The Problem with Wind Energy

[@NMR88]

Wind turbine service technician here, actually modern machines doesnt need to achieve 1500-1800 rpm to produce power, thanks to the converter system its possible to start producing usable power as low as around 900-1000 rpm (about 3.5 / 4 m/s of wind on 150m diameter machines at max blade pitch angle). The way its done is simply to lower the voltage frequency on the generator side of the converters (while keeping 50/60Hz on the grid side). The 1500-1800 range is now more of a "max power" range if the wind speed is high enough (4.2MW for a Vestas V150 MK3E for example, at about 11m/s). About the maintenance on gearboxes in fact there is not really much to do most of the time, as soon as the service is correctly done (filter changes, oil levels) they can last more than the 7 years you are speaking without any issues. Of course gearboxes problems are possible, but they are pretty rare compared to the quantity of machines.

[@xDUnPr3diCtabl3]

Thank you for sharing.

[@randombuilder01]

Do you remember the old farm windmills that were multi-functional, and lasted for decades? The power shaft would go from the blades, through 2 bevel gears, all of the way down to the ground level, THEN, that power was used, or converted, at the ground level. That old method seems like it would be WAY more efficient, and practical. As opposed to having ALL of the equipment on top of a 300 foot pole.

[@NickTaylorRickPowers]

Is the parachute incase of fire thing real ?

[@furripupau]

@@randombuilder01 That would require a lot more weight, a lot more rotating mass, and bevel gears are less efficient than spur gears.

[@Your_Paramour]

@@randombuilder01 You think it's more practical and efficient to have two bevel gears dealing with extremely high torque, connected to a shaft that's potentially 150m long going into a gearbox and generator unit?

[@giovannifontanetto9604]

I procrastinate studying actual engineering by watching real engineer videos.

[@Justin73791]

This is the way.

[@XMarkxyz]

Same brother

[@fnapis]

Have you tried to study real engineering istead of actual engineering?

[@kysco]

@@fnapis That's a dangerous path. You could become another "free energy water powered car modder" in youtube, due to lack of thermodinamics and basic physics knowledge...

[@CAxPH]

This makes you a Real Engineer

[@Yo_67]

The people turning on kettles for tea during ad breaks at 5:45 is probably the most british thing I have ever heard.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Same thing happens in every country, take the superbowl in the US. People open fridges, make coffee, etc. It's just that we're famous for drinking tea. But nobody says this about Japan! Or China? Or India?

[@toggleton6365]

The same statistic is done in Germany right now. You can see it in the Water usage while pause of the UEFA European Championship people use the Toilet.

[@mark_osborne]

LOL !!!

[@captainnutnut6077]

When on a visit to the now closed Hinkley Point B visitor centre, my dad was told by a technician who worked there that one of the most important documents within the control centre of the reactor was, in fact, the Radio Times. For those outside the UK, that is a TV guide magazine. It allowed them to compensate for the spike in energy usage when the soaps finished, for example. 😂 it really is such a British thing, and as a proud English man, it makes me smile, but I digress.

[@surters]

@@MostlyPennyCat Good question, what do they do in the break in China and Japan or even India?

[@andychen8956]

Many people venture into solar, renewable energy and EV charging station investments just to be millionaires, meanwhile I just want to be debt free

[@danielmedina4953]

"Ever since I started following Anne winfield's advice on solar energy investments and EV charging station, my life has completely changed. I was skeptical at first, but the returns have been phenomenal. Now, I don't worry about my financial future; I'm actually planning a retirement abroad!"

[@KaylaAlexis.]

Anne winfield introduced me to the idea of investing directly in solar projects/EV charging station. It's not just about the money; it's the peace of mind knowing I'm part of a sustainable future. But yes, the financial freedom it's given me is indescribable

[@alexanderstonestone4832]

I invested in EV charging station with Anna K winfield and it has been a big win for me

[@KelvinAnthony5]

I was one of those who barely understood solar energy. But Anne made it so clear and accessible. I invested in a community solar project she recommended through RXCEnergy, and the returns have been life-changing. We've moved to a bigger home now!

[@jamessuccess4047]

I invested in some of the solar companies Anne recommended, like RXCEnergy, and the growth has been incredible. It's like watching my money multiply while also doing good for the planet.

[@lilllwizzzle]

Im an offshore wind turbine technician in the US. the platform i work on is a direct drive, no gearbox needed. Those generators are fascinating bits of tech.

[@volvo09]

How long does the oil last in a gearbox driven generator?

[@lilllwizzzle]

​@@volvo09it depends on the platform, but gear oil is usually changed during the yearly maintenance cycles

[@DD2DL]

Battery storage

[@SephShareBear]

Had the opportunity to get on a Siemens D11. Amazing machines, and a stark contrast to a traditional drive train

[@E-JO]

I'm not sure whether the logic why direct drives are used in this video is correct: 'not fully understood bearing and gear failure, causing high repair costs'. I think gear life and failure statistics are very well understood in engineering, and maintenance is not a: oepsy it failed again - thing, its statistical. Its true that direct drive turbines just have less points of wear and therefore potential failure modes.

[@oliviere1215]

Thanks for the video, but it's a bit outdated. Wind turbines nowadays have better power control systems that allow the "inertia" effect and allow 50/60Hz output and variable speed without all of the power going through an inverter. The gearbox has a design life equivalent to the turbine's design life (15 years in France generally). On a turbine from REpower I worked on, the flowing was built -in: - It has a winded rotor. No permanent magnets requiring rare earth. - At partial load (low wind): partial load variable speed wind turbines (VSWT) utilize a method where the rotor operates at variable speeds while maintaining a constant 50Hz output on the stator. This is achieved through the injection of variable frequency current into the rotor, which is controlled to match the desired output frequency on the stator side. - At full load (high wind), the pitch changes depending the wind speed and grid frequency to maintain the 50Hz - VSWT can provide an emulated inertial response by using the kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of the turbine. This is similar to the inertial response provided by traditional synchronous generators. When there is a sudden drop in grid frequency, the turbines can quickly inject additional power to the grid, helping to stabilize the frequency. During frequency drops, the turbine can temporarily operate in overproduction mode, generating more power than its mechanical input by using stored kinetic energy. This rapid power injection helps to counteract the frequency drop. After the frequency stabilizes, the turbine can reduce its output to recover its rotational speed and maintain optimal operating conditions.

[@howardsimpson489]

A better description of the variable frequency alternator. The 3 phase wound rotor is fed with a sine wave at the difference between 50 Hz and what the alternator rpm is trying to produce. This could be faster or slower. The high power output is inverter frequency controlled by a low power excitation input. This effect is called magnetic amplifier and means no niodymium magnets and no huge loads on inverters. I experimented with this as motor speed control 40 y6ears ago even before mosfets.

[@cherriberri8373]

Im really getting tired of this channels repeated mistakes and inaccuracies. They are so often such pivotal points of the videos, too.

[@samr.england613]

Didn't the vid come out 4 days ago?

[@1pcfred]

Down with all bird choppers.

[@lukasoffen2420]

@JOHN-um2 the video. 9:00 he talks about missing inertia of wind turbines. Which is not true neither for modern ones with a full inverter nor for old ones with grid synchronized generators. There also are partially inverters which were popular in the 90s and 00s. These can only use 25-50 % of the inertia for short power peaks. Now there are nearly 50/50 half/full inverters. Missing inertia never will be a problem. The problems are long term storage for a large amount of energy and missing power lines.

[@thesoupin8or673]

Recently started working for a bearing manufacturer. Among the biggest problems with the bearing replacement is the fact that it requires removing the blades, which requires the use of cranes, which are very expensive and have to be scheduled. Apparently some companies are switching to split-ring bearings, which can be replaced without removing the blades. It's my understanding that they wear a little faster, but they reduce the cost of each replacement so much that it's incredibly worth it. Just thought I'd throw in my two cents to show that there are entire industries working to solve this problem and that it's not unworkable.

[@aaadamt964]

How much diesel does it take to transport the crane? How much diesel does the crane use? They're heavy. Tire wear? What about road damage? Maintenance on the crane and equipment that transports it? The turbine spins requiring lubrication... I could go on but yeah.

[@dennisjewitt3809]

Cooper used to make split bearings for the paper industry - wonder if that technology could be used

[@mikes2381]

​@@aaadamt964 Guy is talking about bearings. Not diesel consumption on a single one way trip for a thing that then consumes no fossil fuels for the next several decades of its life once it is erected. But you go off about the dozens of gallons of fuel used to transport and set up a better version of energy production than any carbon powered gas turbine in the world. One that will work for decades with minimal maintenance. Gas turbine facilities have teams of people working around the clock. Wind farms have a small team of people going around and checking and maintaining hundreds or thousands of wind turbines. Much better man-hours/MWh ratio. Also, please check how much tire wear occurs on a single trip of transporting each and every component of a wind turbine. If it was the same truck and trailer doing all of the hauling, I doubt the operator would need to replace any tire by the time the entire wind turbine farm was set up.

[@aaadamt964]

@@mikes2381 what do you think lubricates those bearings? How often do they need maintenance? Nothing with moving parts just lasts several decades. Google claims those things last 20 years. I wouldn't bet money on them lasting half that if they're meticulously maintained. Hint: they're not.

[@Crutonwyt]

It is unworkable. Wind energy is the biggest scam in power and transportation. And I would love to see the math on how replacing the bearings with cheaper alternative that requires more maintenance cuts the cost.

[@Jdinrbfidndifofkdndjoflfndjdk]

Wind energy sounds like a logistics nightmare

[@peatmoss4415]

The woke do not know what "logistics" is....

[@PJke456]

Mechanical design engineer of windturbine gearboxes here. I can say that the section of the gearboxes is not 100% correct. Yes the sensitieve part of the gearbox are the bearings, in particular the high speed shaft. But a lot of development is done in the bearing and bearing arrangement to reduce these failures to max 5-10 in a popultion of 1000. Also current gearboxed exist of 2 or even 3 planetary stages. These are just a few things

[@MichaelKobler-yu6fy]

Did you have any exposure to plain bearings in those gearboxes? Some manufacturers seem to have transitioned.

[@JanHouben]

​@@MichaelKobler-yu6fy Indeed, plain bearings are being used in the planetary stages now as well. But they bring their own issues and challenges. Another innovation is the medium speed drivetrain in which the generators rotate at 400-500 RPM, eliminating the need for a high speed year stage. The gearbox section shown in the video would have been 100% correct, for a typical design of around ca. 2010 😊

[@PJke456]

@@JanHouben that's correct colleague?😉

[@johnathanclayton2887]

​@@PJke456would you see any benefit from ceramic rolling elements? It was hoped that they'd be more durable than metal, but it looks like they might just end up being lighter.

