Hello

Who am I and how did I arrive here?

I am the proud father of three young men, grandpa to six beautiful grandkid's and husband to my sanctuary from a crazy world. But I also am one who believes working and providing while impacting the world in a positive way through that work is essential to true fulfilment. I love my family and friends, but my work defines who I am.

My grandpa once told me that we accept the work at that is given, so we should not merely give according to the amount being paid, but rather give everything necessary to do the job properly as agreed. I have always tried to do things in this way and have benefitted greatly because of it.

In the 80’s I began developing my controls or electromechanical skills servicing gas pumps up and down the San Francisco peninsula for 9 years. 

Fast forward to the late 90’s and having this background gave me a leg up once I was introduced to the

controller of the wind turbines I was first exposed to. [US Windpower Kenetech 56-100kW] At the time

it was the most advanced turbine in our inventory. It was a free yaw, variable pitch 100kW machine that

produced 125% of design capacity. There were several aspects to this machine that the engineers hadn’t

gotten right. This gave me and my fellow “Windsmith” the best learning opportunity ever. We redefined

the critical adjustments that were the cause of some of the catastrophic failure modes and improved

reliability by 500%. It was too late to save these antiques from their demise but we sure learned a lot.
 

These kW machines paved the way for the MW wind turbines of the new millennium where my skills took me out of state to run a small wind farm in VT {Searsburg, VT) for a year and then back to CA to continue as a specialty troubleshooting technician on the Zond (Enron) 750kW. This turbine may have been the first to see asynchronous AC power generation in wind. Those power converters provided another level of technical training for us.
 

In 2005 I was invited to join the Quality Control department. This is where the opportunity to develop the company’s oil management program from the ground up originated. Through this process and all of the research and education required, I gained enormous knowledge with help from early industry specialists at Herguth Laboratories and became well known for this knowledge with contributions to entities like NREL, STLE and Argon Laboratories,  maintaining lube quality, improving oil and grease analysis in wind turbines and across the industry. A short time later I began managing the transformer oil analysis program and diagnosing them as well. This also provided a great learning opportunity and presented the unique privilege to contribute to the wind turbine pad mount transformer query of these MW class wind turbine generators (WTG).
 

By 2011 our Asset management team was becoming a more competent entity, in that Ross Newlan created a department focused on analytics. I was privileged to be a member of that team and was charged with the task of testing CBM systems and reporting on their propriety for wind. I was also tasked with the daunting project of implementing the GE SmartSignal SCADA data modeling application. This was a pioneering challenge since it was the earliest implementation to wind turbines. I worked with this software for 10 years, learning it and using it to monitor and diagnose an array of developing failures.
 

I also had the distinct honor of working with one of the best teams of engineers I have ever had the pleasure to work with, via Poseidon Systems. In our collaboration, we deployed oil wear debris sensors at several wind farms to provide early detection of gearbox faults. Within a few months of installation we were successfully trending wear in gearboxes and identifying faults. I have successfully identified and trended many developing gearbox faults over the past 10 years using this technology, allowing proactive maintenance actions. This wasn’t a lone effort though. I worked very closely with the engineers of this early technology and talented-competent colleagues at EDF, developing data collection and analysis methods as well as thresholds for fault detection and recommended maintenance actions. This collaboration brought about the most sophisticated look into wear debris in wind turbine gear oils thus far, and as a result Poseidon’s wear debris monitoring technology is flourishing in wind today.

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This entire history brings me to this transition whereas these skills and all of this experience can now be used to help further this form of clean power generation, making it even more productive and efficient than before.