Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex stuff from either
Speaker 1: is welcome to text uff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today
Speaker 1: joining me in the studio is uh, you know a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, pillworker guy who also works with
Speaker 1: me on Forward Thinking, Joe McCormick. No stranger to the program. Hi, everybody.
Speaker 1: I think last time I was here was a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago and we were talking about ghost voices coming
Speaker 1: through the radio. Yeah, so I figured we should talk
Speaker 1: about something a little more conventional this time. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: that sounds good. But not boring. No, not not boring, No,
Speaker 1: we're not. I just mean not bordering on the realms
Speaker 1: of the paranormal. Yeah, although the topic we picked does
Speaker 1: have its share of interesting controversy, that being wind turbines.
Speaker 1: And the reason we picked this is because our listener
Speaker 1: Justin on Twitter quite some time ago, said I think
Speaker 1: it would be great if you could do a podcast
Speaker 1: on wind turbines if you haven't already. Frankly, I am shocked.
Speaker 1: You've been doing tech stuff this long and you have
Speaker 1: not done wind turbines. I'm shocked too, and I'm scared
Speaker 1: to do a search right now to make absolutely certain
Speaker 1: that you didn't do it a few years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible, but that doesn't stop me from
Speaker 1: doing a full episode. I mean, for one thing, if
Speaker 1: we did cover it, it was back when I didn't
Speaker 1: even know anything. You were lies. I knew nothing, John Snow.
Speaker 1: So now I feel like I know a lot, and
Speaker 1: or at least my research food is stronger, and so
Speaker 1: I feel that we can have fun talking about this
Speaker 1: and do the subject matter justice. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I guess we should just mention what a wind turbine is,
Speaker 1: and dudes, you probably know, but just in case, it
Speaker 1: is a device that converts the kinetic energy from wind
Speaker 1: into electricity. Sounds some well enough, except if you take
Speaker 1: out that electricity part and get a little more loosey
Speaker 1: goosey with the definition, I think the topic becomes even
Speaker 1: more interesting because then you can really look way back
Speaker 1: into history and find examples. Oh sure, I mean, like
Speaker 1: using wind to do work for us dates back millennia,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about like that's the principle behind sale.
Speaker 1: It's one of the oldest ways to leverage natural forces
Speaker 1: to do our jobs for us, apart from living on
Speaker 1: a high place and needing to get down to a
Speaker 1: low place. It's one of those really simple ways of
Speaker 1: of exploiting really the natural world. And so if you're
Speaker 1: not very imaginative, you may be thinking, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: how do we use wind power things in the ancient world? Well,
Speaker 1: you may have seen something before called a windmill. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: windmills date pretty far back that Some of the earliest
Speaker 1: ones are the day date back to the two in China.
Speaker 1: They were before don Quixote. Even. Yes, they were used
Speaker 1: to pump water, so all ancient water pumps. And then
Speaker 1: you also around that same time had vertical axis windmills
Speaker 1: in Persia and the Middle East to grind grain. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, vertical axis, So that means that the windmill
Speaker 1: is sort of being blown laying flat instead of standing
Speaker 1: up right, well, instead of it looking like a fan
Speaker 1: and and turning on that axis, you rotate that access
Speaker 1: ninety degrees. So it's like a food processor. Yeah, more
Speaker 1: like a food process. We'll talk we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: differences between vertical access and horizontal access and why the
Speaker 1: horizontal axis is the one we're mostly familiar with. That's
Speaker 1: the if you think of modern wind farms, you're thinking
Speaker 1: horizontal axis. Uh, turbines. But well, we'll get into that later, okay.
Speaker 1: So we can use them to pump water, we can
Speaker 1: use them to to turn a big stone and grind
Speaker 1: grain into dust. That's really what we were using it for,
Speaker 1: starting with the Middle Ages and moving forward, especially in
Speaker 1: the Western world. You know, that was that was when
Speaker 1: the rest of the when the Western world started to
Speaker 1: catch on to this technology that had been used for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years and other parts of the world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And really to get to the point where we're using
Speaker 1: wind to generate electricity, you have to get to about
Speaker 1: eight seven. And that's when a physicist and engineer named
Speaker 1: James Blyth or Blithe depending upon your pronunciation. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some spellings of his name that includes an e at
Speaker 1: the end, which which lends credence to that pronunciation. He
Speaker 1: installed a wind turbine with blades made of sailcloth at
Speaker 1: a vacation home he had and yeah, seven it stored
Speaker 1: electricity and what he called accumulators, which are essentially batteries,
Speaker 1: so had that was a storage methodology. They were full
Speaker 1: of lead and quite lethal. Yeah. I read one account.
Speaker 1: Now I hesitate to even mention this account because it
Speaker 1: feels like it might be apocryphal to me, but I
Speaker 1: read one account where he even offered to sell his
Speaker 1: excess electricity to the surrounding village, but they discounted it
Speaker 1: for it was the devil's work. I I have no
Speaker 1: it sounds like one of those legends. Yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: feels a little, a little on the legendary side to me.
Speaker 1: But a few months after Blythe had installed his first
Speaker 1: wind turbine, an American engineer named Charles F. Brush installed
Speaker 1: a wind powered turbine of his own behind his mansion
Speaker 1: in Ohio. The tower was sixty ft high, which is
Speaker 1: about eighteen meters, so this was This was no tiny structure.
Speaker 1: It was quite large. And sometimes brush is um is
Speaker 1: mentioned as the first person to make a wind turbine
Speaker 1: that generates electricity, which gets all the blythe fans up
Speaker 1: in arms. At any rate, it's around this time, late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century that people first started to create these sort
Speaker 1: of things. That's really interesting. But I'm wondering, maybe I
Speaker 1: just don't have a good sense of history at this point.
Speaker 1: What were they doing with all that electricity in eighteen seven,
Speaker 1: probably powering very early light bulbs that didn't last terribly long.
Speaker 1: That would be the most that that would what be
Speaker 1: what I would expect most of the electricity would go towards,
Speaker 1: especially since these were both attached to residences. So these
Speaker 1: weren't you know, these weren't the early days of a
Speaker 1: power grid. This was for a specific location. As for
Speaker 1: wind turbines, well, by the early nineteen hundreds, you had
Speaker 1: more engineers experimenting with ways to use wind power to
Speaker 1: generate electricity, and by the nineteen forties it became pretty important,
Speaker 1: particularly in places that were involved with World War Two,
Speaker 1: because things like coal we're really important for the war effort,
Speaker 1: which meant that we had to be we had to
Speaker 1: find ways of conserving it back at home, and so
Speaker 1: it had a lot of people looking to things like
Speaker 1: wind power to supplement what would normally be a cold
Speaker 1: based energy grid. And uh by the time World War
Speaker 1: two had ended, we started seeing fuel prices come down,
Speaker 1: and it ended up killing wind power pretty much because
Speaker 1: unlike wind power it was cheap, wind power was actually
Speaker 1: expensive to build and maintain. And uh so why would
Speaker 1: you spend the money for wind power when you have
Speaker 1: this enormous source of fossil fuels that are much less expensive. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: making use of wind powers seems to require more foresight.
Speaker 1: You've got to have infrastructure in place, You've got to
Speaker 1: have you know, appliances that take advantage of great electricity
Speaker 1: using coal and oil. That's just easy, just set fire
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, and only that you also had less
Speaker 1: of an awareness of the effects of using fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and what they're long term consequences could be. So without
Speaker 1: that knowledge, there was very little incentive to pursue wind
Speaker 1: power as a meaningful supplement to our our energy needs.
