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The Power of the Wind · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
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0:53
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:03
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's
1:06
Speaker 1: Chuck and Ben's here too, and this is stuff you should.
1:09
Speaker 2: Know, wind edition because it's blowing my microphone all over
1:16
Speaker 2: the place. Of what is going on here?
1:17
Speaker 1: I feel like you should handle this one and I'll
1:20
Speaker 1: just do WIN sound effects in the background the whole time.
1:22
Speaker 2: Okay, that'll be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't
1:26
Speaker 2: know what's happening.
1:27
Speaker 1: Is it eerie?
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Speaker 2: No? Just nothing is right. Sometimes I feel like Ruby
1:33
Speaker 2: comes in here and messes with stuff. Oh no, I
1:37
Speaker 2: think that's the ghost.
1:38
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what happens in it?
1:40
Speaker 1: I do this?
1:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different. Huh okay,
1:45
Speaker 2: all right, I'm fine. I'm back to normal.
1:47
Speaker 1: Well I'm back to normal too. I'm gonna go ahead
1:50
Speaker 1: and presume Ben's back to normal. So you listener. If
1:53
Speaker 1: you're back to normal, great, we can get started then.
1:56
Speaker 1: If not, we'll wait. Just email us.
2:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we're talking about wind power, and I guess
2:02
Speaker 2: a good starting point would be history and not to
2:08
Speaker 2: get to like in the weeds with you know, sailing
2:11
Speaker 2: ships and stuff like that, because people have long been
2:14
Speaker 2: using wind for different things. But I think as far
2:16
Speaker 2: as generating power early on, you know, water was the thing.
2:21
Speaker 2: Obviously Cole was the thing. But there was a guy,
2:24
Speaker 2: a very intelligent Scott and we love our Scottish people.
2:29
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty seven, it was an engineer who designed
2:32
Speaker 2: the first wind turbine to do what we're talking about today.
2:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not like he was the first person
2:40
Speaker 1: to come up with a wind turbine. I mean, everybody
2:42
Speaker 1: knows the Dutch had windmills for centuries and centuries before,
2:45
Speaker 1: but this guy was the first one to try to
2:47
Speaker 1: genuinely harness wind power to generate electricity. His name was
2:52
Speaker 1: James Blythe and he had a second home apparently in
2:56
Speaker 1: the town of mary Kirk in Scotland, which has great
3:00
Speaker 1: gotch I assume. And he had so much power from
3:05
Speaker 1: his wind turbine, chuck, that he offered the access of
3:10
Speaker 1: it to the town of mary Kirk. And this guy
3:12
Speaker 1: was so advanced he had twelve batteries storing the electrical
3:17
Speaker 1: power that his wind turbine was generating. He just invented
3:21
Speaker 1: it like lock stock and barrel the first time.
3:25
Speaker 2: Out Great Scott.
3:28
Speaker 1: Literally he really wasn't Great Scott, so.
3:31
Speaker 2: You know, and on small scales. People came behind him
3:34
Speaker 2: and were doing it, but it wasn't really until a gentleman,
3:38
Speaker 2: a Danish gentleman, a meteorologist named I've never seen that
3:42
Speaker 2: pou L poll I guess polar Coor he is the
3:49
Speaker 2: one who really has a lot of the you know,
3:51
Speaker 2: gets a lot of the credit rightfully. So we're kind
3:54
Speaker 2: of getting when generated power going in a serious way
3:59
Speaker 2: because in the eighteen nineties he's like, you know what,
4:02
Speaker 2: I can produce a steady stream of power. This thing
4:05
Speaker 2: isn't as intermittent as they were before, and I'm actually
4:09
Speaker 2: going to create enough power for my village, for the
4:12
Speaker 2: village of Askoff, and I'm going to have found something
4:15
Speaker 2: that sounds like sorcery. I'm gonna found the Society of
4:19
Speaker 2: Wind Electricians even.
4:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he did. He was very successful. Out of
4:23
Speaker 1: the gate. That was nineteen oh eighteen ninety five. He
4:26
Speaker 1: started nineteen oh eight. There were seventy two different systems
4:30
Speaker 1: running in Denmark and each of them had a capacity
4:34
Speaker 1: between five and twenty five kilowatts, which is peanuts peanuts now,
4:37
Speaker 1: but at the time. This is remember in our Love
4:41
Speaker 1: Canal episode where electricity for a while no matter how
4:44
Speaker 1: you generated, it had to be generated like right next
4:47
Speaker 1: to where you were distributing the power. So it would
4:50
Speaker 1: make sense that you'd have a windmill like right at
4:52
Speaker 1: the village that was being powered, because if you were
4:55
Speaker 1: getting it from a coal fire plant, you had to
4:57
Speaker 1: have it right there too, So that I made wind
5:00
Speaker 1: kind of competitive for a while, and even until the
5:03
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century, it was still fairly competitive, even
5:07
Speaker 1: as coal and gas fired electrical plants started to take
5:11
Speaker 1: over because in rural areas they didn't have access to
5:15
Speaker 1: the grid, so they were using wind turbines. And then
5:18
Speaker 1: finally FDR comes along and said, n's to that, We're
5:21
Speaker 1: electrifying this whole darn toutin country, and the wind turbines
5:26
Speaker 1: fell over in surprise, and coal fired electrical grids took over.
5:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they pretty much held the you know, the
5:34
Speaker 2: high ground until the nineties, when there was a renewed
5:37
Speaker 2: interest in wind. Things got a little windy in the
5:40
Speaker 2: nineties and ninety two Congress passed a tax credit. Clinton
5:45
Speaker 2: came along after that, you know, started to fund more
5:49
Speaker 2: you know, basically federal projects toward wind, and then states
5:53
Speaker 2: got on board individually, especially states like Texas and Iowa.
5:57
Speaker 2: You know, if you're out and you have lots of
6:00
Speaker 2: of wind, lots of open planes, you can generate more
6:03
Speaker 2: wind energy. And Texas, for their part, has really, you know,
6:08
Speaker 2: up until recent years, been super supportive of wind energy
6:12
Speaker 2: and are far and away the leader in US wind energy.
6:17
Speaker 2: But as just as far as like raw numbers, from
6:21
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety to twenty ten, we went from almost two
6:26
Speaker 2: point eight billion kilowatt hours to close to five point
6:31
Speaker 2: six billion, and then twenty ten that jumped to ninety
6:36
Speaker 2: five billion, which is just a huge jump over that
6:38
Speaker 2: span of time. And then now in twenty twenty two
6:41
Speaker 2: we are at four hundred and thirty four billion kilowat hours.
6:45
Speaker 1: So in thirty two years we went from two point
6:47
Speaker 1: seventy nine billion to four hundred and thirty four billions.
6:50
Speaker 1: That is right, that's pretty rapid progress. I mean, that's amazing.
6:54
Speaker 1: That's just in the United States too, as we'll see
6:57
Speaker 1: like around the world, they're trees who are like, yeah,
7:01
Speaker 1: why don't you catch up, lame mos, and then other
7:03
Speaker 1: countries like China are just jumping ahead of the curve
7:07
Speaker 1: even more impressively. But wind is definitely I'm sorry for this,
7:11
Speaker 1: but wind is picking up around the world.
7:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we should probably talk a little bit about
7:16
Speaker 2: how the actual machine works. We're going to concentrate on
7:20
Speaker 2: the hot systems, that is the horizontal axis. Hawt just
7:26
Speaker 2: a little bit about the vertical axis. The vaults. They're
7:29
Speaker 2: kind of cool and that you can you don't like
7:31
Speaker 2: have to point it at the wind. But they're smaller,
7:35
Speaker 2: they're slower, they're not as efficient. Therefore, you know, small
7:39
Speaker 2: scale generation, So those aren't sort of the big daddies,
7:43
Speaker 2: the big players in the field. It's really the hot
7:46
Speaker 2: rotors that are hot.