[@guiguiwillly3623]

Couldn't something like a CVT be used to smooth out the frequency variation? I mean there has yo be a massive downside or it would be used. I just don't know what the most relevant downside is here 😅

[@simontemplar404]

The comments are as educational as the video. This is not a criticisism. It is encouragement to read the comments. This is the first really interesting video I have seen on wind power, good job.

[@Validole]

Honestly, the video is somewhat outdated regarding the problems we're currently facing. It's repeating the already solved talking points of fossil executives, not the state of the art solutions to those problems.

[@noneofyourbusiness4133]

@@Validolemmmmm… I wonder why………

[@cherriberri8373]

I think it absolutely DOES reflect on the creator for having many misleading inaccuracies, what drugs are you smoking that made you think they aren't responsible for giving false- albeit only outdated technically- information? Especially as a channel that is seen as informational/educational the creators only have more responsibility to actually get it right, not to mention it's not like this guy isn't getting paid, and what they're paid for isn't to spread false info.

[@cherriberri8373]

@@Validole I feel like their research either has to be incredibly surface level, or they're actively trying, honestly.

[@mittelwelle_531_khz]

Not the first I've seen but aside from that I agree.

[@dsmith5940]

lol you know you’ve got quite the audience, when you’re first ten comments are ‘I work in this’, ‘I invented that’… 👍🏻

[@Gogeata4]

Everyone wants to be important, let em

[@jerryw6699]

wind energy has created a whole bunch of new millionaries, the new Rockefellers. and wind generated electricity is, by far, the most expensive way to produce the juice. Argue away, but why do you think Electricity rates have skyrocketed while all of this new technology has been developed. I truly wonder if the carbon footprint of one of these goliaths is much larger than just burning the old fossil fuels?

[@taynecooper7747]

I think you are a glass half empty sort of bloke, renewables are the best hope we have

[@taynecooper7747]

​@@jerryw6699renewables are the cheapest means of producing electrical energy, have a look at the cost blowouts on nuclear power station being constructed

[@DerekDavis213]

OR, it could be people defending the wind turbine industry. They don't want any negative (but true) videos on KZbin.

[@parkol88]

Thanks! Great work Brian and the team. This is a fish time I've ever donated on YT. It's high quality content with very interesting infirmation! Keep it up guys. Maybe I'm biased because I live in Galway and just rooting for Ireland :)

[@zebgraves4562]

Currently working on turbines that are 20+ years old. Sure bearings and gearboxes go bad but these things crank out energy like it’s going out of style. And modern turbines are making power from 750rpm all the way up to 1500+ so the wind window is much wider than they used to be. Even the old ones I work on make power at 820rpm. In fact we normally are flagged for making too much and have to shut some towers off on high wind days.

[@triage2962]

Yes it can put out energy at 750 rpm but if it runs 80% at 750 rpm it is not efficient. You have to shut down the towers because the grid cant store energy. Wind and solar are not a energy source for a stable grid.

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

Yes but take one look at the UK power generation, Wind fluctuates between 70% of power and none. Power is only worth something if you can use it and often wind power actually makes every other power generation type more expensive (less uptime and more stop and starts for gap filling). This creates a distorted perspective of the cost of wind energy. Most countries are subsiding wind power often in ways most don't recognize as subsides (ie fixed price for power) again producing distorted cost analysis.

[@billyredtail]

@@mitchellcouchman1444 The more wind turbines you have up and down the UK, the less of an effect that problem is going to have. Just having floating offshore wind turbines alone reduces issues with storage by strategic placement.

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

@@billyredtail no it doesn't, not really, because wind in different places isn't independent. While at the same time replacing other more reliable and actually independent sources like gas, coal and nuclear you do put yourself massively at risk of the energy shortage of winter 2022 when there was minimal wind across all of the UK leading to energy shortages

[@zebgraves4562]

@@mitchellcouchman1444 absolutely right. It’s not the end all-be all for stability. Just the technology has come a long way. We’re starting to add battery storage in parallel with the wind turbines here in the U.S. and that helps with jumps and dips in energy demand but it also isn’t the final answer. Honestly I’d think closest to perfect solution would be nuclear that is also used to create Hydrogen and that hydrogen powering a gas plant for the fluctuations. But for now the wind business is putting food on my table and my family happy.

[@alexlovett1991]

I completed my masters degree on direct drive power converters a decade ago. The inertia of the turbine is absolutely still present even if not directly synchronised to the grid. Under a surge the controller can have the inverter match the grid demand and slow the turbine down by drawing more power from it than it is currently producing. In fact at the time I was studying it I was informed of techniques to allow the turbines to spin faster storing more energy in inertia if a surge is predicted overriding the MPPT algorithm. It’s not too dissimilar to how battery storage is being used to stabilise the grid

[@96oscarC]

That's interesting thanks for sharing. This is similar to battery emulated inertia or how is it different?

[@alexlovett1991]

@@96oscarC I’ve not worked on battery inverters but I imagine it’s very similar techniques used when it comes to frequency stabilisation (DC decoupled turbines are just a rectifier and an inverter after all)

[@DooMMasteR]

Yeah, I would say that there are not even that many synchronous wind turbines anymore. With enercons EP3 4 and 5 series that evolution is also visible, now integrating the inverters right into a "container" behind the direct driven generator. And it's only logical to allow the turbine to spin up slightly above it's maximum power point (in low power usage situations) to have it's inertia as additional regulation headroom for the converter/inverter. Here in Germany, the by far biggest problem is the weak grid not being able to just simply transfer the huge amounts of energy from the north to the south of the country.

[@MrRedwires]

I was about to say - that inverter should be programmable, and you should be able to set it to just emulate a large inertial mass, right? Like a motor controller where you can set the output frequency. I never quite got why we have seemed to all collectively program these inverters to be pure frequency followers, when a few control loop settings should let them help, too...

[@mikejones-vd3fg]

have you heard of the breakthrough in freewheel vs direct drive (regen)motors? its called free gen, grin technologies channel can tell you more about it. Some guy just sat down and thought about the problem and solved it.

[@Space_Reptile]

little fun fact: enercon brand wind turbines (the ones wich have a egg shaped top housing and are very recognizable at 0:24) are the only widely used turbines w/o a gearbox, they instead have a large "pancake" style generator wich does not need any gears and is made specifically to generate peak power at the lower RPM the blades spin at its also why the housing is egg shaped edit: enercon recently celebrated 40 years and their first direct drive turbine, the E-40 was developed in the early 90s direct drive is nothing new, nothing that needs to "prove itself", its been proven and reliable for over 30 years now

[@evdl3101]

The past few years both Siemens and GE have also devellopped a gearless turbine. The trick is to have more energy gain by having a selective variable rotor speed than the energy loss through the AC-DC-AC conversion.

[@Monkey80llx]

Still waiting for the ‘fun’

[@shlak]

​@@Monkey80llx then dont watch an engineering video you pillock

[@gehtdichnixan2801]

Definitely not true, that they are the only widely used turbines without gearboxes. As someone else already posted, Siemens Gamesa, General Electric but also Vestas turbines used offshore are exclusively without gearboxes.

[@bollejantje]

@@gehtdichnixan2801you are correct, people think Enercon are the only one because they had the patent, but it expired some time ago so other manufacturers are now using the same technology

[@carterthiessen3144]

Your videos are really cool and they make me enjoy learning, I have a video idea for you, the city of Venice, you can talk about it’s construction on millions of wooden stakes, the innovative fresh water collection wells, their waste management system, any other innovative technologies they had, how it is sinking, and the ideas and projects to prevent/reverse this!

[@huwday1131]

Northern Ireland resident here, currently sitting maybe a few hundred metres away from a wind turbine. Great to hear about a topic like this that's right in my back yard (well, in the farmer's field next door). I had noticed a lot more wind turbines appearing across the countryside in recent years - didn't know that the island of Ireland had so much more wind than the average.

[@EdoTyran]

Can you hear the wind turbine from your home? Wondering if these turbines have noticeable noise when spinning.

[@huwday1131]

@@EdoTyran I can hear a faint, soft noise from it when out in the field a bit closer to it, but nothing from my house. TBH, even rain, road noise or a gust of wind would drown out the sound.

[@juanjocantandorgarcia613]

I was working as a technician also in north Ireland. Nice to meet people like you.

[@somealias-zs1bw]

Would drive me absolutely insane if I were stuck living next to these things. Renewables have disgustingly massive form factors. I pray they don't start erecting these abominations in the unspoiled wilderness areas here in NA. They're already beginning to ruin the coastal areas on the east coast, I hope they keep them away from the PNW and Alaska.

[@garyharrington3240]

​@@somealias-zs1bw😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢

[@dougtaylor8735]

The flywheel you refer to is called a Synchronous Condenser. We have a lot of them in the U.S. You disconnect the old steam turbine from the generator and attach a starting motor. You spin the generator up to synchronous speed and synch it to the grid, and then disconnect it from the starting motor. It uses power from the grid to continue running. You then have the spinning mass required to help stabilize the grid. This is currently the best means of voltage and frequency stabilization for all the renewable energy coming on line.

[@juliane__]

And wind turbines in Germny are coupled to the grid. It is a requirement to build them. Quite a narrow POV in the video again.

[@dorincostan9884]

that is not correct. The synchronous condensers do perform the function that you described - but if the inertia required is greater than what their rotor can produce (limited by its mass and diameter), then a flywheel is inserted between the synchronous condenser and the pony motor, with the flywheel being a large cylinder of forged steel rotating inside a casing and supported on bearings. Vacuum is created between the flywheel and its casing to reduce friction and friction losses, including heat. So the guy was right about vacuum but he did not mention or does not know about the electrical part (which is the synchronous condenser) which is meant to convert the mechanical inertia into electrical inertia which can be injected into the grid in case of disturbances

[@peterwundersitz3715]

I worked at two sites that had synchronous condensers at the end of long HV transmission lines when I was a teenager. In winter they were warm and the 50 cycle hum was nice to sleep near if you had been partying all night.

[@LindsayBarker-vx8hw]

⁠​⁠@@peterwundersitz3715hi from a fellow Aussie that also worked on synchronous condensers in the early seventies. In fact, I believe they were the same ones, Magill and Northfield? 🇦🇺😎

[@peterwundersitz3715]

@@LindsayBarker-vx8hw I was there in the 60's, left in 69 and went to Darwin. Regards. Peter.

[@canadakonfuzion]

I know someone who works for a company developing HVDC links to connect country grids together, really cool tech. Maybe a video about HVDC can be a good complimentary video to this one.

