EP37 – Paul Gipe, Author of Wind Energy for the Rest of Us

Paul Gipe, a career green energy advocate and prominent author on wind power, joined us on the podcast to talk about electric vehicles, wind power policy, changes in technology and policy he’s seen over the year, vertical axis wind turbine design, ducted turbines, small wind turbines, solar power, off-shore wind and more. His most recent book is called Wind Energy for the Rest of Us.

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Transcript EP37 – Paul Gipe, Author of Wind Energy for the Rest of Us

Hey, great. Uh, great interview with, uh, Paul Gipe this week, really knowledgeable person and been around the industry for a long time and has a lot of great insight into wind turbines and electric vehicles.

It was just a really fascinating discussion. Yeah. So our guest today is Paul  and if you’re not familiar with Paul, then. I guess, where have you been? I mean, Paul, Paul’s been all over the web for a long time, uh, covering, uh, wind energy. He’s been sort of like a wind energy lifer, uh, has worked as, I mean, I’m looking through his bio here.

It’s hard to know where to start, but a policy analyst for numerous organizations over the years. Um, he’s been a principal in firms, uh, evaluating wind turbine technology. He’s written eight books on wind turbines, his most recent one, Wind Energy For The Rest of Us: A Comprehensive Guide to Wind Power and How To Use It, is a, just a huge reference for everything when energy.

I mean, it’s, if you want to know about small wind turbines, big wind turbines, ducted, the history of them, all the, you know, materials failure, like easily got so many case studies in there. Um, so we, we reached out to Paul Gipe because he’s just seems like one of the, again, like the wind energy lifers who has spent a significant amount of his career, you know, fighting the good fight essentially for wind energy.

Yeah. And it’s, it’s one of those really nice people to come across a that you meet in the wind turbine industry that just has a lot of history. And especially the technical side he’s know he’s a good combination of the technical aspects and the policy aspects, because we don’t get into too much, but there’s a lot of governmental policy and regulations that play in the electric market.

Altogether and, and Paul kind of ties the two together, which was really hard. Yeah. So back in 2004, uh, Paul was working or started working as the acting executive director for the Ontario sustainable energy association. He’s talked a bunch about his work over in Canada and, and some of the, just the great things they’ve done with renewable energy over there.

Um, and now, like you said, we, we talk, uh, so kind of like the scope of this conversation. We talk a little bit, a bit. In the beginning about, um, electric vehicles. Cause he has a current, a big passion for the electric car he drives. And as a guy who’s just overall interested in saving the planet, interested in renewable energy, interested in green energy.

And you know, he refers to himself as, as a, as a greenie, uh, which Paul’s, Paul’s a funny guy. Um, but he’s been around the whole, you know, We talk about solar. We talk about wind and small wind, and there’s been a lot of challenges. And like you said down, and there’s not only mechanical and engineering and technology challenges, but he talks a lot about the fights and, uh, just the, the difficulty in getting policy changes that are going to make wind more viable.

And, and one of the things he speaks to is, uh, the fact that we should be farther along today. Then we are, yeah, we should always be farther along or that’s always tends to be the case. Right. You look back around, we should have done better back then, but I think as he points out, we were, we’re catching up very rapidly now, and that we’re devoting a lot of resources too, on the engineering side and the policy side, both that we’re going to see a lot more wind turbines and a lot more work to more activity happened in the next couple of years.

Well, one last quick note. Uh, we’re going to link to all of Paul’s work in the description below. So again, he’s a great resource. So definitely check out his website, wind works.org. That’s wind-works.org. He’s written tons and tons of stuff. Uh, about range of topics in the wind industry. Good. He’s got eight books.

Um, also just really well written great references. If you’re learning to whether you’re advanced or new, like I’m still relatively new to the, uh, to the, the wind industry and I’ve learned a ton. Um, so we’ll link to all that stuff in the show notes, but yeah, without further ado, we’re going to jump to our conversation with Paul.

Well, Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. So how are things out there in Bakersfield?

Paul Gipe: Well today it’s a

little foggy, which is kind of unusual for sunny Bakersfield, but I understand yesterday was quite windy and to atrophy, which is where all the wind turbines are located. So I think they were probably producing pretty good yesterday.

Allen Hall: So, do you have a, do you have a wind farm, like out your window? Like how close are you? Are you kind of nestled beneath them? Do you live in a, maybe like a hammock? Are you floating right now, Paul?

Paul Gipe: No. No, I am. I’m a good hour away from the tach. We pass where the wind turbines are located. The lots of solar panels here in Bakersfield on rooftops.

And of course, a lot of solar farms in the vicinity of Bakersfield, but, uh, lots of thousands of wind turbines, thousands of megawatts of capacity of wind turbines. In attach B pass, which is now our way in the mountains, as well as quite a number of massive solar farm, 750 megawatts that of crack there out on the desert, not too far away.

So you have, you have all those wind and solar. And in here in Kern County might add that we also have large concentration of geothermal energy, which most people are not aware of because one it’s, it’s hidden on the military base and you just can’t go there. People have guns, no, keep you out. Uh, but there’s a lot of geothermal energy there.

So Kern County is kind of like the center of renewable energy here in

Dan Blewett: California. And so, you know, we’re going to talk about a pretty wide ranging topics, a wide range of topics here on renewables today with, with Paul. Cause you’ve got so much experience in all these different areas of it, but, uh, today one of your seemingly big piece of interest is, uh, Electric cars and you drive one, you blog about one, you seemingly love it to death.

Um, so can you tell us, like, what’s your current ride right now, right now, Paul, and, uh, you know, why are you so not? So why are you so bought in? Because I think everyone realizes that the, the value of electric cars. Right. But, um, you’re, you’re a little bit new. You’ve been driving one for what? Uh, is it five years now?

Paul Gipe: Well, it’s, it’s going on seven years now, but what we’re driving now is a Chevy bolt. That’s a, B, B O L T B as in boy, a Chevy bolt. So that’s not a volt which we have had in the past. So we’d gone through a leaf, a volt. A bolt. And now we’re on our second bolt and not a Tesla simply because, well, Tesla’s still are pretty expensive.

And the bolt, if you, if you shop carefully, you can get a bolt for half the cost of a Tesla. Tesla is a better car, but the bolt is a great car and it’ll get you where you need to go. And it gets us where we need to go and we take it everywhere. We would. We it’s the only car we have. And, uh, what I tell people in my advocacy for driving EVs is once you drive an electric car, you really not going back.

Yeah.

Dan Blewett: They can’t be, what’s a, what are the big selling points? Sell me, sell me right now.

Paul Gipe: Well, uh, first of all, um, let’s forget about the fact that it’s cleaner, um, that it doesn’t have any tailpipe emissions. And in here in California, which has a high percentage of renewable energy and a generation mix, of course, it even has a very low impact from the generation of electricity.

Uh, disregarding all that. It’s quiet, very quiet. Um, you know, highway speeds, you can hear the tire noise. Of course, uh, immediately responsive. If you like to cars, if you’re a techie, you’re a car guy. Uh, when you put your foot on the. Go pedal or accelerator pedals since it’s not the gas pedal anymore. Uh, you know, it’ll, it’ll put you back in a seat and of course people drive Teslas point that out all the time, but you can do that in a bullet.

