What do you think about wind power vs. the downsides? And if you liked this video, be sure to check out my video "The truth about nuclear fusion power - new breakthroughs": th-cam.com/video/Wc8SJqAPVaM/w-d-xo.html
Undecided with Matt Ferrell I sort of roll my eyes when the discussion devolves into the relative eco-friendliness all the way back to the manufacturering and installation process. EVERYTHING has to be manufactured and installed-- nuclear, solar (and associated batteries), wind, hydro, oil and gas. EVERYTHING has a negative global energy impact. Clearly, burning fossil fuels, every day, to actually produce the energy is the elephant in the room. Can we please stop the focus on the 1% of energy use and keep the focus on the 99%?
It’s important to make it clear that because wind is intermittent and requires 24/7/365 backup by reliable energy (normally fossil fuels), that wind and solar can’t be cost effective. If you build a 300MW wind farm, you also have to build (or keep open) a duplicate backup fossil fuel energy plant to provide energy for the 50%-100% of time wind or solar aren’t working properly. So you now are paying for 2 energy plants vs only 1 before, but all the cost estimates for solar/wind exclude the cost of the mandatory back up plant. This type of “Enron Pro-Forma Accounting” fraud is rampant in the solar/wind area. Having to pay for double the energy plants is the primary reason people are shocked by skyrocketing energy cost where ever solar/wind are added. There are no exception, everywhere solar and wind are installed, energy prices skyrocket for consumers. Solar and wind have to cost more, a lot more.
alliejr You are spot on! So many people view energy as just a “free” gust of wind or ray of sunshine, but that a very superficial understanding. Energy is the entire life cycle process from converting raw matter into reliable and affordable energy that scales, to its disposal when obsolete. When view in their full life cycle context, solar and wind are anything but green or clean...They are dirty and destructive toxic messes.
I would really like to see your take on vertical Turbines, Wind and Water(like Turbulent). I heard Vertical Windturbines are more Birdfriendly and take up less space, because the blades are not sticking out. Some claim they are even more efficient is that true?
Steve Fortuna You would IF batteries could store enough to meet base-load, avg hourly demand, peak and peak hourly demand plus days of storage, but that’s not possible given today’s current tech snd cost. Likely to change in future, but as it stands today, solar and wind only add cost and instability to grid.
Tell that to democrats! I still prefer a mix of solar and natural gas peaker plants with nuclear. This Country is too large with too many climates to effectively use wind and solar alone. Democrats will figure a way to tax the heck out of this as well.
I live in an area where a "wind farm" sprang up. Initially, it wasn't bad, other than the eyesore it created. It ruined the view of the countryside, day and night. Just very recently, a Second Phase was started, (which we were not told of, and by the time it was made public, it was finalized where the placement of the new turbines were going. Effectively, we were locked out of the process) and is nearly complete. With that Second Phase, 2 wind turbines were placed very, very close to my home (one being about 3/10's of a mile away, the other about 1/2 mile away). Literally just 4 days ago, they got them powered up, running. When they are in operation, it sounds like a jet flying high overhead in the sky, but in the same place without moving. It produces a constant sound from the blade tips passing through the air. It is very, very annoying. I can see why people complain about them.
@@diyr791 ... Yes, I have. Ironically, very shortly after I posted my comment on here, a wind turbine nearly 3 miles away from my residence caught fire. It was quite the spectacle around here, being it's a small community. One blade fell off. The fire eventually went out. And, as I write this comment today, that burnt out husk of the turbine is still standing. Nothing has been done to remove it. So, now we have an additional eyesore.
@@dlopester13 Your exactly right Diego, a farm went in around me and the closest one is 3100 ft away. The view and picturesque setting of the old family farm is ruined, the noise is loud enough i can hear it in the house. our choice to move back to farm 10 years ago has now become a huge mistake in the last 3 years.
I know how you feel, well almost anyway. I'm surrounded by them now too. Even though these look like they're right over my property line, they're at least 3/4 of a mile away and most are further than that. I can't imagine them being any closer like yours are. Still, it sounds like there's heavy traffic on a non-existent highway about a mile away. That swoosh, swoosh, swoosh drives me nuts too. No more quiet evenings outside. At night it's rows of flashing red lights literally for miles in every direction. I can't wait to see what it has done to my property value now that I want to move away from my life long home (almost 60 years)!
