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In this episode, Allen and Dan discuss wind turbine winglets: do they work to increase efficiency? And, wind turbine blade extensions are give the same scrutiny: is it a financially smart move to install these extensions? Tapping into experience from the aviation industry, Allen weighs in.
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EP11 – Wind Turbine Winglets & Blade Extensions: Full Transcript
Alright, Allen, episode 11 big day. Big. The big one. One. I don’t know why we’re about, I don’t know why this is a theme at the moment where we’re just talking about the numbers of the episodes, but we’re in double jettison. Just feels exciting. It feels exciting. I did look this up because my daughter was asking me about it through the day, like how many podcasts do the average. Podcasters put out before the it ends. I thought, well, that’s a really good question because I’ve seen some in a couple hundred but most podcasts in around episode seven that’s the industry. I really were like a way beyond that. Where w my John seven where did you get that info? Is that podcasts, podcasts, quitters.com or what? Google. Where do you go for any information like that? Google. You’re like, you know, it’s everyone’s. Google’s going to give you, it’s gotta give you a source though. I mean, that could be Russian misinformation, like it definitely can be. Podcasts, quitters. Dot. Are you. Not a good source. Yeah. The dot. Are you, you should be a hint, right? You prior to lay off that site. Yeah, but I thought that was interesting right there that most podcasts only love last seven episodes, and I can see why. Right. Because you and I. We spend a good bit of time work on these episodes and we’re going to have some more guests coming on. And you know, all the, all the prep work, all the after the post production stuff that we do and all the computer hardware and software and transcribing, all these things it takes, it’s, we have a crew of people working on this pretty much day and night. Yeah. It’s a soul crushing. It takes us soul crushing toll to get these all out to you. Listeners in podcast land, we are, ours is definitely more involved. Like ours is more involved than the vast majority because we do the video element and we separately record. So it’s not just like zoom call, you know, one quick thing and Don, um. So, yeah, you’re right there. There’s a lot of work too. I think though, I think the big thing that podcasts struggle with is figuring out what is our podcasts about, and that’s, that’s the thing for almost everyone, where maybe you have an idea initially and then you just like run out of talking points or. It’s just not as good, engaging as you thought it would be after like 10 episodes and now you’re like trying to figure out what you’re doing next. That seems to be a common theme. So, yeah, with my, my first one with my former business partner that we did, we eventually just ended up every convening, every, you know, once a week. And we’re like, Dan, what are we talking about today? And I’m like, Lucas, I don’t know. I don’t know. And then we’d like. Beat our foreheads with our palms for 10 minutes sitting in the office. And then we’re like, okay, we’ll do this. And then after like too many weeks of that, you’re like, it’s just time. Like we just need to stop. Like if we don’t always have, you know, good. Uh, whatever. And then obviously doing guests takes a lot out of you. It’s, it’s tough to consistently find guests unless you’re a big, a big wig. So. Yeah, I mean that those are just hazards of the, the format, I think. Right. And the format is not getting any easier, any easier, just because there’s tends to be more and more requirements about the quality of the podcasts. Like Apple and YouTube are really restrictive on what you can put up. One, you can put up one and two, the qual actually, the electronic quality that you want. Putting up there, they want it to be as high as possible. So there’s some gateways you’ve got to pass through and that, you know, it’s just on the technology side. We’ve, we’ve invested several thousand dollars on the technology side, which is fine by me because I think we’re trying to get. A message out and, and talk about things that are interesting to us. And, and as we’re finding out interesting to a lot of other people, and so it just feeds, feeds it back. We get a lot of feedback on the podcast about things to talk about, uh, things that have happened recently that they wouldn’t like us or comment on. So it’s an interesting sort of little, little dynamic family at your, developed you on these podcasts. Uh, and you know, for all the effort we put into it. It does, it does provide at least a little bit of reward at the end. I know there’s been some long sleepless nights over the last couple of weeks, but it’s worth it. It is really worth it. Yeah. It’s a good format. I mean, people obviously like podcasts are super, I just don’t know what a podcast is like. Why is that the name of it? So the iPod, iPod casting, like did it have an Apple? I mean, Apple is like, own the format, right? Like, yeah. Why is it called a podcast? Why? Why do we name it that? But why did it happen? Uh. Was it a Tim cook invention at Apple, or was it before Tim? I don’t know any question. Yeah, it’s over a decade. It’s over a decade old. I’m not sure how long Tim Colin helm of Apple. Oh, okay. So about 2000 around for a long time now. I guess he really didn’t pick it up until the last couple of years. Uh, I guess Joe Rogan’s show, which I don’t like. Joe Rogan’s show is not the oldest. Podcast, but it’s his is over 10 years old. I’m very certain, so. Oh, really? It’s that old. I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure it is. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it is. I could Google this right now, but I’m not going to, well, that’s, that’s longer than most. Uh, how long did Oprah run? Like how long was mash wasn’t the longest running television series was that. 12 years, multiple decades. I mean, the Simpsons is only 29th season now. Oh, well, okay. But I mean like real person, not cartoons, Dan. Well like it, well, even like a modern show, like it’s always sunny in Philadelphia. Is that like season 15 now? If mash really, if mash really held those records, then uh, they’d have to be the game. Well, the podcast and think about Joe Rogan, I think he’s just putting a podcast out. Three times a week, twice a week, and he’s doing a lot of podcasts. I’m not sure is the frequency Gunsmoke was 20 years. Oh wow. Okay. Well, we’ve got something to look forward to and we’ve got another 19 to go dead 31 years. 31 years for the Simpsons. Okay. 21 years. Law and order SVU still print. Still going. That’s still going 20 years. Gunsmoke 20 years law and order. 19 years Lassie, 18 years family guy. So there’s a lot of shows. The list above 10 years is at least like 40 deep mash was 11 years old. Gunsmoke was a radio broadcast before it was television. I think that’s been going on a long time. Gunsmoke dead. I mean, to make it 10 years or longer. These are all very notable, like the big bang theory. My three sons, King of the Hill, Bonanza, uh, Frazier. NYP blue. Yup. Cheers. Murphy Brown. Mash modern families at 11 well, I guess they ended as well. Wow. Actually, actually, no, I guess I think they’re still not made. They’re not still going made modern family ended. X-Files will and graze they were 10 years really. I probably watched five of Roseanne lag JAG made it 10 years. What’s friends? Friends only made it 10 years of all the ones that surprised me. Friends for his beloved as it is. Of course, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t care about friends, but that’s a very well known. That was only 10 years. Wow. That’s surprising though. Well, there you go. Right. So you have something to shoot for. Seinfeld only went nine seasons. That’s also a surprising one, just like as beloved as these ones are. That one seems like it’s been around. Well, how long was the office. Six seven no. Was it less than nine Oh nine there it is. Nine. Okay. Alright. Also beloved, so maybe just 10 years ago, just kind of that sweet spot. Maybe some of them get past 12 well, like years five and six to me, the sweet spots, like you finally get up to, you got good writing, they got a good staff doing your production work, so you finally hit your stride. This is all true. Oh my gosh. God. Can you imagine this? Five years from now, if we’re spinning up, we’re up at midnight working on this. I hope not on lightning. Well, there’s not going to be nothing about lightning. We’ll be like, all right, add up. All right, Alan, what happens if lightning is a Tootsie roll? What happened if lightning hits a carrot. I’ll tell you what happens. If it’s a pizza, we’ll be so out of ideas for that point. No, because we’re army round flying around in our own personal space vehicle, you know, so we have lightning strikes, her own little Jetson immobile, and we’re having the lightning strikes tour, Tesla trucks, whatever the heck we’re driving at that point. Right. What would happen? I’m not driving anything. In five years I will be in a self driving automobile. Oh, so you think, right. So you think in a year, also in a year, I won’t own a car anymore, so that’s for sure happening. Okay. Well, I’m getting, I’m getting rid of mine this winter for sure. I don’t know if that’s a good idea because it’s cold in the winter time. It’s, it’s for sure a good idea. You know the thing about it, well, the thing about wintertime is like in a car, you’re going to stay up. Your body temperature is above freezing, whereas you walk in that mile and a half to the grocery store, you never know. Right. So risk reduction, DC. Not nearly as cold as it is up there in the winter. It’s not nearly as miserable. It’ll to be cold, but not that cold and everything called Instacart, which I’ve learned to use during the coronavirus. Uh, so when it’s really, really nasty out, I will just call Instacart and I’ll have my groceries delivered. There you go. Like a, yeah, like a spoiled waspy American. That’s the new normal is instinct American way. Right? Well, a lot of those things you can start to justify when you say, especially, you know, like when you do consulting, you can say, all right, well, and this is a trick I learned from my friend. She takes an Uber to wherever this government building is that she’ll, she does consulting for a, like DARPA, and she would take an Uber every day. I’m like, I’m