@@jaysonemile6633 I work for a polish company company and we travel across the Europe to work with these turbines. It's absolutely fantastic although they might be a bit of a language barrier in some countries.
@@Shnick in the UK, wind has now got so cheap that it is now the cheapest source of electricity in the uk, and is now forcing all coal and some gas plants out of business
@@danchang9976 But that isn't true. The only reason coal and gas plants close is because they are disadvantaged compared to special treatment that wind gets financially. First if wind energy is being generated then it gets first priority for use (it HAS to be bought by the electric companies) - so in windy weather the gas and coal plants have to 'stand down' and they get no compensation. But if it is so windy that all of it cannot be used then the wind companies get paid even though all the wind isn't used! This puts coal and gas at financial damage. Also what happens when the wind doesn't blow? We just had a week of that in UK (Nov 2020) - wind never got above 5% - it was only gas, coal and nuclear that kept things running, otherwise we have blackouts. Same every day actually it is gas (only) that enables power to ramp up as everyone wakes up in morning,
@@TheChrisEMartin yes, but it also means that consumers get cleaner air to breathe and lower bills as wind is now cheaper than gas and coal. Coal and gas is outdated tech, every utility company knows that and that’s why coal will be gone by 2024 at the latest and gas will follow suit in about 20-30 years. Nuclear provides a base load in our grid, followed by wind and solar. After that gas, biomass and hydro is used and if their is still a demand for more they use coal and move some gas plants over to peak demand scenarios where their output changes depending on volatility. It’s outdated tech, it’s going, don’t defend it it’s gone.
America and here in Canada has huge open spaces in the prairie states and provinces, in the near furniture i see while wind farms being build with hundreds of wind turbines.
People in cape cod have fought off shore wind turbines for years because they don't want it ruining their view. I guess they prefer the air and water to slowly become poisoned. I think wind farms are beautiful. Not the safest thing for birds but evolution will sort them out.
Fun video except fore the recap style editing. Hate that. I just watched the same info from 12 minutes ago, I'm not a toddler, I can retain info for hours sometimes! lol Also, tons of info left out. How do they keep cool? What is a typical failure look like? What does a catastrophic failure look like? Show how the connect to the grid. Show how they stop, start, turn. How do they test the motors prior to shipping? How do they affect local Eco-systems? How about a map showing the amount of homes covered by a "typical" year's generation. Then show amount of space required for turbine-to-home ratio scaled-up. Meaning show space needed to power NYC or London in a typical year. How many, how much space at what cost, etc..? And how about recycling of old units? How much can be reused?
as someone who involved in planning of the Wind Turbine being transport from Local Port to mountain Range, I can honestly say the process is not easy at all!
@@joex8au04 oh ok. What would say are like all the parts of the wind turbine and like match the subject. For example for the wings you would have to know about physics or something right ?
@@huesenpaul1394 There are many different factors involved in designing such complex systems, several different types of engineers find work in wind energy design. These include aerospace, civil, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers, among others.
Morris CH yeah that’s true I really wanna get into aerospace engineering or mechanical engineering when I go to college. Ok so name the 4 main elements then.
Very impressive turbines made by very skillfull people and their high tec equipment. 😀 Det er rigtigt flot klaret at i kan lave de kæmpestore vindmøller i Danmark.! 💕
A wind turbine comes to the end of its lifecycle after about 20-25 years. While 99% of a turbine's parts can be re-sold and recycled, the majority of turbine blades are a challenge, so much so that they end up just being buried in a giant 'graveyard of blades' landfill. In the U.S. over the next four years alone that will be the fate of more than 8,000 blades.
It would seem that as technology grows, our footprint grows exponentially. Therefore, the BEST way to slow our destructiveness is to physically StOP consuming so much energy. The basics of life use to be rewarding. We've somehow lost our way.
@@dougankrum3328 People don't realize is how much coal & oil is required to fabricate, install and maintain them over that 20 years. That same coal & oil would have produced 5 times more electricity than the wind turbine will make in its lifetime.
@@SkullRaven Experience source, worked for Cant Name Wind for 10 years. Just to change ONE O-ring on one blade hub takes 300 man hours and 300 gallons of diesel and 180k$. There are 3 on each turbine. The units near the ocean have to be changed more often than inland but turbine output never even comes close to install and maintenance...and 5 times is a conservative figure. It doesn't even include eroded blade changes. Much more environmental harm then is allowed to be exposed to public on top of that.
Right - and he doesn't know how to pronounce epoxy ("e-poxy"), nor the difference between a screw and bolt. Still, it was very interesting despite the limitations of the script and narrator.
If you want ad free u-tube videos, just move the little red ball to the end point, then start the video over & whala, the video will think you watched the whole thing & you'll have no ads, simple is stupid!
@@TRPGpilot I watch TH-cam premium no ads on mobile download and see content you will never get to see. If you can't afford TH-cam premium you should rethink your life priorities cause clearly you're living below poverty.
I guess they use post-tensioning steel cables to secure the tower, instead of bolting it together. It would've been interesting to see how the cables were tensioned and anchored to the foundation.
Georgw Marhevka. No they tight those cables with some special tools there so many industrial things made to this purposes I know cuz I been working not for wind turbines but for the electric industry so we use cable s and many things
I agree that it would have been nice to see the cables secured. Look up “post tension concrete” or something similar to get a basic idea of how it would be done.
It's a Similar procedure to tightening cables on suspension Bridges. As long as the cables are all equally tightened. It makes the structure very strong.
Absolutely everything those guys did in creating those blades in one piece was sheer genius. From the vauum sealed mold to getting epoxy into every nook and crany without air pockets. I expect they ran the hardener and epoxy through vacuum chambers before hand to remove all air pockets and the mixing would also need to be done in a vacuum. Iv seen so many experiments using epoxy and vacuum chambers and still they could not get great results as they tried to remove the air after mixing and putting into the mold. And seeing that guy tear fiber glass in half just with a knot. Unbelievable. I work with fiber glass. To see it snap like that. Its comparable to steel yet easily not as strong yet nothing reasonably priced and so light comes close so its a fair comparison in my opinion.