Speaker 1: And so it really wasn't until the nineteen seventies when
Speaker 1: we started getting oil shortages that win power started to
Speaker 1: rise to prominence again because now suddenly it was much
Speaker 1: more expensive to get hold of fuel, and so it
Speaker 1: made sense to look for alternatives. And then you get
Speaker 1: into the environmental movement of the late seventies and into
Speaker 1: the eighties, and that kind of helped perpetuate wind power,
Speaker 1: and by the nineteen nineties we got to an era
Speaker 1: where that was again a big focus, and that kind
Speaker 1: of leads us up to today where we now have
Speaker 1: lots of different companies and people looking into wind power
Speaker 1: and finding out if it's if it's an all a
Speaker 1: you know, a viable means of generating enough electricity for
Speaker 1: it to be worth the investment, which is that's a
Speaker 1: legitimate question. Yeah, well it seems to be a money question, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is certainly a viable means of generating electricity.
Speaker 1: The question is will it generate enough electricity um and
Speaker 1: be cheap enough to be worthwhile to invest in, right
Speaker 1: or could there be alternatives that would make more sense?
Speaker 1: So that that's the question that people are asking, and
Speaker 1: it's a good question to ask because it'll direct us
Speaker 1: to the the most likely candidates to meet our needs
Speaker 1: while we hope um not contributing to the problems that
Speaker 1: we've seen with fossil fuels. Well, let's talk about how
Speaker 1: wind turbines actually work. All right. So air is a fluid,
Speaker 1: just let you know start that off. Gases are essentially
Speaker 1: they work by fluid dynamics. Wait, I thought fluid was
Speaker 1: synonymous with liquid. Well, liquids are fluids, but that's not
Speaker 1: I didn't really know. I know that. But you know,
Speaker 1: air will fill up a container and take the shape
Speaker 1: of whatever containers in Then if you open up that
Speaker 1: container and the air is whatever whatever gas is in there,
Speaker 1: if it's lighter than the surrounding air, it will of
Speaker 1: course come out of the container. It'll also pour into
Speaker 1: a vacuum if given the opportunity. That is correct, And
Speaker 1: so when this air is in motion, that's what we
Speaker 1: call wind. Yeah, I know, I'm not I know all
Speaker 1: of this is really simple, but it's the basis for
Speaker 1: wind power. That that when that wind is moving, when
Speaker 1: those air particles are moving, they carry force. But you
Speaker 1: might step back a bit and say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: why does the air move in the first place. That
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. You know. What I used to
Speaker 1: think when I was a kid was that, Well, it's
Speaker 1: because the Earth is turning, right, and the gas is
Speaker 1: just kind of floating around on top of it. So
Speaker 1: like the gases is free floating and not at all
Speaker 1: affected by by the gravity that the rest of us are.
Speaker 1: And so since the world is turning, the wind is
Speaker 1: blowing against us. That's that's quaint it also would you
Speaker 1: know it seems very intuitive because you think about the
Speaker 1: way weather patterns move in the United States from west
Speaker 1: to east. That's what you would expect with the way
Speaker 1: the Earth rotates. Well, you know, I can't say that
Speaker 1: there is no effect of the rotation is a part
Speaker 1: of that. There is some effect, but it's mainly caused,
Speaker 1: I believe we know now by the Sun's effect on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. Yes, ultimately wind energy is
Speaker 1: solar energy. Yeah, it's heat differentials, So you have the
Speaker 1: Sun doesn't heat every part of the Earth exactly the
Speaker 1: same in exactly the same time. Right, So sometimes you
Speaker 1: have some places that get hotter than other places. When
Speaker 1: a place gets hotter than somewhere else, the warm air
Speaker 1: there rises up off the surface and creates a vacuum, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that warm air is less dense than the cold
Speaker 1: air that are that's in surrounding regions. Uh, the you know,
Speaker 1: you can think of it. It's it's kind of weird
Speaker 1: to say that the warm air just simply rises. In
Speaker 1: a sense, the cold air pushes the warm air out
Speaker 1: of the way because it's denser and is trying to
Speaker 1: move into that space. But yeah, you've got the warm
Speaker 1: air that moves faster, it starts to rise up. That
Speaker 1: creates this vacuum that the cold air rushes in to fill.
Speaker 1: That creates wind, which has kinetic energy and pushes against you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a funny side actually, we can argue about the
Speaker 1: pushing the pulling. I've actually heard a story that Buckminster
Speaker 1: Fuller used to like to correct people out what caused wind.
Speaker 1: He would say that the wind doesn't blow, it sucks.
Speaker 1: Think about it for a second. Well, I mean, it
Speaker 1: does kind of make sense because to to blow, that
Speaker 1: means you're pushing what what would actually be pushing the air?
Speaker 1: Pushing is a local action caused by compression. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be able to create the kind
Speaker 1: of global weather patterns we observe. But suction can can
Speaker 1: You can create a vacuum, and that suction can occur
Speaker 1: over vast distances and cause these global effects. So in
Speaker 1: a certain way, thinking about a cold north wind, it's
Speaker 1: actually a warm south suck. Let's not give the Yankees
Speaker 1: more more more cruel words to use toward us. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: that that is I would say, that seems accurate to me.
Speaker 1: That sounds it sounds logical to So next time you're
Speaker 1: standing in the wind, think about this. The action is
Speaker 1: happening on the part of you that's not getting blown upon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well this also kind of makes me think of the
Speaker 1: argument about being in a space capsule and there's a
Speaker 1: breach that you don't get sucked out into space, you're
Speaker 1: blown out into space because of the difference in pressure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a whole star Trek next generation where data correct
Speaker 1: somebody for using that. Well, I would like to see
Speaker 1: a debate schedule between data and buckminster Fuller, you would. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: neither of them are actually alive. Right, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: even if data were a real thing, then you have
Speaker 1: the whole alive debate. There. We're getting off top right, right, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to wind turbines. Okay, sure, So so
Speaker 1: we we've established this kinetic energy occurs because gas molecules
Speaker 1: are being pushed or pulled, however you want to think
Speaker 1: about it, back and forth across the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: We figured out, hey, let's take advantage of that. So
Speaker 1: we build a big thing that looks like a fan.
Speaker 1: How on earth does that take advantage of the wind
Speaker 1: to turn it into electricity? Well, first of all, Joe,
Speaker 1: have you ever or been in a car and put
Speaker 1: your hand out the window and just to you know,
Speaker 1: kind of feel the wind against your hands. Usually I
Speaker 1: lean out the window and hang my tongue out my mouth.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's just pretend like you're a normal
Speaker 1: human being and you would put your hand out now,
Speaker 1: have you ever you've done this right where you put
Speaker 1: your hand out a window where of course, okay, well
Speaker 1: they've gotta go with me on this, Joe. This is
Speaker 1: an analogy I'm trying to make here. So you know what,
Speaker 1: It feels very different if you put your hands, say,
Speaker 1: parallel to the ground, versus if you tilt it so
Speaker 1: that the top the you know, like the the inner
Speaker 1: edge of your hand is higher than the outer edge,
Speaker 1: and then you can feel more resistance and you feel
Speaker 1: like that lift. Well, the blades on a wind turbine
Speaker 1: are designed in order to have a similar effect. They
Speaker 1: are designed so that they take advantage of a lift
Speaker 1: to drag ratio that makes it very efficient to translate
Speaker 1: the kinetic movement of wind into rotational energy, meaning it
Speaker 1: will turn the rotor. The rotor is the thing that
Speaker 1: the blades are attached to. In fact, you would consider
Speaker 1: the diameter of the rotor to be the full diameter
Speaker 1: of the blades all the way out. That's that's the
Speaker 1: diameter of the rotor. It's not just the centerpiece of
Speaker 1: of where the fan blades connect to so the wind
Speaker 1: blows against these fan blades, which generates this rotational energy.
