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Speaker 1: Pushkin.

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Speaker 2: Wind power is big, and it's getting bigger. Wind generates

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Speaker 2: about ten percent of the electricity in the United States,

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Speaker 2: even more in parts of Western Europe, and companies like

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Speaker 2: Vestas Wind Systems sell billions and billions of dollars of

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Speaker 2: giant wind turbines every year. To a large extent, this

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Speaker 2: giant global industry was created by a few tinkerers in

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Speaker 2: rural Denmark in the nineteen seventies. They weren't PhDs, they

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Speaker 2: weren't running venture backed startups. They were students and farmers

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Speaker 2: and teachers who were reacting to the skyrocketing price of

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Speaker 2: electricity and trying to figure out a way to make

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Speaker 2: clean power in a windy place. Maybe the most important

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Speaker 2: tinkerer was Henrik Steesdale. He started out as a farm

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Speaker 2: kid who liked to build stuff, and today, almost fifty

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Speaker 2: years later, he's still building. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this

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Speaker 2: is What's Your Problem, the show where I talk to

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Speaker 2: people who are trying to make technological progress. My guest

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Speaker 2: today is Henrik Steesdale. Over the past several decades, Henrick

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Speaker 2: has solved lots of big wind power problems. His latest

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Speaker 2: is this, how do you build giant floating wind turbines

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Speaker 2: cheaply enough that you can have offshore wind power anywhere

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Speaker 2: in the world. Henrick got a start in wind power

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Speaker 2: back in the nineteen seventies when he was just out

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Speaker 2: of high school. The price of oil had gone way up,

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Speaker 2: and he wanted to help his parents figure out a

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Speaker 2: cheaper source of electricity for their farm. So his dad

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Speaker 2: took him up to a small college near the farm

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Speaker 2: where a few people were trying to build a wind

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Speaker 2: turbine to help power the college.

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Speaker 3: So we've end office so that and was fascinating. It

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Speaker 3: was fascinating because of, so to speak, the spirit of

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Speaker 3: it that they had an issue then they did something

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Speaker 3: about it. It was really a sort of intriguing and

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Speaker 3: exciting when you when you have this attitude, at least

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Speaker 3: the perceived problems are not that big. So when we

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Speaker 3: came home from that visit, we immediately went to work

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Speaker 3: and built a little rotor that we mounted on a

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Speaker 3: water pipe so that you could hold it in your

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Speaker 3: hand and then you could go out in the wind

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Speaker 3: and have its spin and get a feel. I still

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Speaker 3: have it. Actually it's a little more than a meter diameter.

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Speaker 2: Okay, and so what is it it's like a metal

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Speaker 2: pipe with with with the.

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Speaker 3: Arms on it, it looks like a two bladed propeller.

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Speaker 2: Okay. And did you have a little welding shop or something.

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Speaker 2: How do you even build that?

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Speaker 3: No, there was just built out of wood.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 3: So, and then the shaft was bolted to the wooden

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Speaker 3: propeller and then you could take it and go out

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Speaker 3: in the wind. And it didn't work very well. And

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Speaker 3: then we experiment with the shape of the blade and

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Speaker 3: suddenly we got it right. And then it just went mad.

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Speaker 3: You know, you went without There was a windy day,

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Speaker 3: as many days a windy here, and then it started

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Speaker 3: rotating and then it kind of ran away in your

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Speaker 3: hand and spupun with many hundred revolutions per minute, about

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Speaker 3: six inches from your nose.

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Speaker 2: This is an exciting moment.

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Speaker 3: It is. I can tell you if you do that,

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Speaker 3: you actually shouldn't try this at home, because once you

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Speaker 3: do that, then you were hooked for life. So based

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Speaker 3: on that, and given that I had some time before

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Speaker 3: I was called off for the army, I said, could

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Speaker 3: we do something bigger?

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Speaker 2: Something bigger, like to generate power.

