As wind energy OEMs scramble to control costs, more and more and forging partnerships. Vestas has locked-in costs with Maersk – is this a game-changer? Plus, Bill Gates is pushing nuclear power hard in the U.S. – is this a safe diversification of power production? And, a thermoplastic 13m blade was recently 3D printed, SGRE is now producing green hydrogen from one of their pilot projects, and more.
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Show Transcript
00:00:00:13 – 00:00:21:08
Unknown
This episode is brought to you by weather guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We make lightning protection easy. If your wind turbines are due for maintenance or repairs, install our strike tape retrofit LPs upgrade. At the same time, a strike tape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic, long lasting boost to the factory lightning
00:00:21:08 – 00:00:48:22
Unknown
protection system. Forward thinking wind site owners install strike tape today to increase uptime tomorrow. Learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast. Welcome back. I’m Dan Blewett. I’m Allen Hall and I’m Rosemary Barnes, and this is the Uptime podcast bringing you the latest in wind energy, tech news and policy.
00:00:59:20 – 00:01:11:05
Unknown
Welcome back to the Uptime Wind Energy podcast, I’m your co-host Dan Blewett. On today’s show, we’ve got a bunch of great topics we’ll talk about number one. Bill Gates pushing for a new new nuclear power plant in Wyoming.
00:01:11:05 – 00:01:23:23
Unknown
We’ll talk about the future of nuclear and why it’s getting some pushback from the wind industry and others. We’ll talk about Vestas and Maersk. Rosemary is going to come out. She’s going to maul me about my pronunciation of this in a moment.
00:01:24:13 – 00:01:42:22
Unknown
Their container deal and what that means for transportation for them. We’ll talk about a French couple who has won a lawsuit about their health in relation to a wind farm that was installed near their homes. Well, some of the Dominion’s explanation of their 10 billion dollar price tag for their coastal Virginia wind projects.
00:01:43:08 – 00:01:55:08
Unknown
There was a blade that fell off a wind turbine in Freuler. Maybe I got that one right? Could be over two. We’ll see my pronunciation tonight. We’ll talk about it. Roll with our 3-D printing approach for wind turbine blades.
00:01:55:08 – 00:02:12:23
Unknown
They’ve got some new thermoplastic stuff that they’ve just announced. Siemens Gamesa has produced their first green hydrogen from a project. And lastly, we’ll talk about a drone attack on a power grid. This is certainly not can be the last attack of its sort, and we’ve actually mentioned this recently about subsea cables and their potential vulnerability.
00:02:13:00 – 00:02:27:15
Unknown
So we’ll kind of go back and full circle there and talk through this story a little bit. But before we get going, be sure to subscribe to Uptime Tech News, which you’ll find in the show notes or description of today’s podcast, as well as Rosemary’s YouTube channel, which will also find the description.
00:02:27:23 – 00:02:41:10
Unknown
And Alan, let’s start with you. So we’re going to push right here into nuclear. So obviously, nuclear power has a bad rap because we get that, you know, big emotional response from Chernobyl. And there’s the disaster that it caused.
00:02:42:02 – 00:02:57:02
Unknown
But in reality, it’s actually quite safe and it does not contribute to CO2 emissions. So, Alan, take us through this this Bill Gates situation. He’s backing this experimental nuclear nuclear power plant in Wyoming, but not everyone is on board with this right.
00:02:57:02 – 00:03:13:11
Unknown
And this is something that gates and sounds like Warren Buffett have been invested in for a number of years, trying to develop lower cost nuclear power, more modular smaller plants that are more economical to, to build and to control.
00:03:13:21 – 00:03:35:11
Unknown
And there’s a company called TerraPower, which has been doing all the legwork and infrastructure to design these new next generation of nuclear power plants in a couple of years ago, sort of pre-COVID. They were planning on building plants in China so that they would the Chinese government would stop building coal plants.
00:03:35:11 – 00:03:57:01
Unknown
That was that was the goal was to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions in the sulfur emissions into the air by helping the Chinese develop this more compact, more economical and yet highly productive nuclear plants, basically to lower the CO2 emissions out in the world because China is a leading emission emissions from CO2.
00:03:57:14 – 00:04:19:20
Unknown
So that was a game plan. And then COVID happened and the Trump administration happened and they became a limitation on nuclear technology traveling to China. So that left all the investors sort of stuck. And now they’ve come back around and found a site in Wyoming to to build this basically a demonstrator.
00:04:19:20 – 00:04:42:14
Unknown
And it’s really what it is of a new next generation nuclear facility. And it’s supposed to be safer as opposed to to use the nuclear material more efficiently. And there’s discussions about using existing waste material in this facility so we can actually recycle some of the nuclear material already have.
00:04:43:02 – 00:04:58:05
Unknown
That’s the goal. And the that seems like to me on the outside like, all right. Yeah, if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett want to spend some money to the to see if this concept works great. Like, all right, try it right.
00:04:58:06 – 00:05:16:07
Unknown
They’re not building a ginormous plant. They’re building something on a small scale. But the pushback in the renewable industry is overwhelming. Right now, it seems like it’s way too much, and it sort of discredits the whole purpose of of where some of the renewable industry is trying to get to, which is to reduce CO2 emissions.
00:05:16:15 – 00:05:31:03
Unknown
Nuclear reduces CO2 emissions. We can have discussions about how much nuclear cost and the power produced by nuclear. That’s a valid discussion. But in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, Elon Musk has basically said the same thing, which is you have to include nuclear.
00:05:31:13 – 00:05:49:08
Unknown
If you don’t include it, then you probably are not going to get to the gains that you want to fast enough. And so I think I think in the renewable side on the trawler, the wind and solar groups like you should welcome the reduction in CO2 emissions that somebody else is trying something new just like we have
00:05:49:08 – 00:05:58:11
Unknown
been doing in wind and what we’ve been doing a solar, we’ve been trying a lot of things that are new. It’s OK. It’s not a threat to the industry. It’s not a threat to wind. It’s not really a threat to solar.
00:05:59:07 – 00:06:15:17
Unknown
They can all play together. And I think it’s just a little frustrating when we seem like we become irrational. I think there’s too much push on the on the negative side in saying Bill Gates is an evil guy and is trying to rule the world and blah blah blah blah blah and nuclear nuclear power doesn’t.
00:06:15:17 – 00:06:30:09
Unknown
It’s not as efficient as wind power in terms of its cost per megawatt hour. OK, those are discussions we can have at a bill. Gates is putting his money into it. He’s put a little bit of mine into it, by the way, because of the government’s supporting this.
00:06:30:20 – 00:06:44:13
Unknown
But if he’s putting a lot of his money in it, then it’s sort of his risk and good. I think we need to get to that. We need to get to that next step. And rosemary, if we had stopped developing wind turbines back in the 1970s, then we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.
00:06:44:13 – 00:07:04:01
Unknown
And we’ve we’ve limited nuclear to the 1970s. If we look at nuclear 2020, it’s going to look a lot different. So it is. Is there a potential opening here to look at it? Yeah. I mean, I think I’m not so extreme as many renewable energy enthusiasts, in my opinion on nuclear.