Speaker 1: It rotates the rotor which is connected to a shaft.
Speaker 1: The shaft rotates, it is connected to a generator, and
Speaker 1: the generator is what creates the electricity. It it actually
Speaker 1: converts the rotational kinetic energy into electricity. Because as we know,
Speaker 1: energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but you can
Speaker 1: convert energy from one form to another, and that's important.
Speaker 1: So none of this is making energy, right, We're just
Speaker 1: harvesting energy and transforming it into another form of energy. Uh,
Speaker 1: Because I mean, it's very easy to say, like we
Speaker 1: we throw around the word energy and electricity often interchangeably,
Speaker 1: but it is a little I mean, it's it's inaccurate
Speaker 1: to do that. So the rotor blade designs are pretty cool.
Speaker 1: They are meant to be like an airplane's wing, so
Speaker 1: they are meant to take advantage of that lift to
Speaker 1: drag ratio. Unlike an airplane wing. Obviously, it's not meant
Speaker 1: to keep an aircraft in the air. It's meant to
Speaker 1: be as advantageous to translating that wind into rotational energy
Speaker 1: as possible. Although a lot of wind turbines either have
Speaker 1: special blades that can move, uh like you can actually
Speaker 1: change the orientation of the blade itself within the rotor,
Speaker 1: or they are designed in such a way that if
Speaker 1: the wind is blowing beyond a certain speed, the blades
Speaker 1: won't turn anymore. We'll talk about why that isn't a
Speaker 1: little bit uh So it's you know that that I
Speaker 1: think alone is pretty cool. The blades themselves are long
Speaker 1: because longer blades mean that you have a larger rotor diameter,
Speaker 1: and that translates into more energy captured from the wind.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, kind of like how a longer lever
Speaker 1: will give you more leverage. Yeah, kind of like that.
Speaker 1: So in general, if you double the rotors diameter, meaning
Speaker 1: that you have these longer blades, like you double the
Speaker 1: length of the blades, it quadruples the amount of energy output.
Speaker 1: But large rotors need stronger winds to move, right, They're
Speaker 1: heavier because you've got more materials, So there is a
Speaker 1: law diminishing returns here. You could create a rotor that
Speaker 1: is has blades that are so long that it's it's
Speaker 1: so massive and heavy that no wind is going to
Speaker 1: move it, which means it's it's useless. It's energy. I'll
Speaker 1: put zero. So you get to a point where like, okay,
Speaker 1: we can't go any higher than that, because it would
Speaker 1: require a wind so strong that we're never going to
Speaker 1: have that experience. So that's an important thing to remember.
Speaker 1: So in some places, shorter blades are used instead of
Speaker 1: longer blades exactly. So you want to be able to
Speaker 1: capture energy, you know, or to at least harvest energy
Speaker 1: and convert it to electricity. But you know, you can't
Speaker 1: these huge rotors because the wind is just not powerful
Speaker 1: enough to turn them. You could still do do the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing with smaller rotors. It just means
Speaker 1: that each individual wind turbine is going to be generating
Speaker 1: less electricity than a larger one operating under ideal conditions.
Speaker 1: So you would probably need lots of them right in
Speaker 1: order to generate the same amount of electricity. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's look at that electricity part. What's going on
Speaker 1: at the generator level. We've taken the energy that turns
Speaker 1: the blades, and that moves something inside the wind turbine itself,
Speaker 1: inside the the generator housing. How does that turn into electricity? Okay,
Speaker 1: so a generator is The very basic generator is all
Speaker 1: based on electromagnetic induction, and we talk about this all
Speaker 1: the time, both on tech stuff and on forward thinking.
Speaker 1: Electromagnetic induction plays a huge role in a lot of
Speaker 1: technologies today, and the basic idea is really simple. This
Speaker 1: goes all the way back to Faraday Faraday's law. Now,
Speaker 1: Faraday observed that if you brought a coil of copper
Speaker 1: wire within the field of a fluctuating magnetic field, it
Speaker 1: induced electricity to flow through the copper wire. So that's
Speaker 1: that taught us that a fluctuating magnetic field can induce,
Speaker 1: actually really technically induces voltage in a conductor. So a
Speaker 1: generator electromagnetic generators essentially a a copper coil of wire
Speaker 1: that normally surrounds a rotating shaft with magnets on it.
Speaker 1: Permanent magnets maybe that's a possibility. Doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: permanent magnets, but that's a very common one. And as
Speaker 1: that chef rotates, those rotating magnets create this fluctuating magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and that induces the voltage in your conductor. Now voltage,
Speaker 1: you can think of it as like pressure for electricity.
Speaker 1: So it pushes a current of electricity through and you
Speaker 1: can then send that electricity down toward a transformer, and
Speaker 1: transformer steps up the voltage so that you can actually
Speaker 1: transmit it to the grid because the voltage is involved
Speaker 1: are going to be fairly low. But transformer is a
Speaker 1: very easy way of stepping up voltage. It's the basis
Speaker 1: of AC power transmission. Actually. But we are talking alternating
Speaker 1: current here, um, because there was realized that didn't Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because direct current you can't. That's not the way you
Speaker 1: would transmit direct current. You would need a lot of
Speaker 1: repeaters along that way. Direct current is great if whatever
Speaker 1: load you're putting on the circuit is close to the
Speaker 1: actual uh source of power. So a battery is a
Speaker 1: great example that's direct current. But we're talking alternating so yeah,
Speaker 1: really basic electronics here. I mean, this is the very
Speaker 1: basis of alternating current that we're talking about. And and
Speaker 1: so this is just a physical device that generates electricity
Speaker 1: through this matter. It's actually pretty dern simple. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really elegant when you look at it. Now. Granted, the
Speaker 1: generators that you're going to find in modern wind turbines
Speaker 1: are more advanced than what I've just described, but they
Speaker 1: all are based on this fundamental idea. So, uh you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's your that's the way that when turbines generate electricity. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about these different designs. Earlier we mentioned sort
Speaker 1: of the difference between the vertical axis and the horizontal axis.
Speaker 1: I think the ones that we see most oft under
Speaker 1: the horizontal axis, right, yeah, those are the ones that
Speaker 1: were most familiar with. So let's start with the vertical
Speaker 1: axis ones. Yeah. Yeah, these, uh, these spin around like
Speaker 1: I would I would say the spinning is similar to
Speaker 1: that you would see with a carousel or bring around
Speaker 1: or a record player, that kind of thing. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: dat it would be rotating in such a way that
Speaker 1: you could you could look down on it from above
Speaker 1: and see the axis for rotation, right right, So, uh
Speaker 1: you know they look pretty funky now h I mentioned
Speaker 1: a specific one because it's one that's actually in commercial
Speaker 1: use today, the Darius turbine. And I said it looks
Speaker 1: like a giant whisk sticking up in the air. But
Speaker 1: you had a difference, Well, it looks like a wizard staff,
Speaker 1: or typically the top of a wizard staff like gandalfs
Speaker 1: or something has little Yeah, beautiful elegant, swirling kind of shape.
