In this episode we discuss 3D printed wind turbine towers and how this tech can change the efficiency of wind power by allowing much higher tower heights, which will reach much higher wind speeds. We also go in-depth on floating wind farm technology, and discuss whether this will end up powering American homes in the near future. The United States has lots of deep water off its coasts, yet so far only the Scotland Hywind wind farm uses floating turbine designs.
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Full Transcript: EP15 – 3D Printed Wind Turbine Towers, Floating Wind Farm Technology Breakdown
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Allen Hall: Welcome back I’m Allen hall.
Dan: I’m Dan Blewett and this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection, and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
Alright, Allen. So interesting news with a wind turbine based technology. So 3D printing, it looks like they’re testing the capabilities to 3D print, these concrete bases, which is gonna have the implication of allowing 3D printed wind turbine towers to get a lot taller. So. What do you got on the subject?
Allen Hall: Well, it’s, it’s the evolution of 3D printing, right?
It’s gone from making little plastic toys, to making jet engine parts, which GE has done for a number of years now. And now we’re into concrete. Why not? Right. Concrete’s the next step. Why not make it out of concrete? So the article I saw was really interesting about how they’re just sort of zigzagging these little it’s like a nozzle.
So it kind of looked like it was like a squirting out nozzle of concrete.
Dan: Yeah. So I know you’re, you’re not a millennial, so you’re not on Instagram as much, but I’ve seen some of this on Instagram. And they’ve actually been doing this, like trying to build houses in, in lower socio socioeconomic, places, you know, like some small countries, they can whip out a whole house by 3D printing the walls like that.
So I’ve seen this before plastic and out of concrete–out of concrete. So this isn’t, this is the first time I’ve seen this, but it’s the first time I’ve heard about it in the winter, by an industry. So yeah, they like the, and I don’t know if this is their final design by any means, but the photo that you and I are both looking at is, you know, this, inner, inner wall, essentially with like the zigzag pattern, kind of like the way a cardboard is, right.
It’s got the top layer, the bottom layer and this zigzag. That seems to be what they’re doing to, to save. I’m sure. Just the volume of concrete, since it’s a, you know, the load is down, you know, it’s pushing down on it. It doesn’t really need to be
Allen Hall: spiral around in, is that, or is it actually like a printer, like a, inkjet printer where it just zip in left and right.
To think, think to make the, to make this thing?
Dan: No, it follows it. Yeah, it follows exactly. I mean, you can kind of see the way the concrete flows like it. It, it follows it and it just, so I guess they kind of set it up, like, how would I liken this? it’s it’s one of those structures. So it looks like, you know, like a, like a crane.
Yeah. And you know, it just, it follows its pattern, like a CNC machine and it just keeps pumping it and then it repeats and just goes around, around, around, around, around. So, yeah, it’s really interesting. I just never thought about the application here because. I didn’t realize that the bottleneck for the height of this is, is a car transport or truck transport.
So obviously these precast concrete parts. They have to be shipped from the factory to the site. So they obviously max out on how widely it can be instilled, be shipped on the regular roads. So that’s the bottleneck and this, I guess, effectively eliminates that because they can just cast it on site.
Using the three, the three D printer, which is pretty, pretty fascinating. So now they can do what go way wider and thus get up to, I guess, twice as tall. So
Allen Hall: if you increase the width of the base imaging go taller, right. And that’s kind of how it would work. Wow. That’s pretty cool. Did is I, I’m just trying to envision how this works in my head.
So they got wet a guy on the concrete truck, just sitting back there, labeling in this concrete, into this machine to just squirting it out. That’s cool. Kind of how it would go as
Dan: well. I, I, I doubt it’s a ladle, but it’s, I think they just, they pump concrete into the hopper and then the, the hopper, this three D printer then pumps it through to the nozzle.
Allen Hall: You ever, you ever pour a driveway? Come on, have you, have you worked with
Dan: what not? I have not. You haven’t, I’ve worked with my hands. A good amount. I can, well, I can do lots of stuff. But, I have, no, you haven’t
Allen Hall: lived until you poured concrete because there’s nothing as well, just sucks. The water right out of every pore of your body, your hands never feel as dry as when you’re working with concrete, even though it’s wet.
but it’s like this it’s like working with, it’s worse in Plato. You know, it’s working with something that’s goofy. And it doesn’t want to hold its shape. So I’m not sure how do you get the right consistency on this, where you can lay it down where it doesn’t want to run a news everywhere. And yet still be tacky enough when you come around with the next layer that it wants to steal or here to it.
So that’s gotta be, I can imagine if you’re doing this. Okay. Well, I’ll give you the two extremes. We’re doing this in Denver, Colorado, and it’s cold outside January. Well, there’s no way this is going right. And I’ll go the auto, the extreme I’m down in someplace really, really hot, like Australia in this in January.