00:07:04:14 – 00:07:26:13
Unknown
I think, like Dan said at the start, the safety concerns, like when you look at the actual number of deaths per megawatt hour produced, it’s one of the very safest technologies overall. And I do think that it was a real shame that there was such a really sudden withdrawal from nuclear from a lot of countries after Fukushima
00:07:26:21 – 00:07:48:20
Unknown
. So yeah, I definitely I think that I am anti nuclear for Australia, not strongly, but just purely because we don’t have any nuclear yet. And I think that it’s a big distraction that allows people to not do any of the, you know, like real decarbonization stuff that we could be doing in Australia because we just perpetually have
00:07:48:20 – 00:08:05:16
Unknown
this argument about whether we should be doing nuclear or not. And I think that that same sort of argument is why people get really frustrated with Bill Gates. I personally don’t think that he has. My long term view of the energy transition is very different to his.
00:08:05:16 – 00:08:21:20
Unknown
I think that he still seems to be like he he has an idea that I would consider pretty old fashioned, that we’re waiting for waiting for a new technology to come to save us from climate change. Whereas I think that we have the technologies that we need and what we need to do is spend a lot of
00:08:21:20 – 00:08:41:18
Unknown
effort into into rolling them out. But all that said, for me, the thing about nuclear is just an economic disagreement. You know, do the proponents of nuclear and especially small modular nuclear say that it’s going to be much more economic than it has been in the past because, you know, you’re going to have more units, although not
00:08:41:18 – 00:08:54:21
Unknown
that much. I mean, call it small is a bit of a stretch, you know, like it’s not like a one megawatt wind turbine or something. It’s, you know, there’s still there’s still pretty big. It’s still not going to have that many of them to be able to get like a lot of scale effects, in my opinion.
00:08:55:06 – 00:09:08:23
Unknown
So you know what, I want to say less talk about whether this is could be cheaper in the future and more like testing out whether it will be. Bill Gates thinks nuclear is the answer. It can be more economic, and he’s got the financial means to try it out.
00:09:08:23 – 00:09:19:15
Unknown
And that’s exactly what we what we need. You know, try to see if your assumptions are right and try to as soon as possible so that, you know, you know, early on whether we should pursue this path or not.
00:09:19:15 – 00:09:34:21
Unknown
But I’ve got I’ve got no problem with private money being being used for that. I think it’s just what people get upset about. And what I would get upset about is if we say we’re going to do nuclear instead of wind and solar and batteries and everything.
00:09:34:21 – 00:09:51:10
Unknown
And I don’t get the impression that that’s what’s happening here. So I’m all for trying it out, seeing seeing how the economics goes well. And of course, I feel like we all forget that there is nuclear power in the U.S. I mean, there’s one down the street from Washington, DC in Louisa, Virginia, it’s the lake.
00:09:51:10 – 00:10:11:04
Unknown
In a nuclear generation plan, they have 1.79 gigawatts. And I found this out because we went on a family vacation down there last year during COVID swam in that super power plant. Creepy Creevy lake. Yeah, the lake is like 95 degrees.
00:10:11:11 – 00:10:37:11
Unknown
It’s the most disturbingly warm water you’ve ever swollen. So but yeah, that’s I mean, that thing was built in 1978. And it’s been kicking for almost 50 years now and seemingly perfectly safe, right, I mean. But when people hear about this in the news cycle, it still does has that cringy, that scary connotation.
00:10:37:15 – 00:10:51:22
Unknown
But then I think one of the things that we all need to consider here is what are you going to take offline when nuclear is possible? You would take off all the carbon emitting carbon dioxide emitting power plants.
00:10:51:22 – 00:11:08:01
Unknown
That’s what you would do. So if the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, I think it has to be part of the equation because wind and solar in the United States are not going to ever equal up the ability of the coal and natural gas and whatever else plants that we have here today.
00:11:08:01 – 00:11:19:11
Unknown
So if we shut all those plants down and we don’t have anything to replace it with, we’re going to the United States in particular will have a hard time operating. So we have to find something to fill those in.
00:11:19:11 – 00:11:40:14
Unknown
And Rosemary, go back to your point a little bit. It takes a lot of space to put a lot of wind turbines or solar wind than it does to put a nuclear facility in. So if we’re talking about real estate, I think the first off the footprints a lot smaller than it would be for wind or solar
00:11:40:15 – 00:11:58:01
Unknown
. And the second is the recycling bin of it, which is always a problem for solar. IS has a big recycling problem, as we well know the recycling thing we’ve kind of gotten. Figure it out, you’re going to store the the waste, whatever waste is going to be generated by nuclear on the same footprint space.
00:11:58:08 – 00:12:14:10
Unknown
It just stays there and possibly be reused again. I mean, the way technology’s moving. So I have a really hard time saying there’s no room for nuclear. I think in order to have a developing economy or a growing economy, you’re going to need power.
00:12:14:10 – 00:12:27:21
Unknown
In order to get power, you’re going to fire up oil driven, gas driven power plants. Or are you going to have to move to something else? And it can’t be unless I’m wrong. I mean, I could be totally wrong on this.
00:12:28:10 – 00:12:40:02
Unknown
I don’t think solar or wind are going to be able to fill that entire gap and some of these larger countries. Am I way off? I think I think you’re totally, totally wrong on that. No, not totally wrong.
00:12:40:03 – 00:12:58:11
Unknown
I think solar and wind and other kinds of storage definitely can. You know, even ten, 20 years ago, we could have moved the world to a completely clean electricity system and just immense cost. And now that cost is a lot less than in the future.
00:12:58:11 – 00:13:16:08
Unknown
We’ll say it, you know, move, move further. And then, you know, you add nuclear. It certainly makes it a lot of a smaller transition because nuclear much more closely mimics the types of generation that we’ve got now. We’re used to baseload with, you know, a little bit of variable for peaking.
00:13:16:18 – 00:13:32:11
Unknown
So that would be easier. But how much will it will it cost? And I don’t think anyone would argue that nuclear’s cost reduction curve is going to be nearly as steep as, you know, solar wind and batteries, which are, you know, have got great economies of scale.
00:13:32:11 – 00:13:46:08
Unknown
And you know, we’ve already they’ve been demonstrated to just, you know, exceed expectations for price reductions year after year after year. I don’t think anyone thinks that nuclear is going to reduce us as steeply. You know, whether it reduces, I don’t think it’s reduced it at all.
00:13:46:08 – 00:13:59:15
Unknown
Actually, in recent history, I think prices actually gone up per megawatt hour because people are a lot more safety conscious and because there’s a lot less being installed. So I’ll accept that there’s cost reduction potential. I don’t know how much.
00:13:59:15 – 00:14:12:21
Unknown
I think if you leave nuclear out of the discussion, then you are, you know, leaving out the possibility of finding the cheaper solution. And like I said before, like I wouldn’t shut down any nuclear power plants unless they were unsafe.
00:14:12:21 – 00:14:31:20
Unknown
Like, I think Japan’s reaction to that crisis is understandable, and I think every other country is probably a bit of an overreaction. That’s what I would personally, personally do. But yeah, I would look to the future and say, you know, like, you leave all options on the table and assess them on their economic benefits.
00:14:31:20 – 00:14:49:04
Unknown
To me, that’s the way that we get. The fastest transition is by, you know, letting technologies compete on on cost because, you know, when, when it’s about the economics, you don’t have to get government saying, Oh, we need to do this, this, this and this, you just kind of, you know, let people let people business, people figure
00:14:49:04 – 00:15:01:20
Unknown
out how how they’re going to allocate their resources to get the fastest transition. So yeah, I’ve got nothing, nothing against nuclear. I just I just suspect that it’s not going to have the price reductions that its proponents say it will.
00:15:01:20 – 00:15:14:11
Unknown
And I’m really happy to be proven wrong by, you know, this project and others. If, yeah, if that’s the case. Yeah, I think we we don’t know yet. And because we in the United States, we have essentially stopped all nuclear development since the 1970s.
