Billy Martin is an engineer at WSU’s National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR). He is working to stop lightning damage to wind turbines.

His invention is gaining quite a bit of attention. He is using decades of experience in aviation and lightning protection to create an idea that could change the game for repairing wind turbines.

“It will just split the blade apart at the top,” said Martin.

His idea will save the blades of wind turbines from costly damage.

“It perked my interest, so I went in and investigated the problem a little bit and said I can fix that problem.”

That big idea is using conductive material made of copper and dielectric material installed on the tip of the blade with aerospace adhesive.

“It not only protects the composite from degrading and the lightning from entering in at off-angles. It guides the lightning to here and has multi-strike capability by having outer layers, inner layers, it’s a multi-laminate type of design.”

With the help of his team, Martin has struck the material with lightning in the NIAR test lab.

“We literally generate lightning,” Martin said. “It will go from zero to 200,000 amps of current in about 15 microseconds.”

The result proving that Martin’s inventions works.

“In both those cases, as you can see that even though the outer material has been damaged, the blade is not damaged at all.”

The prototype design is out in the field for testing. One of those locations is Flat Ridge Wind Farm in Nashville, Kansas.

Terry Shaefer, Evergy wind tech, said he likes the idea and is surprised at the invention’s appearance.

“It’s really not as noticeable as I thought. It’s good for the farmers, good for the community.”

Not to mention the money that will be save on repairs.

“From just a very few dollars to a lot hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Shaefer.

The design is expected to be in production in a year, further protecting the technology that greatly benefits many parts of Kansas and beyond.

“In a few years, yes, the material will be on a lot of blades in the United States,” said Martin.

Martin and his team, along with Evergy, will continue to monitor the performance of the invention throughout the next year, while also developing and marketing the technology even further.