Speaker 1: It looks like it should house a crystal of magnificent
Speaker 1: ancient power. Yeah, because when you said it looks like
Speaker 1: the top of a wizard staff, immediately thought of the
Speaker 1: Discworld series, which has a naughty song called the wizard
Speaker 1: Staff has a knob on the end. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's the kind you're talking about. Okay, Well, at
Speaker 1: any rate, this thing looks a little funky, and uh,
Speaker 1: you might ask, well, why don't we see more of these?
Speaker 1: Because one of the big advantages of the vertical axis
Speaker 1: wind turbine because that doesn't matter from which direction wind
Speaker 1: is blowing, it will turn that turbine because the way
Speaker 1: it's oriented, right, that's the fact it's vertically oriented. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if wind comes from the east, everything's cool. Wind
Speaker 1: comes from the north, everything is still cool because it's
Speaker 1: designed to turn no matter which way the wind is coming.
Speaker 1: That does sound like a good feature. But one thing
Speaker 1: I would point out about this from looking at it,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of delicate. Yeah, it's a little bit
Speaker 1: on that on the delicate side. It's also you know,
Speaker 1: because the base of it is near the ground, that
Speaker 1: actually causes some issues. The biggest issue being that wind
Speaker 1: at ground level gets broken up by lots of stuff, trees, buildings.
Speaker 1: You know, wind is not as steady nor as strong
Speaker 1: at ground level as it is at higher elevations. So
Speaker 1: that's a problem because unlike the other types of wind turbines,
Speaker 1: which are usually on very tall uh you know poles,
Speaker 1: these go all the way down to the ground, and
Speaker 1: that means you're not going to get as much steady wind.
Speaker 1: They're less efficiently, or at least they generate less energy
Speaker 1: less electricity than uh than your typical horizontal axis wind turbines.
Speaker 1: And uh. Also they take up more more of a
Speaker 1: footprint on the ground because all of your all of
Speaker 1: your infrastructure, like the generator and everything that's actually at
Speaker 1: the base of a vertical axis wind turbine. It's all
Speaker 1: like you can imagine, like a small building almost at
Speaker 1: the very base of these things. Uh. And so that
Speaker 1: means that it takes up more square footage actually on
Speaker 1: the ground itself, whereas horizontal ones you can have all
Speaker 1: of those elements, the wind, the generator, everything built into
Speaker 1: the head of the horizontal axis turbine. So you know,
Speaker 1: they're on these tall towers that you'll you'll see like
Speaker 1: the really tall they look like almost like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like antenna or something, because they stretch out so far
Speaker 1: and they look so relatively thin. Uh. Generally speaking, in
Speaker 1: most cases, the only thing that's in the neck of
Speaker 1: those towers is the power cable that comes down and
Speaker 1: then goes eventually to a transformer. The stuff like the
Speaker 1: generator and everything, all of that's at the top where
Speaker 1: the fan blades are, which makes sense because you know,
Speaker 1: you want to translate that energy into electricity as efficiently
Speaker 1: as possible and don't want to have to turn an
Speaker 1: enormous shaft in order to generate this electricity. You want
Speaker 1: that to be compact, so they tend to take up
Speaker 1: less space actually at ground level, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the advantages of the horizontal one. Like we said, that's
Speaker 1: those are the ones that you're that look the most
Speaker 1: familiar to you. Right, Well, let's talk about those now,
Speaker 1: the non wizard ones. Sure. So yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is essentially the the you know, updated version of the windmill. Right.
Speaker 1: These are the ones that look like giant fans. Uh.
Speaker 1: They need to be facing into the wind to be effective.
Speaker 1: So if the wind is coming from the east and
Speaker 1: and your turbines are all facing that way, that's fine.
Speaker 1: But if the wind shifts direction, then unless you're able
Speaker 1: to turn the turbine so it faces the new direction
Speaker 1: of the wind, you're not going to be harvesting the energy,
Speaker 1: or at least not as efficiently as you should. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's why a lot of these, almost all of the
Speaker 1: horizontal wind turbines have some sort of yaw control y'aw control,
Speaker 1: and that allows you to change the direction of the
Speaker 1: face of the turbine. Yeah, you mean why a wya? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the turning side to side, so that way you make
Speaker 1: sure that whatever way you're facing is the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to harvest as much of the energy as you
Speaker 1: possibly can. So they also are really tall because wind
Speaker 1: speed increases, generally speaking, with elevation. You've probably experienced this
Speaker 1: before in your life. If you go up on a
Speaker 1: mountain or on the observation deck of a tall building.
Speaker 1: There's just more powerful window here, and you might think, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really breezy up here and didn't feel like that
Speaker 1: down street level. Well, I mean, your it's not your imagination.
Speaker 1: Wind power does increase with elevation, so that's why these
Speaker 1: tend to be really tall. It's also why they tend
Speaker 1: to be more efficient, or at least have more of
Speaker 1: an energy output than the vertical access ones, because they
Speaker 1: are located at a place where they going to get
Speaker 1: more steady wind. Now elevating that you know, if you
Speaker 1: elevate the turbine by twice as much like if you
Speaker 1: go from one height and you increase that height by
Speaker 1: a factor of two, it only really results in a
Speaker 1: twelve increase in energy out. But now that's significant, but
Speaker 1: it's not the same as increasing the diameter of the rotor.
Speaker 1: So doing both helps. And of course if you're increasing
Speaker 1: the diameter of the rotor, you have to start increasing
Speaker 1: the elevation because eventually the blades get so long that
Speaker 1: they would encounter the ground, or they would have they
Speaker 1: would hit that spot where they're getting less steady wind
Speaker 1: because of the ground interference. So usually if you're talking
Speaker 1: about wind turbine with that's at a really high elevation,
Speaker 1: it also tends to have a really large diameter. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: while we're on that subject, I think we should turn
Speaker 1: to how much power they actually generate, Like how much
Speaker 1: juice can you get out of one of these and
Speaker 1: is it fairly predictable? Well, you have to answer some
Speaker 1: questions first. I mean, there's not like you can't say,
Speaker 1: you know, a wind turbine generates x amount of power.
Speaker 1: It really depends on two factors, uh, two main factors,
Speaker 1: multiple factors, but two big ones. One is the wind
Speaker 1: speed and UH at whatever position the turbine happens to
Speaker 1: be at, so you want to you need to know
Speaker 1: what the wind speed is going to be uh. And
Speaker 1: another is the diameter of the rotor. Those are the
Speaker 1: two factors you need to know. Now. I would have
Speaker 1: thought intuitively that the faster the wind, the more power
Speaker 1: you get out of it. But that's not exactly right,
Speaker 1: is it. Well, it's you know, if we had perfect
Speaker 1: machines that were capable of harvesting energy no matter how
Speaker 1: hard the wind was blowing, then maybe it would be correct.
Speaker 1: But that's not the case. The case is that beyond
Speaker 1: certain speeds, it no longer becomes safe to operate wind turbines.