[@bimblinghill]

HVDC really is the under-discussed key to a renewable energy future

[@Krasbin]

Looking at the ac to dc converter used for the windturbine, wouldn't it be more efficient if these were connected to HVDC connections? Now that I have thought about it for more than 5 seconds, I spot a potential problem. The frequency isn't the problem, due to the ac to dc converter. But I would expect the voltage coming from a windturbine to be much lower than the HVDC voltage. If this expectation is correct, you can't connect windturbines to the HVDC line.

[@vritra3684]

@@Krasbin On Vestas machines the voltage output of the generator is around 600-800 volts, way less than what is needed for HVDC

[@TheElectricBrit]

@@Krasbinit’s planned, it’s called hybrid HVDC interconnectors and connects two countries to the same offshore wind resource. So they can both use the wind as well as use it as a hub for connecting more wind directly to existing networks. I’m going to produce a video on it in future (I work for such a company).

[@TheElectricBrit]

I’ve got 220 videos planned so far on the UK grid and grid technology including HVDC. Subscribe and it’ll come eventually :) worked in HVDC for many years.

[@1968konrad]

Very few people are aware of the nature of the alternating current mains frequency. A very handy and fundamentally correct analogy would be the comparison with a large timing belt in which all the feeders and consumers are hooked with gears. They have to be hooked in and decoupled without damaging the drive wheels or chain links.

[@butwhytharum]

That's hilarious to know an entire county's electrical grid can be tripped by people watching TV and all getting up to make tea at the same time.

[@akyhne]

Well, the situation is present, no matter how you generate the electricity.

[@aone9050]

​@@akyhnesure theoretically, but its primarily an issue of increased cost of reliable power when utilizing renewables

[@jimlthor]

Yep. That's why during major events, such as the superbowl, those transmissions people are busy as hell. It's also rough when there's been a blackout and when they first turn everyone's power back on. The first second is rough because everyone's ACs, dryers, heaters, etc need more power when they first start

[@jamesturner2126]

That was disturbing.

[@JarheadCrayonEater]

The same thing happens at water and wastewater treatment plants when people get up to go to school/work, they may shower, flush the toilets, and use the sinks around the same time for a few hours. Then there's a few hours before lunch, then dinner, and finally before going to bed. Some plants have FEB's (Flow Equalization Basin) that temporarily hold the waste water until it can be processed during the low usage periods. I'm a former controls engineer and have designed, built, and maintained dozens of those plants around the country. It's amazing to see the infrastructure required to handle all of that. The same with the grid.

[@ramonmosetti1113]

as someone who works with frequency converters and know the actual people developing the Haliade X drive, i highly recommend making a video on frequency converters, they are used basically everywhere and always get overlooked. also the DC storage within a converter can be used als 'artificial' inertia, but obviously has nowhere near the capacity of an actual flywheel.

[@Pfooh]

Do you know why you can't build a DC->AC converter that would just work like an inertial system? Switch a tiny bit slower if f

[@Henrik0x7F]

@@PfoohInverters do that but just a little bit because they are delicate electronic devices. Rotating generators can supply a multitude of their rated current for a short while. Inverters can’t do that

[@randomvideosn0where]

@@Pfooh For one thing, you are generally drawing the max power from the wind turbine. You could delay it but there is no option to ramp up power output to meet higher needs.

[@m00str]

@@randomvideosn0wherewell, that’s just if you operate wind and solar at 100%. Some large solar farms operate at 70-80% to be able to provide „digital inertia“ in case the grid needs it. That’s why we need massive overproduction by wind and by solar all around the world: to have the luxury of throttling them down

[@Former_Texan]

@@Pfooh It's not going to be that difficult. It just needs more research to make sure we don't get it wrong. Until recently there was enough inertia that it wasn't needed, so the engineering wasn't focused on creating artificial inertia.

[@jacklav1]

In 2015 I worked at a R&D company Artemis that was bought by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to make a variable ratio fluid power takeoff for the (then) largest turbine in the world at 7MW. I was the senior engineer leading the development of the high speed motors that turned the generator shafts that span at 1000rpm supplying synchronous power to the grid and helping with grid stabilisation. That speed was sufficient because of the number of pole-pairs on the generator. There were two prototypes installed: one in Hunterston, Glasgow and the other a floating wind turbine off Fukusfhima, Japan and they were both successful. We won the MacRobert award- the Nobel prize for engineering in the UK. The project was canned after the prototypes- don’t know why. Aside from our solution there are ‘medium’ speed gearboxes that obviously power slower generators. There’s not much on the web about it.

[@jayryan1956]

Like you guys designed a torque converter that didn’t have direct drive? To the generator?

[@Marc83Aus]

Theres a proposal from last year to install a flywheel for grid stabilization at hunterstone, seems like most things involving politics things happen very slowly.

[@alanmarr3323]

There seems a lobby attacking all renewables . Your statement was very interesting and the technology using fluid drive seems the solution!

[@fultonius]

I always viewed that one from afar - I worked on the Doosan 7-8MW "prototype" that never made it out the design room before also being canned, then later was the site engineer for the Samsung 7MW prototype over in Fife. Funny how the Koreans and Japanese all jumped in at a similar time, trying various novel concepts and then they all decided it wasn't the path they wanted to follow. I wonder if they're kicking themselves now? The Samsung had some interesting tech in it - individual pitch control with dual electric motors per axis, integrated oil-fed main bearing inside a very compact (short) gearbox for the rating plus a full power converter. Odd combination having both a gearbox AND converter but it did meant it could, in theory, provide frequency support and even black start support for the grid.

[@jacklav1]

@@jayryan1956 It was a big fluid drive: a very large pump on the rotor shaft and then smaller hydraulic motors turning the generators. A torque converter is a hydrodynamic device- it uses the momentum of fluid to pass torque from one side to another. I don’t think it can be variable displacement. Our system was hydrostatic- very high pressure (340 bar) piston on the pumps and motors. Because we could change the displacement of the pumps and motors we could adjust the gearing ratio continuously so that the generator span at the desired speed. Our machines were very efficient (96.5% for the pump) and their displacement could be computer controlled with very fast response times- i.e. we could determine how much oil the pump would make for one rotation of the blades and then how many revs the generator for that volume of oil. MHI sold the technology to Danfoss and you can read about it here: www.danfoss.com/en/products/dps/hydraulic-pumps/digital-displacement-pumps/digital-displacement-single-and-multiple-outlet-pumps/

[@desdoan8509]

Your engineering prowess on aviation, civil engineering, and others is amazing..!!.really appreciate the knowledge !!

[@HL65536]

Inertia can be added artificially. This artificial inertia could even be better than the real inertia. While a real spinning rotor can only slow down from 1800 rpm to 1797 rpm to go from 60Hz to 59.9Hz, with a rectifier and inverter, the physical rpm be changed 20% or more, making far more of that rotational energy available. That energy doesn't even have to be rotational. Battery storage systems could react instantly with their stored power, providing short bursts above their continuous rating. Even solar inverters could be programmed to have artificial inertia. The inverter (and sometimes DC booster) has internal capacitors that can be tapped (though their stored energy is a lot less).

[@oznerol256]

Thank you! I was also missing an explanation of doubly fed induction generators, which allow direct connection to the grid while having a fairly decoupled speed. Those have inertia too.

[@polterp]

In many grids the majority of grid inertia is already provided by batteries, as they are extremely well suited for that task. Would have been a good topic to bring up

[@edwinhuang9244]

The problem with chemical batteries is that: 1. They're expensive, especially at the scales needed to deal with the power grids 2. They can only unload so much power within a certain timespan before they start getting damaged

[@polterp]

@@edwinhuang9244 “they’re expensive” Private investors pay for them, and then get paid for the frequency response services they provide. Previously that money would go to natural gas plants or other dispatchable sources, but BESS saw a niche where they were competitive and said “hey, we can provide the same service for cheaper”. The grid operators save money, ratepayers save money, and the BESS owners make money. Legacy dispatchable sources get the short end of the stick, but I’m not really a protectionism kinda guy. Also you only need a relatively small battery to do frequency response

[@fablearchitect7645]

yeah and if you want to add more synthetic inertia capacity you just add more capacitors or batteries to the DC bus of the inverter. People really need to get this idea that we need mechanical inertia out of there heads. The grid runs on electricity so electrical only solutions would work fine.

[@rossk4864]

In Alaska where I live, the villages of Wrangell and Kodiak produce virtually 100% of their energy with a combination of wind and hydro. Kodiak installed its first power grid tied wind turbine in 2009. The village of Kotzebue installed its first utility grade wind turbine in 1997 and currently produces about 20% of its energy with wind, saving close to 280,000 gallons of fuel oil or a little over one million dollars annually. Given the high cost of fuel oil, wind and hydro has played a major, cost-effective role in producing Alaska's energy for quite a number of years. Wind energy in much of the U.S. was first installed experimentally, and especially some early efforts were ill-advised not cost effective. To create practical, cost-effective systems, it is essential to conduct a minimum of a two-year wind study, in a specific location, to assure that a sufficient wind resource exists. It makes no sense to install utility grade wind turbines in a location lacking an excellent wind resource.

[@TantorNa]

Not quite correct - Wrangell and Kodiak produce 100% of ELECTRICAL energy with wind and hydro. And most of it is hydro, which has absolutely nothing to do with wind/solar. Don't count on your hydro being safe from the progressives. Here in WA State, the Biden administration has been trying to take down the Snake River hydro plants, to coddle the Salmon.. Clearly they do not regard hydro as a clean form of energy.

[@C_R_O_M________]

Oil prices are artificially kept high otherwise w/s wouldn't make any sense for their intrinsic EROEI is horrendous (8 to 40 times lower than fossil fuels).

[@PeterBaumgart1a]

​@@C_R_O_M________ That's only true if producing CO2 is considered to be free and benign.

[@C_R_O_M________]

@@PeterBaumgart1a I don't know, do you think that the documented and factual greening of the planet due to higher atmospheric CO2 is beneficial or not? Propaganda works wonders. P.S. Not to mention that we don't even know that most of the CO2 increase is anthropogenic and not the natural consequence of natural warming.

[@PeterBaumgart1a]

@@C_R_O_M________ Seems like you need to broaden your information sources. (I agree on propaganda.)

[@dacharyzoo]

You left out something rather important. Software defined inverters (basically all modern industrial ones) like those used in Battery Electricity Storage Systems (BESS) and Variable Frequency Drives (like those used in wind turbines for frequency conversion) are very good at maintaining inertia on a power grid. In other words, spinning a large mass (flywheels, steam turbines) is not the only way to provide inertia for a grid. Utilities call these frequency response services. Huge flywheels like the one you mentioned in Ireland are made redundant when you're installing large battery storage anyways. It's even entirely possible, though not currently implemented, for EVs doing V2G (vehicle to grid) to provide frequency response services. In the case of the English flipping on their tea kettles during commercial breaks, your EV would charge from the grid during programming, but flip to powering your tea kettle during the commercial break all automatically.

