I love these things…I live in Colorado and we have several large scale wind farms out on the eastern plains, and they are absolutely beautiful. I love driving through and watching those massive turbines spinning, and they are tiny compared to what is being built now. Most of ours are 1.6 MW or 2.1 MW turbines….I can’t wait to see a 12 MW turbine up close and in person.
Hi Willy Mac, I live at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos, to your west, and haven't seen these! Sounds lovely! We are hoping to see our county START to take advantages of alternate energies, as we are at the epicenter of wind and solar production. My dad worked for a factory that made LARGE scale wind turbines (we could have gotten these wind turbines at COST!) and I made a presentation to our county commissioners and their main question was: "Well, how are you going to fuel these windmills? Propane and electricity would cost a fortune". I'm not joking!! This told me a lot about people who are fighting the conversion to Green Energy! These are college educated adults, mind you! I was speechless!! And they say solar panels are "too ugly" to use.
Nicely done David.. Wind and Solar can be integrated into Ocean Mechanical Thermal Energy Conversion in places where deep Western Boundary currents do not exist which means Ocean Mechanical Thermal Energy Conversion can be used in numerous locations around the world where augmented by wind and solar energy..
The potential energy benefits seem so obvious, I struggle to understand why there isn't a massive coordinated geo-political initiative to get these technologies in place without delay. And then I remember we have a fossil fuel industry! Heyho. 'Keep buggering on" as Winston Churchill once said!
Yes, you're very professional and articulate the subject matter very well. The diagrams/illustrations add further clarity 'a picture is worth a thousand words'
Have you read the new book Drawdown by Paul Hawkens? It discusses much of what you do, but from a slightly different angle. It's super interesting, and for a guy like you it would be a breeze.
Geeze, I wonder if you could add a couple of ocean current/tidal blades to the bottom of the floating base? Less ballast, more power to the infrastructure required for the turbine?
Hi Pete. Sounds like a genius plan! See also Patrick's post below on Ocean Mechanical Thermal Energy Conversion which is another concept for harnessing the ocean's mind blowing amount of available energy. Thanks for watching and supporting - very much appreciated.
"Bigger is better." Yes, but that's really the problem with wind. They're building some truly monstrous structures, just to get those blades up to where the wind is strong. That will put wind at a serious disadvantage in competing with solar, which can scale up and down with great ease, and because so many units are made, will descend a learning curve to incredible prices over the next couple of decades.
There is a problem that is not being mentioned. There has always been many approaches for Alternative Energy production, no question. However (and unfortunately), this was not done. If you calculate how effective these alternative systems are from a standpoint of Energy Density, they are too little too late. Nuclear (fission) power is the only solution. Unfortunately, dangerous reactor designs have made this proposal unpopular. I have studied this issue in many formats, including research at Cambridge University, UK. Today, the Certification of a Nuclear Power takes 12 years+ and we are going to need THOUSANDS of Nuclear Power Plants to replace our current energy production methods. Our future will also have to include the outcome of Methane release which will impact us immeasurably. We can fix this problem but our politicians are dragging their feet. We cannot consider Carbon Sequestration either. Geologic forces in the Earth could release all this stored CO2 rapidly and kill us all. Love your Channel though.
Yes, and they are very good at self promotion and not so good at results. The movement is too small to be viable on a large scale. But with storage ramped up, it could add to the mix taking into account it's limitations.
The 30% difference between wind and nuclear is a very BIG detail, something other than natural gas will be needed to pickup the slack. At present in the UK that's 10 gigawatts.
There's a point at which you reach "good enough" & the extra really isn't helping all that much. As this video details, natural gas has a lower capacity factor than the proposed wind turbines, & it is extremely reliable -- so reliable in fact that you're using it as the example of the default reliable energy source that needs to be replaced. The proposed capacity factor of these turbines are more than good enough to serve as a base load power supply.
how does 12MW supply 16000 homes? That's an average per home of only 750W or 0.75kW. Per day, that's 18kWh in total, but when I look at my own usage, it can be 5kW at times and never drops much below 200W, so that in winter I use about 25kWh per day on average (my heating is electric), dropping to 5-7kWh in summer...? btw - the first time I saw such a calculation (for a -then- large GE turbine producing 3MW), they seemed to be basing their calculation of the number-of-homes-served on an average power consumption of 1.5kW, or twice as much. How did British homes suddenly start using half as much electricity?
