In this episode we discuss research that showed a 70% decrease in bird deaths when just one wind turbine blade was painted black—is this a real effect or do we need to do more studies? We also go in-depth discussing vortex generators for wind turbine efficiency, and whether they actually live up to the 1-3% AEP claims made by companies that sell them. We also discuss WhalePower and whether a turbine blade design inspired by the humpback whale’s dorsal fin can make it to market.



Learn more about Weather Guard Lightning Tech’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! 







EP25 Full Transcript - How Do Vortex Generators Work, and Do Black Painted Blades Save Birds? Plus, Whalepower wind turbine blades?



All right, welcome back. This is the uptime podcast, episode 25. I'm your cohost, Dan Blewett. And I'm joined here by. Lightening protection expert, Allen Hall, Allen, how are you? Dan, uh, just another crazy busy week in wind turbine world. Uh, so when he got on the list of news for the week, well, to start off with news, we've got some bird strike, uh, mitigation techniques, old ones, old school, AKA paint, um, where it's talking about a barrage of a lightning in Oklahoma, which I'm curious on your take about this because obviously.



You know, a lot of climates, pretty conducive, delighting somewhere, not so much Oklahoma doesn't strike me as one. That's crazy, but maybe I'm wrong along here. Um, and then our engineering segment, we got some more animal inspiration. So whale power, so well inspired leading edges, which is really interesting and unique.



And then we're also gonna talk about vortex, generators, bunch and internet of things, devices that can help detect faults in the field. So. First let's talk about, uh, let's, let's talk about Oklahoma. So 30, 30,000 strikes, uh, within eight miles or flashes. So I know there's a difference there, but what did, what was your take on this story out of the Washington post?



Um, why such a barrage of, of, of lightning strikes and maybe because of the Washington post doesn't. See a lot of weather like that, but the Midwest particularly between, so if you know your geography, like a sort of mid middle of Kansas South, all the way down into Texas, um, and even a little bit further North and in Nebraska can be really, really huge thunder storms.



I mean, I mean, tens of miles of thunderstorms and if the. If the weather is right and it's hot and you've have enough fuel in the air. And it starts to usually come in from the sort of the Colorado New Mexico area, it starts to build up and yeah, and look out, uh, or in this case, West, Texas, you know, it starts building up and you can get these huge storms if they start to churn and that, and it happens at the right time of day.



You get these gigantic hailstorms, which, and then in terms create all these lightning strikes and that is not abnormal. I think we're just paying more attention to it now. But if you ever, if you have the opportunity to drive through the middle of the United States and wonder all the trees are that they're all the trees are small young.



You don't see old trees there it's because the hailstorm. Wipe them out. If they get trees of any certain size they're going to come down. And at one point years ago, this is probably five ish, 10 years ago. Now once you start to hit with a huge. Um, hailstorm and just wiped out all the little trees just completely devastated the city.



So this is not unusual. I think the number of, and likes to be able to count them as unusual but 30. Was it 30,000 lightning strikes is a lot of lightning strikes that's within, uh, within eight miles of, uh, Oklahoma university is Norman campus. So. That's insane. So when you say this hailstorm wiped out all these trees, was it the hail itself?



When you're saying like the lightening effects ...