Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Taylor, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, did you
Speaker 1: ever know that you're my hero? I'm Jonathan Strickland. Come on,
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc Obama, I'm Jim mcfarwick.
Speaker 1: That's the best one yet. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's thematic, right. We're talking about wind power today, the future, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the future of wind power. But a big fan. He
Speaker 1: has big fans, increasingly large, one the size of planets. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're we're a little loopie today. We're talking about wind
Speaker 1: power today, and before we talk about the future of it,
Speaker 1: obviously we should probably set up, you know, the fact
Speaker 1: that what's the past of wind power? What is wind power?
Speaker 1: How do we harness wind power? And how long have
Speaker 1: we been doing that? Well, I think the important fact
Speaker 1: here to to think about is how is wind created?
Speaker 1: And that is that is, basically, when the sun heats
Speaker 1: an area of land and the air above that land
Speaker 1: absorbs some of the heat, making it warmer and therefore
Speaker 1: less dense than than air that might be hanging out
Speaker 1: above it um. At a certain point, it will suddenly
Speaker 1: rise in that cooler above. It will rush down to
Speaker 1: build a space. That is how wind is essentially created, right,
Speaker 1: And wind exerts a force it pushes. So anything that
Speaker 1: pushes has the capacity to do some sort of work
Speaker 1: if we can only figure out a way of channeling
Speaker 1: it and harnessing it. Uh, the ancients did. Actually they
Speaker 1: had wind turbines too. They were called windmills. Yeah, wind
Speaker 1: mills very very similar to to turbines. In this case,
Speaker 1: you're not talking about generating electricity. You're talking about turning
Speaker 1: some sort of mill that could crush stuff. Right, You're
Speaker 1: just moving kinetic force from one place to another. You're
Speaker 1: translating it a little bit. But say, yeah, you you
Speaker 1: build a big tower and you make some big blades
Speaker 1: that the wind will turn when it blows, and that
Speaker 1: turns a crank that say, crushes grain into flower. Right
Speaker 1: or maybe um like moves the water wheel or water
Speaker 1: pump to um water up from a river lake yep, yep.
Speaker 1: And also we've been harnessing wind in other ways. Obviously,
Speaker 1: sailing would be a big win using sales had sailboats
Speaker 1: since about three thousand BC, and the fancy windmills. You're
Speaker 1: you're getting up there, and we've had fancy windmills since
Speaker 1: about what it's it's people people aren't really sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's not something between two hundred and two thousand BC.
Speaker 1: I know that that's a large time. Yeah, things like
Speaker 1: that don't tend to last throughout the millennia. But we've
Speaker 1: been using the wind to do work for us for
Speaker 1: quite some time now. As far as using wind in
Speaker 1: the sense of creating electricity, that's far more recent. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was really around the nineteen eighties when that technology
Speaker 1: had reached a level of sophistication where we could, you know,
Speaker 1: put it to practical use right in rural areas. As
Speaker 1: early as like the nineteen twenties or thirties, windmills were
Speaker 1: supplying a little bit of electricity where basically the power
Speaker 1: lines weren't going. Yeah yeah, But for anything for like
Speaker 1: a significant amount of electricity, you really have to look
Speaker 1: at the fairly recent past. And even then it was
Speaker 1: a little shaky. A lot of the wind turbines that
Speaker 1: went up in the eighties were made out of material
Speaker 1: that wasn't necessarily um ideal, didn't last very long. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of maintenance issues. Wind power turbines broke
Speaker 1: down fairly frequently those early wind farms and covered in
Speaker 1: all those neon signs. They were really only producing about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty kilowatts like ideally of energy, which
Speaker 1: is nothing really compared to today, right right, and so
Speaker 1: you know they're they're actually there's some some interesting abandoned
Speaker 1: wind farms in various parts of the United States, including Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I've seen some uh some pictures of a wind farm
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. The the turbines haven't been producing electricity for years,
Speaker 1: but they're still standing there. No one's yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: in fact, there are there are some wind turbines out
Speaker 1: there that are not producing electricity. They turn because the
Speaker 1: companies want them to continue to turn to force oil
Speaker 1: through the various uh workings of the system, but they're
Speaker 1: not actually generating electricity. However, to an outside observer who
Speaker 1: doesn't know that that's what's going on, it may look
Speaker 1: like they're fully functional. However, let's talk about what they're
Speaker 1: actually doing. How they're converting kinetic energy into electric energy.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty simple design really. So you've got these
Speaker 1: long rotor blades that are designed to you know, catch
Speaker 1: the wind. The wind will push these blades and turn
Speaker 1: the turn them there on a hub that rotates. The
Speaker 1: hub is actually attached to a main shaft, and the
Speaker 1: main shaft will also turn you know, it's it rotates
Speaker 1: as well due to the rotational force that we get
Speaker 1: from these blade aids, and uh, it usually runs through
Speaker 1: some sort of gearbox where the gears will translate that
Speaker 1: into a faster rotational force because you know, if you
Speaker 1: use different sized gears, you can, uh you can change
Speaker 1: the speed the revolutions per minted. Really that will then
Speaker 1: go through a generator, and a generator essentially uses magnets
Speaker 1: to rotate past a conductor. And that you know, once
Speaker 1: you have a conductor in the presence of a fluctuating
Speaker 1: magnetic field, you induce current to flow. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you are able, you just just look at me like
Speaker 1: you're talking magic talk like magnets. But how do they work?
