Wind Energy Workshop

A day long workshop on role of PHM for Wind Energy organized by NRG Systems Chief Engineer Dr Eric Bechhoefer and Dr. Girija Parthasarathy from Honeywell, and Shaun Sheng from NREL. The theme of this one-day workshop is to Quantify the Need and Impact of Prognostics Health Management on reliability and operating cost of wind energy. This first-of a kind workshop brings together experts from the PHM community and the Wind Energy community and provide an ideal forum for technical interchange and exploring the transfer of PHM capabilities from other industries to Wind Energy

The keynote will be delivered by Sandy Butterfield, Chief Technology Officer at Boulder Windpower. The workshop features 16 speakers from the wind industry representing OEM, Operations and Maintenance providers, Insurers and Finance, and Condition Monitoring System providers.

Monday Sep 24, 2012
Location – Nicollet D1
This one day workshop features participants from OEM, government agencies, automation suppliers, insurance and finance companies. Events include position papers, technical presentation, interactive discussions on PHM topics related to Wind Energy, and a wind energy research exhibit.

Participants Biographies
C. P. (Sandy) Butterfield
– Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Boulder Wind Power
Sandy has been an innovator and leader in wind energy his entire career. Prior to co-founding Boulder Wind Power Sandy spent over 24 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), most recently as Chief Engineer at NREL’s National Wind Test Center and leader of the Gearbox Reliability Collaborative. His work at NREL included aerodynamics research, testing, design reviews, contract management, manager of the applied research program and leader of the certification / standards program.
Sandy was a wind energy entrepreneur prior to NREL. He co-founded ESI, a wind turbine manufacturing company in 1980 where he was Vice President of Engineering responsible for all aspects of design and manufacturing. Sandy is currently Chairman of IEC TC88 Technical Committee which is responsible for international wind turbine standards. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers. Sandy graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering in 1977 where he studied under Bill Heronemous, famous for his floating offshore wind farm proposals in the early 1970s. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers.

Mark Ahlstrom
– CEO, WindLogics Inc.
Mark has been the CEO of WindLogics since December of 2000. Under his leadership, the company became an authority in the assessment, forecasting, operations and integration of renewable energy.WindLogics became a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources (formerly FPL Energy) in 2006, allowing it to expand its role as an applied R&D center and provider of services to utility, wind and solar energy clients.
Prior to joining WindLogics, Mark was founder of two software technology companies. He holds degrees in Biochemistry and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Huageng Luo
– Engineering technical Lead, GE Bently Nevada
Dr. Luo is a Engineering Technical Leader at GE Bently Nevada. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees (Mechanics) in July 1984 and December 1986, respectively, from Peking University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanics, Peking University as an Assistant Professor and Lecturer for five years. After he earned his Ph.D. in June 1996 from School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, he worked at the same school for a year as a post-doctoral research fellow. Then, he joined the Global Research Center of General Electric Company as a Senior Mechanical Engineer. His areas of expertise include Machinery Diagnostics and Prognosis, Vibration and Noise Control, and Mechanical Dynamic System Modeling and Identification. Currently he is a Global Technical Leader for Wind under the Machinery Diagnostic Services group of GE Energy Services. Dr. Luo has published 28 journal papers, delivered over 39 conference presentations, and documented 45 internal reports. He also holds 9 patents in area of dynamics and signal processing. He is an active member of ASME and an associate fellow of AIAA.

Karl-Heinz “K-H” Mertins
– Director Technology & Operations, Exelon Wind.
Exelon Wind is based in West Des Moines, Iowa. Responsibilities include wind resource assessment, wind farm design, supply management, construction management, and the operation of wind and solar assets. Currently, Exelon operates 38 distributed wind farms with over 500 utility-scale wind turbines, totaling 895MW, 5 OEMs, and 7 technology platforms. In 2012 we are adding 6 new wind farms which bring our totals to 727 wind turbines, 1,300MW, 6 OEMs, and 8 technology platforms. Our team has broad experience with new product introduction, serial defect remediation, asset optimization and performance excellence.
K-H has 25 years of diverse engineering and business experience in Europe and the United States. He moved to the United States to participate in the start-up and growth of Phoenix International, responsible for research and design of electronic sensors and control systems for original equipment manufacturers of off-highway equipment. After Phoenix International was acquired by Deere & Company, K-H joined the Corporate Engineering Division to evaluate and advance technology-based growth initiatives. This included experimental work on intelligent mobile equipment and pilot projects in the wind energy sector using a business incubator approach. Since 2005 responsible for all technical aspects of John Deere’s renewable energy projects which were acquired by Exelon in December of 2010. K-H holds a Master’s and a doctorate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