00:15:15:01 – 00:15:35:20
Unknown
So we don’t know how far it will go. And we need to do. Something new and to check out the technology to show it will or will not work because if they do. Create something that has massive sort of scale and also reasonable energy prices, then I think it comes back into the discussion again because there are
00:15:35:20 – 00:15:51:01
Unknown
some places on this on this planet will be very hard to get wind or solar to be the main thrust in Australia. A different situation, right? And I think there’s definitely a renewable future in front of Australia. I’m not sure everybody else is in that same boat.
00:15:51:13 – 00:16:02:09
Unknown
So let’s I’m of the opinion like, let Bill Gates go for a little while. Let’s see how this plays out instead of killing the guy all the time. Let it play out, and you may be right. You may be totally right it.
00:16:02:20 – 00:16:14:20
Unknown
Bill Gates has got money. He’s he’s not. He’s not going to, you know, go hungry at night if this thing goes belly up in the boardroom. But if it works, it could be beneficial for everybody. So I’m willing to let it play out.
00:16:15:03 – 00:16:28:11
Unknown
I would love it. If nuclear war was something cheap, we could roll out a lot that would really and fast. That’s the other thing is that I think that it’s not going to be so fast to restart a nuclear industry, even in the U.S. where you have have one already.
00:16:29:21 – 00:16:45:08
Unknown
That would be so much easier. Technically speaking, but yeah, I just I’m skeptical. But it’s, you know, put your money where your mouth is and he is. Yeah. Well, and just like solar, there’s obviously environmental concerns of where you can put it.
00:16:45:08 – 00:17:08:20
Unknown
Not not to mention not wanting to have it too close to major areas of people, but also the site in Virginia was found to have a risk of earthquake of only one in 22,000 each year. So obviously they don’t want to put this like there’s not a nuclear plant going in Louisiana, right, right in central or in
00:17:08:20 – 00:17:21:18
Unknown
Kansas, where a tornado is going to run through it sooner or later. So just like solar or wind or anywhere else, there’s it’s going to fit certain locales. Sounds like they they did their diligence in Wyoming, and that’s going to make sense out there.
00:17:22:03 – 00:17:45:18
Unknown
But yeah, we’ll we’ll see. So moving on. Myers and Vestas have signed a big deal, which essentially gives Vestas first crack and direct access to container capacity at a fixed price. And that’s going to be where they can get parts shipped directly from their ports to manufacturers and warehouses, et cetera, et cetera, which seems like it makes
00:17:45:18 – 00:18:08:02
Unknown
a lot of sense. Now, Rosemary, you’re about to give me a clinic and how to pronounce Myers as a lowly American sign, please? No, I’m not. Well, I forget that I’m trying to produce. You said it’s the best I can, and I’m overwhelmed my internal memory of my brain trying to think two words ahead.
00:18:08:20 – 00:18:26:13
Unknown
I’ve lost it. So fill me in Maersk. Maersk, right? Yes, that’s better. Perfect. That was that was great. Yeah. Mask, OK. Thanks. So Rosa, what’s your take? You’re obviously shipping logistics. All that good stuff. We’ve talked about how raw materials are getting more uncertain in the future.
00:18:26:20 – 00:18:37:11
Unknown
It seems like vessels just wants to lock down, like, Hey, we want to make sure we know we have containers. We know we have the shipping logistics in the distant future. Is this seemed like a good move for them?
00:18:38:00 – 00:18:59:10
Unknown
Yeah, I think so. I’ve been surprised at how much supply chain logistics is affecting everything, literally everything, not not just renewable energy, not just wind, but you know any anything at all. So I think a lot of companies have been surprised to, you know, we’ve had this big push towards lean, lean manufacturing where you kind of just
00:18:59:10 – 00:19:12:21
Unknown
have everything just in time. We don’t have big warehouses full of full of stuff, and I know that’s, you know, starting to look less like a really good strategy for for this year, at least and probably into the future.
00:19:12:22 – 00:19:34:00
Unknown
So yeah, it’s tricky, tricky for companies to predict what the future is going to be because, you know, if the problem just goes away quickly, then obviously investors will probably be overpaying for this extra security. But I guess it’s about mitigating mitigating risk because projects all over the world in any kind of industry are just saying delay
00:19:34:00 – 00:19:54:18
Unknown
, delay, delay, cost increase, cost increase, cost increase. And yeah, so I think any any business would be looking towards trying to reduce some of the risk of that getting lost in the future. So moving on, there’s a French couple who has been in a legal battle over a wind farm and so that affected their health, you know
00:19:54:18 – 00:20:19:23
Unknown
, turbine syndrome, which could include headaches, insomnia, irregularities of their hard depression, dizziness tonight as nausea. And they basically said, I want some forestry or some forestry. Forestry is the act of forestry as a verb, right? Once some forest land was felled near them through the active forestry, perhaps that that sound, that sound barrier.
00:20:19:23 – 00:20:39:04
Unknown
So you’re we’re all learning about language here today on up time, that sound barrier. Was removed, and they said this got significantly worse, where essentially their quote was that it was comparable to a washing machine continually turning. And of course, the reflection from the white blades obviously can cause shadows and reflecting light in general.
00:20:39:04 – 00:21:01:11
Unknown
So, Alan, they won their litigation. There were more than £100,000 in compensation. And I guess the question is €0. Got it. I’m learning a lot today. This is a great day for me. So, so do are we going to see more of these?
00:21:01:12 – 00:21:11:11
Unknown
Is this going to open the floodgates or is this sort of a one off kind of thing? Well, I think France wants us to make this a one off thing, but I don’t see how you keep it one off.
00:21:11:16 – 00:21:24:19
Unknown
Obviously, this is a very unique situation in which they had a buffer of trees in between them and the wind turbines, and they are 700 meters. I’ll put that in America, and it’s about a half a mile away from the wind turbines.
00:21:24:19 – 00:21:41:20
Unknown
That’s not really, really that close. But they felt some health effects from Italy. I think they felt some health effects from it and brought up a suit. And I don’t think once you establish that precedent, it gets really hard to stop it.
00:21:42:12 – 00:22:00:18
Unknown
You can say all you want about it’s not precedent, it’s not precedent, but it is precedent. And maybe there are unique situations about it. But those things tend to creep. And unless France comes in and act and prohibits lawsuits of this particular type, I don’t know how you’re going to stop it.
00:22:01:14 – 00:22:20:06
Unknown
We’re going to see more lawsuits in the United States. We already have seen a lot of lawsuits the United States, and we’re trying to work around those things. I think the real key for engineers is that we can’t, you know, we can’t put people underneath wind turbines and we need to be considerate of where people live.
00:22:20:17 – 00:22:37:04
Unknown
And this is it doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. And I think if they would have left the trees as a buffer in between, they could have set themselves €100,000. So I could plant a lot of trees instead of paying out that kind of funds.
00:22:37:04 – 00:22:54:12
Unknown
So I’m just curious as to why they didn’t choose that as a better option. And I know in the states, especially as we get and rosemary is going to see the same thing in Australia when we start putting up a number of wind turbines, particularly offshore, we’re going to have a ton of complaints about it, people about
00:22:54:12 – 00:23:09:14
Unknown
expensive offshore properties. And there’s a flicker right now. My son says change. My son has changed. And you know, this is this is going to be never ending. So unless there’s something done legislatively, I don’t see how it’s going to stop there.
00:23:09:14 – 00:23:20:19
Unknown
They all sort of spiral on one another. So if you start to focus and fixate on the wind turbines and the noise, it’ll never go away. Right. And I mean, I lived in a different apartment early in the summer and a nightclub moved beneath me.
