In this Uptime Spotlight, Joel Saxum discusses the C1 Wedge Connection with Managing Director of C1 Connections, Jasper Winkes. They explore how this innovative wind turbine foundation interface addresses challenges in the expanding offshore wind industry, especially for larger turbines. The design benefits include structural enhancements, faster installation, lower maintenance needs, and possible cost savings for both offshore and onshore wind projects.

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Joel Saxum: I'm Joel Saxum filling in Allen Hall's shoes as your host for this innovation focused guest episode of the Uptime Wind Energy podcast. Today we're talking about wind turbines and massively important connections in between the towers and transition pieces. Bolted L flange have been used for decades to connect steel cylindrical structures.

We know this. However, as the wind industry continues to push structural engineering limits with increased capacity for these behemoth wind turbines, specifically offshore, a need for new tech to solve the loading problems has emerged. Enter stage the C1 Wedge Connection. With over seven years of development and two years in the field Jasper Winkes and team have developed the next generation of steel structure connections. Jasper, welcome to the show.

Jasper Winkes: Thank you very much for having me.

Joel Saxum: Great. So we, you and I talked a little bit off air about kind of the technology where it's been, where it's coming, where it's going, but it's driven by offshore industry trends, right? We've all seen, if you look in the North sea, small turbine big, Bigger, all of a sudden now we're 15 megawatts and some people around the world are talking about what could be the next generation.

What are those trends that are driving your technology?

Jasper Winkes: Yes, indeed. As you mentioned, we've seen a massive growth in turbine size over the years. And on one hand, that's of course the growth of the rotor. And they always say the rotor is the motor. So you need large rotors to extract energy from the wind.

But of course, large rotors also require tall towers. So we see that there's an exponential increase in overturning moments over the past years whereby essentially the bolted L flange has now reached the point where it is already struggling to deal with the loads and soon will no longer be able to take the loads.

And of course, where that point lies is really project specific but it's an issue that has been flagged by many industry experts for years already.

That L flange has been used since we started putting steel together hundreds of years ago, so in, but in a turbine, you see the L flange in between every tower section in even up in the tower, some places, right on, in a cell on blades, whatever.

But what we're focused on is tower connections and even the transition piece and some of that monopile interface. So where, and what are the issues that these, the traditional L flange technology, you explained it to me, maybe you can explain it here to our listeners.

Yeah indeed, we see that the heavy loaded connections, and of course, the more down the substructure, the heavier loaded the connection is, because you've got a longer lever arm to where the rotor is pushing on the structure itself.

You see there are overturning moments which are already approaching one giga newton meter. For people to put it in perspective,