EP59 – Eologix Ice Detection Sensor Technology with Founder Thomas Schlegl

The Uptime Wind Energy Podcast

Thomas Schlegl, founder of Eologix sensor technology, sat down with us to talk about how their ice detection sensors increase wind turbine safety and allow for more efficient wind turbine management and production via automatic shutoffs and restarts. When turbines on a wind site start accumulating ice, local regulations may call for them to be shut down due to the fear of throwing ice, increased blade noise or other factors. With quality, direct detection, operators can have their turbines shut down and restarted automatically, saving the time and expense of maintenance crews to go perform the same job. Listen in as we talk through how the sensors work and how they're best deployed. Watch this episode on YouTube here. Follow up with Eologix via their website and on their company Linkedin page and connect with Thomas personally on Linkedin. 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. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Transcript: EP59 - Eologix Ice Detection Sensor Technology with Thomas Schlegl Dan: This episode is brought to you by weather guard, lightening tech at weather guard, we make wind turbine lightning protection easy. If you're a wind farm operator, stop settling for damaged turbine blades and constant downtime. Get your uptime back with our strike table lightening protection system. Learn more in today's show notes or visit weather guard, wind.com/strike tape. Welcome back. I am Alan Hall. I'm Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection, and ways to keep your wind turbines running. All right, welcome back to the uptime podcast. I'm your co-host Dan blew it. No Allen hall today, but we've got a great guest, uh, Dr. Thomas Schlegl. He's the founder. And managing director from Eologix and they are an ice detection sensor company, uh, with some really interesting IP. So we've talked about, uh, in subsequent episodes, you know, the whole Texas, uh, you know, ice disaster from January of 2021, and we've covered it from different angles. You know, we talked to, uh, Brian from elemental codings talk about some upcoming, you know, ice, um, ice shedding coatings that allow ice to sloth off a blade. A lot faster. We've talked to a laissez Hill. He had to co from Weiss tech with their, uh, blade heating technology. And so we've, we've gotten a good idea of like some of the different ways to keep ice off your blades. Um, but today they're, uh, their technology Eologix is about, uh, ice detection. And, you know, this is going to allow. Operators to automatically stop and start their turbines when it's, uh, you know, safety regulations tell them that they have to, and if they don't have a heating technology, that's going to be their solution rise to stop their blades. Uh, you know, wait till tomorrow warms up or the next day or whatever, and then get them operating again. Um, and that's going to make the most sense for a lot of climates and, and some wind farms. So illogic has, it has interesting technology. Um, there's a essentially, it's, it's almost like a big sticker. They can stick it on the blade. Um, you can put it on every turbine in your site or a handful depending, you know, just on, what's going to be best for it. And you could also put it on, uh, potentially, uh, turbines that are closer to say a, uh, you know, a residential area or a trail or somewhere where again, there might be more human safety concerns from throwing, you know, ice, getting thrown, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So. You know, one of the things that makes this tech pretty interesting is that it's not measuring just atmospheric conditions and sort of predicting or guessing, but it's actually directly measuring, uh, the ice accumulation on the blade.