WEBVTT - The Power of the Wind 0:00:00.760 --> 0:00:04.840 Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you, 0:00:04.880 --> 0:00:06.360 so putatively see us. 0:00:06.559 --> 0:00:10.520 That's right, May twenty ninth. We'll be in Boston, really Medford, Massachusetts. 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.319 The next night we're gonna go down to Washington, DC, 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.040 and then scooch back up to New York City at 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:17.760 Town Hall on May thirty first. 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:19.760 Yeah, and if you're one of those people who likes 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:21.720 to plan way far in advance, then you can go 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.160 ahead and get tickets for our shows in August. We're 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:25.560 gonna start out where Chuck. 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.720 We're gonna be in Chicago August seventh, Minneapolis August eighth, 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:31.880 then Indianapolis for the very first time on August ninth, 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:34.400 and then we're gonna wrap it up in Durham, North Carolina, 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.640 and right here in Atlanta on September fifth and September seventh. 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:39.880 Yep. So you can get all the info you need 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.159 and all the ticket links you need by going to 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:44.920 stuff youshould Know dot com and hitting that tour button, 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:49.400 or you can also go to linktree slash SYSK Live. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:51.320 We'll see you guys this year. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:59.440 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:05.800 Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.760 Chuck and Ben's here too, and this is stuff you should. 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:15.960 Know, wind edition because it's blowing my microphone all over 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:17.360 the place. Of what is going on here? 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.040 I feel like you should handle this one and I'll 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.440 just do WIN sound effects in the background the whole time. 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:26.480 Okay, that'll be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't 0:01:26.480 --> 0:01:27.120 know what's happening. 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:28.360 Is it eerie? 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:33.919 No? Just nothing is right. Sometimes I feel like Ruby 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.160 comes in here and messes with stuff. Oh no, I 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:38.160 think that's the ghost. 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:40.840 Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what happens in it? 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:41.400 I do this? 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:45.200 Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different. Huh okay, 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:46.960 all right, I'm fine. I'm back to normal. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:50.120 Well I'm back to normal too. I'm gonna go ahead 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.280 and presume Ben's back to normal. So you listener. If 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.040 you're back to normal, great, we can get started then. 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.240 If not, we'll wait. Just email us. 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.600 Yeah. So we're talking about wind power, and I guess 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:08.120 a good starting point would be history and not to 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.240 get to like in the weeds with you know, sailing 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:14.520 ships and stuff like that, because people have long been 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:16.720 using wind for different things. But I think as far 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.919 as generating power early on, you know, water was the thing. 0:02:21.520 --> 0:02:24.320 Obviously Cole was the thing. But there was a guy, 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.640 a very intelligent Scott and we love our Scottish people. 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.520 In eighteen eighty seven, it was an engineer who designed 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.959 the first wind turbine to do what we're talking about today. 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.400 Yeah, and it's not like he was the first person 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:42.560 to come up with a wind turbine. I mean, everybody 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:45.200 knows the Dutch had windmills for centuries and centuries before, 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.640 but this guy was the first one to try to 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:52.520 genuinely harness wind power to generate electricity. His name was 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:56.800 James Blythe and he had a second home apparently in 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.800 the town of mary Kirk in Scotland, which has great 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:05.480 gotch I assume. And he had so much power from 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:10.000 his wind turbine, chuck, that he offered the access of 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.799 it to the town of mary Kirk. And this guy 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:17.799 was so advanced he had twelve batteries storing the electrical 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:21.320 power that his wind turbine was generating. He just invented 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.600 it like lock stock and barrel the first time. 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.360 Out Great Scott. 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.799 Literally he really wasn't Great Scott, so. 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.079 You know, and on small scales. People came behind him 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:38.080 and were doing it, but it wasn't really until a gentleman, 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:42.200 a Danish gentleman, a meteorologist named I've never seen that 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:49.600 pou L poll I guess polar Coor he is the 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:51.320 one who really has a lot of the you know, 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:54.119 gets a lot of the credit rightfully. So we're kind 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:58.240 of getting when generated power going in a serious way 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:01.800 because in the eighteen nineties he's like, you know what, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.080 I can produce a steady stream of power. This thing 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:09.560 isn't as intermittent as they were before, and I'm actually 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.480 going to create enough power for my village, for the 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:15.760 village of Askoff, and I'm going to have found something 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:19.200 that sounds like sorcery. I'm gonna found the Society of 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:20.800 Wind Electricians even. 