I can, I can squeal the tires on a bull. I pulled up to the stop sign with a couple of them, you know, we’re in Bakersfield. So we’ve got some of those big trucks with the pipes out the back of revenue engine, and I can beat them to the next light, uh, and the other, the other advantage of driving. Um, electric car is regenerative braking.

And so if you have a lot of regenerative braking, like there isn’t a bolt, they ha it has quite a bit. I even has more than a Tesla. Uh, you can do what we call single pedal driving, and I think that’s the way driving a car was always intended. Uh, you don’t use the brake pedal and it’s just an emergency or you’re coming to a stoplight.

For example, you should always put your foot on the brake, but you don’t really need driving in the mountains. For example, downhill, the regenerative braking, decelerates the car, and of course creates electricity and you store back in the battery. So. Uh, they accelerate well, they’re very, uh, sporty feeling and they decelerate well, and they’re just all around, a lot more fun to drive.

I mean, once you, once you get one, that’s it you’re gonna keep getting electrics.

Allen Hall: Well, did you see this coming? I mean, so obviously Alan’s our electrical engineer here and, you know, we’ve talked a lot about, and we’re going to get into wind turbines a ton. Um, but like the world’s really changed as far as battery technology, but.

Has everyone always realized, I guess the potential of electricity. Cause like, for me, I’ll give you my example. I have an electric scooter and it’s super fun and, and same thing ball like, but you hit the thing and it just goes, and you can tell the difference. There’s different models of scooters and some are bigger, bigger motors and whatnot.

And you can feel like just the instant pickup of the more powerful ones, but like the world is changing really fast. As far as transportation goes with all these different little. Like you can have the scooters and you can have these little one wheel, you can have, there’s a couple different types of segways that are insane looking that you just like, sort of stand over it and the wheels between your legs and you just, I see guys flying down the streets in those, but sure.

I mean, everything is changing. Did everyone realize that this was going to happen? Paul? Did you realize this, Alan, did you realize this or is this sort of like, Oh, we just sorta got here and now this is really going to be a reality. Uh, for me, my first experience with and electric vehicles, when we built in college, we, I went to school and Rose Hulman in Terre Haute, Indiana.

And, uh, the back end, this is 1980. Eight or 89, the GM had the son race for a lot of, of colleges, uh, participated across the country and the world, uh, to design and build a solar powered vehicle. It had solar cells on it. We had batteries installed inside of it. We went to Indianapolis to get the latest and greatest from composite technologies off the Indianapolis 500 race car.

Companies that were located up there. And so we built ourselves on an electric vehicle. And at the time, when, when you start running all the numbers and doing all the calculations back in the late eighties, early nineties, you realize that batteries are a huge problem. First off, uh, getting anything besides lead acid that was relatively inexpensive, was near impossible.

And there are there’s nickel metal hydride. There’s some. And the space application kind of batteries, but essentially you are limited to let acid, if you wanted to buy something that was realizable and the same thing on solar cells to you were, we were trying to get the highest efficiency solar cells we could.

And I forget at the time what the, what the percentage was, but it was relatively tiny when you go back and look at it. But we all knew that at the time, and even the electric motors that drove the drove the cars, weren’t particularly complicated. They’re just really kind of the infancy stage of that. But we all knew all the pieces were there.

And as Paul has seen as, as technology develops, it’s the same basic concept. It’s sort of that Tesla foundation where it’s it’s first concept. Right. First concept is. You have batteries, you have storage, you have an electric motor, which has all that advantages. And he just got to get the technology up where it becomes available.

And that’s when Paul’s talking about buying that Nissan leaf. I mean, that, that seems like eons ago today, Asia, right? It’s just ancient because now you look at even the Bolton and all the tests of products and, and you, and you just are amazed at what. The technology has brought and that now we have these giga battery factory is out in the middle of the desert.

Now they’re building one in Germany and, and you realize that the world is changing so fast, but at the same time, we haven’t really come all that far in a sense of where we will end up, because if I don’t. I used to visit, uh, presidential, uh, museums. And one of the more interesting one was Eisenhower’s museum, which is in Kansas.

And in that museum, you see Eisenhower’s electric car, right? It’s a battery powered car because he came up during the 1920s tens twenties, right. And there was a lot of roads to speak of and there wasn’t available. Petroleum. So batteries was one of those things that they used to, uh, drive the cars with.

So, uh, it’s not relatively new technology, but it’s just that we’ve developed better and better and better pieces to it, which has made it much more, um, convenient. I think it’s a convenience thing. And Paul would attest to that. Bolt you have now is like a car, any other car, right? I mean, it has all the features.

Paul Gipe: Yeah. Yeah, it’s just car. It’s just got electric stuff in it. Yeah. And that’s what I tell people. They say, you know, Hey, what about their car? It says on, I said, it’s just a car. We just are now, you know, we just drive it. I take notes. Of course I keep a spreadsheet and stuff, but that’s cause I’m a nerd. Um, but, but yeah, it’s just a car.

So I tell people don’t you don’t get excited about this car. Um, yeah, plug it in at night. And if you’re on the road trip, yeah. There’s special plugs for those, but basically it’s just a car. You drive it like a car and you know, it’s funny that you mentioned now on that, you know, first, uh, automobiles were electric.

Um, they weren’t gas powered and it really wasn’t until Dayton. Uh, electric light company or Dayton engineering and light company, uh, developed a self-starter um, that gasoline powered engines, uh, became, uh, the predominant technology for, for driving automobiles. Because up until then, you know, people couldn’t really use automobiles and less work techie and, uh, it didn’t mind.

Risking your arm cranking the damn thing. Uh, but that things have changed a lot. And I’ll bet that in the late 1980s, when you guys were racing, I may have actually seen your car on this on hideaway new Randerson, Indiana passing by the Dell Karimi. Plan and built some of those motors that were used in those early, uh, experimental EVs.

Allen Hall: Yeah, you

Paul Gipe: probably did. I got some, I got some really old photographs from that era. Yeah. And then GM GM dropped the ball. Uh, and there was a hiatus and it’s 10 fortunate. Um, because during that height, we could be much further than where we are now, if we didn’t have that hiatus and a hiatus was in part due to policy, um, and a lack of policy from California, California stepped back from the requirements on the auto manufacturers to have a certain percentage of their fleet here in California.

To be electric. Um, and so we lost a lot of years and it’s the same story with renewable energy. I mean, we, if you want to segue into renewable energy, I’m happy to stay here with you.

Allen Hall: No, Paul, you just crushed it, man. That was such a smooth segue. Yeah, salty veteran here,

Paul Gipe: but what is the problem we had with renewable energy, wind energy in particular?

I mean, we were going gung ho here in California in the 1980s, early 1980s. Right. Obviously I’ve been doing this for a while and then. Well, we had the Reagan years. It’s our, we don’t need those windmills and solar panels. So, you know, the Danes did it, the Germans did it. Uh, then the Chinese came along and they did it.

And finally, we got back in the game and we’re in a game now. And of course we’re growing rapidly and renewable energy, wind and solar, all that stuff. But we lost a good 20 years that we could be so much further ahead than where we are now, but this stuff does work. Now. We are where we, we are, uh, we have electric vehicles.

