Jon Zalar, founder of IWTG Consulting, discusses the challenges of wind turbine maintenance, emphasizing the rise in turbine failures and the importance of root cause analysis (RCA). Proactive maintenance, proper documentation, and expert consultation will help to mitigate issues and ensure turbine efficiency.

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Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on Wind. Energy’s brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering tomorrow.

Allen Hall 2025: Jon, welcome to the program.

Jonathan Zalar: Thanks for having me,

Allen Hall 2025: Jon. Let’s start with the reality facing wind farmer operators today. What’s the core problem when it comes to turbine failures?

Jonathan Zalar: There’s been a larger number than they probably experienced like five years ago. I think, um, you know, the volume of turbines out there and some of the bigger issues that, you know, people are seeing in the last two to three years has made owning a wind farm a little more challenging than before.

Um, you know, between blade issues, bolted joint issues, shoes, and. Overall, like o operations, right? It’s been tougher to keep these turbines up and running, you know, manpower’s an issue, getting people out there to go fix stuff. It’s, [00:01:00] it’s been tough for a lot of people I’ve talked to.

Joel Saxum: Do you think this is a, a partial result of like, um, okay, so what we’re, you know, on the podcast in the last few years, we’ve always been talking about, oh, there’s all kinds of models coming out and there’s this, this manufacturer can put out this many different variations and all these things, and now.

Now we’re getting to the age where that family, that group of turbines that, I guess it’s kind, I’m looking at it like a class, right? That class of, that, those years of turbines are now getting to the stage where they’re out of warranty and they’re coming into, some people are taking, you know, ISPs taking, um, maintenance of them or an owner operator taking maintenance over from the OEM.

And all of a sudden now there’s these issues popping up and different things that we’re, we’re kind of in this. Um, like a swamp of problems with a lot of different models. So, uh, yeah, like you said, we’ve we’re, we talked a little bit off air here about RCAs and how to fix things and looking at serial defects and stuff, but it’s just like, it seems like every other week [00:02:00] someone calls Alan Ryan’s like, Hey, have you heard about this thing with this model?

And it’s like, man,

Jonathan Zalar: another one. I think it’s a combination of two things. One. Like I talked about the last time we had podcasts, there was a, you know, a pretty big push to increase rotor size, come out with new models for, for every, for all the os, right? They’re competing against each other. Coming out with a new model every 18 months.

And you can ask Phil, but I believe mostly the OEMs are sold out. If you go back five, six years, where. A huge expansion in the amount of wind turbines that have been placed. Right. So I think you combine those cheap factors and now, yeah, the owners have a lot on their plate, a lot more than they’re

Allen Hall 2025: probably used to.

And my question all is this, the complexity of the turbines. So every new model that comes out, what I’m seeing is more instrumentation, more sensors, more stuff, more variability, even in where the components originate from.

Jonathan Zalar: Right? Yeah. [00:03:00] I mean, to increase, to be able to meet that increased demand the OEMs had to get, you know, a lot of different suppliers for bearings for, you know, maybe two or three different places to make blades, right?

Um, and you’re right about the complexity, right? So like these rowers are getting bigger. They were trying to keep as many components the same. So you need better sensing, better controls to, you know, keep those loads where they work.

Allen Hall 2025: And a lot of times, uh, when operators have problems, they don’t actually realize.

What to do or realize that maybe there’s a serial defect and how to address it and how to suss that out. Now the, the big question is, is like what’s at stake if the operators don’t implement some sort of proper root cause analysis? Uh, what does that sort of downward spiral look like? Because we have seen operators that do that, that, that don’t try to identify key issues with their turbines.

I

Jonathan Zalar: mean, at the end of the day, it costs money, right? So if the quicker you figure out an [00:04:00] issue and if it’s a solution for an issue, the quicker you’re gonna solve that problem for your site or your fleet. Um. Also like making sure you’re communicating with the OEM about your failures so that they can add them to their RCA if they’re working on one, for example.

The more data they have, it’s gonna help them come up with a more effective solution.

Joel Saxum: I think you’re, you’ve gotta, how to put this? You have to have a specific engineering mindset. So of course we’re dealing with engineers all day long. We’re all engineers. We enjoy the engineering mindset. So it’s easy for us to quantify ROI and value add from an RCA, right?