like, Ana, that’s, that’s so expensive. How do you take an Uber every day? She’s like, well, I’m, I’m billing them mom in the car because I’m legitimately doing work. Uh, taking the 20, it’s 20 minutes. She’s like, I’m, I’m like actually working in an Uber versus if I go to the Metro or do this, do that, do that. I’m like, that makes sense. She’s like making money doing it. Yeah. She, she’s like, she’s like, I’m not, I’m not screwing them over. She’s like, I’m, I’m, I’m working in that car. Like, it’s focused and it’s good use of my time. Well, okay. Can’t argue with that. So it’s, if you get someone to deliver your groceries and you’re doing work. For that hour that you would have been at the grocery store. It makes financial sense. You can double bill them. Well, I’m paying them a $20 premium or $3 premium for my groceries, but I’m actually producing income for myself instead of being at the grocery store for two hours. Mm Cornell. That’s true. That’s true. Well, all right, so if you had a driverless car, I mean, if you had a driverless car, do you know where that’s going next? Right? You got a driverless little airplane. So that’s, that’s your next step, right? And you plug the thing in. You go to your climb up to the roof of your condo, house, apartment, whatever you’re in. Just pull the plug out, hop in, you speak the words like, Hey Siri, I want to go to. I don’t know, wherever I’m going to go to the Washington nationals game, and then bam, off you go. And then I lift, and then in DC I lift off and then I’m immediately shot down because that will never happen. In DC. There’s no fly zone for a 30 mile radius. So yeah, maybe, maybe another city, but not in DC. That won’t happen. What did I tell you? The time and I, I was in, uh, uh, of all things, I was in a law firm. Yeah, that was right next to the white house, and we were like looking down on the white house and I thought, Oh my gosh, this is not wrong. This is, I’m not sure it should be looking out this window right now because I can tell there’s like a missile. Bank on top of the white house. Um, yeah. Oh, you’re right. You want me to get shot down? I wouldn’t take all of five seconds for you to be shot out of the air. So there’s no, there’s a strong no fly zone because I own a little drone. I have a little, little Maverick, a little Maddick mini. I’d love to go fly it somewhere, but I can’t, not anywhere near anywhere near here. Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Cause there’s a, there’s a ring that’s like, I think it’s 25 miles. Around Reagan airport, and then there’s a limited use ring, I think outside of that, which extends almost to where my sister lives, which is about 45 minutes outside the city. Wow. I can fly it at her, but if you’re in like Fairfax for example, I still think you’re, it might be illegal. So it’s a, I mean, that makes sense. It’s just very restricted, is the most restricted airspace in the world as far as I’ve heard. So, yeah, not surprising. It’s not surprising. After nine 11 it’s going to be there. There’s no way you’re getting an airplane anywhere near those buildings. And that’s for, speaking of which, I guess it was the president, I was out walking the, the national, I call it the national rectangle because I just don’t like using the new world national mall because I just keep, I can’t get the shopping mall imagery out of my head. So I was walking the national rectangle and I was right by the Washington monument when Marine one, the helicopter went by and then Marine too. Marine two came shockingly close to the monument, like couldn’t have been 30 feet like to the left and they like veered on the inside. Wow. The inside doesn’t make sense for me saying it, but like I was on the, the capital side of it and they were like trees and buildings on the side of it. I on the other side, it’s just like all like grass for, you know, for a long ways. It was on this side, he CR and he was not above the, not above the monument. So he definitely was the point where like the rotors go to like hit the monument. That was, it was, it was astonished. I was astonished at how close to the, where it was. Couldn’t have been, like I said, more than 20 or 30 feet rotor to shop in the George Washington monument down the carrot. So pretty crazy. I’m not like, why did you choose that route? Like there’s so much more space on the other side. I mean, they know what they’re doing. They certainly know what they’re doing, but it was still just like as an onlooker. I’m like, that was weird. So do you think someone is trying to get an Instagram photo? You think what’s good? What’s going on? There’s like selfie, selfie avoidance system does, isn’t it? Yeah. Oh, well, they’re in there trying to get a selfie. Got it. Right. Oh my gosh. Well, you had taken some pretty cool video of wind turbines with your drone. Those are pretty, those are pretty awesome. I don’t know how you steer that thing so accurately without running into something, but. That was, that was pretty cool. Well, I got, yeah, I got clothes and I had to be just really cautious because it’s hard to know exactly how far you are from something in those things. I mean, you’re looking in the camera and it’s got the point of view from the drone itself. So you’re like, you are the drone, but