April 23, 2024 • 51 mins
You probably know wind energy projects have been around since the 90s, but did you know they now provide 10% of America’s energy, and more than that in other countries? Learn about what’s ahead for wind and what it’ll need to become a real star like coal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you,
so putatively see us.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
That's right, May twenty ninth. We'll be in Boston, really Medford, Massachusetts.
The next night we're gonna go down to Washington, DC,
and then scooch back up to New York City at
Town Hall on May thirty first.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, and if you're one of those people who likes
to plan way far in advance, then you can go
ahead and get tickets for our shows in August. We're
gonna start out where Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We're gonna be in Chicago August seventh, Minneapolis August eighth,
then Indianapolis for the very first time on August ninth,
and then we're gonna wrap it up in Durham, North Carolina,
and right here in Atlanta on September fifth and September seventh.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yep. So you can get all the info you need
and all the ticket links you need by going to
stuff youshould Know dot com and hitting that tour button,
or you can also go to linktree slash SYSK Live.
We'll see you guys this year.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Ben's here too, and this is stuff you should.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Know, wind edition because it's blowing my microphone all over
the place. Of what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I feel like you should handle this one and I'll
just do WIN sound effects in the background the whole time.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, that'll be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't
know what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Is it eerie?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No? Just nothing is right. Sometimes I feel like Ruby
comes in here and messes with stuff. Oh no, I
think that's the ghost.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what happens in it?
I do this?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different. Huh okay,
all right, I'm fine. I'm back to normal.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well I'm back to normal too. I'm gonna go ahead
and presume Ben's back to normal. So you listener. If
you're back to normal, great, we can get started then.
If not, we'll wait. Just email us.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah. So we're talking about wind power, and I guess
a good starting point would be history and not to
get to like in the weeds with you know, sailing
ships and stuff like that, because people have long been
using wind for different things. But I think as far
as generating power early on, you know, water was the thing.
(02:21):
Obviously Cole was the thing. But there was a guy,
a very intelligent Scott and we love our Scottish people.
In eighteen eighty seven, it was an engineer who designed
the first wind turbine to do what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, and it's not like he was the first person
to come up with a wind turbine. I mean, everybody
knows the Dutch had windmills for centuries and centuries before,
but this guy was the first one to try to
genuinely harness wind power to generate electricity. His name was
James Blythe and he had a second home apparently in
the town of mary Kirk in Scotland, which has great
(03:00):
gotch I assume. And he had so much power from
his wind turbine, chuck, that he offered the access of
it to the town of mary Kirk. And this guy
was so advanced he had twelve batteries storing the electrical
power that his wind turbine was generating. He just invented
(03:21):
it like lock stock and barrel the first time.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Out Great Scott.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Literally he really wasn't Great Scott, so.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You know, and on small scales. People came behind him
and were doing it, but it wasn't really until a gentleman,
a Danish gentleman, a meteorologist named I've never seen that
pou L poll I guess polar Coor he is the
one who really has a lot of the you know,
(03:51):
gets a lot of the credit rightfully. So we're kind
of getting when generated power going in a serious way
because in the eighteen nineties he's like, you know what,
I can produce a steady stream of power. This thing
isn't as intermittent as they were before, and I'm actually
going to create enough power for my village, for the
(04:12):
village of Askoff, and I'm going to have found something
that sounds like sorcery. I'm gonna found the Society of
Wind Electricians even.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, and he did. He was very successful. Out of
the gate. That was nineteen oh eighteen ninety five. He
started nineteen oh eight. There were seventy two different systems
running in Denmark and each of them had a capacity
between five and twenty five kilowatts, which is peanuts peanuts now,
but at the time. This is remember in our Love
(04:41):
Canal episode where electricity for a while no matter how
you generated, it had to be generated like right next
to where you were distributing the power. So it would
make sense that you'd have a windmill like right at
the village that was being powered, because if you were
getting it from a coal fire plant, you had to
have it right there too, So that I made wind
kind of competitive for a while, and even until the
(05:03):
into the twentieth century, it was still fairly competitive, even
as coal and gas fired electrical plants started to take
over because in rural areas they didn't have access to
the grid, so they were using wind turbines. And then
finally FDR comes along and said, n's to that, We're
electrifying this whole darn toutin country, and the wind turbines
(05:26):
fell over in surprise, and coal fired electrical grids took over.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, and they pretty much held the you know, the
high ground until the nineties, when there was a renewed
interest in wind. Things got a little windy in the
nineties and ninety two Congress passed a tax credit. Clinton
came along after that, you know, started to fund more
you know, basically federal projects toward wind, and then states
(05:53):
got on board individually, especially states like Texas and Iowa.
You know, if you're out and you have lots of
of wind, lots of open planes, you can generate more
wind energy. And Texas, for their part, has really, you know,
up until recent years, been super supportive of wind energy
and are far and away the leader in US wind energy.
(06:17):
But as just as far as like raw numbers, from
nineteen ninety to twenty ten, we went from almost two
point eight billion kilowatt hours to close to five point
six billion, and then twenty ten that jumped to ninety
five billion, which is just a huge jump over that
(06:38):
span of time. And then now in twenty twenty two
we are at four hundred and thirty four billion kilowat hours.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So in thirty two years we went from two point
seventy nine billion to four hundred and thirty four billions.
That is right, that's pretty rapid progress. I mean, that's amazing.
That's just in the United States too, as we'll see
like around the world, they're trees who are like, yeah,
why don't you catch up, lame mos, and then other
countries like China are just jumping ahead of the curve
(07:07):
even more impressively. But wind is definitely I'm sorry for this,
but wind is picking up around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, so we should probably talk a little bit about
how the actual machine works. We're going to concentrate on
the hot systems, that is the horizontal axis. Hawt just
a little bit about the vertical axis. The vaults. They're
kind of cool and that you can you don't like
have to point it at the wind. But they're smaller,
(07:35):
they're slower, they're not as efficient. Therefore, you know, small
scale generation, So those aren't sort of the big daddies,
the big players in the field. It's really the hot
rotors that are hot.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
They're hella hot, they are. So Yeah, if you have
a small what's called a distributed system, which is like
that thing that say James Blyth Paul LeCour came up
with that just powers like a very small area, you're
probably going to do a vertical axis type. It's like
a merry go round with sails around it. But the
sails are actually wind turbines and it looks cool, cooler
(08:09):
than a horizontal axis one if you ask me. But
the horizontal ones are most ubiquitous because they can generate
power in aces compared to the vertical types. Right, they're
way more efficient. You can make them way bigger, because
if you're making something with a vertical axis, it takes
up ground space because it's basically on the ground. The
(08:31):
horizontal ones, they're way up in the air, catching generally
steady streams of air that have very little turbulence, that
are moving fairly fast compared to the stuff on the ground,
and they can convert it very efficiently, at least as
far as wind turbines are concerned into electricity.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, you mentioned the size. These are the you know,
if you're traveling out west in the planes or something
and you see a wind farm. These are the big
daddies that we're talking about. The little guys are about
eight feet in diameter. These you know, these are the rotors.
But if you go offshore, and we'll talk a little
bit more about what's going what's going on in the ocean,
(09:10):
but those can be eight hundred feet generate up to
eighteen megawatts, which is just a lot of power being generated.
And I mean those things are just absolutely enormous, Like
I can't even picture what an eight hundred foot turbine
might look like.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So take three football fields, cut off just a little
bit of the third one, and then that's the the
turbine diameter. I mean, it's so massive it like boggles
the mind, even though we're talking about you know, a
few hundred feet. It's just I just can't imagine what
that looks like up close.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, same, so connecting to the US power grid. Like
the size of these things have basically increased over time.
They've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger these days.
If you're talking like not those gargantuans offshore, but irregular
like terrestrial turbine on a wind farm is generally about
four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet in diameter,
(10:04):
they're about thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground,
and they generate each one about three point two megawatts.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and this is actually a case where bigger's better.
From what I've seen, the bigger they are means that
they can generate more electricity, which means that you need
fewer of them on site. So I saw the average
is expected to go down in like next year from
two hundred and twenty two turbines and like a good
sized average wind turbine farm to eighty nine, so you
(10:33):
got far fewer. They're bigger, but they also are figuring
out how to make them quieter. Two, So by going bigger,
they're actually getting a lot more out of it. It's
kind of like one of those things where the economy
of scale just exceeds the sum of its parts, which
is two different things. But I put them together expertly
if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, and these things they got to be spaced apart.
You can't put them obviously right on each other, so
that makes a difference. You know, if you have fewer
of them, they're not spread out as far obviously geographically.
And we'll talk about it a little bit more, but
you know, it's not like you can't do anything with
the land. A lot of times you'll just see them
(11:12):
out kind of the middle of nowhere, but that can
be cataland and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yes, So usually the horizontal axis wind turbines, which are
just the wind turbines you've seen pictures of or video of,
or maybe even seen off in the distance, depending on
where you're driving around, they usually have three blades, and
three is kind of this magic number because the more
blades you have, the more drag it produces. Each blade
(11:38):
experiences drag from the air as it moves through the air.
The air is like, no, stop doing that and tries
to like stop it. And even though it's individual for
each blade, they accumulate and combine and transfer that to
the rotor, so it experiences five blades worth of drag.
So three blades is kind of sweet because you can
generate quite a bit of electricity, can capture a bunch
(12:00):
of wind, but you're also reducing drag dramatically. So that's
why basically every single horizontal access turbine has three blades.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
What's your ceiling fan?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Preth definitely more than I don't know. I'm trying to think.