Speaker 1: That's an excellent question. We'll cover that in a different episode.
Speaker 1: So anyway, uh, yeah, the rotational motion of the magnets
Speaker 1: creates this fluctuating magnetic field, which you then with the conductor,
Speaker 1: can use to generate electricity. Um so that's that's the
Speaker 1: basic design, and that's pretty much been the same way
Speaker 1: since we started building wind turbines. And it's very similar
Speaker 1: to the way other turbines work, not just wind turbines.
Speaker 1: Steam turbines are very similar. You know, obviously it's using
Speaker 1: steam not wind, but the same sort of general idea. Um, now,
Speaker 1: you guys have i've guess seen wind turbines. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you ever seen them in person. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen one in person, like an actual like wind farm.
Speaker 1: I don't think I have. I think I might have
Speaker 1: flown over them at one point, but I think I've
Speaker 1: seen them in California. I've seen them in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: There's uh, there was a an area I went to
Speaker 1: in Salt Lake City where there's a wind farm right
Speaker 1: outside of Salt Lake and uh, there are quite a
Speaker 1: few there. Actually, it was kind of interesting. We kept
Speaker 1: driving by it and realizing, oh good, now we're thirty
Speaker 1: minutes away from the hotel. I tell you what I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of though, is stock images. For some reason,
Speaker 1: we are just rich with stock images. That is true. Well,
Speaker 1: if you've seen them in person or even just an image,
Speaker 1: As long as you get a sense of scale, you know,
Speaker 1: is that they're pretty tall right there there. There could
Speaker 1: be a couple of hundred feet tall, three feet tall sometimes.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are big structures. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that the winds tend to be more stable
Speaker 1: and steady at higher altitudes. At ground level, you may
Speaker 1: not be able to get a steady wind for any
Speaker 1: length of time, and it may not be you know,
Speaker 1: strong enough to turn the turbines. They really need to
Speaker 1: turn at the speed of about what you need to
Speaker 1: get a wind of around twelve to fourteen miles per
Speaker 1: hour minimum, which is about nineteen to twenty two kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour in force for it to really turn these
Speaker 1: these blades properly, and you get a much better uh,
Speaker 1: steady supply of wind at a higher altitude, which is
Speaker 1: why these things are so tall. And they do tend
Speaker 1: to generate between around fifty to lots of energy depending
Speaker 1: upon the design of the turbine. No two turbines are,
Speaker 1: you know, they aren't created equally, depending upon who made
Speaker 1: them and how they were designed, and um, they're not.
Speaker 1: Their efficiency ranges quite a bit too, and that depends
Speaker 1: heavily on where you put them and uh and just
Speaker 1: the design of the wind turbine as well. And by efficiency,
Speaker 1: I mean how frequently how often are they actually generating electricity.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the capacity for a wind turbine
Speaker 1: is is determined by if the turbine were turning at
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, seven days a week constantly,
Speaker 1: if there was a constant supply of wind, here's how
Speaker 1: much electricity that turbine would generate. And then you have
Speaker 1: the number. But in reality that tends to be a
Speaker 1: much smaller percentage than the overall in those places the
Speaker 1: wind is not going twenty four hours, right Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would imagine that gets more business and during the daytime,
Speaker 1: right well, it all depends, all depends on where it
Speaker 1: is early. But uh, well, when we talk we'll talk
Speaker 1: a bit about the pros and cons of wind energy
Speaker 1: when we get towards the end of this episode, and
Speaker 1: I'll give a few more details on percentages as for
Speaker 1: you know, how efficient these things can be, and it
Speaker 1: really heavily depends upon where you put them. But you know,
Speaker 1: we we've we've got that basic design down. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: people have recognized that it's got a it's it's got
Speaker 1: an interesting approach to harvesting uh, the wind and getting
Speaker 1: electricity out of it. That's something that appeals to a
Speaker 1: lot of people because it means being able to shift
Speaker 1: some of our dependency on say, uh greenhouse gas emitting
Speaker 1: forms of generating electricity. But it's there's still some problems
Speaker 1: with it. So there have been a lot of people
Speaker 1: looking into ways of innovating in the space, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about some of those. So have you
Speaker 1: guys heard of the solar wind energy tower? Look, Joe,
Speaker 1: have you heard about this? Right? You're just kind of
Speaker 1: grinning at me. You want to hear what it looks? No? No, no, no, sorry, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's not one in China. This is one that are
Speaker 1: actually they're they're talking about building one in like the
Speaker 1: Mojave Desert. But um, alright, so imagine imagine a tower.