It’s now a question of getting people to use and buy them, uh, getting the cost down as Tesla’s doing, they’re forcing the market, uh, because they’re selling a lot of cars, selling half a million vehicles a year. That’s got GM’s attention. Certainly got Volkswagen’s attention. Of course, both wagon got caught with their pants down, uh, in diesel gate, but, uh, wagon has invested a ton, the money, uh, in manufacturing.

And so as fast as, and now I’m not vested. I mean, Tesla and Tesla’s nest just now joined what to Dow Jones, industrial average, and Exxon’s out.

Allen Hall: Yeah. Yeah, well, well, and that, and that sort of technology shift, we’re seeing electric vehicles. I agree with you on the, on the. Wind turbine side, particularly United States.

There was a, there was a definite law in the middle of that, but I also think part of that was that there just wasn’t a lot of technology advancements in a sense, I know on the composite side. And that’s where I think a lot of the countries got ahead of the United States was that they were developing that sort of the more on the composites.

And we were the bigger, larger company. Country that had industrial motors and things of that sort. And the market was too small in a sense. It was too small at the time. Uh, but as the market grew, it seemed like. Everybody’s sort of woke up, like there’s, once you throw money on the table in any sort of enlarge industrial scale, Americans will tend to congregate around that and find ways to make money off that, off that system.

So, uh, the, the, the, the rate of technology, I agree with you from. In the seventies, even up to the early nineties was just like, really not there. And then electronics developed just like power electronics developed substantially in the early nineties. And then boom. Everything just cut loose. It just seems in my engineering career has just exploded so that, uh, things that were impossible back in the seventies are routine today.

And if you watch some of that go on and you, you saw both sides, but I think the thing about your experiences, you, you saw both sides of it. You saw sort of the technology and, but you also saw. Policy end of that was there just, was there always this sort of disconnect between the two, even like Tessa, did I seem to be going through that?

There’s, there’s a Tesla technology and then there’s the policy and they never seem to, to ever meet as some sort of happy medium are we S and it seems like the winter ministry was gone through that, and we’re still in that mode. Is there a shorter coming consensus that’s going to happen around when pretty soon are we getting closer to that?

Well,

Paul Gipe: no, th there’s a consensus there there’s a consensus for the electric vehicles. And I think Alan, you put your finger on it. Uh, early on in that, in that statement that, uh, there was no market, but that’s why that’s how technology to develop it. Doesn’t develop because there’s some guy sets in a lab and says, Oh, I think I’m going to invent something.

No, that’s because there’s a market. We live in a market economy. I mean, we can be. Critical 11. I’m a critic of it, but, uh, but we live in a market economy. And if you believe in a market economy, you’re only going to get this stuff. If you create a market for it. And that’s where policy comes in and we abandoned the policy front and a reason that the Europeans ended up.

Being the ones who build wind turbines, uh, and solar panels too. We can come back to where the Chinese fit into this picture, um, is because they created a market for it. And then, so we didn’t, we abandoned the market. We said, ah, the market will take care of itself. Now the market doesn’t take care of itself.

The market follows policy. And if the policy says we want windmills. Uh, we want solar panels. Um, then we pay for them and we had technology that worked in the eighties. Uh, we had technology worked in solar panels, too. I mean, Arco, solar. I mean, they were one of the pioneers we had, we had one of the first solar power plants, uh, just West of Bakersfield.

Uh, it was only seven megawatts, but seven megawatts in 1980s, early 1980s was enormous now 750 megawatts in that same project. So that’s different, but we had the technology and the cost of that technology would have fallen much more rapidly than it did. If the United States had stayed in the game had continued its policy of saying, we want to develop renewable energy.

We made a conscious decision, a political decision. Now, maybe they didn’t ask you or I, what our opinion was. But we, as a nation made a conscious political decision that we don’t care about. That stuff where as the Dane said, man, we want this. And a German said, yeah, we definitely want this. Uh, and eventually a French came along and then the Brits to, uh, the Brits tried to same approach of, we did failed miserably.

And so there they buy Danish windmills too. Like we do, uh, even general electric, which we consider an American company. Really, the design came from a German company that they bought, um, But so, so there, they created a market and that’s what the Chinese did too. When the Chinese decided that to enter the renewables area, they said, well, this looks like a good thing to do.

We need it in our country because we are shortage of energy. We have this huge industrial expansion. We need a lot of energy. Um, Stuff that we’re doing is polluting like hell is killing her own people. And they might even rise up and overthrow us. And we, we, we don’t want that. So I am, we want to sell a lot of it, a lot of, uh, solar panels and windmills to the Yankees because they buy everything and we send them anyway.

And, uh, so they said we’re going to create a market right for that. And they, they basically copied what the Germans did and while the rest is history. So now stuff’s dirt cheap. Uh, anybody builds a coal plant today would be crazy. And in fact, uh, just as a sidebar here, um, general electric few years ago, I think it was only five years ago, but can you believe they did this five years ago, bought house tomes went to the French government, bought Al’s tomes, uh, nuclear turbine fabricating plant.

And now they’re trying to get rid of they’ve lost their shirt. And I think there was even talk of GE possibly going bankrupt because of their investments in coal plants and in their, their nuclear, um, turbo machinery plant. And now they’re trying to get rid of asking a French government to come back and buy it back.

Allen Hall: Wow.

Paul Gipe: So world can be crazy, but we made a hell of a lot of progress.

Allen Hall: Well, so I want to, I do want to transition to. And another thing that might be on the horizon and you’re by far the expert on this, but it’s small wind turbines. So you’ve been obviously in your book, wind energy for the rest of us, which is, I mean, super thorough and like every topic on wind energy. Um, you talk about small wind turbines a lot, and we still don’t see them much in the U S so my question to you is why, and, uh, what’s holding them back, like what barrier?

We just talked about barriers to the market, but, um, Paul what’s the deal with small wind turbines? Will we see them at peoples homes anytime soon?

Paul Gipe: Oh, that’s a tough question. Ah, well, um, small wind does work. Uh, it has a very, uh, specific niches or applications where it does work today. Uh, if you’re off the grid, Uh, and they replace with any wind.

Uh, you’re not tucked away in a cave someplace while your solar is not going to work in a cave either. So anyway, um, if you’re, if you’re off the grid and you, uh, plan to put in solar, then, uh, you probably need, need a small wind as well, so that you have a hybrid system. So the battery bank doesn’t have to be too big and you don’t have to have a backup gasoline or diesel generator.

So that’s one application, but that’s the main reason why. Uh, small wind, uh, is not work. It’s not, not prevalent today is simply because of cheap solar. Solar is dirt cheap. I mean, if you call Mike Bergie Bergie wind power, he says that’s a cheap Chinese, sorry, I’m always adds Chinese, do it, but it’s cheap, cheap solar and solar has become dirt cheap, white put up a windmill that, you know, you have to climb them and fix occasionally.