7:48
Speaker 1: They're hella hot, they are. So Yeah, if you have
7:51
Speaker 1: a small what's called a distributed system, which is like
7:54
Speaker 1: that thing that say James Blyth Paul LeCour came up
7:57
Speaker 1: with that just powers like a very small area, you're
8:01
Speaker 1: probably going to do a vertical axis type. It's like
8:03
Speaker 1: a merry go round with sails around it. But the
8:06
Speaker 1: sails are actually wind turbines and it looks cool, cooler
8:09
Speaker 1: than a horizontal axis one if you ask me. But
8:12
Speaker 1: the horizontal ones are most ubiquitous because they can generate
8:17
Speaker 1: power in aces compared to the vertical types. Right, they're
8:22
Speaker 1: way more efficient. You can make them way bigger, because
8:25
Speaker 1: if you're making something with a vertical axis, it takes
8:28
Speaker 1: up ground space because it's basically on the ground. The
8:31
Speaker 1: horizontal ones, they're way up in the air, catching generally
8:35
Speaker 1: steady streams of air that have very little turbulence, that
8:39
Speaker 1: are moving fairly fast compared to the stuff on the ground,
8:42
Speaker 1: and they can convert it very efficiently, at least as
8:45
Speaker 1: far as wind turbines are concerned into electricity.
8:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned the size. These are the you know,
8:51
Speaker 2: if you're traveling out west in the planes or something
8:53
Speaker 2: and you see a wind farm. These are the big
8:56
Speaker 2: daddies that we're talking about. The little guys are about
9:00
Speaker 2: eight feet in diameter. These you know, these are the rotors.
9:04
Speaker 2: But if you go offshore, and we'll talk a little
9:06
Speaker 2: bit more about what's going what's going on in the ocean,
9:10
Speaker 2: but those can be eight hundred feet generate up to
9:14
Speaker 2: eighteen megawatts, which is just a lot of power being generated.
9:18
Speaker 2: And I mean those things are just absolutely enormous, Like
9:21
Speaker 2: I can't even picture what an eight hundred foot turbine
9:24
Speaker 2: might look like.
9:25
Speaker 1: So take three football fields, cut off just a little
9:28
Speaker 1: bit of the third one, and then that's the the
9:31
Speaker 1: turbine diameter. I mean, it's so massive it like boggles
9:34
Speaker 1: the mind, even though we're talking about you know, a
9:36
Speaker 1: few hundred feet. It's just I just can't imagine what
9:39
Speaker 1: that looks like up close.
9:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, same, so connecting to the US power grid. Like
9:46
Speaker 2: the size of these things have basically increased over time.
9:50
Speaker 2: They've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger these days.
9:53
Speaker 2: If you're talking like not those gargantuans offshore, but irregular
9:57
Speaker 2: like terrestrial turbine on a wind farm is generally about
10:01
Speaker 2: four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet in diameter,
10:04
Speaker 2: they're about thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground,
10:06
Speaker 2: and they generate each one about three point two megawatts.
10:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is actually a case where bigger's better.
10:13
Speaker 1: From what I've seen, the bigger they are means that
10:16
Speaker 1: they can generate more electricity, which means that you need
10:19
Speaker 1: fewer of them on site. So I saw the average
10:22
Speaker 1: is expected to go down in like next year from
10:25
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty two turbines and like a good
10:27
Speaker 1: sized average wind turbine farm to eighty nine, so you
10:33
Speaker 1: got far fewer. They're bigger, but they also are figuring
10:36
Speaker 1: out how to make them quieter. Two, So by going bigger,
10:40
Speaker 1: they're actually getting a lot more out of it. It's
10:42
Speaker 1: kind of like one of those things where the economy
10:44
Speaker 1: of scale just exceeds the sum of its parts, which
10:48
Speaker 1: is two different things. But I put them together expertly
10:50
Speaker 1: if you ask me.
10:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and these things they got to be spaced apart.
10:54
Speaker 2: You can't put them obviously right on each other, so
10:58
Speaker 2: that makes a difference. You know, if you have fewer
11:00
Speaker 2: of them, they're not spread out as far obviously geographically.
11:05
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about it a little bit more, but
11:07
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like you can't do anything with
11:09
Speaker 2: the land. A lot of times you'll just see them
11:12
Speaker 2: out kind of the middle of nowhere, but that can
11:14
Speaker 2: be cataland and stuff like that.
11:16
Speaker 1: Yes, So usually the horizontal axis wind turbines, which are
11:22
Speaker 1: just the wind turbines you've seen pictures of or video of,
11:25
Speaker 1: or maybe even seen off in the distance, depending on
11:28
Speaker 1: where you're driving around, they usually have three blades, and
11:31
Speaker 1: three is kind of this magic number because the more
11:34
Speaker 1: blades you have, the more drag it produces. Each blade
11:38
Speaker 1: experiences drag from the air as it moves through the air.
11:41
Speaker 1: The air is like, no, stop doing that and tries
11:43
Speaker 1: to like stop it. And even though it's individual for
11:47
Speaker 1: each blade, they accumulate and combine and transfer that to
11:51
Speaker 1: the rotor, so it experiences five blades worth of drag.
11:55
Speaker 1: So three blades is kind of sweet because you can
11:58
Speaker 1: generate quite a bit of electricity, can capture a bunch
12:00
Speaker 1: of wind, but you're also reducing drag dramatically. So that's
12:05
Speaker 1: why basically every single horizontal access turbine has three blades.
12:11
Speaker 2: What's your ceiling fan?
12:13
Speaker 1: Preth definitely more than I don't know. I'm trying to think.
12:18
Speaker 1: Now I've got such a strange variety of ceiling fans
12:21
Speaker 1: that I think about it, I'm gonna say I'll go
12:25
Speaker 1: with three. Sure, three, what's yours?
12:29
Speaker 2: I typically like a five blader?
12:32
Speaker 1: Okay?
12:33
Speaker 2: Uh? Four is okay? I've got one three, and I've
12:38
Speaker 2: realized that I don't really like it, And boy do
12:41
Speaker 2: I hate those two bladers.
12:43
Speaker 1: Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken, is
12:46
Speaker 1: what you're describing.
12:48
Speaker 2: I know people like them, so I don't want to
12:50
Speaker 2: yuck someone's jum, but aesthetically I don't care for the
12:53
Speaker 2: two blade propeller style ceiling fan.
12:55
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the big question though. Do you like those
12:58
Speaker 1: fans that look like fans that they might have used
13:02
Speaker 1: in Casablanca in the nineteen thirties.
13:05
Speaker 2: Oh? Oh, that are ceiling fans.
13:07
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what the blades look like.
13:10
Speaker 2: No, I don't like to get too like weird. Okay,
13:13
Speaker 2: Well here's the real question, though you thought you had
13:15
Speaker 2: the real question. Do you do you get up and
13:18
Speaker 2: change the direction of that thing every year?
13:20
Speaker 1: Sometimes yes, depending on whether I'm chilly thinking about it
13:24
Speaker 1: or I'm motivated. Okay, yeah, those are the two factors
13:27
Speaker 1: that are you have to combine.
13:29
Speaker 2: I think that's the factor for almost everyone, except for
13:31
Speaker 2: the you know, the real fastidious person who just has
13:34
Speaker 2: it on their calendar.
13:36
Speaker 1: Even I don't have that on my calendar. And I'm
13:39
Speaker 1: suddenly impressed with myself and kind of relieved.
