Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you, so putatively see us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Ben's here too, and this is stuff you should.
Know, wind edition because it's blowing my microphone all over the place. Of what is going on here?
I feel like you should handle this one and I'll just do WIN sound effects in the background the whole time.
Okay, that'll be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't know what's happening.
Is it eerie?
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.
Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what happens in it? I do this?
Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different. Huh okay, all right, I'm fine. I'm back to normal.
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.
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. 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.
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 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 it like lock stock and barrel the first time.
Out Great Scott.
Literally he really wasn't Great Scott, so.
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, 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 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.
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 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 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 fell over in surprise, and coal fired electrical grids took over.
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 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.
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 span of time. And then now in twenty twenty two we are at four hundred and thirty four billion kilowat hours.
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 even more impressively. But wind is definitely I'm sorry for this, but wind is picking up around the world.
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, 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.
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 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 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.
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, 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.
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.
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, they're about thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground, and they generate each one about three point two megawatts.
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 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.
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 out kind of the middle of nowhere, but that can be cataland and stuff like that.
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 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 of wind, but you're also reducing drag dramatically. So that's why basically every single horizontal access turbine has three blades.
What's your ceiling fan?
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?
I typically like a five blader?
Okay?
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.
Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken, is what you're describing.
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.
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.
Oh? Oh, that are ceiling fans.
Yes, that's what the blades look like.
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?
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.
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.
Even I don't have that on my calendar. And I'm suddenly impressed with myself and kind of relieved.
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.
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 to get too cooking. It's like a motor spinning too fast is just never good.
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, 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 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 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, 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.
Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that.
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.
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 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.
Don't still doesn't make sense to me.
Really well, have you ever seen a gear like, you know, like a gift or something of gears at work?
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.
Well, Fewer teeth just means slower.
But that doesn't make sense, like I understand that there's more teeth means faster. How that's what I get it.
It's catching fewer teeth, which is like the go button. Basically, ill on this, We'll move on.
I don't think it's gonna.
Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing to not do this, and I'm trying to explain.
It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle of this episode.
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, so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool.
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.
Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades, just like it would be on a plane.
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 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 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.
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.
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
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.
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 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 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.
I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on this one.
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.
All right, Can we have lunch?
We can have bult We'll order it.
Okay, all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about where we stand today here in the United States.
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 in his whatever kind of shoes he wore.
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.
Nothing on Doc Brown.
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?
Do you know who Doc Brown is? Sure who?
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?
I guess the kind of person who refuses to comment on a great Doc Brown joke.
I was commenting on it. I was saying that it was such a perfect joke and it was inserted so perfectly that there.
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 too bad. I mentioned Texas as the leader. They're generating about twenty five percent of that a little more.
Even that's just mind boggling to think considering Texas.
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 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 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 we're even though we're great at making win, we I guess can't do both.
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.
Yeah, still in Texas.
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.
I know, I know, and like.
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 the sides.
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.
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 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 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.
Like slow pace.
It's just a negative but with a negative vibe, you.
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.
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 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 and efficiently without you know, ruining some nearby community.
Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of what's called nimbi going on, Yeah, on both sides, you know, well, yeah.
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 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.
Here.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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 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.
They're paying commercial fishermen to not fish, essentially.
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 people like, I don't want to see it.
I don't think it's swimming out.
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 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.
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. 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 wind by twenty to fifty could potentially supply between ten and twenty five percent of all US energy, not just wind energy.
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 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.
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 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.
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, 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
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.
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.
That's exactly right.
Yeah, then you know there's a point, so.
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 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.
Like I said, you had, the wind is out in the middle of nowhere. That's the problem.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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 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 because of the Inflation Reduction Act.
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 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.
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, 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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, 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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 so like, what do you do with those? You can't just fill landfills with these giant beasts. No.
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
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Yeah, I think so.
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 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 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 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 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.
Opinion, Yeah, it's a sunny opinion.
Are you got anything else?
I got nothing else.
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.
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.
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 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 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. 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 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.
Wowey, who is this?
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.
Yeah, I've always seen it pronounces or heard it pronounces when.
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.
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.
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