Cause that’s when it’s summer, right summer in January and Australia, the temperature and the humidity. It’s got to play really into that. When you think like you gotta be able to get it, get it down where it still sticks and you can still build upon the previous level before it hardens, but it can’t be too soft either.
Well, there’s, it’s going to collapse under its own weight. Right.
Dan: Yeah. And my understanding of it is that there’s there just as a lot of high tech chemistry nowadays, just looking at the, just, have you seen some of the auto leveling stuff of these for like foundations and for retailing of floor, stuff like that?
Just really thin essentially. And so they call it, they call it auto auto leveling, where it’s just thin enough where it’ll. You know, it’ll spread out and it’ll pool where it’s got a pool and it’ll just, just like water we’ll fill the, fill the vessel that it’s, you know, poured into this thinner concrete, we’ll do the same thing and sort of level itself.
So I think, yeah, I think there’s just a high tech mix with this concrete, and I think there’s a lot of new additives from what I’ve gathered. Just like I’m like, kind of in the know with some weird stuff, just like. I’m just interested in, construction, like tools and welding and machining. And if I’m screwing around on Instagram, I’m kind of looking at that kind of stuff, which is kind of fascinating.
So just piecing little things together that seems like that’s a, so whatever, whatever, they’re there. Three D printing these with, it’s definitely like a proprietary sort of mix and they’re good. They’re really working hard. I’m sure to get the viscosity. And like you said, the stickiness. And all that stuff right.
To make it work. But yeah, they’d be doing this with houses and, you know, on a small scale, like kind of like little village kind of like huts and, they can three D print the walls in a day and just throw a roof on it. And they’re going w versus, you know, having to do the real masonry work, which is some really, both difficult and.
Skilled labor is
Allen Hall: supposed to be used out in the ocean or just on land to say,
Dan: I think on land and the, and the other thing that they talked about, this baffle design. So, you know, again, we’re still looking at the same photo where it has that waviness inside of it and some, and that’s that provides a natural insulation for homes.
So if you, you know, your walls are this they’re a 12 inches thick, but there’s also some, some, some. Empty space inside, which is going to give you good insulation when it’s cold or hot. And it’s going to give you a little bit of sound. So is this like an
Allen Hall: additional revenue stream for the wind turbine?
You can just open it up and make it a hotel on the weekends and throw a
Dan: couple of, I mean, have some habits in there or whatever, maybe run it out to the Keebler corporation. I mean,
Allen Hall: no, you can totally live with the base. Now. These things are huge. You could totally make while,
Dan: especially if they’re going to be 200 meters tall.
Yeah. Enormous
Allen Hall: sublet. Right?
Dan: Yeah. I mean it’s 600 feet. That’s six. Is it exactly 10 feet? I always get this mixed up. Is it so six, if it’s 200 meters tall, a structure, a building that’s 600 feet. Is that 60 stories? Stories, 10, the
Allen Hall: story. I don’t know if the story in official measure of length. I doubt it. I think it has to be a measure of floors.
Do I think, I don’t think, I don’t know.
Dan: Well, it’s definitely like a 42 story building. And this is my, my question is, is a 42 story building 420 feet tall. I don’t think so. No, I don’t think
Allen Hall: so. I don’t think that’s how it works. I think every, every level, the elevator stops that is a story. Is that kind of how it works?
Dan: Yeah, but isn’t there a standardized, Oh
Allen Hall: no, no. I’m going to vote. No on that. Now someone may email us and say, no, there is a standard price war.
Dan: Well, you know, about 14. Well, I just Googled it. It’s about 14 hours
Allen Hall: or is right. I mean,
Dan: that’s the featured snippet on Google about 14 feet. So that could be 10, please.
What is going on 10 or 11? 12 meters. I doubt it.
Allen Hall: But in the base of these,
Dan: well, it says the height of each story is based on the ceiling height of the rooms. Plus the thickness of the floors between each pane. So generally this is around 14 feet, 4.3 meters. So there you go,
Allen Hall: but I’m telling you in the base of these wind turbines, you could totally make an apartment in there or make like a little
Dan: like a workspace
Allen Hall: workspace.
Just kind of go to your own turbine.
Dan: Coworking,
Allen Hall: put some spits, a
Dan: stereo in there as remote, remote, remote village, remote area on top of the mountain where there’s no food or. Nope. Anything around?
Allen Hall: Well, it was just like those little tiny houses.
Dan: Right? Sounds lovely.
Allen Hall: Thousands of dollars on the tiny houses you could live inside the wind turbine.