13:41
Speaker 2: No good. So the hats, you know, we said that
13:45
Speaker 2: those the vertical winds don't need to be pointed at
13:47
Speaker 2: the wind. The hats do face into the wind. But
13:51
Speaker 2: you might think, well, the wind changes, and josh, how
13:54
Speaker 2: is that possible. Well, they do it by moving the
13:56
Speaker 2: turbine to face the wind. It's got a y'all system,
14:00
Speaker 2: so it's you know, it's not too hard to do.
14:02
Speaker 2: And they also have pitch systems. They can change the
14:05
Speaker 2: actual angle of the blades to help control that rotor
14:08
Speaker 2: speed to really maximize efficiency A and B protect it
14:13
Speaker 2: because what you don't want during like a really big
14:17
Speaker 2: windstorm is for those you might think like, oh man,
14:20
Speaker 2: those things get really cooking. That's awesome. They don't need
14:23
Speaker 2: to get too cooking. It's like a motor spinning too
14:25
Speaker 2: fast is just never good.
14:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, it can break pretty easy. So if they change
14:30
Speaker 1: the angle of the blade relative to the direction of
14:33
Speaker 1: the wind, the winds is going to push on it
14:37
Speaker 1: rather than making it spin. And so if it pushes
14:39
Speaker 1: on it, it's going to go much slower. So you
14:41
Speaker 1: still want them to kind of move, but not too fast.
14:43
Speaker 1: And that's pretty cool that they've got that figured out. Yeah,
14:47
Speaker 1: so you got yaw control, pitch control, and the whole
14:50
Speaker 1: thing is connected to a rotator that is connected to
14:56
Speaker 1: a generator and sometimes you've got a gearbox in the middle.
15:00
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing. One of the reasons why wind
15:04
Speaker 1: didn't catch on or didn't continue to spread as coal
15:09
Speaker 1: did is because it's really difficult to get a windmill
15:13
Speaker 1: rotor to spin fast enough to generate electricity using traditional electromagnets, right,
15:19
Speaker 1: you need something like eighteen hundred RPMs to really get
15:22
Speaker 1: a good electrical buzz cooking and win windmill rotors, especially
15:29
Speaker 1: the big ones these days, they're at like five ten
15:32
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty I think is about the top that I saw,
15:35
Speaker 1: so about one rotation a second, which is still a
15:38
Speaker 1: third of what it needs to be to generate electricity.
15:41
Speaker 1: Although by the way, they've got that figured out. But
15:43
Speaker 1: for like one that's using a traditional dynamo, not dynamo,
15:49
Speaker 1: I guess generator. Right, where you've got like magnets spinning
15:52
Speaker 1: through coils to generate electricity, they have a gearbox and somehow,
15:56
Speaker 1: through some sort of black magic, I just genuinely don't
16:00
Speaker 1: understand gears, Chuck, we have to do an episode on
16:02
Speaker 1: and I guess, but.
16:03
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that.
16:06
Speaker 1: It translates that sixty rotations a minute into eighteen hundred
16:12
Speaker 1: just by changing the direction. I don't know how they
16:14
Speaker 1: do it. I know that it's really basic stuff that
16:17
Speaker 1: even like Archimedes used to mess with. I just can't
16:20
Speaker 1: wrap my head around how that happens.
16:22
Speaker 2: Well, I definitely don't want to do something on gears
16:25
Speaker 2: because many years ago, I'm pretty sure I updated the
16:28
Speaker 2: old House Stuffworks article on gears okay, and it's it's
16:33
Speaker 2: pretty mind numbing and boring. Okay, but you know, just
16:39
Speaker 2: think about the size of gears and like a gears
16:44
Speaker 2: with tons and tons of teeth, you know, hooking up
16:48
Speaker 2: and making love to a gear with fewer teeth is
16:51
Speaker 2: gonna like that top one's going to be spinning really
16:54
Speaker 2: fast and the other one's gonna be spinning less.
16:57
Speaker 1: Don't still doesn't make sense to me.
16:59
Speaker 2: Really well, have you ever seen a gear like, you know,
17:03
Speaker 2: like a gift or something of gears at work?
17:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked it up for this just to try
17:07
Speaker 1: to see if I could wrap my head around at
17:09
Speaker 1: this time, and it still just wouldn't work.
17:11
Speaker 2: Well, Fewer teeth just means slower.
17:13
Speaker 1: But that doesn't make sense, like I understand that there's
17:18
Speaker 1: more teeth means faster. How that's what I get it.
17:22
Speaker 2: It's catching fewer teeth, which is like the go button. Basically,
17:29
Speaker 2: ill on this, We'll move on.
17:32
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna.
17:33
Speaker 2: Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing to
17:35
Speaker 2: not do this, and I'm trying to explain.
17:37
Speaker 1: It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle of
17:39
Speaker 1: this episode.
17:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Here's another fun fact is the uh and this
17:42
Speaker 2: is not super consequential, but I just thought it was interesting.
17:45
Speaker 2: Is the gearbox and all that stuff is up tall
17:50
Speaker 2: in the tower and something called a nestle And that
17:53
Speaker 2: is an aviation term. That's like planes have nestles, so
17:56
Speaker 2: just like you have a spinning propeller on a plane. Okay, yeah,
18:01
Speaker 2: so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool.
18:02
Speaker 1: Okay, So like that whole thing that it looks like
18:04
Speaker 1: the turbines are mounted to that, that whole thing is
18:07
Speaker 1: basically the nestle, and it's where the gearbox and the
18:09
Speaker 1: rotor and the generator are all tucked in, right.
18:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades, just
18:15
Speaker 2: like it would be on a plane.
18:17
Speaker 1: So the thing with the gearbox, it really works like
18:19
Speaker 1: you can get some pretty good electricity out of a
18:22
Speaker 1: relatively small set of moving parts. But they are moving parts,
18:26
Speaker 1: and they're way up high, usually dozens of feet in
18:30
Speaker 1: the air, and they can be loud too, and they
18:33
Speaker 1: can get dirty and break down like any gears can.
18:36
Speaker 1: So there's another kind called a direct drive system and
18:40
Speaker 1: it it basically they figured out and I couldn't get
18:43
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this, they can use that regular
18:46
Speaker 1: rotation of a of a wind turbine to generate electricity.
18:52
Speaker 1: I think they just it just requires much larger parts.
18:57
Speaker 1: I think it's generally what the trade off is. So
19:00
Speaker 1: there's pros and cons to both kinds, and they've kind
19:03
Speaker 1: of come up with some new stuff that's on the
19:05
Speaker 1: horizon are happening now that seem to kind of supersede
19:08
Speaker 1: both of those too, as we'll talk about.
19:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, no matter how efficient you can
19:14
Speaker 2: build really any kind of power generation system, there are limits.
19:20
Speaker 2: At a certain point. You can increase efficiency and increase efficiency,
19:24
Speaker 2: but then the laws of physics step in and say,
19:27
Speaker 2: you can't be one hundred percent efficient. You're never going
19:29
Speaker 2: to capture every bit of the wind. It's just not possible.
19:34
Speaker 2: And there was a German physicist in nineteen nineteen named
19:37
Speaker 2: Albert Binns who calculated the theoretical maximum of kinetic energy
19:43
Speaker 2: that you can zap into electricity, and it basically caps
19:47
Speaker 2: off a close to sixty fifty nine point three percent.
19:51
Speaker 2: Wind is about thirty five to forty five percent efficient,
19:53
Speaker 2: which may not sound great, but Olivia helped us out
19:57
Speaker 2: with this. She points out, you know, wind is free,
19:59
Speaker 2: so it's not you know, you've got these things sitting
20:01
Speaker 2: out there, so it's not like you're paying to generate
20:04
Speaker 2: that wind.