Now I've got such a strange variety of ceiling fans
that I think about it, I'm gonna say I'll go
with three. Sure, three, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I typically like a five blader?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Uh? Four is okay? I've got one three, and I've
realized that I don't really like it, And boy do
I hate those two bladers.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken, is
what you're describing.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I know people like them, so I don't want to
yuck someone's jum, but aesthetically I don't care for the
two blade propeller style ceiling fan.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Okay, here's the big question though. Do you like those
fans that look like fans that they might have used
in Casablanca in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Oh? Oh, that are ceiling fans.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yes, that's what the blades look like.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, I don't like to get too like weird. Okay,
Well here's the real question, though you thought you had
the real question. Do you do you get up and
change the direction of that thing every year?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Sometimes yes, depending on whether I'm chilly thinking about it
or I'm motivated. Okay, yeah, those are the two factors
that are you have to combine.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I think that's the factor for almost everyone, except for
the you know, the real fastidious person who just has
it on their calendar.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Even I don't have that on my calendar. And I'm
suddenly impressed with myself and kind of relieved.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
No good. So the hats, you know, we said that
those the vertical winds don't need to be pointed at
the wind. The hats do face into the wind. But
you might think, well, the wind changes, and josh, how
is that possible. Well, they do it by moving the
turbine to face the wind. It's got a y'all system,
so it's you know, it's not too hard to do.
(14:02):
And they also have pitch systems. They can change the
actual angle of the blades to help control that rotor
speed to really maximize efficiency A and B protect it
because what you don't want during like a really big
windstorm is for those you might think like, oh man,
those things get really cooking. That's awesome. They don't need
(14:23):
to get too cooking. It's like a motor spinning too
fast is just never good.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, it can break pretty easy. So if they change
the angle of the blade relative to the direction of
the wind, the winds is going to push on it
rather than making it spin. And so if it pushes
on it, it's going to go much slower. So you
still want them to kind of move, but not too fast.
And that's pretty cool that they've got that figured out. Yeah,
(14:47):
so you got yaw control, pitch control, and the whole
thing is connected to a rotator that is connected to
a generator and sometimes you've got a gearbox in the middle.
Because here's the thing. One of the reasons why wind
didn't catch on or didn't continue to spread as coal
(15:09):
did is because it's really difficult to get a windmill
rotor to spin fast enough to generate electricity using traditional electromagnets, right,
you need something like eighteen hundred RPMs to really get
a good electrical buzz cooking and win windmill rotors, especially
the big ones these days, they're at like five ten
(15:32):
eighteen sixty I think is about the top that I saw,
so about one rotation a second, which is still a
third of what it needs to be to generate electricity.
Although by the way, they've got that figured out. But
for like one that's using a traditional dynamo, not dynamo,
I guess generator. Right, where you've got like magnets spinning
through coils to generate electricity, they have a gearbox and somehow,
(15:56):
through some sort of black magic, I just genuinely don't
understand gears, Chuck, we have to do an episode on
and I guess, but.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It translates that sixty rotations a minute into eighteen hundred
just by changing the direction. I don't know how they
do it. I know that it's really basic stuff that
even like Archimedes used to mess with. I just can't
wrap my head around how that happens.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, I definitely don't want to do something on gears
because many years ago, I'm pretty sure I updated the
old House Stuffworks article on gears okay, and it's it's
pretty mind numbing and boring. Okay, but you know, just
think about the size of gears and like a gears
(16:44):
with tons and tons of teeth, you know, hooking up
and making love to a gear with fewer teeth is
gonna like that top one's going to be spinning really
fast and the other one's gonna be spinning less.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Don't still doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Really well, have you ever seen a gear like, you know,
like a gift or something of gears at work?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, I looked it up for this just to try
to see if I could wrap my head around at
this time, and it still just wouldn't work.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, Fewer teeth just means slower.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
But that doesn't make sense, like I understand that there's
more teeth means faster. How that's what I get it.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
It's catching fewer teeth, which is like the go button. Basically,
ill on this, We'll move on.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I don't think it's gonna.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing to
not do this, and I'm trying to explain.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle of
this episode.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah. Here's another fun fact is the uh and this
is not super consequential, but I just thought it was interesting.
Is the gearbox and all that stuff is up tall
in the tower and something called a nestle And that
is an aviation term. That's like planes have nestles, so
just like you have a spinning propeller on a plane. Okay, yeah,
(18:01):
so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, So like that whole thing that it looks like
the turbines are mounted to that, that whole thing is
basically the nestle, and it's where the gearbox and the
rotor and the generator are all tucked in, right.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades, just
like it would be on a plane.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So the thing with the gearbox, it really works like
you can get some pretty good electricity out of a
relatively small set of moving parts. But they are moving parts,
and they're way up high, usually dozens of feet in
the air, and they can be loud too, and they
can get dirty and break down like any gears can.
So there's another kind called a direct drive system and
(18:40):
it it basically they figured out and I couldn't get
to the bottom of this, they can use that regular
rotation of a of a wind turbine to generate electricity.
I think they just it just requires much larger parts.
I think it's generally what the trade off is. So
there's pros and cons to both kinds, and they've kind
(19:03):
of come up with some new stuff that's on the
horizon are happening now that seem to kind of supersede
both of those too, as we'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, and you know, no matter how efficient you can
build really any kind of power generation system, there are limits.
At a certain point. You can increase efficiency and increase efficiency,
but then the laws of physics step in and say,
you can't be one hundred percent efficient. You're never going
to capture every bit of the wind. It's just not possible.
(19:34):
And there was a German physicist in nineteen nineteen named
Albert Binns who calculated the theoretical maximum of kinetic energy
that you can zap into electricity, and it basically caps
off a close to sixty fifty nine point three percent.
Wind is about thirty five to forty five percent efficient,
which may not sound great, but Olivia helped us out
(19:57):
with this. She points out, you know, wind is free,
so it's not you know, you've got these things sitting
out there, so it's not like you're paying to generate
that wind.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right. Plus, also, if you look into the other types
of fuels used to generate electricity, it's perfectly in line.
Nuclear is between thirty to forty five percent efficient, coals
thirty eight to forty five. Natural gas is only twenty
five percent efficient. So it's way better than natural gas
as far as efficiency goes. And if you're wondering why
can it be one hundred percent efficient? The explanation that
(20:28):
I found that I'm still having trouble digesting too. I
think the gears thing really threw me off first. Then
I went into this and it was just hopeless. To
transfer one hundred percent of the power from wind to
a turbine. That means the wind has to come to
a stop and transfer all of its energy to the
turbine when it comes in contact with it. And I
(20:50):
understand that means the wind stops. But as long as
there's a stream of wind coming at you. Why would
that matter? That's my big question.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on
this one.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
All right, well, how about this. We'll take a break
to everybody else. It will just be a couple of ads,
but you and I will spend the next forty five
minutes or so hashing this out.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
All right, Can we have lunch?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
We can have bult We'll order it.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Okay, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about
(21:40):
where we stand today here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
We'll get to elsewhere in the world later on. Don't
you worry. We're looking at you, Denmark. Right now, the
United States has about seventy thousand wind turbines going with
a capacity a total potential capacity of about one hundred
and forty six gigaway, which should make Doc Brown shake
(22:02):
in his whatever kind of shoes he wore.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
I looked up what that is relative to what we use.
I think we use something like thirteen hundred gigawatts, so
it's like a tenth of that. But that's still pretty good.
I mean, think about it. We went from like basically
zero wind power in the eighties to a tenth of
our capacity is in the form of wind turbines.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Nothing on Doc Brown.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Huh No, I just think it was gonna so it
fit so perfectly that it'd be like me pointing out
that we've been using the word turbine. You know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Do you know who Doc Brown is? Sure who?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
He's like Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future. What
kind of person do you think I am? Do you
know me at all?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I guess the kind of person who refuses to comment
on a great Doc Brown joke.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I was commenting on it. I was saying that it
was such a perfect joke and it was inserted so
perfectly that there.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Was no aid, no comment. Yes, I have to remember
that your joke was so good. A note, you know
what that you basically just said? Is that so far
any I forgot to laugh. So last year twenty twenty three,
about ten percent of our electricity came from win Not
(23:18):
too bad. I mentioned Texas as the leader. They're generating
about twenty five percent of that a little more.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Even that's just mind boggling to think considering Texas.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know they are, well, let's talk about Texas for
a second, because they have been far and away the
leader they got a lot of wide open land there
in West Texas. They had their own their own power grid.
They're the only state with their own power grid, so
that makes it a lot easier for them with interstate
projects to not have to you know, they can rely
(23:49):
on themselves like Texans like to do. But here's the thing.
In recent years, I don't think it's a stretch to
say that there's been some I mean, Livia calls it
ideological warfare, and she's basically right. And that's unfortunate because
now there are conservatives in Texas that are making it
(24:11):
harder to do something they're really really good at, and
that's generate wind for power. And that's a real shame
because it seems like ideology. I mean, I know there
are and we'll talk about downsides of wind production and
there are gripes that it's you know, there might be
inconsistent supply, but it really seems to kind of come
down to, like, no, we are an oil state, and
(24:34):
we're even though we're great at making win, we I
guess can't do both.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I don't know, but I mean, even though they are
an oil state, they've been an oil state for decades
and decades like a century basically, and they still spend
all this time and money and effort into creating this
wind infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, still in Texas.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't think it has anything to do with oil.
I think I think a certain vein of conservativism equates
anything part friendly to liberals.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I know, I know, and like.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Because everything's so divisive and the sides are just so
divided that like you just can't possibly be into something
that liberals favor, Like that's just crazy and vice versa.
Like there's I mean, I don't mean to just say
like this is all conservatives. Like the divisiveness. Definitely, it
can be found on both sides of the equation. It's
just sad that there's two sides. Let's just get past
(25:29):
the sides.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Everybody, Well, it's sad that it's affecting something like this, which,
like I said, Texas is really really good at they
have a lot a lot of it figured out. They're
they're the leader in the United States, Like, keep it,
keep it going, Texas.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The thing is this chuck they're trying, they're not necessarily succeeding.
