WEBVTT - Blowing in the Wind 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.360 Forward Thinking, Taylor, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:17.799 podcast that looks at the future and says, did you 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:23.480 ever know that you're my hero? I'm Jonathan Strickland. Come on, 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.880 I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc Obama, I'm Jim mcfarwick. 0:00:26.960 --> 0:00:28.840 That's the best one yet. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.200 it's thematic, right. We're talking about wind power today, the future, Yeah, 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:36.400 the future of wind power. But a big fan. He 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:41.040 has big fans, increasingly large, one the size of planets. Yes, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:45.960 we're we're a little loopie today. We're talking about wind 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.400 power today, and before we talk about the future of it, 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:50.720 obviously we should probably set up, you know, the fact 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.800 that what's the past of wind power? What is wind power? 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.080 How do we harness wind power? And how long have 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:00.680 we been doing that? Well, I think the important fact 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.240 here to to think about is how is wind created? 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.240 And that is that is, basically, when the sun heats 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.120 an area of land and the air above that land 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.440 absorbs some of the heat, making it warmer and therefore 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:13.640 less dense than than air that might be hanging out 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:15.720 above it um. At a certain point, it will suddenly 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:17.920 rise in that cooler above. It will rush down to 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:21.119 build a space. That is how wind is essentially created, right, 0:01:21.160 --> 0:01:24.560 And wind exerts a force it pushes. So anything that 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.720 pushes has the capacity to do some sort of work 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.160 if we can only figure out a way of channeling 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.640 it and harnessing it. Uh, the ancients did. Actually they 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.520 had wind turbines too. They were called windmills. Yeah, wind 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.920 mills very very similar to to turbines. In this case, 0:01:41.920 --> 0:01:44.600 you're not talking about generating electricity. You're talking about turning 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.720 some sort of mill that could crush stuff. Right, You're 0:01:47.760 --> 0:01:51.360 just moving kinetic force from one place to another. You're 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.040 translating it a little bit. But say, yeah, you you 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.560 build a big tower and you make some big blades 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.000 that the wind will turn when it blows, and that 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:03.400 turns a crank that say, crushes grain into flower. Right 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:08.000 or maybe um like moves the water wheel or water 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:13.200 pump to um water up from a river lake yep, yep. 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.639 And also we've been harnessing wind in other ways. Obviously, 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:20.560 sailing would be a big win using sales had sailboats 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:25.440 since about three thousand BC, and the fancy windmills. You're 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.200 you're getting up there, and we've had fancy windmills since 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.080 about what it's it's people people aren't really sure. Yeah, 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:37.560 there's there's not something between two hundred and two thousand BC. 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.440 I know that that's a large time. Yeah, things like 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.519 that don't tend to last throughout the millennia. But we've 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.720 been using the wind to do work for us for 0:02:46.800 --> 0:02:49.440 quite some time now. As far as using wind in 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:54.240 the sense of creating electricity, that's far more recent. In fact, 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:56.960 it was really around the nineteen eighties when that technology 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.600 had reached a level of sophistication where we could, you know, 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.799 put it to practical use right in rural areas. As 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:06.959 early as like the nineteen twenties or thirties, windmills were 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.400 supplying a little bit of electricity where basically the power 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.680 lines weren't going. Yeah yeah, But for anything for like 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.799 a significant amount of electricity, you really have to look 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.480 at the fairly recent past. And even then it was 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:22.120 a little shaky. A lot of the wind turbines that 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.079 went up in the eighties were made out of material 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.680 that wasn't necessarily um ideal, didn't last very long. There 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.560 were a lot of maintenance issues. Wind power turbines broke 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.480 down fairly frequently those early wind farms and covered in 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.800 all those neon signs. They were really only producing about 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.320 a hundred and fifty kilowatts like ideally of energy, which 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.840 is nothing really compared to today, right right, and so 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.640 you know they're they're actually there's some some interesting abandoned 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:56.320 wind farms in various parts of the United States, including Hawaii. 