Uh, when you can put the solar panel on your roof and you can just hose off the bird ship periodically. So, um, you know, solar, solar is cheap, solar simple, um, and the other, the other problem is that, um, uh, there are. Um, legal and regulatory hurdles to installing small wind. Um, obviously your neighbors don’t want to have a tall winter, but if somebody in your neighbor’s yard, uh, because if it falls over, it might land on their yard.

So there’s all kinds of regulatory stuff that solar panels don’t have to face. Well, I know there’s, some people complain about they’re all blue and I hate blue. You know, that there been staff or where are their green solar panels? I prefer blue, whatever, but generally we have a permit emitting process that allows solar to go in, even in America.

Uh, even in California, we actually say it’s a good idea that you can put solar on your roof in California, but the wind turbine saying, well, we’d better think about that a little bit. And there’s a lot more discussion and people say why, you know, windmills, Gill, birds. And, um, you know, I hear that the reflection is going to cause, cause me to have Alzheimer’s or pick something, um, and, uh, Or trigger ADHD or some, some kind of

Allen Hall: talk about that because when our pre-call last week, we talked a bunch about misconceptions.

So there’ve been a lot of misconceptions that have really hurt the wind industry. And you’ve seen them throughout the last bunch of decades. So what are, what are some of these big ones and did they actually have an impact.

Paul Gipe: Uh, well, they, uh, the myths can have an impact in that they can influence, uh, policy decisions.

So policies at the state regional and federal level. Uh, for example, there’s a, there’s a country, uh, in a world today that has a president who thinks windmills cause cancer. So that country probably is not going to do anything right now to encourage wind energy. Um, the wind energy is growing fine without him because he doesn’t really know.

Uh, one way or the other what’s going on. So, um, so it can have, have an effect on policy, uh, but in the regulatory and legal arena, uh, very rarely do these kind of, uh, miss, uh, affect the outcome. Uh, what they do do is of course, force the person who wants to put up the wind turbine to go through a long expense of the legal process.

Just say, well, it doesn’t really cause cancer. There’s no evidence of that. If you have evidence, can you prove it? And then there are other parties say, well, you know, this is the evidence we have. And they say, well, but that’s anecdote or hearsay. Do you have any doctors ever looked at this stuff? And they said, well, no, not really.

So then the judge says and throws it out. So, uh, the consequences are more one in terms of general public image, uh, wind energy in this case. Uh, and that public policy. So politicians who not always the brightest people on earth, um, a lot of them are attorneys. Non-engineers. We have very few engineers who are in Congress, uh, in United States.

And I think that’s a real problem. Uh, we need a lot more engineers. Uh, in Congress, uh, and in the parliament in Canada, uh, than we have now, but at any rate, some of them aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box and they believe this stuff because while might be useful to the political career, and then they might propose policies that say, well, you can’t have windmills that are.

Blue, why can’t have solar panels are blue because blues make people upset. I’m just giving an example, but we have a lot of stuff that’s really wacko. And you say, oops, where did they get that? And you have to go back and you step back and you have to go back and back and find out what, how did this were a, where did this come from?

For example, I told you guys last week about the case of, you know, you wouldn’t, you didn’t know, probably the windmills attract sharks. Right.

Allen Hall: They leave. They try to leave your game for that. You

Paul Gipe: heard it here. You heard it here first. Yes. When mills attract sharks and, uh, uh, French speaking sharks only for the moment, um, uh, on the, um, you know, their Guadalupe, uh, in the Caribbean, uh, there was a small wind farm proposed, uh, using smaller wind turbines.

So not, not the kind that we have now, but small, relatively small. And, um, so there was a huge outcry against putting up these wind turbines. It’s going to go, you know, a couple dozen of these things. And they were pretty small to begin with. And there’s this huge outcry that, uh, they were going to attract sharks and it’s, you know, the Guadalupe, I mean, people go to the beach a lot, uh, and you know, they don’t like sharks, sharks, eat people and they don’t want to be eaten.

So this was bad. You know what, when those. Come because they’re going to call it attract sharks and sharks are going to eat people. So this is pretty serious stuff. So, so, so researcher looked into this and tried to figure out what things going on here found out that there was a conference held at a hotel, uh, about the economic investment opportunities of developing wind energy on Guadalupe.

And he pitched this as we’re going to attract the sharks and wall street. To invest in that spell the word got out there attracting sharks, but they were American sharks from wall

Allen Hall: street. Unbelievable.

Paul Gipe: People didn’t hear that they thought of the swimming sharks, the people

Allen Hall: roughly you can’t make that up.

And that’s, that’s amazing.

Paul Gipe: I liked that one that maybe that’s why I tell you that score. Of course, I tell you about the ones that windmills. Uh, cause, uh, rattlesnakes coming out of the ground and kill people. Um, but that’s not as much fun as the sharp one. I like the sharp one better or the windmills. Cause, cause your guts to turn to mush and they’d come out places where things come out.

Yeah. I don’t need to tell you that one

Allen Hall: either. Well, Paul, did you hear about the uh, the icebreaker wind farm in, uh, it was going to be in Lake Erie. There was a lot of, a lot of horrible about it this year, because it looked like it was going to happen. And then it looks like a local, whether it was coal, um, or whatever, you know, local industry that was sort of opposed to losing perhaps some business to this sort of started to lobby.

And they said, yeah, this caused a negative environmental impact on the animals. Or, you know, whether it’s fish or, or foul. I think it was mostly foul. They’re claiming. And so is basically

Paul Gipe: any sharks in Lake eerie.

Allen Hall: It’s going to actually, I’ve heard it’s going to mutate the fish, the Lake trout into becoming.

Yeah. But they essentially got an order and then it got reversed, but they said that, you know, Hey, you got, you can go ahead with this, but you gonna have to turn the wind turbines off for like eight hours a day. They’re like, well, then this is not feasible. Like this can’t possibly make financial sense. Um, but then they.

Someone came to their widths and they reverse this and it looks like it’s going to go forward. It’s still kind of Rocky. It seems like, but I mean, is that a pretty common scenario? I mean, you’ve, you’ve been doing this for a long time. How many stories are there like that? Paul?

Paul Gipe: Oh, there’s a lot of stories.

Um, we we’d spend a lot of time on this. Um, but in the, in the, yes, well, I like to say, I like to say I’ve sat in my books that. If we develop wind energy in a certain way, or in a ways, or a little bit different than what we’re doing now and give people an op I still have faith in humanity. It’s being tested.

It’s been tested the last few years. It’s still tested, but I still have facing humanity. And if you give them an opportunity to learn, to live with wind energy or renewable generalized say, well, yeah. Okay. I don’t like blue solar panels and I don’t like green windmills, but, but they’re okay. Um, I think that, uh, over time people will become more accepting of wind turbines and solar panels and what else?

Um, but in the case here it’s wind energy because they’re big physical things and they, they turn around. I mean, we can see them on the landscape, um, and we can hear them solar panels. We don’t hear it because they don’t do anything. They just sit there. Um, and they don’t stand up in the sky and they don’t move around.

Uh, so windmills are far more visible, so we notice them more than we do other technologies. Uh, and so as a consequence, we who are advocates of, uh, wind energy need to be particularly attuned to the fact that some people may be put off by that put off by the fact that they are turning, that they’re visible, that they’re nearby.