Speaker 1: So wind turbines are designed and the generators we use
Speaker 1: are are maximized for a particular ideal speed, and it
Speaker 1: tends to be thirty three miles per hour or fifteen
Speaker 1: meters per second. That's the maximum energy output, and part
Speaker 1: of that is a technological um limitation. Part of it
Speaker 1: is just a safety limitation. So at that wind speed,
Speaker 1: assuming that you're having an ideal a situation where you're
Speaker 1: you're consistently getting that wind speed, which second, yes, that
Speaker 1: that at that wind speed, if you have a ten rotor,
Speaker 1: it will generate ko watts um at that speed. If
Speaker 1: you have a forty rotor, it will generate five kilowatts.
Speaker 1: And if you had an eighty meter rotor, which would
Speaker 1: be pretty darn huge, you would generate two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred kilowatts. So your average wind turbine generates about one
Speaker 1: point eight megawatts of electricity per year under ideal conditions,
Speaker 1: which is not to supply almost six hundred homes with
Speaker 1: electricity for that year. Okay, I saw that number and
Speaker 1: decided I would do just a little bit of math. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you you took this upon yourself. Joe. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: we have to take in mind that we're starting with
Speaker 1: some rough estimates here, and there may be factors so
Speaker 1: that we're not considering. This isn't a gospel number, but
Speaker 1: this is this is just a a armchair right kind
Speaker 1: of figure. According to the US Census Bureau, between two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight and two thousand twelve, there were a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen million, two hundred and twenty six thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and two households in the United States. So
Speaker 1: I compared that against the six hundred homes that each
Speaker 1: of these could power. If you divide that number by
Speaker 1: six hundred, it comes out to a hundred nine two thousand,
Speaker 1: forty four point six. So, based on that rough estimate,
Speaker 1: that's how many wind turbines you'd need to power all
Speaker 1: the homes in the US for that period. There's probably
Speaker 1: more homes, so so just under two hundred thousand, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousands, Now that that would be the homes. Also,
Speaker 1: I guess the Census Bureau didn't take into account other buildings. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were talking about an entire city. Obviously the
Speaker 1: homes only make up a tiny percentage of all the
Speaker 1: electricity needs. And I'm not sure about those six hundred
Speaker 1: homes if that's uh talking about a household of a
Speaker 1: certain type of energy usage, and if that applies across
Speaker 1: the board. So there are a lot of other factors
Speaker 1: to consider, but that's kind of an interesting number. Two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, I mean, that's that's a large number of
Speaker 1: wind turbines. But then you spread across an entire country
Speaker 1: like the size of the United States, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: become as as as a huge a number on the
Speaker 1: surface as you would first imagine. So um. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, wind farms can have a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: these together, like like two dozen at a time. But
Speaker 1: wait a minute, if you put a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: them together, don't they eventually start stealing all of the
Speaker 1: wind that the earth needs? Oh? You mean like if
Speaker 1: we if we have too many wind turbines, them will
Speaker 1: will run on a wind and then the world will
Speaker 1: just have this weird heating thing because the hot air
Speaker 1: won't go where it needs to go and the cold
Speaker 1: air won't go where it needs to go. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be if you if you subscribed to a UM
Speaker 1: Joe Barton's philosophy. Joe Barton is a Texas politician who
Speaker 1: actually did claim once that wind power could use up
Speaker 1: all of our wind, or at least slow it down
Speaker 1: and thus interfere with and this is a quote God's
Speaker 1: way of balancing heat. UM it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: scientists disagree with this particular point of view. They don't
Speaker 1: think that the wind farms will use up our precious
Speaker 1: wind resources there. I mean, it is true that a
Speaker 1: wind farm will affect the wind patterns in the general area,
Speaker 1: but not so much as to be significant enough for
Speaker 1: you for it to have any meaningful effect. It might
Speaker 1: have a measurable effect if you were using very sensitive equipment,
Speaker 1: but not in a way that would actually mean that
Speaker 1: you know, you're having like climate change issues. Well, are
Speaker 1: there any safety issues or anything like that we should
Speaker 1: worry about with wind farms? Sure? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: any device that's going to be operating, especially at that elevation,
Speaker 1: with blades that are that long, that's going to be
Speaker 1: operating in like in windy environments, they're always going to
Speaker 1: be safety concerns. If the wind blows too hard and
Speaker 1: those blades turn too quickly, then you could have some
Speaker 1: true vibration problems that could cause a failure, a mechanical
Speaker 1: and structural failure of the wind turbine to the machine itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you've got you know, rotor blades flying off
Speaker 1: or something like that. So so you need a safety override. Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean you've heard of you know what a resonant
Speaker 1: frequency is, right, the idea that if something starts to
Speaker 1: vibrate at a frequency that resonates with whatever material it's
Speaker 1: made out of, it can get out of control. How
Speaker 1: the opera singer breaks the glass. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's possible in reality, if we ever looked into that.
Speaker 1: I know that h an unamplified voice. It's really I
Speaker 1: think it's been done, but it's one of those super
Speaker 1: rare things that tends to be an amplified voice that
Speaker 1: does it, which which is completely possible. You can find
Speaker 1: the pitch of and crystal works best. If you can
Speaker 1: find like a piece of crystal like glass and then
Speaker 1: find what the pitches and then use an amplified voice,
Speaker 1: you can absolutely shutter it. But so this could also
Speaker 1: shatter a wind turbine, not the opera singer, but the wind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If the if the wind turbine rotor was turning out
Speaker 1: a frequency that resonated with the material, then that could
Speaker 1: be a huge problem. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: safety features that are included with wind turbines to prevent
Speaker 1: any sort of high speed failures. And high speed wind
Speaker 1: is usually considered something around forty five or tweet twenty
Speaker 1: meters per second or faster, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: have a vibration sensor to make sure that it shuts
Speaker 1: down in the case of of any kind of influence
Speaker 1: that would make the wind turbine vibrate, whether that's high
Speaker 1: winds or like an earthquake. And it is one of
Speaker 1: the most elegant, awesome types of of fail safes that
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of. For for your basic vibration sensor,
Speaker 1: did you did you happen to see what it was?
Speaker 1: There is a little gremlin that lives inside. Is it okay?
Speaker 1: It's actually imagine that you have a little platform inside
Speaker 1: the this enormous wind turbine, and on that little platform
Speaker 1: is a little metal ball and that metal ball also
Speaker 1: is tethered by a chain to a sensor, and the
Speaker 1: ball just sits there on the platform. But if the
Speaker 1: the the turbine shakes, if this turbine, that that ball
Speaker 1: falls off, the platform pulls the chain taut, which activates
Speaker 1: the fail safe. It's brilliant, right, It's so simple. It's
Speaker 1: not some sort of digital switch. It's literally this physical thing.
Speaker 1: How do you return the ball to its home boyl
Speaker 1: and you have to send a maintenance guy out there,
Speaker 1: which you would need to do anyway, Like in the
Speaker 1: case of something where it's causing a real you know,
Speaker 1: safety issue, you would want a maintenance person to come
Speaker 1: out there anyway to give it a good once over,
Speaker 1: to make sure there was no damage to the wind turbine.
