The Blade Whisperer Returns with Morten Handberg

Morten Handberg, Principal Consultant at Wind Power LAB, joins the show to discuss the many variables within wind turbine blades that operators may not be aware of. From design to materials and operation, understanding your blades is crucial to making informed decisions in the field.

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Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program. 

Morten Handberg: Thank you so much, Allen. It’s fantastic to be back. It’s, uh, I really, really happy to be back on the show to discuss blades with you guys. 

Allen Hall: So you’re a resident blade whisperer, and we wanted to talk about the differences between types of blades even within the same manufacturer, because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding if I buy a specific OEM turbine that I’m getting the same design all the time, or even just the same basic materials are that are used.

That’s not the case anymore. 

Morten Handberg: No, I mean, there’s always been variations. Uh, so the B 90 is a very good example because initially was, was released with, uh, with the, with the glass fiber spark cap. [00:01:00] But at later iterations it was, then they then switched it to carbon fiber for, for, for larger, for larger turbines, for higher rated power.

But it, it, but it sort of gave that you were not a hundred percent sure. When you initially looked at it, was this actually a ca a glass fiber, uh, beam or a carbon fiber was only when you started to learn the integral, you know, what, what to read in, in the naming convention that you could understand it.

But it caused a little confusion about, you know, I’m looking at glass fiber blade or, or a carbon fiber blade. So it’s been there for a while, but we’re seeing it more and more pronounced with, um. Uh, OEMs changing to signs, uh, or OEMs merging together, but keeping their integral design for, for, for various purposes.

And then for the, for the, for the people, not in, uh, not in the loop or not looking behind the curtain. They don’t, you don’t know, know, know the difference. So I think it’s really important that we, that we sort of highlight some of those things to make it easier for people to, to, to know, to know this.

Allen Hall: There was a generational change. [00:02:00] Uh, even in the 1.5 megawatt class. There were some blades that were fiberglass and then they, there was a trend to move to carbon fiber to make them lighter, but then the designers got better and started putting fiberglass in, where now you have 70 meter blades that are fiberglass worth 35 meter blades, may have had carbon.

Yeah, it’s hard t