Come on, live it
Dan: up, baby. Which those tiny houses, I think they’re cool because they, they really utilize this space. Well, especially like for me being here in a city like DC, like space out a premium space is expensive. You see these, it depends where you’re coming from in the world. So if you’re in a normal house, out in the suburbs, you’re like, Oh, tiny houses set makes that’s so weird.
If you’re in the city and a smallest apartment already, you see a tiny house. You’re like, that’s just a cool unit utilization of a similar amount of space. Right. So, yeah, it just kinda depends on which way you’re looking at it,
Allen Hall: I suppose. But, but I still wouldn’t own one
Dan: if I had a choice, but I guess my only point is if you, if you, if you started reconceptualizing like studio apartments or, you know, small one bedroom apartments in the same way as they configure these.
Small homes. Like they really get a lot of, they really get a lot of like livable space, lofting it, putting stuff under this, under this, the, steps. And, they, they really make use of every little nook and cranny of those tiny homes, which is cool. And it doesn’t seem like the same engineering goes into, studio apartments and stuff like that.
That’s my point there,
Allen Hall: but. It also some of the most efficient homes on the planet, too. A lot of them are solar powered. some of them are wind powered. I’ve seen some of them been wind powered, so they plugged into the local wind turbine to get electricity and those storage and batteries and that kind of thing.
It’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s obviously to each their own. Enjoy it, but the, the three D printed concrete thing, that’s kind of cool. I want to see, well, let’s just see where it goes. I didn’t know they were building homes out of it. That’s interesting. That’s kind of cool.
Dan: Yeah, and I think it’s new. I think, like I said, I think it’s a, it’s definitely happening in, in lower income places around the world.
And more of like a village kind of setting is where they’re starting to test this, but it’s not mainstream enough where it’d be anywhere. You would have seen it in like the U S is essentially the, what I’ve gathered from it. But it is a cool technology for sure
Allen Hall: homes out of it. You’re gonna see a lot more of it.
Right. That’s kind of how it starts. It starts small that expands and finds it on the markets. And then next thing you know, You’re buying your brand new home out of concrete made by GE?
Dan: Well, it’s, it’s kinda like the, Have you seen the storage container homes, which I really like, I think they’re super, I mean, they can be whatever you want them to be.
Have you seen those?
Allen Hall: The first time I saw him was I wouldn’t call it a home, but the first time I saw that was down in Washington, DC at the Washington nationals baseball game, as you’re walking up to the stadium, they had them.
Dan: Yeah. I assume
Allen Hall: people were living in those things, but also selling hot dogs and, Oh, there are sorted meats out of those shipping containers.
I thought, wow, that’s kind of cool. I’m not sure I’m going to eat out of that.
Dan: That’s actually, that’s actually like a, a, like a, I think it’s like a beer garden kind of bar what that is. I haven’t been in it. It, yeah, I haven’t been in it. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Cause right at the entrance, but I haven’t been in it, but yeah.
I think I asked someone, they said that’s a, that’s a pretty popular, like outdoor summer kind of bar or something like that. But no, they make they, I mean, you can, for a pretty reasonable price, you can get, like kind of like a pre engineered are just like the architectural drawings of a. a home using these shipping containers, which are obviously fireproof, they’re structurally very sound.
And, you know, you could take four of them and build like a 2,400 square foot home, like not a small home and you could get six, eight E like all the designs are really fascinating. The way you can be creative, kind of stacking them up and then you can make them still look very industrial outside, or you can kind of.
Box them in and make them very modern looking, put like regular outside paneling on it. And then of course inside you can, insulate them and you know, it just, it could look like a normal house inside opposite once you finish it off inside. But the, the frame of it, the bones are all metal. So it’s fireproof.
And, and obviously it’s like doing a service for the environment because there’s so many of these shipping containers that go out of commission that they need to go somewhere where seals are recyclable, but, still it’s a cool use for it. So if you have a piece of land, you can. By the drawings and potentially like make your own home, for less than you’d probably fabricate one with Patricia traditional materials anyway, which is really interesting.
So you think that over time, this concrete, you know, this concrete idea. Could be the same thing where maybe you just get the bones of your house through the fringes. There’s no reinforcement in still put shingles on it. Yeah. That’s
Allen Hall: reinforcement bar in it that I could see, but doesn’t mean they don’t fill the nooks and crannies with other reinforcement.
Hm that’s that’s interesting.
Dan: Yeah, who knows it could, it could definitely be a hybridized kind of thing where maybe you do a certain parts of it with that, and then you reinforce it some other way or, yeah, the I’m sure there’s a lot of different ways to try to
Allen Hall: just find issues recyclability. Right.