Speaker 1: To be the person who replaces the ball, that's your job,
Speaker 1: Like you have to love to go and put it. Yeah, Like, well,
Speaker 1: well wait a minute, now, So what happens when the
Speaker 1: ball rolls off? Does it? Does it like put the
Speaker 1: brakes on the rotor? It literally does. Yeah, these rotors
Speaker 1: have breaking systems that are meant to immobilize the rotors.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it engages the brakes so that the turbine
Speaker 1: blades won't won't turn anymore and we'll stay uh and
Speaker 1: I hope it uses regenerative breaking so that they can
Speaker 1: at least get some of the electricity on that. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know what, some of these systems also have a
Speaker 1: blade realignment system. That's what I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: So remember when I said you have your hand out
Speaker 1: of the car window, and when it's when you've got
Speaker 1: it angled. You can feel the force of the wind,
Speaker 1: and when you when you move it more parallel to
Speaker 1: the ground, you don't feel it as much. The same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. The realignment system will realign the blades
Speaker 1: so that the wind is no longer pushing against the
Speaker 1: blade to create that rotational force, and some of the
Speaker 1: blades are designed so that if wind does hit that
Speaker 1: that speed, just because the blade design itself, the blades
Speaker 1: will no longer turn with the same force that they
Speaker 1: did before, which is kind of cool. It's actually a
Speaker 1: physical design of the blades as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: electronically changing their orientation. Okay, so wind turbines might be
Speaker 1: susceptible to high winds, but they have these failsafe features
Speaker 1: in place. Though. That does put me in the mind
Speaker 1: to think about we should talk about pros and cons.
Speaker 1: What are the pros and cons of wind power? Obviously
Speaker 1: there's gotta be something going against it. Yeah, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, I mean, the pros are fairly obvious,
Speaker 1: but we shouldn't mention them. At least. The main one,
Speaker 1: of course, is that the actual method of action in
Speaker 1: the power generation is completely clean. Yes, that you're not
Speaker 1: burning anything there are no emissions, you're not using a
Speaker 1: finite resource. It's it's clean and it's renewable. And that's
Speaker 1: the biggest pro right there, Right, the fact that it's
Speaker 1: a renewable source of energy that's not going to cause pollution.
Speaker 1: As as for the generation of that electricity, right, the
Speaker 1: actual building of the device may be different, but we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in the second in the And it
Speaker 1: allows for domestic energy production, which is really important. Right.
Speaker 1: As long as you've got wind, you can make this.
Speaker 1: You don't need to get your energy from somewhere else, right,
Speaker 1: And and that's a matter of national security. I mean
Speaker 1: people often forget that, but our our energy problems are
Speaker 1: also national security problems. And that was a big reason
Speaker 1: why UH. During UH several administrations, presidential administrations, there have
Speaker 1: been proposals to find alternatives to fossil fuels, not just
Speaker 1: from an environmental standpoint, in fact that's often not even
Speaker 1: a rest, but from a national security standpoint. The idea,
Speaker 1: we need to be able to produce whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: energy source wherever we're going for the storage of energy,
Speaker 1: whether that's in fuel or renewable resources or whatever. We
Speaker 1: need to be able to do that. Domestically. So that way,
Speaker 1: if there ever is a foreign power that we get
Speaker 1: into a disagreement with, we don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: them cutting off some needed resources. So it's it's something
Speaker 1: that all countries think about, right, the idea of how
Speaker 1: can we be as self sustainable as possible totally? Yeah,
Speaker 1: without you know, destroying your own countries and environment and
Speaker 1: air quality and things like that, and of course the
Speaker 1: global questions like climate change and everything that that entails.
Speaker 1: But so I think the pros are fairly obvious and
Speaker 1: they're pretty substantial, but there have to be some cons
Speaker 1: in place, quite a few. They're not necessarily insurmountable, but
Speaker 1: they there are some that you have to knowledge so
Speaker 1: that you can at least say, all right, does this
Speaker 1: in the long run matter or is this something that
Speaker 1: is superfluous? Right? Well, I would say the first one
Speaker 1: that comes to my mind is that you can't put
Speaker 1: them just anywhere. You've got to be somewhere where you
Speaker 1: have the right kind of wind and the supply of
Speaker 1: wind to take advantage of this. Yeah, there's some places
Speaker 1: that you don't get a lot of air movement. It's
Speaker 1: just because there's you know, that's just the region that
Speaker 1: you're in. And if that's the case, then something like
Speaker 1: a wind turbine is not gonna be a whole lot
Speaker 1: of use. If there's nothing to push against those blades,
Speaker 1: you're not going to generate any electricity. So often you
Speaker 1: will see uh, these turbines located at places where there's
Speaker 1: quite a bit of wind regularly throughout the year. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if it's one of those things that changes
Speaker 1: from season to season, that also is a problem because
Speaker 1: it means that in some seasons you'll be generating electricity,
Speaker 1: in other seasons you won't be. So you often see
Speaker 1: them along shorelines, for example, because you tend to have
Speaker 1: pretty steady winds along those, But you're not going to
Speaker 1: see them in areas where there's not this you know,
Speaker 1: constant wind. Well, there's another reason you can't just put
Speaker 1: them anywhere. That doesn't have to do with the supply
Speaker 1: of wind, but with the willingness of the people around
Speaker 1: to allow them to be put in place. A lot
Speaker 1: of people don't like wind turbines. They this is big,
Speaker 1: it's ugly, I don't like the noise it makes, I
Speaker 1: don't like looking at it. And this is the Nimby issue.
Speaker 1: The not in my backyard problem. Yeah. Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you know, it's understandable. You
Speaker 1: you have let's say that you are a homeowner. Well,
Speaker 1: that means you've got you know, money invested in your home,
Speaker 1: whether you're the one who bought it or you inherited
Speaker 1: it or whatever. There is value in that and you
Speaker 1: don't want anything to decrease that value. That's a hit
Speaker 1: to you personally, So I totally understand it from that perspective.
Speaker 1: And then there is the nuisance factor to these turbines
Speaker 1: make noise. They actually do generate noise as well as electricity,
Speaker 1: so that can be an issue too, and in fact
Speaker 1: plays into another con that is probably one of the
Speaker 1: more at least unresolved problems, the thing that we aren't
Speaker 1: entirely sure if it really exists or not. Are you
Speaker 1: talking about wind turbine syndrome. I'm talking about wind turbine syndrome.