[@EP-bb1rm]

Flywheels aren't made redundant by BESS. Synthetic inertia would require all BESS to maintain sufficient capacity at all times to provide that service. Which defeats the point entirely...

[@Your_Paramour]

Good post. I would think the advantage the flywheel has vs a battery system is probably a much higher power density. The press release for the flywheel plant states it can store 4000 MWs and they give they give an example of a 500MW load for 8 seconds (so I assume the flywheel's maximum power is 500MW). It's not clear to me reading the press release, but to me it sounds like they describe the frequency stablisation it provides is a passive system that does not require active management (but I could be off on this point).

[@zacksstuff]

Inverters are still not great at providing fault current, which is absolutely essential to protecting transmission and distribution circuits. Fuses and relays don't do their job without large amounts of available fault current, and that leads to damaged equipment and worse.

[@dacharyzoo]

@@EP-bb1rm This flywheel only stores 1.1MWh of energy. A 500MW BESS will have a capacity of 1000MWh to 2000MWh. The BESS are going to be installed anyways, you get the inertia for free. Perhaps there is something specific to Ireland's grid topology that warrants this flywheel, but I'll bet good money flywheels will remain niche.

[@dacharyzoo]

@@zacksstuff I don't think this is right. Actually this sounds backwards. Fuses and relays don't work better by dumping larger fault currents into them. They have a trip current and a maximum current they can break. The reason the grid needs inertia is so that different parts of the grid don't get out of sync, if they get out of sync a dangerously large fault current will flow between. This is why safety equipment is designed to trip if the frequency gets out of the small defined range, to prevent fault currents the over current devices can't handle before they happen.

[@uweklages2500]

In 2023, there were 28,677 wind turbines on land in Germany. In December 2023, 1,566 offshore wind turbines (OWEA) with a total output of 8.5 GW were in operation in Germany.

[@juliane__]

Haliade isn't the biggest nor most powerful wind turbine built - Siemens SG-14-236 is larger and has more output. And i am sure the recent MingJang is even larger. How could he missed that? By tailoring the channel for he US audience. Wind turbines are non synchronous is also not 100% accurate. At least in Germany they are required to balance the grid too.

[@kenneth9874]

Oh my!😂

[@paulsoffgridhomestead3819]

All this cheap POWER, Germany must have very very cheap clean power, NOT :/

[@ms-jl6dl]

And how much do they produce when there's no wind? In GW please.

[@MrBashem]

Wow that is a lot of wasted money. Could have just built 5-8 reactors and not ruin the landscape.

[@rayknn]

I actually worked with the Delft Offshore Turbine team to work on a new system which has self-aligning piston rolling which don't have the Brinelling effect. These are actually turbines which pump water to a central generator. The weight of the turbine head is thereby reduced and the turbine can therefore be made higher (more wind power).

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

Curious, what sort of losses are associated with that and can you then adjust the generator side geometry to maintain 60hz/ 50hz?

[@MarkJacksonGaming]

-- That's smart. So you lose some power production, but through H2O valve/turbine control you can steady your output? What does maintenance look like in salt water? Would Zinc be worthwhile for the fluid systems, or would that be too expensive? A high tech windmill driven water well. I like it.

[@MartinParsons-tr6wi]

​@@MarkJacksonGaming Oil is the normal choice for hydraulic fluid

[@laurynaszubrickas1061]

It's great to see you do a video about our lovely island, I'm lucky to have the Raheenleagh wind farm on my doorstep. As an engineer I always appreciate the science behind these machines.

[@kikooo3o]

8:15 is that a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER?!?!!!11!!1

[@Grantly]

Calm down BigClive

[@stereoroid]

It's a 2-phase rectifier, I would have thought these generators would be 3-phase.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Yes, that is indeed a *_Fffffuuuuull Bridge Rectifier_*

[@I_SuperHiro_I]

It’s a Wheatstone bridge

[@shiftyhexahedron7891]

FOOL BRIDGE RECTIFIERRR

[@peterheynmoller2581]

Hi, I want to add a few points to the video: - modern wind turbines that use gearboxes are commonly using a doubly fed induction generator, which is able to "unsynchronize" the grid frequency (and most importantly the phase!) from the blade rotation speed. This way you can easily use the inertia. Also power electronics in direct drive turbines (with a bit of controlling magic) can easily provide the needed inertia. - The planned grid interconnect from Ireland to France is a HVDC line (as cables over such lengths don't make any sense for AC). This means, that the power is actually transferred via DC which by default contributes no inertia. Again this can be changed with control magic ;)

[@asinglemaleinuk]

The wind flows off the Scottish coast are the greatest, most consistent in Europe. We also have pumped storage in Scotland where water is pumped up during low energy usage times , then released down when energy is required. Wind turbines do not need replacement every 7 years. It’s just a big generator and there are thousands of industrial models used far more heavily without issue in powers stations worldwide.

[@johnmchardy4502]

Yes there just cheaply built reduction gear and the public get charged a massive amount for them when you could buy a quality reduction gear system for a fraction of the green energy sector prices but everything in the green industry is charged at astronomical prices compared to normal machinery

[@NiklasLarssonSeglarfan]

True, the entire turbine need replacing (scrapping) every 14 years. But the gear box needs to be replaced before that.

[@TOleablemonk]

@@NiklasLarssonSeglarfan Incorrect.

[@kenbellchambers4577]

Using excess power for hydrolysis seems like another excellent way to prevent waste of energy.

[@stuartrobertson4714]

Should be same as Norway people in Scotland should be getting free electric god made things wind should be free

[@arthurcosta482]

Here in Brazil we have a national electric grid based on hydro power. The large reservoirs provide inertia for the wind energy. The problem for Wind Energy here is that our Hydroelectric power is so cheap that the system’s controller does not let wind energy into the grid (constrained off). Our capacity factor for wind power here is very competitive tough , >45%

[@johnbearjunkyard]

I'm an environmental engineer from Texas and I was working at a natural gas plant when the grid went down. Texas doesn't have an requirement for winterization because they don't want to connect to the national grid. It's kind of a 1-2 punch that led to the blackouts. It's kind of a joke with people in my industry that cold weather means we'll be on the phone with the government reporting pollution releases because the plants keep going down when equipment breaks - always on the weekend. I don't think we get enough electricity from wind for the turbines going down to make a difference, even out here in west Texas where it's very flat and windy and there are turbines all over.

[@dknowles60]

the TVA has Winterization and still Had a 66% nat gas failure Rate dec 23 dec 24,

[@xfreeman86]

During the Texas freeze, wind resources fell to single digit capacity factor, meaning they were no help. A bunch of nat gas failed, but a bunch of other nat gas was scrambling to come online to cover the difference. There just wasn't enough of it. But wind can't scramble to come online at all. If we keep shutting down dispatchable generators in Texas, adding only wind and solar, then the reliability problem will only grow bigger.

[@dknowles60]

and on Dec 23 dec 24 2022 Texas did a lot better then the FED GOV TVA

[@dknowles60]

the TVA is on the eastern gird did purchase 10k megawatts from other power companys and still lost dec 23 dec 24 2022

[@avrracer4175]

Lol 😂😂😂😂 in Germany they hate renewable Energy but have a stable Net with 99,986% Availability!!! And a Lot of they think they German Net is worse...😂😂😂 This German people should BE live in Texas....😅😅😅

[@rainerzufall9881]

4:45 I walked under this bridge in July when I visited Galway. Nice to see it again in this video! :)

[@squidcaps4308]

For a bigger portion of the video than i want to admit i thought we were talking about a small island called Arlan. And now i can't stop hearing it. I live on the west coast of Finland. Wind power + hydrogen plants are a nice combo. Specially when there is a lithium mine less than 100km away and it needs to be processed to lithium hydroxide. Estimated 5% of global production should be coming from here in few years and it is easy to sell when there is renewable energy involved: you can avoid carbon taxes etc. and whoever makes the battery can boast about it in their marketing.

[@amanasd26]

I thought the exact same thing. "Where is Arlan?"

[@gameBB6]

Was working on the thrird interconnecting for ireland to wales last few months. Burying the subsea cable amazing project. Now i know a lot more of why that cable is so important

[@Suzuki_Hiakura]

Long ago I planned to make a few small scale wind turbines for a turbine wall or putting one on each roof, which I planned to connect to a CVT to stabilize power output... calculated for RPM, but never even considered frequency. Goes to show how there is always more to research... makes me want to go to trade school just to learn about it lol.

[@arpeggioblues5924]

My partner was trained to work maintenance with these and many kinds of wind turbines.. The management was ineffective, there were always some injuries, technicians slipping on ice surrounding these towers in the northern states. They have to carry 80+ pounds of gear with them to the top of the tower to the nacelles, to repair them; They have NO cranes, the management companies say it's too expensive. Using a crane to bring the nacelle to the ground for serious maintenance, and parts wear out in a few years; They pay far poorer than they advertise. Most of the managers are not from the states, from Denmark, Netherlands etc. Sometimes there's a language barrier. The workers spend a lot of time, just sleeping up in the nacelles, because they are only allowed to maintain towers on their list which is about 2 per day, at most, so if they are done, they have to just stay there, and wait, sleep in the nacelle. They are extremely HOT in the summer time, extremely cold in the Winter, It's a thankless underpaid job, with lousy management. They offer hourly for workers, so they are not allowed over-time, except in emergencies, and they are constantly looking for mainenance techs, and trying to convert an hourly to salaried, where salaried means you get paid for 40 hours, but expected to work more for the same amount.. This industry is built upon Making Money, not an effective or organized management. Workers work for a couple years, then leave and find a completely different line of work, and swear never to go back, even if they get constant offers from WindFarms.. It's a sad thing; people being treated without regard, and not being current with a sensible and effective maintenance strategy.. I was floored when I heard these stories, daily..

[@johncaldwell-wq1hp]

HI-australia is going down this path,now,---pulling down Power Stations that did the job !!--with a gov. that has absolutely no Clue what they doing !!--for the first time in our history,we having "black-outs"-welcome to the third world !!--thanks for posting ,

[@gyrogearloose1345]

Thanks for your report. Sorry to hear the bad news, unfortunately quite typical for our world. It's not the technology at fault here, it's the people and corporations behind the projects. Very disappointing that so few people here seem at all concerned about it!

[@francesco5254]

Very interesting to hear your perspective. I'm studying to become a wind farm project manager, and I want to be of help for the people I will manage. I obviously will need to care about economics, but it's not like I chose this career because I'm interested in being rich, I just love wind energy and organising work. I would really love to hear some suggestions on how I could make the work environment better for every kind of colleague. Reading your comment gave me already a rough idea of the main issues, but if you can reply with any sort of practical suggestion, this would be a great learning opportunity for me and could benefit indirectly other people in the future as well. Thank you!!