So, hey, we’re gonna bring in an expert, or we’re gonna bring in a consultant, or whether it’s a, you know, a big one, A DNV, a UL type, or it’s a Jon Zalar, it’s gonna cost us a little bit of money, right? It’s gonna cost us. 5, 10, 20, 30 grand, what, whatever that is. But to us, that ROI is easy to quantify, oh, we had [00:05:00] this issue on this turbine.

We’re gonna spend 20 grand figuring out why, what, how, and how we fix it in the future. Well now we can avoid that blade failure. Next time we can avoid, you know, a de deductible on an insurance case, $250,000. So boom, we, if we save one of those, we paid for the whole RCA. It’s easy for us to do that in that engineering mindset, but to get, sometimes to get.

You know, an asset manager who may not have that engineering mindset, they’re just looking at, um, dollars and cents. They’re like, yeah, do we wanna spend this money? And, and I, I think that that’s a, uh, uh, a mindset, a, an action, an operation that, you know, us as evangelists for engineering in the industry need to help because we can help it in a large scale, right?

Like if we, if we solve these problems through RCAs. Then we can avoid ’em in the future and it’s better LCOE for the entire fleet. That’s the goal,

Jonathan Zalar: right? Like even if you identify an issue and you have the ability to figure out how many [00:06:00] turbines are affected and like we use a Blade Blade issue, right? If you only catch the CAT five, that’s a much more expensive repair than a cat two or three.

So if you work with somebody to identify, hey, this lat or you know, this list of turbines have a better chance of having this problem, let’s inspect it a little more, for example. Or let’s proactively add some strength in one area that we know we’re seeing issues that could save a lot of money in the long run.

’cause blade repairs are expensive. They take time, weather out. It just adds up.

Allen Hall 2025: And what I see when Joel and I have been around a lot of, uh, wind turbines in the Midwest, is that the asset managers. Get a lot of complaints from the neighbors and the landowners. So if they have a blade break or they have some sort of bearing that’s going bad, that’s making a lot of noise.

It’s a constant set of phone calls from the surrounding landowners about this problem. So even in the simple things. That can be [00:07:00] fixed, turn into big problems because of all the associated people that are around it. I mean, Joel, you’ve, you’ve seen some of these cases where, like a bearing’s squeaking, okay.

And the neighbor complains, or a blade breaks and the, and the owner calls up and say, Hey, why is this blade in my front yard? Which has happened? And those are real life situations that, that. You know, re requires somebody with knowledge to catch them before they turn into that neighborhood problem. Yeah.

That’s

Joel Saxum: the intrinsic side of, of the return on investment, right? Like, you can’t measure that, but it’s valuable. And, and I, and we get, this concept comes up a lot to us because we’ve been doing a lot of work in Australia lately, and Australia has a different approach to their neighbors and how they work within things.

And it’s very, very, very hands-on. Where in the states sometimes you see like, oh, well, they’re a non-participating landowner, so we just kinda, you know, move on. And then you see the Facebook posts that are like, these turbines take a thousand gallons of [00:08:00] oil a year and they never run. You know? And if we can, as an industry, if we can avoid those things by getting on top of stuff with RCA, we can, we can get ahead of the game, right?

We can change the perception of, of renewables as we move forward. Um, which is, I mean, it’s a difficult battle, but that’s, as engineers, we can, we can help that fight. So I think that this is an important thing. That’s why we’re talking to you, Joe.

Jonathan Zalar: Yeah, I agree. I mean the, the video of the guy who was asking why it wasn’t turning, ’cause there was no wind.

I’ll never forget that one.

Allen Hall 2025: So how do we break this cycle of reactive maintenance and repeated failures? What should we be doing?

Jonathan Zalar: Continuing that relationship with the OEM, making sure you’re having those monthly quarterly calls, sharing information back to them and making sure that you’re getting the updated information from them.

Because, you know, all the major OEMs have like information letters they provide when there’s an a known issue and they give recommendations of what to do to fix it. And just making sure that you’re plugged in, especially the smaller owners that you’re plugged into the oem, just make sure you get that [00:09:00] information.

You know, some could be a parameter setting or a increase inspection or, or a safety concern as well. Just keeping that relationship I think is important.

Joel Saxum: So, Jon, so continue on that, that thread at what, at what point does. Because not everybody is able to keep that relationship really good. And sometimes OEMs don’t wanna share a little bit, at what point does an operator say, I’m taking on an RCA myself.

I’m going to get a consultant in here. Or we’re gonna take it on in our internal team. what, how do you make that call?