20:05
Speaker 1: Right. Plus, also, if you look into the other types
20:07
Speaker 1: of fuels used to generate electricity, it's perfectly in line.
20:11
Speaker 1: Nuclear is between thirty to forty five percent efficient, coals
20:14
Speaker 1: thirty eight to forty five. Natural gas is only twenty
20:17
Speaker 1: five percent efficient. So it's way better than natural gas
20:21
Speaker 1: as far as efficiency goes. And if you're wondering why
20:24
Speaker 1: can it be one hundred percent efficient? The explanation that
20:28
Speaker 1: I found that I'm still having trouble digesting too. I
20:31
Speaker 1: think the gears thing really threw me off first. Then
20:33
Speaker 1: I went into this and it was just hopeless. To
20:38
Speaker 1: transfer one hundred percent of the power from wind to
20:40
Speaker 1: a turbine. That means the wind has to come to
20:43
Speaker 1: a stop and transfer all of its energy to the
20:46
Speaker 1: turbine when it comes in contact with it. And I
20:50
Speaker 1: understand that means the wind stops. But as long as
20:53
Speaker 1: there's a stream of wind coming at you. Why would
20:56
Speaker 1: that matter? That's my big question.
21:00
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on
21:02
Speaker 2: this one.
21:02
Speaker 1: All right, well, how about this. We'll take a break
21:05
Speaker 1: to everybody else. It will just be a couple of ads,
21:07
Speaker 1: but you and I will spend the next forty five
21:09
Speaker 1: minutes or so hashing this out.
21:10
Speaker 2: All right, Can we have lunch?
21:12
Speaker 1: We can have bult We'll order it.
21:14
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about
21:40
Speaker 3: where we stand today here in the United States.
21:42
Speaker 2: We'll get to elsewhere in the world later on. Don't
21:44
Speaker 2: you worry. We're looking at you, Denmark. Right now, the
21:48
Speaker 2: United States has about seventy thousand wind turbines going with
21:53
Speaker 2: a capacity a total potential capacity of about one hundred
21:57
Speaker 2: and forty six gigaway, which should make Doc Brown shake
22:02
Speaker 2: in his whatever kind of shoes he wore.
22:05
Speaker 1: I looked up what that is relative to what we use.
22:09
Speaker 1: I think we use something like thirteen hundred gigawatts, so
22:14
Speaker 1: it's like a tenth of that. But that's still pretty good.
22:18
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. We went from like basically
22:20
Speaker 1: zero wind power in the eighties to a tenth of
22:23
Speaker 1: our capacity is in the form of wind turbines.
22:27
Speaker 2: Nothing on Doc Brown.
22:28
Speaker 1: Huh No, I just think it was gonna so it
22:32
Speaker 1: fit so perfectly that it'd be like me pointing out
22:35
Speaker 1: that we've been using the word turbine. You know what
22:37
Speaker 1: I mean?
22:38
Speaker 2: Do you know who Doc Brown is? Sure who?
22:42
Speaker 1: He's like Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future. What
22:45
Speaker 1: kind of person do you think I am? Do you
22:47
Speaker 1: know me at all?
22:48
Speaker 2: I guess the kind of person who refuses to comment
22:50
Speaker 2: on a great Doc Brown joke.
22:52
Speaker 1: I was commenting on it. I was saying that it
22:54
Speaker 1: was such a perfect joke and it was inserted so
22:56
Speaker 1: perfectly that there.
22:57
Speaker 2: Was no aid, no comment. Yes, I have to remember
23:02
Speaker 2: that your joke was so good. A note, you know
23:06
Speaker 2: what that you basically just said? Is that so far
23:07
Speaker 2: any I forgot to laugh. So last year twenty twenty three,
23:14
Speaker 2: about ten percent of our electricity came from win Not
23:18
Speaker 2: too bad. I mentioned Texas as the leader. They're generating
23:21
Speaker 2: about twenty five percent of that a little more.
23:23
Speaker 1: Even that's just mind boggling to think considering Texas.
23:27
Speaker 2: You know they are, well, let's talk about Texas for
23:30
Speaker 2: a second, because they have been far and away the
23:34
Speaker 2: leader they got a lot of wide open land there
23:36
Speaker 2: in West Texas. They had their own their own power grid.
23:41
Speaker 2: They're the only state with their own power grid, so
23:43
Speaker 2: that makes it a lot easier for them with interstate
23:46
Speaker 2: projects to not have to you know, they can rely
23:49
Speaker 2: on themselves like Texans like to do. But here's the thing.
23:54
Speaker 2: In recent years, I don't think it's a stretch to
23:57
Speaker 2: say that there's been some I mean, Livia calls it
24:02
Speaker 2: ideological warfare, and she's basically right. And that's unfortunate because
24:07
Speaker 2: now there are conservatives in Texas that are making it
24:11
Speaker 2: harder to do something they're really really good at, and
24:14
Speaker 2: that's generate wind for power. And that's a real shame
24:18
Speaker 2: because it seems like ideology. I mean, I know there
24:23
Speaker 2: are and we'll talk about downsides of wind production and
24:26
Speaker 2: there are gripes that it's you know, there might be
24:28
Speaker 2: inconsistent supply, but it really seems to kind of come
24:31
Speaker 2: down to, like, no, we are an oil state, and
24:34
Speaker 2: we're even though we're great at making win, we I
24:38
Speaker 2: guess can't do both.
24:40
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I mean, even though they are
24:41
Speaker 1: an oil state, they've been an oil state for decades
24:44
Speaker 1: and decades like a century basically, and they still spend
24:48
Speaker 1: all this time and money and effort into creating this
24:51
Speaker 1: wind infrastructure.
24:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, still in Texas.
24:55
Speaker 1: I don't think it has anything to do with oil.
24:57
Speaker 1: I think I think a certain vein of conservativism equates
25:03
Speaker 1: anything part friendly to liberals.
25:06
Speaker 2: I know, I know, and like.
25:07
Speaker 1: Because everything's so divisive and the sides are just so
25:10
Speaker 1: divided that like you just can't possibly be into something
25:14
Speaker 1: that liberals favor, Like that's just crazy and vice versa.
25:17
Speaker 1: Like there's I mean, I don't mean to just say
25:19
Speaker 1: like this is all conservatives. Like the divisiveness. Definitely, it
25:23
Speaker 1: can be found on both sides of the equation. It's
25:27
Speaker 1: just sad that there's two sides. Let's just get past
25:29
Speaker 1: the sides.
25:30
Speaker 2: Everybody, Well, it's sad that it's affecting something like this, which,
25:34
Speaker 2: like I said, Texas is really really good at they
25:36
Speaker 2: have a lot a lot of it figured out. They're
25:39
Speaker 2: they're the leader in the United States, Like, keep it,
25:42
Speaker 2: keep it going, Texas.
25:43
Speaker 1: The thing is this chuck they're trying, they're not necessarily succeeding.
25:48
Speaker 1: In the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three session, a
25:51
Speaker 1: whole raft of bills that were trying to basically make
25:56
Speaker 1: win power investment harder. None of them past, and I
26:01
Speaker 1: think the reason why, and this is kind of like
26:03
Speaker 1: the thing like, yes, you can oppose wind power, but
26:05
Speaker 1: I think the giant gears are already in motion, like
26:09
Speaker 1: massive corporations. But you don't know how those were, I know,
26:13
Speaker 1: I don't, but I can tell when they're moving, I guess, so,
26:16
Speaker 1: like just giant multinational corporations have sunk so many tens
26:21
Speaker 1: and hundreds of billions of dollars into this investment and
26:25
Speaker 1: are starting now to actually reap benefit from it. It's
26:29
Speaker 1: not going back like sorry, it's just not so it's
26:32
Speaker 1: still moving forward. It just sucks that it has to
26:34
Speaker 1: move forward at this in this kind of.