However there are huge landfills all over the place, like the one in Wyoming where the rotor blades are sent after their useful life, because they are not recyclable. Not much of the wind turbine is. The price of wind generated power is extortion, Ontario residents are being raped by their electricity suppliers. Calgary's biggest windfarm is due for replacement as it is too old and it will be headed for the landfills soon before being replaced with more of the same.
Yeah let's dump them all in your backyard to recyclable. Every Wind farm and Solar panel fiasco should have to post a $Billion dollar bond for the clean up of these eye sores!
Extremely marvellous .. I liked watching Extreme Engineering for technical knowhow improvement . Thanks a lot in sharing Free Documentary to me ..... Will watch I am sure what comes into my wall.
Lane Shurtleff if that bugs you, you’re part of the problem. Zane H If you call them bolts, then thats fine, I normally would too, however, in Europe (and Asia) they call them screws. In some places around the world, the word screw is used as a noun, and bolt is used as a verb, and vice versa in other places. For example: next we bolt it together with these screws. I repair very large mining equipment and spent years manufacturing it, and the general rule of thumb in our area is that a bolt is used as an assembly with a nut and washer, while a screw doesn’t use a nut, it is “screwed” into something, however when we deal with our German counterparts, they just call everything with a thread, a screw. So my original comment still stands: in your little bubble, they’re bolts and everyone who disagrees is wrong, but in the real world, it doesn’t matter. Q. What are you if you are on an incline plane, wrapped helically around an axis?
9:30 In my part of Europe they are screws if fully threaded and bolts if only partly threaded. Was hard to see but these look to be partly threaded so bolts.
@@flexairz It would be interesting to see a cost benefit analysis. Electric in Europe is very expensive, with the exception of France, which uses mainly nuclear power.
Espectacular.. es impresionante como no pueden trabajar con vientos superiores a 6 m/s, cuándo en las zonas dónde se van a instalar es porque es muy ventosa...
A machine screw is a screw or bolt with a thread type which accepts nuts (or other types of twisted on locking devises) possessing the same thread dimension. Example : a 6-32 x 1" screw would take a 6-32 nut..... and..... a 1/2-20 x 5" bolt would take a 1/2-20 nut. BOTH of them have "machine screw threads" and can be called machine screws. When the fastener in question has a shank diameter of 1/4" or larger, it's referred to as a BOLT.
The explanation for the use of the word 'screw' is that in German, the word 'Schraube' means screw and/or bolt and whoever made the translation was not aware of the distinction in English.
Look up what happens to wind turbines when they are disassembled. They literally bury the parts in the ground because the parts are nearly impossible to recycle... you may rethink just how green this is..
@@justicewarrior9187 An electric car battery is 100% recycle-able also look at what oil has done to the ocean and how many wars have been fort over it. Also when you make petrol from oil you need to put cobalt in it to get rid of the sulphur and when you burn that you can't get it back.
The Thor windfarm in Denmark will cost 15,5 billion DKK and have a output of between 800 and 1000 mw, it will probably be around 100 wind turbines, so its around 155 million DKK per wind turbine if the price of the connection to land is divided equally between each wind turbine.
Too many advertisements??? Here is the trick: At beginning, just fast forward (extend the little red dot control) the video and then rewind again - this time without or less advertisements 👍
@The Curious Mind I can - where I live we are not far away from the biggest onshore farm in the UK, where they have both Siemens and Alstom turbines. You can't hear them at all until you are fairly close, 50 metres or so, is the first thing I will say. There's a hum from the generator and electronics, quite similar to what you hear if you're next to a transformer. You a low pitch "swoosh" every time a blade passes by. Also on these ones they drilled a small whole through 1 blade on each turbine which gives a little whistle - that discourages birds and bats from flying too close. The other noise you might hear is a knocking. That's from the guy trapped inside ;) no what that is the yaw drive. Because the motors are very underpowered for the mass at the top the turbine changes direction very slowly, and that noise is just the yaw gear travelling from tooth to tooth. Hope that helps!
@@danijelhorvatincic9224 Thanks, I'm not in this industry lol. Those wind turbines are just common in my hometown, somewhere in the southeast corner of Shanghai
*Those cables were used to anchor the 83-meter concrete stacks. For the other steel sections that they added on the top to reach a height of 136 meters, were they also anchored to the concrete sections or just stacked up? I guess they were bolted to each other. Can anyone clarify that, please? Thank you.*
While traveling through Kansas i wondered how they hung the turbine.... now i get this video in my suggestions. Seems like my phone can not only hear me, but read my damn mind too. 🤨🤨🤨🙉🙊🙈🙈
Wind turbines are bs not reliable i install them here in Texas. 90 percent are stopped right now because of a little snow major power outage no power to oil refineries. Gas prices will be going and piss on Joe Biden he is a corrupt just letting the world know
Three different times they state that the turbine blade is longer than the wing of the Airbus 380. Given most of us have never seen the wing of the Airbus 380, and since the plane is being taken out of service, they might as well say the blade is half as long as the Titanic.
Yes i remember that. I think one of them jumped to his death and the other burned alive if i remember right. Horrible way to die knowing there is no escape
Everything is fantastic, but I would also like to see a documentary about what happens during use or kills birds, how often they work how much energy they produce for how much they sell and then what happens to worn out windmills.
a 2MW turbine on a tall tower like this will have a capacity factor of about 30-35%, so will produce 700kW average output, or 6.13 GWh/yr worth about £200,000/yr worth of electricity (at wholesale prices). They have at least some output about 85% of the time. They can kill birds, and more often bats (because the blade-tips travel at over 100mph), although rates are very low in comparison to other sources of human-induced bird mortality such as cats, cars and buildings (in general - some migratory routes have been deemed unsiutable for wind turbines because putting them there would cause unnaccepetaby-high bird mortality). When they are worn out the tower +foundation is often re-used for a larger, more modern, more efficient turbine: i.e. 'repowered'. Old turbines (and towers) are recycled (except blades, which can be, but mostly aren't currently - I expect that to change due to both technology and regulation.