[@rogerk6180]

So like every other job out there lol.

[@adan507]

10 years wind worker, have to say you are well informed. My only complain is about the video itself, looks like you didnt have any script. Came to find what is wind energy problem (yes, its true frecuency control is challenging more than a "problem" IMO) but 90% of the video is about Ireland and how you want to be producing hydrogen for the world to consume. Apart that I think hydrogen will definately never be a energy vector no matter what a politician pushes for it (physics) i think is very far from the topic. Seeing you speak about a topic i fully control, reasures me that when i watch other videos where i am less knowledgable i am being feed good info, keep it up!

[@MusikCassette]

I agree that hydrogen is inferior to other options for Energy storage. But we do need a lot of it for the chemical industry. So I don't see why it would not be a good outlet for the energy sector. could you elaborate?

[@adan507]

@@MusikCassette electrolisis needs pure water and expensive materials, is not like you put any water in some cheap gadged = H2 + O2. thats why any colour of hydrogen is cheaper than green hydrogen ATM. Can any major disruption occur in any of both problems? yes. Can we have fusion in 10 years as well? same logic says we can

[@saiforos7928]

The Haliade-X is not the largest turbine, that's either the Siemens Gamesa 14 (14MW) the Dongfang Electric DEW-18 (18MW)

[@5Cats]

They cannot even get simple facts straight. Why would anyone believe their prognostications?

[@Paul-yh8km]

I Think you are giving the impression that the problem of inertia has only appeared since renewables grew in importance, but various issues including inertia have required synchronous compensators in the past. Synchronous compensators, being dumb rotating machines with a flywheel. They are coming back into fashion because of renewables.

[@solace6633]

That is why most relatively new build renewable farm, both wind and solar, will first send their power to a battery storage, that then deploys to the grid. You lose a little bit of output total but gain massively in term stability. Very few plants I worked on, as a control systems engineer, here in Australia, didn't have these small 30MW batteries solutions to the inertia issue

[@michawisniewski4654]

totally wrong opinion. Steam turbines have all the inertia that system would ever need for primary frequency control. Synchronous condensers were introduced for a different purpose - to continously adjust reactive power in 'problematic' substations. This solution was virtually not present in countries with CHP plants - densely distributed generation can rely mostly on the turbine voltage regulators, solution older than the three-phase grid itself. Rise of SCR-controlled capacitor (and sometimes inductor) banks removed needs for synchronous condensers, although they are still operational and may provide minuscule amount of inertia.

[@billynomates920]

so we are reintroducing a problem we'd already solved thanks to dumb rotating machines with fan blades?

[@SillySandgroper7076]

Not to say I disagree with you - but I'd suggest that power electronics didn't make the problem go away - they just made it easier to manage in millisecond timeframes. Spinning reserve (which was needed anyway), non-synchronous compensators and electronic micro-adjustments to generators were then able to manage grid instability much more quickly without the need for rotating compensators - you'll note that these were traditionally put nearby to loads, when the generation might be hundreds of kilometres away. There seems to be a school of thought that all of this will eventually be able to be managed electronically with batteries and capacitors that switch over in hundredths of milliseconds and keep everything online without hitting protection or cascade failures, however with an inertia-less generation side - which is a feature of a renewable grid, if you have any level of inductance/pf, load/supply, phase misalignment etcetc fluctuation... you're instantly relying on your electronics, which isn't necessarily a great place to be. However, it doesn't need to be a hyper-efficient compensator, you can turn a defunct coal or gas power plant in to one.

[@Paul-yh8km]

​​@@michawisniewski4654 I stand corrected! My point being is that solutions aren't being newly invented for renewables, they have existed for a long time.

[@Lythrox]

This is also why having a mega watt battery station that can supply accumulated power to the grid from an array of win turbines means that power can be delivered, by DC transmission to a constant while the turbines together keep the deliver at peak as a team and I personally think this level of power grid integration is more superior than direct to grid from each turbine because it follows the model of all other power generation grids.

[@wicketprofessor375]

please do the insane engineering of the SUPERCARRIERS

[@marshalllapenta7656]

3 GORGES DAM

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Extreme UV Lithography.

[@sirensynapse5603]

Warmongering creepoid.

[@MihkelKukk]

The Insane Engineering of YOUR MOTHER!

[@xstream2952]

​@@MihkelKukkbe respectful idiot Doesn't matter even if it's a joke

[@jonaslipskas]

I really like your videos, but this time you missed... All those issues you are talking about in this video was solved 10y ago. Synthetic Inertia is mandatory in order to pass Grid Compliance Test, Gearbox issues are real strugle, but nobody is replacing them every 7y and cost is about 500k for full replacement including work and spare parts. Also, in the video, you are showing Enercon turbines, and those do not have any of those issues: No Gearbox, no permanent magnets, Synthetic Inertia is included 20y ago in every turbine...

[@copium7845]

what about the extreme amount of noise they causes?. There are people who cant live at their houses anymore because companies decide to put up wind turbines nearby

[@williamcampbell9859]

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Move.

[@estebanamador7601]

How does synthetic inertia works? Thanks

[@devrim-oguz]

@@estebanamador7601 inertia is simulated with the help of electronics, since it is just a 60Hz wave.

[@firnen_]

@@francisR46 While this is true, the noise of wind turbines is highly overstated and very, very few people would realistically see any need to move because of the noise they cause. Road traffic causes significantly more noise than wind turbines, and we have not stopped building roads because of it either. The few people who are actually affected seriously by wind turbines, beyond aesthetic complaints, should be financially supported in either sound proofing their homes, or moving. It should not be their financial burden, but it can't stop progress of renewables either.

[@harmenkoster7451]

Correction regarding your point about inertia at the 8:30 mark. Yes, inverter based power sources like Wind and Solar do not have physical inertia. But they do have an inverter that can spit out whatever waveform it wants. Which from the perspective of the grid is the same thing as inertia. It is very easy to program an inverter to slightly increase its frequency relative to the grid frequency when it detects a drop, which effectively achieves the same goal as a big spinning generator. The only thing you need to do for this, is to have a tiny buffer of potential energy that you aren't feeding into the grid by default. So if your solar panel is providing 100kW of power, you should only feed 95kW into the grid and use the remaining 5kW for frequency regulation. This is not conventionally done because wind turbine and solar panel owners aren't required to do so, and they earn more money by selling the full 100kW. But that's an easy fix with some regulation. Or hell, even just licencing requirement from the grid operator. You don't need to build vacuum sealed flywheels for grid stability at all.

[@pilotavery]

No that's not how this works because for inertia you need to store the energy somehow. What this means is that If you need to put double the energy out for a few seconds, The energy has to come from somewhere and you won't be able to do it. You can use batteries or capacitors, along with the inverter, but there isn't inertia because there's no actual energy buffer. What the inertia means is that if you immediately double the amount of energy you want to draw from it, for a few seconds, You will quickly stop the blades. Even if you're using it at 95% capacity

[@pilotavery]

That's not how it works, when the grid frequency drops it doesn't actually increase the frequency by increasing its own frequency, it increases the frequency by simply running app the frequency that the grid is at, which is slower, but with a tiny bit I'll say is with much much much higher voltage feeding back into the grid to try to get it back up to speed hoping that everyone else does the same thing.

[@harmenkoster7451]

@@pilotavery Yes, that extra required energy is in the 5% buffer you have. The grid experiences a sudden surge in power draw. This manifests as a drop in grid frequency. Your solar inverter detects that drop in frequency and it adjusts its own frequency to be slightly forward in phase relative to the grid. This causes more power to be fed into the grid (The extra 5kw), which counteracts the extra load and thus functions as inertia. You are using that extra 5% of oomph as your buffer. This all happens in milliseconds, resulting in a very smooth grid frequency. Now, if only a single solar power plant did that, it would indeed not have enough buffer power to do that. But if every single inverter on the grid has frequency compensation programmed in, the added load is trivial. To overwhelm the system the unexpected added load to the grid would have to exceed the buffer, and that just doesn't happen. Nobody is suddenly increasing total load on the grid by several percentage points without first informing the grid operator.

[@pilotavery]

@@harmenkoster7451 5% is not enough, When the frequency drops by 1% you usually have about a 50% increase in load. A 5% buffer doesn't really do shit, You have exponentially more and more torque against the inertia...

[@Henrik0x7F]

@@harmenkoster7451A rotating generator can output a multitude of their rated power for a short while. That means at least twice the rated power not just a few percent. Modern inverters do their best like you said but it’s not comparable

[@D.u.d.e.r]

Great analysis of the wind energy pros and cons, thank u for making and sharing this vid!

[@TobiKellner]

What I love: In most channels, a title like this prompts hundreds of totally uninformed comments about why wind power doesn't work. Here, you get lots of comments by actual engineers who know what they are talking about, giving real-world insights into specific issues

[@alan2007-x8x]

Absolutely. I'm no engineer, but I love to hear from those who can discuss issues relating to renewables and help me learn about the subject. It's refreshing not to see a comments section filled with, 'All wind turbines break', 'it can't be done' (often without any mention of what 'it' means), 'what happens when the sun dies?' etc, etc. It's sad knowing that many of these comments are from bots, and they come originally from those who aren't trying to make the world a better place to live in. Thanks to everyone who shares their knowledge!

[@TobiKellner]

@Dr.Kraig_Ren I watch both. My point was that for a channel as "mainstream" as Real Engineering, it's refreshing. The university presentation type videos usually don't get nearly a million views and 3000 comments in a day or so 🙂

[@skierpage]

The top-level comments here from actual wind turbine engineers are great. The replies to them include plenty of "can't be done" naysaying from fossil fuel shills and nuclear fans who deny the reality of gigawatts of renewable energy and now increasing gigawatt hours of battery storage being installed throughout the world.

[@zm1786]

As a former wind turbine technician, we should just switch to nuclear. Turbines make a mess and kill lots a birds. I've probably ingested too much grease and hydraulic oil and inhaled too much fiber glass

[@samr.england613]

I know they work, but as a layman, I understand that they're a pain in the arse to maintain and repair, they're eyesores, and they kill birds. Granted, most energy producing stuctures are eyesores, including coal-fired power plants, solar panels, petro refineries, etc.

[@joepiejaapie]

I just finished a project where we needed to design a proces of converting biogenic carbon into some type of platform molecule for fuel. One of the profs works in Ireland, and there was a representative of ESB present during the final presentations. They wanted to see what ideas might work to produce the artificial hydrocarbon you talked about generated from waste streams. Awesome to see something I'm actually kind of involved in being shown on your chanel!