So if you made it out of concrete that’s and it doesn’t have anything to say, let’s just for the sake of. Ignoring engineering for a minute and it doesn’t have any say doesn’t have any reinforcement bar or reinforcement metal reinforcement, then it’s pretty much recyclable in a sense. You just, you would just grind it up and call it a day or slice it up into rings and do something else with it.
It’s probably has a pretty long lifespan too. You would think if it, if it does do. Well, we think it does. That’s kind of, that’s interesting, right? Because every part we were trying to work on these wind turbines, we’re trying to get rid of waste and we’re not just delaying the inevitable, like with the existing wind turbine blades where we’re going to bury them 20 years from now, the ones that come out of the factory today, maybe GE is thinking a little more ahead and saying, Hey, what’s this use this, this is using recyclable material.
Just like the, the company that was making the towers out of wood. Maybe it’s the same sort of thought process. Like it’s a lot less, energy to make it out of concrete, which may be true. Maybe a lot less effort to make it out of concrete than to make it out of steel. That’s somebody’s thinking, right?
Yeah. Hmm. That’s pretty cool
Dan: for sure.
other, a big piece of tech on our radar. So we talked about this a little bit about, or we talked a little bit about this in our previous podcast, but. Kind of wanted to go a little bit deeper on floating wind turbines. So the high, the high wind farm is the only floating wind farm in the world. It’s outside of Scotland and it’s in 2,600 feet.
Well, I don’t think it’s in 2,600 feet of water, but the technology they use is good for up to 2,600 feet of water. And this is the spar technique where they’re essentially. they have this long anchoring floating tube essentially filled with, heavy ballasts. So it’s got 5,000 tons of iron ore in the bottom to keep it float, you know, to keep it upright.
And then they anchor the turbine to the top of it. And then once they’ve done this in the Harbor, they tow it out to its final resting position. And then they have three Slack Moring lines that connect it to seabed anchors. And that’s what kind of keeps it in its same little, general spot. they’re not tensioned.
And so it’s going to just kind of stay put and keep the lines are going to kind of keep it in the same place. But. pretty interesting. And they said that, say that technology is good for up to 2,600 feet deep, which is about 10 times deeper than the current offshore rigs that are fixed to the sea bed.
So what are, what are your impressions seeing this? There’s a couple of really cool, cool YouTube videos showing the high wind farm being built. A really impressive, like big, big off shore. where, what is that, that, that crane just a crazy, some crazy big machinery needed to get this done. Cause they, the hoist the entire fully built, fully assembled wind turbine on top of the, of it.
Isn’t it.
Allen Hall: So as they get bigger and bigger and bigger, that essentially pushes them to make them right on the beach. Right. You can’t. Necessarily assemble those a thousand miles. Well, in Scotland, you’re not really that far from the water, no matter what you do, but, you’re kind of limited in where you can build something like that.
Right. It’s gotta be pretty close to the shore cause you don’t want to have to haul that around through town to get, get it out into the ocean. But the it’s sort of like a, it’s like a buoy, right? It’s similar. It’s just got a weight on the bottom and it’s quasi anchored to the sea floor. With a cable or cables, and then you got this wind turbine on top of it, but that is the advantage.
Then just having watched a little of the videos, it didn’t really get to the what’s the super advantage besides I can put it in places that otherwise couldn’t Mount it to the seabed floor. Is it just a, I can float it and it’s going to be. Bob around in there, like a rubber ducky on the ocean, on the ocean.
Is that sort of the philosophy? Cause it’s still buoyant, right? It’s not sinking to the bottom of it. It’s
Dan: still boiling.
Allen Hall: Right? So it’s got it’s. It must be just counterbalanced such that it must not rock a lot. Right? Cause it must have some sort of control system on it too, because otherwise it’d want to drift when the winds come, it’s always going to be going away from the seashore.
It seemed like, but where’s,
Dan: well, those are the morning, the morning cables are going to keep it from drifting off of where it’s supposed to settle. Right. But the, you know, the anchor for it is 80 meters on our water, you know, and that, and that’s, I mean, 5,000 tons of iron or we’ll do that. But like you said, it’s still floating.
and obviously just like the. The idea here is that just the wind is much stronger, further out. And so they’re trying to get out to some of that, but
Allen Hall: that thing was developing.
Dan: It’d be
Allen Hall: like a,
Dan: a
Allen Hall: ship on most, in the sense that it tends to develop its own, life system around it, where fish and barnacles and whatever I was going to come on to that structure.
And then you’re going to have this. Marine life, living around these things and you the opposite. You’re going to have birds as soon as you have fish. And then it’s just one could be a little ecosystem. Isn’t it? Wouldn’t you think? So,
Dan: Right.
