Is it possible for wind turbine blade aerodynamics to improve as a blade wears down? Nicholas Gaudern, CTO of Power Curve, joins us to talk about vortex generators, Gurney Flaps and the ins and outs of blade aerodynamic upgrades. We also discuss new migratory bird laws in the U.S. that may impact wind farms, undersea exploration tech, a collapsed Nordex turbine in Germany, and more.







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TRANSCRIPT EP82 Vortex Generators: How & Why Do They Work to Improve Blade Aerodynamics?



This episode is brought to you by weather guard lightning tech at Weather Guard. We make lightning protection easy. If you're wind turbines or do for maintenance or repairs, install our strike tape retrofit LPS upgrade. At the same time, a strike tape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic, long lasting boost to the factory lightning



protection system. Forward thinking wind site owners install strike tape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today's podcast. Welcome back. I'm Dan Blewett



I'm Allen Hall,



and I'm Rosemary Barnes,



and this is the uptime podcast bringing you the latest in wind energy, tech news and policy. All right, welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your co-host, Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got a great lineup.



Also an amazing guest, Nicholas Gaudern, who is the chief technical officer from Power Curve, is back on with us today. He's going to chat later on in the show about vortex generators and some other belayed aerodynamic upgrades. He's a whiz when it comes to aerodynamics, so we're excited to have him and his expertize back on the show



. Before that, we'll talk a little bit about EC1 or some of their Kedron technology, checking on wind farms and the aquatic wildlife beneath. We'll talk about migratory birds, some new legislation or really just the law. Looks like it's changing again here in the U.S. We'll talk about some of the implications there for wind turbines, Rehame birds.



And then after our interview, we'll talk Germany. There was Nordic wind turbine collapse recently. Not much on it as far as causes. We'll talk about that sort of as an industry wide issue, like why do we not know some of these things?



And some of it seems like it's kept kind of close to the vest. We'll also talk about blackouts potentially in Germany. Their electricity supplies seem tenuous at times, and some interesting advertisements have been sort of driving that point home with their own people.



And lastly, we'll talk about a U.S. congressman proposing some funding programs for wind and solar here in the U.S. So first, I'll start with Equador. Allen, you seem pretty keen on this technology they have been putting out there.



There are drone running around and collecting a bunch of data. So tell us, Allen, what's some of the stuff that they're looking for here on these offshore wind farms?



Well, they're looking to see what the sea life is right now before they start investing and in a lot of offshore wind and to try to get a baseline for what the sea life is and what the vegetation is and what the migratory patterns are in some cases.



So they're basically putting out these looks like little boat drones are about six feet, two meters long, and they have a solar panel onto them and they're self-propelled and they relay data back to shore, but they're just tracking the wildlife in the area.



Very similar that we would do on land. When we put wind turbines on land. We track the migratory birds, we track the wildlife.