@@30dayride67 20 year lifespan is what these are too be. If i live that long i can enjoy watching them come down. Disheartening at the least... And what brought them into the area was greedy government money hungry farmers. Thats a whole nother rant but farmers in my area r nowhere near needing assistants yet they have people hired to seek out grants, programs and assistants available to them and abuse the tax payer money.
@@JimP226 @witold SzafaRyn has it exactly. On that brutal winter week, when your solar panels are producing zero, it's -20 and your grandma really, really needs her heat to work, you might as well start dividing up her assets because they're going to have to shut the wind turbines down.
It's rare to shut it down because it's too cold or hot. You'd have to have very strong gusts over 25m/sec. The irony is that if there's a power outtage they won't work, they need power to get started.
I have a PhD in wind energy, and have worked in the industry the last decade, designing wind turbine blades and other systems for major wind turbine manufacturers. Wind turbines are usually designed to operate in a temperature range of minus 20 to plus 40 degrees. Survival temperatures are usually minus 30 to plus 50. I worked on a turbine designed for northern Sweden where it gets very cold, and in situations like that the customer will request a special low-temperature package. So the operating temperature for that project was minus 30 and the survival temperature even lower. Wind turbines do stop operating and turn their blades out of the wind in gale-force winds. You have that part correct. Another commenter replying to this comment said they need electricity supply to start up and that is not true. The blades are rotated so that they can catch the wind when they need to start up in low wind speeds. There is some electricity supply for auxiliary equipment like the control cabinets or heating in cold climates, and that generally comes from the grid. But if there is a power outage separating the turbines from the grid, then that would mean that the electricity produced by the turbine would have nowhere to go and of course then they couldn't operate anyway.
As someone whose home has just been surrounded by a wind farm, they suck way more than those who don't live by them realize. I also went back to college for environmental sciences because I very much care about the environment, so I'm not just being crabby here. I've lived in this area nearly 60 years now. We have tons of migratory birds that pass through our numerous ponds and marshes. I guess time will tell if they manage getting past these monstrosities with whirling blades moving at around 200 mph. I know we usually have Bald Eagles, but I haven't seen a single one since the turbines went up this fall. I've loved the quiet of the night here all of these years. The masses of stars in the sky were beautiful. Now I close the drapes to stop seeing the hundreds of red flashing lights that surround my property from every direction. I hate the thought of having to keep my windows closed on beautiful spring evenings to get the sounds of the motors and the swoosh of the blades out of my head. The gravel roads are a mess of deep tire tracks and washboards. The massive power lines, poles, transformers by the dozens and of course a new power station. There will be quieter days at times when the winds are silent, but they don't tend to build these turbines in places where there are too many windless days. The turbines will also shut down in high winds which seems ironic. I can say with 100% certainty that the recorded number of birds these things kill won't come close to reality as nature's cleanup crews will leave little to no trace of the bodies by the time the sun comes up the next morning. What have I learned about this green movement? Most people (including all political parties) want to improve our impact on the environment. Unfortunately, we are being scammed in order for certain groups to reap huge financial gains and/or power. We know there are so many cost-effective ways that are proven to work to clean up our environment. We have huge improvements coming for greener and more efficient solar and wind energy as well as battery technologies. There are also other energy sources being explored. The problem is that certain groups have invested heavily in what we have available today and they want to force us to buy it before better options replace it. The powers that be don't want to implement any of the cost effective, proven methods and I truly believe it is because they don't enrich or empower the right people. Some of the things these billionaires like Mr Gates are doing are NOT good at all. They are using chemicals to block out the sun which ends up contaminating our water and soil, but our government isn't interested in stopping him. The assault on livestock production is ridiculous. Far more energy and chemicals are used in growing plants. There are some changes that would be beneficial to make in our raising of livestock, but eating meat is not the enemy of the environment. Livestock can destroy land or it can add great benefit to the land depending on how it is managed and the land itself.
There is no doubt that there are downsides to wind turbines, especially if they are sited in the wrong places that bring them into conflict with migratory bird routes and or existing land uses/iconic locations. I have my doubts about the life cycle costs of offshore wind farms and they are not free from environmental impacts either. All of that said, we need to get our energy from somewhere and I would argue that wind turbine technology can be part of that solution, BUT we need to be really clear on the impacts of where they are located and be very particular about where they are permitted to be installed.