Allen Hall: You could be attracting well there’s no, I don’t know. It was a whales over there.
There must be some sort of whale running up and down and through there. I wonder if they thought, well, just being in Scotland, it just makes me think, like, someone’s thought about the aquatic life and what that thing’s going to look like. And with this thing bebopping around in the ocean is. Is it going to be some sort of issue for the Marine, animals that are in that, in that neighborhood?
I wonder if it is right. Cause they even say like, Is it kind of like the submarines with the, making the pinging noises. That’s annoying the whales. And so they’ve been trying to stop some of those signals from submarines. And then I can’t imagine this is not going to make some quasi noise. And what, and is it simple, is it going to be similar to where we have the bats and the birds running into the top of the turbine that we have?
We have, we still have birds or to get to the top of the spitting blaze, and then we have something run into the bottom. you got to,
Dan: yeah, I’m not sure. I mean, you’d hope, you’d hope there isn’t, you’d hope some of these creatures just, Oh, there’s a thing in the water. Like just go around. I’m not really sure how.
Yeah. I don’t know how they live their lives down there under the sea, you know, Sebastian and Ariel and friends, but, it’s yeah, that’s a good question. I guess, I guess they don’t really know. I mean, the thing with the big implications here that most of the water off shore on the U S is very deep. It gets very deep, very fast.
So this is the only viable technology to. To get wind turbines offshore, you get a triangle. There’s just really deep water. And they, if you, if you utilize that, then you could potentially power a lot of America. With one.
Allen Hall: Good.
Dan: Well, it’s this, so that’s the front seat here
Allen Hall: where all the, in the, was that the New York times article?
I think it was New York times. Where, where basically all the States along the Eastern seaboard, New Jersey, I’m going to give you a geography lesson, right? So you go from Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. Connecticut New York, New Jersey from sort of North to South, or all pitching a bunch of wind turbine sites on, out in the ocean, out in the Atlantic ocean.
And there seems to be some dispute about where who’s going to get to build all the wind turbines. Right? Cause you can imagine it’s a lot of jobs and New Jersey is stepping out saying, Hey, we got all this open land. Open land along the seashore in New Jersey and Massachusetts doesn’t. So we’re gonna, we’re going to be the leader in winter and technology and like, yeah.
Yeah, sure. I think Massachusetts will have something to say about that. But if we’re going to continue to build these wind turbines off shore and the ones that I saw at least around Massachusetts, we’re talking about being pretty far off shore because you don’t want to ruin the sight line out in the ocean, that we’re going to have to have some sort of mechanism of making these turbines float out there.
Right. Wouldn’t surprise me. Doesn’t surprise me.
Dan: Agreed. And I, yeah, I think it’s a natural evolution for this. I mean, of course there is also still a lot of, a lot of space in the U S that’s kind of dead space. I mean, Texas is, you know, the leader in, installed capacity in the U S and a lot of arid unpleasant on livable, you know, Parts of the country, especially down
Allen Hall: in the Southwest New Jersey, he was trying to stick it to Texas, stick it to the oil and gas industry in Texas and saying, Oh, look at these guys down in Texas and all their, carbon polluting oil and gas.
Yeah. You know what. Texas is also the leader in wind. It’s not even close. All right. Where’s New Jersey in that mix, not even in the top 10. so cool. It right. Texas has been in the wind business a long time in West. Texas is kind of ideally situated because there’s like this drop-off and the, and the landscape is like a 400, 500 a drop drop off these tableaus or.
Potatoes, what do they call them? that the wind term is set up against that, right? For miles and miles and miles and miles and miles after you go to West Texas wind turbines everywhere. yeah. So if, if I hate to break new Jersey’s bubble, I used to live there. Great state have family there. But when it gets down to it, you know, they’re going to have to compete with everybody else.
And I don’t necessarily see New Jersey being the winner there, especially since Gamays has been in Pennsylvania for quite a number of years, building wind turbine blades and an old steel factory outside Philadelphia, which is just the next state down. So we’ll see I, the shore, if you ever watch, do you ever watch MTV?
Do you ever watch whatever that stupid show is with the people at the Jersey shore? Right. So the Jersey shore is really popular. There’s when you go to the Jersey store, first of all, the weather’s not bad. Temperature is nice and the beaches aren’t. Bad there’s sexual sand there and they’re really popular.
So I, I, I doubt they’re going to better be, be putting big factories along the seashore of New Jersey. I doubt it. Most likely. It’s going to end up somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts or Rhode Island where they can do that kind of thing. Cause the water appears is not as much colder and there’s a lot of sharks, right?