[@jahnkeanater]

Both solar and wind turbine inverters are programmed to ride-through faults. They do not simply turn off when the grid becomes unstable. The real issue is keeping them all in perfect synchronization. When you have a lot of inverters vs spinning mass it becomes hard to tell what the phase angle is during a fault.

[@MusikCassette]

so it is a software problem?

[@jahnkeanater]

@@MusikCassette Sort of. There is still the problem of suddenly losing wind/sun and all the windmills/solar going offline. The solution to this problem is battery backup to fill in the gaps. Right now we use natural gas peaker plants that rapidly spool up and down to stabilize the gap between production and demand. But the really fast peaks and valleys in demand can be fixed with software.

[@marsjaninzmarsa]

@@jahnkeanater I've just imagined the effect the Solar eclipse must have had on the grid, I would be glad to read some essay on that

[@jahnkeanater]

@@marsjaninzmarsa The eclipse is super predictable. A lot of people with roof solar have data on their solar production dropping during the eclipse.

[@AmericatheBeautiful-p4z]

'Grid Dis-Harmonization' by millions of independent rooftop solar feeds is fascinating to realize any out of phase solar converters are actually DESTROYING power in the grid. This effect can also occur in small fossil grids with relatively large commercial solar. One diesel grid client, faced with surge-and-sag solar feed every time clouds moved in, designed a load bank (giant toaster) to _burn off the solar as heat_ after the solar surges blew up their 6MW generator, so they could still continue to claim Federal carbon credits to pay the solar installation off.😂🎉

[@williamwaleys865]

Wind turbines don't operate during storms. It spins too fast and the heat on the bearing and gears can cause fires. Also the the blades can bend inward and hit the vertical support causing catastrophic collapse.

[@aurelspecker6740]

Wind turbines toggle off, if the wind is too strong, that is correct. Unfortunately, many misunderstand the consequence. We will NOT have an undersupply of Wind energy during a storm. A storm usually has peak wind speeds in very center. All around is strong, but not too strong wind. Which means high energy production. So in the end, storms are in fact very productive, just not as productive as they could theoretically be. But we couldn't use so much energy anyways.

[@adamwhite7930]

There’s no “gearbox maintenance” outside of checking oil level for a leak (extremely rare), changing the filter, and opening the gear view port to make sure there’s no chipping or excess wear. The 10 year mark for complete oil change is coming up on our moventus boxes but outside of that, “maintenance” takes about 20 minutes a year.

[@gavinvdm]

There most certainly is other maintenance. I’ve been involved in retrofitting gearboxes for years. Factory faults mean bearings need replacement and gearboxes are regularly opened up to pin bearing raceways which are rotating in the housing.

[@adamwhite7930]

@@gavinvdm I suppose it depends on the make and model, ours seem to be the least failing major component at a failing site

[@AAbipolar]

I'm halfway through the video when I realize after a map of Ireland is show, that this is where he's talking about. That thick Irish accent and my lack of coffee has done me for the morning.

[@talideon]

He doesn't have a particularly strong accent as they go.

[@General12th]

*ARLAN*

[@haqvor]

The example with 60 Hz threw me off for a while as well. Just use 50 Hz if you are in Europe, it's good for the Americans to be forced out of their comfort zone once in a while... ;)

[@CartoType]

I thought his accent was clear and attractive. But it was very amusing when he stated that Ireland was isolated, then a map appeared showing that the Republic of Ireland has a land border with the UK, and the island of Ireland is very close to the island of Britain. In fact you can see one island from the other.

[@JonnyD3ath]

@@CartoTypeelectrically isolated

[@sebastianarmstrong2775]

On the point of frequency control/grid inertia--although modern wind turbines do not have a direct connection between the generator and grid, they can still supply "synthetic" inertia. Essentially, if the frequency dips, the power electronic converters are commanded to put out extra power to the grid. On short time scales (seconds), this is called "primary frequency response." It has the net effect of slightly slowing down the speed of the wind turbine rotor, similar to a conventional power plant. On longer time scales (minutes), the power grid typically also needs "secondary frequency response." Here, it's good to have generators available that can put out extra power for 30 minutes or so. For a wind turbine to serve this purpose, it must be "de-rated." A de-rated turbine supplies a fraction of its maximum power output (e.g., say 90% rated capacity). One way to de-rate a turbine is to pitch the blades a few degrees out of the wind. When needed, the blades can be pitched back to optimal for full power output. Source: "Wind Energy Generation: Modeling and Control" by Anaya-Lara, et al.

[@alexlovett1991]

When I studied this a decade ago, there was also talk of allowing the turbine to speed up in anticipation of a surge (offsetting the MPPT curve a bit)

[@MarkHonea-dx6mv]

This has answered all of the questions regarding frequency I have imagined in regards to wind power. And it showed ingenious methods of balancing these frequencies I never imagined before.,

[@eastcorkcheeses6448]

Just drove past the construction site for the giant inverter/rectifier for the celtic interconnector , connecting irelands grid to europes .. so its all going ahead

[@TealJosh]

Yeah, I found that bit a weird from Real Engineering. He discusses how wind turbines lack ability to provide grid inertia due to AC-DC-AC conversion, but that's how the interconnector will work. It's going to run on HVDC and without the ability of modern inverters to add "simulated" inertia, wouldn't be helpful at all.

[@riparianlife97701]

I thought he was saying "Arland", and I had no idea where that could be.

[@wumi2419]

​@TealJosh interconnector has a whole power grid to take power from or supply it to. Where can excess power appear from or go to in AC-DC-AC bridge?

[@eastcorkcheeses6448]

That's a Galway accent for ya ..​@@riparianlife97701

[@riccardoriganti838]

13:03 It’s not so cheap! Remember you have to build an electrolyser (that costs a lot) to make it run just a few hours per day. P.S. Please make a video about Fisher Tropsch 🙏🏻

[@1224chrisng]

It depends, they could have a high efficiency electrolyzer with expensive membranes, or they could equally have a bunch of lower efficiency ones that stick some cheap carbon rods into the water. If electricity is cheap, then run the cheap one, and when it's expensive, run the expensive one.

[@cyrilio]

Didn't Norway find a huge ' field' of rare earth minerals recently? I'm sure that this will help curb the costs of them within 10 years.

[@bimmjim]

Miner here. There are abundant deposits of rare earth minerals around the world. .. China does it cheap by having no environmental regulations. .. Mining of rare earths is extremely toxic and very expensive to fix. That's why the US shut down their rare earth mines and started bying from China. .. Lithium is also abundant. It's the cost to mine.

[@sliwka621]

​@@bimmjimAll the "green" crap is just outsourcing pollution and human suffering to China.

[@Tank50us]

@@bimmjim Something our political leaders don't fully understand. People may say that they care about Carbon emissions or climate change... but if you can't breath the air or drink the water, what's the point of all of that? To truly do good by our children, we need to stop buying from countries who have zero interest in environmental protections.

[@ChucksSEADnDEAD]

​@@Tank50us But... the point is that we need to mine those minerals to stop polluting. We have a choice between leaving an Earth that will need cleanup, and an Earth increasingly hostile to human prosperity.

[@Tank50us]

@@ChucksSEADnDEAD I don't doubt that we need the materials. But if the choice is either: A. extract them from a country that doesn't care about workers rights or their own environment, but it costs less. or B. extract them from a country that does care about the workers doing the mining, as well as the environmental impact, and does everything they can to limit the damage, but costs more. Personally, I choose B. After all, at the end of the day, the whole issue with Global Warming means squat if people can't breath the air or drink the water.

[@bob_mikhail]

Man, that ad integration was so smooth

[@thermitebanana]

11:08 '"In an ideal world, Ireland could sell wind energy".... "... To France"

[@yetti423]

I'm not seeing wind energy bring down my bills, infact, anything to do with green energy has pushed bills eye-wateringly high, and the reductions at this late point in time have not got back near to the affordable levels. Have been loving the quality content though.

[@sailormanoyster1849]

@@yetti423 it was privation of our utilities that caused high bills

[@rogergeyer9851]

Though at the margin, the newer tech. for solar and wind can be cheaper than fossil fuel energy like natural gas and oil, the main issue with fossil fuel in the intermediate term is NOT about saving money overall, but about preventing AGW from getting much much worse over time. For one thing, battery tech. is still expensive, and is needed for continuous coverage for green energy like wind and solar, so that's going to really hit the total cost, at least until batteries get CHEAP and very safe and highly durable. (I think that happens, but it will take a decade or three for such batteries to dominate the storage backup market). So it's not a cost disaster like the usual denier suspects claim, but nor is it truly super-cheap as the green energy uber-bulls often like to claim. At least the overall costs are definitely going the right direction over time (and to a SIGNIFICANT extent), so if that persists for a couple decades, the news will be good on costs.

[@colinhamel1174]

@@rogergeyer9851don’t care, give me cheap oil & gas and all the jobs associated with oil & gas opposed to the odd service technician. It’s not going to make a difference in any case.

[@starseedenergy]

If you live in the UK the subsidies paid to industrial wind plants are added as tariffs to our electricity bills as are the cost of constraint payments made to wind turbine operators when they are asked to reduce output in order to stabilise the grid.

[@sailormanoyster1849]

@@yetti423 I am very pleased I installed svp on my 🏠 already gott capital back after yrsnow its free electricity 😀

[@Awesomlypossom]

We need a big ass CVT for the wind turbines so they can always go at 60 hz

[@Meyer-gp7nq]

That’s what I thought watching this too

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

CVT drives don't scale well and are both inefficient and have poor service life

[@SeaMushroom98]

Just use some power electronics to match your output frequency. Electrical solutions can be much more reliable and easier to fix

[@martinhammett8121]

@@mitchellcouchman1444 CVT ? (Current voltage transformer ? circuit )

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

@@martinhammett8121 I think they mean a CVT transmission considering the context

[@rbpal1]

Synchronous Condensers can provide the grid strength needed to offset the weakness induced by the closure of traditional generation and additon of renewables. Plus they provide voltage support and short circuit current that a flywheel by itself cannot supply. A flywheel can be combined with a synchronous condenser to boost the inertia provided without oversizing the synchronous condenser. Further, a hybrid synchronous condenser, flywheel and BESS system can be used to provide the best of all technologies.

[@Bora_H]

Hydrogen is a giant PITA to work with. It's so small it leaks through solid metal. It's best used for process heat - like concrete and steel making.

[@jameso1447]

It takes so much energy to compress hydrogen! 600 PSI? Cars run at 80 PSI. Forget the hydrogen part, compress ordinary air and call it good! I've watched videos of a guy who converted a car and ran it on compressed air. Hydrogen power has no place beyond school experiments. Can't be useful unless generated on-demand.