00:23:20:19 – 00:23:37:13
Unknown
I was on the second floor and their bass was pounding through the floorboards. And even as I tried to mitigate it, I eventually moved out because I couldn’t. I mean, it was just like, so intense. But as I even as I tried to, it was just so present in my brain, my irritation at the sound.
00:23:37:19 – 00:23:49:15
Unknown
It’s like you’re seeking the sound out. And at that point, it’s like the problem’s never going to be solved. So I can imagine if you’re living near these turbines, you can’t just like, go about your merry way and be present in every other activity and and just forget they exist.
00:23:49:15 – 00:24:08:01
Unknown
You’re probably going to be so hyper focused on that sound that you hear. You hear it even when they’re not even turning sometimes. That’s how humans sort of are when you get disturbed. I think there’s two different issues here that kind of get conflated because there’s one about like noise, audible noise, and we already know that noise
00:24:08:01 – 00:24:25:17
Unknown
can be annoying. And all kinds of development have noise limitations on them, especially, you know, including wind turbines. And I know that that’s something that we’re very focused on in the industry. You know, you do a lot of modeling before you make a new wind turbine to predict what the wind will be.
00:24:25:17 – 00:24:35:08
Unknown
And then if your modeling turns out to be wrong by a decibel or two, that sounds. That can be a huge problem for certain cases. So the noise part of it is, I think, that that’s pretty well understood.
00:24:35:08 – 00:24:48:00
Unknown
You can also easily measure it, you know, get it in like an objective measurement of what the noise is and there’s a limit, you know, same for you. If they put a highway and near your house, you know, like that there’s limits to how much noise can be near houses.
00:24:48:00 – 00:25:07:12
Unknown
So that’s understood and totally reasonable and not that hard to deal with, not different to any other kind of engineering or construction project. But then the other side of it is this idea of wind turbine syndrome, which is supposedly related to infrasound, which is like low frequency noise, inaudible noise.
00:25:07:12 – 00:25:19:11
Unknown
So it’s kind of funny to call it noise if you can’t hear it, and infrasound is is everywhere it’s in is in wind, it’s in waves, you know, people live near the ocean. I love the soothing sound of that.
00:25:19:20 – 00:25:39:17
Unknown
So that is I don’t even want to say contentious, because if you do a metal. The core review of infrasound, a wind turbine syndrome, you won’t find any evidence that it harms humans. You’ll find a lot of studies that have failed to find any link between infrasound levels and human health, but you know, you can’t prove a
00:25:39:17 – 00:25:56:08
Unknown
negative. So we just kind of keep on studying and studying. But if you’re interested to learn more about it, there’s this research. I think he’s Australian, but I’m not sure. Scott Simon Chapman And he’s been kind of logging the symptoms that people associate with wind turbine syndrome.
00:25:56:19 – 00:26:12:12
Unknown
He has 247 listed in his book. And I just read a quote in a paper that he wrote. These include lung cancer, skin cancer, hemorrhoids, gaining weight, losing weight and my favorite disoriented the kidneys. That’s a small Australian animal.
00:26:12:12 – 00:26:24:12
Unknown
Looks looks just a little more into the kidneys. Wow. Yeah. And and then you know what to say, but most do you know? I know. Do you know why I know one of the kidneys? Because it’s an awesome animal.
00:26:24:12 – 00:26:37:18
Unknown
Sonic and Sonic the Hedgehog, a psychic who is in a kidnaper that was like the game of my childhood. Sonic. Yeah, Mike, I can remember what his what his name was, but it was like me, like a couple of iterations down the road.
00:26:38:02 – 00:26:55:05
Unknown
Sonic and Knuckles, I think, was his name. Sonic Knuckles Knuckles the echidna. Fun fact, the kidneys, mammals. But they also like eggs. So weird does not violate the law of mammals, OK? They also collect rings at high speed with with with blue hedgehogs.
00:26:55:08 – 00:27:15:22
Unknown
So, yeah, so anyway. Simon Chapman goes on to say that most of the symptoms are classic symptoms of anxiety, things that can happen to you when you’re very worried and then that ties into what you are saying. Then wear these like, I don’t think that people who have wind turbine syndrome are making up their symptoms.
00:27:15:22 – 00:27:32:05
Unknown
It’s just I think that they’re mis attributed. And so Simon Chapman did a lot of research into why people get wind turbine syndrome and where and it’s, you know, very clustered in English speaking countries. When I moved to Denmark, no one had even heard of it there, which was lovely for me because I had been quite sick
00:27:32:05 – 00:27:49:07
Unknown
of of hearing about it all the time in Australia. And anyway, he found that it really follows where certain groups of people went to protest wind farms before they were even built. With those protesting groups had gone, people got wind turbine syndrome and where they hadn’t, they didn’t.
00:27:49:07 – 00:28:02:23
Unknown
So it was like, you know, building up this expectation of negative things happening and then the symptoms are all very, very common. Symptoms like everyone has headaches sometimes and sometimes has trouble sleeping. When you’re looking out for these things, that might happen.
00:28:03:04 – 00:28:13:07
Unknown
It’s very easy to, yeah, get in the cycle of, oh, you know, all these terrible things are happening to me. You get anxious and then you get more symptoms from the anxiety. And so I think it’s a real, a real problem.
00:28:13:07 – 00:28:32:18
Unknown
But the cause isn’t from infrasound, from from wind farms. It’s more of a social thing. And what I’ve learned from the whole wind turbine syndrome thing is that it’s not enough to just, you know, look at the technical facts that infrasound does not make people sick directly because actually, it’s important to know how the community is going
00:28:32:18 – 00:28:46:00
Unknown
to react to things and bring them bring them on board. And I think a lot of the wind industry were really surprised by wind turbine syndrome, dismissed it for a long time because it seems really ridiculous to a very technically minded person.
00:28:46:00 – 00:29:04:12
Unknown
But it’s it’s a real problem. It’s just not an engineering problem. And yeah, so it’s one of the things that I really like about, you know, communication like this and my YouTube channel is you get feedback from non engineers, non industry professionals about what they’re actually concerned and optimistic about with the energy transition.
00:29:04:12 – 00:29:25:17
Unknown
And I, yeah, ever since this whole wind turbine syndrome was quite a big thing in Australia, I’ve never really dismissed those community concerns. It’s not only about the technology, that’s for sure. Yeah. Well, and of course, as we talk about them cutting down the forest and I’m not, it’s not clear that the wind turbine company cut down
00:29:26:11 – 00:29:43:08
Unknown
the woodlands. But if you start thinking of like other mitigation strategies like obviously like in roads, they’ve put a huge sound barrier between a highway and a community, right? There’s a suburb right next to it. And so you think, Oh, well, they could do this well, it’s like, well, it was certainly going to cost more than €100,000
00:29:43:08 – 00:29:58:21
Unknown
to make a huge wall right next to this couple’s land. So it’s kind of just like just just pay the settlement and they moved away, and that makes more sense. So, you know, we have these big projects. Sometimes it just makes more sense to to settle out of court and pay them off, and it’s cheaper than changing
00:29:58:21 – 00:30:14:21
Unknown
the project or the the barriers that they might need to put in place. So moving on, speaking of big projects, dominion, they’ve gotten a lot of questions about why the estimated costs of the coastal Virginia offshore wind farm is increasing to 10 billion.