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Speaker 3: It's something bigger, to learn more, but just has an

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Speaker 3: experimental device.

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Speaker 2: So you're just kind of playing.

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Speaker 3: At this point, we were just kind of playing. It

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Speaker 3: was mostly me. My dad helped me every now and then,

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Speaker 3: but he was working and didn't have much time. So

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Speaker 3: what I did was that, since it was just for

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Speaker 3: experimental purposes, I built a frame on the farm wagon,

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Speaker 3: and then I could run the wagon out in the

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Speaker 3: field when it was windy and do experiments with it,

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Speaker 3: and then I could take it back into the barn

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Speaker 3: again when I was done.

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Speaker 2: So this like a wagon that you hitch to the

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Speaker 2: back of a tractor or something.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, pull it out with a tractor, and then we

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Speaker 3: could test it out there. I was able to measure

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Speaker 3: that on a windy day, this little rotor could produce

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Speaker 3: significantly more electricity than what we used on the farm.

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Speaker 3: Then you can take me onto something. And based on that,

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Speaker 3: I said, couldn't I build a turbine that should power

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Speaker 3: the whole farm even when it was not that windy,

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Speaker 3: mounted on a tower and build it genuine wind turbine.

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Speaker 3: And that is what I did. I bought a welding

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Speaker 3: machine and taught myself to weld, so I could build

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Speaker 3: a tower. We bought a lath so that I could

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Speaker 3: turn the shaft and so on. At the junk It

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Speaker 3: cost us at that time fifteen cents a kidro.

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Speaker 2: So you're saying it was at the junkyard. So they

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Speaker 2: were selling it like for scrap. When you say fifteen

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Speaker 2: cents a killer, they're selling it like by the pound. Essentially, Yes, exactly, fantastic,

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Speaker 2: but they worked. You took it home and you plugged

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Speaker 2: it in and it worked.

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Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, it was from nineteen fourteen. So

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Speaker 3: I took it home and made it work. Let's put

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Speaker 3: it like that. But once it worked, then I could

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Speaker 3: use it for this, for these things. So it all

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Speaker 3: worked out, and in seventy eight we were able to

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Speaker 3: install the turbine and it ran for thirteen years.

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Speaker 2: So you build this tower for your family farm, how

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Speaker 2: do you come to license it to this? What it

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Speaker 2: was then a you know, local little cream manufacturer vest Us.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so it was actually not mighty signed here for

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Speaker 3: the family farm. That was licensed, okay, because there was

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Speaker 3: something I had welded myself. I'd built the blades myself.

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Speaker 3: I had found old equipment at the junk yard and

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Speaker 3: so on that was not licenseable. You could not base

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Speaker 3: a production.

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Speaker 2: You can't license buying an fifty year old lathe and

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Speaker 2: fixing it up.

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Speaker 3: Ay, that doesn't work. But I happened to meet a

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Speaker 3: local blacksmith who was also wind interested, and there were

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Speaker 3: a lot of people who were interested in winter at

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Speaker 3: the time. And he was not a bookish person. He

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Speaker 3: didn't read or write well, but he was a very

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Speaker 3: very good craftsman. And then gradually we figured out we

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Speaker 3: could work together in the way that I could design

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Speaker 3: it for him, and then he could in return do

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Speaker 3: some machining for my turbine that I didn't have equipment for.

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Speaker 3: So I ended up and he didn't have any money.

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Speaker 3: I didn't have any money he wanted. It is still

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Speaker 3: done from new parts, because he was already thinking about

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Speaker 3: doing it professionally. So we of course had an issue

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Speaker 3: how would we get such a thing funded? But then

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Speaker 3: I discovered, purely by chance, that there was a new

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Speaker 3: sort of subsidy that had been created for inventors within renewables.