They don’t know what they are. The president says they cause cancer, the French and Guadalupe. So they attract sharks. So, so we, we have to spend a lot of time addressing these questions. Uh, but I it’s my hope that over a period of time that a bulk of the public, uh, accepts this and every opinion survey that I’ve ever seen shows that, um, the majority, I mean the two thirds to three quarters of people polled now most, any country, uh, want more wind energy.

Uh, maybe they want a little bit more solar because solar is not quite as, uh, disruptive as a winter. I mean, cause you can see the windmill as a court, as I’ve said. Um, but they want more of it. They’re more supportive of it. If you ask them about a nuclear plant, they’ll say, well, okay. I don’t want that.

Okay. So, um, most people support, uh, wind energy. Uh, if you do a public opinion per survey, it takes 10%. Only takes 5% and they only take 1%. Of the people to stop your project, particularly if those are key people by the people on the public utility commissioner was this offshore citing council or whatever it was made the decision on the icebreaker project.

It only took a few people. So it’s probably not even 1%, but if you, um, try to get the majority of people and we still live in a democracy, and I say, well, most people accept this and it’s not really going to hurt to. Uh, it’s for the best, for everybody it’s best for the environment. It’s best for all of us, we have a cleaner world, uh, and it’s a good thing to do and we should do it.

And if that’s putting wind turbines off of Cleveland, uh, in Lake Erie, and why has it taken us a damn long?

Allen Hall: Yeah. Well,

Paul Gipe: how old is that? By the time they get to st. Build, it’s going to be two decades. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Well, and Paul, where has this industry in particular, the wind turbine industry over the years really dropped the ball in terms of marketing this to the larger.

Community cause it’s, it seems like there’s had several open opportunities that they have. The door is open. All I need to do is walk through it and very minimal amount of effort. My opinion. It would have taken to really change the level of discourse. Where, where have you seen those key points? Point span over time on the, on the marketing side.

Paul Gipe: Well, certainly certainly here in the United States. And I would say probably in Canada as well as, uh, I think the industry has been too damn greedy. Um, I think that if we had enabled, uh, public policies that made it possible for other people, besides Florida power and light and electricity to France, uh, and all the people who actually are developing wind energy in the United States and Canada, uh, give other people the opportunity to build known their own wind turbines.

Uh, not, not a little window in your backyard necessarily, but maybe it could be a community owned, wind turbine, or it could be a community owned, wind farm, a group of wind turbines. Uh that’s uh, that’s there. So it’s not the other guys, um, that there might be a greater, uh, acceptance of. For example, um, if this Cleveland project could have been done by a municipal utility, that’s a little bit better than just a private utility.

I think this is going to be a private company, whatever it is, you want to do this, but it could have been done by the people or Cleveland. I mean, it could have been the people’s co-op Cleveland and I think, uh, wasn’t Dennis, somebody  was from Cleveland. They can say here’s the April’s co-op it’s gotta be the people’s wind farm.

Uh, am I make it a little bit more acceptable, but that’s not the plan and that’s not the way we’ve done things in the United States, but that’s not, there are other places in the world that have developed wind energy and they’ve developed in a different way. Denmark, for example, Germany, for example. Um, and there’s some interest in have been in the UK, but definitely Germany and Denmark developed wind energy was owned by, uh, people in the community.

And that was quite a bit different. Now it’s changed. We can talk about that, but, but it’s changed, but that’s why I say in my book, the title is wind energy for the rest of us. So when the energy needs to grow, needs to grow rapidly, uh, to, to, to, to meet our climate targets, uh, to, to protect us. But we need to broaden the market to not just the giants of the electric utility world, not just to electricity and difference, uh, or inner heat, the porch gal.

Uh, or, uh, poison electorate where they change their names. So they’re not pricing electric anymore. There’s some AI on, but, but you know, it could be owned by, you know, people in Bakersfield even, right.

Allen Hall: Oh, sure. Well that, that, that, that sort of, uh, local winter bin marketplace. Was there for a certain amount of time.

And I always felt like, uh, there was, there was an impetus back in the seventies and eighties into maybe not so much into the nineties, but 70 eighties definitely was where the, the industry heard itself in terms of the quality of the product, the longevity wasn’t there. And you highlight that in your book a little bit like this, these are all the generations of wind turbines, and these are the things that did not work.

And these are the things that have gone on to the longer lifetimes. That sort of, I don’t want to say necessarily quality because some part of it was just straight up engineering at the time that I think that really delayed some part of the inevitability of this, that if we had done a better job, it’s still like the Tesla situation.

I don’t like using analogies. So I’ll use the analogy of Tesla here, which is when Tesla has some early crashes, especially with the automated. Driving thing that really hurt them. That’s slowed down their progress a really good bit. And they had it. Then there was a period in which Tessa was going to go broke.

And that sort of thing happened too. I think a bunch of winter, big companies in that same mode where the quality wasn’t there, do you see that quality and the consistency and the, the lifetime of the product finally getting to where that advertised space I showed a 20 year life span. Are we, are we getting closer to that right now?

Paul Gipe: No, no, no. It was a word there. No. Yeah, but it’s now these are commercial products. Now they have all the benefits and problems of any commercial technology. Now. Standard stuff I G will be happy. General electric would be happy to sell you a thousand windmills. I at, you know, 5 million piece. If you get the discount discount bunch, uh, you buy them by the dozen kind of thing, right?

They’re they’re they’re commercial products, solar panels, the same way. Uh it’s it’s like. Every other industry though. I mean, you do have to be careful. I mean, it’s a lot of money and, uh, it’s it’s technology produces electricity and electricity is serious stuff. Gotta be kills people. So you got it. Gotta be careful.

And there’s some, there’s some Chinese. Um, well let’s just say there’s some solar products that, uh, I wouldn’t recommend. There are wind turbines. I don’t recommend that most of the big commercial players, that’s pretty standard stuff. Um, where you get into this fringe now is inventions. Uh, new guys got gotta, it’s going to save the world with some new windmill invention.

And most of the time it’s crackpot stuff. Occasionally you see some serious efforts where people put serious money into a crackpot idea. And it’s still, it’s still a crackpot idea, but it’s an, a lot of money behind it. So the engineering is good. So, so Alan, you, you would be happy. I mean, they, they had good engineers, but it was still a crackpot idea and the whole company, you know, implodes example that would be, um, flow design.

Uh Ojin. Who they burned through, I think 300 and some million dollars, uh, in money. And they hired a lot of engineers, MIT, MIT, engineers, not Rose home. And I didn’t hear anybody about Rose home and being there. Uh, but, uh, lots of MIT engineers. Um, maybe you got a Harvard guy in there too. Just, just to round it out, out the money.

Yeah, probably the guys who ran the company were Harvard because they, you know, I think they did. Okay. In the project. Um, but anyway, um, so it wasn’t, uh, an idea that had been discarded many, many times in the past, but of course they brought it back. Of course they were going to do it better than anybody else.

And it’s the ducted winter, but I think you guys talk abducted winter.

Allen Hall: Yeah. We need you to set us straight.

Paul Gipe: Remember? That’s exactly right.