00:30:15:07 – 00:30:36:02
Unknown
And the why the levelized cost of energy for that project is now close to $90 at about 87 is the current projection per megawatt hour. So, Alan, you’ve been pretty dug in with all the news on what the vitamin administration is doing both, you know, good and bad as far as trying to get when stood up here
00:30:36:02 – 00:30:57:17
Unknown
in the U.S. offshore. What’s your take here on this increasing project by Dominion? Well, it sounds like the Biden administration is just going to send them a check to offset the increased costs due to inflation. And I’m not sure that’s a smart move because pouring more money into an inflationary situation causes more inflation.
00:30:58:21 – 00:31:17:03
Unknown
So I’m not sure that got vetted by any economists. Obviously, if I’m dominion, I’m thinking that’s great because the cost I can help keep the cost of the project down. It’s not money coming out of my pocket. Obviously, Dominion is really trying to make this project go, and they’re very aggressive about it and seems Comesa is participating
00:31:17:03 – 00:31:31:07
Unknown
and building a blade factory in in Virginia to support it. So there’s going to be a lot of great things happening around it. I guess the question is economically, and this is where wind turbines and a lot of renewable industry can get in a pinch.
00:31:31:22 – 00:31:50:00
Unknown
If we get into some sort of economic turmoil, in particular with rising inflation to really unrecognizable levels, then can we make some of these renewable projects work? And I think that’s a really big drawback to what is happening now in the US economy.
00:31:50:00 – 00:32:07:16
Unknown
In the world economy is feeling some of the same effects as rising inflation is going to really drag down the middle class. It’s going to really drag down the lower class of people who can’t afford these things. And it’s also going to push up projects that we probably need to get done that.
00:32:07:17 – 00:32:33:21
Unknown
And again, who pays the rates? It’s the average Joe citizens are going to pay the rates for this. So the cost, the project does matter. And I just think right now, the biggest thing to help the renewable industry is to control inflation, slow this unfettered inflationary growth down.
00:32:33:21 – 00:32:53:14
Unknown
I’m not sure pouring another trillion and a half dollars into the economy. It’s going to do that. And on these offshore projects, which I think need to get done. We need to have price stability. That is the one thing that will really kill a project and will kill large corporations would have very slim margins.
00:32:53:22 – 00:33:10:06
Unknown
Are this an estimated at unpredictable inflation? And until we get that done, this project that Dominion has is going to continue to grow in cost 10 billion is going to turn to 11 billion, which is going to turn to twelve.
00:33:10:15 – 00:33:31:08
Unknown
And we really can’t have that happen at this point. I was just doing some research on levelized cost of energy. I’m making a video and at the moment, it’s such a, you know, exciting, obviously exciting topic. I’ve got a friend who is an accountant, and he has a website where you can kind of put in cost assumptions
00:33:31:08 – 00:33:43:12
Unknown
and then it will, you know, tell you the result. So he’s made a levelized cost of energy calculator for me on his site, key numbers, and I was really surprised at how much the cost of capital really affects things.
00:33:43:13 – 00:34:03:13
Unknown
And it has got an interesting effect on the energy transition as well, because at the moment, the cost of capital for renewables is usually cheaper than it is for fossil fuel projects because banks see it as quite risky that, you know, like a fossil fuel, a coal power plant has a lifetime of like 40 years.
00:34:03:19 – 00:34:18:18
Unknown
And banks aren’t sure that in 40 years, it’s still going to be, you know, like making the the the profits that they expect. So the cost of capital for for coal, especially, but some other fossil fuels is higher than it is for renewables just because of the perceived risk difference.
00:34:18:18 – 00:34:37:15
Unknown
And that’s actually like a big a big thing in favor of the renewables that makes it much more favorable and has a huge impact on the levelized cost of of electricity. So yeah, it’s I think you’re definitely right that the inflationary environment is is increasing costs by a lot.
00:34:38:01 – 00:34:56:19
Unknown
But that said, I did look up the says $87 per megawatt hour, I expected Alcoa now for offshore wind, and I know the Lazard just put out their latest Alcoa ranges for, you know, they do it for all the different technologies and the average for offshore wind is $83 per per megawatt hour.
00:34:56:19 – 00:35:13:10
Unknown
So it’s not like way, way, way over the top. I wouldn’t look at that figure and say, Wow, this is a project that’s been mismanaged or or anything like that. It’s probably, yeah, more more just in line with, yeah, the kind of headwinds that any kind of capital intensive projects facing at the moment.
00:35:13:21 – 00:35:30:05
Unknown
Yeah, in this particular project, they’ve they’ve said that the level of cost of energy is between 80 and $90. That’s where they set those to fencepost and it was at 87, right? So the Biden administration is going to pour cash and that is going to drive it closer to 80 without that cash.
00:35:30:16 – 00:35:49:03
Unknown
I think it’s going to it was going to exceed 90 and it still may exceed 90. By the way, we’re still four or five years off on this thing. We really don’t know until it gets into action, but I think that can be really catastrophic in terms of the, you said, the investments that go into this, the
00:35:49:03 – 00:36:04:02
Unknown
ability to turn a profit really makes the landscape much scarier. And this is why we think see companies like Siemens Gamesa, Investors and GE all being very hesitant to go after some of these offshore projects because inflation is trouble.
00:36:04:09 – 00:36:19:00
Unknown
So moving on, let’s talk about a well appears to be maybe a lightning strike. There is a wind turbine blade that has fallen off of a turbine in Freuler and Rosemary. We need you to pronunciation. It’s no wage.
00:36:19:00 – 00:36:36:21
Unknown
And so I’m going to say it’s probably like, say, yeah, because they’re kind of quite lyrical in their accent. OK, well, what? She’s what she said. But these turbines are owned and operated by Vestas, and they said that lightning was registered there on Wednesday, Alan.
00:36:38:01 – 00:36:50:15
Unknown
Again, what is the what is the failure mode when a blade falls off after a lightning strike? Because I mean, most of these strikes are to the tip. I don’t see how the two really connect. It depends on what what kind of blade that it is.
00:36:50:16 – 00:37:05:04
Unknown
I think the blades that have had lightning issues and this is not Vesta specific, by the way. So generically speaking, blades that have had lightning issues where the blade has come, come off, have carbon fiber spars, restructures internal.
00:37:05:17 – 00:37:20:23
Unknown
And if you’re going to have lightning, take out a blade like that, it has to damage a major structural component really close to the hub. And lightning can do that because carbon is conductive and lightning likes to follow it.
00:37:20:23 – 00:37:39:05
Unknown
And even if you try to prevent it from getting into the carbon, it’s going to get to the carbon. If you had some uncontrolled event where there’s energy entering into the carbon, particularly closest to the hub. I think the fatigue or eventually get to the structure and it’ll fail.
00:37:39:11 – 00:38:01:23
Unknown
The blade will break off. And so these events are becoming were not really common. With fiberglass blades, I don’t remember fiberglass, pure fiberglass blades breaking off like that unless there was some real manufacturing issue. But with blades, with carbon fiber, we’re having a little bit of a different reaction here that we we as an industry, it’s not
00:38:01:23 – 00:38:18:22
Unknown
particular to an OEM that we as an industry do not quite got a handle on. And the one thing I point to and I try to explain to potential customers of ours and people that are interested in lightning is that lightning varies a lot across the world.