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Speaker 3: And I wrote to the government body that arranged this,

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Speaker 3: and then they actually wrote back and said, we'll send

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Speaker 3: over somebody to speak to you, and then a very

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Speaker 3: nice person came over spoke with him, and then two

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Speaker 3: weeks later I had a check for about ten thousand

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Speaker 3: dollars in the mail, and then it was kind of

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Speaker 3: now we had the means, Now we could do it.

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Speaker 3: So I designed a turbine and he built it, and

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Speaker 3: he built it and installed it at his workshop which

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Speaker 3: was out in the countryside, and it worked, and then

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Speaker 3: we kind of said, could be there actually something here

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Speaker 3: that really could become a business. So purely by chance,

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Speaker 3: a friend of ours was it. He had the use

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Speaker 3: of a small plane and was flying, I think mostly

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Speaker 3: for pleasure, and he had flown over Vests and had

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Speaker 3: seen that they had a wind turbine installed. It was

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Speaker 3: not operating, but one could see that they were interested

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Speaker 3: in wind, otherwise they wouldn't be doing.

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Speaker 2: This, just to be clear. He'd flown over the sort

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Speaker 2: of headquarters of this local company called Vestes, Okay.

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Speaker 3: And then I basically picked up the phone and called

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Speaker 3: them and said, we know that you're interested in wind,

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Speaker 3: shouldn't you get a license to a proper turbine? Which

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Speaker 3: was a little cheeky, if you can say, but they

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Speaker 3: were interesting enough to come over and have coffee.

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Speaker 2: They were a company that had made farm equipment and

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Speaker 2: cranes and that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, there were a couple of hundred people and

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Speaker 3: they were interested. So we made a deal whereby they

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Speaker 3: would pay a certain amount for each turbine. And that's

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Speaker 3: how they got started in wind. That was biting out

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Speaker 3: this license and starting to do the production of our machine.

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Speaker 2: And Vestas became a giant, right, a global giant in

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Speaker 2: making wind turbines.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, they very quickly, they were, They were really good.

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Speaker 3: They very quickly got a significant share of the market

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Speaker 3: here and Denmark. And when then the California market started

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Speaker 3: booming around nineteen eighty three due to some test credit

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Speaker 3: arrangements that were implemented to motivate people to invest in wind,

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Speaker 3: they were very well positioned to go in and take

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Speaker 3: a good part of that market. And that is what

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Speaker 3: they did.

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Speaker 2: And I remember I happened to grow up in California

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Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, and I remember there was a

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Speaker 2: wind farm, a bunch of wind turbines you would see

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Speaker 2: east of San Francisco when we were driving to San Francisco.

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Speaker 2: Were those based on your design? Those those turbines.

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Speaker 3: There may have been forty different manufacturers, so you may

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Speaker 3: well have seen some of our turbines, and you would

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Speaker 3: surely have seen a wide rain sell of other turbines

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Speaker 3: if they were running and operating every day. There would

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Speaker 3: have been hours just.

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Speaker 2: Joking how ones that were spinning were the ones that.

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Speaker 3: You built the ones who are spinning years.

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Speaker 2: Henrik worked with Vestas for several years. He helped put

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Speaker 2: the company on a path to become one of the

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Speaker 2: biggest wind companies in the world. Today, Vesta sells around

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Speaker 2: fifteen billion dollars worth of turbines every year. He went

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Speaker 2: on to work for another wind company, where he helped

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Speaker 2: build the world's first offshore wind turbines in the early

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Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. He retired in twenty fourteen, and then he

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Speaker 2: unretired in twenty sixteen and started his own company. And

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Speaker 2: today he's still at the frontier of wind power, trying

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Speaker 2: to solve a new set of problems.

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Speaker 1: That's after the break. Now back to the show.

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Speaker 2: When Henrik retired in twenty fourteen, he thought he'd go

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Speaker 2: back to his roots as a tinkerer, but at a

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Speaker 2: bigger scale. He didn't want to work for a company.

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Speaker 2: He didn't want to run a company, but he wanted

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Speaker 2: to keep working on offshore wind offshore wind is great.