Allen Hall: So

Paul Gipe: bourbon, it was a windmill with a big shroud around it. And of course it has the shroud and everybody understands that know it’s like a funnel. Hmm works the opposite of the funnel, but, but it’s, it’s there.

And so people say, Oh yeah, that looks like that’s a lot better than those big things. Spindly things out there with them long slander blades. And, uh, so it’s natural that, you know, investors line up to throw their money at this stuff, including the U S government who should know better. Um, of course they should ask people who know better, but they don’t.

Uh, and, and they throw, they throw money at this thing because, well, I mean, it looks like it’s got a funnel on it. And, uh, well you didn’t and, uh, if you, you have to read between the lines, but anyway, $300 million. So most of these crackpot things, you know, they, they fleece a few investors and that’s it, but these are the big boys.

And when they do the policing, they do a good job. They’re pros, they’re pros with this. Uh, let’s see, Gary doer. I think he was the guy behind this, the, the, the wall street, um, Uh, venture capital firm that did Google. So they’ve had some winners and this one is not a winner. And, and they blew through, uh, $60 million in the Alberta pension fund and the $50 million of the New Zealand pension fund, uh, got nothing for it.

Uh, they had one prototype and current County, they had, I think, seven. Pre production models in Palm Springs before they concluded, Hey, Oh, they’re just not going to get the performance that they promised everybody. And so it’s gone

Allen Hall: complete surprise, surprise. Right? Can you, can you talk more to that, Paul?

So you devote a good amount of time in your book and, um, this was one of the, in your researching us to see if you want to come on our show. He said, Oh, I got to set you straight on ducted. So tell us about, cause it does seem like a good idea. This is why PQ. Well, first I got, I got a palsy. Did you ever, are you a Simpsons fan, Paul?

Paul Gipe: Oh, I’m sorry. I know who they are.

Allen Hall: Okay. There a Simpsons episode. Where this salesman comes in, he wants to sell a monorail to the town of Springfield. Alan, do you remember this episode? And he like gets, he wins their hearts and this is a big emotional and everyone’s singing. Like he has them all singing, monorail, monorail, and he just basically fleeces them, takes their money and skips town.

Um, it’s an amazing classic episode, but, um,

Paul Gipe: it’s the music man.

Allen Hall: It’s all it is. There’s some music, man. It’s in Simpson cartoon fashion. Yeah.

Paul Gipe: It sounds like the pied Piper. Yes. Yes, exactly.

Allen Hall: Yes. But so ducted fans seem to make sense, but why do they not work in practicality?

Paul Gipe: Well, again, I’d go back to, um, you know, we have an intuitive sense.

Unfortunately, our intuitive senses is, is based on intuition. It’s not necessarily based on an engineering analysis. So intuitive sense says this is final and you’ve got to put more wind into it and that’ll make the wind turbine go faster or stronger or whatever you want to say. But the wind is not like a hydro plant.

I mean, we know how hydro power plants work, and we have a big pen stock, which is great big tube and a water’s inside it. And it goes through the turbine and turns the turbine. And we say, well, what’s this do the same thing with the windmill, but the wind is different. The wind just. Goes around the windmills.

So the whole design of the duct is very sophisticated to get the wind to exit just the way it can properly with the best error dynamic engineers in the world, so that it draws more wind through the rotor. So typically what they do is they make the argument. The rotor is more efficient than the same rotor size of a conventional windmill.

And you could say. Guys like me say, well, yeah, that’s probably true. Prove it. That’s probably true, but that’s not the point. The point is cost-effective electricity and that includes the whole thing, includes the dot and the windmill part, the spinning part and all the other stuff that you have to have, where that, so to produce cost-effective electricity.

And remember, we’re still trying to compete with coal and oil and nuclear and natural gas, all that stuff. Uh, and people still have to pay for it. So, you know, Cost does become is it is, is not the sole criteria, but it is an important criteria. So, so that includes the doc. And what we’ve found is that the doctor is a very expensive thing, even if it is composite materials.

And usually you can get the same result by just making the rotor blade a little bit longer because it’s a square of the diameter and that’s a subtle thing. It’s not always intuitive that you get that. And the other aspect to a ducted wind turbine is windmills are not like solar panels. We don’t have solar hurricanes where the sun does get super bright and it’s going to burn everything out.

But we do have hurricanes with windmills. We have high winds with windmills and we have to know how to deal with them. Otherwise we don’t have a windmill anymore. I mean, it was a good window, but it’s not there now. So, uh, we, we have to have ways to keep the windmill on one piece. And when you have a ducted wind turbine, you have the duct it’s out there and what are you going to do with it?

Where, where do you put it? What so far, nobody’s got an idea of what to do with the duct when there’s hurricane force winds, and you. You, uh, you have to somehow mitigate the forces on the wind turbines. So what they have to do with a dr. Wind turbine, they have to make it strong enough to withstand all those forces, which means everything’s gotta be stronger.

It means more expensive, expensive. So the bottom line is nobody’s built a ducted wind turbine that has been cost-effective. Uh, and then we could go argue and say, well, has deducted ducted, winter, but ever exceeded the vet’s limit, which is our measure of efficiency in the wind industry. And he’d say, well, not if you can see that as a duct, but if you consider just the rotor.

Yes. So in advertising, they say, well, our rotor is going to, you know, do better than the bats. And then guys like me say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But, but far out the big thing around the outside and said, wow, that’s, you know, that’s not, we don’t, we don’t want to talk about that. So, uh, so, so the windmill, the two problems with the duct is you’ve got the big duck and then you have to have something to hold it into high winds.

So it’s big and beefy. And so like in the Ojin, um, flow design, which is the $300 million investment by the, by the venture capital firm with doer, um, was that, well, if you stick a way up in the air, I did. It’s really hard to hold onto the thing. Right? Cause it’s, can’t leave her alone. It’s gotta be in the ground and you know, so they kept a chore.

Well, and then if it’s short, the winds, aren’t very strong. So, you know, you’re just, you’re just fighting, not pill battle. So. Like I, like, I try to say, tell people who, you know, also bring to me vertical axis, wind turbine designs, and so on. I said, okay, I don’t care if you’re an inventor and you want to play with this thing in your backyard, don’t put your retirement savings in it because you know, you’re going to, your, wife’s going to leave you, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Don’t turn in day for yourself, your friends. And don’t ask any money from the government. Uh, because I paid taxes. Um, unlike other people, I pay taxes and don’t, don’t ask. Whatever you do. Don’t say this is going to save the world and hold up the renewable energy revolution we need right now, in other words, go ahead and play with the thing and get out of the way.

Allen Hall: Yeah, that’s the hardest part is like getting rid of all the, I don’t want to say crazy, but I mean, that’s some part of, it’s a little insane of, of ideas that we’ve been through. Before that haven’t proven out and they’re not going to prove out because the laws of physics are not going to allow it, which then brings me to the next point is, okay, how big are we going to go on with some of these wind turbines?

And what’s, what’s the play on offshore? Because right now you’re here in numbers. 20 megawatt, 30 megawatt machines. Is that even a reality.

Paul Gipe: Okay. First of all, you shouldn’t ask me that question because I have been consistently wrong throughout my career on this, how big the wind turbines are going to get.