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.440 Yeah, and he did. He was very successful. Out of 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.840 the gate. That was nineteen oh eighteen ninety five. He 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.640 started nineteen oh eight. There were seventy two different systems 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.200 running in Denmark and each of them had a capacity 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.840 between five and twenty five kilowatts, which is peanuts peanuts now, 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.839 but at the time. This is remember in our Love 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.880 Canal episode where electricity for a while no matter how 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:47.880 you generated, it had to be generated like right next 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.640 to where you were distributing the power. So it would 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:52.760 make sense that you'd have a windmill like right at 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.160 the village that was being powered, because if you were 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:57.159 getting it from a coal fire plant, you had to 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.560 have it right there too, So that I made wind 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.279 kind of competitive for a while, and even until the 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.240 into the twentieth century, it was still fairly competitive, even 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:11.200 as coal and gas fired electrical plants started to take 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:15.719 over because in rural areas they didn't have access to 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.600 the grid, so they were using wind turbines. And then 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.200 finally FDR comes along and said, n's to that, We're 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:26.240 electrifying this whole darn toutin country, and the wind turbines 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:30.760 fell over in surprise, and coal fired electrical grids took over. 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.120 Yeah, and they pretty much held the you know, the 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.560 high ground until the nineties, when there was a renewed 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.400 interest in wind. Things got a little windy in the 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:45.080 nineties and ninety two Congress passed a tax credit. Clinton 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.680 came along after that, you know, started to fund more 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:53.280 you know, basically federal projects toward wind, and then states 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:57.520 got on board individually, especially states like Texas and Iowa. 0:05:57.600 --> 0:05:59.600 You know, if you're out and you have lots of 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.080 of wind, lots of open planes, you can generate more 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:08.080 wind energy. And Texas, for their part, has really, you know, 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.800 up until recent years, been super supportive of wind energy 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:16.040 and are far and away the leader in US wind energy. 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:21.840 But as just as far as like raw numbers, from 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.640 nineteen ninety to twenty ten, we went from almost two 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:31.440 point eight billion kilowatt hours to close to five point 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:36.000 six billion, and then twenty ten that jumped to ninety 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.719 five billion, which is just a huge jump over that 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.880 span of time. And then now in twenty twenty two 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.280 we are at four hundred and thirty four billion kilowat hours. 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.640 So in thirty two years we went from two point 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.560 seventy nine billion to four hundred and thirty four billions. 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.320 That is right, that's pretty rapid progress. I mean, that's amazing. 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.920 That's just in the United States too, as we'll see 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:00.920 like around the world, they're trees who are like, yeah, 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.880 why don't you catch up, lame mos, and then other 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.159 countries like China are just jumping ahead of the curve 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.240 even more impressively. But wind is definitely I'm sorry for this, 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:13.200 but wind is picking up around the world. 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:16.880 Yeah, so we should probably talk a little bit about 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.720 how the actual machine works. We're going to concentrate on 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:26.600 the hot systems, that is the horizontal axis. Hawt just 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.680 a little bit about the vertical axis. The vaults. They're 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:31.680 kind of cool and that you can you don't like 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.480 have to point it at the wind. But they're smaller, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.400 they're slower, they're not as efficient. Therefore, you know, small 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:42.880 scale generation, So those aren't sort of the big daddies, 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:46.040 the big players in the field. It's really the hot 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:47.840 rotors that are hot. 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:51.320 They're hella hot, they are. So Yeah, if you have 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.920 a small what's called a distributed system, which is like 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.440 that thing that say James Blyth Paul LeCour came up 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.960 with that just powers like a very small area, you're 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.600 probably going to do a vertical axis type. It's like 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.320 a merry go round with sails around it. But the 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.280 sails are actually wind turbines and it looks cool, cooler 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.640 than a horizontal axis one if you ask me. But 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:17.440 the horizontal ones are most ubiquitous because they can generate 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:22.080 power in aces compared to the vertical types. Right, they're 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:25.640 way more efficient. You can make them way bigger, because 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:27.920 if you're making something with a vertical axis, it takes 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.960 up ground space because it's basically on the ground. The 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.800 horizontal ones, they're way up in the air, catching generally 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.240 steady streams of air that have very little turbulence, that 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.200 are moving fairly fast compared to the stuff on the ground, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.280 and they can convert it very efficiently, at least as 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.120 far as wind turbines are concerned into electricity. 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.080 Yeah, you mentioned the size. These are the you know, 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.640 if you're traveling out west in the planes or something 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.000 and you see a wind farm. These are the big 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.959 daddies that we're talking about. The little guys are about 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.439 eight feet in diameter. These you know, these are the rotors. 