Speaker 1: I've read about this online. I remember coming across people
Speaker 1: just kind of mentioning it in comments something. You know,
Speaker 1: you you write something about wind turbines and then somebody
Speaker 1: comments like, yeah, but they're making us all sick. You know,
Speaker 1: they gave me a disease. I was curious if there's
Speaker 1: really anything to that, and I'd say the answer is,
Speaker 1: I don't really know, but it seems kind of doubtful.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical, but skeptical in the sense that if scientific
Speaker 1: research discovered that there is in fact an effect, I
Speaker 1: would say, all right, I was I was skeptical of it,
Speaker 1: but it turns out there is an effect here. The
Speaker 1: symptoms that are often cited are really vague, like they
Speaker 1: often go along with hypochondria. Well, a lot of people
Speaker 1: have claimed a lot of different symptoms that they're suffering
Speaker 1: because of wind farms, allegedly. There was an article and
Speaker 1: New Scientist in October two thousand twelve called the Sickening
Speaker 1: Truth about Wind Farm Syndrome that catalogued a lot of
Speaker 1: the different claims people have made about what wind farms
Speaker 1: did to them. And it seems to just run the
Speaker 1: entire gamut everything that you could imagine being wrong with
Speaker 1: a person somebody has blamed on wind farms, which kind
Speaker 1: of makes you suspicious, like a real syndrome should have
Speaker 1: a more limited and controlled list of symptoms. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: non specific symptoms are a warning flag from especially for skeptics,
Speaker 1: but it's also interesting you found a meta study that
Speaker 1: was came to an interesting conclusion. Yeah. Well, so there
Speaker 1: was a paper in the Journal of Laryngology and Otology
Speaker 1: called wind Turbine Syndrome fact or fiction, and it was
Speaker 1: a review of other published reports on the health effect
Speaker 1: wind turbines that have come out in the past ten
Speaker 1: years or the past ten years from last year, so
Speaker 1: it would have been I guess two three through and
Speaker 1: their findings were inconclusive. But I'll just read you what
Speaker 1: they said in their little abstract in the results, they said,
Speaker 1: there is evidence that infrasound, and this is the sound
Speaker 1: phenomenon that's supposedly created by wind turbines causing this problem,
Speaker 1: there is evidence that infrasound has a physiological effect on
Speaker 1: the ear. Until this effect is fully understood, it is
Speaker 1: impossible to conclude that wind turbine noise does not cause
Speaker 1: any of the symptoms described. However, many believe that these
Speaker 1: symptoms are related largely to the stress caused by unwanted
Speaker 1: noise exposure. So in other words, the noise is irritating
Speaker 1: and that may in fact be the cause. Like it's
Speaker 1: more of a hate hearing that as opposed to this
Speaker 1: cause is directly the the reason why I have these symptoms. Right,
Speaker 1: So they basically say, there is some evidence to think
Speaker 1: you might be experiencing some symptoms because of turbine noise,
Speaker 1: but we don't know. And the they said the effects
Speaker 1: of infrasound require further investigations. Essentially, somebody should do a
Speaker 1: controlled study on this so we can actually find out
Speaker 1: what's going on, whether, if anything, whether or not there
Speaker 1: is a true physiological effect, or it's just annoying, and
Speaker 1: so the effects that we that we feel as a
Speaker 1: result of that are more about being annoyed and less
Speaker 1: about directly the noise itself. Right though, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be dismissive of the annoyance factor. I mean, having
Speaker 1: a a constant sort of grading noise going on in
Speaker 1: the place where you live can be a real problem.
Speaker 1: I can see how that would cause psychological stress on somebody,
Speaker 1: and so I'm not dismissing the way they feel if
Speaker 1: that is really the source of how they feel. It
Speaker 1: may be the case that a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who claim to be suffering from wind farm syndrome are
Speaker 1: just feeling st based on this noise. But but the
Speaker 1: bottom line is we need more research. Somebody should actually
Speaker 1: look into this in a rigorous and controlled way. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so the jury is still out on that. There
Speaker 1: are other cons with wind turbines that are uh you know. Again,
Speaker 1: there's there's debate on how extensive the con is, but
Speaker 1: it's clear that there is a con For example, uh,
Speaker 1: that they can have a very negative impact on bird
Speaker 1: and bat populations. They can kill birds and bats. Now
Speaker 1: there's some that claim that this love borders on massacre,
Speaker 1: that it's it's wholesale slaughter of animals. There are the
Speaker 1: reports that say that yes, birds and bats do sometimes
Speaker 1: uh collide with wind turbines and it kills the animal,
Speaker 1: but that if you were to compare it to other
Speaker 1: means of electricity production, the animal deaths are actually much
Speaker 1: lower than comparable means of generating electricity, and that it
Speaker 1: may not impact animal births the way other methods of
Speaker 1: electricity generation do. So without doing a study where you
Speaker 1: look at both the the birth rate and the death
Speaker 1: rate of animals, you can't really come to a conclusion
Speaker 1: saying wind turbines are more dangerous than other means of
Speaker 1: generating electricity. Now, they are they do have a negative impact.
Speaker 1: You can't get around that. The question is how bad
Speaker 1: of a negative impact is it, and is it worse
Speaker 1: than other methods. Yeah, it seems almost hilarious to me
Speaker 1: the idea that someone from like the coal lobby could
Speaker 1: be saying, look, wind farms are really devastating the local ecology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's the wookie defense. Hey look at the wookie. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little it's a little weird, but I mean
Speaker 1: it is one of those things that you have to
Speaker 1: take into consideration. Uh, there's also the issue of carbon footprint.
Speaker 1: We mentioned that the generation of electricity is greenhouse gas
Speaker 1: emission free, but the manu facture the construction of these
Speaker 1: wind turbines all have a carbon footprint and that you
Speaker 1: have to take that into account. Pretty much any way
Speaker 1: of generating power. I can't think of one where that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be sure. It's just one of those It's just
Speaker 1: one of those that you you know, you're like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: you've got to look at the big picture and then
Speaker 1: you make your determination. And I think from a big
Speaker 1: picture perspective it's kind of a non factor. But you
Speaker 1: also have rare earth minerals that you have to think about,
Speaker 1: neodymium magnets, permanent magnets that are used in a lot
Speaker 1: of these Uh, those are rare earth minerals, which largely
Speaker 1: just come out of China, and there are there's a
Speaker 1: whole suite of issues related to that. In fact, I've
Speaker 1: done an episode of tech stuff about rare earth minerals,
Speaker 1: So if you want to hear the whole story, you
Speaker 1: can go and listen to that old episode. But just
Speaker 1: suffice it to say that that also comes with some issues.
Speaker 1: It's again, I don't think it's insurmountable. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a bigger issue than say, burning fossil fuels, but
Speaker 1: it is one you have to take in consideration. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are there are a lot of issues like that.
Speaker 1: And one another con to consider is that economically speaking, uh,
Speaker 1: the generation of electricity through wind power is still more
Speaker 1: expensive than with fossil fuel. Sure, and that's so that's
Speaker 1: a big goal in the wind energy industry is to
Speaker 1: bring that price per kill a lot down so that
Speaker 1: it is competitive against fossil fuels, so that there's an
Speaker 1: economic incentive to pursue wind energy, not just the environmental
Speaker 1: and national security side, right, And that's the problem we
Speaker 1: always see with less prevalent technologies or newer or you know,
Speaker 1: emerging technologies. They're they're just more expensive until they can
Speaker 1: reach the point of market saturation where it becomes cheaper
Speaker 1: and cheaper and cheaper. Either that or the alternative, the
Speaker 1: fossil fuels become so expensive as to make it more
Speaker 1: competitive that way, right, or you could subsidize the heck
Speaker 1: out of it from the government. That's what happens in California. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's some really cool future uh implementations of wind
Speaker 1: technology we need to cover really quickly. We've talked about
Speaker 1: a couple of these on Forward Thinking before. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about the solar wind energy tower really briefly,
Speaker 1: just to explain what it is because it's a neat concept. Well,
Speaker 1: you should know that the acronym is sweat without an A. Yes,
Speaker 1: W S W E T. I'm gonna get that acronym
Speaker 1: right one of these days. So, yeah, this is ah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting concept. Imagine a tower without a
Speaker 1: top and it's not in the desert I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: I'm imagining really tall tower. So you've got super hot
Speaker 1: air inside this tower because you're in a desert, and
Speaker 1: then you spray some water at the top of the tower,
Speaker 1: which cools the air at the top, and that cold
Speaker 1: air is much more dense than the hot air that's
Speaker 1: beneath it, So it's gonna start to sink, and it's
Speaker 1: going to pick up speed as it's going down the
Speaker 1: interior of this tower, so it falls faster and faster
Speaker 1: and faster. And at the base of the tower, on
Speaker 1: the inside, you have all these wind turbines facing inward,
Speaker 1: so that the air rushing to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: tower goes out through these turbine. It's turning the turbines
Speaker 1: and generating electricity. So that's the basic ideas that with
Speaker 1: these these sort of towers you can generate a significant
Speaker 1: amount of electricity this manner, it does have some fact
Speaker 1: there's some some drawbacks. One is that you have to
Speaker 1: put it in a place where the air is gonna
Speaker 1: get really hot, and another is that requires water. So
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the places that get really hot sometimes have
Speaker 1: limited access to water, which means you have some transportation
Speaker 1: issues to get water out there. But it's a neat idea,
Speaker 1: and so that's one of the ones we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about, what about a floating wind turbines and therese
Speaker 1: are in different parts of the world, although in the
Speaker 1: United States it's a fairly new idea. It's offshore wind farms.
