Ronin Ascenders Transform Wind Turbine Maintenance

Allen and Joel speak to Bryant Bertrand, CEO and co-founder of Ronin, to discuss their innovative power ascenders used in the wind industry. Ronin's technology makes turbine climbs faster, safer, and less physically demanding for technicians, potentially transforming maintenance operations. Their products are designed with the technician in mind, from operation simplicity to weight.



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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, joined by my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, joining us is Bryant Bertrand, CEO and co founder of Ronin. And for those of you who haven't encountered their equipment yet, Ronin is a company at the forefront of vertical access technology.



They develop power ascenders aiming to make turbine climbs faster, safer, and less physically demanding for technicians. In today's episode, we'll explore how Ronin's ascenders are impacting maintenance operations from. Routine inspections to major component exchanges. And we'll discuss the technology behind the devices, their safety features, and how they comply with industry standards.



. Will also share his insights on real world performance data and user experiences from wind farms across the country. So whether you're a technician looking to optimize your climb times or an engineer interested in the latest maintenance tech or a site engineer considering ways to enhance your team's efficiency, this conversation promises valuable insight.



Allen Hall: Welcome to the program.



Joel Saxum: Thanks for having me on guys. Bryant, give us a, give us the rundown. Give us the general thing here. What are you guys doing? What is the product?



Bryant Bertrand: Yeah. So let me give you just a little background on myself. My team, we came out of the rescue industry. Predominantly we were designing hoists and winches for helicopters.



So this is the mountainside Coast Guard rescue that you typically see on helicopters and believe it or not, there's not rescues happening every day and a lot of times these birds get multipurpose into commercial activities and those activities may be dropping a technician off on a transmission tower, an offshore wind turbine, oil and gas platform, but we would just see a ton of access issues for men and women that are climbing in these at height industries.



And so we took a look saying how can we get some better access tools out there for these workers that are working on ropes. And we took a look at a lot of technology and specifically we looked at the military technology that was being deployed for power descenders. And you guys might have seen maybe videos of these devices coming out of the water SEAL teams or tactical teams doing on, off, offshore shipboarding with it.



And we said how do we take this technology which is. Very nichey, very military, very high, highly tech and make a more commercialized product that's more looked like a tool. And that's really. Where Ronan was founded on, and we've seen great success there and bringing these tools in these industries.



And they serve a number of great purposes in addressing access challenges and fatigue reduction and efficiency. And that's really the core founding message of this business is to bring this technology to the forefront. And allow it to essentially elevate the workforce.



Allen Hall: So the key I've noticed from the Ronin technology is it's pretty compact an...