Speaker 1: It looks, you know, kind of like a cooling tower
Speaker 1: that you would see at a nuclear power plant. But
Speaker 1: all right, So this tower is hollow, It's like a
Speaker 1: hollow cylinder and at the base of the tower is
Speaker 1: a ring of turbines that faces so that the blades
Speaker 1: are facing so that they're facing into the tower. So
Speaker 1: wind coming from the middle of the tower going out
Speaker 1: would turn the turbine blades. Okay, Now you put this
Speaker 1: in a desert where the air is very very hot
Speaker 1: and very very dry, and at the very top of
Speaker 1: the tower is a water injection system and they pump
Speaker 1: water up the tower. The water gets sprayed in a
Speaker 1: fine mist. That fine mist ends up saturating that dry,
Speaker 1: hot air, which makes it heavier and makes it start
Speaker 1: to rush down the center of the tower. And so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a reverse chimney in a way.
Speaker 1: That air rushes down and it hits the ground and
Speaker 1: goes out through the turbines, turning the turbine blades. So
Speaker 1: rather than harvesting wind, you're creating your own. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: making wind sounds like that's a terrible way of putting it.
Speaker 1: Kind of similar to geothermal somehow and pouring water down
Speaker 1: there to create the steam from the heat. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: this case, you're just using a very fine mist to
Speaker 1: create heavy air, and then you channel that heavy air
Speaker 1: down through the turbine blades. Uh. It's an interesting idea. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: the wind speeds hit pretty a pretty gusty level when
Speaker 1: it gets to the bomb somewhere around fifty miles per hour.
Speaker 1: So that's that's decent. That's a decent breeze. Um, there
Speaker 1: are some disadvantages. These things are are tall, they're big,
Speaker 1: They're like two feet tall. That's so it's still, you know,
Speaker 1: a large thing that you have to build, and you're
Speaker 1: limited to where you can build them. You can you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just put these suckers like in here in
Speaker 1: the southeast, we've got really high humidity, so injecting the
Speaker 1: air with water would not necessarily create the effect we
Speaker 1: would need. We would have to have it in a
Speaker 1: very dry right. You put one of those suckers in
Speaker 1: Florida and people are like, there's no change. It's like
Speaker 1: a swamp cooler in Florida. Doesn't many good though. Uh,
Speaker 1: pretty much all wind power is subject to geographical limitation.
Speaker 1: Wind power is very dependent on places where there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wind. Yes, obvious, that's one of the odd
Speaker 1: things about it. Yeah, I know, it's it's it really
Speaker 1: does make it challenging. I mean your point, your point
Speaker 1: is extremely valid. I mean, because the electricity you generate,
Speaker 1: you're likely not going to be transporting that huge distances, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like the uh, the Mojave Desert is going
Speaker 1: to generate all the electricity for everybody on the Eastern seaboard.
Speaker 1: That doesn't That doesn't really make any sense. So uh,
Speaker 1: these are That's another limitation that we have to talk about.
Speaker 1: But that was one of those things that I thought
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting, this idea of this this tower system. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's really more like a a proof of concept right now.
Speaker 1: It's not like something has been widely rolled out. You
Speaker 1: can go to their website and check out the information there.
Speaker 1: They have lots of of little videos and things. The
Speaker 1: solar Wind Energy Tower is what I'm talking about, So
Speaker 1: go check that out and you can see exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: like little animations on how this is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: But another one is kind of the you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of if you go to those higher altitudes, you
Speaker 1: can harness uh those steady winds, but even three feet
Speaker 1: may not be high enough. And yet you don't want
Speaker 1: to build towers that are going way up into the sky.
Speaker 1: It makes it very dangerous and not a lot of
Speaker 1: people will be very thrilled with that. So what if
Speaker 1: you could just fly something up at the right altitude
Speaker 1: and then channel the electricity you generate back down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These these air drones, yeah that we talked about and
Speaker 1: or you talked about. I wasn't there in the video episode. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one called the mccannie power Drone, which is kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. All right, So imagine a wing, a flying
Speaker 1: wing that's design. It doesn't quite look like that. It
Speaker 1: looks almost like uh for the early sketches, look more
Speaker 1: like a biplane almost, but it's it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a flying wing that is at least partially designed to
Speaker 1: mimic a the end of a blade on one of
Speaker 1: these turbines. So it has these little propellers on the
Speaker 1: front that connect as both propellers and turbine blades. So
Speaker 1: if you spend them one way, they're propellers, and then
Speaker 1: if you let the wind blow them the other way
Speaker 1: you turn off the power, you let the wind blow them.
Speaker 1: They can actually turn a direct generator uh and generate electricity. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is all playing into the fact that all of these,
Speaker 1: all of these turbines, the air foils are designed to
Speaker 1: create lift the same way that an airplane would um
Speaker 1: in order to take off. And you know that that's
Speaker 1: just creating a an area of pressure differential between the
Speaker 1: top and the bottom, or I guess top and bottom
Speaker 1: doesn't really apply necessarily to vertical blades, but yes, you're
Speaker 1: creating a low pressure system that's going to end up
Speaker 1: turning this. Yeah, creating that, creating that force of turning,
Speaker 1: because otherwise if you if you didn't angle it just right,
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't get that that rotational force out of it.
