel Saxum: Right? I think Americans are good at that as well. Perfect. Yeah. Especially in Texas, everybody has tint on their windows because it’s too dang bright down here.

Okay so the product itself very interesting different than what you feel in the rest of the market, right? I’ve never put my hands on an LEP product that felt like that. But you can feel that it would almost, so I’m talking rain erosion testing, that it would almost cushion against rain droplets rather than take a hard impact.

Michael Drachmann Haag: Yeah. And definitely that’s where we’re combining the the thickness of that absorption power of the material, but also ease of installation. Yeah. So if it becomes too thick, the installation becomes a bit more difficult to do. So we are finding the right balance between that thickness and then the, also the, let’s say the performance in the rain version tester.

Joel Saxum: All right. Is it available now?

Michael Drachmann Haag: Not for serial delivery. Not today. Okay. But it will shortly be at least.

Joel Saxum: Okay.

Michael Drachmann Haag: All right. We are working hard in our facilities and bombing really to to make the product ready.

Joel Saxum: Perfect. Okay. So let’s so we’ve got the product. We’re also gonna shift gears here.

We’re gonna talk Polytech for a little bit. So Thorbjørn you were telling me that you guys are making some moves.

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Yeah. But just to confirm that in a short while is in a few months. In June, we are absolutely sure that we can deliver to the market. So that’s why we’re bringing it to the market now.

So people can feel in touch and get an idea. And then of course, maybe plan for late season. We have been Working from Europe to towards U. S. with travel, visit, and so forth. And we will continue doing that, and our normal staff is still available. We have strengthened a little bit. But we actually had a sleeping company in U. S. And we’re probably going to reactivate that in order to create also a warehouse situation that we can deliver with short notice out of, Out of the U. S. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And simply also, some of the feedback we’ve gotten is that ease the installation, ease the access, and have a decentralized warehouse situation in the U. S. And we try to listen. And so within within this year we are planning to activate that as well. Yeah.

Joel Saxum: From a customer success standpoint, it’s fantastic to have someone. Denmark and the U. S., you’re six, five, six, seven, eight hours apart, right? So it’s nice to have someone here to help the customers have that warm, fuzzy feeling that probably takes right down the road.

Exactly. Fantastic. Okay, guys, so we’re nearing towards the end of what we want to chat about here, but I want to make sure that anybody that wants to see the product can get their hands on it. So we’re at Blades right now. In two days, we’re going to OMS. You guys will be in OMS. Yes. OMS. And then we’ve got global shows coming up.

We’ve got Wind Europe Bilbao, you guys will be there. Hamburg is of course the big one this fall, it’ll be there for sure. By then we’ll probably see some more installations. Yes. Anywhere else that you guys are going to be that people can visit?

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Yeah next week we will be in Tokyo. With the Japan Expo then we will also have a couple of smaller areas in Europe and in and of course in October the annual fair in China.

Yeah. We also exhibiting there. And of course we will concentrate this year on this product launch, but of course you can always come by and hear about all our other solutions.

Joel Saxum: So we’ve got, if we want to reach Polytech, of course. That’s an easy one. If you’ve got a technical question, are we giving out your LinkedIn?

Michael Drachmann Haag: I think it’s best getting through the commercial guys first. He likes to talk, right? We need to focus on the product. That’s right. You’ve got stuff to do.

Joel Saxum: So what’s the best way to get a hold of Polytech if you need to?

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: It’s simply to contact me or one of my business development sales team.

The Mark Folley, or the Thomas Nilsson, and so forth. And but if you go to our website, you can find names and address numbers, email address etc. That’s probably the easiest way, and you’ll find me and my colleagues there.

Joel Saxum: Fantastic. Polytech. com, if you’ve got questions about the new LEP product they’re putting out, the existing LEP products they have in the market, or any other solutions.

Fellas thanks for coming on the podcast.

Thorbjørn Rasmussen: Thanks for having us. We’ll chat soon. Yes. Thank you.