It is a shame that neither the narrator or the script writer (and the editor responsible) don't know what a screw from a bolt. The installers / builders are using bolts, not screws.
@@nissanboy97 Not really. A screw goes through one object IN to another whilst a bolt goes through BOTH objects and is secured on the other side with a nut. That being said its a totally trivial point.
@@cacs99 That's completely false. There's an entire far-left movement that seeks to ban the usage of all fossil fuels, and any industry that supports it. Some are even violent about it!
Blows my mind that the life of the blades is only 10-15 years and then the 35 ton 150' blades are left somewhere. How about in your backyard? Eye sore, junk,garbage, forever.
What is not mentioned is how hard it is to recycle the turbine blades, they suffer from stress fatigue over time. Basically, they get buried in special waste dumps just for this purpose.
It's definitely a negative, but not as big as you'd think. There's more than enough space for landfills, especially for non-toxic waste. The problem with landfills has been that things rot, producing gas which can cause problems when it seeps up. That's not a problem with turbine blades though. Recycling of composite materials is a big challenge that's not unique to wind turbines. I think switching to carbon composites, rather than fiber glass, will help a lot. It's all just hydrocarbons, so you could just burn it.
madaxe79 How exactly is it ironic? Please explain. I checked, and both carbon fiber and epoxy can be made from biological sources so the whole process can be carbon neutral. But even if you use petroleum.. what’s better? Burning tons and tons every day for energy? Or turn a bit of it into carbon composites, use it for decades and then burn it in a trash burning facility like those in Sweden, that then makes electricity and heats homes in winter? You could also bury it, of course, which is essentially just putting it back where it came from.
Audun Wilhelmsen I’m an engineering consultant, i travel to remote locations and solve problems. I did a job at a coal fired power plant around 3 years ago, and while i was there i learned a lot about the operation. There is virtually zero emissions from a modern coal fired power plant. What comes out of the top is pure water vapour, just hydrogen and oxygen, nothing else. All of the “bad” stuff is captured in the processing and is then used in other area’s, like fertiliser, road paving, brick making etc. there is no pollution. It’s a myth created by the green movement. In older power plants, yes absolutely, but in modern ones, nothing. The news always shows these big cooling towers with vast amounts of “smoke” come out of them, and they claim it’s pollution, when in actual fact, is extremely pure steam, nothing else. So until there is a way to recycle these turbines in a manner as clean as coal power, and also to manufacture them in a clean manner, then coal power is actually better for the environment. Also, i know you probably believe all the lies about carbon in the atmosphere, but the reality is that it is essential for plant life, and i have been involved in experiments with carbon dioxide enrichment for plant growth, and the experiment clearly increased plant growth significantly by enriching the carbon dioxide content of the air. That being said, there isn’t any carbon released from modern coal plants, it’s all captured used in productive manners. Have you ever gone to you local garden store and bought potash for your garden? Guess what potash is, it’s the heavy solids leftover from a coal fired power plant... Also bear in mind that, without burning coal you would have zero steel, or any metal for that matter. If you don’t know how steel is manufactured, i suggest that you do some reading, it is impossible to make steel without burning coal. Also, no matter how many of these wind turbines you build, they will never create a return on investment. The only way they can ever be viable is with subsidies, and the only way they can be subsidised is with tax. So we would be far better off financially and environmentally, to invest in clean coal power, than wind turbines. The only caveat being that we will eventually run out of coal. And we need all the coal we can get for steel making.
At 45;59 it is said that the 81 meter long blades that are shown to us are 20,000 square meters. I guess the correct number is more likely around 200 square meters.
How much energy is needed to manufacture these "Wonderful " Machines? And what is the output Vs input ?? And what is the lifespan of these "wonderful Machines" How are the used parts recycled?? And how many birds do they kill??
There is a lot to unpack here but ill do my best. Massive amount of energy is used to manufacture everything from the electrical components on the interiors to the fiberglass blades and steel cans. There is not input to the towers except during construction. Manufactures all build varying output turbines but most fall around 2-4 MW which usually is about 6 million kWh every year (that's one turbine). I personally had done repowers on some of the first turbine installed in Oklahoma back in 1990ish so in practice as long as the steel cans hold structural integrity you could see one standing for many years while updating the interiors(not something most wind farm/park owners do). Classically all the metals are recycled and the electrical components are scrapped as well. Fiberglass cant really be recycled and blades cant be reused considering they are made in sets and balanced specifically for one another(aka if you brake a blade and it cant be fixed by a fiberglass tec. your THROWING AWAY all three blades, they cant be recycled). And as for the birds the numbers are exceptionally low considering. Most migratory birds will literally change their seasonal flight paths to avoid farms/parks. Hope this sums it up for u Cheers
@@MrBurtonboy14 Not all bird deaths are equal Wind turbines kill endangered raptors and these deaths are vastly under reported due to monthly vs daily collection of carcasses. Scavengers carry most of the carcasses away from the kill sites before they are inventoried.
@@brucefrykman8295 This is not true. Blades have built in sensors on most models and need to be inspected basically immediately after an impact. Failure to do so could result in catastrophic failure of the blade structure which leads to the entire turbine ripping itself to pieces (roughly between 2.5 and 3.8 million dollars, not including labor). Which means we know exactly when birds hit turbines and we have extremely accurate data on the topic. In regards to not all birds deaths are equal. You are right not all birds deaths are equal but a study done in 2014 shown wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in the US. The same study also shown collisions with power lines in the US numbered 12 to 64 million. These are just the facts do with them what you will.
10:52: "Each turbine has a rating of 7 megawatts per year"... um, no. The turbine has a rating of 7 MW. Stop. Power per unit time does not make any sense.
@Nader Abdel-Khaliq I'm not saying MW/year is right, but technically, acceleration is m/s^2, so having two units of time in the denominator isn't wrong. You can even have Jerk which is m/s^3
Hello, i'm not agree with you, it makes sense, , it's the second derivative of energy. So in ten years, this turbine will make 70 MW. it's Magic.! better than free Energy. Good remark however ...
