TotalEnegies Floating Wind Anchor, Rope Management Tool

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

We discuss a rope management tool for wind turbine maintenance, TotalEnergies' floating offshore wind anchor idea, and a stress relief device. Fill out our Uptime listener survey and enter to win an Uptime mug! Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia! https://www.windaustralia.com Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes' YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting - https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech - www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com This is Power Up, where groundbreaking wind energy ideas become your clean energy future. Here's your hosts, Allen Hall and Phil Totaro. Allen Hall: Well, Phil, our first patent of the week is a clever, portable device for managing industrial ropes used in wind turbine maintenance. Now, the key to this innovation is a rope driver system that combines mechanical and electrical components to safely control wind energy. Heavy duty ropes, and we know those can be kind of a pain to deal with. This device features a rope storage container with a hardened lower portion and a flexible top portion, along with a motorized driver mechanism that can both lift and lower ropes. And I'll think of it as a sophisticated wind system that not only moves the rope, but stores it properly, too. Seems like a lot of good uses for this idea, Phil. Phil Totaro: And when you consider that regardless of remote inspection technology, we still do end up dangling a lot of service techs off ropes in, in this industry. So, this is actually something that comes from seemingly independent inventors with no corporate affiliation. And it's, there's a lot of patents like that that are usually just kind of crackpot things that, Is something that's never going to be adopted by the industry. This is something I hope they can find a way to commercialize or, find somebody that is interested in licensing this or acquiring the, the patent because this is actually Besides being kind of a clever and unique idea, I think this would actually come in handy in a lot of sites, because if you have multiple techs working on a blade repair up tower you can get techs. Crossed ropes, and it creates a safety issue. So having proper storage really does come in handy and, and enhances safety of, of uptower workers. Allen Hall: Our next idea comes from TotalEnergies, One Tech. And it is a patent that tackles one of the biggest challenges in offshore wind, how to securely Anchor wind turbines to the seabed. Now, the invention introduces an innovative monopile foundation design that's specifically engineered for offshore wind turbines. And the key feature is a specialized lower end structure with inner and outer tubes connected by Wing plates, they create compartments, think of it as a hybrid between a traditional monopile and a suction bucket foundation. Now, what makes this design special is how it handles both the vertical and horizontal forces from the turbine. And Phil, we all know trying to attach the C4 is really complicated and Totaro Energies has been out in the forefront of this for a number of years. This patent is just one of those ideas from Totaro. Phil Totaro: Yeah, and, and, like we've been talking about on PowerUp over the past few weeks, the reason I wanted to, to key in on this one today was, besides being this clever combination of kind of a, as you said, either a suction bucket or a jacket type approach and a monopile which, again, you would, you would not necessarily use this everywhere, but this is something that would come in for potentially sites in France where they're looking to d...