00:38:18:23 – 00:38:39:06
Unknown
There’s different kinds of lightning. There’s different sort of the amount of energy, the amount of current, the way they form, the way they react. It varies based on where you are. And we as the lightning community, I’m a part of this mess, I think, is that when you try to describe the lightning world, you try to put
00:38:39:06 – 00:39:02:08
Unknown
some envelopes around it. Well, sometimes you don’t do a very good job of that. You don’t think about that, how that could impact a design. And I think we’re into that. Phase right now is trying to figure out like what the heck is going on, where lightning is for catastrophically failing blades because we’ve got to fix it
00:39:02:09 – 00:39:16:23
Unknown
and I saw some comments on LinkedIn. I’m glad you brought this up, actually, because I saw some comments on LinkedIn over the last couple of weeks, which said the industry group that defines the spec is starting to get together and they may produce an update in the next couple of years.
00:39:17:09 – 00:39:34:03
Unknown
Like, Come on, are we really going to take that long? Because the problem is, is that we’re going to build a whole bunch of wind turbines off offshore in the United States and everywhere else in the world? Do we really and they’re all going to have carbon fiber and they have to because they’re like 100 meter blades
00:39:34:03 – 00:39:52:00
Unknown
, you have to have some level of carbon in them. Have we really got this lightning thing figured out? Yes or no? And we better get it figured out before we put a couple hundred turbines off the coast of, you know, Virginia or Maryland or wherever, and then find out we have this massive problem that would be bad
00:39:52:01 – 00:40:11:09
Unknown
. So there’s there’s there’s just like this little pocket of lightning knowledge is not well understood yet, and we need to get it figured out like now, really fast now because the results on a 15 megawatt turbine are going to be really bad versus a six megawatt hour, two megawatt.
00:40:11:19 – 00:40:25:07
Unknown
That that’s that’s my take on that. So, you know, hopefully there wasn’t a lightning failure. That’s the hope up in Norway. But if it is, it just and then it is, then we need to be doing something about it just more than just fixing the blade.
00:40:25:07 – 00:40:50:21
Unknown
We need to get it to the root cause of what’s driving these weird lightning reactions. Root cause. It’s a good time for a blade upon anyone. Anyone, anyone. OK, we’ll move on and leave that one teed up. So the National Renewable Energy Laboratory just announced that they’ve 3D printed a 1313 meter turbine blade from recyclable resin.
00:40:51:16 – 00:41:06:04
Unknown
So Rosemary, you’re our resident blade design expert. What stands out? Obviously, we’ve talked about thermoplastic blades a bunch in the last six months or so, but this was one of their first. one of the first pieces they have to show for it.
00:41:06:12 – 00:41:25:12
Unknown
What sticks out as important about this, this news story that it’s actual doing rather than on paper design? You know, the whole time that I’ve been working with composites, which is, yeah, well over a decade, people have been talking about them, the plastic wind turbine blades and making designs.
00:41:25:12 – 00:41:40:00
Unknown
I know in my Ph.D. race that I started, something started at least ten years old. That is a full length wind turbine blade design out of thermoplastic. I can remember how long it was, like 6080 meters, something like that.
00:41:40:13 – 00:41:59:07
Unknown
There’s no there’s no problem you’ve always been able to design, and I’ve got no doubt that it would work. The reason that they’re not made is because they end up more expensive because basically the, you know, the properties structural properties haven’t been there in the past and I don’t know if they are now.
00:41:59:07 – 00:42:17:09
Unknown
Some people say that then I’ve found thermoplastic resins that are as good as thermostats, and I haven’t seen that evidence of that yet. But the point is that when you use a material that’s less strong and specifically less stiff for its weight, then you end up needing a heavier blade to get the same structural properties.
00:42:17:09 – 00:42:35:14
Unknown
You know they need to be stiff enough to not hit the tower under heavy winds and strong enough to not not break, you know, in that one in 100 year storm. And that’s the extent of it. It’s not that it’s not technically possible, it’s that it’s not economically viable to make blades like this.
00:42:36:00 – 00:42:55:17
Unknown
So now we’ve got, you know, some people actually making a 13 made blade. So, you know, it’s obviously not close to full scale. On the one hand, it’s progress because, you know, we’re actually doing and finding out, you know, the issues that happen from physically doing something rather than just talking about it.
00:42:56:06 – 00:43:16:01
Unknown
But on the other hand, I didn’t feel like a huge leap of anything really in the reporting because I don’t think anyone would have doubted ten years ago that you could print. Maybe the 3D printing part of it wouldn’t have been possible ten years ago, but you know, there’s nothing that really surprises me about this being possible
00:43:16:12 – 00:43:26:03
Unknown
. It’s just a matter of actually doing it. Well, what happens next? So say they print three of these and they look great. Is there a turbine to put them on like they go and someone is like the CFO?
00:43:26:03 – 00:43:37:23
Unknown
Take it home and what’s in his backyard? Like, where does it go? I don’t know. Again, it’s the economics, you know, until you can make a blade for a turbine that someone wants to buy in this way, then it won’t change anything.
00:43:38:19 – 00:43:59:10
Unknown
And so I’m kind of on the fence because, you know, on the one hand, we’re actually, you know, doing stuff and progressing towards it. But on the other hand. Like, are we going to take turbine sizes back to, you know, 13 meter long blades just so that we can have the Blades be recyclable?
00:44:00:01 – 00:44:12:20
Unknown
I don’t, I don’t think so. So what about distributed wind? I mean, there’s still some smaller models. And of course, the wind has not hit its stride and really taken off and occurred in different parts of the U.S..
00:44:12:23 – 00:44:27:04
Unknown
But I mean, do you feel like that could have been avoided if you started a 13 meters? They can slowly tick up to where that’s going to make sense on one of their turbines. I mean, there’s is there’s a place for distributed wind, but it’s not the same.
00:44:27:04 – 00:44:37:05
Unknown
It’s not the same thing that these multi megawatt turbines are doing, and they never will be. And there’s, you know, like laws of physics that can tell you why they never will be. It’s not just a matter of all.
00:44:37:06 – 00:44:53:01
Unknown
We need to, you know, make more of them and have costs come down. It’s just it. Take a lot to go into into now. But distributed wind is never going to replace big wind, even if it might be a good compliment, you know, assuming that you want small wind turbines everywhere.
00:44:54:15 – 00:45:09:14
Unknown
Yeah. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s such a big step currently, but I am happy that so many people are taking this issue seriously, and I think we will see progress, but I think we haven’t seen it yet.
00:45:09:15 – 00:45:24:13
Unknown
Well, I’m going to keep you on the hook, rosemary, as we pivot to Siemens Gamesa. So they had a green hydrogen pilot project and they have produced their first green hydrogen, just like this friendly little turbine blade that tap is now flowing.
00:45:25:01 – 00:45:45:19
Unknown
So, you know it’s a Siemens Gamesa 3.0 111 d d Siemens 113 meter blades. And this project is obviously in Denmark, where, you know they’re sort of at the forefront of all this. So I mean, do you see these combination plants where they’ve got the green hydrogen production on site with the turbine?
00:45:46:13 – 00:46:09:01
Unknown
Do you see that going somewhere now that this is off and running or is it still just still really early phase? And I say this is a more exciting project to me that represents real progress, so I personally don’t see it working out like that for green hydrogen in wind turbines, especially not offshore, because, you know, maintenance
00:46:09:01 – 00:46:26:21
Unknown
is such a big thing for offshore and in general, anything you can take and do onshore instead of offshore. You would. So this seems like moving something offshore that doesn’t really need to be there, but there are several like legitimate technical advantages that you can have by by putting it there.
00:46:26:21 – 00:46:41:13
Unknown
So, you know, like you’ll save some some losses, some conversion losses if you just directly power the electrolyzer and nothing in between the, you know, the the rotor and the the electrolyzer, you don’t need all the the cables and transformers and stuff.