even then, you’re not really sure exactly how close you are. And I was pretty far away because I was outside of this, uh. This wind turbine gate, I wasn’t trespassing, so I just flew my drone up and over and then it was, I guess probably trespassing, but I mean, do they own the airspace? I don’t think so. Like I don’t know. I mean, I assume if I had crashed it there, I wasn’t going to get it back. Or if I went and tried to retrieve it, I’d be trespassing obviously, but I was outside the gate, flew it over, took some video. Lou back, it was fine, but my brother-in-law saw that and he’s like, how did you reserve, how did you read? How did you resist the urge to not fly that through the, uh, the blades? He’s like, I for sure would have been like trying to fly it through and see if I could make it without getting chopped up. I’m like, well, because it was 500 bucks. I didn’t really want to do that. But he’s like, he’s like, there’s no way I would have made it out there. My brother-in-law actually was like a big, uh, drone builder in the army amongst many of the things that he did, but he was very. So he’s like very well versed in, uh, in drones, especially with like this, like years ago when they were, um, weren’t like a thing, like he didn’t get a drone that was just like this beautiful rate of fly thing. It was like, you had to like, kinda make them, uh, airworthy well, when you were out there, uh, taking video of those wind turbines, did you see what it looked like to be blade extensions on those wind turbines? Did you see anything like that or did they have winglets? I don’t think they had winglets on him. Did they? Any winglets on those blades? I don’t think so. I think so. Cause that’s all the rage now is these blade extensions and winglets where they’re trying to improve the efficiency of the wind turbines by essentially making the blades longer. After they’d been in service for a while. So you can add a couple more percentage points on power output by putting these blade extensions on. So we’ll explain to you the difference. So what’s the difference between an extension and a wingless? Uh, kind of the same, right? So a wing lit, like, like if you’re flying on a. 737 not that everybody’s flying on a 737 or an A320 there’s got these little, uh, vertical pieces at the end of the wing that cut down. Yeah. They go up, up and down. Actually the ones, yeah, they go up and down. If you see the ones on Airbus to kind of go, there’s some up or there’s some down. Boeing says, tend to go look cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, the new Boeing ones go up and down on Southwest airlines. They have a. As sitter, I forget what, what they call those things, but essentially they go up and down. But on the winter ones, I’ve only seen them going essentially up, but. Cause there is really no up there. So that would be facing the way the winds blowing in the wind direction. But yeah. Okay. So what they’re doing is they’re cutting down chamberlains off the blade tips and getting more efficiency out of the blade now. And the same thing as just a straight extension. So if you just made the blade physically longer, you got this more power being drained and rated by this blades. So the, there’s a lot of emphasis on trying to improve the existing turbines to make them more efficient for the last 10 years of their life cycle. And so you’re seeing companies like LM and Siemens and, um, I think Vestas was doing it to where they’re actually making this little sleeve while they’re applying this. Blade section on the end of the existing blade and then sort of fastened to get on to the, to the standard blade. That’s kinda night. That seems like a nightmare. That seems like a really, I mean, so like, tell me, talk me through the process. Like what do you know about the installation of these help? I mean, obviously it’s gotta be permanent, but. Yeah. Are they bolting it in or they APOC seeing it in, it’s probably proprietary. You might not really know how their, uh, from what I can tell, it’s, it doesn’t tend to be a lot of bolts to be more like fiberglass work where they’re sort of bonding it on a, so they’re blending it into the existing Blake’s, you don’t want any kind of aerodynamic step there. You want to make it as smooth as you can. So there’s a tooling and whatnot to get that to the lay in there just right. But once they do, then you got this. Uh, extended blade, which is producing more power. So it just, it just, uh, really a mechanical thing of a mechanical add on. It’s like adding on a sunroof on your car or cool exhaust. It’s kind of same thing on the winter, my level where you’re putting this blade extension on. And the interesting thing, cause I saw a lot of that going on and I thought, wow, that’s. All right, I get it. What are they doing for lightening protection out there on these extensions and then, then you just see this plethora of design concepts and things are being implemented in the field. Because every company has their own way of doing it. Um, because you, you think about it, you got this existing wind turbine set up and then you have usually receptor receptors on the, on the base blade was called the, I think, sort of the OEM base blade, and then you add the section onto it. And do you have lightening