Jonathan Zalar: It’s looking at their relationship and if it’s not there, and that does happen. There’s breakups in the industry, if you will, and. You see three or four of the same failures at a, 50 wind turbine park.

it should be a little bit of a yellow flag. I wouldn’t say red yet, but one turbine fell over. That’s a red flag, and that’s when if you’re not getting what you need and you don’t know what to do about it, that’s when you call somebody else out because. [00:10:00] The next one’s gonna be just as expensive, and there could have been a way to make it either cheaper or not happen.

Allen Hall 2025: let’s, get down to specifics now, because I think a lot of problems in the United States are related to bolts at the minute, and I, this may be a worldwide problem, that there seems to be blade bolts and pitch bearing bolts that are. Have cracked or are failing in some unique ways. And I’ve seen more recently where operators are just replacing them.

Like they, they don’t think about it in a larger context of maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe I need to be flagging these things. And they don’t bring in an expert like you, Jon, to come in and do an RCA To suss this out, you want, can you give us just a little bit of background on what’s happening on the, blade bolt and pitch bearing bolt problem?

Jonathan Zalar: It is multiple OEMs are having. I think three or four different failure modes that I’ve heard so far between root inserts, just the bullet joint itself, and then potentially just some initial torquing issues. Um, I know from my experience there have [00:11:00] been update updates to the bold, the bolt torque.

Specifications. And back to my comment about the relationships, like if you’re not getting that information, then you might not know. You should have went back and retort all these bolts and now you have a couple fail. Fail. Right? And then also what you do about it, when you have one that comes out, do you replace just the one or do you replace four to the left and four to the right?

So d different solutions I have seen from different OEMs about what to do when you do have one particular bolt fail. Um, you know, there’s definitely some potential supplier concerns. ’cause like I said, there’s been so many turbines with so many bolts, like you’re gonna have some manufacturing issues. You can’t get over that With the volume of bolts that are out there.

Joel Saxum: Do you think the technology innovations in bolting and tensioning tools right now are gonna help or hinder. Bolting problem.

Jonathan Zalar: I think they’re gonna help. Um, you know, [00:12:00]torquing, big bolts have been a problem in multiple industries. Even when I worked in locomotives, you know, getting high torque to come out with the right size tool to be able to get in there, to go, to go put the locomotive back on the frame.

Right. It is a very hard job. And you had mean you looking at 92 bolts on one axis, then you got tower bolts. I mean, it’s a very, very boring job, I’m assuming for the people that have to do that. All the time and having tools that make it easier, have a, have a less chance of not hitting that torque value, setting something wrong, not putting the tool in properly at an angle, for example.

I, I think the more, at least what I’ve been seeing recently, the more money and effort people are putting into, like making bolted joints. Is gonna be worth it.

Joel Saxum: Well, and I think this is why, like this is the importance of an RCA, right? Because at that level of, say, new construction or repowers, people are just pointing fingers like, oh, the technicians did this wrong, or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Or you get an RCA specialist to come in and can do, you know, the [00:13:00]eight eight DRCA or if they throw an RCA and figure this thing out properly and be able to point to, well, actually there’s a. A metallurgical defect in these bolts and you know, it’s a supplier issue or, or maybe it does the RC may point, Hey, these guys were at the bar the night before they torked this one or something.

You

Jonathan Zalar: know? Or, or could be like crew a just happens to not pay attention or, or had or had the wrong information. They had the old bolted joint, this tribal knowledge.

Joel Saxum: Exactly. And speaking about the problem there, like if we’re down the line, say now out of warranty, and we’re looking at a bolted connection issue.

It may point to once you’ve stretched those bolts a certain amount, if you’re re torquing or changing torque specs or something along the way that’s done, like that’s cash, like that doesn’t, it doesn’t work like that called yield.

Jonathan Zalar: Yes.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, especially composites though, when you start talking about these bushings that are in the blades.

You pull them, they’re, they don’t recover. They just get damaged. It’s not like some metal and it can stretch. You don’t really stretch [00:14:00] composites. You break composites.

Jonathan Zalar: Right. Once it loose is once it’s loose, it is adherence, it’s done right. You have to go do something, get it back. And I know there’s some technologies out there trying to fix some of these inserts, but yeah, like once you do that damage.

It doesn’t heal itself.