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.360 I've seen some uh some pictures of a wind farm 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.640 in Hawaii. The the turbines haven't been producing electricity for years, 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:08.560 but they're still standing there. No one's yeah, yeah, And 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.840 in fact, there are there are some wind turbines out 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:15.400 there that are not producing electricity. They turn because the 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.120 companies want them to continue to turn to force oil 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.880 through the various uh workings of the system, but they're 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.200 not actually generating electricity. However, to an outside observer who 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:28.320 doesn't know that that's what's going on, it may look 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.839 like they're fully functional. However, let's talk about what they're 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:37.480 actually doing. How they're converting kinetic energy into electric energy. 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:41.080 And it's pretty simple design really. So you've got these 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.000 long rotor blades that are designed to you know, catch 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.760 the wind. The wind will push these blades and turn 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.000 the turn them there on a hub that rotates. The 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.080 hub is actually attached to a main shaft, and the 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.080 main shaft will also turn you know, it's it rotates 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:59.320 as well due to the rotational force that we get 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.240 from these blade aids, and uh, it usually runs through 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:05.680 some sort of gearbox where the gears will translate that 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:08.320 into a faster rotational force because you know, if you 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.360 use different sized gears, you can, uh you can change 0:05:11.400 --> 0:05:14.839 the speed the revolutions per minted. Really that will then 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:19.240 go through a generator, and a generator essentially uses magnets 0:05:19.279 --> 0:05:22.880 to rotate past a conductor. And that you know, once 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:25.400 you have a conductor in the presence of a fluctuating 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:29.600 magnetic field, you induce current to flow. Right, So if 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:31.680 you are able, you just just look at me like 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:35.240 you're talking magic talk like magnets. But how do they work? 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.320 That's an excellent question. We'll cover that in a different episode. 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.719 So anyway, uh, yeah, the rotational motion of the magnets 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.040 creates this fluctuating magnetic field, which you then with the conductor, 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.880 can use to generate electricity. Um so that's that's the 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:52.239 basic design, and that's pretty much been the same way 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.960 since we started building wind turbines. And it's very similar 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.200 to the way other turbines work, not just wind turbines. 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.839 Steam turbines are very similar. You know, obviously it's using 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:06.520 steam not wind, but the same sort of general idea. Um, now, 0:06:07.160 --> 0:06:11.039 you guys have i've guess seen wind turbines. I don't 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:12.400 know if you ever seen them in person. Have you 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.960 ever seen one in person, like an actual like wind farm. 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:16.520 I don't think I have. I think I might have 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.720 flown over them at one point, but I think I've 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:23.000 seen them in California. I've seen them in Salt Lake City. 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.640 There's uh, there was a an area I went to 0:06:25.680 --> 0:06:27.720 in Salt Lake City where there's a wind farm right 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.320 outside of Salt Lake and uh, there are quite a 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:32.640 few there. Actually, it was kind of interesting. We kept 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.000 driving by it and realizing, oh good, now we're thirty 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:36.920 minutes away from the hotel. I tell you what I've 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:41.720 seen a lot of though, is stock images. For some reason, 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:45.320 we are just rich with stock images. That is true. Well, 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.320 if you've seen them in person or even just an image, 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:49.800 As long as you get a sense of scale, you know, 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.520 is that they're pretty tall right there there. There could 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.320 be a couple of hundred feet tall, three feet tall sometimes. 0:06:56.320 --> 0:06:59.240 I mean, these are big structures. And the reason for 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.400 that is that the winds tend to be more stable 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.280 and steady at higher altitudes. At ground level, you may 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.600 not be able to get a steady wind for any 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:12.840 length of time, and it may not be you know, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.080 strong enough to turn the turbines. They really need to 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.800 turn at the speed of about what you need to 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.520 get a wind of around twelve to fourteen miles per 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:23.600 hour minimum, which is about nineteen to twenty two kilometers 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.480 per hour in force for it to really turn these 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.520 these blades properly, and you get a much better uh, 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:33.880 steady supply of wind at a higher altitude, which is 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.000 why these things are so tall. And they do tend 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.920 to generate between around fifty to lots of energy depending 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.840 upon the design of the turbine. No two turbines are, 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.560 you know, they aren't created equally, depending upon who made 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.640 them and how they were designed, and um, they're not. 