Chris Pomfret
– MFPT
Career Military Aerospace Engineer (1976 to 1996), now an independent aerospace consultant with a special interest in Condition Monitoring and Health Management. Initiated the USAF’s entry to Propulsion Health Management, 1992 immediately prior to DoD’s pursuit of JSF. Appointed Executive Director of the Society for Machinery Failure Prevention Technology (MFPT) in 2006. Member and former chair of SAE Committee E-32 for Aerospace Propulsion Systems Health Management Founder member of SAE Steering Committee for Aerospace Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) and member of Technical Committee HM-1 for IVHM.
Member ASME, AIAA, AUVSI and SAE.

Dirk van Bonn
– Expert in charge, Germanischer Lloyd Renewables Certification
Dirk received his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering in 2004 from the University of Cooperative Education Mannhein. From 2004 to 2008 he worked as a manufacturing engineer in the truck department of Daimler Benz. In 2008 he joined Germanischer Lloyd Renewables Certification, where he started working as technical expert in the area of mechanical components in wind turbines, such as: gearboxes, couplings, brakes etc. Currently Dirk is Expert in Charge for machinery components in wind turbines and for condition monitoring systems

David Zeglinski
– Business Development Manager, OSISoft, LLC,
David is responsible for growing OSIsoft’s portfolio of accounts ranging from intelligent buildings to datacenters to discrete manufacturing sites. David is interested are in pure play software solutions for energy and information with a concentration on renewable and clean-tech power generation, smart buildings and advanced manufacturing. Currently co-chair – American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) Operations and Maintenance Working Group, where he is working with a team of industry experts to publish the first Best Practices Document for utility scale wind turbines and wind turbine power plants. This effort will leverage the experience of mature industries for which Best Practices Documents have existed for decades and serve as a living resource for professionals in those business groups.

Alexander Hill
– Critical Software
Alexander Majored in Digital Systems Engineering from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and pursued a career involving embedded software and hardware within the aerospace and defense industry; improving his professional background with embedded systems having worked on several testing and development projects for major defense and mobile-handset manufacturers.
After joining Critical and seeing opportunities to diversify the business, Alexander led the expansion of Critical Software Technologies into the Energy sector. The company now has clients in the Oil & Gas, Smart Grid and Renewable Energy markets and is constantly looking for ways to help take technology and experience from Aerospace and Defense into Energy. Alexander has a particular interest in Condition Monitoring and Data Engineering to intelligently improve the use and operation of assets, reducing risks, downtime and cost.

Steve Rodger
– Product Manager, GasTOPS Ltd.
Steve Rodger is a Product Manager with GasTOPS Ltd. Since joining GasTOPS in 1997 Mr. Rodger has held a number of different positions within the company spanning product design, applications engineering, project management and marketing. He has extensive experience developing conditioning monitoring products for high-value mechanical equipment in wind power, industrial, marine and aerospace applications. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Carleton University and is a licensed professional engineer.

Brogan Morton
– Senior Market Specialist, NRG Systems
Brogan Morton is a Senior Market Specialist at NRG Systems with a focus on health monitoring for utility scale wind turbines. Brogan started his career performing engineering research on the diagnostics and prognostics of mechanical components in turbo machinery. His research involved developing vibration-based diagnostic algorithms for mechanical components as well as a physics-based prognostic model for bearings. He then worked at the Idaho National Laboratory providing market research and competitive analysis in the technology transfer office as well as technology-based economic development support in eastern Idaho. He received his BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire and his MBA from Idaho State University.

EOLOS Exhibit
— University of Minnesota
The Eolos Wind Energy Research Consortium is a research collaboration designed to match highly-specialized engineering expertise with leading, market-based industry partners. Consortium researchers are employing laboratory and field-scale experimentation and state-of-the-art computational modeling to tackle a broad range of critical areas in wind energy. Ongoing research projects deal with wind farm siting, conditioned based monitoring, control system optimization, aero-elastic modeling, drag and noise reduction methods, radar interactions. Research is centered on the Eolos 2.5 MW research wind turbine and associated 130 meter meteorological tower. Both the turbine and met tower are instrumented with custom, research-grade sensor systems.