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Speaker 2: You get nice steady winds out in the ocean. You

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Speaker 2: can put the turbines out of sight in the sea,

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Speaker 2: but still relatively close to dense populations on the coast.

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Speaker 2: But there was this big problem with offshore wind that

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Speaker 2: Henrik wanted to help solve. Offshore wind turbines are built

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Speaker 2: on platforms that have to sit on the ocean floor,

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Speaker 2: and that limits where you can put them.

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Speaker 3: They can't go out to maybe sixty meters water deips,

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Speaker 3: but most of the world has much deeper waters than

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Speaker 3: sixty meters. We have been able to build up a

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Speaker 3: very big offshore wind industry in northwestern Europe because the

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Speaker 3: north sea dead water is quite shallow and you can

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Speaker 3: build very large offshore wind farms out there. We have

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Speaker 3: built large offshore wind farms, but most of the worlds

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Speaker 3: you can't do that because it gets too deep.

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Speaker 2: There is a potential solution to this, build turbines on

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Speaker 2: floating platforms. If you can do that, you could have

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Speaker 2: offshore wind basically off of any coast in the world.

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Speaker 2: It would be amazing. People have been working on this

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Speaker 2: problem for years, but it's hard. Offshore wind turbines are gigantic,

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Speaker 2: like almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower. And when

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Speaker 2: Henrik looked at the work people were doing on floating

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Speaker 2: wind and reflected back on his decades in the wind business,

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Speaker 2: he saw this one problem in particular, people were not

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Speaker 2: paying enough attention to making floating wind turbines cheap enough

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Speaker 2: to be widely adopted.

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Speaker 3: I was just slightly annoyed that they were not doing

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Speaker 3: it in an industrial manner. Industrialization is the way that

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Speaker 3: things get to be cheap a hah. So wind started

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Speaker 3: out as being more costly than fossil fuels. Now it

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Speaker 3: is cheaper than fossil fuels. Solar powers the same will

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Speaker 3: was very costly twenty years ago. Now it's much cheaper

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Speaker 3: than fossil fuels. And there you could of course ask

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Speaker 3: yourself how what is the difference? And it's a mixture

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Speaker 3: of technology development that we got better at designing the stuff,

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Speaker 3: but much more importantly that we got professional in the

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Speaker 3: manufacturing of the equipment. So it was made in syrup.

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Speaker 2: Essentially economies of scale rather than crafts, people building them

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Speaker 2: one by one, figuring out how to exactly use factory

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Speaker 2: mass production to bring down costs.

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Speaker 3: Yes, as you and I city and talk. I have

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Speaker 3: an iPhone. I think I paid five hundred dollars for it.

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Speaker 3: It has, you know, as people said, more computing power

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Speaker 3: than nasahead when they sent people to the Moon. It's

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Speaker 3: a small video camera, it can show films, it can

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Speaker 3: do everything. I paid five hundred dollars for it. If

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Speaker 3: I was going to get the only one in the world,

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Speaker 3: I'll probably pay fifty million. But I pay only five

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Speaker 3: hundred dollars because a million or millions are.

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Speaker 2: Made, hundreds of millions, I'm sure. Yeah. So that's the

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Speaker 2: problem with floating offshore wind turbines is they're making them

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Speaker 2: one at a time, and as a result, they're extraordinarily expensive,

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Speaker 2: prohibitively expensive.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and I thought, maybe I could do something that

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Speaker 3: was suited for cereal production. That's what I don't want

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Speaker 3: to run a company make it. Maybe I could make

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Speaker 3: something that I just kind of presented to the world

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Speaker 3: and say, here has some good ideas, there's a design,

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Speaker 3: go out and do it. So that's what I spent

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Speaker 3: the first years of my retirement on was to develop

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Speaker 3: things like that. At the end of the day, I

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Speaker 3: had to realize that that would not work because they

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Speaker 3: did not want something that was, so to speak, open source.