You're right. I came to the comments for the same reason. A MW is a measure of power and they produce power or energy/time. 7 MW/year = 13j/s/s relates t nothing in the real world. Perhaps they mean 7MWy/y.
@Vladimir Birukoksukker - hmm.... let's see... Vestas, revenue for 2019 is 12.15 BILLION EUROS, which is over 14,000,000,000 USD (BILLION, son) and they a strictly a manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines.
glad to be a wind Technician who gets to travel all over the world to work on these beauties.
Do you know how to use a caddy program?
@@Priestley777 I’m a Torque and tension lead tech I don’t work with any software or electrical components. I save that for the smarter fellas
Wait really you get to travel around the world. I thought if you were a winglets tech you just stay within the country ?
@@jaysonemile6633 I work for a polish company company and we travel across the Europe to work with these turbines. It's absolutely fantastic although they might be a bit of a language barrier in some countries.
@@xJakeeyy you tell people how tight to turn nuts?
Amazing documentary! All the process is more or less explained. Now I'm curious about the offshore assembly proccess.
What is really amazing about it is it makes no mention of all the negative aspects of wind turbine.
Incredible Efforts involved in assembly as well as in manufacturing of wind turbines.... Thank you for this awesome documentary.
A huge pile of useless tech.
Невероятная конструкция! Такие размеры, это фантастика!
huh? what you say????
Thank you Free Documentary for uploading this video. This video was one of my best video in your video list.
I wonder how much energy it takes to produce a wind turbine? From raw material to finished product including transportation.
It takes like half a year for a turbine to recover the energy invested on it's production and installation. They are really efficient.
And how much it costs to maintain. The industry claimed it would compete with other sources, but in the end, the customer pays the same regardless...
@@Shnick in the UK, wind has now got so cheap that it is now the cheapest source of electricity in the uk, and is now forcing all coal and some gas plants out of business
@@danchang9976 But that isn't true. The only reason coal and gas plants close is because they are disadvantaged compared to special treatment that wind gets financially. First if wind energy is being generated then it gets first priority for use (it HAS to be bought by the electric companies) - so in windy weather the gas and coal plants have to 'stand down' and they get no compensation. But if it is so windy that all of it cannot be used then the wind companies get paid even though all the wind isn't used! This puts coal and gas at financial damage. Also what happens when the wind doesn't blow? We just had a week of that in UK (Nov 2020) - wind never got above 5% - it was only gas, coal and nuclear that kept things running, otherwise we have blackouts. Same every day actually it is gas (only) that enables power to ramp up as everyone wakes up in morning,
@@TheChrisEMartin yes, but it also means that consumers get cleaner air to breathe and lower bills as wind is now cheaper than gas and coal. Coal and gas is outdated tech, every utility company knows that and that’s why coal will be gone by 2024 at the latest and gas will follow suit in about 20-30 years. Nuclear provides a base load in our grid, followed by wind and solar. After that gas, biomass and hydro is used and if their is still a demand for more they use coal and move some gas plants over to peak demand scenarios where their output changes depending on volatility. It’s outdated tech, it’s going, don’t defend it it’s gone.
My younger brother has been working on wind turbines for years ,now I know why he is so fit and strong !! Amazing to see one come together !!!
Must be nice to get paid to do a workout instead of paying to do one!
This is very good. I had to stop and check comments for calling parts screws vs. bolts. If I'm wrong so what I'll keep watching
America and here in Canada has huge open spaces in the prairie states and provinces, in the near furniture i see while wind farms being build with hundreds of wind turbines.
People in cape cod have fought off shore wind turbines for years because they don't want it ruining their view. I guess they prefer the air and water to slowly become poisoned. I think wind farms are beautiful. Not the safest thing for birds but evolution will sort them out.
This channel is keeping me entertained and educated in quarantine
How much are THEY paying you to stay home and NOT Work?
Fun video except fore the recap style editing. Hate that.
I just watched the same info from 12 minutes ago, I'm not a toddler, I can retain info for hours sometimes! lol Also, tons of info left out.
How do they keep cool?
What is a typical failure look like?
What does a catastrophic failure look like?
Show how the connect to the grid.
Show how they stop, start, turn.
How do they test the motors prior to shipping?
How do they affect local Eco-systems?
How about a map showing the amount of homes covered by a "typical" year's generation.
Then show amount of space required for turbine-to-home ratio scaled-up. Meaning show space needed to power NYC or London in a typical year. How many, how much space at what cost, etc..?
And how about recycling of old units? How much can be reused?
Always wanted to know how they connect to the grid.
GREAT questions.. we need a video cover jussst this alone
as someone who involved in planning of the Wind Turbine being transport from Local Port to mountain Range, I can honestly say the process is not easy at all!
What kind of engineers are needed in the field ?
@@huesenpaul1394 Geotechnician, Site engineer, Service engineer, field engineer. etc...
@@joex8au04 oh ok. What would say are like all the parts of the wind turbine and like match the subject. For example for the wings you would have to know about physics or something right ?
@@huesenpaul1394 There are many different factors involved in designing such complex systems, several different types of engineers find work in wind energy design. These include aerospace, civil, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers, among others.
Morris CH yeah that’s true I really wanna get into aerospace engineering or mechanical engineering when I go to college. Ok so name the 4 main elements then.
Great and interesting documentary, thanks for uploading!
Useless tech,rubbish.
Thank you.
You've done a great job.
May God bless your work.
03:20 Foundation
10:05 Brande Factory
24:47 Brande Factory
26:20 Direct Drive vs Geared
26:57 Generator
33:13 Aalborg Factory
41:29 Aalborg Factory
0
very nice videos I'm watching your videos from Athens Greece .
"We used to glue the rings together but we stopped doing that for efficiency..." thats reassuring...
The gluing was redundant with the cables running through from top to bottom. Waste of money and man power.
As a native dane with a perfect american accent, the danish accent on my fellow countrymen here always cracks me up.
I like to watch this channel videos. In depth detailed documentary chennel.
So little about the concrete foundation and anchoring! great documentary anyway folks! many thanks for sharing it!
Screws? You mean BOLTS!! And cement sections? No, CONCRETE! Cement is powder.