Allen Hall 2025: Right. And I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about that right now in the field because it, they’re not talking to engineers. They feel like, well, we’ll just cinch it back up and it’ll be okay. No, that joint is done. It’s done. You need to have somebody come in and look at it and give you some really good advice.

Joel Saxum: So to get to that level, Jon, you need to go through an investigation process. Can you give us some of the like, tips and tricks for the investigation process that like, that you know of, that you, that have helped you in the past? Data quality is very important,

Jonathan Zalar: like making sure, you know, like what turbine, which bolts, how many bolts, when did it happen, when were they last touched?

Like documentation is not always the best in the field. There’s a lot of handwritten stuff I [00:15:00] know that, you know. Companies are getting much better with electronic documentation, but that didn’t always exist in the beginning, like four or five years ago, surprisingly. Um, and then also like having the expectations where an RCA doesn’t take a month.

If someone, if someone calls you up and says, I need an RCA in a month, they don’t want RCA, that’s it. They’re not that fast. You really need to look at what’s going on, collect the data, put a hypothesis together, and. Validate or invalidate it and repeat if needed. And then you have corrective action. And that takes time.

That takes a commitment from the customer as well as you know, whoever they’re working with.

Allen Hall 2025: And that corrective action is the real key. But it’s hard to get to the corrective action if you don’t know what the root cause is. I see a lot of corrective actioning happening out in the field. Like they assume they know what’s happened, but not the details.

And you’re right, Jon, it’s gonna take more than a couple of days. To suss this out because there’s too [00:16:00] many variables and there’s not a lot of information, particularly when you show up on site. A lot of operators haven’t kept the real detailed records that you would need to be able to point it in in an afternoon.

Like, yes, this is it. Right?

Jonathan Zalar: Unless it’s a known issue that you’re not aware of and somebody else tells you, oh, yeah. G has his tail go do this, whatever this is. Right.

Allen Hall 2025: And how does that play out between the different OEMs at the minute? Are they basically providing the same level of information about, uh, known problems?

I have very little experience with like, um, I don’t know. Intercon for example, I haven’t seen a lot of Intercon service bulletins. I’ve seen Seaga Mesas and GEs Iveta. They’re pretty on top of it, but there’s other turbines that are out there, Solan. Well, how does that work?

Jonathan Zalar: That’s a very good question.

’cause I’m not seeing very many from Intercon or Solan either. And I believe they have some bigger companies that are responsible for them now. Um, [00:17:00] it’d be interesting to see. What kind of level that a turbine, that old without, you know, their OEM’s gone. Right. Someone else bought ’em out at some point.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, it’s like the Mitsubishi 1000 A’s, which is a really good example because a lot of the Mitsubishi 1000 A’s, and there are a number of them still in the states are, are being repowered at the minute.

So they’re gonna have another 20 years of lifetime. But I, you know, Mitsubishi probably doesn’t really provide a lot of service on those. What do you do? If you have an issue on a Mitsubishi or an old Suland machine or even an old GAA machine, where are you going to get help? I

Jonathan Zalar: mean, you, you really need to go to like an independent engineer that has that kind of experience, you know, hopefully with that particular turbine model.

But if not, you know, people who do follow known RCA processes, we will be able to like work through issues like that.

Allen Hall 2025: Is there a network of RCA people in the industry? I know you. Because you’re the [00:18:00] best. So, I mean, I’m talking to you all the time, Jon. I’ve seen this problem of the turbine tell me what’s going on.

But is there a, a general network of people that are just out there focused on solving these problems?

Jonathan Zalar: I don’t think the market’s huge in that right now. I mean, yes, there’s some independent people like myself, and then you have your DNB Leidos, those type of companies that that will do RCAs. But I don’t think they have dedicated RCA teams.

I think. The OEMs are the ones with the dedicated OEMs and then a handful of people like me.

Allen Hall 2025: So let’s, let’s walk through that for a minute, because one of the questions that pops up when someone’s trying to solve a problem is like, why not bring in a big organization like the one you just mentioned to, to do the RCA?

Like we, we, we’ve hired, uh, the three letter acronym to come in and do the RCR, the two letter acronym to come in and do the RCA. There’s a downside to that. I think I, I’m not always sure that the, the competency is there based [00:19:00] upon the, just what I see for the level of person that’s been assigned to that.

When they have so many RCAs and requests coming into the door, can they. Manage it at a level that you as the customer would be happy with.

