My Green Job: Blade Repair Technician

Around 2012, happenstance drew Edan Blomme from the frigid shores of Toronto to the rainy metropolis of London, England. There, tired of the desk jockey life, Blomme decided to make a career change. Next thing he knew, he was dangling by a rope from the side of a building, cleaning windows and putting up billboards. But what really caught his attention was wind turbines, those awesome generators of power dotting the countryside. Someone had to keep their blades spinning. Why not Blomme? He quickly became a go-to blade repair technician, hanging off the sides of wind turbines all over the world. It’s an important source of energy, he says, especially as fossil fuels get phased out. Blomme has spent the past 12 years working on wind turbines and is even attempting to bring a new blade repair technician school to Calgary. To find out more about his job, we sat down with him for a chat.

How did you become a blade repair technician?

I moved from Toronto to England about 15 years ago. I had a girlfriend who got a scholarship there, so I thought I'd go with her. I was working a corporate job, but I hated working at a desk. I wanted to get as far away from a desk as I could. So when I started looking for other jobs on my computer, I would go to this cafeteria, near where I worked. And one time, I walked out the cafeteria door and there was a rope dangling right beside me. I looked up and there was a guy hanging from the building, cleaning windows. I thought to myself, He’s getting exercise, he’s outside. And I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I went home and I Googled rope access courses. In England, they call it abseiling. In North America, they would call it rappelling.

I did the course, and I started working as a rope access technician in London, England. I did a bit of window cleaning and general construction work. I hung huge billboards on buildings. I did that for three years and got to the highest level of rope access, which allows you to do a lot more within that field. And then one morning—it was really early in the morning in London, and it was cold and wet—the guy I was working with said he was going to Thailand for three months, making £10,000 a month (nearly CAD $17,000) to fix wind turbines. Thailand sounded better than hanging in the rain in London, so I did the course for fixing wind turbine blades and that’s how I got into it. That was about 12 years ago now.

What do you enjoy about the job?

After doing wind turbines in England for two years, I went to work in the United States, which was great, because I had no real boss. I basically landed and my employer gave me a truck and some equipment, and I drove across the United States fixing wind turbine blades with no real oversight. I've driven across the United States back and forth, coast to coast about four times. It was really this cowboy, fun thing to do. I'm dangling in the sunshine 12 hours a day, exercising. And surprisingly, the most interesting thing about it was how creative it was. Since it hadn't been going on for very long, no one really knew how to do it and you were kind of making up techniques as you went along.

What’s the hardest part of the job?

If you've got a family, and you don't want to be away from home, that can be challenging. Most guys I work with have kids. They manage it because there's a rotation, so they get a lot of free time off with their family in blocks. But they won't see their family every day. That can be hard for a lot of people. And if you’re doing a repair, it can be unpleasant working with the blade’s fibreglass. You're grinding the blades, which makes an enormous amount of fibreglass dust, which you don't want in your lungs or on your skin, so you have to cover yourself. But that's the same for pretty much any kind of construction or infrastructure job.

What skills do you need to perform the job?

You can’t be afraid of heights, number one. There are wind turbine repair technicians that don’t leave the ground, but that never appealed to me. You also have to be physically active—I’m climbing a 100-metre ladder at least twice in a day. And you should want to work with ropes.

What type of training did you have to do?

You need some basic training on how to work on ropes. There are two governing bodies that manage that. In North America, it’s mostly SPRAT (The Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians). The other governing body, which is becoming the more dominant of the two, is IRATA (The Industrial Rope Access Trade Association). Both organizations offer three levels of training courses, level one, two, and three. That's a good starting point. The courses are a week-long and cost around $1,500. And then after that, there are blade repair courses. There's a company called the GWO (Global Wind Organisation), and they have a basic training blade repair course (which is 10 days long and costs around $5,000). The courses are all hands-on. You go out and start climbing. I’m also working with a partner in England to bring a blade repair school called Advanced Blade Repair Services to Calgary. It’d be the first dedicated blade repair school in Canada. The company already has schools in the UK, Singapore, and Dallas. So, hopefully we can get that going soon.

What’s involved in repairing a wind turbine blade?

It really depends on what the problem is you’re trying to tackle. Generally speaking, you can do an inspection or you can do a repair. With an inspection, you're just going down and looking at things and taking photographs. It's pretty relaxed. But I mean, you’re still climbing a 100-metre ladder and pulling up 90 metres of heavy rope, so, it is physically demanding. If you’re doing a repair, you’re working with fibreglass. These long blades are spinning at incredible speeds, and you can imagine that the wind is not just empty, it’s got debris in it. So, the leading edge of that blade, which is cutting through the wind, slowly erodes. And we need to build back up that erosion after a period of time. We install materials on that leading edge to limit erosion. So, every once in a while, we have to go and reinstall that material. And occasionally, the blades crack and break or they get hit by lightning.

What kind of hours do you work?

You're basically working on rotation, so you have a three-weeks-on one-week-off rotation, or a six-weeks-on two-weeks-off rotation, or variations of that. Although, I used to work the whole year. I would leave in April and wouldn't get home till December. I covered other people's time off because for me it was a chance to travel. I was in a new town or a new country all the time. I really enjoyed it. But a lot of people—especially if they have commitments at home—will do a 3-1 or 6-2 type rotation. And the companies fly you home for free.

Where do you work?

There’s a lot of travel involved. There’s work everywhere, it’s just about hustling. I’ve worked in the UK and the United States. My second job was in Sweden. It really is a global industry. And, surprisingly, Canada right now is in a very big growth spot for wind. There are wind farms in Ontario, Quebec, and B.C., and the Prairies are growing extremely quickly.

How much does a blade repair technician earn?

At the top range, level three blade repair technicians with rope experience are probably earning around £35 an hour (CAD $60). But entry level, you're probably going to be getting somewhere around £20 pounds an hour (CAD $34). That’s for level one without much experience. And then there’s also a per diem or an accommodation and food rate that the companies will pay you for being away from home.

Is there room to grow in the profession?

Eventually, there’s going to be a massive drive to fix millions of blades in the United States. Texas especially because they’ve left many of their turbines to rot. Energy is just so cheap there. But as oil is phased out, the turbines are going to be important and there’s going to be a need for tons of blade repair technicians. There’s demand in Canada, too. I’m working on wind farms in Alberta and, generally speaking, I would say 75 to 80 percent of the blade repair technicians are foreign (mostly from Europe or the United States). Companies fly them in at enormous expense. So, there’s definitely room for more Canadians to get involved. I’ve actually started a group called the Renewable Energy Alberta Workers Association. There are so many massive companies in this space and the little guys can get very easily squashed. So there’s a need to train, mentor, and advocate on the behalf of renewable energy workers, and the association is meant to help with that.