[@alibabaei1953]

you gotta admit, the single source of reliable, cheap, low maintenance, daytime and nighttime available, every season available is Nuclear

[@ActivateMission2ThisTimeline]

ReleaseFreeeEneegyyyTechAndWeCanSayAdios2theseTechs

[@AerialWaviator]

Many of the problems mentioned at the beginning of this video can be addressed by eliminating gear-boxes entirely and utilizing DC generators (vs a synchronous AC generator). Such a wind turbine with DC generator is pictured at 13:10, from UK. Notice how the nasal (enclosed section on top) is much smaller, as it no gearbox is on top of the tower, thus reducing weight, construction and maintenance). Power is feed as DC to the grown where it can be converted to AC, or stored from DC into Battery Energy Storage (BESS). Both Texas, and Ireland mentioned in video have GWh of BESS already that serve a dual function of stabilizing grid frequency and providing unto 6 hours of redundancy. The same inverter power electronics that convert wind DC to AC for the grid can also convert DC from the BESS for the grid on demand. Since wind can be forecast with greater than 90% accuracy 1-2 days in advance, there is not really a need to have larger storage capacity. BTW: the round trip efficiency of converting electricity to hydrogen, and then back to electricity is very inefficient, being in 30% range. BESS (battery storage) has a round trip efficiencies in the 80% range and can instantly switch from storing to producing, or from producing to storing electricity. With hydrogen two different systems are required, a fuel cell to make electricity and electrolysis (water to hydrogen) plus a compressor (to reduce hydrogen volume) are required. Thus hydrogen is a costly energy storage method.

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

1 - DC generators typically trade off efficiency 2 - Battery storage is very expensive 3 - 6hr storage isn't remotely enough as predicting the energy generation is less important than net generation over a period of time which fluctuates, as a result excess generation capacity is often required to reduce storage requirement during low wind conditions but can only do so much as you can get whole weeks with minimal wind as was seen recently in the UK 4 - Planes need energy density that batteries can't provide and due to their weight batteries actually make a plane so much less efficient that its far more cost effective to use hydrogen plus requires minimal modification to existing aircraft / aircraft infastrcture

[@asificam1]

Using chemistry to store energy in a synthetic fuel is very inefficient, but so are gas engines and we don't care. The reason we use less efficient methods of energy usage for mobile power like cars, ships, aircraft, some powertools, etc. is that chemical fuels like gasoline have HUNDREDS of times the energy density of batteries that exist and still several orders of magnitude more energy density than ANY battery will EVER reach because of the limits of electrochemistry. Gasoline plus air is so energy dense that a cheap car like mine can get double the range of a top tier EV with a fuel tank that weighs about as much as me... the EV battery weighs more than my whole car by itself (Tesla batteries weigh more than a metric ton). That might work for city dwelling cars, but if you have to tow ANYTHING or operate with limited charging infrastructure (such as country folk, or any work truck), and batteries just get stupidly impractical even if they magically went from 80% round trip to 120% round tip and broke thermodynamics. Ships need to carry huge amounts of energy to carry their loads but can do so with less energy per unit weight and distance than trucks, trains, or planes... but they are miles from shore so powering them is just stupid impractical with batteries. Aircraft with batteries would have such a short range, long charging time, and small cargo capacity that for anything other than training, they would be stupid impractical. Using waste energy from curtailed energy means that the round trip efficiency does not really matter all that much. You're not wrong, you just missed a few variables. Single variable analysis like CO2 alone or energy efficiency alone miss real problems like not getting the battery electric aircraft off the runway or having millions of us Canadians frozen to death in the winter because solar resources are lower in the winter, minimum energy needed to keep you alive is more than triple the summer months, and one day without enough wind would mean having to haul around very inefficient diesel peaker gensets and portable gas generators just to avoid freezing and bursting pipes or people dying of hypothermia... and our weather in Alberta is very unpredictable (often going and doing the opposite of the forecast last minute). My solar panels provide more power than I could every hope to use in the summer even when running some long, costly, and power intensive multi day compute jobs on my computers, cranking the A/C full blast, and just not caring about power usage... we still popped breakers between some buildings and the grid (needed to use more power in those buildings to keep get the peak output used there instead of through the under rated breaker)... however, in winter, less than 5% of our needed energy is available through solar. Even if we had the option for efficient heat pumps back when we installed, even if those heat pumps would work in -35C or -40C (yes it can get that cold even in Calgary and Edmonton areas), even if the heat pumps would have an acceptable COP, we would still use so much more energy than we make that we would freeze and die without a grid connection. There is no battery big enough to store enough power to operate effectively without a recharge all winter... and so we offset most of our energy needs by using gas furnace for heat and a wood fireplace as a backup... and even just the energy needed for cooking and lighting is more than triple what we generate (and ye we do keep the panels snow free). Wind is no different, one bad day and all the batteries in the world would be depleted. Need backup power like nuclear for baseload, stupid level of pumped storage, and some form of steam power plant for grid stabilization and backup power that is faster to respond than nuclear (and less politically controversial)... so unless you want us to have to rely on diesel engines which are not overly efficient, the only option is to either extract hydrocarbon fuels from the ground (which we do ethically and relatively efficiently given what we have to work with), or we can waste 70% of generated power to store the excess in synthetic hydrocarbons in tanks the size of a city in order to power ourselves through the majority of the year (which is icy cold winter).

[@jeffveltri8472]

The power converted are very capable of capturing the inertia of the blades. I used the same converter design for large flywheel for Energy storage

[@MegaHarko]

Wait... There are STILL manufacturers using gearboxes? I'm out of the field for a few years but back then it seemed they all were switching to gearless systems?! Is this a US thing?

[@polterp]

There’s certainly plenty of operating turbines using gearboxes, even if newer models had all moved on to DD. So gearbox maintenance is still a hot topic in the industry

[@assepa]

It's a cost thing. Most if not all onshore turbines have gearboxes. For offshore turbines the cost of maintenance for gearboxes adds up, so there direct drive is more popular.

[@fablearchitect7645]

I don't think it is really gearless but rather single speed gear. Just like in EVs there is still a reduction gear to boost the torque of the electric motor. Still much lower maintenance then a gearbox with multiple gears used in the older fixed speed wind turbines

[@solarsynapse]

No gearbox needed. Use a properly designed generator for the high torque low RPM application. Speed is controlled by load, like dynamic braking, which gives even more power output. The torque will change, but not the speed. Like a helicopter rotor powered by a trubine engine. The RPM is constant at operating speed. Bearings should last a very very long time.

[@MartinParsons-tr6wi]

My thoughts. And translate the power to a vertical shaft running down the tower

[@MartinParsons-tr6wi]

It's just occurred to me, the power translation could be done hydraulically

[@solarsynapse]

@@MartinParsons-tr6wi Power cables. No moving parts, no maintenance, lighter.

[@solarsynapse]

@@MartinParsons-tr6wi Yes, like industrial equipment, but now your dealing with oil again and mechanical wear.

[@MartinParsons-tr6wi]

@@solarsynapse Extra weight, and mechanical wear at the top of the pillar are significant problems

[@robhaitch5544]

South Australia took the flywheel approach to stabalise its grid that often runs on just wind and rooftop solar. It’s also growing battery storage and using big inverters to manage frequency. The fossil industry kept saying that each completed step was impossible.

[@simonbowman6206]

Some new info for you,,, a wind farm in my area was sold to the landholder after it had been in operation for 23yrs. Now the landholder has since sold his farm because he found the costs to maintain the wind farm was larger than the returns it earned. SO THE INSTALLERS RECOVERED THE COSTS TO FIT THE SYSTEM AND A HANDSOME RETURN ON TOP & NO COSTS TO REMEDIATE THE AREA AND PROFIT FROM ITS SALE !! yes thats the game watch it roll out in your area

[@MrBashem]

Pretty much. You know they are lining the politicians pockets who keep push for this.

[@markedis5902]

Rare earth minerals have, within the last month, been found in very large quantities in Scandinavia and Japan

[@ronblack7870]

it's not the locations as these are all over the world it's that china does almost all of the refining because they do it cheaper by mostly ignoring environmental problems in the refining. to do it clean takes more money so it's more expensive.

[@Calyx]

It's been found but the infrastructure is not in place for processing. The mine in Kiruna, Sweden is still far away from developing the Rare Earth deposit, so at the moment, China still holds all the marbles.

[@jacksons1010]

Rare Earth is a misnomer, as these elements are not rare per se. The issue is the lack of concentrated ores and hence the cost and waste of refining from low grade ores. Now that there are significant uses for these “rare” elements a lot more prospecting is being done.

[@Tokru86]

Rare earths are abundant in a lot of places. Even in western countries. But environmentalists are doing anything they can to prevent the mining of it in the truest NIMBY fashion one can imagine.

[@ray.shoesmith]

​@@Tokru86 Indeed, behind China the next 2 largest producers of rare earth metals are the USA and Australia. Both fairly 'western'.

[@Dosdos12345]

The gearbox is not coasting multi million dollers. I think price is something arround 500k. Also i think newer Wind Turbines have not a gearbox but a frequency converter to change the frequency.

[@joewiddup9753]

The 6MW Nordex turbines being assembled South of my house are synchronous and have massive gearing to be directly attached to the grid. I'd bet there is north of $2 million in each gear box.

[@assepa]

I agree, total cost of a wind turbine can be estimated to be around 1 million euros per 1MW of capacity. Not very likely that a gearbox costs millions, unless perhaps it is in a really big WTG.

[@1224chrisng]

It probably depends on the size, the big ones cost more

[@kolonarulez5222]

I never realized how truly massive these are until I was riding on the highway passing several trucks just hauling the blades. The turbine field going from AZ to CA was a magical place the first time

[@janverbanck]

Worth mentioning is also the huge impact of rare earth material mining on the environment and people. Mining often happens in terrible circumstances. But as usual, most westerners don't care as it going on mostly in China and third world countries...

[@garnerjoyce606]

Not necessarily true, people care and China might slow down on some production as also other nations till a better management in place

[@HansZarkovPhD]

The problem is sometimes the wind doesnt blow, but people always need power.

[@baomao7243]

That blows

[@rogerk6180]

That is why you need a large grid. The wind always blows in multiple places on an continent and has multiple places that are without wind. The wind always blows somewhere. Same with the sun. And if it ain't sunny it is windy, cause that is what creates clouds.

[@gedeon2696]

There are MANY places where Vertical Axis Turbines (various sizes) can be used, and at ground level ! Examples: as in UK along highway medians where vehicle traffic provides the wind. On buildings that may be shaded from sun, areas where turbulence prevents use of Horizontal Axis Turbines, etc. V-A-Turbines, while less efficient, in theory, more than make up by being far more flexible (wind, location, maintenance) !!