protection on this new section? Do you. Have a cable, you have to connect internally. I’ve seen it where they’ve actually cut open the existing blade like a mic. They basically take a saw and cut an opening in it to make a connection between the extension. Just like adding a second extension cord kind of thing where they’re plugging it in. That makes sense to me. I seen the ones where they add the a wing lid extension and Siemens Mesa has a patent out that just came out. Month or two ago about this where they’ve, they’ve, they’ve bought it on a wing lit section onto the existing blade, and they’ve used a segment of diverters from the existing receptor and the blade to then go up into the winglets and provide light and protection over the winglets. That’s. Pretty simple, easy thing to do cause you don’t have to make any internal connections. You’re just basically using the existing lightening receptor that it’s there for the baseline blade. And then extending it out over the, uh, the wing lit with segmented diverters pretty straight forward. And then there was a couple others where they’ve, uh, put receptors in the new blade section and then, uh, try to basically plug it in. So it’s, there’s a lot of variations on a theme there. I just thought it was really a. Interesting sort of lightening problem to solve. It’s like, I put this extension on, now I’ve got to provide lightening protection on this thing and it’s got to plug into whatever he made. How do I do that without causing a lot of work? Yeah, that seems a, you wonder how, like do they have a lot of research out on like, is this worth the squeeze? I mean, I’m sure even with the sending a repairman up there, which is not going to be cheap because it’s such skilled technical labor and not fast work, but even then say a couple of calls. Cost a couple thousand dollars or whatever to get them installed. Uh, I mean, what’s is the research that you’ve seen that says this is worth, this is worth it? Yeah, it is. Because it pays itself back at least. Okay. So I’m looking at marketing material, not engineering, but the marketing material says two to three year payback on those things. Well, if you’ve got 15 years of life, you have to go on those turbines and. It makes sense to do it because I got another dozen years. It’s just making more money off these turbines. Totally worth it. And what is, what is the aerodynamic reason that these help? Well, longer blade, more lift. Think of it as a glider. I got that. But like the winglets, like are they corralling wind? Like what is the wing would do either on a plane or a wind turbine. Okay. So the end of a very standard wing, uh, some of the airflow is outboard, so they are, doesn’t necessarily go. Over the top of the surface as much as it turns a slide sideways. So somewhat of the air is actually sliding towards the tip. And when it gets out to the tip, you got this sort of weird aerodynamic thing happening because you have sort of a high pressure, low pressure effect at the tip. And what happens is if you ever watched airplanes land at an airport and in the right condition, you’ll see these vortices happen. You see the spinning, uh, spinning air. Happened, uh, you see it on fighter jets a lot. So if you watch like the blue angels or something and that they’re doing demonstrations or they got smoke, or if they got smoke coming off the airplane, that could do an a demo with smoke. You’ll see these, these, uh, wingtip vortices happen. So it’s just think of any sort of vorticity like that is like loss, drag, flat drag. So if you can prevent that drag and make, make it such that. Um, the airflow comes off the back and the end of the wing smoothly without getting turbulent. It’s more efficient. It’s less draggy. And if you’re less drag, you can create more power and a wind turbine. So in an airplane, it’s, you know, the reason Southwest airlines and some of the airlines. Took their baseline seven 30 sevens and start putting wind next time was a safe fuel. And I think Southwest saw big time fuel savings over the fleet. They were one of the first to do it and they put enormous, uh, winglets on those sings. Those winglets had to be six foot high. And the latest generation is that up top and then some on the bottom. So they’ve even replaced the original winglets with newer winglets that even more efficient so that I think the data would indicate it’s, Southwest isn’t going to lie to you, right? If you see Southwest, they’re not messing around. No money for sure. You’re trying to say money anywhere they can write Ryan air. Those kinds of airlines are going to be trying to save every, every possible dollar they can. So yeah. They’ve done the economics audit and it says thumbs up, you got to go do it. And I think the wind turbine histories is doing something similar right now. They see that there’s, um, beneficial. So it’s the same thing with like the dyno tales. He was seeing the dyno tails on these wind turbines where it’s got the, on the back on the trailing and she’s coming out this kind of bird feathers, fish look to it. same sort of thing, right? It’s a way to keep turbulence down cause bird like it. Al feather. The one that I see a lot is the description. I’m like an alpha feather. So you’re a big Al guy. I know. Yeah. Well, I