Uh, because I’ve said I didn’t get any bigger than this. And of course, then they got bigger and then I say it again and they came and they get bigger. So I’m the wrong guy to ask. Because I’ve been wrong so many times, but yeah. And all shore is different than on shore and off shore is different because, well, it’s so expensive to put in anything in the ocean, you got to really maximize every bit of revenue stream you can from the wind.

So you have to have this enormous rotor. And because the winds offshore are typically much higher than on land, you can put a barely big generator on the back of it. But just keep in mind. This is, this is illustration I used, uh, to, to emphasize why generator size is inappropriate for wind energy or to describe wind turbines is you can have a two by four and put a 20 megawatt generator on Encana 20 megawatt generator.

Allen Hall: Yeah,

Paul Gipe: right. So maybe a two before is wrong.

Allen Hall: Oh, got you there now it’s better. A couple of surf boards, a couple of surf boards, just Elmer’s glue. Okay. Let’s

Paul Gipe: go a little bit. Let me go a little bit further on off for, because what we see even on onshore Intercon, um, Halloween bogans company in Germany. Uh, their terpenes are getting so big.

The transport was a problem, you know, holidays, big braids blades around destined populated country like France or Germany or Denmark. So they they’ve actually shipped them now in two pieces, and then they actually assemble them on the site. And then they lifted up in the air. Uh, and we talked about doing that that’s 30 years ago, but the only ones we did were a couple of government projects and those turbans were all blown up and, you know, sold for scrap.

Uh, so this is that. And I think

Allen Hall: that’s, that’s, that’s just it, right? I mean, as you go to, if you’re going to do that offshore size,

Paul Gipe: you’re going to

Allen Hall: have to build factories. I did on the shoreline. There’s no other way to deal with it. And you’re going to have to probably assemble that some of this on,

Paul Gipe: and that’s it that’s perfectly, then we will actually assemble some of these on the ship on that.

I’m not sure, but, but certainly, uh, for off shore, the offshore industry, they’re building the harbors. The big, they, they they’re, they’re putting the factories at the Harbor Vestas. Uh, when Vestas Vestas is the world’s largest manufacturer, wind turbines is Danish eyes from a small town in Denmark called lamb and nearby lamb is bring Cobain and rank of being as a Harbor.

It’s a port and there was a shipbuilding factory at the pork. Well, you know, they don’t build ships anymore, so that’s just bought it. That’s where they build big windmills.

Allen Hall: Yeah. I mean, those just seem like they’re going to have to, like you said, like building in the factory at the Harbor is going to just be a necessity for these to get any bigger, but then it also still seemed like split blades and just like other ways to, like you said, reducing.

Prefab stuff is probably the only way that they’re going to continue to get bigger, because we’ve all seen those videos of the blades meandering through a town or whatever. It’s just, it’s crazy. And it’s just like, can’t get much bigger. They’re going to have to be in pieces.

Paul Gipe: Right. I, I think that, you know, I, I’m not, not a big YouTube watcher, but I know there’s some YouTube videos.

These guys

Allen Hall: long track, some

Paul Gipe: of these small towns. And I saw one the other day, somehow, I don’t know. It came across my feed. The guy got his directions wrong.

Allen Hall: We talked about that in one thing you talked about.

Paul Gipe: Okay. Okay. Yeah. And he had the backup for kilometers or something. Thanks. It was recent that I heard about.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s a funny story, but it’s true. I mean, those truck drivers, I had a friend, uh, he said he had his commercial driver’s license for a little while and it just wasn’t for him. But he said, he said, man, like I was driving. You remember what he was hauling, but he’s like dip going down. Some of those inclines with tons and tons and tons on this truck.

He’s like, I was just so afraid of this truck. And I’m like making any little mistake. And, uh, like you talk about say, everyone’s like concerned about safety of the technicians going up, these wind turbines, right. It’s a terrifying job. And it seems like they have a really good track record of safety, but at the same time, there’s all these other things that you probably don’t think about that are a really big safety hazard.

Perhaps a way more. So which might just be the trucking of the darn things,

Paul Gipe: right. Absolutely very valid point and very perceptive point. Um, we want to use renewable energy and my case wind energy. We want to use wind energy because it’s preferable to, uh, other sources, conventional sources because of the effects it has on people.

So we don’t want renewable energy kill people or injured them. Uh, because that’s not the point, the point is to make it better for all of us. And so we, we, in the end of the street, of course have to do everything we can to make the workplace as safe as possible. Uh, and now the industry is big enough that OSHA and other regulatory agencies around the world.

Look over our shoulders all the time. Uh, every major company has its own safety program that, uh, complies with OSHA here in the United States and, uh, the din requirements in Germany and so on. And that’s good. That’s the way it should be. It wasn’t like that. All the time. And as, as Dan mentioned, uh, you know, just transported, these things can be, can be dangerous.

Um, you know, a 30, 40, 50 meter blade going down a highway with the trailer behind it. Uh, you know, there’s a long space in between and, you know, it’s like train, right. People can drive underneath it and get killed. And we have had people, uh, in United States, uh, killed inclusions with wind turbine blade carriers.

Or maybe it was that the truck that during the winter, I don’t remember the Glade or the NSL, but they crashed into it and they died. Uh, and I don’t know if I put that one in my statistic as a wind industry, an accident I may have because it was a blade or something. I kind of keep track of that stuff.

Um, and we we’ve had, we’ve had people commit suicides, uh, wind turbines, or like, uh, bridges. Uh, and you know, people still jump off bridges and we don’t have always have fences on bridges. And, and, and in the early days we didn’t lock the doors and people climbed up the winter roads and jumped off. So all the wind turbines should have a door that’s locked or a nine  tower sections so that people can, who are depressed, uh, kill themselves.

Uh, we don’t want people killing themselves on a winter. Right. Uh, and we we’ve had some really, you know, just. Horrific accidents. Uh, we have had a parachutist. Killed by a wind turbine. Uh, you guys may not have known that one, but that’s a pretty, pretty odd, uh, her first unassisted jump, uh, her, her trainer landed safely.

Uh, she didn’t, she flew into winter and then she died. So, you know, we, we do have these cases and you know, they’re, they’re not pretty, and that’s not nice stuff to talk about. It’s not all the. Tacky stuff. And it’s not all that we’re going to save the world. Uh, this is real, real people, real families that have been affected.

Um, I’ve written about this. I’ve written about these accidents and I’ve had family members contact me and, uh, we do everything we can, we don’t want to be like the coal industry. Um, we don’t want to be like the gas and oil and gas industry. Um, we want to make sure our people go home to their families.

Allen Hall: That’s a really good point because I think that the wind industry has been really up front of that for quite a while. Well, other industries have not been, I think the wind industry has really, at least, especially lately, anytime I’ve got anywhere near a turban, it’s the steel-toed shoes. It’s the safety classes.

It’s the helmet. It’s the, uh, training

Paul Gipe: land

Allen Hall: in the lanyards. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s amazing. I just know. No, there’s no messing around. There is no messing around when you’re working on tournaments. And I think that’s probably to their benefit, right? I mean, you treat them like the machine, the machine deserves to be treated, uh, with a lot of respect because, uh, it will get you if you’re not careful.