Speaker 1: So the way this one works is imagine that you've
Speaker 1: got a little pedestal and on that pestle, you have
Speaker 1: this this drone thing that looks like a biplane with
Speaker 1: several little propellers in the front of it. Uh the
Speaker 1: wind at the right elevation, which would be between two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty to six hundred meters that's about a hundred
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty feet somewhere around that range. Let's say
Speaker 1: that the wind is perfect, so the pedestal would tilt back,
Speaker 1: putting the aircraft into launch positions. So now the little
Speaker 1: propellers are facing essentially straight up, they start spinning. It
Speaker 1: creates the left the powers being channeled through a tether.
Speaker 1: So there's a tether on a ground station that's also
Speaker 1: attached to this little aircraft. Now the aircraft doesn't have
Speaker 1: to have batteries, it doesn't have to have fuel because
Speaker 1: it's getting all of its electricity through that tether. That
Speaker 1: means that the aircraft itself is incredibly light. So then
Speaker 1: we'll take off until it gets to the right altitude,
Speaker 1: the tether will become taut and it will then tilt
Speaker 1: into the wind and fly in a kind of wacky
Speaker 1: well almost like well circular formation that more or less
Speaker 1: mimics the pathway that a turbine blade would go through,
Speaker 1: and uh, it would do this harnessing the wind power.
Speaker 1: The wind would be blowing. Those little propellers of now
Speaker 1: are turbine blades, and they don't have to go through
Speaker 1: uh a mainshaft gearbox kind of thing. They have a
Speaker 1: direct Uh they just have a little tiny magnets there.
Speaker 1: They have a direct generator right there on the aircraft itself,
Speaker 1: which reduces the complexity and size of the aircraft. And
Speaker 1: then all the electricity goes back down through the tether
Speaker 1: to the ground station, which is pretty cool. Now. So
Speaker 1: that means you can actually harness the air that's at
Speaker 1: a higher altitude without building a huge tower. Uh. It
Speaker 1: takes up less space, It takes up less materials to
Speaker 1: build it. According to the website, Uh, the typical aircraft
Speaker 1: would cost fifty of a traditional turbine, so you have
Speaker 1: cost savings from that's on that side of things. And um,
Speaker 1: it was it's such an interesting idea that a very
Speaker 1: large company took interest in it and decided to help
Speaker 1: them out, but to the tune of acquiring the company,
Speaker 1: So that would be Google. That is true. Google in
Speaker 1: May of purchased mccani Power and now it is part
Speaker 1: of Google X, which is their division where they really
Speaker 1: look into environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity, both because
Speaker 1: you know, Google kind of has this mission to um
Speaker 1: to really help help just the environment in general, but
Speaker 1: also how can they provide electricity to their massive data
Speaker 1: centers in a way that's you know, environmentally responsible and
Speaker 1: also economically feasible. You know. So, and they just generally
Speaker 1: seem to be into making the future happen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of yeah, they well, and they're definitely
Speaker 1: not afraid of trying things, even if those things never
Speaker 1: really out. So there there are people who are skeptical
Speaker 1: that this approach and the other air based ones I'm
Speaker 1: about to talk about are are going to work out,
Speaker 1: but it's possible another one. Actually, I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: and pair two of these together. There's one called ampis
Speaker 1: and one called windlift. Both of these use a very
Speaker 1: similar method to generate electricity. So these are two gliding
Speaker 1: type aircraft. One of them is more like a kite
Speaker 1: that's wind left, and the other one looks more like
Speaker 1: it looks kind of similar to the mccannie power one,
Speaker 1: but in each case these are uh designed to fly
Speaker 1: up into the air to glide it at these altitudes,
Speaker 1: and the way they generate electricity is not by turning
Speaker 1: little turbines. The tether itself ends up allowing them to
Speaker 1: have a ground paced generator, and pulling the tether ends
Speaker 1: up creating the the kinetic energy you need to generate
Speaker 1: the electricity on the ground. So instead of generating the
Speaker 1: electricity in the air and sending it down, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like if you have this is a
Speaker 1: a totally different model here, but let's say you need
Speaker 1: to start your motor on your gag on your your lawnmower,
Speaker 1: getting the sky to start your lawnmower. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that, except instead of a motor. We're talking
Speaker 1: about a generator, but yes, similar, similar idea, and both
Speaker 1: of them are designed to do that. So the way
Speaker 1: it works is that you let the wind pull the
Speaker 1: the the aircraft out to the maximum length of the tether,
Speaker 1: and then you then start to have the aircraft dive down.