In the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three session, a
whole raft of bills that were trying to basically make
win power investment harder. None of them past, and I
think the reason why, and this is kind of like
the thing like, yes, you can oppose wind power, but
(26:05):
I think the giant gears are already in motion, like
massive corporations. But you don't know how those were, I know,
I don't, but I can tell when they're moving, I guess, so,
like just giant multinational corporations have sunk so many tens
and hundreds of billions of dollars into this investment and
(26:25):
are starting now to actually reap benefit from it. It's
not going back like sorry, it's just not so it's
still moving forward. It just sucks that it has to
move forward at this in this kind of.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Like slow pace.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's just a negative but with a negative vibe, you.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Know, yeah, no, totally. I mean hopefully you know, Americans
are capitalists, and hopefully money well went out on the end, because,
like you said, a lot of money invested and a
lot of money to be made.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The thing is, though, that's not to say that people
who oppose, especially locally, oppose when projects don't have a point.
There's a lot to be said about not wanting to
live near a wind turbine, in particular a wind farm,
because it's just one of those things that like, this
(27:13):
is going to impact your life. It can impact your
real estate values, it can impact what's called the view shed,
just simply your view. There's actual legitimate reasons for people
to push back on this stuff, but that doesn't mean
that there can't be like a compromise, a way forward
to find legitimate places where wind can be generated well
(27:35):
and efficiently without you know, ruining some nearby community.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of what's called
nimbi going on, Yeah, on both sides, you know, well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
For sure, And again I don't blame anybody for that.
It sucks because that whole idea means that usually poorer
communities who can't represent themselves and don't have the the
means to really like have the political clout to push
back on that kind of thing, end up with this stuff.
But it seems like that with with things like wind
(28:10):
turbine farms in particular, the decision making is being decentralized,
so more and more local communities are being able to
step in and being like, no, this is not happening.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Here.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Sorry, we're our city council voted against it. It's not happening,
And I think that that's I think that's legitimate. I
think that I don't know what the way forward is,
but I know that there's a way forward. But I
don't think it's shoving a wind farm down in a
local community's throughout, whether they like it or not.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, and by the way, an MBA people are like,
what the heck is Chuck talking about. That's just the acronym,
the not in my backyard thing. You're like, no, wind
energy is great, we should totally do it, but I
don't want one of those in my backyard over there.
Go do it over there, much much better exactly. But
moving on, we promised to talk about offshore. Most of
(29:00):
what's going on right now is on land. In terms
of wind collection. I guess they're not collecting it, but
in a way they are, sure. But if you think
about a lot of wind out on the open ocean,
that seems like a no brainer in some ways. And
we will get to the environmental aspects of all this
stuff later. So people out there screaming like how can
(29:20):
you put more things in the ocean, Like, we'll get
to it, but it is a promising idea stronger winds.
There's a lot of permitting issues, obviously what we just
talked about with the NIMBI thing. A lot of communities,
you know, beachfront property or generally people who either you know,
if you're lucky enough to have owned it forever, you
(29:40):
may not be super wealthy, but most people who like
live on the beach are wealthy and they don't want
to see that stuff. So there's been a lot of
complaints about looking at that kind of thing. But we
may be headed toward I mean that they're building more
and more of them in the coming years. It seems
like is.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Kind of what I was talking about. There was a
big push against the Vineyard wind project. Yeah, I should
say there was a vocal push against it. And it's
still happening. Like they're they're doing i think sixty two turbines,
they've already got five installed, and it's just it's moving forward.
But at the same time, like a bunch of local
people who make their money off of fishing, they were
(30:22):
affected by this, Like they're fishing grounds were now a
wind turbine farm. They couldn't fish there anymore, so they're
being compensated for that.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
They're paying commercial fishermen to not fish, essentially.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
To stay out of this area at least or to
accept a buffer zone. So like, yeah, there's like that's
what I'm saying. There's compromises to be to be made here.
And other people are like, this view shed thing, what
are you talking about? Like, if you hold your hand up,
the windmill that you see on the horizon is smaller
than your fingernail, Like, that's what you're seeing. And other
(30:57):
people like, I don't want to see it.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I don't think it's swimming out.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I don't want to see it. But those people seem
to have I guess they're outnumbered or outgunned by the
people who are like, no, this project's going forward. And
again it's tough to argue about it because sure, right now,
the sixty eight megawatts that that Vineyard Wind project is
(31:21):
putting out with just the five turbines, that's enough to
power thirty thousand homes, and their goal is something like
eight hundred megawatts, So there's going to be a lot
of people getting a lot of clean energy from the
wind project.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, and there are more kind of people are looking
to the Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico may have one
at some point. The mid Atlantic is being targeted. Joe
Biden and his administration have a target of thirty thousand
megawatt offshore hours by twenty thirty. It seems like like
we're going to mention a lot of like goals and things.
(31:57):
It doesn't seem like any of these will be reached,
but those are the goals at least, And you know,
we're kind of explaining why as we're going. But California
is trying to get twenty thousand, I'm sorry, twenty five
thousand megawatts by twenty forty five. These are going to
be floating because of Pacific is so deep and cal
Berkeley they did a study and they said that offshore
(32:19):
wind by twenty to fifty could potentially supply between ten
and twenty five percent of all US energy, not just
wind energy.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And offshore is the smallest one, so it's the smallest segment.
And the fact that the offshore wind farms are so
small right now, that's significant growth. And I get the
impression that one of the reasons they're growing is one
it's not up on anybody's real estate. It's like way
out in the ocean, even though you can kind of
see them. But secondly, fifty percent of Americans live within
(32:48):
fifty miles of a coast, and transmission lines are a
real thing, a real issue for wind power. So if
you can get you know, a fifty mile length of
transmission wire to fifty percent of Americans, that's a pretty
significant number of people.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, I wonder if some of these, you know, like
the younger generation is generally, I mean, this is a
broad stroke, but generally a little more into trying to
go toward renewable energy. So I wonder if they're sort
of you know, if like the rich kids are even
fighting back against their parents about stuff like this. Like,
I wonder how you know you said it was like
(33:29):
a pinky nail, right, Dad's complaining he's on the beach,
and the kids are like, Dad, just hold up your
pinky nail. Block it out roomor exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
The thing is is, I was very interested to find
this out. There's a lot of environmentalists who are opposed
to these wind projects too. They're making strange bedfellows with
people who don't like renewable at all. They're like, you're
an environmentalist, how can you be opposed to this. They're like,
look at those giant turbine. That's just one of them,
and they're put more and more offshore. They're ruining habitats,
(34:03):
they're ruining communities, Like, this is not the way to go.
And they're like, well, what way do you want to go? Hippie, Like,
what's wrong? Now? We're finally doing the stuff you wanted
to do. And the thread that seems to be emerging
among younger environmentalists or among environmentalists in general, is degrowth.
It's like, no, we don't need to create more and
more wind farms to meet electrical demand that's going to
(34:24):
increase over the next two decades. We need to decrease
the electrical demand, and yeah, we need to supply it
with wind and stuff like that, but we're going in
the wrong direction here. We're billing, billing to meet growth, growth, growth.
They're like, we need to stop growing. So that's actually
made them opposed to a lot of these projects, especially
the biggest ones.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah. I mean, I think those people look out and
see a big wind farm and it doesn't look any
different to them than a nuclear power plant or a
huge coal plant. All they see is some giant monstrosity
of capitalism at work.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, then you know there's a point, so.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I say we take a break and we'll jump back
into the more of the nuts and bolts of this,
all right, okay, Chuck. In addition to a lot of
(35:30):
the pushback that we just covered for a while, there's
a lot of practical issues and challenges to making wind.
What was it like, up to twenty five percent of
US demand by twenty fifty. I think that's crazy. One
of them is transmission.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Like I said, you had, the wind is out in
the middle of nowhere. That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
That's exactly right. Yeah, the places where it blows the
most there are the least number of people, and that
means you have to build an infrastructure to get it
from those less populated areas of the populated areas that
want to use it. That's a big one. And apparently
there was a Princeton study that found that transmission infrastructure
is growing at just like one percent a year, and
(36:12):
that if we keep that pace up. The reduction and
fossil fuel emissions that the Inflation Reduction Act envisioned with
a lot of it's green stuff. That was associated with it,
we'll lose eighty percent of that. Yeah, that reduction, so
we need to definitely expand transmission lines. It's a big,
big step.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, for sure, getting the power there is a big deal.
One idea that you know has a lot of promise,
but you know, it all has its downsides of course,
like there is no like perfect system is storing the energy.
So there's a lot of work being done toward you know,
storage capacity because you know, right now, if the sun
(36:53):
isn't shining, if it's super cloudy a lot, if the
wind isn't blowing very much, then solar and wind are
going to take a hit. And then that means that
the fossil fuel plants just sort of make up for that.
But if you know, if we're leaning more and more
on solar and wind and other renewables, we're gonna have
to figure out a way to store that stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah. So so just real quick for people who are
in the United States or who are in the United
States and don't pay attention to congressional packages, The Inflation
Reduction Act was a bill, was a law that was
passed in twenty twenty two that had it was just
this huge, huge, spending package. But one of the things
that it really focused on was the US infrastructure, which
(37:35):
needs updating big time. But it also looked forward down
the future and was like, how can we invest in
energy and renewables And basically it said the government's even
more open for business for renewable investment than before and
as a results, already had huge impacts. That was passed
in twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty three, the investment
(37:57):
in renewables storage so basically giant batteries that can store
solar and wind power for use later, has increased by
three hundred percent. They predicted that in twenty forty there
was going to be fifty gigawatts of storage capacity, and
now they're up to they're predicting it'll be more like
two hundred gigawatts of storage capacity by twenty forty, just
(38:20):
because of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah, but again, you know these batteries are you know,
not environmentally friendly to create batteries like that. I don't
even think we mentioned really the rare earth metals and
things that are used for these, for the magnets, for
the turbines, like that stuff isn't great either. So like
like we said there is no perfect system. I think
(38:44):
early on the sort of pie in the sky stuff
with renewables was just like use wind in u sun,
which is great, but you can't just talk about the
blue sky stuff without talking about the downsides.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, and we need to listen to the downsides too,
and then go back, say the drawing board, and not
be like, Nope, this is the way we're doing it totally.