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.400 Their efficiency ranges quite a bit too, and that depends 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:58.080 heavily on where you put them and uh and just 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.600 the design of the wind turbine as well. And by efficiency, 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:04.320 I mean how frequently how often are they actually generating electricity. 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.000 So a lot of the capacity for a wind turbine 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:12.040 is is determined by if the turbine were turning at 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.640 twenty four hours a day, seven days a week constantly, 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.040 if there was a constant supply of wind, here's how 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.760 much electricity that turbine would generate. And then you have 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.800 the number. But in reality that tends to be a 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.040 much smaller percentage than the overall in those places the 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.480 wind is not going twenty four hours, right Yeah, I 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:31.600 would imagine that gets more business and during the daytime, 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:33.760 right well, it all depends, all depends on where it 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:36.839 is early. But uh, well, when we talk we'll talk 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.480 a bit about the pros and cons of wind energy 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:41.240 when we get towards the end of this episode, and 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.800 I'll give a few more details on percentages as for 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.400 you know, how efficient these things can be, and it 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.000 really heavily depends upon where you put them. But you know, 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.480 we we've we've got that basic design down. Uh. It's 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.280 people have recognized that it's got a it's it's got 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:03.600 an interesting approach to harvesting uh, the wind and getting 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.360 electricity out of it. That's something that appeals to a 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.800 lot of people because it means being able to shift 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:14.239 some of our dependency on say, uh greenhouse gas emitting 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:20.120 forms of generating electricity. But it's there's still some problems 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:21.839 with it. So there have been a lot of people 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.959 looking into ways of innovating in the space, and I 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:27.000 wanted to talk about some of those. So have you 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:31.280 guys heard of the solar wind energy tower? Look, Joe, 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:33.880 have you heard about this? Right? You're just kind of 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:38.480 grinning at me. You want to hear what it looks? No? No, no, no, sorry, no, no, no, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:40.000 it's not one in China. This is one that are 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.400 actually they're they're talking about building one in like the 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:47.120 Mojave Desert. But um, alright, so imagine imagine a tower. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.240 It looks, you know, kind of like a cooling tower 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:51.760 that you would see at a nuclear power plant. But 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.240 all right, So this tower is hollow, It's like a 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.559 hollow cylinder and at the base of the tower is 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:01.200 a ring of turbines that faces so that the blades 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.920 are facing so that they're facing into the tower. So 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:06.400 wind coming from the middle of the tower going out 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:10.000 would turn the turbine blades. Okay, Now you put this 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.920 in a desert where the air is very very hot 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.400 and very very dry, and at the very top of 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.439 the tower is a water injection system and they pump 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.960 water up the tower. The water gets sprayed in a 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.079 fine mist. That fine mist ends up saturating that dry, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:30.400 hot air, which makes it heavier and makes it start 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:34.040 to rush down the center of the tower. And so 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.240 it's kind of like a reverse chimney in a way. 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.600 That air rushes down and it hits the ground and 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.680 goes out through the turbines, turning the turbine blades. So 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.640 rather than harvesting wind, you're creating your own. Yeah, you're 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.120 making wind sounds like that's a terrible way of putting it. 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:54.720 Kind of similar to geothermal somehow and pouring water down 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.360 there to create the steam from the heat. Yeah, in 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.640 this case, you're just using a very fine mist to 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.840 create heavy air, and then you channel that heavy air 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:06.679 down through the turbine blades. Uh. It's an interesting idea. Supposedly, 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.600 the wind speeds hit pretty a pretty gusty level when 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:13.640 it gets to the bomb somewhere around fifty miles per hour. 