Very impressive turbines made by very skillfull people and their high tec equipment. 😀 Det er rigtigt flot klaret at i kan lave de kæmpestore vindmøller i Danmark.! 💕
A wind turbine comes to the end of its lifecycle after about 20-25 years. While 99% of a turbine's parts can be re-sold and recycled, the majority of turbine blades are a challenge, so much so that they end up just being buried in a giant 'graveyard of blades' landfill.
In the U.S. over the next four years alone that will be the fate of more than 8,000 blades.
It would seem that as technology grows, our footprint grows exponentially.
Therefore, the BEST way to slow our destructiveness is to physically StOP consuming so much energy. The basics of life use to be rewarding. We've somehow lost our way.
they now recycle some so that will grow until no landfill is needed
The blades are very reminiscent of the A350 sharklet. That's some sexy engineering!
37:00 you see white bracket lying down on the mold fiber
37:23 you see the bracket crushing the fiber glass
13:30 close up shot with intense music had me wheezing, why was that needed?
Because the end of the world is coming and they wanted to convey it with some Hans Zimmer music., LOL
How much energy does it take to make and build these things and at what point does it become cost effective?
I've wondered that myself, and others have asked. But part of the whole wind-power is to reduce burning coal and oil....
@@dougankrum3328 People don't realize is how much coal & oil is required to fabricate, install and maintain them over that 20 years. That same coal & oil would have produced 5 times more electricity than the wind turbine will make in its lifetime.
@@Tadrjbs I'm sure you have a scientific source for that? I'm especially interested in that last statement.
@@SkullRaven Experience source, worked for Cant Name Wind for 10 years. Just to change ONE O-ring on one blade hub takes 300 man hours and 300 gallons of diesel and 180k$. There are 3 on each turbine. The units near the ocean have to be changed more often than inland but turbine output never even comes close to install and maintenance...and 5 times is a conservative figure. It doesn't even include eroded blade changes. Much more environmental harm then is allowed to be exposed to public on top of that.
It will never pay off.
Spinned? The word you are looking for is spun!
Im glad someone else heard that.
I could not stop thinking about it for the rest of the video
Right - and he doesn't know how to pronounce epoxy ("e-poxy"), nor the difference between a screw and bolt. Still, it was very interesting despite the limitations of the script and narrator.
pardon the PUN.
GOOD, THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE THAT CAUGHT THAT...
Thank you. You can also add "unwound" instead of "unraveled". Worst narration EVAR!
Thanks for uploading this amazing documentary.
I love Adblock. I just wish you could fast forward or reverse easier.
Watching TH-cam without Adblock Plus is a waster of time :-)
If you want ad free u-tube videos, just move the little red ball to the end point, then start the video over & whala, the video will think you watched the whole thing & you'll have no ads, simple is stupid!
@@TRPGpilot I watch TH-cam premium no ads on mobile download and see content you will never get to see. If you can't afford TH-cam premium you should rethink your life priorities cause clearly you're living below poverty.
@@dco5055 Yeah I guess so. I will have to increase the rent on my properties so that I can afford TH-cam Premium like you . . .
I guess they use post-tensioning steel cables to secure the tower, instead of bolting it together. It would've been interesting to see how the cables were tensioned and anchored to the foundation.
@niels lund The method to show how the cables are tensioned and fixed down is omitted.
How do the wires going through the tower get tightened? looks like they left that out.
Georgw Marhevka. No they tight those cables with some special tools there so many industrial things made to this purposes I know cuz I been working not for wind turbines but for the electric industry so we use cable s and many things
I agree that it would have been nice to see the cables secured. Look up “post tension concrete” or something similar to get a basic idea of how it would be done.
It's a Similar procedure to tightening cables on suspension Bridges. As long as the cables are all equally tightened. It makes the structure very strong.
Company secrets 😉
I’ve enjoyed every second of this. Thank you
Alman sirketlerine tesekür ediyorum .Dunya insanları Onlar sayesinde daha rahat yaşıyor.
15:15 nice interior & sign design
Lovely and space to work on, well thought out
Been my career for a decade. It's amazing how little people know. Or how much they think they know.
I know some little people. They prefer to be called midgets
Absolutely everything those guys did in creating those blades in one piece was sheer genius. From the vauum sealed mold to getting epoxy into every nook and crany without air pockets. I expect they ran the hardener and epoxy through vacuum chambers before hand to remove all air pockets and the mixing would also need to be done in a vacuum. Iv seen so many experiments using epoxy and vacuum chambers and still they could not get great results as they tried to remove the air after mixing and putting into the mold. And seeing that guy tear fiber glass in half just with a knot. Unbelievable. I work with fiber glass. To see it snap like that. Its comparable to steel yet easily not as strong yet nothing reasonably priced and so light comes close so its a fair comparison in my opinion.
However there are huge landfills all over the place, like the one in Wyoming where the rotor blades are sent after their useful life, because they are not recyclable. Not much of the wind turbine is. The price of wind generated power is extortion, Ontario residents are being raped by their electricity suppliers. Calgary's biggest windfarm is due for replacement as it is too old and it will be headed for the landfills soon before being replaced with more of the same.
O
Yeah let's dump them all in your backyard to recyclable. Every Wind farm and Solar panel fiasco should have to post a $Billion dollar bond for the clean up of these eye sores!
Extremely marvellous .. I liked watching Extreme Engineering for technical knowhow improvement . Thanks a lot in sharing Free Documentary to me .....
Will watch I am sure what comes into my wall.
They are called bolts not screws
Only in your tiny little world
NERDDDDDDDD!!!!
Ignore these other two pleebs, that was the first thing (from many many errors in descriptions) that bugged me too.
Lane Shurtleff if that bugs you, you’re part of the problem.
Zane H If you call them bolts, then thats fine, I normally would too, however, in Europe (and Asia) they call them screws. In some places around the world, the word screw is used as a noun, and bolt is used as a verb, and vice versa in other places. For example: next we bolt it together with these screws.
I repair very large mining equipment and spent years manufacturing it, and the general rule of thumb in our area is that a bolt is used as an
assembly with a nut and washer, while a screw doesn’t use a nut, it is “screwed” into something, however when we deal with our German counterparts, they just call everything with a thread, a screw.
