Morten Handberg Answers the Big RCA Questions

Blade specialist Morten Handberg on when an RCA pays off, what SCADA data can and cannot tell you, and why erosion gets written off as wear and tear.

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Allen Hall: Morten, welcome back to the program.

Morten Handberg: Thanks, Allen. It’s so– It’s, it’s so such a great, great pleasure to be back again.

Allen Hall: We have a lot to talk about today because of root cause analysis and the number of operators that are really struggling with RCAs, of when to do them or when not to go down the RCA pathway.

It, it– There’s a, a ton of confusion in the industry about it, and we thought, well, this would be a great time for Morten to come back and explain when is the right time for an RCA. So Morten, when is the right time for an RCA? What should we look for? Or wh- how big of the problem sh-should it be [00:01:00]before I find somebody to help me do this RCA?

Morten Handberg: So the obvious question is typically when something really bad happens, then I think everyone can agree that, you know, we should definitely do an RCA to get to the bottom of this. And that’s also just from a– It’s both from a technical perspective to sort of figure out, you know, why did this happen, and, you know, um, who…

Well, what is the, what is the main cause? Is it, is it something that, you know, it was happening while we were operating the asset, be it turbine or whatever? Uh, was it something that was inert in the bla- in the, in the turbine, the blade, the gearbox that was just waiting to happen? So that’s always very important to know.

Also because it tells you what is the chance of this happening again, you know, and, and can you prevent it in a meaningful way? Um, and there’s also a, a safety aspect to it because it’s– so it also tells, you know, uh, what if, you know, you don’t want blade falling left and right. You don’t want gearbox ex- [00:02:00] gearboxes exploding.

You don’t want towers to collapse. We can all agree on that. Uh, and you don’t want this to happen because you don’t, you don’t want to run the risk that someone gets hurt, uh, hurt by it. So then