Speaker 1: And then you gently taken the slack of the tether,
Speaker 1: which will actually consume some of the electricity that you've generated,
Speaker 1: but hopefully a much smaller amount than the overall amount
Speaker 1: you've generated, and you let it go back out again,
Speaker 1: generating more electricity, and you do that over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. What I'm thinking is that really we
Speaker 1: can capitalize on children's ability to play with kites if
Speaker 1: we just if we just send an army of children
Speaker 1: out with attached to generators. I'm just saying, here's here's
Speaker 1: how I say, forget the kites. If this power is
Speaker 1: generated by pulling, you know, pulling a cord attached to
Speaker 1: a generator. Just attached the cord directly to the kids
Speaker 1: and have them run around there. You got it. That's it.
Speaker 1: Take the kites out of it. Energy problem solved, you guys,
Speaker 1: Good work, right, We we solve two problems. Kids and
Speaker 1: our electricity crisis. No. So so moving on, there are
Speaker 1: two more air based ones I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: They're very similar in that these are two lighter than
Speaker 1: air solutions. So there's one that's the majorin power, which
Speaker 1: is a helium based one where it's they have a
Speaker 1: gadget called MARS, which is their inflatable helium balloon generator thing.
Speaker 1: Think about like a giant inflatable turbine. So it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of tricky to think about, all right, So think
Speaker 1: of like a big balloon. All right, it's round dish, uh,
Speaker 1: and you've got on either side of the balloon, along
Speaker 1: its horizontal axis, you've got the little generators that are
Speaker 1: hooked up to a tether that go down to the ground.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you were to look along the edge
Speaker 1: of the balloon like a if you were to cut
Speaker 1: the balloon in half vertically, instead of cutting it in half,
Speaker 1: along that slice, you've got little ridges where the wind
Speaker 1: can catch. So if the wind catches the balloon there,
Speaker 1: it makes the balloon turn along that horizontal axis. So
Speaker 1: the entire balloon is like a giant inflatable turbine. You
Speaker 1: put that up into the right altitude you let the
Speaker 1: wind turn this balloon in the air, that in turn
Speaker 1: allows the generators to generate electricity. You send that back
Speaker 1: down to the ground. The other one is the al Terris,
Speaker 1: which is a donut shaped balloon. Yeah favorite silly word, right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Um is so you can imagine the sort of donut
Speaker 1: shape this this balloon shell. In the center where the
Speaker 1: hole is, that's where you have a turbine mounted there.
Speaker 1: It's got uh some uh some some mounting um rods
Speaker 1: that hold it in place from the center of this
Speaker 1: donut hole, and that you can float up to the
Speaker 1: right altitude and then wind will blow the turbine blades
Speaker 1: just as it would if it were supported on a stand,
Speaker 1: as opposed to being suspended in the middle of this
Speaker 1: giant helium balloon. And uh all of these are interesting ideas.
Speaker 1: They've all been shown off in various prototype stages. Uh.
Speaker 1: We don't have any real like wide uh rollout of
Speaker 1: any of these yet, but they all seem at least feasible.
Speaker 1: I don't know how plausible it is to have them
Speaker 1: as uh as generating meaningful amounts of power, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to see the innovation and I hope that it
Speaker 1: leads to practical application. Oh, certainly, yeah, no, based on
Speaker 1: I mean because some of the some of the problems
Speaker 1: that people have with wind turbines are are the fact
Speaker 1: that they that they are potentially changing the environment that
Speaker 1: they're in. Sure. Yeah, let's talk about some of the
Speaker 1: pros and cons of of wind turbines and wind power. Alright,
Speaker 1: so I mean, okay, uh, smaller greenhouse gas emission, smaller
Speaker 1: carbon footprint. Right, Oh yeah, absolutely, that's actually okay. Well,
Speaker 1: so here's one thing it's that people have started to
Speaker 1: realize is helpful. UM Because obviously, when a wind turbine
Speaker 1: is turning, it's not burning any any carbon based thing,
Speaker 1: it's not releasing any greenhouse gases doing that. Right, Some
Speaker 1: some vertical access wind turbines, UM do need a little
Speaker 1: bit of startup juice. But but for the most part, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not like running a car and just a spilling.