Jonathan Zalar: I don’t deal with it too much, but you’re right, it, it will depend on the person you get Right. When you’re using one of the bigger one. Right. And you know, I’m sure some customers have the opposite, like, oh, I got the best guide or girl I could get for this.

Right.

Allen Hall 2025: Have you seen the varying in quality there, Joel? Like if you just call out the big name and pick up the phone and call the name. You don’t always know what you’re getting

Joel Saxum: there. We know, we know some really good people in the industry that has specific problems, but the trouble is, is scaling engineering expertise is tough.

Right. So like if you have a, you have a Jon Zalar on the phone, you get an awesome engineer that knows how to do RCAs, but you only get Jon Zalar, right? You, you, you can’t expand that. A million things like Jon Zalar can’t take out 58 RCAs this week because he’s Jon Zalar. Whereas, whereas I think that some of the [00:20:00] bigger houses, you get the strength of having a, uh, the larger team behind some of them where they can kind of spread some work out.

Or you may have an expert in fracture mechanics that he can look at this and somewhat so you have that with the larger teams, which I think is an advantage and you get some varying opinions in the room and you can really sort down to certain things. But at the end of the day it, it, it’s exactly that.

It’s an engineering expertise shortage

Jonathan Zalar: off. You know, it’s also nice when they have a good network. Of people that they’ve worked with in the past to bounce ideas off of. Because like if you’re the only one doing RCA all on your own, you’re gonna second guess yourself a lot. But like having somebody who does have.

A lot of contacts and colleagues in the industry. I think that’s very helpful.

Allen Hall 2025: Well, a new avenue for root cause analysis is looking at the service providers. I’ve noticed that, uh, you know, it’s one thing if a product comes to an OEM, you, you kind of know what you’re dealing with there. But when a company’s out there, uh, independent service provider or maybe some out there on a contract is [00:21:00] doing work on your turbine.

Now RCAs are looking into those service providers. Jon, are you involved with some of those discussions?

Jonathan Zalar: It’s, you know, not just the service provider, it’s even like who’s doing the work. Are they actually doing what they say they’re doing? Um, are they following the OEMs maintenance schedule correctly? Um, you know, especially some of the owners that farm out the whole operations to somebody else.

Double checking their work, I think is important just to make sure, I mean, you, even if you have total control and people, but just having a second set of eyes doing some quality checks. I, I, I don’t think that enough of that’s being done in the industry at this point. I think there’s opportunity to get

Joel Saxum: better.

The bird dog concept, right? The bird like oil and gas is bird dogs everywhere in the onshore, offshore. Anything you do, they gotta, they got a client rep who is rolling around making [00:22:00] sure things are done right. And I think we need that in wind too. And it’s not any different if you look at the same thing.

Remote operations people are like, oh, wind farms are all over the place. Like, have you looked at any other In industry, it’s the same thing.

Jonathan Zalar: It it, it’s harder. There’s more of them and they don’t move, like, you know, like a locomotive or automobile, right. Where they come to the shop and you can overlook, see what somebody did.

But yeah, like spending that money and effort on. Quality, I think could go a long way. And one of the ways would be the bird dog method that you suggested.

Allen Hall 2025: Yeah, I do think some of the issues we’re seeing in the field are related to particular groups that have touched the turbines, and maybe they just don’t have the latest and greatest information from the OE em, or maybe they’re just winging it, but either case, uh, the sampling there needs to happen and it really gets down to knowing what’s happening with your turbine.

And then when it doesn’t seem right. Getting an expert on site to take a look and make sure that your turbine is operating like you think it should and [00:23:00]it should be producing like it should, because if anything, we know right now production is key. We need those turbines up and running. Jon, you know, a lot of people call us and ask us, how do I get ahold of Za LR?

Do you have an email for Jon? How do people get ahold of you? I send ’em to your website, i wtg consulting.com. But they, you know, they want your mobile number, which I try to avoid giving them, but how do they, how do they reach you?

Jonathan Zalar: Um, the website, it’s got a form there. Um, they can also email me at Jay [email protected].

Allen Hall 2025: Well, you can see Jon on LinkedIn. It has a lot of good posts on LinkedIn and you’ll see him. Around the country and the world at different symposiums and discussions about wind turbine operations. Uh, and you can always feel free to talk to Jon Jon’s easy to talk to. So Jon, so thank you so much for being on the podcast.

We love having you. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. It was [00:24:00] fun.