26:36
Speaker 2: Like slow pace.
26:38
Speaker 1: It's just a negative but with a negative vibe, you.
26:41
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, no, totally. I mean hopefully you know, Americans
26:46
Speaker 2: are capitalists, and hopefully money well went out on the end, because,
26:48
Speaker 2: like you said, a lot of money invested and a
26:51
Speaker 2: lot of money to be made.
26:52
Speaker 1: The thing is, though, that's not to say that people
26:55
Speaker 1: who oppose, especially locally, oppose when projects don't have a point.
27:02
Speaker 1: There's a lot to be said about not wanting to
27:04
Speaker 1: live near a wind turbine, in particular a wind farm,
27:09
Speaker 1: because it's just one of those things that like, this
27:13
Speaker 1: is going to impact your life. It can impact your
27:16
Speaker 1: real estate values, it can impact what's called the view shed,
27:20
Speaker 1: just simply your view. There's actual legitimate reasons for people
27:24
Speaker 1: to push back on this stuff, but that doesn't mean
27:27
Speaker 1: that there can't be like a compromise, a way forward
27:30
Speaker 1: to find legitimate places where wind can be generated well
27:35
Speaker 1: and efficiently without you know, ruining some nearby community.
27:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of what's called
27:43
Speaker 2: nimbi going on, Yeah, on both sides, you know, well, yeah.
27:48
Speaker 1: For sure, And again I don't blame anybody for that.
27:50
Speaker 1: It sucks because that whole idea means that usually poorer
27:56
Speaker 1: communities who can't represent themselves and don't have the the
28:00
Speaker 1: means to really like have the political clout to push
28:03
Speaker 1: back on that kind of thing, end up with this stuff.
28:06
Speaker 1: But it seems like that with with things like wind
28:10
Speaker 1: turbine farms in particular, the decision making is being decentralized,
28:15
Speaker 1: so more and more local communities are being able to
28:18
Speaker 1: step in and being like, no, this is not happening.
28:20
Speaker 2: Here.
28:21
Speaker 1: Sorry, we're our city council voted against it. It's not happening,
28:24
Speaker 1: And I think that that's I think that's legitimate. I
28:28
Speaker 1: think that I don't know what the way forward is,
28:32
Speaker 1: but I know that there's a way forward. But I
28:35
Speaker 1: don't think it's shoving a wind farm down in a
28:37
Speaker 1: local community's throughout, whether they like it or not.
28:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by the way, an MBA people are like,
28:42
Speaker 2: what the heck is Chuck talking about. That's just the acronym,
28:45
Speaker 2: the not in my backyard thing. You're like, no, wind
28:48
Speaker 2: energy is great, we should totally do it, but I
28:49
Speaker 2: don't want one of those in my backyard over there.
28:52
Speaker 2: Go do it over there, much much better exactly. But
28:56
Speaker 2: moving on, we promised to talk about offshore. Most of
29:00
Speaker 2: what's going on right now is on land. In terms
29:02
Speaker 2: of wind collection. I guess they're not collecting it, but
29:06
Speaker 2: in a way they are, sure. But if you think
29:08
Speaker 2: about a lot of wind out on the open ocean,
29:11
Speaker 2: that seems like a no brainer in some ways. And
29:14
Speaker 2: we will get to the environmental aspects of all this
29:17
Speaker 2: stuff later. So people out there screaming like how can
29:20
Speaker 2: you put more things in the ocean, Like, we'll get
29:22
Speaker 2: to it, but it is a promising idea stronger winds.
29:28
Speaker 2: There's a lot of permitting issues, obviously what we just
29:31
Speaker 2: talked about with the NIMBI thing. A lot of communities,
29:34
Speaker 2: you know, beachfront property or generally people who either you know,
29:38
Speaker 2: if you're lucky enough to have owned it forever, you
29:40
Speaker 2: may not be super wealthy, but most people who like
29:43
Speaker 2: live on the beach are wealthy and they don't want
29:45
Speaker 2: to see that stuff. So there's been a lot of
29:48
Speaker 2: complaints about looking at that kind of thing. But we
29:52
Speaker 2: may be headed toward I mean that they're building more
29:57
Speaker 2: and more of them in the coming years. It seems
29:59
Speaker 2: like is.
30:00
Speaker 1: Kind of what I was talking about. There was a
30:01
Speaker 1: big push against the Vineyard wind project. Yeah, I should
30:07
Speaker 1: say there was a vocal push against it. And it's
30:09
Speaker 1: still happening. Like they're they're doing i think sixty two turbines,
30:13
Speaker 1: they've already got five installed, and it's just it's moving forward.
30:17
Speaker 1: But at the same time, like a bunch of local
30:19
Speaker 1: people who make their money off of fishing, they were
30:22
Speaker 1: affected by this, Like they're fishing grounds were now a
30:27
Speaker 1: wind turbine farm. They couldn't fish there anymore, so they're
30:30
Speaker 1: being compensated for that.
30:32
Speaker 2: They're paying commercial fishermen to not fish, essentially.
30:36
Speaker 1: To stay out of this area at least or to
30:38
Speaker 1: accept a buffer zone. So like, yeah, there's like that's
30:43
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. There's compromises to be to be made here.
30:45
Speaker 1: And other people are like, this view shed thing, what
30:47
Speaker 1: are you talking about? Like, if you hold your hand up,
30:50
Speaker 1: the windmill that you see on the horizon is smaller
30:53
Speaker 1: than your fingernail, Like, that's what you're seeing. And other
30:57
Speaker 1: people like, I don't want to see it.
30:59
Speaker 2: I don't think it's swimming out.
31:01
Speaker 1: I don't want to see it. But those people seem
31:04
Speaker 1: to have I guess they're outnumbered or outgunned by the
31:10
Speaker 1: people who are like, no, this project's going forward. And
31:13
Speaker 1: again it's tough to argue about it because sure, right now,
31:16
Speaker 1: the sixty eight megawatts that that Vineyard Wind project is
31:21
Speaker 1: putting out with just the five turbines, that's enough to
31:24
Speaker 1: power thirty thousand homes, and their goal is something like
31:28
Speaker 1: eight hundred megawatts, So there's going to be a lot
31:31
Speaker 1: of people getting a lot of clean energy from the
31:34
Speaker 1: wind project.
31:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are more kind of people are looking
31:39
Speaker 2: to the Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico may have one
31:41
Speaker 2: at some point. The mid Atlantic is being targeted. Joe
31:45
Speaker 2: Biden and his administration have a target of thirty thousand
31:49
Speaker 2: megawatt offshore hours by twenty thirty. It seems like like
31:54
Speaker 2: we're going to mention a lot of like goals and things.
31:57
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like any of these will be reached,
31:58
Speaker 2: but those are the goals at least, And you know,
32:01
Speaker 2: we're kind of explaining why as we're going. But California
32:05
Speaker 2: is trying to get twenty thousand, I'm sorry, twenty five
32:07
Speaker 2: thousand megawatts by twenty forty five. These are going to
32:12
Speaker 2: be floating because of Pacific is so deep and cal
32:16
Speaker 2: Berkeley they did a study and they said that offshore
32:19
Speaker 2: wind by twenty to fifty could potentially supply between ten
32:23
Speaker 2: and twenty five percent of all US energy, not just
32:27
Speaker 2: wind energy.
32:27
Speaker 1: And offshore is the smallest one, so it's the smallest segment.