Speaker 1: But the production, the implementation um, all power sources do
Speaker 1: have some kind of greenhouse gas emission UM. And so
Speaker 1: one thing that's important to look at is the life
Speaker 1: cycle analysis of a kilowatt hour produced by any given
Speaker 1: type of energy. So how does wind power stack up
Speaker 1: from you know this cradle to grave analysis, Well, according
Speaker 1: to a report I found UM it was reprinted by
Speaker 1: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Thank nice, thank you, that's
Speaker 1: funded by the Department of Energy, and they offered an
Speaker 1: overall l c A report that found wind, both offshore
Speaker 1: and land based together produced about eleven grams of c
Speaker 1: O two equivalent per kilowatt hour of electricity. That's compared
Speaker 1: to about a thousand grams for coal, so significantly a
Speaker 1: bunch more than yea more than two, yeah, are not
Speaker 1: more than two more less than two yes, So it's
Speaker 1: uh so yeah, like compared to fossil fuel burning. The
Speaker 1: overall life cycle analysis says wind is a whole lot
Speaker 1: better in terms of greenhouse gas eractions. It's um generally
Speaker 1: considered pretty comparable to other renewables like like solar or hydroelectric, right, so,
Speaker 1: and that's that's another key is that we're talking about
Speaker 1: renewable energy source. It's not like it's not like something
Speaker 1: that we could feasibly run out of. Although, as we
Speaker 1: were saying before we started this podcast, there is always
Speaker 1: the chance that climate change over time could shift where
Speaker 1: the windiest spots are. So if you're talking about some
Speaker 1: of the more permanent wind farms, that could potentially maybe
Speaker 1: and it may not be for a really long time,
Speaker 1: but it could potentially change how effective they are, just
Speaker 1: whether or not they get as much wind as they
Speaker 1: did when you first built them. Yeah, that's true. Wind
Speaker 1: is not going away, but it might be going somewhere,
Speaker 1: meaning that weather patterns changing, especially due to something like
Speaker 1: climate change, could say, move a jet stream from one
Speaker 1: place to another. Right, There's also some evidence that that
Speaker 1: wind farms themselves could be causing local weather changes. What say,
Speaker 1: what No, There was a study published in Nature Climate
Speaker 1: Change in and this was taking satellite data from from
Speaker 1: NASA's aquand Terrace satellites, and it found that the land
Speaker 1: surface temperature around four Texas wind farms had warmed at
Speaker 1: a rate point seven two degrees celsius, which is about
Speaker 1: one point three degrees fahrenheit over over the course of
Speaker 1: about ten years of data. That's a that's a significant warming,
Speaker 1: which is which is a bunch Yeah, if you guys
Speaker 1: listen to our climate change episode, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: that's significant. That's bunch um. And they think that what's
Speaker 1: going on here is that the turbines are mixing that
Speaker 1: hot and cool air, especially at night, they're they're pulling
Speaker 1: warm air that's risen during the day back down to
Speaker 1: the ground and causing this warming and and that you know,
Speaker 1: they don't know what's going to happen with that, and
Speaker 1: so no one really knows what effect this could possibly have.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, not only on whether or not
Speaker 1: the wind pattern is going to change, but obviously on
Speaker 1: the environment around these wind farms. And there are other
Speaker 1: environmental concerns as well. For example, I've often heard concerns
Speaker 1: about wind farms and the health of the local wildlife,
Speaker 1: specifically bats and birds. Birds and bats, Yeah did did you?
Speaker 1: Did you look into this one, Joe? You're you're giving
Speaker 1: me a blank look of fear. Yeah, well, I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know about birds, but I think but with bat's,
Speaker 1: one of the theories is that, Okay, so they've got
Speaker 1: all these dead bats around wind farms, and and it's
Speaker 1: not that they're getting caught up in the turbines or
Speaker 1: something like that. There's a theory that the low pressure
Speaker 1: area is created by the mixing agency of of of
Speaker 1: that wind um. Bat lungs are very sensitive and so
Speaker 1: when they enter very suddenly a pocket of low pressure air.
Speaker 1: They could be swelling and expanding so much that they
Speaker 1: burst blood vessels and kind of spontaneously just just drop
Speaker 1: beyond that. I know that a lot of wind farms
Speaker 1: tend to generate sounds that are well outside the frequency
Speaker 1: of human hearing, but I imagine that that for some
Speaker 1: animals might be somewhat distressing as well. And for a
Speaker 1: sound yes, um, and this this is a big part
Speaker 1: of what is referred to as wind turbine syndrome, which
Speaker 1: is not okay. It has never been proved or disproved
Speaker 1: in a laboratory anywhere. It was named by a pediatrician,
Speaker 1: Dr Nina pear Point, whose husband happens to be an
Speaker 1: anti wind activist, and whose study involved a small sample
Speaker 1: of phone interviews with no controls or peer reviewing involved.
Speaker 1: UM so but but but but lots of people have
Speaker 1: reported UM kind of colloquially from living around wind farms.