So my original comment still stands: in your little bubble, they’re bolts and everyone who disagrees is wrong, but in the real world, it doesn’t matter.
Q. What are you if you are on an incline plane, wrapped helically around an axis?
9:30 In my part of Europe they are screws if fully threaded and bolts if only partly threaded. Was hard to see but these look to be partly threaded so bolts.
You really would find many of my ideas over the top but logical and simple to understand.
In Construction Simulator game the wind generator is a prized achievement, but is time consuming and difficult.
EXCELLENT documentary.
I'm now up on CURRENT events.
The size, the complexity, and the expense! Amazing.
A magnificent documentary,Thankyou for providing it for a most informative experience.😎🇳🇿
Absolutely fascinating. Loved it. Has anyone calculated the energy to make one of those? How long to pay back the "embodied energy"?
The lastest Wind turbines are Suppose to recoup construction cost and energy in under a year. And then last another 25+ years
They never will recoup all the energy that went into them. Impossible.
@@flexairz you have some information to share on the subject? Or is that just your opinion?
@@johnv341 inflation always seems to fenagle its way into even the deepest of pockets. I cut mine off 😂
@@flexairz It would be interesting to see a cost benefit analysis. Electric in Europe is very expensive, with the exception of France, which uses mainly nuclear power.
Espectacular.. es impresionante como no pueden trabajar con vientos superiores a 6 m/s, cuándo en las zonas dónde se van a instalar es porque es muy ventosa...
BOLTS...... those fasteners are called BOLTS, not "screws".
I know! I thought I was the only one going crazy with guy kept saying screws!
I know that was driving me nuts. Screws to hold that heavy equipment in place. Lol
Stay safe bro
"machine screw"... look that up and wise up...
A machine screw is a screw or bolt with a thread type which accepts nuts (or other types of twisted on locking devises) possessing the same thread dimension. Example : a 6-32 x 1" screw would take a 6-32 nut..... and..... a 1/2-20 x 5" bolt would take a 1/2-20 nut. BOTH of them have "machine screw threads" and can be called machine screws.
When the fastener in question has a shank diameter of 1/4" or larger, it's referred to as a BOLT.
The explanation for the use of the word 'screw' is that in German, the word 'Schraube' means screw and/or bolt and whoever made the translation was not aware of the distinction in English.
Estos documentales me gustan, deverian tradusirlos al español👍
We need thousands more!!!
Look up what happens to wind turbines when they are disassembled. They literally bury the parts in the ground because the parts are nearly impossible to recycle... you may rethink just how green this is..
@@WARHAWKLEADER1
Impossible??
Didn't knew that...
Just like eletric cars fuck up the environment with lithium and sulfuric acid for batteries
@@justicewarrior9187 An electric car battery is 100% recycle-able also look at what oil has done to the ocean and how many wars have been fort over it. Also when you make petrol from oil you need to put cobalt in it to get rid of the sulphur and when you burn that you can't get it back.
I've been so bored that I'm starting to watch documentaries on how a wind turbine is made.. but I mean I'm not complaining they're so cool!
KINDLY ALSO MENTION EACH WIND TURBINE PRICE WITH INSTALLATION.
If you have to ask, you can't afford it...
About 1.3 million dollars per MW of capacity. Most wind turbines are built for 2.5 MW capacity.
The Thor windfarm in Denmark will cost 15,5 billion DKK and have a output of between 800 and 1000 mw, it will probably be around 100 wind turbines, so its around 155 million DKK per wind turbine if the price of the connection to land is divided equally between each wind turbine.
@@HappilyHomicidalHooligan Will you shutttt upppp, maaaan? -Biden
@@valentinewellington6405 I don’t work for you!
This is just amazing! Technology and the human being will power! Amazing!
excellent documentary it has expanded the basic understanding of the complete precise engineering of these structures and build method.
Too many advertisements??? Here is the trick: At beginning, just fast forward (extend the little red dot control) the video and then rewind again - this time without or less advertisements 👍
Donald Duck or just pay a small amount and get TH-cam premium, no ads ever
I was once standing right under a turbine, it was surreal..
Chen Yes me too! It’s almost unreal, and the noise it makes is so eerie.
@The Curious Mind I can - where I live we are not far away from the biggest onshore farm in the UK, where they have both Siemens and Alstom turbines.
You can't hear them at all until you are fairly close, 50 metres or so, is the first thing I will say. There's a hum from the generator and electronics, quite similar to what you hear if you're next to a transformer. You a low pitch "swoosh" every time a blade passes by. Also on these ones they drilled a small whole through 1 blade on each turbine which gives a little whistle - that discourages birds and bats from flying too close. The other noise you might hear is a knocking. That's from the guy trapped inside ;) no what that is the yaw drive. Because the motors are very underpowered for the mass at the top the turbine changes direction very slowly, and that noise is just the yaw gear travelling from tooth to tooth. Hope that helps!
@@danijelhorvatincic9224 Thanks, I'm not in this industry lol. Those wind turbines are just common in my hometown, somewhere in the southeast corner of Shanghai
that's so amazing man discovered the wind energy
Was discovered thousands of years ago
grindupBaker humans that discovered it.
i guess we will never know how the cables get anchored lol
Seems like it's a trade secret
I wanted to see that instead of stacking the segments on top of one another.
*Those cables were used to anchor the 83-meter concrete stacks. For the other steel sections that they added on the top to reach a height of 136 meters, were they also anchored to the concrete sections or just stacked up? I guess they were bolted to each other. Can anyone clarify that, please? Thank you.*
i had totally forgot all about that part
A
thanks so much for this super complete video 👌👍
They’re bolts, not screws
hi tensile blts
Bolts are screws
I said the same thing. Lol
They could be set screws if the thread goes all the way down to the shoulder, they’re only bolts if there is a decent shank
@@lollollollollolrofl Agreed
27:15 "magnets are spinned around the copper" SCIENCE!!!!
Two things were left out: 1) How do they tighten the cables? & 2) How do they get the foam out of the rotor blade?