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.600 So that's that's decent. That's a decent breeze. Um, there 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:20.920 are some disadvantages. These things are are tall, they're big, 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.640 They're like two feet tall. That's so it's still, you know, 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.679 a large thing that you have to build, and you're 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:27.920 limited to where you can build them. You can you know, 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.360 you can't just put these suckers like in here in 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:34.400 the southeast, we've got really high humidity, so injecting the 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.120 air with water would not necessarily create the effect we 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:38.400 would need. We would have to have it in a 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:40.840 very dry right. You put one of those suckers in 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.199 Florida and people are like, there's no change. It's like 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:46.840 a swamp cooler in Florida. Doesn't many good though. Uh, 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:51.760 pretty much all wind power is subject to geographical limitation. 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.800 Wind power is very dependent on places where there's a 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.960 lot of wind. Yes, obvious, that's one of the odd 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.640 things about it. Yeah, I know, it's it's it really 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.600 does make it challenging. I mean your point, your point 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:09.000 is extremely valid. I mean, because the electricity you generate, 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.520 you're likely not going to be transporting that huge distances, right, 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.839 It's not like the uh, the Mojave Desert is going 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.240 to generate all the electricity for everybody on the Eastern seaboard. 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.160 That doesn't That doesn't really make any sense. So uh, 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.000 these are That's another limitation that we have to talk about. 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:27.880 But that was one of those things that I thought 0:12:27.880 --> 0:12:31.600 was kind of interesting, this idea of this this tower system. Uh, 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:34.360 it's really more like a a proof of concept right now. 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.160 It's not like something has been widely rolled out. You 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:41.000 can go to their website and check out the information there. 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.480 They have lots of of little videos and things. The 0:12:44.559 --> 0:12:47.000 solar Wind Energy Tower is what I'm talking about, So 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.040 go check that out and you can see exactly, you know, 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.280 like little animations on how this is supposed to work. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.880 But another one is kind of the you know, the 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:58.120 idea of if you go to those higher altitudes, you 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:01.920 can harness uh those steady winds, but even three feet 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.480 may not be high enough. And yet you don't want 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:09.320 to build towers that are going way up into the sky. 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:11.959 It makes it very dangerous and not a lot of 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.000 people will be very thrilled with that. So what if 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.080 you could just fly something up at the right altitude 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:20.960 and then channel the electricity you generate back down. Yeah. 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.240 These these air drones, yeah that we talked about and 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.400 or you talked about. I wasn't there in the video episode. Yeah. Yeah, 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:31.480 there's one called the mccannie power Drone, which is kind 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:33.560 of interesting. All right, So imagine a wing, a flying 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:38.280 wing that's design. It doesn't quite look like that. It 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.000 looks almost like uh for the early sketches, look more 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:44.800 like a biplane almost, but it's it's supposed to be 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:48.240 a flying wing that is at least partially designed to 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:52.599 mimic a the end of a blade on one of 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.840 these turbines. So it has these little propellers on the 0:13:56.880 --> 0:14:00.120 front that connect as both propellers and turbine blades. So 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.080 if you spend them one way, they're propellers, and then 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:03.800 if you let the wind blow them the other way 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:05.560 you turn off the power, you let the wind blow them. 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.600 They can actually turn a direct generator uh and generate electricity. Uh. 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.560 This is all playing into the fact that all of these, 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:16.960 all of these turbines, the air foils are designed to 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.560 create lift the same way that an airplane would um 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:21.840 in order to take off. And you know that that's 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:25.800 just creating a an area of pressure differential between the 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.640 top and the bottom, or I guess top and bottom 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:31.960 doesn't really apply necessarily to vertical blades, but yes, you're 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.120 creating a low pressure system that's going to end up 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:37.600 turning this. Yeah, creating that, creating that force of turning, 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.880 because otherwise if you if you didn't angle it just right, 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.680 then you wouldn't get that that rotational force out of it. 