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Speaker 2: You were just trying to make a design that anybody

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Speaker 2: could use.

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Speaker 3: The big developers, the people actually making wind farms happen,

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Speaker 3: they did not want something that was in the open

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Speaker 3: source and was a free fall. They wanted there firm

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Speaker 3: and fixed design that had a cost associated with it.

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Speaker 3: And that meant that in the end I had to

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Speaker 3: run a company. I had to establish a company.

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Speaker 2: What I did, what's happening with the floating wind project?

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Speaker 3: That's going well. We set out with this idea of

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Speaker 3: industrializing so that we simply took up the challenge of

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Speaker 3: making a very big steel structure in a factory. The

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Speaker 3: wind ship and itself is a very big steel structure.

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Speaker 3: Each blade is significantly longer than a football field. And

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Speaker 3: there could say, how can you ever build such a

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Speaker 3: big machine two hundred and fifty meters tall in a factory,

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Speaker 3: And the answer is you don't. You build the components

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Speaker 3: and then you just put it together out in the field.

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Speaker 3: And we simply took inspiration from that saying, okay, what

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Speaker 3: we have been doing there, and myself had the good

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Speaker 3: luck to be part of that, was to figure out

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Speaker 3: a way to do big structures but still have the

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Speaker 3: benefit of mass production. Let's use that thinking also for

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Speaker 3: the floating foundation. So that's what we have done. All

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Speaker 3: the components are made in a factory. We have then

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Speaker 3: figured out a way to connect them in the port

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Speaker 3: so that they actually end up constructing a hole floating structure.

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Speaker 3: But all the components were made in a factory benefiting

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Speaker 3: from this mass production. So we have had a good

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Speaker 3: luck to have some big power companies fund the project

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Speaker 3: for us. They're not co owners of the company, but

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Speaker 3: they had us pay for the prototype. So we built

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Speaker 3: the components in twenty and launched it in twenty one

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Speaker 3: and it has been operating since then off the coast

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Speaker 3: of Norway.

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Speaker 2: Right now, it's floating out in the sea, spinning and

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Speaker 2: generating power even as we speak.

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Speaker 3: Yes, as you and I are sitting here talking, is

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Speaker 3: out in the sea at two hundred meters water depths

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Speaker 3: producing today on the order of three make wads of

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Speaker 3: power all the time. It powers something like a thousand households.

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Speaker 3: As you and I sit.

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Speaker 2: Here and talk, your goal with the project was to

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Speaker 2: get to mass production, right is that happening?

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Speaker 3: Yes, off your wind is and that goes aso for

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Speaker 3: floating is somewhat burdened with very long planning permission times.

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Speaker 3: So what we're doing now is we're building a small

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Speaker 3: demo project with a number of turbines, but much larger

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Speaker 3: than the first one. That's a really big machine, two

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Speaker 3: hundred and thirty six meters diameter, and it'll go off

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Speaker 3: the north coast of Scotland. Hope to get it out

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Speaker 3: in a couple of years. We have started welding on it.

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Speaker 2: Now, So it's a very long time that you have

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Speaker 2: been doing this now, and you know, you started when

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Speaker 2: there was essentially no wind industry and now it is

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Speaker 2: this giant, international, billion dollar industry. And I'm curious, if

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Speaker 2: you step back from that, do you feel like you

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Speaker 2: have some insight into kind of how to make big

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Speaker 2: industrial change in the world.

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Speaker 3: And good question. The conditions when we created the wind

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Speaker 3: industry were very favorable. There was a big poor from society.

