Air Time- Adventures In Wind Energy Rope Access Work
The Andean condor is a majestic bird that works very well in high winds. I learned this first-hand while rock climbing 2,000 feet up a vertical granite wall in the remote Cochamó Valley of Southern Chile in 2007. My partner and I spent a long night sleeping on a ledge with no water to drink. The next morning, I found myself climbing up inside a huge corner, or what climber’s call a dihedral. There was a huge condor soaring around in the Patagonian wind like a glider, directly behind me. I got a bit scared, thinking I was climbing up near a nest, soon to see a huddled group of hungry and squealing baby condors wishing I was their mom or dad. Turns out that the condor was just curious that day, as they often are with climbers.
We eventually made it to the top of the climb and found a melting patch of snow that I eagerly slurped up for about 30 minutes. I climbed this El Capitan-sized rock with a great friend who introduced me to the world of working with ropes on wind turbines.
The following autumn, I got laid off from my residential carpentry job in Mammoth Lakes, California. With my friend’s connection, I received a life-changing phone call from a new rope access company that was looking to hire experienced climbers and put them to work maintaining and inspecting wind turbines.
Before I could set foot inside a wind turbine with a climbing harness on, I needed to successfully pass a rigorous practical and written exam governed by the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians (SPRAT). While my 25 years of climbing experience proved to be beneficial with the one-week training course and exam, rope access work involves practices that are very different from methods used while rock climbing or scaling a mountain.
It’s exhilarating to perform complex maneuvers while attached to ropes on the side of a wind turbine, or while practice-rescuing an injured co-worker during a rope access training course. It requires a very organized, efficient, and methodical mindset, otherwise rope access workers will end up in a tangled mess of slings and ropes. After 4 long days of training and practice, I passed my SPRAT Level 1 exam with no problems. Next thing I knew I was in Okoboji, Iowa, preparing to rappel down a wind turbine blade in a cold October wind.
Everything about rope access work revolves around safety and redundancy. The hardest thing for me to grow accustomed to in rope access involves being connected with two ropes by my full body harness — at all times. While rock climbing or mountaineering, a climber is typically connected to just one rope for safety. Rope access work requires an awareness of specialized equipment, personal limitations and weather patterns that is developed and built upon by raw experience. It’s very similar to the skills, awareness and wisdom that are needed to safely climb rocks or mountains well. As time is spent working in rope access, hours are logged in order to document experience and to enable a technician to qualify for higher training levels, from a beginner Level 1 technician up to a veteran Level 3 supervisor.
My first job in wind energy was on a Clipper turbine. Once we climb up into the nacelle (the giant fiberglass box on top of the steel tower), the first thing we do before working on any turbine is to lock out the rotor, so the blades won’t turn. Our ropes are firmly anchored with slings and steel carabiners to the lifting eyes that are used to hoist the turbine’s gearbox into place with a crane. On this Clipper job, we were performing detailed external blade inspections, about 25 feet down from the front edge of the rotor hub, which connects all 3 wind blades together. It was quite a disorientating experience to lean back into the air while 275 feet up on the front side of the giant rotor. I felt quite small.
These inspections required measuring out and sanding off a portion of gelcoat, roughly the size of a laptop computer. We did this while taking numerous pictures of the composite structure underneath, all the while suspended comfortably on two ropes. A large component of any wind job involves taking pictures of everything we do, either for engineers and inspectors to review, or to simply prove the quality of our work.
Hanging on ropes while working is made a lot more comfortable by the use of a padded work seat. Being suspended on ropes makes you very aware of the nuances of wind and how it curls around blades and towers, similar to how water moves around rocks in a river. It’s imperative to get used to working in the wind and adapting to what the weather conditions could be on any given day. On hot days, we rotate the nacelle so that we can work comfortably on the blades while in the shade, or vice-versa on cold weather days. We utilize a suction cup and a ring line, which is a lasso-type of rope that’s encircled around the diameter of a tower or a blade and subsequently attached to both sides of our full-body harness. This allows us to position ourselves properly for efficient work at extreme heights and it helps to save energy.
Just as we’re always connected with two ropes while working in rope access, we also always work in pairs of two people. My first work partner in rope access was a SPRAT Level 3 character named Chris. I learned a lot from him. Every day was pure entertainment. His humor certainly softened the reality of being exposed 83 meters above a frozen prairie in Iowa.
It’s the camaraderie and depth of character that’s gained while working with others in rope access that’s so invaluable and rewarding to me. Chris helped me realize right away just how much I enjoy working high off the ground with a consistently amazing view. While working on these first turbines, time flew by, compared to the slow crawl of time during a typical day of residential construction work.
Since those first days on the blade in Iowa, my rope access career in wind energy has taught me many skills while having plenty of adventures along the way. With the help of my work partners, my job has taught me how to become proficient at repairing composite damages on blades, painting both steel and concrete towers, retrofitting and repairing bus bar assemblies, installing vortex generators on blades, along with several other tasks. All of these skills have been learned through mentoring while on ropes, accompanied with a composite wind blade repair certification that I earned from the Abaris training center in Reno, Nevada.
I’ve developed an acute awareness of weather patterns that help me make quick, wise decisions while on the job. If lightning is within 50 miles of us, if it starts to rain, or if the wind speeds exceed approximately 12 meters per second, we will stop work and come back down to the ground. Typically, our teams will have assistance from the wind farm site office for weather and lightning alerts, but not always.
The door to this career was opened by meeting a new climbing partner in the forested jungle of northern Patagonia. The future of wind energy will certainly require the availability of several more skilled and motivated rope access workers. In my opinion, people are attracted to this line of work for several different reasons, primarily because it’s an adventurous and pioneering field. It’s rewarding to be an integral part of a renewable energy solution. I’m quite motivated to continue performing rope access maintenance work on wind turbines throughout my career.