32:31
Speaker 1: And the fact that the offshore wind farms are so
32:35
Speaker 1: small right now, that's significant growth. And I get the
32:38
Speaker 1: impression that one of the reasons they're growing is one
32:40
Speaker 1: it's not up on anybody's real estate. It's like way
32:43
Speaker 1: out in the ocean, even though you can kind of
32:45
Speaker 1: see them. But secondly, fifty percent of Americans live within
32:48
Speaker 1: fifty miles of a coast, and transmission lines are a
32:51
Speaker 1: real thing, a real issue for wind power. So if
32:56
Speaker 1: you can get you know, a fifty mile length of
32:59
Speaker 1: transmission wire to fifty percent of Americans, that's a pretty
33:05
Speaker 1: significant number of people.
33:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if some of these, you know, like
33:10
Speaker 2: the younger generation is generally, I mean, this is a
33:13
Speaker 2: broad stroke, but generally a little more into trying to
33:17
Speaker 2: go toward renewable energy. So I wonder if they're sort
33:20
Speaker 2: of you know, if like the rich kids are even
33:23
Speaker 2: fighting back against their parents about stuff like this. Like,
33:27
Speaker 2: I wonder how you know you said it was like
33:29
Speaker 2: a pinky nail, right, Dad's complaining he's on the beach,
33:34
Speaker 2: and the kids are like, Dad, just hold up your
33:36
Speaker 2: pinky nail. Block it out roomor exactly.
33:40
Speaker 1: The thing is is, I was very interested to find
33:43
Speaker 1: this out. There's a lot of environmentalists who are opposed
33:46
Speaker 1: to these wind projects too. They're making strange bedfellows with
33:49
Speaker 1: people who don't like renewable at all. They're like, you're
33:52
Speaker 1: an environmentalist, how can you be opposed to this. They're like,
33:55
Speaker 1: look at those giant turbine. That's just one of them,
33:59
Speaker 1: and they're put more and more offshore. They're ruining habitats,
34:03
Speaker 1: they're ruining communities, Like, this is not the way to go.
34:06
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, what way do you want to go? Hippie, Like,
34:09
Speaker 1: what's wrong? Now? We're finally doing the stuff you wanted
34:11
Speaker 1: to do. And the thread that seems to be emerging
34:14
Speaker 1: among younger environmentalists or among environmentalists in general, is degrowth.
34:19
Speaker 1: It's like, no, we don't need to create more and
34:21
Speaker 1: more wind farms to meet electrical demand that's going to
34:24
Speaker 1: increase over the next two decades. We need to decrease
34:27
Speaker 1: the electrical demand, and yeah, we need to supply it
34:30
Speaker 1: with wind and stuff like that, but we're going in
34:33
Speaker 1: the wrong direction here. We're billing, billing to meet growth, growth, growth.
34:37
Speaker 1: They're like, we need to stop growing. So that's actually
34:39
Speaker 1: made them opposed to a lot of these projects, especially
34:42
Speaker 1: the biggest ones.
34:43
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think those people look out and
34:45
Speaker 2: see a big wind farm and it doesn't look any
34:48
Speaker 2: different to them than a nuclear power plant or a
34:50
Speaker 2: huge coal plant. All they see is some giant monstrosity
34:54
Speaker 2: of capitalism at work.
34:56
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
34:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, then you know there's a point, so.
35:00
Speaker 1: I say we take a break and we'll jump back
35:01
Speaker 1: into the more of the nuts and bolts of this,
35:04
Speaker 1: all right, okay, Chuck. In addition to a lot of
35:30
Speaker 1: the pushback that we just covered for a while, there's
35:33
Speaker 1: a lot of practical issues and challenges to making wind.
35:37
Speaker 1: What was it like, up to twenty five percent of
35:40
Speaker 1: US demand by twenty fifty. I think that's crazy. One
35:44
Speaker 1: of them is transmission.
35:45
Speaker 2: Like I said, you had, the wind is out in
35:47
Speaker 2: the middle of nowhere. That's the problem.
35:49
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Yeah, the places where it blows the
35:52
Speaker 1: most there are the least number of people, and that
35:55
Speaker 1: means you have to build an infrastructure to get it
35:57
Speaker 1: from those less populated areas of the populated areas that
36:01
Speaker 1: want to use it. That's a big one. And apparently
36:04
Speaker 1: there was a Princeton study that found that transmission infrastructure
36:08
Speaker 1: is growing at just like one percent a year, and
36:12
Speaker 1: that if we keep that pace up. The reduction and
36:16
Speaker 1: fossil fuel emissions that the Inflation Reduction Act envisioned with
36:21
Speaker 1: a lot of it's green stuff. That was associated with it,
36:23
Speaker 1: we'll lose eighty percent of that. Yeah, that reduction, so
36:27
Speaker 1: we need to definitely expand transmission lines. It's a big,
36:30
Speaker 1: big step.
36:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, getting the power there is a big deal.
36:34
Speaker 2: One idea that you know has a lot of promise,
36:38
Speaker 2: but you know, it all has its downsides of course,
36:40
Speaker 2: like there is no like perfect system is storing the energy.
36:45
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of work being done toward you know,
36:49
Speaker 2: storage capacity because you know, right now, if the sun
36:53
Speaker 2: isn't shining, if it's super cloudy a lot, if the
36:56
Speaker 2: wind isn't blowing very much, then solar and wind are
36:58
Speaker 2: going to take a hit. And then that means that
37:01
Speaker 2: the fossil fuel plants just sort of make up for that.
37:04
Speaker 2: But if you know, if we're leaning more and more
37:06
Speaker 2: on solar and wind and other renewables, we're gonna have
37:10
Speaker 2: to figure out a way to store that stuff.
37:13
Speaker 1: Yeah. So so just real quick for people who are
37:16
Speaker 1: in the United States or who are in the United
37:18
Speaker 1: States and don't pay attention to congressional packages, The Inflation
37:22
Speaker 1: Reduction Act was a bill, was a law that was
37:25
Speaker 1: passed in twenty twenty two that had it was just
37:28
Speaker 1: this huge, huge, spending package. But one of the things
37:32
Speaker 1: that it really focused on was the US infrastructure, which
37:35
Speaker 1: needs updating big time. But it also looked forward down
37:39
Speaker 1: the future and was like, how can we invest in
37:42
Speaker 1: energy and renewables And basically it said the government's even
37:45
Speaker 1: more open for business for renewable investment than before and
37:49
Speaker 1: as a results, already had huge impacts. That was passed
37:52
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty three, the investment
37:57
Speaker 1: in renewables storage so basically giant batteries that can store
38:02
Speaker 1: solar and wind power for use later, has increased by
38:05
Speaker 1: three hundred percent. They predicted that in twenty forty there
38:09
Speaker 1: was going to be fifty gigawatts of storage capacity, and
38:14
Speaker 1: now they're up to they're predicting it'll be more like
38:16
Speaker 1: two hundred gigawatts of storage capacity by twenty forty, just
38:20
Speaker 1: because of the Inflation Reduction Act.
38:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again, you know these batteries are you know,
38:27
Speaker 2: not environmentally friendly to create batteries like that. I don't
38:31
Speaker 2: even think we mentioned really the rare earth metals and
38:34
Speaker 2: things that are used for these, for the magnets, for
38:37
Speaker 2: the turbines, like that stuff isn't great either. So like
38:41
Speaker 2: like we said there is no perfect system. I think
38:44
Speaker 2: early on the sort of pie in the sky stuff
38:46
Speaker 2: with renewables was just like use wind in u sun,
38:49
Speaker 2: which is great, but you can't just talk about the
38:53
Speaker 2: blue sky stuff without talking about the downsides.
38:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we need to listen to the downsides too,
38:59
Speaker 1: and then go back, say the drawing board, and not
39:01
Speaker 1: be like, Nope, this is the way we're doing it totally.