Wonder what negative effects this will have on already struggling ocean life and then there's the resource overshoot aspect!! August 1st was resource overshoot day this year everything humanity uses from then until the end of the year the Earth cannot replenish. We are currently consuming resources like we have 1 and half planet Earths Many scientists saying we cannot build our way out of this quickly enough as these systems will only cover new energy demands rather than replace existing fossil fuel demands. Saw a article this week saying the US is blocking and slowing current climate change talks and there seems to be little leadership at the talks
I like charts, I study them, I extrapolate them, I ponder upon them. So this chart will not be news to anyone watching these videos (joannenova.com.au/2018/09/renewables-hit-record-high-of-3-6-of-total-global-energy-production/). This doesn't stop me from investigating building my own wind turbine for my garden. Dave, everything you are doing, I did (although not the quality videos) a couple of years back. Read all the reports, read some of the books, ran a website, organised a first showing of Chasing Ice (very good movie) ran a class on climate change, maintained a regularly updated climate noticeboard for years and I'm not so sure it made any difference. I think reality sinks in eventually. But one can never say die and it's not possible to unlearn what one has learned (although I sometimes wish I could). Perhaps there will be a massive turnaround and your views will spike into the hundreds of thousands overnight. Of course, if that happened we are looking at social chaos and panic.
Hi David. Thanks, as always, for your feedback. Much appreciated. Sounds like you were a few years ahead of me ( and maybe therefore a few years further along the disillusionment line, which I can understand). I think ambivalence and apathy in the general public are as dangerous as ignorance , but there are a couple of sites that are gaining traction. Fully Charged is now huge, and although it confines itself to renewable energy and vehicle rather than climate change, it is at at least raising awareness. Climate State is getting there, and Potholer 54 has, I think, about 170,000 subscribers. This latter channel is narrated by a very engaging, entertaining and extremely well researched guy with a wicked sense of sardonic and sarcastic humour. He has bravely tackled the deniers head on, and he is relentless. I'm not in his league, but I will keep going. The one thing I have learnt is that once the videos are out there, they are of course accessible for ever (for better or for worse), so the numbers are growing gradually. Every now and then one video goes a bit viral, like the Solid State batteries video that got over 70,000 views (and a lot of haters in the denier community). My view is pretty sanguine. I just get bored if I sit around doing nothing, so if we are all going extinct in the next couple of decades I just want to be busy, and if I can keep busy while trying to find solutions then that's even better. Thanks again. All the best. Dave
@@JustHaveaThink Evening. It's good for ones mental health to stay busy. I have an expression "move and survive", where move means anything from progressing with, or starting, a new hobby, to physically moving to a new job or location perhaps. I've followed Potholer for quite some time and like his style and voice. I also follow Climate State and Robert Scribbler (although I much preferred to read his articles than watch his videos, for the same but opposite reason I prefer Potholer). Although I find Guy Mc. rather arrogant, his messages to "live a life of excellence" and "at the end only love remains" to be valuable. This is something I try to do now. I also liked his monster climate essay when he kept it updated. It has been 10 years since I was woken up to climate change. A friend asked me to proof-read his IB Environmental Systems and Societies (by Adrian Palmer) revision textbook. Topic 6 was Issues of Climate Change and he has a chart showing Global average temperature vs. decades. I couldn't believe the graph could be correct and that's what kicked it all off for me. I do what I can to reduce our family carbon footprint but also I now "I enjoy my sandwich as if it is my last" (I also worry a lot less about stupid things).