We need to say okay, great, like we're all we're
all on board with moving forward, with us like, how
can we figure out enough of us are on board
with moving forward? How can we figure out how to
do it so that it impacts the fewest people possible
in the least amount possible. And that's I mean, we're smart,
(39:18):
like humans are fairly smart animals, and we can figure
that kind of stuff out. We just have to go
out of our way to take that into account. I
feel like that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think so too, I say, with trepidation. Right, So
we talked about where we promised talk about what's going
on around the world, and we mentioned Denmark of course,
because just like those windmills back in the day, they
were leader then and they're the leader. Now they create
fifty four zo point three percent of their power supply
(39:52):
from when in Denmark as of a couple of years
ago in twenty twenty two. Other European countries Spain, Germany,
Portugal and then the UK they're over twenty percent. So
they're doing pretty good if you're talking and that's percentage wise.
If you're talking just total wind generation. The US is
number two with four hundred and thirty watt tarawatt hours
(40:14):
annually right now, but you mentioned China. We're at four
thirty four in second place. China is generating seven hundred
and sixty three tarawatt hours per year and like running
away with it.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, And actually the world is extraordinarily fortunate that China
has decided to do that rather than just rely on
fossil fuels, because the pollution that would be even worse
than it is now if they were used if they
use fossil instead of like wind and solar as they're
planning on doing, it would just be the impact would
be nuts essentially.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah. I mean, I think their goal in China is
full carbon neutrality by twenty sixty and wind is a
very very big part of that.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Also, we should point out China is not doing that
because of their magnanimous benevolence towards humanity and the planet.
They're doing it because there's they recognize that there's a
lot of money coming down the pike for for whoever
is prepared for this kind of revolution, and it's actually
happening right now. That figure from how much just the
(41:19):
US alone improved as far as wind generation goes from
the nineties is just astounding. Like I knew it was
going on in the background, I had no idea that
we were this far along already, which I found very heartening.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, yeah, same. So we talked a lot about the
downsides here and there. We haven't talked about animals yet. Obviously,
anytime you're screwing up a habitat for animals in nature,
that's going to have a real bad effect. You know,
there's no way around it. They're gonna I mean, just
those spinning blades are gonna kill birds and bats and
(41:53):
things that fly into them. But the wind pressure around
these farms can affect the habitats. The terrestrial animals are affected.
I think they did a study in Europe about their
row deer and the European hair that are like they're
just not here anymore because of these wind farms in Norway.
You know, they're obviously got a lot of wind going there,
(42:16):
but they're they're shutting things down because reindeer. It's affecting reindeer,
which is, you know, a very big deal in Norway
and the indigenous Sami people who heard the reindeer. So
they can't mess with the indigenous cultures there. So they're
shutting some of those down right.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
They're they're they're it's impacting local communities, no matter how
small the community that's they're they're responding to it. That's
a big that's a big deal. There's also, i think
you said earlier, a lot of impact with ocean based
wind because these things are huge. They're like giant oil dereks,
but there's a bunch of them and they have to
(42:55):
be like mounted to the continental shels so they don't
blow over. So it's a huge, massive project. And the
sound that it generates can rupture whales, ear drums, it
can completely disturb breeding grounds, it can do a lot
of stuff. But again it's been pointed out like if
you do this right and you do the right kind
of studies. If you look around and say who is
(43:15):
this going to impact, and then how can we mitigate
those impacts? There's stuff you can do to make the
impact that much lesser as low as possible. Like, if
you're impacting whales, then plan the construction phase of it
for a time when the whales are off migrating on
another part of the ocean, so it's not going to
blow out their ear drums when you pile Drive the
(43:36):
pylons into the continental shelf, or move it over a
little bit, keep it out of the whales breeding ground,
put it somewhere else. Like, there's just little things you
can do that will decrease that impact tremendously.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, for sure. One thing we haven't talked about that.
I mean, I never really considered this, which is really
short sighted of me. But these are big, massive machines,
and when big massive machines reach the end of their life,
you know, it's not like they'll go forever. These are
physical materials that wear out, including those huge turbines and blades.
(44:13):
So when that stuff, you know, the ones that kind
of came on early in the nineties, in two thousands,
some of those are nearing the end of their life,
and all of a sudden, you're stuck with these blades
that you know, are just gargantuan and they're not made
of bamboo or banana fiber. You know, they're fiberglass and
epoxy resin, and they're kind of an environmental nightmare, and
(44:37):
so like, what do you do with those? You can't
just fill landfills with these giant beasts. No.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
There's a company in Tennessee called Carbon Rivers that says
that they recycled about a thousand of the blades in
twenty twenty three, so I'm guessing is probably significant, but
still maybe a drop in the bucket. Yeah, But they
figured out how to extract the carbon fibers from the
POxy resin, and then you can reuse the carbon fibers
because they're very strong stuff. So that's great, that's good
(45:07):
to have that online. But the better solution, at least
in the future, is to start manufacturing the turbine blades
in ways that they can be much more easily recycled.
So I think they're using the same material still, they're
just using processes that can later on down the road
be reversed more easily, and you can separate the fiberglass
from the epoxy more easily.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
And like, you know, kind of what you've been saying about,
like why don't you change the way you're doing things
as we go instead of being locked in? That is
happening with those blades. And there's a company in Germany. Oh,
actually it's Semens, big company. Sure. Is that the same
company Semens Gamesa as regular Semens Sure? Okay, I just
(45:51):
never heard the full name. I guess I didn't know
Semens had a last name. But they're basically saying, well,
why don't we make a better kind of blade that
uses a different kind of resin that is much more
easily separated from that fiberglass. So things like that, like
you're talking about, like make the parts more easily recyclable
(46:12):
or reusable. You know, I know they're using them on
like like playgrounds and stuff, trying to repurpose them. I
guess it makes it a heck of a slide or
something like that. But that they're you know, there are
limits to how much you can I mean, it all helps,
but how much Because there's a lot of blades out there,
they're going to be coming offline, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Right, and they're big also by the way. I think
I was using carbon fiber and fiberglass interchangeably, and I'm
not quite sure that's right. So they're fiberglass, right.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
So there's a couple of other things that that are
drawbacks to turbines that need to be addressed. Once called
shadow flicker. When the sun is lowish on the horizon
and it's just kind of beaming through the wind turbine.
As the turbines bins, it makes a flickering shadow, and
if you live in range of that shadow, it can
(47:05):
drive you crazy. As a matter of fact, they did
a study to make sure that it wasn't rapid enough
to trigger seizures, and apparently the max is again sixty RPMs,
so I think it's like one hundred. It takes double
that to start to trigger photosensitive seizures. They're like, it's
not going to trigger a seizure, but yes, it's extremely
(47:27):
annoying when it happens. But they're like, it only happens
certain times of the year for a couple of hours
out of a day. Can you just get used to it?
And some people are like no, and then other people
are like, yeah, it's not They did another study of
people who lived in proximity of wind turbines are like,
I don't even really notice anymore. And then noise too,
Like it makes a noise. But again, the fewer parts
(47:50):
that you have, the less noise is gonna make. Like
if you don't have a gearbox, those gears aren't there
to make a bunch of noise. If you do have
a gearbox to soundproof, you're what'd you call that that
package that the airplane has to uh nestle a nestle.
And then also they're making I think these giant those
(48:11):
giant turbines are also going to be quieter. They're like
eighteen percent quieter or something like that. So, yeah, there's
a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed, but
I feel like I just think it's going to get addressed.
If I can share my.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Opinion, Yeah, it's a sunny opinion.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Are you got anything else?
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
All Right, Well, that's it for wind turbines for now.
We'll have to revisit it in your thirty five of
stuff you should know. Uh And since I said that,
it's time for listener mane.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this. Marcie is definitely Asian. We
heard from quite a few Asian listeners for our Peanuts
episode who were very kind, but they were kind of like, guys,
you seemed a little hesitant to kind of to kind
of go there, but go there because Marc was clearly
Asian to every kid that was Asian and reading Peanuts.
(49:05):
And this one is from Hugh Nuian. So, hey, guys,
I'm a forty three year old Vietnamese American who grew
up reading and watching Peanuts my friend's family, and I
assumed without question that Charles Schultz intended Marshy to be
Asian American by drawing and writing her with so many
shortcuts to signal Asian American identity. First, her haircut. Marshy's
(49:29):
hair's short black bob with bangs. Many Asian American girls
had this bus free homemade haircut exacted upon them by
their frugal mothers. Number two, her glasses. Asians and Americans
and Asian Americans do have a higher rate of myopia
and developed countries, so I wear is just more common
with us. She's awkward because she is so busy. I
(49:50):
quote an article by Kevin Wong which resonates with me
and so many children raised by overly protective immigrant parents
who carried the trauma of war and or forced immigration.
Marci couldn't come out to play because she had to
practice her organ she had to study, she had to read.
This was our experience number four. She is mothered by everyone.
(50:12):
Asian language, food, religion, and culture in general were and
might still be considered foreign and weird in many parts
of the US. And I just assume Marcy was depicted
as a strange little girl, because that's how the Peanuts
Gang and the rest of America would perceive an unathletic,
bookish Asian child. And then finally she calls Peppermint Patty
(50:33):
sir because English is her second language. Guys, In many
East and Southeast Asian languages, children address adults and people
in positions of power and respect with courtesy titles that
have no gender. So that's why Peprimitt Patty was called sir.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Wowey, who is this?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
This is from an I got a pronunciation guide. It's
spelled hi eu pronounced hugh and n g u y
e n and Hugh said, I pronounced that hugh ewan.
But different people even pronounced my last name differently within
my own country.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, I've always seen it pronounces or heard it pronounces when.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah. So that was a great email, and we appreciate
all our Asian and Asian American listeners who wrote in
about that saying, guys, we thought she was Asian, so
it's okay to say that.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Hugh did and everybody else,
you can send us an email, send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you,
so putatively see us.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
That's right, May twenty ninth. We'll be in Boston, really Medford, Massachusetts.