39:03
Speaker 1: We need to say okay, great, like we're all we're
39:05
Speaker 1: all on board with moving forward, with us like, how
39:07
Speaker 1: can we figure out enough of us are on board
39:10
Speaker 1: with moving forward? How can we figure out how to
39:12
Speaker 1: do it so that it impacts the fewest people possible
39:15
Speaker 1: in the least amount possible. And that's I mean, we're smart,
39:18
Speaker 1: like humans are fairly smart animals, and we can figure
39:21
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff out. We just have to go
39:23
Speaker 1: out of our way to take that into account. I
39:26
Speaker 1: feel like that's going to happen.
39:28
Speaker 2: I think so too, I say, with trepidation. Right, So
39:34
Speaker 2: we talked about where we promised talk about what's going
39:37
Speaker 2: on around the world, and we mentioned Denmark of course,
39:41
Speaker 2: because just like those windmills back in the day, they
39:44
Speaker 2: were leader then and they're the leader. Now they create
39:47
Speaker 2: fifty four zo point three percent of their power supply
39:52
Speaker 2: from when in Denmark as of a couple of years
39:54
Speaker 2: ago in twenty twenty two. Other European countries Spain, Germany,
39:59
Speaker 2: Portugal and then the UK they're over twenty percent. So
40:03
Speaker 2: they're doing pretty good if you're talking and that's percentage wise.
40:06
Speaker 2: If you're talking just total wind generation. The US is
40:09
Speaker 2: number two with four hundred and thirty watt tarawatt hours
40:14
Speaker 2: annually right now, but you mentioned China. We're at four
40:18
Speaker 2: thirty four in second place. China is generating seven hundred
40:21
Speaker 2: and sixty three tarawatt hours per year and like running
40:25
Speaker 2: away with it.
40:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, And actually the world is extraordinarily fortunate that China
40:30
Speaker 1: has decided to do that rather than just rely on
40:32
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, because the pollution that would be even worse
40:37
Speaker 1: than it is now if they were used if they
40:39
Speaker 1: use fossil instead of like wind and solar as they're
40:42
Speaker 1: planning on doing, it would just be the impact would
40:46
Speaker 1: be nuts essentially.
40:48
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think their goal in China is
40:51
Speaker 2: full carbon neutrality by twenty sixty and wind is a
40:56
Speaker 2: very very big part of that.
40:58
Speaker 1: Also, we should point out China is not doing that
41:01
Speaker 1: because of their magnanimous benevolence towards humanity and the planet.
41:05
Speaker 1: They're doing it because there's they recognize that there's a
41:08
Speaker 1: lot of money coming down the pike for for whoever
41:13
Speaker 1: is prepared for this kind of revolution, and it's actually
41:17
Speaker 1: happening right now. That figure from how much just the
41:19
Speaker 1: US alone improved as far as wind generation goes from
41:23
Speaker 1: the nineties is just astounding. Like I knew it was
41:26
Speaker 1: going on in the background, I had no idea that
41:28
Speaker 1: we were this far along already, which I found very heartening.
41:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, same. So we talked a lot about the
41:35
Speaker 2: downsides here and there. We haven't talked about animals yet. Obviously,
41:40
Speaker 2: anytime you're screwing up a habitat for animals in nature,
41:45
Speaker 2: that's going to have a real bad effect. You know,
41:48
Speaker 2: there's no way around it. They're gonna I mean, just
41:50
Speaker 2: those spinning blades are gonna kill birds and bats and
41:53
Speaker 2: things that fly into them. But the wind pressure around
41:57
Speaker 2: these farms can affect the habitats. The terrestrial animals are affected.
42:02
Speaker 2: I think they did a study in Europe about their
42:05
Speaker 2: row deer and the European hair that are like they're
42:08
Speaker 2: just not here anymore because of these wind farms in Norway.
42:13
Speaker 2: You know, they're obviously got a lot of wind going there,
42:16
Speaker 2: but they're they're shutting things down because reindeer. It's affecting reindeer,
42:22
Speaker 2: which is, you know, a very big deal in Norway
42:24
Speaker 2: and the indigenous Sami people who heard the reindeer. So
42:28
Speaker 2: they can't mess with the indigenous cultures there. So they're
42:31
Speaker 2: shutting some of those down right.
42:33
Speaker 1: They're they're they're it's impacting local communities, no matter how
42:37
Speaker 1: small the community that's they're they're responding to it. That's
42:40
Speaker 1: a big that's a big deal. There's also, i think
42:43
Speaker 1: you said earlier, a lot of impact with ocean based
42:48
Speaker 1: wind because these things are huge. They're like giant oil dereks,
42:53
Speaker 1: but there's a bunch of them and they have to
42:55
Speaker 1: be like mounted to the continental shels so they don't
42:57
Speaker 1: blow over. So it's a huge, massive project. And the
43:01
Speaker 1: sound that it generates can rupture whales, ear drums, it
43:05
Speaker 1: can completely disturb breeding grounds, it can do a lot
43:08
Speaker 1: of stuff. But again it's been pointed out like if
43:11
Speaker 1: you do this right and you do the right kind
43:13
Speaker 1: of studies. If you look around and say who is
43:15
Speaker 1: this going to impact, and then how can we mitigate
43:18
Speaker 1: those impacts? There's stuff you can do to make the
43:21
Speaker 1: impact that much lesser as low as possible. Like, if
43:26
Speaker 1: you're impacting whales, then plan the construction phase of it
43:30
Speaker 1: for a time when the whales are off migrating on
43:31
Speaker 1: another part of the ocean, so it's not going to
43:34
Speaker 1: blow out their ear drums when you pile Drive the
43:36
Speaker 1: pylons into the continental shelf, or move it over a
43:40
Speaker 1: little bit, keep it out of the whales breeding ground,
43:42
Speaker 1: put it somewhere else. Like, there's just little things you
43:45
Speaker 1: can do that will decrease that impact tremendously.
43:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. One thing we haven't talked about that.
43:54
Speaker 2: I mean, I never really considered this, which is really
43:57
Speaker 2: short sighted of me. But these are big, massive machines,
44:02
Speaker 2: and when big massive machines reach the end of their life,
44:05
Speaker 2: you know, it's not like they'll go forever. These are
44:07
Speaker 2: physical materials that wear out, including those huge turbines and blades.
44:13
Speaker 2: So when that stuff, you know, the ones that kind
44:18
Speaker 2: of came on early in the nineties, in two thousands,
44:20
Speaker 2: some of those are nearing the end of their life,
44:22
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, you're stuck with these blades
44:24
Speaker 2: that you know, are just gargantuan and they're not made
44:28
Speaker 2: of bamboo or banana fiber. You know, they're fiberglass and
44:33
Speaker 2: epoxy resin, and they're kind of an environmental nightmare, and
44:37
Speaker 2: so like, what do you do with those? You can't
44:39
Speaker 2: just fill landfills with these giant beasts. No.
44:43
Speaker 1: There's a company in Tennessee called Carbon Rivers that says
44:46
Speaker 1: that they recycled about a thousand of the blades in
44:49
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, so I'm guessing is probably significant, but
44:53
Speaker 1: still maybe a drop in the bucket. Yeah, But they
44:56
Speaker 1: figured out how to extract the carbon fibers from the
45:00
Speaker 1: POxy resin, and then you can reuse the carbon fibers
45:03
Speaker 1: because they're very strong stuff. So that's great, that's good
45:07
Speaker 1: to have that online. But the better solution, at least
45:10
Speaker 1: in the future, is to start manufacturing the turbine blades
45:14
Speaker 1: in ways that they can be much more easily recycled.