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:46.440 So the way this one works is imagine that you've 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:48.800 got a little pedestal and on that pestle, you have 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.120 this this drone thing that looks like a biplane with 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:53.640 several little propellers in the front of it. Uh the 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:56.640 wind at the right elevation, which would be between two 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.600 hundred fifty to six hundred meters that's about a hundred 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.600 to nineteen fifty feet somewhere around that range. Let's say 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.240 that the wind is perfect, so the pedestal would tilt back, 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.760 putting the aircraft into launch positions. So now the little 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.440 propellers are facing essentially straight up, they start spinning. It 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.120 creates the left the powers being channeled through a tether. 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:22.040 So there's a tether on a ground station that's also 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:24.800 attached to this little aircraft. Now the aircraft doesn't have 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:26.560 to have batteries, it doesn't have to have fuel because 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:28.880 it's getting all of its electricity through that tether. That 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.400 means that the aircraft itself is incredibly light. So then 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.480 we'll take off until it gets to the right altitude, 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.840 the tether will become taut and it will then tilt 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.000 into the wind and fly in a kind of wacky 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:45.120 well almost like well circular formation that more or less 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.960 mimics the pathway that a turbine blade would go through, 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.600 and uh, it would do this harnessing the wind power. 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:55.360 The wind would be blowing. Those little propellers of now 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.080 are turbine blades, and they don't have to go through 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:03.160 uh a mainshaft gearbox kind of thing. They have a 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.080 direct Uh they just have a little tiny magnets there. 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:09.280 They have a direct generator right there on the aircraft itself, 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.400 which reduces the complexity and size of the aircraft. And 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.040 then all the electricity goes back down through the tether 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:17.640 to the ground station, which is pretty cool. Now. So 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.400 that means you can actually harness the air that's at 0:16:20.440 --> 0:16:23.440 a higher altitude without building a huge tower. Uh. It 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.760 takes up less space, It takes up less materials to 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:31.040 build it. According to the website, Uh, the typical aircraft 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:34.400 would cost fifty of a traditional turbine, so you have 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.200 cost savings from that's on that side of things. And um, 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:41.200 it was it's such an interesting idea that a very 0:16:41.280 --> 0:16:44.640 large company took interest in it and decided to help 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.000 them out, but to the tune of acquiring the company, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.040 So that would be Google. That is true. Google in 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.840 May of purchased mccani Power and now it is part 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:56.840 of Google X, which is their division where they really 0:16:56.840 --> 0:17:01.840 look into environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity, both because 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:05.000 you know, Google kind of has this mission to um 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.240 to really help help just the environment in general, but 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:13.280 also how can they provide electricity to their massive data 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.000 centers in a way that's you know, environmentally responsible and 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:21.760 also economically feasible. You know. So, and they just generally 0:17:21.760 --> 0:17:24.840 seem to be into making the future happen. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:26.960 they're they're kind of yeah, they well, and they're definitely 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.600 not afraid of trying things, even if those things never 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:36.760 really out. So there there are people who are skeptical 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.440 that this approach and the other air based ones I'm 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.120 about to talk about are are going to work out, 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:46.720 but it's possible another one. Actually, I'll go ahead and 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.000 and pair two of these together. There's one called ampis 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.360 and one called windlift. Both of these use a very 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:59.119 similar method to generate electricity. So these are two gliding 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:01.800 type aircraft. One of them is more like a kite 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.160 that's wind left, and the other one looks more like 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:07.400 it looks kind of similar to the mccannie power one, 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:12.840 but in each case these are uh designed to fly 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:16.800 up into the air to glide it at these altitudes, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:19.920 and the way they generate electricity is not by turning 