The next night we're gonna go down to Washington, DC,
and then scooch back up to New York City at
Town Hall on May thirty first.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, and if you're one of those people who likes
to plan way far in advance, then you can go
ahead and get tickets for our shows in August. We're
gonna start out where Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We're gonna be in Chicago August seventh, Minneapolis August eighth,
then Indianapolis for the very first time on August ninth,
and then we're gonna wrap it up in Durham, North Carolina,
and right here in Atlanta on September fifth and September seventh.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yep. So you can get all the info you need
and all the ticket links you need by going to
stuff youshould Know dot com and hitting that tour button,
or you can also go to linktree slash SYSK Live.
We'll see you guys this year.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Ben's here too, and this is stuff you should.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Know, wind edition because it's blowing my microphone all over
the place. Of what is going on here?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I feel like you should handle this one and I'll
just do WIN sound effects in the background the whole time.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, that'll be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't
know what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Is it eerie?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
No? Just nothing is right. Sometimes I feel like Ruby
comes in here and messes with stuff. Oh no, I
think that's the ghost.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what happens in it?
I do this?
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different. Huh okay,
all right, I'm fine. I'm back to normal.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Well I'm back to normal too. I'm gonna go ahead
and presume Ben's back to normal. So you listener. If
you're back to normal, great, we can get started then.
If not, we'll wait. Just email us.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah. So we're talking about wind power, and I guess
a good starting point would be history and not to
get to like in the weeds with you know, sailing
ships and stuff like that, because people have long been
using wind for different things. But I think as far
as generating power early on, you know, water was the thing.
(02:21):
Obviously Cole was the thing. But there was a guy,
a very intelligent Scott and we love our Scottish people.
In eighteen eighty seven, it was an engineer who designed
the first wind turbine to do what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, and it's not like he was the first person
to come up with a wind turbine. I mean, everybody
knows the Dutch had windmills for centuries and centuries before,
but this guy was the first one to try to
genuinely harness wind power to generate electricity. His name was
James Blythe and he had a second home apparently in
the town of mary Kirk in Scotland, which has great
(03:00):
gotch I assume. And he had so much power from
his wind turbine, chuck, that he offered the access of
it to the town of mary Kirk. And this guy
was so advanced he had twelve batteries storing the electrical
power that his wind turbine was generating. He just invented
(03:21):
it like lock stock and barrel the first time.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Out Great Scott.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Literally he really wasn't Great Scott, so.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
You know, and on small scales. People came behind him
and were doing it, but it wasn't really until a gentleman,
a Danish gentleman, a meteorologist named I've never seen that
pou L poll I guess polar Coor he is the
one who really has a lot of the you know,
(03:51):
gets a lot of the credit rightfully. So we're kind
of getting when generated power going in a serious way
because in the eighteen nineties he's like, you know what,
I can produce a steady stream of power. This thing
isn't as intermittent as they were before, and I'm actually
going to create enough power for my village, for the
(04:12):
village of Askoff, and I'm going to have found something
that sounds like sorcery. I'm gonna found the Society of
Wind Electricians even.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, and he did. He was very successful. Out of
the gate. That was nineteen oh eighteen ninety five. He
started nineteen oh eight. There were seventy two different systems
running in Denmark and each of them had a capacity
between five and twenty five kilowatts, which is peanuts peanuts now,
but at the time. This is remember in our Love
(04:41):
Canal episode where electricity for a while no matter how
you generated, it had to be generated like right next
to where you were distributing the power. So it would
make sense that you'd have a windmill like right at
the village that was being powered, because if you were
getting it from a coal fire plant, you had to
have it right there too, So that I made wind
kind of competitive for a while, and even until the
(05:03):
into the twentieth century, it was still fairly competitive, even
as coal and gas fired electrical plants started to take
over because in rural areas they didn't have access to
the grid, so they were using wind turbines. And then
finally FDR comes along and said, n's to that, We're
electrifying this whole darn toutin country, and the wind turbines
(05:26):
fell over in surprise, and coal fired electrical grids took over.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, and they pretty much held the you know, the
high ground until the nineties, when there was a renewed
interest in wind. Things got a little windy in the
nineties and ninety two Congress passed a tax credit. Clinton
came along after that, you know, started to fund more
you know, basically federal projects toward wind, and then states
(05:53):
got on board individually, especially states like Texas and Iowa.
You know, if you're out and you have lots of
of wind, lots of open planes, you can generate more
wind energy. And Texas, for their part, has really, you know,
up until recent years, been super supportive of wind energy
and are far and away the leader in US wind energy.
(06:17):
But as just as far as like raw numbers, from
nineteen ninety to twenty ten, we went from almost two
point eight billion kilowatt hours to close to five point
six billion, and then twenty ten that jumped to ninety
five billion, which is just a huge jump over that
(06:38):
span of time. And then now in twenty twenty two
we are at four hundred and thirty four billion kilowat hours.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
So in thirty two years we went from two point
seventy nine billion to four hundred and thirty four billions.
That is right, that's pretty rapid progress. I mean, that's amazing.
That's just in the United States too, as we'll see
like around the world, they're trees who are like, yeah,
why don't you catch up, lame mos, and then other
countries like China are just jumping ahead of the curve
(07:07):
even more impressively. But wind is definitely I'm sorry for this,
but wind is picking up around the world.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, so we should probably talk a little bit about
how the actual machine works. We're going to concentrate on
the hot systems, that is the horizontal axis. Hawt just
a little bit about the vertical axis. The vaults. They're
kind of cool and that you can you don't like
have to point it at the wind. But they're smaller,
(07:35):
they're slower, they're not as efficient. Therefore, you know, small
scale generation, So those aren't sort of the big daddies,
the big players in the field. It's really the hot
rotors that are hot.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
They're hella hot, they are. So Yeah, if you have
a small what's called a distributed system, which is like
that thing that say James Blyth Paul LeCour came up
with that just powers like a very small area, you're
probably going to do a vertical axis type. It's like
a merry go round with sails around it. But the
sails are actually wind turbines and it looks cool, cooler
(08:09):
than a horizontal axis one if you ask me. But
the horizontal ones are most ubiquitous because they can generate
power in aces compared to the vertical types. Right, they're
way more efficient. You can make them way bigger, because
if you're making something with a vertical axis, it takes
up ground space because it's basically on the ground. The
(08:31):
horizontal ones, they're way up in the air, catching generally
steady streams of air that have very little turbulence, that
are moving fairly fast compared to the stuff on the ground,
and they can convert it very efficiently, at least as
far as wind turbines are concerned into electricity.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, you mentioned the size. These are the you know,
if you're traveling out west in the planes or something
and you see a wind farm. These are the big
daddies that we're talking about. The little guys are about
eight feet in diameter. These you know, these are the rotors.
But if you go offshore, and we'll talk a little
bit more about what's going what's going on in the ocean,
(09:10):
but those can be eight hundred feet generate up to
eighteen megawatts, which is just a lot of power being generated.
And I mean those things are just absolutely enormous, Like
I can't even picture what an eight hundred foot turbine
might look like.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
So take three football fields, cut off just a little
bit of the third one, and then that's the the
turbine diameter. I mean, it's so massive it like boggles
the mind, even though we're talking about you know, a
few hundred feet. It's just I just can't imagine what
that looks like up close.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, same, so connecting to the US power grid. Like
the size of these things have basically increased over time.
They've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger these days.
If you're talking like not those gargantuans offshore, but irregular
like terrestrial turbine on a wind farm is generally about
four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet in diameter,
(10:04):
they're about thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground,
and they generate each one about three point two megawatts.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, and this is actually a case where bigger's better.
From what I've seen, the bigger they are means that
they can generate more electricity, which means that you need
fewer of them on site. So I saw the average
is expected to go down in like next year from
two hundred and twenty two turbines and like a good
sized average wind turbine farm to eighty nine, so you
(10:33):
got far fewer. They're bigger, but they also are figuring
out how to make them quieter. Two, So by going bigger,
they're actually getting a lot more out of it. It's
kind of like one of those things where the economy
of scale just exceeds the sum of its parts, which
is two different things. But I put them together expertly
if you ask me.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, and these things they got to be spaced apart.
You can't put them obviously right on each other, so
that makes a difference. You know, if you have fewer
of them, they're not spread out as far obviously geographically.
And we'll talk about it a little bit more, but
you know, it's not like you can't do anything with
the land. A lot of times you'll just see them
(11:12):
out kind of the middle of nowhere, but that can
be cataland and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yes, So usually the horizontal axis wind turbines, which are
just the wind turbines you've seen pictures of or video of,
or maybe even seen off in the distance, depending on
where you're driving around, they usually have three blades, and
three is kind of this magic number because the more
blades you have, the more drag it produces. Each blade
(11:38):
experiences drag from the air as it moves through the air.
The air is like, no, stop doing that and tries
to like stop it. And even though it's individual for
each blade, they accumulate and combine and transfer that to
the rotor, so it experiences five blades worth of drag.
So three blades is kind of sweet because you can
generate quite a bit of electricity, can capture a bunch
(12:00):
of wind, but you're also reducing drag dramatically. So that's
why basically every single horizontal access turbine has three blades.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
What's your ceiling fan?
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Preth definitely more than I don't know. I'm trying to think.