45:16
Speaker 1: So I think they're using the same material still, they're
45:18
Speaker 1: just using processes that can later on down the road
45:23
Speaker 1: be reversed more easily, and you can separate the fiberglass
45:26
Speaker 1: from the epoxy more easily.
45:29
Speaker 2: And like, you know, kind of what you've been saying about,
45:32
Speaker 2: like why don't you change the way you're doing things
45:35
Speaker 2: as we go instead of being locked in? That is
45:37
Speaker 2: happening with those blades. And there's a company in Germany. Oh,
45:41
Speaker 2: actually it's Semens, big company. Sure. Is that the same
45:46
Speaker 2: company Semens Gamesa as regular Semens Sure? Okay, I just
45:51
Speaker 2: never heard the full name. I guess I didn't know
45:52
Speaker 2: Semens had a last name. But they're basically saying, well,
45:57
Speaker 2: why don't we make a better kind of blade that
45:59
Speaker 2: uses a different kind of resin that is much more
46:02
Speaker 2: easily separated from that fiberglass. So things like that, like
46:07
Speaker 2: you're talking about, like make the parts more easily recyclable
46:12
Speaker 2: or reusable. You know, I know they're using them on
46:15
Speaker 2: like like playgrounds and stuff, trying to repurpose them. I
46:18
Speaker 2: guess it makes it a heck of a slide or
46:21
Speaker 2: something like that. But that they're you know, there are
46:24
Speaker 2: limits to how much you can I mean, it all helps,
46:27
Speaker 2: but how much Because there's a lot of blades out there,
46:29
Speaker 2: they're going to be coming offline, you know.
46:31
Speaker 1: Right, and they're big also by the way. I think
46:33
Speaker 1: I was using carbon fiber and fiberglass interchangeably, and I'm
46:37
Speaker 1: not quite sure that's right. So they're fiberglass, right.
46:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
46:44
Speaker 1: So there's a couple of other things that that are
46:46
Speaker 1: drawbacks to turbines that need to be addressed. Once called
46:51
Speaker 1: shadow flicker. When the sun is lowish on the horizon
46:56
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of beaming through the wind turbine.
46:59
Speaker 1: As the turbines bins, it makes a flickering shadow, and
47:02
Speaker 1: if you live in range of that shadow, it can
47:05
Speaker 1: drive you crazy. As a matter of fact, they did
47:07
Speaker 1: a study to make sure that it wasn't rapid enough
47:11
Speaker 1: to trigger seizures, and apparently the max is again sixty RPMs,
47:17
Speaker 1: so I think it's like one hundred. It takes double
47:20
Speaker 1: that to start to trigger photosensitive seizures. They're like, it's
47:24
Speaker 1: not going to trigger a seizure, but yes, it's extremely
47:27
Speaker 1: annoying when it happens. But they're like, it only happens
47:30
Speaker 1: certain times of the year for a couple of hours
47:33
Speaker 1: out of a day. Can you just get used to it?
47:35
Speaker 1: And some people are like no, and then other people
47:38
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, it's not They did another study of
47:40
Speaker 1: people who lived in proximity of wind turbines are like,
47:43
Speaker 1: I don't even really notice anymore. And then noise too,
47:47
Speaker 1: Like it makes a noise. But again, the fewer parts
47:50
Speaker 1: that you have, the less noise is gonna make. Like
47:55
Speaker 1: if you don't have a gearbox, those gears aren't there
47:57
Speaker 1: to make a bunch of noise. If you do have
47:58
Speaker 1: a gearbox to soundproof, you're what'd you call that that
48:02
Speaker 1: package that the airplane has to uh nestle a nestle.
48:07
Speaker 1: And then also they're making I think these giant those
48:11
Speaker 1: giant turbines are also going to be quieter. They're like
48:13
Speaker 1: eighteen percent quieter or something like that. So, yeah, there's
48:17
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed, but
48:19
Speaker 1: I feel like I just think it's going to get addressed.
48:23
Speaker 1: If I can share my.
48:24
Speaker 2: Opinion, Yeah, it's a sunny opinion.
48:27
Speaker 1: Are you got anything else?
48:28
Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
48:30
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, that's it for wind turbines for now.
48:32
Speaker 1: We'll have to revisit it in your thirty five of
48:36
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Uh And since I said that,
48:38
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mane.
48:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna call this. Marcie is definitely Asian. We
48:47
Speaker 2: heard from quite a few Asian listeners for our Peanuts
48:49
Speaker 2: episode who were very kind, but they were kind of like, guys,
48:54
Speaker 2: you seemed a little hesitant to kind of to kind
48:56
Speaker 2: of go there, but go there because Marc was clearly
49:00
Speaker 2: Asian to every kid that was Asian and reading Peanuts.
49:05
Speaker 2: And this one is from Hugh Nuian. So, hey, guys,
49:10
Speaker 2: I'm a forty three year old Vietnamese American who grew
49:13
Speaker 2: up reading and watching Peanuts my friend's family, and I
49:16
Speaker 2: assumed without question that Charles Schultz intended Marshy to be
49:20
Speaker 2: Asian American by drawing and writing her with so many
49:22
Speaker 2: shortcuts to signal Asian American identity. First, her haircut. Marshy's
49:29
Speaker 2: hair's short black bob with bangs. Many Asian American girls
49:32
Speaker 2: had this bus free homemade haircut exacted upon them by
49:36
Speaker 2: their frugal mothers. Number two, her glasses. Asians and Americans
49:40
Speaker 2: and Asian Americans do have a higher rate of myopia
49:43
Speaker 2: and developed countries, so I wear is just more common
49:46
Speaker 2: with us. She's awkward because she is so busy. I
49:50
Speaker 2: quote an article by Kevin Wong which resonates with me
49:54
Speaker 2: and so many children raised by overly protective immigrant parents
49:58
Speaker 2: who carried the trauma of war and or forced immigration.
50:01
Speaker 2: Marci couldn't come out to play because she had to
50:03
Speaker 2: practice her organ she had to study, she had to read.
50:07
Speaker 2: This was our experience number four. She is mothered by everyone.
50:12
Speaker 2: Asian language, food, religion, and culture in general were and
50:15
Speaker 2: might still be considered foreign and weird in many parts
50:18
Speaker 2: of the US. And I just assume Marcy was depicted
50:21
Speaker 2: as a strange little girl, because that's how the Peanuts
50:24
Speaker 2: Gang and the rest of America would perceive an unathletic,
50:28
Speaker 2: bookish Asian child. And then finally she calls Peppermint Patty
50:33
Speaker 2: sir because English is her second language. Guys, In many
50:36
Speaker 2: East and Southeast Asian languages, children address adults and people
50:39
Speaker 2: in positions of power and respect with courtesy titles that
50:43
Speaker 2: have no gender. So that's why Peprimitt Patty was called sir.
50:49
Speaker 1: Wowey, who is this?
50:51
Speaker 2: This is from an I got a pronunciation guide. It's
50:55
Speaker 2: spelled hi eu pronounced hugh and n g u y
50:59
Speaker 2: e n and Hugh said, I pronounced that hugh ewan.
51:03
Speaker 2: But different people even pronounced my last name differently within
51:07
Speaker 2: my own country.
51:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've always seen it pronounces or heard it pronounces when.
51:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that was a great email, and we appreciate
51:16
Speaker 2: all our Asian and Asian American listeners who wrote in
51:19
Speaker 2: about that saying, guys, we thought she was Asian, so
51:22
Speaker 2: it's okay to say that.
51:24
Speaker 1: That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. If you want to get
51:26
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Hugh did and everybody else,
51:30
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, send it off to
51:32
Speaker 1: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
51:39
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51:40
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