Magic
@@darinareyacrazyman1505 lol
might be trade secret as commercial companies dont giveaway their propreity tech to their rivals.
Its what I do for a living💙
travel and see What is your Site?
@@danijelhorvatincic9224 i build them from scratch..in north Dakota
That's 4 Hours and 20 Minutes at each station. Definitely a salute to 420.
хороший канал, молодцы
While traveling through Kansas i wondered how they hung the turbine.... now i get this video in my suggestions. Seems like my phone can not only hear me, but read my damn mind too. 🤨🤨🤨🙉🙊🙈🙈
Yeterday I waslooking for someone to tech me the Colombian Cuatro...today I get a guy playing the Cuatro, suggesting I buy some car or other
Apps spy you every second, google, youtube,facebook....
@@William12-m8m VPN!!, no social media. Unless you call TH-cam social media.
Beautiful Engineering so interesting to watch. Someone should explain the difference between a Bolt and a Screw to the narrator!
Wind turbines are bs not reliable i install them here in Texas. 90 percent are stopped right now because of a little snow major power outage no power to oil refineries. Gas prices will be going and piss on Joe Biden he is a corrupt just letting the world know
Three different times they state that the turbine blade is longer than the wing of the Airbus 380. Given most of us have never seen the wing of the Airbus 380, and since the plane is being taken out of service, they might as well say the blade is half as long as the Titanic.
These types of documentary normally use the length of a football field as their preferred SI unit of measurement.
@@rickogden204 Soccer as footabll or NFL as football?
@@xlavahott4547 same here gb
4 hours and 20 minutes to build each stage. Interesting number.
I remember seeing the picture and article about the two engineers who were caught on top of one of these as it caught fire :-( Terrifying.
Yes i remember that. I think one of them jumped to his death and the other burned alive if i remember right. Horrible way to die knowing there is no escape
Yeah they were seimens employees in Denmark. Its recapped in all of seimens training now
@@davidm3maniac201 bs fact btw the man's family that jumped didnt recieve any of his insurance because he committed "suicide"
@@kendallhall4767 not true
The propellers look pretty cool in a huge pile in west Texas.
@24:18 he says 6 screws? I only see 3 bolts.
Impressive
Please put standard measurement in sub titles for those of us that are still in the olden days!! Thanks
3 school buses (or 180,000 laptop computers)(or 821,000 squirrels)
Metric is coming to the US might as well get used to it. It’s a much better measurement system as well
Everything is fantastic, but I would also like to see a documentary about what happens during use or kills birds, how often they work how much energy they produce for how much they sell and then what happens to worn out windmills.
a 2MW turbine on a tall tower like this will have a capacity factor of about 30-35%, so will produce 700kW average output, or 6.13 GWh/yr worth about £200,000/yr worth of electricity (at wholesale prices). They have at least some output about 85% of the time. They can kill birds, and more often bats (because the blade-tips travel at over 100mph), although rates are very low in comparison to other sources of human-induced bird mortality such as cats, cars and buildings (in general - some migratory routes have been deemed unsiutable for wind turbines because putting them there would cause unnaccepetaby-high bird mortality). When they are worn out the tower +foundation is often re-used for a larger, more modern, more efficient turbine: i.e. 'repowered'. Old turbines (and towers) are recycled (except blades, which can be, but mostly aren't currently - I expect that to change due to both technology and regulation.
@@Wookey. Thank you for your comprehensive answer.
37:54 the voice-over is making him sound way more professional than he is lol
Why not try the Harmony VAWT, it retracts in high winds to avoid spinning out of control. 😊
Amazing documentary!
Human engineering. One of the biggest accomplishments of Man-kind
Useless tech.
It is a shame that neither the narrator or the script writer (and the editor responsible) don't know what a screw from a bolt. The installers / builders are using bolts, not screws.
bolts screw in
@@p8ntballer117 Yes, of course. But they are called bolts, not screws.
@@msotil tru dat
Same difference lol
@@nissanboy97 Not really. A screw goes through one object IN to another whilst a bolt goes through BOTH objects and is secured on the other side with a nut.
That being said its a totally trivial point.
EXCELENTE DOCUMENTÁRIO - FORTALEZA - CEARÁ - BRAZIL, 31-08-2020
That Explains it, the most expensive Source of Energy 🤗🤨
And how many people do you think it takes to maintain a thermal or nuclear power station!?
not agree with u, more expensive is a coal\gas plant, nuclear plant. maybe solarplant too.
One of the materials that is used in the manufacture of these magnificent devices is resin. Resin is a byproduct of oil.
Nobody is claiming to wipe out oil use. They are just trying to not burn so much of it
@@cacs99 That's completely false. There's an entire far-left movement that seeks to ban the usage of all fossil fuels, and any industry that supports it. Some are even violent about it!
That dude said "magnets are spinned" at 27:16. Lol
Good Engineering Documentary .Thanks
Blows my mind how us humans are capable of building all this technology
Blows my mind that the life of the blades is only 10-15 years and then the 35 ton 150' blades are left somewhere. How about in your backyard? Eye sore, junk,garbage, forever.
STUNNING
What is not mentioned is how hard it is to recycle the turbine blades, they suffer from stress fatigue over time. Basically, they get buried in special waste dumps just for this purpose.
If they can't be recycled in some way, that is a big negative.
It's definitely a negative, but not as big as you'd think. There's more than enough space for landfills, especially for non-toxic waste. The problem with landfills has been that things rot, producing gas which can cause problems when it seeps up. That's not a problem with turbine blades though. Recycling of composite materials is a big challenge that's not unique to wind turbines. I think switching to carbon composites, rather than fiber glass, will help a lot. It's all just hydrocarbons, so you could just burn it.
Audun Wilhelmsen hahaha... just burn the hydrocarbons, how ironic
madaxe79 How exactly is it ironic? Please explain. I checked, and both carbon fiber and epoxy can be made from biological sources so the whole process can be carbon neutral. But even if you use petroleum.. what’s better? Burning tons and tons every day for energy? Or turn a bit of it into carbon composites, use it for decades and then burn it in a trash burning facility like those in Sweden, that then makes electricity and heats homes in winter? You could also bury it, of course, which is essentially just putting it back where it came from.