got ALS in my backyard quite honestly, which are awesome because they’re actually one of the coolest, I mean, ALS are like the coolest creatures. I was just messing with you, but elders like they’re amazing. Anyway, go on. Think about it. An Al having an owl in the backyard. I said, there’s not a lot of mice back there. Because they pretty much take care of that. It’s like having a cat, but it, but if you ever see an I’ll fly, like if you watch in our backyard, you use, these owls are just unbelievably quiet. And the one, the reason they are is because they don’t have a lot of turbulence coming off on the backside of their wings. They’ve got these feathers back there. That kind of. Prevent the airflow from getting turbulent, and that’s what they’ve done on these wind turbines. If they’ve added, some of them called dyno tells, I call them feathers, but they look like they look like a dinosaurs backwards kind of these ridges and, and if you get a good amount of clothes, some of them do have a feather appearance to them and they smooth airflow coming over the blade and one they, cause it’s quieter. Right. So if you’re making wind turbines quieter, the neighbors appreciate that. I think there’s some efficiencies about it too. So it’s funny how we’ve gone from in the last couple of years, from essentially 1940s 1950s wing design. When some of the initial were in terms came out, and then we got very computationally oriented and we started making these very aerodynamic shades and the blades start to get twists in them from the roof to the top. And then at the top. Now we’re putting winglets on them and we’re putting these trailing edge effects on them. And we got, now we have vortex generators, which is even. But you see the light called VGs. It’s wind turbine slang, VG vortex generators. You have vortex generators that are closer near to the hub on the blades that are, are creating sort of turbulent air to get more energy out of the bottom third of the wind turbine. Um, there’s a lot of aerodynamic things happening on winter min blades that didn’t happen 10, 15 years ago because we’re really trying to push the edge in the envelope. And this is where we get into things like the leading edge erosion and all those other things, like any kind of disturbance on the surface is drag and we’re trying to eliminate and minimize drag. So reducing vortexes out. Now the tip. Reduces drag, therefore you have more, more energy. Well, here’s a question for you. Uh, why three blades? Ah, that’s a good question because I’ve seen it before. When a five one, not six. Well, okay, so, uh, cost weight. Wait more, blase more weight. You gotta tower’s gotta be stronger. Um, three’s a sweet spot. I think, uh, the done the calculations always indicate three tends to be the sweet spot. So you see the. Every once in a while you see the four bladed argument or the five bladed argument, like, wow, that’s a lot of weight going on there. Um. Balance. All those things play into it. It’s just like on aircraft repellers you see like a lot of them are too bladed, and then you get the more sporty ones that are three bladed, and then you get to the ones that are super fast propellers. And there may be four or five bladed, like on the ones that race had been me five bladed, well, if you’re trying to, if you’re trying to get more wind speed, cool. But there’s a trade off there. And if these wind turbine blades are several tons, it’s hard on the towers when you start putting a lot of weight on them. So three tends to be, it. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, you got to always have to assume that the reason things are done, there’s a lot of thought behind it, obviously, and all that. And it’s like, especially now it’s iteration, you know, 89 like they’ve gone through a lot of the different blade designs, like you said, but still, you know, sometimes you’re was like, well, why three. Well, yeah, it’s very similar to, you ever see cars with three, three wheels, like back in the seventies you see a lot of cars are sixties and seventies three wheels, and we kind of settled on four. There’s a reason for that, right? It’s a safe, there’s a safety reason. You’re not gonna tip a thing over. You blow that one tire out of that, the one. Yeah. Yeah. You have a state. There’s a risk there. Right. So it’s all, that’s one of the things I try to teach my kids about. Engineering is don’t assume you know more than the 5,000 engineers that came ahead of you. They thought about the same things you’re thinking about. Realize they made decisions based on the information they had. Now, they may not always have the best information, so, okay, then we’ll, we can investigate that, but don’t necessarily assume you’re the one genius has come along that’s going to fix the world because there’s a lot of smart people out there. There just are. And then the wind turbine industry, particularly on the aerodynamic side, really, really smart people. They’ve been working on this a long time. So, um, I don’t, I never, never think that they haven’t thought this through. They have these wind turbines, like how much extra weight capacity do they have? Like obviously you can’t just extend the blades 50% longer, even if you had the ability to do so, because it might be too much torque for the box or just too much weight. Like, like, so how much extra is on tap where they could say, Oh, we could S we could safely add. 15 feet or 30 feet or X amount of pounds, like how much extra do they have in the tank? You think? Uh, that’s a good quick, good question because you got to worry about how much load you’re putting onto the tower, right? It’s, you don’t want to max anything out. Things to be operating like pretty well below their capacity. You don’t go with the car, you don’t read line, even though it could go that fast. Right. 