Now I've got such a strange variety of ceiling fans
that I think about it, I'm gonna say I'll go
with three. Sure, three, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I typically like a five blader?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Uh? Four is okay? I've got one three, and I've
realized that I don't really like it, And boy do
I hate those two bladers.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken, is
what you're describing.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I know people like them, so I don't want to
yuck someone's jum, but aesthetically I don't care for the
two blade propeller style ceiling fan.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Okay, here's the big question though. Do you like those
fans that look like fans that they might have used
in Casablanca in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Oh? Oh, that are ceiling fans.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yes, that's what the blades look like.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
No, I don't like to get too like weird. Okay,
Well here's the real question, though you thought you had
the real question. Do you do you get up and
change the direction of that thing every year?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Sometimes yes, depending on whether I'm chilly thinking about it
or I'm motivated. Okay, yeah, those are the two factors
that are you have to combine.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I think that's the factor for almost everyone, except for
the you know, the real fastidious person who just has
it on their calendar.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Even I don't have that on my calendar. And I'm
suddenly impressed with myself and kind of relieved.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
No good. So the hats, you know, we said that
those the vertical winds don't need to be pointed at
the wind. The hats do face into the wind. But
you might think, well, the wind changes, and josh, how
is that possible. Well, they do it by moving the
turbine to face the wind. It's got a y'all system,
so it's you know, it's not too hard to do.
(14:02):
And they also have pitch systems. They can change the
actual angle of the blades to help control that rotor
speed to really maximize efficiency A and B protect it
because what you don't want during like a really big
windstorm is for those you might think like, oh man,
those things get really cooking. That's awesome. They don't need
(14:23):
to get too cooking. It's like a motor spinning too
fast is just never good.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, it can break pretty easy. So if they change
the angle of the blade relative to the direction of
the wind, the winds is going to push on it
rather than making it spin. And so if it pushes
on it, it's going to go much slower. So you
still want them to kind of move, but not too fast.
And that's pretty cool that they've got that figured out. Yeah,
(14:47):
so you got yaw control, pitch control, and the whole
thing is connected to a rotator that is connected to
a generator and sometimes you've got a gearbox in the middle.
Because here's the thing. One of the reasons why wind
didn't catch on or didn't continue to spread as coal
(15:09):
did is because it's really difficult to get a windmill
rotor to spin fast enough to generate electricity using traditional electromagnets, right,
you need something like eighteen hundred RPMs to really get
a good electrical buzz cooking and win windmill rotors, especially
the big ones these days, they're at like five ten
(15:32):
eighteen sixty I think is about the top that I saw,
so about one rotation a second, which is still a
third of what it needs to be to generate electricity.
Although by the way, they've got that figured out. But
for like one that's using a traditional dynamo, not dynamo,
I guess generator. Right, where you've got like magnets spinning
through coils to generate electricity, they have a gearbox and somehow,
(15:56):
through some sort of black magic, I just genuinely don't
understand gears, Chuck, we have to do an episode on
and I guess, but.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It translates that sixty rotations a minute into eighteen hundred
just by changing the direction. I don't know how they
do it. I know that it's really basic stuff that
even like Archimedes used to mess with. I just can't
wrap my head around how that happens.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Well, I definitely don't want to do something on gears
because many years ago, I'm pretty sure I updated the
old House Stuffworks article on gears okay, and it's it's
pretty mind numbing and boring. Okay, but you know, just
think about the size of gears and like a gears
(16:44):
with tons and tons of teeth, you know, hooking up
and making love to a gear with fewer teeth is
gonna like that top one's going to be spinning really
fast and the other one's gonna be spinning less.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Don't still doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Really well, have you ever seen a gear like, you know,
like a gift or something of gears at work?
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, I looked it up for this just to try
to see if I could wrap my head around at
this time, and it still just wouldn't work.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, Fewer teeth just means slower.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
But that doesn't make sense, like I understand that there's
more teeth means faster. How that's what I get it.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
It's catching fewer teeth, which is like the go button. Basically,
ill on this, We'll move on.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I don't think it's gonna.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing to
not do this, and I'm trying to explain.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle of
this episode.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah. Here's another fun fact is the uh and this
is not super consequential, but I just thought it was interesting.
Is the gearbox and all that stuff is up tall
in the tower and something called a nestle And that
is an aviation term. That's like planes have nestles, so
just like you have a spinning propeller on a plane. Okay, yeah,
(18:01):
so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, So like that whole thing that it looks like
the turbines are mounted to that, that whole thing is
basically the nestle, and it's where the gearbox and the
rotor and the generator are all tucked in, right.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades, just
like it would be on a plane.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
So the thing with the gearbox, it really works like
you can get some pretty good electricity out of a
relatively small set of moving parts. But they are moving parts,
and they're way up high, usually dozens of feet in
the air, and they can be loud too, and they
can get dirty and break down like any gears can.
So there's another kind called a direct drive system and
(18:40):
it it basically they figured out and I couldn't get
to the bottom of this, they can use that regular
rotation of a of a wind turbine to generate electricity.
I think they just it just requires much larger parts.
I think it's generally what the trade off is. So
there's pros and cons to both kinds, and they've kind
(19:03):
of come up with some new stuff that's on the
horizon are happening now that seem to kind of supersede
both of those too, as we'll talk about.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, and you know, no matter how efficient you can
build really any kind of power generation system, there are limits.
At a certain point. You can increase efficiency and increase efficiency,
but then the laws of physics step in and say,
you can't be one hundred percent efficient. You're never going
to capture every bit of the wind. It's just not possible.
(19:34):
And there was a German physicist in nineteen nineteen named
Albert Binns who calculated the theoretical maximum of kinetic energy
that you can zap into electricity, and it basically caps
off a close to sixty fifty nine point three percent.
Wind is about thirty five to forty five percent efficient,
which may not sound great, but Olivia helped us out
(19:57):
with this. She points out, you know, wind is free,
so it's not you know, you've got these things sitting
out there, so it's not like you're paying to generate
that wind.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Right. Plus, also, if you look into the other types
of fuels used to generate electricity, it's perfectly in line.
Nuclear is between thirty to forty five percent efficient, coals
thirty eight to forty five. Natural gas is only twenty
five percent efficient. So it's way better than natural gas
as far as efficiency goes. And if you're wondering why
can it be one hundred percent efficient? The explanation that
(20:28):
I found that I'm still having trouble digesting too. I
think the gears thing really threw me off first. Then
I went into this and it was just hopeless. To
transfer one hundred percent of the power from wind to
a turbine. That means the wind has to come to
a stop and transfer all of its energy to the
turbine when it comes in contact with it. And I
(20:50):
understand that means the wind stops. But as long as
there's a stream of wind coming at you. Why would
that matter? That's my big question.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on
this one.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
All right, well, how about this. We'll take a break
to everybody else. It will just be a couple of ads,
but you and I will spend the next forty five
minutes or so hashing this out.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
All right, Can we have lunch?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
We can have bult We'll order it.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Okay, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about
(21:40):
where we stand today here in the United States.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
We'll get to elsewhere in the world later on. Don't
you worry. We're looking at you, Denmark. Right now, the
United States has about seventy thousand wind turbines going with
a capacity a total potential capacity of about one hundred
and forty six gigaway, which should make Doc Brown shake
(22:02):
in his whatever kind of shoes he wore.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
I looked up what that is relative to what we use.
I think we use something like thirteen hundred gigawatts, so
it's like a tenth of that. But that's still pretty good.
I mean, think about it. We went from like basically
zero wind power in the eighties to a tenth of
our capacity is in the form of wind turbines.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Nothing on Doc Brown.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Huh No, I just think it was gonna so it
fit so perfectly that it'd be like me pointing out
that we've been using the word turbine. You know what
I mean?
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Do you know who Doc Brown is? Sure who?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
He's like Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future. What
kind of person do you think I am? Do you
know me at all?
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I guess the kind of person who refuses to comment
on a great Doc Brown joke.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I was commenting on it. I was saying that it
was such a perfect joke and it was inserted so
perfectly that there.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Was no aid, no comment. Yes, I have to remember
that your joke was so good. A note, you know
what that you basically just said? Is that so far
any I forgot to laugh. So last year twenty twenty three,
about ten percent of our electricity came from win Not
(23:18):
too bad. I mentioned Texas as the leader. They're generating
about twenty five percent of that a little more.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Even that's just mind boggling to think considering Texas.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
You know they are, well, let's talk about Texas for
a second, because they have been far and away the
leader they got a lot of wide open land there
in West Texas. They had their own their own power grid.
They're the only state with their own power grid, so
that makes it a lot easier for them with interstate
projects to not have to you know, they can rely
(23:49):
on themselves like Texans like to do. But here's the thing.
In recent years, I don't think it's a stretch to
say that there's been some I mean, Livia calls it
ideological warfare, and she's basically right. And that's unfortunate because
now there are conservatives in Texas that are making it
(24:11):
harder to do something they're really really good at, and
that's generate wind for power. And that's a real shame
because it seems like ideology. I mean, I know there
are and we'll talk about downsides of wind production and
there are gripes that it's you know, there might be
inconsistent supply, but it really seems to kind of come
down to, like, no, we are an oil state, and
(24:34):
we're even though we're great at making win, we I
guess can't do both.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
I don't know, but I mean, even though they are
an oil state, they've been an oil state for decades
and decades like a century basically, and they still spend
all this time and money and effort into creating this
wind infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, still in Texas.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I don't think it has anything to do with oil.
I think I think a certain vein of conservativism equates
anything part friendly to liberals.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I know, I know, and like.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Because everything's so divisive and the sides are just so
divided that like you just can't possibly be into something
that liberals favor, Like that's just crazy and vice versa.
Like there's I mean, I don't mean to just say
like this is all conservatives. Like the divisiveness. Definitely, it
can be found on both sides of the equation. It's
just sad that there's two sides. Let's just get past
(25:29):
the sides.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Everybody, Well, it's sad that it's affecting something like this, which,
like I said, Texas is really really good at they
have a lot a lot of it figured out. They're
they're the leader in the United States, Like, keep it,
keep it going, Texas.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The thing is this chuck they're trying, they're not necessarily succeeding.