Jaws, jaws was based in, Massachusetts. So you gotta be careful when you’re swimming. Good place to put a winter
Dan: and factory. Yeah. So with Texas and, and this is kind of a, you know, one of our, our talking points here today, I mean, they’ve got 24,899 megawatts installed. This is a big state. Mind you, but.
That’s a lot of, that’s a lot, a lot of classes.
Allen Hall: And remember that a lot of
Dan: those is enough to power six thousand six million
Allen Hall: hole. Yeah. And remember that a lot of those wind turbines are not necessarily new, so they’re like one megawatt and less, most of them probably are. So that means there’s. Thousands 20, 30,000 wind turbines out there, maybe more.
That’s a lot of wind turbines and yeah, it’s, it’s a big open state, but still they made a commitment a long time ago to invest in wind and to find whatever energy source that they could get, to, to power that state. So I, you know, I get the whole, let’s poke at the oil. Guy in Houston or whatever, but come on, Texas has done a pretty good job in developing all sorts of, of energy and yeah, New Jersey.
Governor’s, shouldn’t be trying to stick it to Texas on no level. Should they be sticking it to Texas right now?
Dan: Yeah, well, and just to show how far ahead they are. I mean, I was second and in capacity with 8,000 and change megawatts. So it’s not even, not even remotely close. I mean, Texas is three times the second place.
So, so yeah, and this is like we said, this is factoring into the fact that a lot of these are older and smaller. Smaller turbines, which makes, again like the off shore, even more attractive, because you can have some of these, I mean, Siemens Gamesa is new. One is 14 megawatts up to 15 with boost. I mean, that, that could, that could replace eight or 10, depending on how I was like
Allen Hall: they’re, water all on co has more coastline.
Texas thought it’d be close to next to the New Jersey. You kidding me? There’s a half the state, the bottom, the whole Eastern part of the state, or the vast part of the Eastern part of Texas is on the water right in the Gulf of Mexico. and they, and they’ve been drilling for oil out there. So they know how to handle, equipment on the water.
There. Texas is going to be so far ahead of New Jersey if they even want to try. and with Eli must be down there now. And. And making it as well. The latest thing for Ilan, he’s going to put that rocket launch facility on the water. He’s not going to put it on land because we really can’t. So they’re going to put it on the water.
You know, things would be a lot of technology and I’m putting floating stuff out in the water. You don’t think Elon Musk is going to be powering that with a wind turbines. Hell yeah, he is. Yeah. Come on. Right? so it’s going on in the right direction. I just hate this little state to state stupid squabbles we get in, which is pointless.
And, and at the end of the day, if you’re really concerned about making the earth a little bit better than does it really matter if Rhode Island is making wind turbines too, does it really really matter? No, it doesn’t matter at all. Build your wind turbines be happy. You are and stop sticking it to somebody else.
It’s ridiculous.
Dan: so, our last segment here, we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit about business. So a business and tech news, I guess. So there’s company fluence, which is a battery company. They kind of have like the, sort of the next generation of their, other of their battery products and it’s, they’ve just sold, 800 megawatts of it.
And these new versions come in a 10 foot cube. So it’s a lot easier to ship their previous one, with these big, what do you call these batteries there? It’s escaping me at this moment, but they’re just these large high capacity, while they’re sodium and, they’re just like electrolyte batteries.
Right? And so obviously they have to take a little bit of a bigger form factor, to have big storage. But, so what they’re now starting to scale down. So this company fluence used to have ones that were basically the size of a, Of a truck bed or a shipping container. Funny that we were just talking about that.
And now they’re down to about a 10 foot queue, which is obviously a much easier to transport. And so just like anything else, the technology is improving and they’re getting smaller. So, you know, where do you, where do you see these kind of fitting in to all of this? I mean, as battery storage is going to be a big thing going forward.
Allen Hall: Or it’s going to be huge going forward. It’s a matter of how efficient it’s going to be in. Is it worth the money you’re going to pour into it for the energy you can possibly store. Right? It’s all comes down to the money at the end of the day. It’s all about the money. So what are you going to do? you’re going to try to store that energy that you couldn’t sell on the open market and then deliver it when the energy prices are high.
Yeah, probably. Yeah. That’s probably a smart thing to do. is, can you, can you work that Delta between those two to pay off for the batteries, maybe. I mean, obviously a lot of smart people sitting in front of the computer on Excel going, can I make a little bit of money? Can I make a little bit of money?
And it’s sorta like that now. The problem with batteries is that the battery technology lately has been changing so rapidly that, and the way we control batteries has increased the, the, the way we control the temperature and the charge rates and all those things. We’re really able to control the lifetime of the battery.
And also just some of the newer technology where you can store more and more in a battery that. This is the scary part is you make this investment. And then six months later, Elon Musk comes out with the super giga battery thing, Bob, and then he’s just wiped you out.