Speaker 1: UM all kinds of symptoms, from headaches to sleep problems,
Speaker 1: night terrors and learning disabilities and children ringing in the ears,
Speaker 1: mood problems, concentration, memory problems, and UH issues with like
Speaker 1: with like dizziness and nausea. So and I would say,
Speaker 1: I mean, my my first inclination here is to say
Speaker 1: that people are uh are identifying symptoms and then are
Speaker 1: going in search of a problem. That that would be
Speaker 1: my that's my inclination. I'm not saying that that's what's happening,
Speaker 1: but that's that's kind of the feeling to get simply
Speaker 1: because we've seen this sort of thing happen in other
Speaker 1: areas before, things like living near power lines or being
Speaker 1: really sensitive to WiFi that whenever we put this up
Speaker 1: to any kind of double blind test, the the supposed
Speaker 1: effects seem to disappear. Now this has not been put
Speaker 1: to that, and because the infrasound, there is at least
Speaker 1: a uh, maybe not plausible, but a possible explanation that
Speaker 1: it could it could very well be contributing to some
Speaker 1: effects that we don't fully understand. So it's, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those things where we definitely need someone to
Speaker 1: take a look at it from a very scientific point
Speaker 1: of view and find out if there really is an
Speaker 1: actual effect here, because that could be the case. I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. Certainly, there have
Speaker 1: been laboratory studies that have confirmed that infrasound has an
Speaker 1: effect on human people. I mean, but biologically speaking, there
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of things recorded. When when you
Speaker 1: get intense enough infrasound for long enough, you can have
Speaker 1: stuff like hearing loss. We know that from people working
Speaker 1: in factories, for example, But in these are modern times,
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by infrasound. It's it's not like it's nowhere,
Speaker 1: and and basically the primary effect is annoyance, which clinically speaking,
Speaker 1: is is a mix of sensitivity to a noise and
Speaker 1: anxiety about your sensitivity to the noise, which which kind
Speaker 1: of conflates into something that can that can cause things
Speaker 1: like chronic sleep loss which has a lot of the
Speaker 1: symptoms that are reported, and wind turbine syndrome. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: so you're you're you're talking about minor body body vibration um,
Speaker 1: you know, increased sensitivity to and and a lack of
Speaker 1: coping with a continual noise um, which can lead to
Speaker 1: other psychological stuff like lower work performance and increased stress. Right,
Speaker 1: and then you have the addition of any other symptoms
Speaker 1: you might be suffering from completely unrelated sources which you
Speaker 1: attribute then to which goes into that anxiety exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you have the escalation of anxiety problems, and so
Speaker 1: it just becomes a big issue. Is and we honestly
Speaker 1: we don't know. Again, like I said, uh, what of
Speaker 1: any extent the wind farms contribute to this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: There are people who have gone so far as to say, yes,
Speaker 1: this is what is causing all these issues, but we
Speaker 1: don't have any actual scientific evidence of that. I And
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm pretty skeptical that they're as rough
Speaker 1: as as they've been made out to be. Uh. Seems
Speaker 1: like the kind of thing that it would be fairly
Speaker 1: easy to design a very good scientific test. Oh, sure,
Speaker 1: it would be very easy. And and record. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can certainly record the vibration of wind farms. And
Speaker 1: there there are technologies that are being research and implemented
Speaker 1: into dampening the vibration of of of sound and equipment
Speaker 1: around wind farms. Um you know from from from pads
Speaker 1: that that dampened the structure vibration to um like counter
Speaker 1: vibrations to cancel out things that are being created by
Speaker 1: the turbines. Got you. That's kind of interesting. So there
Speaker 1: are other some other issues with wind turbines obviously they're
Speaker 1: one of them. Is the whole concept of intermittency, just
Speaker 1: same issue that you have with a lot of other
Speaker 1: renewable sources like solar energy, which is that it's not
Speaker 1: always windy, just like it's not always sunny except in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: UM So you've got this issue where if it's not
Speaker 1: if the wind is not always blowing, then you're never
Speaker 1: going to be producing electricity at full capacity. So remember
Speaker 1: earlier I said that wind turbines typically if you you
Speaker 1: hear like, oh well, it generates three kilowatts, that's based
Speaker 1: on it operating at full capacity for as long as
Speaker 1: it's upbring life is, which tends to be a couple
Speaker 1: of decades twenty to thirty years in general. Um So
Speaker 1: that's great if it were operating at full capacity all
Speaker 1: the time, but it's not. In fact, most of them
Speaker 1: are operating it around twenty capacity. Um if you are
Speaker 1: able to build them off shore where winds are more consistent,
Speaker 1: you might be able to get that up to about
Speaker 1: but that's still guess I mean compared to solar panels,
Speaker 1: you're doing pretty good there well, And even then you're
Speaker 1: talking about it's of the time it's operational it's not
Speaker 1: even not saying it's forty percent efficiency in the sense
Speaker 1: of it's converting the wind into energy, which is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about with solar energy. Is like, you know,
Speaker 1: out of the of solar energy that's hitting a solar
Speaker 1: panel on a really good day, you're talking about Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a really good technology, you're talking
Speaker 1: in the lab. You might be able to boost that
Speaker 1: just below fift but that's in the lab, which, as
Speaker 1: we all know, most of the solar panels not in
Speaker 1: the lab. Um. So, yeah, intermittency is a problem, and
Speaker 1: efficiency is a problem. Uh And the amount of power
Speaker 1: they can provide that all depends again on the the
Speaker 1: design of the solar solar panel, the wind turbine and
Speaker 1: uh like some of them could generate enough power to
Speaker 1: supply six homes on a single wind turbine, which is
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. If you've got a wind farm of significant size,
Speaker 1: you could definitely support a small to medium sized community,
Speaker 1: which is not a bad thing at all, I mean,
Speaker 1: but it's still you know, it's it's it's small potatoes
Speaker 1: when you compare it to the overall population of a
Speaker 1: country as large as say the United States. Clearly wind
Speaker 1: energy at least in the implementations that we have right now.