Paul Gipe: Well, that’s right. I mean, you’re an engineer and we, we all work with electricity and, uh, Uh, we know the electricity kills and so, but we use electricity. We use it every day. Uh, we’ve done over a hundred, 150 years. Learned, learned all the things not to do well. We’ve learned lights in the wind industry not to do we still make mistakes and accidents still happen, but we try to avoid that.

And in the early days, our record was not very good. I I’m actually, our record is terrible. Yeah, but, but the industry got its act together and that’s to their credit. Uh, and I’m glad of that. Yeah.

Allen Hall: Yeah. It’s certainly, it’s something really for the industry to be proud of today. And you see a lot of the different for many companies really highlight that and rightfully so they should.

And it’s good. It’s good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well not, no, Paul, uh, obviously you said you don’t like to forecast too much, like you don’t, you can’t predict the future. So sorry for those of you listening Paul camp. Predict the future. But, uh, one of the interesting changes in the industry is obviously all the use of drones, which this seems like a perfect solution for, for drones, obviously.

Um, with, I mean, you’ve seen lots of changes over the many decades you’ve been in, um, you know, a wind energy insider. How big of a change do you feel like the drone technology is to winter? I mean, do you, do you feel like those are going to be fully automated in the future? Like, will anyone go onto a blade on a rope in the future?

Paul Gipe: Well, I actually, Dan that’s that’s an excellent question. I’m very good. You guys got some good questions? Yeah. Drones are really making a big end road in a wind turbine service, uh, and maybe, and certainly in photography. I’m a German photographer who uses drones now, and there are some fantastic photographs, uh, but in terms of wind turbine service, blade inspection.

Oh, that is just makes life. So much better for everybody, both the people who have to know what the blade is looking like what’s doing. And also the people who have to serve as, but at some point, of course, we, if the blade does need to be repaired, it either has to be taken off the wind turbine, which is a big job, really big job, or it has to be fixed in situ or in place.

And then that requires people to go out there. So we’re going to still, still need the people with ropes. Um, And interestingly, a colleague of mine, uh, over in Santa Cruz, he started a company, uh, doing the repelling down the blades to fix the blades and inspect, inspect the blades and then repair them. And now I got a drone business.

So. I would say right on target, uh, there are a number of companies do drones. His company does drones. And I know in Europe there are lots of companies doing drones now.

Allen Hall: Well, as, as, as we wrap up here, Paul, you’ve been in this industry for a long time. You said you’ve been threatened you, the other, you, you fought a lot of your battles.

Uh, and there’s a lot of people, especially my generation. I mean, I’m in my mid thirties. Uh, but people care a lot about the environment today. Maybe more so than they ever have. I don’t know if that’s just an anecdote, but. Um, for people who are looking to get into renewable energy, who are passionate about it, who maybe want to make a career out of it, or just want to advocate for it, what advice would you give them as someone who’s devoted a large part of his life to it?

Paul Gipe: Well, there’s a lot of opportunity, uh, in renewable energy. It’s growing exponentially around the world, which has should, uh, there’s a lot of opportunity for women because women are not well-represented in the renewable energy industry, uh, or in the electric vehicle industry for that matter. Um, so there’s a lot of opportunity for women.

Women have to make a space for themselves, but, uh, most of the companies now are open to the idea, uh, and we need a lot more engineers. Don’t go be in an attorney, don’t go to Harvard and studies. I studied to be an attorney, uh, you know, our bias best and brightest in the United States, uh, go to become attorneys.

And we we’ve got a plenty of those. They’re there. Okay. We need them when we need them, but we needed engineers. Uh, we need engineers in the United States. We need technical people. Not everybody needs to go to college. Um, we can, we need talented people who work in the, in as technicians, service technicians.

Uh, this is very sophisticated stuff to troubleshoot, uh, power electronics. I troubleshoot the control systems, computer control systems on these things. We need good people who do that. And fortunately, now there are some community colleges are offering technical training for Trump, for troubleshooting technicians, for both solar and wind energy.

Uh, there should be plenty of opportunity there. Um, most of these jobs are non union. Don’t have to be done. They don’t have to be non-union, but the currently non-union, but, uh, we need more people doing that stuff. And so I think this is a growing business. I don’t go on oil. Don’t go on gas and those are dead end jobs.

Uh, don’t go, uh, build, uh, internal combustion engine vehicles. Those are dead end jobs. If you want a career for the future, you’re young, go to engineering school or go to a trade school and get into, get into renewables or an electric vehicles and do it now because, uh, this is a ground it’s still a ground floor.

Allen Hall: Awesome. Well, Paul, we, uh, we really appreciate your time. It’s been a great conversation. You were very, you’re probably one of our favorite guests. You’re super fun. You’re very direct, you know, lots of anecdotes. Uh, we need to get you off camera so we can hear some of your, your more, um, Well, it’s colorful, colorful, great way of putting it down.

Um, but correct me if I’m wrong here. So why is it eight books in your lineup? I’m looking right through them here, but you’re

Paul Gipe: no, unfortunately I’m losing track now, but it’s a good thing.

Allen Hall: So it looks like eight. So definitely if you’re out there, be sure to pick up some of Paul’s books, if you’re interested in wind energy, whether you’re deep into it or you’re, you’re new to it.

And you want to learn more about other really fascinating machines, just the history of it’s really fascinating and. Paul’s latest book, wind energy for the rest of us is super thorough, super long. I mean, even if you just use it as a, as a reference. So that’s why I think it’s probably fast. Like you want to, you want to learn about how much they cost this part of them.

Why are they made of where they originate? The history, like ducted, why this thing fail? That thing failed. I mean, there’s so many. It’s a great, just like tome to have to just like flip through. So Alan, I each have a car.

Paul Gipe: If you need a door, stay open. They make great doorstops and

Allen Hall: intruder and intruder. The night is beefy enough.

You can knock a line, a lineman down. So. Yeah, but check them out. Also wind-works.org is Paul’s website. And you’re writing mostly about, uh, electric vehicles more so today than you are about wind, right?

Paul Gipe: That’s correct. Yeah. I wrote an article just the other day on this vertical axis, this wind turbine, but mostly about electric vehicles these days, our personal experience with

Allen Hall: yeah, but definitely keep up, keep up with Paul and Paul, is there anywhere else on the web that people can follow up with you is you have a newsletter list.

Like where can people stay in touch with what you’re doing?

Paul Gipe: Well, uh, my email of course, is on the web. I’m easily accessible by email. And, uh, if you want to be added to my little newsletter distribution, uh, there’s a sign up sheet on my website, so you can go there and it’s, it’s got the standard unsubscribed stuff.

So if you don’t like what I say, you can just unsubscribe.

Allen Hall: Gotcha. Well, we’ll put links to everything. Uh, Paul has in the show notes or the description here in YouTube. So if you want to check them out, just a flip up on iTunes or go to the description in YouTube, you’ll find his email lists, his books, all that stuff.

So it’d be easy to access and you can follow up with Paul Paul. Thanks again. We really appreciate it was a great conversation today.

Yeah. Well, thank you. It was great. I love talking to you guys and good luck there. Okay.