Dan: I think that’s what he calls it. Yeah.
I think that’s actually the, that’s actually the, the term you should use that,
Allen Hall: you know, if we
Dan: trademark that puppy,
Allen Hall: he may have to pay us and that’d be okay. But the, if you get, if you get to the point of making enough storage, there’s just been all kinds of different stories, techniques over the years.
Right. So they’ve. There’s been sort of mechanical storage. At one point, we were talking about making flywheels and have these flywheels in a vacuum. You spin it up this flywheel at a store, the energy, and then you can unwind this flywheel and discharge it so mechanical. Then you’ve had sort of supercapacitors you still hear Dotson spout supercapacitors and then you get to this real, real, real storage batteries where you have some control over it.
And it’s just going to have to find his place. But again, it comes down to. A risk reward. How fast can you cash this thing in and make it pay for herself before someone like Elan or bayzos or somebody just wipes you out? Because that’s, that’s an evidently what’s going to happen here is that one of the bigger players is gonna come in and squash you like the bug that you are and okay.
Right. You gotta be prepared for that. so prepared to get your money out as fast as you humanly can, but there’s a place for it and there, and. Like all, all great things. It takes small steps to get to the bigger picture. Maybe they have something. Maybe they have something. But history would say no as right now.
No. And we always hope for something better technology every, every day. You hope for that better piece of technology? I’m not sure we’re quite there yet, but we’re starting to get close. You can, you can kind of see it coming. And was it a Tesla the other day was talking about, some improvement, more improvements and batteries and what the future holds.
So if you’re, if you’re have any sort of older style battery technology, you gotta be wondering, is this really worth it? Are we going to be here five years from now? Yeah, maybe, maybe. Now, who do you bet against Andy? Go ahead. Do you go to Vegas and say, I’m gonna put my money on Bob Smith’s battery pack and Purium, or am I going to put my money on Elon Musk?
$2 billion in, in, in, space X and Tesla would say, people are gonna put the money on Elon Musk. That’s my bet.
Dan: Yeah. He’s obviously gonna have a lot more resources to throw it back to technology, but at the same time, I don’t know that his, the tech they’re working on is going to be the same tech that these companies are working on because obviously a lot of different types of batteries and applications.
So, you know, I think it just depends on where they’re focused and where that. What the prize they’ll have their eye on us. So I, but you could definitely see when these smaller companies getting acquired by them, whatever dream. Right. That seems like a Silicon Valley dream. Yeah. Cause
Allen Hall: I have this,
Dan: I mean, especially if you’re not struggling to turn a profit, you know, we’re talking about yeah.
some of these electric aircraft companies or same deal or other podcasts struck. And yeah, if you’re just going along and someone wants to put you in their portfolio and give the equity holders a nice payday, I mean, that’s rescued a lot of entrepreneurs, Jersey shore, you know, recent.
Allen Hall: Why not? Right.
Come on.
Dan: I mean, there you go and get fist pump with your quarter million dollars and I’ve ran in. You’re never turned a profit. So. Well, speaking of which, as we wrap up, let’s talk a little bit about some of these, the bigger wind turbine manufacturers and just companies and their stocks. So, we got Suzlon GE.
Siemens Gamesa. And Nordex obviously GE has been struggling as a company and there are no, they’re not, they’re not the, the level of prominence. They once were back in the day. Where do you, where do you see G and some of their struggles?
Allen Hall: I ran into somebody this past week. We were talking about GE stock and.
The I said, what do you think about GE now says, Oh, it’s a wasteland. It’s a wasteland. It’s never going to come back. And, I don’t know about that. I would, I’m betting on the smart people and they’re, and when they get, when smart people get desperate, they, they find out ways to make things work. The GE stock is not doing great, right.
It’s down in the single digits. And I think I sold it when it was over a hundred at one point or close to it. That was many years ago, obviously. But, you know, the stock price is really, it’s sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. Like when you stock prices down, no one wants to invest in. Yes. So your stock price goes lower and then wants investing is getting into this, like this free fall to the bottom, right?
Right. But GE has stuff, right? They have infrastructure, they have equipment, they got people, they have stuff. So they’re not worth zero. They’ll never be worth zero. This is a question of whether they’re, the investors think there’s an upside potential. And I think GE is going to be okay. And they’re, they’re selling down parts of the company to offload and to provide financial support for what’s going to remain.
I think you’re going to be okay. And when there are also working on some new, obviously the Halle aid series of blades they’ve purchased LM glass fiber. so that’s a very positive thing for the renewable energy sector. They’re going to be okay. They got it. I think at least on the renewable energy side, they’re going to be just fine.