In the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three session, a
whole raft of bills that were trying to basically make
win power investment harder. None of them past, and I
think the reason why, and this is kind of like
the thing like, yes, you can oppose wind power, but
(26:05):
I think the giant gears are already in motion, like
massive corporations. But you don't know how those were, I know,
I don't, but I can tell when they're moving, I guess, so,
like just giant multinational corporations have sunk so many tens
and hundreds of billions of dollars into this investment and
(26:25):
are starting now to actually reap benefit from it. It's
not going back like sorry, it's just not so it's
still moving forward. It just sucks that it has to
move forward at this in this kind of.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Like slow pace.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
It's just a negative but with a negative vibe, you.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Know, yeah, no, totally. I mean hopefully you know, Americans
are capitalists, and hopefully money well went out on the end, because,
like you said, a lot of money invested and a
lot of money to be made.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
The thing is, though, that's not to say that people
who oppose, especially locally, oppose when projects don't have a point.
There's a lot to be said about not wanting to
live near a wind turbine, in particular a wind farm,
because it's just one of those things that like, this
(27:13):
is going to impact your life. It can impact your
real estate values, it can impact what's called the view shed,
just simply your view. There's actual legitimate reasons for people
to push back on this stuff, but that doesn't mean
that there can't be like a compromise, a way forward
to find legitimate places where wind can be generated well
(27:35):
and efficiently without you know, ruining some nearby community.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of what's called
nimbi going on, Yeah, on both sides, you know, well, yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
For sure, And again I don't blame anybody for that.
It sucks because that whole idea means that usually poorer
communities who can't represent themselves and don't have the the
means to really like have the political clout to push
back on that kind of thing, end up with this stuff.
But it seems like that with with things like wind
(28:10):
turbine farms in particular, the decision making is being decentralized,
so more and more local communities are being able to
step in and being like, no, this is not happening.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Here.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Sorry, we're our city council voted against it. It's not happening,
And I think that that's I think that's legitimate. I
think that I don't know what the way forward is,
but I know that there's a way forward. But I
don't think it's shoving a wind farm down in a
local community's throughout, whether they like it or not.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, and by the way, an MBA people are like,
what the heck is Chuck talking about. That's just the acronym,
the not in my backyard thing. You're like, no, wind
energy is great, we should totally do it, but I
don't want one of those in my backyard over there.
Go do it over there, much much better exactly. But
moving on, we promised to talk about offshore. Most of
(29:00):
what's going on right now is on land. In terms
of wind collection. I guess they're not collecting it, but
in a way they are, sure. But if you think
about a lot of wind out on the open ocean,
that seems like a no brainer in some ways. And
we will get to the environmental aspects of all this
stuff later. So people out there screaming like how can
(29:20):
you put more things in the ocean, Like, we'll get
to it, but it is a promising idea stronger winds.
There's a lot of permitting issues, obviously what we just
talked about with the NIMBI thing. A lot of communities,
you know, beachfront property or generally people who either you know,
if you're lucky enough to have owned it forever, you
(29:40):
may not be super wealthy, but most people who like
live on the beach are wealthy and they don't want
to see that stuff. So there's been a lot of
complaints about looking at that kind of thing. But we
may be headed toward I mean that they're building more
and more of them in the coming years. It seems
like is.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Kind of what I was talking about. There was a
big push against the Vineyard wind project. Yeah, I should
say there was a vocal push against it. And it's
still happening. Like they're they're doing i think sixty two turbines,
they've already got five installed, and it's just it's moving forward.
But at the same time, like a bunch of local
people who make their money off of fishing, they were
(30:22):
affected by this, Like they're fishing grounds were now a
wind turbine farm. They couldn't fish there anymore, so they're
being compensated for that.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
They're paying commercial fishermen to not fish, essentially.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
To stay out of this area at least or to
accept a buffer zone. So like, yeah, there's like that's
what I'm saying. There's compromises to be to be made here.
And other people are like, this view shed thing, what
are you talking about? Like, if you hold your hand up,
the windmill that you see on the horizon is smaller
than your fingernail, Like, that's what you're seeing. And other
(30:57):
people like, I don't want to see it.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I don't think it's swimming out.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I don't want to see it. But those people seem
to have I guess they're outnumbered or outgunned by the
people who are like, no, this project's going forward. And
again it's tough to argue about it because sure, right now,
the sixty eight megawatts that that Vineyard Wind project is
(31:21):
putting out with just the five turbines, that's enough to
power thirty thousand homes, and their goal is something like
eight hundred megawatts, So there's going to be a lot
of people getting a lot of clean energy from the
wind project.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, and there are more kind of people are looking
to the Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico may have one
at some point. The mid Atlantic is being targeted. Joe
Biden and his administration have a target of thirty thousand
megawatt offshore hours by twenty thirty. It seems like like
we're going to mention a lot of like goals and things.
(31:57):
It doesn't seem like any of these will be reached,
but those are the goals at least, And you know,
we're kind of explaining why as we're going. But California
is trying to get twenty thousand, I'm sorry, twenty five
thousand megawatts by twenty forty five. These are going to
be floating because of Pacific is so deep and cal
Berkeley they did a study and they said that offshore
(32:19):
wind by twenty to fifty could potentially supply between ten
and twenty five percent of all US energy, not just
wind energy.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
And offshore is the smallest one, so it's the smallest segment.
And the fact that the offshore wind farms are so
small right now, that's significant growth. And I get the
impression that one of the reasons they're growing is one
it's not up on anybody's real estate. It's like way
out in the ocean, even though you can kind of
see them. But secondly, fifty percent of Americans live within
(32:48):
fifty miles of a coast, and transmission lines are a
real thing, a real issue for wind power. So if
you can get you know, a fifty mile length of
transmission wire to fifty percent of Americans, that's a pretty
significant number of people.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, I wonder if some of these, you know, like
the younger generation is generally, I mean, this is a
broad stroke, but generally a little more into trying to
go toward renewable energy. So I wonder if they're sort
of you know, if like the rich kids are even
fighting back against their parents about stuff like this. Like,
I wonder how you know you said it was like
(33:29):
a pinky nail, right, Dad's complaining he's on the beach,
and the kids are like, Dad, just hold up your
pinky nail. Block it out roomor exactly.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
The thing is is, I was very interested to find
this out. There's a lot of environmentalists who are opposed
to these wind projects too. They're making strange bedfellows with
people who don't like renewable at all. They're like, you're
an environmentalist, how can you be opposed to this. They're like,
look at those giant turbine. That's just one of them,
and they're put more and more offshore. They're ruining habitats,
(34:03):
they're ruining communities, Like, this is not the way to go.
And they're like, well, what way do you want to go? Hippie, Like,
what's wrong? Now? We're finally doing the stuff you wanted
to do. And the thread that seems to be emerging
among younger environmentalists or among environmentalists in general, is degrowth.
It's like, no, we don't need to create more and
more wind farms to meet electrical demand that's going to
(34:24):
increase over the next two decades. We need to decrease
the electrical demand, and yeah, we need to supply it
with wind and stuff like that, but we're going in
the wrong direction here. We're billing, billing to meet growth, growth, growth.
They're like, we need to stop growing. So that's actually
made them opposed to a lot of these projects, especially
the biggest ones.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah. I mean, I think those people look out and
see a big wind farm and it doesn't look any
different to them than a nuclear power plant or a
huge coal plant. All they see is some giant monstrosity
of capitalism at work.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, then you know there's a point, so.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
I say we take a break and we'll jump back
into the more of the nuts and bolts of this,
all right, okay, Chuck. In addition to a lot of
(35:30):
the pushback that we just covered for a while, there's
a lot of practical issues and challenges to making wind.
What was it like, up to twenty five percent of
US demand by twenty fifty. I think that's crazy. One
of them is transmission.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Like I said, you had, the wind is out in
the middle of nowhere. That's the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
That's exactly right. Yeah, the places where it blows the
most there are the least number of people, and that
means you have to build an infrastructure to get it
from those less populated areas of the populated areas that
want to use it. That's a big one. And apparently
there was a Princeton study that found that transmission infrastructure
is growing at just like one percent a year, and
(36:12):
that if we keep that pace up. The reduction and
fossil fuel emissions that the Inflation Reduction Act envisioned with
a lot of it's green stuff. That was associated with it,
we'll lose eighty percent of that. Yeah, that reduction, so
we need to definitely expand transmission lines. It's a big,
big step.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, for sure, getting the power there is a big deal.
One idea that you know has a lot of promise,
but you know, it all has its downsides of course,
like there is no like perfect system is storing the energy.
So there's a lot of work being done toward you know,
storage capacity because you know, right now, if the sun
(36:53):
isn't shining, if it's super cloudy a lot, if the
wind isn't blowing very much, then solar and wind are
going to take a hit. And then that means that
the fossil fuel plants just sort of make up for that.
But if you know, if we're leaning more and more
on solar and wind and other renewables, we're gonna have
to figure out a way to store that stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah. So so just real quick for people who are
in the United States or who are in the United
States and don't pay attention to congressional packages, The Inflation
Reduction Act was a bill, was a law that was
passed in twenty twenty two that had it was just
this huge, huge, spending package. But one of the things
that it really focused on was the US infrastructure, which
(37:35):
needs updating big time. But it also looked forward down
the future and was like, how can we invest in
energy and renewables And basically it said the government's even
more open for business for renewable investment than before and
as a results, already had huge impacts. That was passed
in twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty three, the investment
(37:57):
in renewables storage so basically giant batteries that can store
solar and wind power for use later, has increased by
three hundred percent. They predicted that in twenty forty there
was going to be fifty gigawatts of storage capacity, and
now they're up to they're predicting it'll be more like
two hundred gigawatts of storage capacity by twenty forty, just
(38:20):
because of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah, but again, you know these batteries are you know,
not environmentally friendly to create batteries like that. I don't
even think we mentioned really the rare earth metals and
things that are used for these, for the magnets, for
the turbines, like that stuff isn't great either. So like
like we said there is no perfect system. I think
(38:44):
early on the sort of pie in the sky stuff
with renewables was just like use wind in u sun,
which is great, but you can't just talk about the
blue sky stuff without talking about the downsides.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah, and we need to listen to the downsides too,
and then go back, say the drawing board, and not
be like, Nope, this is the way we're doing it totally.