00:46:41:20 – 00:46:57:06
Unknown
So that’s that’s a benefit. I know that there’s also some different sizing optimization that you might do. You might choose a larger generator, for example, than you would if you needed to get the power, the electricity onshore via cable.
00:46:58:11 – 00:47:22:15
Unknown
There’s there’s quite a lot of like seemingly like significant, but not that huge effects that all come into play. And so that’s why, like the wind turbine electrolyzer thing, and then there’s just the, you know, the idea that we’re going to be using electrolysis to help balance variable electricity generation, which I’ve always thought is just like crazy
00:47:22:15 – 00:47:36:17
Unknown
. It’s never going to work out like that because excuse me, because, you know, electrolytes are very like, they cost a lot. So you want to be using it all the time. Like, I can’t imagine anyone buying a really expensive electrolyzer and saying, Yeah, well, we’ll use it, you know, like 30% of the time.
00:47:37:03 – 00:47:48:21
Unknown
And I did notice in this project that they are starting to talk about putting batteries in there so that I can, you know, get a higher capacity factor for that electrolyzer. And I’m saying that in other hydrogen projects as well.
00:47:49:07 – 00:48:02:18
Unknown
So it’s kind of like none of the technologies are early at all. You know, we’ve had electrolysis for a long, long time that wind turbines for a long time. But this way that we want to use them now is really new.
00:48:02:18 – 00:48:18:19
Unknown
There’s all these different factors. It’s a bit complex to kind of know exactly how it’s going to work out. And so I do think we need projects like this to just say, OK, you know, like, how does this end up working in and and what’s the most economic way to run something like this?
00:48:19:04 – 00:48:32:19
Unknown
And I really feel glad that was going to the action on hydrogen now instead of just, you know, at the last two or three years, there’s been so much talk about the possibilities and like announcements of, you know, billions and billions and billions of dollars being spent.
00:48:32:19 – 00:48:50:05
Unknown
But there’s been no progress towards, you know, like actually figuring out some of those technical challenges that need to be solved, you know, to see this huge hydrogen economy that everyone imagines. So I’m really glad that now this year, we are finally starting to see people actually build physical projects.
00:48:50:05 – 00:49:08:16
Unknown
Figure out what are the problems going to be? What’s the economic impact going to be? We’ll be able to make a plan for the future much better once you know, we’ve got a few more of these. Yeah, I’d like some more actual experienced operation of those kinds of systems because it’s yeah, it’s one thing to have mature
00:49:08:16 – 00:49:21:01
Unknown
technologies. But when you’re using them in a totally new way, it’s not that mature. So, yeah, really, really excited to see and see projects starting the green hydrogen thing. I’m not sure how this is really going to play out.
00:49:21:02 – 00:49:38:13
Unknown
I think there are definitely applications for it, like probably in the mining industry in Australia, actually, that it may make sense to do that to reduce CO2 emissions overall. Those places in the United States. So it could be very useful and it’s just really getting the technology put together like Rosemary is saying, it’s it’s more of a
00:49:38:13 – 00:49:54:07
Unknown
technology thing than anything else. And I think the battery aspect is a really important part of this too. Like if you’re producing energy and you have electrolyzer, you want to keep the electrolyzer running, you need to have some sort of energy buffer in the middle of this.
00:49:54:22 – 00:50:06:22
Unknown
And I think that’s the missing link right now. And in fact, I was looking at the sort of battery storage companies this morning trying to figure out like what’s going on there, because that’s to me, is the missing link.
00:50:06:22 – 00:50:26:01
Unknown
Like inexpensive battery storage is the missing link that helps both sides. It helps the green hydrogen thing and helps on the renewable energy side. So I looked up form Energy’s stock price because stock price are indicative of where the investors think the company is going to be six months a year from now and their stock prices down
00:50:26:01 – 00:50:42:16
Unknown
like down enough where it’s a little worrisome because of the announced I that after the announcement earlier in the spring that there would be you skyrocketing up in value with all the the names and associations with Tesla and all the technology people there, because that’s the missing link.
00:50:42:17 – 00:51:04:21
Unknown
But the industry and the investors are not super excited about it. That’s worrisome to me. So there must be something that I don’t see either. Cost or a technology limitation or a size limitation or some regulatory hurdle that I haven’t put my finger on yet, where no one’s excited about it and it may have a lot to
00:51:04:21 – 00:51:18:01
Unknown
do with inflation, honestly, it may be seeing like, well, inflationary prices are going to be so crazy that renewables are going to be hard to do, and we’re going to be stuck with some oil burning, natural gas burning factories for the time being and everything gets shoved to the right.
00:51:18:17 – 00:51:31:22
Unknown
I’m not sure that makes sense right now. So, Rosemary, I think you’re totally right. I think there’s definitely applications for a green hydrogen, but we got to get the energy storage peace in the middle of it. That’s not there yet.
00:51:32:00 – 00:51:43:03
Unknown
And that’s the worst part. It’s kind of funny, though, because a lot of the hydrogen hype was about its ability to be energy storage. And that’s one of the aspects and I’ve always been the most skeptical about this.
00:51:43:03 – 00:51:54:19
Unknown
I just couldn’t imagine the business case. And yeah, now we’re saying, I mean, it’s why it’s such a fun, fun, you know, field to be involved in at this time, right? Because you don’t really know precisely how things are going to work together.
00:51:54:19 – 00:52:09:02
Unknown
But you know what seemed like six months ago batteries versus hydrogen? Now it seems more like batteries plus hydrogen versus, you know, fossil fuels or yeah, or whatever. So I find it really interesting to see how things are evolving and changing.
00:52:09:02 – 00:52:23:16
Unknown
And, you know, the more unpredictable it is, the more exciting. The key is, I guess, for, you know, for an energy geek to to follow. Well, let me throw this out here. So the discussion in the United States ten years ago was about using nuclear energy.
00:52:24:06 – 00:52:42:10
Unknown
Nighttime nuclear energy to create things like hydrogen. Is that off the table still? No. I think people are still still talking about that. Yeah, because I mean, so nuclear, it’s a big benefit is that it’s baseload. But on the other hand, we don’t actually use energy in that way.
00:52:42:17 – 00:52:59:09
Unknown
I mean, I like it. It’s a solid band. So it’s like it’s plus side is also it’s negative when taken to extremes. So. Yeah, no. I definitely still see nuclear proponents talking that up, but it relies on it being the cheapest, the cheapest form of of energy, I guess.
00:52:59:10 – 00:53:13:00
Unknown
And again, you know, if you’re trying to make hydrogen to match what your energy system is otherwise doing, then you’re not. Well, I just can’t imagine someone with an a hydrogen electrolyzer. They’re making a very valuable product hydrogen.
00:53:13:01 – 00:53:28:20
Unknown
They’re not just going to make that when the energy is cheap, they’re going to make it whenever the electricity price is just below whatever threshold it is that allows them to make a profit on their hydrogen. So of course, they’re they’re going to be using that as much as they can.
00:53:29:15 – 00:53:44:21
Unknown
So I’ve never really thought that it was such a suitable technology for energy balancing when you know the energy cost is such is not the biggest, the biggest component. You know, the capital cost is really important for for an electrolyzer.
00:53:44:21 – 00:53:55:05
Unknown
So to me, it makes more sense that other industries that are really much more based around electricity prices, they would be the ones that would be, you know, like really ramping up and down depending on the on the price.