Speaker 1: Now we have two different coasts with two different, very
Speaker 1: very different environments here in the United States. On the
Speaker 1: Atlantic side, it's a nice gradual drop off for the
Speaker 1: offshore area, so you could actually have wind turbines that
Speaker 1: are anchored to the ground fairly effectively. Uh. The West
Speaker 1: Coast is different. The West Coast, the continental shelf drops
Speaker 1: off steeply, so you can't do that. So there's some
Speaker 1: experiments like off the coast of Oregon with floating wind farms.
Speaker 1: They're essentially on floating platforms that are anchored um, which
Speaker 1: is challenging. You know, you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: this thing is going to be stable, especially since it's
Speaker 1: gonna be capturing wind. So there are some engineering challenges
Speaker 1: around that, but it's pretty exciting stuff. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: one demonstration project off the coast of Oregon was coming
Speaker 1: online this year and UH, we're eager to see how
Speaker 1: it plays out, whether or not it it's a success.
Speaker 1: There's another one that's going to be off the east
Speaker 1: coast in two thousand and sixteen. Let to stay off
Speaker 1: the coast of Massachusetts. Um. There are some states that
Speaker 1: are opposed to this for various reasons, largely because a
Speaker 1: certain family is very influential in some of those states.
Speaker 1: It's a family that starts with a K and ends
Speaker 1: with an O C H. But anyway, Uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really it really is true. It's a political thing, not
Speaker 1: just environmental or energy thing. Uh. Then we have inflatable
Speaker 1: wind turbines. These are like the giant turbine balloons. Have
Speaker 1: you seen these? Oh, it's so cool. Think of like
Speaker 1: a giant inflated doughnut and in the center pictures of these, Yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously I haven't seen them in person. They look amazing.
Speaker 1: So imagine like a big hot air balloon type thing,
Speaker 1: except in the shape of a donut and it floats,
Speaker 1: and in the center, suspended by cables is an actual
Speaker 1: wind turbine. So wind blows through this kind of inflated
Speaker 1: wind tunnel and gets captured by this wind turbine, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's tethered to the ground by power cables as well
Speaker 1: as you know, a strong tether and sends the electricity
Speaker 1: down that way. Uh. These are largely meant for out
Speaker 1: of the way, small locations, like a little village that
Speaker 1: isn't near anything else. It's not necessarily meant to supplement
Speaker 1: a power grid of a large like city. But it's
Speaker 1: still a really cool idea and the images are great,
Speaker 1: and it reminds me a Big Hero six, which if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen, you need to go out and see that.
Speaker 1: But they have floating wind turbines as part of the
Speaker 1: world that is shown off in that movie, and it's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. You told me it was a
Speaker 1: sort of beautiful future. It is. Yeah. And when I
Speaker 1: when I do a forward thinking episode and I talk
Speaker 1: about the amazing future, I imagine a future that looks
Speaker 1: a lot like the city in Big Ero six. You
Speaker 1: know what that actually reminds me of is the other
Speaker 1: airborne wind power generation method we've talked about before, which
Speaker 1: is wind power drones, the ones from mccannie Power that
Speaker 1: Google X ended up acquiring. Okay, so Google x is
Speaker 1: the the super secret art research and development arm of Google.
Speaker 1: That's where the driverless cars came out of, as well
Speaker 1: as other stuff and mcconnie power. They created a a
Speaker 1: drone and automated drone that looks kind of like a
Speaker 1: particularly large model airplane with a really wide wingspan and
Speaker 1: multiple propellers UM and what they do is they launch
Speaker 1: it up into the air. It's it is like a kite.
Speaker 1: It's it's tethered to the ground, and it flies in
Speaker 1: a big circular pattern vertical circle to the ground and
Speaker 1: orientation to the ground, so it kind of mimics the
Speaker 1: pathway that a wind turbine blade would take. So it
Speaker 1: goes in these big circles and it captures wind energy
Speaker 1: that way. Now, the the CEO of mccannie Power, the
Speaker 1: head of mccannie power, has said that he believes he
Speaker 1: can get the price down to three cents per kilowatt hour,
Speaker 1: which would make it cheaper than coal, if that's in
Speaker 1: fact true. Now, I've seen some skepticism about whether or
Speaker 1: not that's actually attainable, but it is a really interesting
Speaker 1: figure if that's actually possible. And uh, the I guess
Speaker 1: these things have to be super light. Yeah, they talk
Speaker 1: about making it out of carbon fiber, so it would
Speaker 1: be much lighter than any sort of existing wind turbine
Speaker 1: UM and so they weigh very little. They really efficient,
Speaker 1: really cheap. At least the energy production would be really cheap.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't imagine the actual production of the
Speaker 1: drone would be that cheap, but it Uh. It's really
Speaker 1: an interesting approach because it also would require much less
Speaker 1: space than your typical wind farm. It would be deployable.
Speaker 1: You'd be able to pull it in if the wind
Speaker 1: were ever getting to a point where you're thinking, well
Speaker 1: that there's no sense in generating it's not going to
Speaker 1: generate enough electricity to justify having it out. You could
Speaker 1: actually pull it in if you wanted to. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of an interesting approach. Whether or not it'll
Speaker 1: ever be practical for large scale electricity production, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's The videos out there are really neat, so
Speaker 1: I recommend checking them out if you can. So, Joe,
Speaker 1: you're ready to wrap up wind power? Okay, I think
Speaker 1: I think I've been full of hot air this entire episode,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna spare everybody else anymore. Joe, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us, Thanks for having me so
Speaker 1: so tell him what you do here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works Well. I am a writer and podcaster for Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: which is the other show that Jonathan's on. So if
Speaker 1: you can't get enough of this man's ego, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that you come over and listen to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: where we talk about the future. Yeah, tech stuff here
Speaker 1: is technology. There's a little bit of overlap before thing,
Speaker 1: and we talked about technology a lot. We also talk
Speaker 1: about science and what the future is gonna monsters. We've
Speaker 1: done episodes about the monsters. We've done X Men, we
Speaker 1: just recently did one on how to catch a time traveler.
Speaker 1: We've done a lot of fun, done a lot about bugs. Well,
Speaker 1: a big I think a big topic for future technology
Speaker 1: is bio memetics. How you turn bugs into the technology
Speaker 1: of tomorrow sometimes literally. Yeah, it's pretty cool stuff. So
Speaker 1: go check that out, guys, and remember if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions or subjects here for tech stuff or guests
Speaker 1: or you know, interviews, anything like that, send me a message,
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