We need to say okay, great, like we're all we're
all on board with moving forward, with us like, how
can we figure out enough of us are on board
with moving forward? How can we figure out how to
do it so that it impacts the fewest people possible
in the least amount possible. And that's I mean, we're smart,
(39:18):
like humans are fairly smart animals, and we can figure
that kind of stuff out. We just have to go
out of our way to take that into account. I
feel like that's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think so too, I say, with trepidation. Right, So
we talked about where we promised talk about what's going
on around the world, and we mentioned Denmark of course,
because just like those windmills back in the day, they
were leader then and they're the leader. Now they create
fifty four zo point three percent of their power supply
(39:52):
from when in Denmark as of a couple of years
ago in twenty twenty two. Other European countries Spain, Germany,
Portugal and then the UK they're over twenty percent. So
they're doing pretty good if you're talking and that's percentage wise.
If you're talking just total wind generation. The US is
number two with four hundred and thirty watt tarawatt hours
(40:14):
annually right now, but you mentioned China. We're at four
thirty four in second place. China is generating seven hundred
and sixty three tarawatt hours per year and like running
away with it.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, And actually the world is extraordinarily fortunate that China
has decided to do that rather than just rely on
fossil fuels, because the pollution that would be even worse
than it is now if they were used if they
use fossil instead of like wind and solar as they're
planning on doing, it would just be the impact would
be nuts essentially.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah. I mean, I think their goal in China is
full carbon neutrality by twenty sixty and wind is a
very very big part of that.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Also, we should point out China is not doing that
because of their magnanimous benevolence towards humanity and the planet.
They're doing it because there's they recognize that there's a
lot of money coming down the pike for for whoever
is prepared for this kind of revolution, and it's actually
happening right now. That figure from how much just the
(41:19):
US alone improved as far as wind generation goes from
the nineties is just astounding. Like I knew it was
going on in the background, I had no idea that
we were this far along already, which I found very heartening.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, yeah, same. So we talked a lot about the
downsides here and there. We haven't talked about animals yet. Obviously,
anytime you're screwing up a habitat for animals in nature,
that's going to have a real bad effect. You know,
there's no way around it. They're gonna I mean, just
those spinning blades are gonna kill birds and bats and
(41:53):
things that fly into them. But the wind pressure around
these farms can affect the habitats. The terrestrial animals are affected.
I think they did a study in Europe about their
row deer and the European hair that are like they're
just not here anymore because of these wind farms in Norway.
You know, they're obviously got a lot of wind going there,
(42:16):
but they're they're shutting things down because reindeer. It's affecting reindeer,
which is, you know, a very big deal in Norway
and the indigenous Sami people who heard the reindeer. So
they can't mess with the indigenous cultures there. So they're
shutting some of those down right.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
They're they're they're it's impacting local communities, no matter how
small the community that's they're they're responding to it. That's
a big that's a big deal. There's also, i think
you said earlier, a lot of impact with ocean based
wind because these things are huge. They're like giant oil dereks,
but there's a bunch of them and they have to
(42:55):
be like mounted to the continental shels so they don't
blow over. So it's a huge, massive project. And the
sound that it generates can rupture whales, ear drums, it
can completely disturb breeding grounds, it can do a lot
of stuff. But again it's been pointed out like if
you do this right and you do the right kind
of studies. If you look around and say who is
(43:15):
this going to impact, and then how can we mitigate
those impacts? There's stuff you can do to make the
impact that much lesser as low as possible. Like, if
you're impacting whales, then plan the construction phase of it
for a time when the whales are off migrating on
another part of the ocean, so it's not going to
blow out their ear drums when you pile Drive the
(43:36):
pylons into the continental shelf, or move it over a
little bit, keep it out of the whales breeding ground,
put it somewhere else. Like, there's just little things you
can do that will decrease that impact tremendously.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, for sure. One thing we haven't talked about that.
I mean, I never really considered this, which is really
short sighted of me. But these are big, massive machines,
and when big massive machines reach the end of their life,
you know, it's not like they'll go forever. These are
physical materials that wear out, including those huge turbines and blades.
(44:13):
So when that stuff, you know, the ones that kind
of came on early in the nineties, in two thousands,
some of those are nearing the end of their life,
and all of a sudden, you're stuck with these blades
that you know, are just gargantuan and they're not made
of bamboo or banana fiber. You know, they're fiberglass and
epoxy resin, and they're kind of an environmental nightmare, and
(44:37):
so like, what do you do with those? You can't
just fill landfills with these giant beasts. No.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
There's a company in Tennessee called Carbon Rivers that says
that they recycled about a thousand of the blades in
twenty twenty three, so I'm guessing is probably significant, but
still maybe a drop in the bucket. Yeah, But they
figured out how to extract the carbon fibers from the
POxy resin, and then you can reuse the carbon fibers
because they're very strong stuff. So that's great, that's good
(45:07):
to have that online. But the better solution, at least
in the future, is to start manufacturing the turbine blades
in ways that they can be much more easily recycled.
So I think they're using the same material still, they're
just using processes that can later on down the road
be reversed more easily, and you can separate the fiberglass
from the epoxy more easily.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
And like, you know, kind of what you've been saying about,
like why don't you change the way you're doing things
as we go instead of being locked in? That is
happening with those blades. And there's a company in Germany. Oh,
actually it's Semens, big company. Sure. Is that the same
company Semens Gamesa as regular Semens Sure? Okay, I just
(45:51):
never heard the full name. I guess I didn't know
Semens had a last name. But they're basically saying, well,
why don't we make a better kind of blade that
uses a different kind of resin that is much more
easily separated from that fiberglass. So things like that, like
you're talking about, like make the parts more easily recyclable
(46:12):
or reusable. You know, I know they're using them on
like like playgrounds and stuff, trying to repurpose them. I
guess it makes it a heck of a slide or
something like that. But that they're you know, there are
limits to how much you can I mean, it all helps,
but how much Because there's a lot of blades out there,
they're going to be coming offline, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Right, and they're big also by the way. I think
I was using carbon fiber and fiberglass interchangeably, and I'm
not quite sure that's right. So they're fiberglass, right.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
So there's a couple of other things that that are
drawbacks to turbines that need to be addressed. Once called
shadow flicker. When the sun is lowish on the horizon
and it's just kind of beaming through the wind turbine.
As the turbines bins, it makes a flickering shadow, and
if you live in range of that shadow, it can
(47:05):
drive you crazy. As a matter of fact, they did
a study to make sure that it wasn't rapid enough
to trigger seizures, and apparently the max is again sixty RPMs,
so I think it's like one hundred. It takes double
that to start to trigger photosensitive seizures. They're like, it's
not going to trigger a seizure, but yes, it's extremely
(47:27):
annoying when it happens. But they're like, it only happens
certain times of the year for a couple of hours
out of a day. Can you just get used to it?
And some people are like no, and then other people
are like, yeah, it's not They did another study of
people who lived in proximity of wind turbines are like,
I don't even really notice anymore. And then noise too,
Like it makes a noise. But again, the fewer parts
(47:50):
that you have, the less noise is gonna make. Like
if you don't have a gearbox, those gears aren't there
to make a bunch of noise. If you do have
a gearbox to soundproof, you're what'd you call that that
package that the airplane has to uh nestle a nestle.
And then also they're making I think these giant those
(48:11):
giant turbines are also going to be quieter. They're like
eighteen percent quieter or something like that. So, yeah, there's
a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed, but
I feel like I just think it's going to get addressed.
If I can share my.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Opinion, Yeah, it's a sunny opinion.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Are you got anything else?
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
All Right, Well, that's it for wind turbines for now.
We'll have to revisit it in your thirty five of
stuff you should know. Uh And since I said that,
it's time for listener mane.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah, I'm gonna call this. Marcie is definitely Asian. We
heard from quite a few Asian listeners for our Peanuts
episode who were very kind, but they were kind of like, guys,
you seemed a little hesitant to kind of to kind
of go there, but go there because Marc was clearly
Asian to every kid that was Asian and reading Peanuts.
(49:05):
And this one is from Hugh Nuian. So, hey, guys,
I'm a forty three year old Vietnamese American who grew
up reading and watching Peanuts my friend's family, and I
assumed without question that Charles Schultz intended Marshy to be
Asian American by drawing and writing her with so many
shortcuts to signal Asian American identity. First, her haircut. Marshy's
(49:29):
hair's short black bob with bangs. Many Asian American girls
had this bus free homemade haircut exacted upon them by
their frugal mothers. Number two, her glasses. Asians and Americans
and Asian Americans do have a higher rate of myopia
and developed countries, so I wear is just more common
with us. She's awkward because she is so busy. I
(49:50):
quote an article by Kevin Wong which resonates with me
and so many children raised by overly protective immigrant parents
who carried the trauma of war and or forced immigration.
Marci couldn't come out to play because she had to
practice her organ she had to study, she had to read.
This was our experience number four. She is mothered by everyone.
(50:12):
Asian language, food, religion, and culture in general were and
might still be considered foreign and weird in many parts
of the US. And I just assume Marcy was depicted
as a strange little girl, because that's how the Peanuts
Gang and the rest of America would perceive an unathletic,
bookish Asian child. And then finally she calls Peppermint Patty
(50:33):
sir because English is her second language. Guys, In many
East and Southeast Asian languages, children address adults and people
in positions of power and respect with courtesy titles that
have no gender. So that's why Peprimitt Patty was called sir.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Wowey, who is this?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
This is from an I got a pronunciation guide. It's
spelled hi eu pronounced hugh and n g u y
e n and Hugh said, I pronounced that hugh ewan.
But different people even pronounced my last name differently within
my own country.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, I've always seen it pronounces or heard it pronounces when.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Yeah. So that was a great email, and we appreciate
all our Asian and Asian American listeners who wrote in
about that saying, guys, we thought she was Asian, so
it's okay to say that.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. If you want to get
in touch with us, like Hugh did and everybody else,
you can send us an email, send it off to
stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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