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:06.960 But if you go offshore, and we'll talk a little 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:10.240 bit more about what's going what's going on in the ocean, 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.080 but those can be eight hundred feet generate up to 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:18.479 eighteen megawatts, which is just a lot of power being generated. 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:21.680 And I mean those things are just absolutely enormous, Like 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:24.440 I can't even picture what an eight hundred foot turbine 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:25.040 might look like. 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.160 So take three football fields, cut off just a little 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:31.080 bit of the third one, and then that's the the 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.560 turbine diameter. I mean, it's so massive it like boggles 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.680 the mind, even though we're talking about you know, a 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.720 few hundred feet. It's just I just can't imagine what 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:40.800 that looks like up close. 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:46.600 Yeah, same, so connecting to the US power grid. Like 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.960 the size of these things have basically increased over time. 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:53.080 They've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger these days. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:57.160 If you're talking like not those gargantuans offshore, but irregular 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:01.240 like terrestrial turbine on a wind farm is generally about 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.600 four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet in diameter, 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.520 they're about thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground, 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.040 and they generate each one about three point two megawatts. 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.240 Yeah, and this is actually a case where bigger's better. 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.560 From what I've seen, the bigger they are means that 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.240 they can generate more electricity, which means that you need 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:22.120 fewer of them on site. So I saw the average 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.000 is expected to go down in like next year from 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:27.640 two hundred and twenty two turbines and like a good 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:32.880 sized average wind turbine farm to eighty nine, so you 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.080 got far fewer. They're bigger, but they also are figuring 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.960 out how to make them quieter. Two, So by going bigger, 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:42.600 they're actually getting a lot more out of it. It's 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:44.720 kind of like one of those things where the economy 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.080 of scale just exceeds the sum of its parts, which 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.800 is two different things. But I put them together expertly 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:51.600 if you ask me. 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.559 Yeah, and these things they got to be spaced apart. 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:58.160 You can't put them obviously right on each other, so 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.560 that makes a difference. You know, if you have fewer 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.319 of them, they're not spread out as far obviously geographically. 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:06.920 And we'll talk about it a little bit more, but 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:09.480 you know, it's not like you can't do anything with 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.520 the land. A lot of times you'll just see them 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.520 out kind of the middle of nowhere, but that can 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:15.920 be cataland and stuff like that. 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:22.559 Yes, So usually the horizontal axis wind turbines, which are 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.800 just the wind turbines you've seen pictures of or video of, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:27.959 or maybe even seen off in the distance, depending on 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.600 where you're driving around, they usually have three blades, and 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.760 three is kind of this magic number because the more 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:38.520 blades you have, the more drag it produces. Each blade 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.680 experiences drag from the air as it moves through the air. 0:11:41.720 --> 0:11:43.440 The air is like, no, stop doing that and tries 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.720 to like stop it. And even though it's individual for 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.760 each blade, they accumulate and combine and transfer that to 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.520 the rotor, so it experiences five blades worth of drag. 0:11:55.720 --> 0:11:58.040 So three blades is kind of sweet because you can 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:00.880 generate quite a bit of electricity, can capture a bunch 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:05.360 of wind, but you're also reducing drag dramatically. So that's 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:10.920 why basically every single horizontal access turbine has three blades. 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:12.720 What's your ceiling fan? 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:18.000 Preth definitely more than I don't know. I'm trying to think. 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.880 Now I've got such a strange variety of ceiling fans 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.840 that I think about it, I'm gonna say I'll go 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:29.320 with three. Sure, three, what's yours? 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:31.800 I typically like a five blader? 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:32.640 Okay? 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:38.160 Uh? Four is okay? I've got one three, and I've 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.080 realized that I don't really like it, And boy do 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.040 I hate those two bladers. 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.160 Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken, is 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:47.119 what you're describing. 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.000 I know people like them, so I don't want to 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.560 yuck someone's jum, but aesthetically I don't care for the 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:55.040 two blade propeller style ceiling fan. 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.280 Okay, here's the big question though. Do you like those 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.959 fans that look like fans that they might have used 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.160 in Casablanca in the nineteen thirties. 0:13:05.160 --> 0:13:07.840 Oh? Oh, that are ceiling fans. 