Speaker 1: And I would argue, even in the case that we
Speaker 1: are able to create these new and improved type of
Speaker 1: wind farms, I don't think we're gonna say that wind
Speaker 1: energy is going to become the patch that's going to
Speaker 1: replace carbon based UH power systems right now, but it
Speaker 1: can certainly offset them. Yeah. As of I think for
Speaker 1: the end of twenty eleven about three of all US
Speaker 1: power was coming from wind farms, So you know, room
Speaker 1: to improve, Yes, certainly, that's more than I would guess.
Speaker 1: There's there's some There are a lot of surveys that
Speaker 1: talk or reports that talk about the amazing growth of
Speaker 1: of the wind power industry, but you have to remember
Speaker 1: that when you have so few comparatively speaking, UH, even
Speaker 1: doubling in size doesn't mean that it's a lot of
Speaker 1: times right Like if I had three wind farms and
Speaker 1: now I've got six wind farms, I experienced percent growth,
Speaker 1: but but it doesn't you know, that doesn't translate into
Speaker 1: an overwhelming amount of electricity in the long run. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who have brought up the
Speaker 1: economic problems of wind farms. Specifically, they are pretty expensive
Speaker 1: to build, and they can be expensive to continue to
Speaker 1: have them working in proper order. I mean, depending upon
Speaker 1: who it was that made the parts, it may be
Speaker 1: very difficult to keep them in working order. And if
Speaker 1: if the company that made those parts goes out of business,
Speaker 1: then you have to figure out how to repair things
Speaker 1: that break down over time. Uh. And I think I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of parts in the world
Speaker 1: they are kind of burnt out on wind power because
Speaker 1: in those early days in the nineteen eighties, when these
Speaker 1: these wind farms were popping up all over the place
Speaker 1: because a lot of governments were giving major subsidies, were
Speaker 1: also having a big oil crisis around the world. Then
Speaker 1: exactly we had an oil crisis, so there was a
Speaker 1: huge incentive to get off of oil as much as possible. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we had the government subsidies that were very
Speaker 1: very much attractive to investors who thought they could make
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money back by investing in wind farms. Uh. It.
Speaker 1: The overall result was that not all the wind farms
Speaker 1: that went up were particularly well built. Uh. Not all
Speaker 1: of them were able to be maintained. Because once the
Speaker 1: subsidies started to drift away, the there was kind of
Speaker 1: like a bubble burst, right. It's kind of like seeing
Speaker 1: you know this, if the government support starts to go away,
Speaker 1: then the major source of actual money going into that that, uh,
Speaker 1: that whole venture has gone away. It makes the thing
Speaker 1: kind of dissipate, which is sad because obviously we do
Speaker 1: have a need for clean, renewable energy. There's no denying that.
Speaker 1: It's just that if you can't make the money work,
Speaker 1: because the way the world works, that really means that
Speaker 1: it's kind of uh, you know, it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: a dream. I like to think that with companies like
Speaker 1: Google behind wind power, we'll see some innovations that you know,
Speaker 1: it might take a generation or two for them to
Speaker 1: be implemented in a way that's uh, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: wide form. Yeah, but I'm optimistic that that will happen.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to happen as quickly as
Speaker 1: most people would like. I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: much more gradual than that. That is no reason to
Speaker 1: give up. There's no reason to say if it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen tomorrow, then I don't want to work on this, right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I really like some of these ideas that that you
Speaker 1: that you brought in to tell us about today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some some pretty cool ones. I love the I
Speaker 1: love the idea of the balloon based ones. I really
Speaker 1: want to see a specifically, want to see the Mars
Speaker 1: one in action, that giant balloon that's just turning in
Speaker 1: the sky. I kind of want to see what that
Speaker 1: looks like. So um yeah, if if anyone wants to
Speaker 1: send me out and take a look at this in person,
Speaker 1: I'll take I'll take that ticket, I'll go see it.
Speaker 1: I don't mind. How can they get in touch with
Speaker 1: us in order to send you you know what, We've
Speaker 1: got a website and it is awesome. Joe, you do
Speaker 1: a great job working on that website. Why thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: You are welcome. That website, by the way, is f
Speaker 1: wh thinking dot com. And if you would like to
Speaker 1: see the hard work that Joe puts in, go to
Speaker 1: f W Thinking dot com. That's where we have the videos,
Speaker 1: the blog post podcast, we have links to articles. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool stuff in there. You can
Speaker 1: also follow us on social media. We are on Twitter,
Speaker 1: we're on Facebook. Look for f W Thinking at both
Speaker 1: of those locations and we will talk to you again,
Speaker 1: really sooner. For more on this topic and the future
Speaker 1: of technology, visit forward thinking dot com, brought to you
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