Rosemary had a great discussion with blade expert Mohammed Fajar about blade defects, the blade design and certification process, and how optimization and automation could improve blade quality. Mohammed provides perspective on recent issues with turbine OEMs like Siemens Gamesa, and expresses optimism about wind power's future, particularly offshore! With both of their extensive blade knowledge, they explore how human factors in blade manufacturing lead to inconsistencies and why the industry struggles to implement more automation.



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Rosemary: Hello and welcome to a special episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm Rosie Barnes and today I'm joined by Mohamed Fajar, founder and blade consultant at Apex Wind. We used to be colleagues actually at LM Wind Power when Mohamed was a senior structural design engineer who took five blade designs through the certification process.



So wind turbine blade defects are very topical at the moment with what's in the news with Siemens Gamesa and also TPI, we've talked a lot about that on the podcast. And I thought that Mohammed would be the perfect person to have on to tell us about how the blade design and certification process works, or maybe more accurately how it should work to ensure that blade defects aren't a problem.



They're not supposed to be. So thanks heaps for coming on, Mohammed.



Mohammed: Thank you for inviting me.



Rosemary: So I just wanted to start out. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you're doing now at Apex?



Mohammed: I graduated in 2014 as a master in engineering in France about composite structures and materials.



And since then I joined LM Wind Power in Denmark and my journey with blades started. So I started as a structural design engineer. Yeah. As you say, designing blades, for various OEMs, uh, taking them from the conceptual design to the Yeah. Manufacturing and handover to, to the factories. Also worked at yeah, a company called R& D test systems also in Denmark doing test systems for wind.



And then another three and a half years in Vestas in the innovation department. I was working a little bit as the blade owner in the department tech lead in, in all blade related projects. One of them, it's the, yeah, cable stay drawtor where I also worked on it from the start to almost the end of it.



And then since July 23 I went on my own. I started Apex Wind, as you mentioned, and the goal is, yeah, to have this. It's a consultancy company, a hundred percent focused on blades. Uh, helping developers, OEMs and startups yeah, to have a blade expert on the side when they need it.



Rosemary: Yeah. It's good timing to pick a company like that, founding a company like that, because it's definitely such a need for blade consultants these days, but with yeah, all of the issues that we're seeing.



Mohammed: Yeah. One of the things that really motivated me to get in, because when it was, for example, on the OEM side, sometimes I feel that there was a struggle finding someone who knows about blades and can help with blades.



Often you end up, even if you want some CAD resources, you end up hiring someone who works with steel or something, and then almost have to teach him how to work with composites. And there was never this full package for people who knows about the whole value chain of blades to know about the design and then the manufacturing,