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.880 Yes, that's what the blades look like. 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:13.080 No, I don't like to get too like weird. Okay, 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:15.840 Well here's the real question, though you thought you had 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.480 the real question. Do you do you get up and 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:20.400 change the direction of that thing every year? 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.720 Sometimes yes, depending on whether I'm chilly thinking about it 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.800 or I'm motivated. Okay, yeah, those are the two factors 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:29.160 that are you have to combine. 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:31.760 I think that's the factor for almost everyone, except for 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:34.480 the you know, the real fastidious person who just has 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:35.280 it on their calendar. 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.120 Even I don't have that on my calendar. And I'm 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:41.440 suddenly impressed with myself and kind of relieved. 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.000 No good. So the hats, you know, we said that 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.400 those the vertical winds don't need to be pointed at 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.760 the wind. The hats do face into the wind. But 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.280 you might think, well, the wind changes, and josh, how 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:56.920 is that possible. Well, they do it by moving the 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:00.400 turbine to face the wind. It's got a y'all system, 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:01.920 so it's you know, it's not too hard to do. 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.040 And they also have pitch systems. They can change the 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.160 actual angle of the blades to help control that rotor 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:13.600 speed to really maximize efficiency A and B protect it 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:17.280 because what you don't want during like a really big 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.040 windstorm is for those you might think like, oh man, 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.440 those things get really cooking. That's awesome. They don't need 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:25.600 to get too cooking. It's like a motor spinning too 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:26.840 fast is just never good. 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:30.320 Yeah, it can break pretty easy. So if they change 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:33.920 the angle of the blade relative to the direction of 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.240 the wind, the winds is going to push on it 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:39.760 rather than making it spin. And so if it pushes 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:41.560 on it, it's going to go much slower. So you 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.840 still want them to kind of move, but not too fast. 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:47.760 And that's pretty cool that they've got that figured out. Yeah, 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.960 so you got yaw control, pitch control, and the whole 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:56.120 thing is connected to a rotator that is connected to 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.960 a generator and sometimes you've got a gearbox in the middle. 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.600 Because here's the thing. One of the reasons why wind 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:09.400 didn't catch on or didn't continue to spread as coal 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:13.240 did is because it's really difficult to get a windmill 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:18.880 rotor to spin fast enough to generate electricity using traditional electromagnets, right, 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.720 you need something like eighteen hundred RPMs to really get 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:29.200 a good electrical buzz cooking and win windmill rotors, especially 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.280 the big ones these days, they're at like five ten 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:35.320 eighteen sixty I think is about the top that I saw, 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.280 so about one rotation a second, which is still a 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:40.520 third of what it needs to be to generate electricity. 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:43.760 Although by the way, they've got that figured out. But 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:48.560 for like one that's using a traditional dynamo, not dynamo, 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.080 I guess generator. Right, where you've got like magnets spinning 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:56.120 through coils to generate electricity, they have a gearbox and somehow, 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.000 through some sort of black magic, I just genuinely don't 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:02.760 understand gears, Chuck, we have to do an episode on 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:03.880 and I guess, but. 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.520 Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:11.880 It translates that sixty rotations a minute into eighteen hundred 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:14.440 just by changing the direction. I don't know how they 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.520 do it. I know that it's really basic stuff that 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.160 even like Archimedes used to mess with. I just can't 0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.120 wrap my head around how that happens. 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:25.360 Well, I definitely don't want to do something on gears 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.800 because many years ago, I'm pretty sure I updated the 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:33.440 old House Stuffworks article on gears okay, and it's it's 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:39.240 pretty mind numbing and boring. Okay, but you know, just 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:44.000 think about the size of gears and like a gears 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:48.000 with tons and tons of teeth, you know, hooking up 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.800 and making love to a gear with fewer teeth is 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:54.640 gonna like that top one's going to be spinning really 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.280 fast and the other one's gonna be spinning less. 0:16:57.440 --> 0:16:59.280 Don't still doesn't make sense to me. 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.040 Really well, have you ever seen a gear like, you know, 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:05.600 like a gift or something of gears at work? 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:07.880 Yeah, I looked it up for this just to try 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:09.320 to see if I could wrap my head around at 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:11.080 this time, and it still just wouldn't work. 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:13.360 Well, Fewer teeth just means slower. 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:18.000 But that doesn't make sense, like I understand that there's 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.359 more teeth means faster. How that's what I get it. 