Audun Wilhelmsen I’m an engineering consultant, i travel to remote locations and solve problems. I did a job at a coal fired power plant around 3 years ago, and while i was there i learned a lot about the operation. There is virtually zero emissions from a modern coal fired power plant. What comes out of the top is pure water vapour, just hydrogen and oxygen, nothing else. All of the “bad” stuff is captured in the processing and is then used in other area’s, like fertiliser, road paving, brick making etc. there is no pollution. It’s a myth created by the green movement. In older power plants, yes absolutely, but in modern ones, nothing. The news always shows these big cooling towers with vast amounts of “smoke” come out of them, and they claim it’s pollution, when in actual fact, is extremely pure steam, nothing else.
So until there is a way to recycle these turbines in a manner as clean as coal power, and also to manufacture them in a clean manner, then coal power is actually better for the environment. Also, i know you probably believe all the lies about carbon in the atmosphere, but the reality is that it is essential for plant life, and i have been involved in experiments with carbon dioxide enrichment for plant growth, and the experiment clearly increased plant growth significantly by enriching the carbon dioxide content of the air. That being said, there isn’t any carbon released from modern coal plants, it’s all captured used in productive manners.
Have you ever gone to you local garden store and bought potash for your garden? Guess what potash is, it’s the heavy solids leftover from a coal fired power plant...
Also bear in mind that, without burning coal you would have zero steel, or any metal for that matter. If you don’t know how steel is manufactured, i suggest that you do some reading, it is impossible to make steel without burning coal.
Also, no matter how many of these wind turbines you build, they will never create a return on investment. The only way they can ever be viable is with subsidies, and the only way they can be subsidised is with tax. So we would be far better off financially and environmentally, to invest in clean coal power, than wind turbines. The only caveat being that we will eventually run out of coal. And we need all the coal we can get for steel making.
At 45;59 it is said that the 81 meter long blades that are shown to us are 20,000 square meters. I guess the correct number is more likely around 200 square meters.
This is supposed to be A documentary, not a drama, please know the difference.
DREAM JOB WOW THANKS FOR THE VIDEO
nuclear reactor : hold my beer
Great video 😊
How much energy is needed to manufacture these "Wonderful " Machines? And what is the output Vs input ?? And what is the lifespan of these "wonderful Machines" How are the used parts recycled?? And how many birds do they kill??
There is a lot to unpack here but ill do my best. Massive amount of energy is used to manufacture everything from the electrical components on the interiors to the fiberglass blades and steel cans. There is not input to the towers except during construction. Manufactures all build varying output turbines but most fall around 2-4 MW which usually is about 6 million kWh every year (that's one turbine). I personally had done repowers on some of the first turbine installed in Oklahoma back in 1990ish so in practice as long as the steel cans hold structural integrity you could see one standing for many years while updating the interiors(not something most wind farm/park owners do). Classically all the metals are recycled and the electrical components are scrapped as well. Fiberglass cant really be recycled and blades cant be reused considering they are made in sets and balanced specifically for one another(aka if you brake a blade and it cant be fixed by a fiberglass tec. your THROWING AWAY all three blades, they cant be recycled). And as for the birds the numbers are exceptionally low considering. Most migratory birds will literally change their seasonal flight paths to avoid farms/parks.
Hope this sums it up for u
Cheers
@@MrBurtonboy14 Not all bird deaths are equal Wind turbines kill endangered raptors and these deaths are vastly under reported due to monthly vs daily collection of carcasses. Scavengers carry most of the carcasses away from the kill sites before they are inventoried.
@@brucefrykman8295 This is not true. Blades have built in sensors on most models and need to be inspected basically immediately after an impact. Failure to do so could result in catastrophic failure of the blade structure which leads to the entire turbine ripping itself to pieces (roughly between 2.5 and 3.8 million dollars, not including labor). Which means we know exactly when birds hit turbines and we have extremely accurate data on the topic. In regards to not all birds deaths are equal. You are right not all birds deaths are equal but a study done in 2014 shown wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in the US. The same study also shown collisions with power lines in the US numbered 12 to 64 million. These are just the facts do with them what you will.
I seen a wind mill up close and the blades were so big🤯🤯🤯
10:52: "Each turbine has a rating of 7 megawatts per year"... um, no. The turbine has a rating of 7 MW. Stop. Power per unit time does not make any sense.
UNHCORE I came to the comments just for this same reason
@Nader Abdel-Khaliq I'm not saying MW/year is right, but technically, acceleration is m/s^2, so having two units of time in the denominator isn't wrong. You can even have Jerk which is m/s^3
Honestly can you please explain this to me? I’m not seeing the mistake.
Hello, i'm not agree with you, it makes sense, , it's the second derivative of energy.
So in ten years, this turbine will make 70 MW. it's Magic.! better than free Energy.
Good remark however ...
You're right.
I came to the comments for the same reason. A MW is a measure of power and they produce power or energy/time.
7 MW/year = 13j/s/s relates t nothing in the real world.
Perhaps they mean 7MWy/y.
Hola soy de Argentina q,bárbaro tecnológico extraordinario
Wind turbine is expensive toy with low sufficiency . It is social adverts for "greens"
😊 😁 scrap farms...
Funny then why are massive companies investing large amounts into wind. Dont listen to everything you see on the internet
@Vladimir Birukoksukker - hmm.... let's see... Vestas, revenue for 2019 is 12.15 BILLION EUROS, which is over 14,000,000,000 USD (BILLION, son) and they a strictly a manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines.
Fantastic documentary Thank You 🎃.
who else came from a video called “top ten wind turbine fails” and before that, came from “windmill destructed in storm”
😂😂 Yep
Haha how did you know?!
😂😂
Kate Malfoy me
Not me. Before this I was watching a documentary on the declining bird population in America. Somehow it switched me over to this video.
I searched up this video, but before that, I had watched those videos.
Thank you for all your hard work and efforts 🙏 The world thanks you
... for making such an in-disposable mess.