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:25.199 little turbines. The tether itself ends up allowing them to 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:30.000 have a ground paced generator, and pulling the tether ends 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:33.480 up creating the the kinetic energy you need to generate 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:36.280 the electricity on the ground. So instead of generating the 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:38.280 electricity in the air and sending it down, it's like, 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:40.480 you know, kind of like if you have this is a 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.399 a totally different model here, but let's say you need 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.119 to start your motor on your gag on your your lawnmower, 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.360 getting the sky to start your lawnmower. Yeah, it's kind 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:51.359 of like that, except instead of a motor. We're talking 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.840 about a generator, but yes, similar, similar idea, and both 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:56.760 of them are designed to do that. So the way 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.080 it works is that you let the wind pull the 0:18:59.400 --> 0:19:03.399 the the aircraft out to the maximum length of the tether, 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.080 and then you then start to have the aircraft dive down. 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.200 And then you gently taken the slack of the tether, 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:15.800 which will actually consume some of the electricity that you've generated, 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:18.520 but hopefully a much smaller amount than the overall amount 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:20.720 you've generated, and you let it go back out again, 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.400 generating more electricity, and you do that over and over 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.600 and over again. What I'm thinking is that really we 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.400 can capitalize on children's ability to play with kites if 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:31.360 we just if we just send an army of children 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:38.160 out with attached to generators. I'm just saying, here's here's 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:42.320 how I say, forget the kites. If this power is 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.800 generated by pulling, you know, pulling a cord attached to 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.600 a generator. Just attached the cord directly to the kids 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.040 and have them run around there. You got it. That's it. 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.000 Take the kites out of it. Energy problem solved, you guys, 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.879 Good work, right, We we solve two problems. Kids and 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:02.040 our electricity crisis. No. So so moving on, there are 0:20:02.040 --> 0:20:04.359 two more air based ones I want to talk about. 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:08.240 They're very similar in that these are two lighter than 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:13.760 air solutions. So there's one that's the majorin power, which 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:16.960 is a helium based one where it's they have a 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:25.680 gadget called MARS, which is their inflatable helium balloon generator thing. 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:30.160 Think about like a giant inflatable turbine. So it's it's 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:31.840 kind of tricky to think about, all right, So think 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:35.400 of like a big balloon. All right, it's round dish, uh, 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.760 and you've got on either side of the balloon, along 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.280 its horizontal axis, you've got the little generators that are 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.600 hooked up to a tether that go down to the ground. 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.000 And uh, if you were to look along the edge 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:51.320 of the balloon like a if you were to cut 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:54.160 the balloon in half vertically, instead of cutting it in half, 0:20:54.200 --> 0:20:57.399 along that slice, you've got little ridges where the wind 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:00.000 can catch. So if the wind catches the balloon there, 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.600 it makes the balloon turn along that horizontal axis. So 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:07.480 the entire balloon is like a giant inflatable turbine. You 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:10.439 put that up into the right altitude you let the 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:13.160 wind turn this balloon in the air, that in turn 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:16.680 allows the generators to generate electricity. You send that back 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.240 down to the ground. The other one is the al Terris, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:29.920 which is a donut shaped balloon. Yeah favorite silly word, right, yeah, exactly. 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.040 Um is so you can imagine the sort of donut 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:36.040 shape this this balloon shell. In the center where the 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.400 hole is, that's where you have a turbine mounted there. 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:44.360 It's got uh some uh some some mounting um rods 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:47.760 that hold it in place from the center of this 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:51.080 donut hole, and that you can float up to the 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:53.639 right altitude and then wind will blow the turbine blades 0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.280 just as it would if it were supported on a stand, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:58.480 as opposed to being suspended in the middle of this 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:03.840 giant helium balloon. And uh all of these are interesting ideas. 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:08.400 They've all been shown off in various prototype stages. Uh. 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:12.560 We don't have any real like wide uh rollout of 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:17.280