It’s some of the other ones like Suzlon that you got to worry about that have a struggle financially. Now they had this economic downturn, they were struggling beforehand. Are they going to be able to make it out or. Just be gobbled up. You see in a lot of consolidations and if you watch some of these stock prices, you’ll you notice how that, how that consolidation goes.
At some point, your stock prices low enough that they can just gobble you up and say, Hey, look, it’s better to sell to us than to go away. And that’s sorta what’s happening with some of these wind turbine companies. So the big players are getting bigger. The Siemens can Macy’s of the world, the Vestas of the world are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and the smaller players are going away.
At least on the OEM side, you can see that and you can watch that in the stock prices, too. People are betting on what they think are the theoretical winners. So. Vesta Siemens Gamesa are probably tops, tops that list right now, at least don’t use don’t. You see the similar thing on the way that sort of the people gamble in the stock market on wind turbine companies?
That’s kind of what I see.
Dan: Well, yeah, I mean, people tend to speculate and people tend to rise and fall on hot chips and exciting news and there’s, or there’s not as much, You know, from, and this is something that I’m interested in learning more about the stock market and the, and the ways, companies are valued in the ways they fluctuate.
And so you just see lots of, Lots of stocks don’t follow their valuation very well. Like it’s not a logical, it’s a, just a, who’s pumping it up. And so, you know, you see your local or your favorite TV, investment guru says, you know, buy stocks in milk and milk price shoots up. It doesn’t necessarily mean the companies.
Actually worth that valuation their per share price. And I think that’s the scary thing where, like you said, you know, gee, he might still have something, even though they’re kind of at the bottom of the barrel now, and they’ve been delisted from the, from the New York stock exchange. They’re on the NASDAQ now, but.
It’s I don’t know. I mean, Sue’s loan has just restructured, so they’re shareholders and they’re an Indian, they’re an Indian based company. So they’ve restructured and the votes just went through last month to, restructure their debt. So it has 10 resolutions and they’re trying to move forward and, seeing upticks.
So, so yeah, I mean they’re, but they’re training at a penny stock. I mean, are. No, they’re at four, four, four, four 50 rupees per share, per share, which equates to about 60 cents about 5 cents or no, I’m sorry. That equates about seven, seven, six or 7 cents. U S yeah. So that’s what’s, what’s it? Yeah. And what’s, what’s curious is, is obviously an industry that’s not going away.
No. They also have assets like these turbines that are producing and, and people that want to get on the renewable energy train. So it’s, it’s interesting to see how the stock market plays out. With the
Allen Hall: seventies company, you see the move to offshore. right now, the money is almost entirely on offshore wind turbines, where you’re starting to see 12, 14, 15, 16 megawatt turbines being offered.
Off shore. Cause you can’t really do that on shore. And the benefit of, of off shores is that there’s less, you’re gonna annoy a lot less people, right? Because you really can’t see it and it’s off shore. It’s not bothering anybody. And the winds are better. It’s sort of a good combination. Right? You can build it as, as big as you can.
Buoy it up, out there on the water. And, and there seems to be a lot more emphasis, just from what our company sees. The, the ground-based winter means we’re always be there because some people, some places are just landlocked, but from a larger industrial scale. from a country standpoint, if you can power some, some parts of your country, and a lot of cities tend to be based near the shore, like in the United States, right?
The biggest cities are near the shorelines. Then it may make a lot of sense to start putting wind turbines out in the ocean and feeding them that way. So like the Siemens Gamesa part, like Siemens. Siemens appears to be doing the offshore wind and Gamesa tends to be doing the onshore wind. Vestus is getting more and more on the off shore side and the turbines are getting bigger and bigger.
If you can’t play in that market where you can invest, golly, I hate to even imagine about how many millions of dollars they’re gonna invest in it. And one of these new turbines and have no sense of whether they’re gonna, it’s gonna pay off or not. But if you’re not able to front up the money to get a 15 megawatt turbine up and running and demo it and show that you can produce it.
You’re going to be stuck there. You’re really going to be stuck because the infrastructure required to make something that large really restricts the players who can do that. And what you’re going to see is more of a consolidation around. companies that can build facilities. They have the, the cashflow to build a facility near the ocean to build these big wind turbine blades and the towers and the buoys and the whole thing, and shove it out in the ocean and power a nation.
That’s going to get to be a really small list fast.
Dan: All right, well, we’re going to wrap up today’s episode of uptime. If you’re new to the show. Welcome. If you’re a regular here, thank you for your continued support. Please subscribe to the show and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Don’t forget to check out the weather guard, lightening tech, YouTube channel for video episodes, full interviews and short clips from each show for Allen and all of us at weather guard. Stay safe and we’ll see you next week.
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