00:53:55:09 – 00:54:17:21
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, it’s we haven’t seen heaps of that yet. So last on our line up today is an interesting story about the power grid in general in the stability of it. And the story from Wired reports that are a DJI drone piloted by still unknown man was man or woman was not caught approach to Pennsylvania power substation
00:54:17:21 – 00:54:35:23
Unknown
with essentially two ropes hanging down with a with a thick copper wire between them. So you can imagine like a U-shaped thing hanging from the drone. And I guess the goal was what they were saying. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI said basically that the goal was to get over top of something lower this down
00:54:35:23 – 00:54:58:14
Unknown
than the wire touches and create a short circuit and disrupt the power supply that way. So obviously, we talked a little bit partly in jest about, you know, a supervillain disrupting subsea cables. But the reality is that if a country wants to, you know, do acts of terrorism trying to disrupt operations in any other country, they can
00:54:58:14 – 00:55:12:19
Unknown
certainly do. And there’s a lot of technology in place, including drones, which are very difficult to detect, very like they have not found this person because they, the operator of this drone, stripped the camera off the memory card and any other identifiable markings.
00:55:12:19 – 00:55:27:18
Unknown
So if you know how to use one of these and how to kind of clean it up, they might not be able to track you very well. Alan, does this seem like this is going to be something that maybe Congress or other governmental bodies are going to need to probably get ahead of now that there’s been one
00:55:27:18 – 00:55:37:11
Unknown
of these officially registered on the board in the U.S.? I think the power industry has been aware of it for a number of years, and I think quietly behind the scenes are trying to address it and find ways to deal with it.
00:55:38:18 – 00:55:51:04
Unknown
As as we well know you, if you want to cripple a nation, turn off its power. We certainly we’ve seen that in some regional conflicts. If you remember during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, that was one of the things that happen.
00:55:51:05 – 00:56:06:03
Unknown
And I think on the way out, they just started blowing up all of the power lines and basically taking the country off line, and that’s the way to do it. And Dan, actually near you not many years ago, you remember there was an arrow stat, which is kind of a blimp with a long rope on it had
00:56:06:03 – 00:56:18:15
Unknown
cut loose. So there’s an arrow stat blimp sitting over a sort of Baltimore, Washington, DC looking for incoming missiles that are headed towards Washington, D.C. And so it’s an early detection thing, and it had come loose in its morning mornings.
00:56:18:15 – 00:56:38:00
Unknown
It started floating across up to Pennsylvania. And of course, what is it? What does it do? It drops as very conductive cable across these huge power lines and causes massive power failures on the way to finally crashed. And so the industry is very aware of sort of air attacks on power lines.
00:56:38:01 – 00:56:51:01
Unknown
I think the question is, what are you going to do about it? And if someone really, really, really wants to get it done, I think there’s not a lot you can be able to do besides try to quickly repair it and get it, get it back in service again.
00:56:52:21 – 00:57:13:02
Unknown
We have all kinds, well, daily. As you well know, we have limitations of where drones can fly. In fact, you can’t fly a drone in the area of Washington, D.C. it just won’t fly there. I’m curious as to see if they’ve actually apply that to other high risk areas like power lines, because you could do that.
00:57:13:11 – 00:57:23:22
Unknown
Obviously, if you have malicious intent, you can bypass that. But still, yeah, because that’s a basically if you’re taking like an off the shelf drone that has GPS software in it, all that stuff, it’s not going to be activated.
00:57:23:22 – 00:57:36:06
Unknown
But yeah, if you’re savvy enough to want to do something terrible like this, you’re going to know how to disable that kind of stuff. And you’re going to be sort of like a manual drone not subject to DJI being able to control it like that.
00:57:36:11 – 00:57:53:09
Unknown
Yeah, right? Yeah. But I think as we go forward, Rosemary, don’t you think that we’re going to have a lot of cameras and systems to monitor the power lines, especially those critical critical routes like that feed New York City or that or feed San Francisco or Houston or Adelaide or Perth that somebody is going to be you’re
00:57:53:09 – 00:58:13:21
Unknown
going to have some sort of system watching what’s going on to make sure that you don’t have an attack like that. Yeah, probably, and I think I mean, I’m probably more worried about cyber security, more so than in these physical attacks, but it does remind me of I listen to I can’t remember which one I was listening
00:58:13:21 – 00:58:36:05
Unknown
to some podcast recently with a woman who worked for the California grid in some capacity, and she was talking about the reliability of their system. And she mentioned that when there’s like a high bushfire or forest fire, whatever you call them over that when there’s a high risk for that and it’s windy, then they will preemptively shut
00:58:36:06 – 00:58:51:00
Unknown
down certain parts of the grid to avoid the power lines blowing over and causing a bushfire. And she said, You know, people get really annoyed about that because they have these blackouts all the time for something that, you know, didn’t even happen.
00:58:51:00 – 00:59:05:13
Unknown
It was just a risk. And she was saying how one of the things that they’re doing to counteract that is getting more like grids are able to operate as an as an island for a period of time, so it works in combination with distributed energy.
00:59:05:14 – 00:59:16:22
Unknown
So, you know, if you’ve got some wind and solar or even rooftop solar in combination with household and community batteries, then as long as you’ve got the grid set up right, then you can operate in Island Island mode.
00:59:16:22 – 00:59:37:15
Unknown
So it doesn’t matter if you’re disconnected and that sort of, you know, work will make the whole grid a lot more reliable. And it would also work if you know there was an attack like this. So I think that it is, yeah, just like part of the the move from this like centralized to distributed energy grid that
00:59:37:15 – 00:59:55:00
Unknown
were that were moving towards and there’s benefits other than, you know, cleaning up the atmosphere. There are also security benefits when it’s done right. So yeah, I think it be. It’s really interesting to see what they’re doing in California, and probably we’ll see that sort of thing rolled out, not just in bushfire prone areas, but, you know
00:59:56:06 – 01:00:13:06
Unknown
, everywhere. It just helps with reliability. Well, obviously, I know we’ve had radar technology for ever, right? So it can’t be that hard to have some sort of, you know, radar detection system and a substation or whatever where it’s like we can monitor or figure out what’s absurd and what’s a drone.
01:00:13:06 – 01:00:29:20
Unknown
The movement patterns, I’m sure, quite different, right? I mean, is that something that’s probably going to just end up being like standard security installation and some of these things going forward? Well, I’m still surprised that you’re allowed to walk up to high voltage lines right now.
01:00:30:12 – 01:00:42:08
Unknown
Like I can’t walk on to an airport because it’s a fence around it or some sort of barrier natural barrier there. I can walk up to any high voltage tower that I want to in America and do dramatic things to it.
01:00:42:22 – 01:00:57:15
Unknown
And again, I think what are going to do put a fence around every. Tower, probably not. I don’t think that makes any sense, but I do think there’s technology today that will help prevent some of these real catastrophic things from happening because it will be bad.
01:00:57:23 – 01:01:13:17
Unknown
It’ll be really bad. All right. Well, that’s going to do it for this week’s episode of Uptime. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher or YouTube. Be sure to subscribe in the show notes below to Uptime Tech News our weekly newsletter to keep you updated on everything wind and
01:01:13:17 – 01:01:41:22
Unknown
renewable energy, and to Rosemary YouTube channel, which she continues to pump out great content each week, including live streams sponsored by Weather Garden. So thanks once again for listening, and we’ll see you here next week on uptime. Operating a profitable wind farm is all about mitigating costs, minimizing risks and being efficient with maintenance repairs and upgrades.
01:01:42:11 – 01:02:03:13
Unknown
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01:02:03:13 – 01:02:10:18
Unknown
crews are going up on ropes. Learn more in today’s show notes or visit us on the web at Weather Guard Wind Dotcom.