Wind and solar require storage to be efficient, and we need to develop all three. Living in Switzerland, home of Davos, they seem to be putting the kabosh on any technology that hinders their ability to make money. And they fund unthink tanks to brainwash people with lies about different technologies. One advantage of solar and wind and batteries, they pay themselves back after less than 2 years, and then they can last 20 to 25 years giving back on their investment. Nuclear, coal, gas and petroleum are a cost, and never pay back anything. And their infrastructure is enormous. We are stupid to not go renewable.
Good point Lawrence. Also, living in Switzerland you may be interested to look at Climeworks, who are Swiss - they are pioneering Direct Air Carbon Capture and sequestration, which is another great intiative. All the best. Dave
I still think the Molten Salt Reactor will play a part here. These reactors produce 1800 F heat that is storable as hot molten salt. What this enables is peak power production. So when the wind does not blow high levels of power can be produced to make up for shortages like no wind. When not producing power the reactor can produce high temperature heat needed for other industrial uses like making cement. These reactors would make wind even more advantages in that cheap power from wind could be used most of the time without the problems of unsure power. The reactor making peak power with it's heat storage will also be profitable because of the hight price peak power commands when electrical generation is on short supply.
I would like to say, although this is great I am a bit disappointed in the fact that the emphasis seems to be on generating more power when we should be looking to reduce our consumption through insulation nation wide as one example. However the decommissioning of the less efficient turbines as technology improves would be relatively easier than nuclear and cleaner
These scales of generation in wind could start to effect the weather patterns, have any studies been done on this, or are we taking the usual path of shot first and ask questions later! Plus I underStand one of the trusts for wildlife have placed a complaint against this wind farm in the North Sea, just because it’s place right bang in the middle of a bird migrating path!
And high rises in large cities don't do this? I think perhaps you need to look at more relevant studies. I'd LOVE to see a reference to the "trusts" and "studies" to which you mention. Or do you think drilling for oil in the North Sea is a better option? I understand your concerns, but please give references.
There have been a number of articles in the past several months about the difficulty of recycling the turbine blades; that problem has a negative impact on the environment. Considering that, I'm not sure what the net benefit is, but that's a side of the story that needs to be told. Maybe you've addressed this in a later video that I haven't seen yet? I'm loving the videos, by the way. Thank you so much.
You didn't really explain why 'bigger is better'! Building big presents many problems in the way that building a really high sky scraper is much more difficult than building a load of small ones! The reason why bigger is better where wind turbines is concerned is bexause the power harvested from a wind of a given velocity increaces with the area swept out by the blades. Recall that the area of a circle is pi * radius SQUARED. Therefore if you double the length of a blade you get 4 times the area and 4 times the power! This is the overwhelmingly significant factor that makes building bigger turbines worthwhile. even though it usually costs more to build one big one rather than 2 of half the height! You would in fact have to build 4 of half the size to get the same power. There are disadvantages to building big in that the strength and therefore quantity of materials required to fabricate the structural components of a large turbine will be disproportionately greater than might be expected from merely building four of half the size, this is because since the structure is a 3 dimensional form, this time we must consider not merely squared exponents but cubed ones. There are also problems with issues such as transporttion and errection. (Viagra will not help here!) However, once all these factors are taken into account, BIGGER may well proove to be BETTER.
Thanks. I've stood on top of an elevator and looked 930 feet straight down its shaft so I can't be impressed. Mind you, it didn't spin at all so that's a fancy feature.
It is mind boggling how much materials must go into a 12mw wind turbine. And you are in awe of it? You're no better than dick Cheney, Halliburton or Exxon mobil.
Only 12 megawatts for that monstrosity? According to Peter Huber at 4 minutes into this video, your jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts just to get off the ground: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7D8rT2ttoS0.html
science can be good for a laugh or exciting fiction but when it comes right down to it, we implement all technology pretty much the same. if i've learned anything from my time in the UK it is that Flashman is the archetype for those pulling the strings in our civilization. if we can't get there from avarice and self-interest it, apparently, just won't happen. if you prefer Germans, Hegel's your man, "such are great historical men-whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the world-spirit" want a blueprint for action in the face of a terminal diagnosis? ask Gordie "sweep up a little on your way out, we might make it." soundcloud.com/the-tragically-hip/07-all-tore-up