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:27.000 It's catching fewer teeth, which is like the go button. Basically, 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.520 ill on this, We'll move on. 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:33.399 I don't think it's gonna. 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.719 Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing to 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:37.320 not do this, and I'm trying to explain. 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:39.280 It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle of 0:17:39.280 --> 0:17:39.840 this episode. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:42.679 Yeah. Here's another fun fact is the uh and this 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.280 is not super consequential, but I just thought it was interesting. 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:50.520 Is the gearbox and all that stuff is up tall 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:53.159 in the tower and something called a nestle And that 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.479 is an aviation term. That's like planes have nestles, so 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.960 just like you have a spinning propeller on a plane. Okay, yeah, 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:02.520 so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool. 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:04.520 Okay, So like that whole thing that it looks like 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.080 the turbines are mounted to that, that whole thing is 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.760 basically the nestle, and it's where the gearbox and the 0:18:09.840 --> 0:18:12.440 rotor and the generator are all tucked in, right. 0:18:12.840 --> 0:18:15.639 Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades, just 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:16.760 like it would be on a plane. 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.639 So the thing with the gearbox, it really works like 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.240 you can get some pretty good electricity out of a 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:26.320 relatively small set of moving parts. But they are moving parts, 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.080 and they're way up high, usually dozens of feet in 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:33.440 the air, and they can be loud too, and they 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.000 can get dirty and break down like any gears can. 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.080 So there's another kind called a direct drive system and 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.520 it it basically they figured out and I couldn't get 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.720 to the bottom of this, they can use that regular 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:52.040 rotation of a of a wind turbine to generate electricity. 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.200 I think they just it just requires much larger parts. 0:18:57.160 --> 0:18:59.720 I think it's generally what the trade off is. So 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.720 there's pros and cons to both kinds, and they've kind 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:05.520 of come up with some new stuff that's on the 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.720 horizon are happening now that seem to kind of supersede 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:10.440 both of those too, as we'll talk about. 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:14.600 Yeah, and you know, no matter how efficient you can 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:20.399 build really any kind of power generation system, there are limits. 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.680 At a certain point. You can increase efficiency and increase efficiency, 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.600 but then the laws of physics step in and say, 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.479 you can't be one hundred percent efficient. You're never going 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:33.960 to capture every bit of the wind. It's just not possible. 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:37.480 And there was a German physicist in nineteen nineteen named 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:42.640 Albert Binns who calculated the theoretical maximum of kinetic energy 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.040 that you can zap into electricity, and it basically caps 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.240 off a close to sixty fifty nine point three percent. 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:53.880 Wind is about thirty five to forty five percent efficient, 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:57.439 which may not sound great, but Olivia helped us out 0:19:57.480 --> 0:19:59.639 with this. She points out, you know, wind is free, 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:01.640 so it's not you know, you've got these things sitting 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.160 out there, so it's not like you're paying to generate 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:04.639 that wind. 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:07.399 Right. Plus, also, if you look into the other types 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.720 of fuels used to generate electricity, it's perfectly in line. 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:14.679 Nuclear is between thirty to forty five percent efficient, coals 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:17.639 thirty eight to forty five. Natural gas is only twenty 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.400 five percent efficient. So it's way better than natural gas 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:24.600 as far as efficiency goes. And if you're wondering why 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.919 can it be one hundred percent efficient? The explanation that 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.000 I found that I'm still having trouble digesting too. I 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.880 think the gears thing really threw me off first. Then 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:36.840 I went into this and it was just hopeless. To 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:40.679 transfer one hundred percent of the power from wind to 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:43.240 a turbine. That means the wind has to come to 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.600 a stop and transfer all of its energy to the 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:50.679 turbine when it comes in contact with it. And I 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.159 understand that means the wind stops. But as long as 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.120 there's a stream of wind coming at you. Why would 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.040 that matter? That's my big question. 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:02.359 I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:02.640 this one. 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:04.600 All right, well, how about this. We'll take a break 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.200 to everybody else. It will just be a couple of ads, 0:21:07.200 --> 0:21:09.000 but you and I will spend the next forty five 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:10.320 minutes or so hashing this out. 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:11.920 All right, Can we have lunch? 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:14.040 We can have bult We'll order it. 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:40.240 Okay, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:42.480 where we stand today here in the United States. 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:44.720 We'll get to elsewhere in the world later on. Don't 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.760 you worry. We're looking at you, Denmark. Right now, the 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:53.600 United States has about seventy thousand wind turbines going with 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.800