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Speaker 3: Society wanted things to happen. There was a very big

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Speaker 3: support from the government sort of mentally and also so

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Speaker 3: cunderstand economically for people to establish things, and that way

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Speaker 3: we hit, without knowing it at the time, as sweet

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Speaker 3: spot of making such a thing happen. But I learned

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Speaker 3: a lot about what it takes to make things happen,

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Speaker 3: and to a very last extent, it's about a motivation

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Speaker 3: from service society, and then it's a matter of getting

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Speaker 3: what we call frame conditions right, the surroundings of what

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Speaker 3: you do need to be right for the development. Then

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Speaker 3: you can essentially make anything happen.

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Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.

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Speaker 1: Now it's time for the lightning round.

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Speaker 2: So I'm just going to ask you a bunch of questions.

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Speaker 2: Now it's sort of fast and we can kind of

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Speaker 2: run through them. I have a couple of Denmark questions

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Speaker 2: for you. What's one thing I should do if I

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Speaker 2: go to Jutland.

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Speaker 3: If you go as a private individual, Yeah, again, good question.

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Speaker 3: Go to the west coast and visit some of the

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Speaker 3: small port cities or port towns and see how life

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Speaker 3: is there. It's very different from big city life. If

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Speaker 3: you are traveling in a more professional manner, make sure

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Speaker 3: to go and visit the wind turbine factory or a

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Speaker 3: steel tower factory. It is they are in the middle

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Speaker 3: of nowhere, in the flat countryside and it's super exciting.

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Speaker 2: I think if I were there on vacation, I might

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Speaker 2: still want to go to the wind turbine.

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Speaker 3: Factory, Yes you should.

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Speaker 2: Yes, are Vikings overrated or underrated?

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Speaker 3: I think most of us are somewhat embarrassed about having

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Speaker 3: your national identity resting on plunder and murder. I think

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Speaker 3: that they were. They were extraordinarily sharp when it came

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Speaker 3: to their tools, So they made these wonderful ships that

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Speaker 3: could go anywhere. They went as far as you know,

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Speaker 3: up the big Russian rivers and down to Constantinople.

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Speaker 2: And to North America and America in.

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Speaker 3: An open boat. So I think that for their skills

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Speaker 3: they are definitely not overrated. For their human qualities, I

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Speaker 3: think that sometimes there are a few sort of compassionate elements.

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Speaker 2: Lacking underrated as engineers, overrated as humanists.

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Speaker 3: Perhaps, yes, that could be a good way to put it.

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Speaker 2: If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying

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Speaker 2: to solve in say, five.

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Speaker 3: Years, if everything goes well. My biggest personal ambition is

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Speaker 3: to make a difference on the climate when it comes

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Speaker 3: to implementation. So that's actually not an engineering task. That's

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Speaker 3: more about trying to solve this conundrum that everybody knows

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Speaker 3: what needs to be done for the green transition. It

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Speaker 3: can't go too fast. It is going much too slow.

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Speaker 3: How do you make that happen? And if I could

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Speaker 3: in five years time say there are things that happened

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Speaker 3: because of our efforts that wouldn't always have happened, that is,

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Speaker 3: of course, would be a fantastic thing.

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Speaker 2: What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone trying

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Speaker 2: to solve a hard problem.

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Speaker 3: I think that the most important thing is that you

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Speaker 3: are not seduced by your own rhetoric. The most important

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Speaker 3: thing when you're developing new stuff is to be honest,

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Speaker 3: not only about the positive prospects, but also about the challenges.

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Speaker 3: You should not fool yourself with false oaps. And as

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Speaker 3: somebody also said, persistence is the biggest virtue. Persistence in

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Speaker 3: the face of adversity which will surely come.

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Speaker 4: Henrik Steesdale's company is called Stevesdale Makes Sense. Today's show

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Speaker 4: was produced by dath Russello. It was edited by Sarah

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Speaker 4: Nix and engineered by Amanda Kwong. You can email us

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Speaker 4: at problem at Pushkin dot fm, or you can find

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Speaker 4: me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein. I'm Jacob Goldstein and

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Speaker 4: we'll be back next week with another episode.

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Speaker 1: Of what's your problem,