80% ish kind of member. 60 80% is where you want to live on most things. Just so if you want it to have a lifetime. And I think there’s obviously more as you put these blade extensions, Andre, you’re clearly adding more weight and you’re adding more load. Um, because that’s the whole point. Um, the, the, the. Push factor from the wind is putting load onto the tower. How much can the tower handle? So from what I could see, they’ve looked at how much a tower can possibly stand. How big can those extensions be? Can it handle it from the, from the hubs standpoint, and all the bearings are things that inside of this thing that there’s also kind of vibration flutter. Affects it. Need to go look at. Yeah, it’s, that’s a really interesting question because I think, you know, we were talking about the wooden towers over in Sweden, and that’s one of the questions I had this week about that was like, how much load can you put on that thing? You know, steel is a really well known material. We have a lot of understanding of how it performs and loaded conditions. Uh, I’m not sure we have that. For wood like we do for steel. Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah. Cause you always just wonder, like you, things just start to break down when they’re just pushed too close to their, to their max. And we all, like I said, we all know that. But yeah, you, you wonder like how, how much is left on tap with some of these, these big wind turbines and often I wonder like how much farther like a car could go if a. I dunno, like efficiency is obviously key and working below, like even like our microphones, like microphones need a certain amount of power so they can be in there sort of like 60% range and sound good and not sound overblown on computers the same way. Like they don’t want to run too, too close to their processor capacity. It’s just like, that’s why you get a rental car. So he can find out what the car you’re about to buy will really do without you having to go wreck your car. Right. So a lot of people go out and rent the car that they are thinking about buying and then push it, push it to the limit. Like especially as a little sports car. They will, they won’t buy the car themselves cause you don’t want to go to the dealer. Right. And go red line on your new. Whatever ADI, you’re not going to go red line on ADI with a dealer sitting next to you, the sales guy sitting next to you. What you do is you go out and you rent the car and then you go see what it can do, and then you, then you go to the dealership and say, yeah, okay, I like that car. I red light at a couple of times it didn’t implode. Therefore, I go, I can go out and buy myself a new ADI. See how that works? That’s an interesting thought. Yeah. I never thought of that, but that’s a, I mean, I know people. Would go take, get a rental car if they’re going to go on like a big family vacation sometimes just to not put the 2000 miles on their car. Yeah, but I never thought about that. But then, no, no, no. Go, go for the opposite way, Dan. I know you’re trying to eliminate a car for your life, but that’s the way that’s, if you want to know what engineers do, that’s what engineers do. You don’t trust the book. You know the book says it goes zero to 60 and like, like Musk says 1.9 seconds. Well, how the heck you going to verify that? You mean he could be blowing smoke? Right? Well, I’ll go out on to. You know, hopefully Hertz isn’t. Listen, I’ll go down to Hertz and I’ll go rent myself a new Elon Musk, Tesla, whatever, and I will go find out. I’ll take a stopwatch and we’ll go find out. That’s how you do it. Yeah, but how do you actually do that? You’re in the car, like how do you verify that it was 1.9 when you hit 60 like you’re looking at the tachometer or not the Technomic speedometer when it exactly gets there. Yeah. Well, you have another person in the car. Yeah. And you’ve got a small little stopwatch where you have your iPhone, they’re rudimentary know, probably, probably going to Tesla. It would tell you engineer, this is very unscientific way to do this, but, but, okay. But, okay. Um, so, so, so final thoughts, final conclusion here with these blade tips. These winglets be extensions for wind turbine blades. Is it a winner? Is it a winner or is it a loser is a thumbs up winner if you can get the lightening protection right. It’s a thumbs up winter. And, uh, I know we’ve had been reached out to a couple of times here about this subject in particular. So, uh, weather guard, lightning tech, we’ve been, you know, providing information about those blade extensions and how to protect them. Um, so to us it’s a winner. It makes sense longterm to add more power and to just increase that production. Clearly a winner.