[@syedhassan3263]

Have often thought the same

[@PaulDavis-p9r]

Excellent explanation of the challenge of implementing renewable energy

[@g-dcomplex1609]

Snee generator: designed for offshore wave action from any direction, when the generator was brought out of the sea for maintenance it was noted for achieving higher rpms than designed for producing three times the power it did by wave action, instead of the turbine blades extending from the center shaft like a fan, the snee generator sits with its shaft vertical and is basically a squirrel cage fan within a stationary squirrel cage that has its fins angled opposite the angle of the fan blades of which forces the air or water directly against the blades from any direction

[@howardsimpson489]

And lots of chopped up fish.

[@simplethings3730]

Someone in the comments talked about "the massive amount of noise" from wind generators. I have the things all around me. They seldom make any noise at all. When they do, it is VERY quiet and kind of pleasant. It only lasts for a few seconds and is a low frequency whoosh. When I first heard it, I stopped and listened to figure out what it was. About 3 years ago, they installed a natural gas pipeline about a quarter of a mile from our house. We didn't know it was there. The first time they used it, it scared the crap out of us. It sounds like a freight train. It sounds like a nuclear bomb would sound if it was dropped a couple of hundred miles away.

[@joshmusic9766]

The people who are against wind turbines are the type of believe AI videos on Facebook of Obama saying he was born in Kenya. These people are easily influenced by people on the news and unfortunately they are littered across the country. Farmers make a killing by selling the land to be used for wind turbines. They are absolutely bonkers to be against it, especially given how economically difficult it is to be a farmer. It blows my mind that they are so against it.

[@paulwooton4390]

​@@joshmusic9766 they wouldn't be wrong in thinking wind turbine production, installation, maintenance and disposal are far more costly than conventional fossil systems. Also less reliable and far more environmentally destructive. Still, a few people are making huge money from them, so that's at least some benefit.

[@joshmusic9766]

@ more environmentally destructive? When the wind turbines die they are buried in the earth, its fiberglass, it is inert as far as I’m aware. Fossil fuels are destroying life on planet earth. How could there be anything more destructive than fossil fuels? Maybe total nuclear destruction?

[@lbowsk]

@@paulwooton4390 "far more environmentally destructive". Now that's a knee-slapper. The cleanup for the DeepWater Horizon blowout cost over 63 Billion.

[@finfrog3237]

@@joshmusic9766 funny thing about Obama's birth certificate. There's an official dot gov webpage that has a copy. But it's a downloadable and editable PDF. You can move the layers around and can tell that it's been manufactured and edited. What is also inconvenient is that the Arctic Ice mass has grown 26% since 2012. Have you gotten the latest booster shots? It's extremely important.

[@slydog7131]

The cost of wind energy isn't only the cost of the turbine but also the cost of all the other infrastructure needed to maintain grid integrity. When that is added in, wind isn't so cheap, which is why I had to pay more for wind electricity when my utility offered the option. It was a stupid choice that I no longer do.

[@kevinmeyer3884]

Let's see a true ecological cost of wind! Including the mining of the rare products, building of the roads, concrete, steel, cranes, trucks, building the actual units, and then a lifetime of maintenance! If all this is not subsidized, as much is presently. I think there's a lot of dishonesty about what the true money and ecological costs are!!

[@reiniernn9071]

I know Ireland also has mountains. Also I'm told that Norway buys wind energy from the next wind country (Denmark) when Denmark has more energy than needed. They use that energy to pump water BACk UP to lakes....when energy needed they use that lake (as a battery in use in fact) for hydro generated electricity ...making their hydro systems even more profitable. I would assume thatb Ireland also can use some lakes and hydro generated powerplants for storing energy and regenerating. Could well be (much) more efficient as the hydrogen cycle.

[@christopherlynch4347]

There is some but no where near enough pumped storage

[@Helmut-pdh]

Producing E-Fuels and burning them in internal combustion engines afterwards has an efficiency of 5-10%. Compare that with battery storage and direct electricity usage at a combined efficiency around 40-50%.

[@sliwka621]

The batteries made out of rare earth minerals that take an enourmous amount of energy to mine and refine? The batteries that degrade? Making efuels only requires electrolysis. And a liquid fuel can be transported cheaply. So take your battery storage efficiency down by a factor of 10.

[@Helmut-pdh]

@@sliwka621 Batteries are NOT made out of rare earth materials! Lithium is not a rare earth metal such as Neodymium. Many electric motors and generators are made out of rare earth metals, although you can make them without them. Of course you can criticize Lithium mining and battery production, but please stay by the facts

[@perrybrown4985]

The benefit of synthetic fuels is that they have an effectively infinite storage capacity.

[@Meyer-gp7nq]

Google methanol economy

[@5353Jumper]

I got sad as soon as he mentioned Hydrogen. Often it is a terrible solution being promoted by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. As long as electrolysis using oversupply of "green" generation makes the Hydrogen, and then that Hydrogen supply replaces existing applications of hydrogen previously using Methan Steam Reformed production...then maybe it makes sense. 1. We are unlikely to ever have much sustainable oversupply of green generation to make Hydrogen with. 2. If we do have oversupply of green generation are we sure Hydrogen production is the best use of it compared to all the other potential uses like storage for future peaks, or making something else, or carbon capture. 3. Before we start dreaming of new applications for Hydrogen like transportation and such, ALL the current demand for medical, industrial and agricultural Hydrogen needs to be converted from Steam Reforming to Electrolysis. As long as some Hydrogen is produced with Methane, the ALL Hydrogen is dirty. Creating new demand for Hydrogen just extends the life and pollution from dirty Hydrogen production. Making hydrogen is a very inefficient conversion of energy. Hydrogen is a fuel needing to be transported and stored which is also terribly inefficient. Most uses of hydrogen are also terribly inefficient energy conversion so it is lost on both ends and the middle. Once you run the math hydrogen is almost never a good option.

[@hotsaucebeliever]

I love how the comments immediately addressed the inaccuracie. Great community

[@icekk007]

This video stated that an asynchronous wind turbine does not have the inertia needed to dampen frequency changes in a grid. I don't think this problem is inherent. The wind turbine blades, gear box and rotor are heavy. The inertia is there. It is up to the designer of the inverters to increase load on the turbine blades, which in turns increase the electric output when the grid frequency is dropping.

[@pilotavery]

But there's already so little energy stored in the moving blades because they are so lightweight. It's like trying to turn a pinwheel. As soon as you put any inertia on it it just stops the pinwheel.

[@icekk007]

@@pilotavery Whether it is a lightweight or not, it is all relative. A Vesta V150 wind turbine, each blade weights 70 metric ton. A wind turbine may be lighter than a steam turbine, but it does have an inertia compared to a solar farm.

[@sliwka621]

​@@pilotaveryLightweight and with a massive aerodynamic drag. The exact opposite of a flywheel.

[@pilotavery]

@@sliwka621 yeah exactly

[@mitchellcouchman1444]

The instantaneous power response of a massive turbine can be several times its generation capacity where as power electronics are typically not rated that highly due to cost and don't react fast enough

[@timfulwell8472]

I believe grid scale battery systems can not only supply power when supply doesn’t match demand but can also keep the frequency from changing too fast or too much. They are also often paired up with wind or solar as a very efficient way of producing power when it’s needed.

[@SP4CEBAR]

I thought it was about a small island named "Arland" until 11:09

[@WYO_Dirtbag]

Another huge downsize is the short lifespans on the blades themselves. And the fact that there still is not an actual cost effective way to recycle them. Here in Wyoming they have a massive pit they still bury them in. TX also has massive plots of lands with just stacks of the things. It kinda grosses me out the waste of those blades. I'd be much more open to wind if that can be solved.

[@stepup898]

Kettles shouldn’t be filled via the spout. Hope this helps.

[@toby_fred]

keep up the hard work King

[@dhiviyanshpunamiya2251]

Who knew Ireland's next big export would be wind? 🌬️ Harnessing all that blustery weather for energy is both brilliant and poetic. Cheers to a future where our biggest challenge is keeping the sheep from napping in the turbines!

[@mastrofnone8025]

Arent all those massive amounts of pinwheels the most beautiful things to ever blot out the views of those nasty mountain/landscape vistas?

[@sprinterx]

No mountains in Kansas hiding behind turbines.

[@rickw.7923]

😂😂😂😂😂 True! They're just plain ugly - the pinwheels, that is! They can now build small, modular nuclear power plants in factories and set them up on site. One such plant would eliminate SQUARE MILES of wind turbines and supply safe, clean energy.

[@TheKdcool]

3:14 that's a really strong men!

[@roberttran1114]

Those massive flywheels are literally equivalent to capacitors in a traditional circuit 😮

[@whataboat]

No mention of the negative visual effect on the pastoral Irish countryside.

[@Agtsmirnoff]

Yeah, turbines are not very slightly

[@oldcynic6964]

Or the number of birds killed.

[@n00000blet]

I think they look cool

[@randallbesch2424]

@@oldcynic6964 compared to buildings. Why were you not caring when millions of birds are killed by pollution?

[@RB-bd5tz]

@@randallbesch2424 Yes, birds are killed by fossil-fuel pollution. But the point is, this alternative, which is boldly, proudly, and explicitly claimed to be better for the environment, kills millions of birds every year.

[@Roger_Gustafsson]

If there only was a stable, safe, environmentally friendly, low area impact way of generating a massive amount of power...

[@discoj7112]

Nuclear?

[@CarriUSA]

Nuclear, hydro…but environmentalist hate hydro…not an option in their ideology and why they’re destroying hydro power dams in America at a insane rate with no back up…they’re ideology of no humane use of natural resources . No hydro dams …stupid is as stupid does.

[@emilsinclair4190]

@Roger_Gustafsson ... you forgot expensive, slow and not that environmentally friendly

[@admiralkaede]

exactly if only

[@contentment5325]

What are uranium talking about

[@letsfixit1594]

Nuclear fixes everything.

[@torikipitt750]

Slight correction on inertia, only Type 4 WTG's have that issue, the preferred WTG's these days is the Type 3, this gives about 80% of the usual inertia as the converter power is about 0.2-0.3 pu i.e. the other 0.8-0.7 is from the rotating machine. The idea of a type 3 is to inject a compensatory AC waveform (i.e. +3Hz) onto the rotor so that the WTG can spin at other "non synchronous" speeds and achieve better turbine performance without affecting the final generator output. i.e. +3hz rotating field on the rotor + 47hz rotating electromagnet = +50hz out on the stator. My bad, in Australia we use 50hz, but you get the idea. Source: Am Electrical Plant Engineer in Hydro Power Station.

[@user-xz9hu4rd2v]

We should have kept the nuke plants running.

[@RezaQin]

Trump was right again...

[@George-uy2kb]

Nuclear power is king