REALLY ,LOL . Nuclear Decommissioning Authority ownership On 1 April 2005 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) became the owner of the site, with the UKAEA remaining as operator. Decommissioning of Dounreay was initially planned to bring the site to an interim care and surveillance state by 2036, and as a brownfield site by 2336, at a total cost of £2.9 billion.[24] A new company called Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) was formed as a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to handle the decommissioning process. By May 2008, decommissioning cost estimates had been revised. Removal of all waste from the site was expected to take until the late 2070s to complete and the end-point of the project was scheduled for 2300.[25] Apart from decommissioning the reactors, reprocessing plant, and associated facilities, there were five main environmental issues to be dealt with: A 65-metre (213 ft) deep shaft used for intermediate level nuclear waste disposal was contaminating groundwater, and would be threatened by coastal erosion in about 300 years time. The shaft was never designed as a waste depository, but was used as such on a very ad-hoc and poorly monitored basis, without reliable waste disposal records being kept. It was originally used to construct a tunnel for the sea discharge pipe. Later use of the shaft as a convenient waste depository had resulted in one hydrogen gas explosion[26] caused by sodium and potassium wastes reacting with water. At one time it was normal for workers to fire rifles into the shaft to sink polythene bags floating on water.[27] Irradiated nuclear fuel particles on the seabed near the plant,[5] estimated to be about several hundreds of thousands in number,[28] caused by old fuel rod fragments being pumped into the sea.[5] The beach had been closed since 1983 due to this.[5] In 2008, a clean-up project using Geiger counter-fitted robot submarines was planned to search out and retrieve each particle individually.[5] Particles were still being washed ashore at Sandside Bay beach and one particle at a popular tourist beach at Dunnet in 2006.[29] In 2012, a two million becquerel particle was found at Sandside beach, twice as radioactive as any particle previously found.[30] 18,000 cubic metres (640,000 cu ft) of radiologically contaminated land, and 28,000 cubic metres (990,000 cu ft) of chemically contaminated land. 1,350 cubic metres (48,000 cu ft) of high and medium active liquors and 2,550 cubic metres (90,000 cu ft) of unconditioned intermediate level nuclear waste in store. 1,500 metric tons (1,500 long tons) of sodium, of which 900 metric tons (890 long tons) are radioactively contaminated from the Prototype Fast Reactor. Historically, much of Dounreay's nuclear waste management was poor. On 18 September 2006, Norman Harrison, acting chief operating officer, predicted that more problems will be encountered from old practices at the site as the decommissioning effort continues. Some parts of the plant are being entered for the first time in 50 years.[31] In 2007 UKAEA pleaded guilty to four charges under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 relating to activities between 1963 and 1984, one of disposing of radioactive waste at a landfill site at the plant between 1963 and 1975, and three of illegally dumping radioactive waste and releasing nuclear fuel particles into the sea,[32][33] resulting in a fine of £140,000.[34] In 2007 a new decommissioning plan was agreed, with a schedule of 25 years and a cost of £2.9 billion, a year later revised to 17 years at a cost of £2.6 billion.[23] Due to the uranium and plutonium held at the site, it is considered a security risk and there is a high police presence.[5] The fuel elements, known as "exotics", are to be removed to Sellafield for reprocessing, starting in 2014 or 2015.[35][out of date] In 2013 the detail design of the major project to decommission the intermediate level waste shaft was completed, and work was to begin later in the year. The work would include the recovery and packaging of over 1,500 tonnes of radioactive waste.[36] As of 2013, the "interim end state" planned date had been brought forward to 2022-2025.[37] In March 2014 firefighters extinguished a small fire in an area used to store low-level nuclear waste.[38] PFR Fire On 7 October 2014 a fire on the PFR site led to a "release of radioactivity via an unauthorised route". The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) concluded that "procedural non-compliances and behavioural practices" led to the fire, and served an improvement notice on Dounreay Site Restoration Limited.[39][40] In 2015 decommissioning staff expressed a lack of confidence in management at the plant and fear for their safety.[41] In 2016 the task of dismantling the PFR core commenced.[42] Plans were also announced to move about 700 kg (1,500 lb) of waste Highly Enriched Uranium to the United States.[43][44] On 7 June 2019, there was a low-level radioactive contamination incident which led to the evacuation of the site. A DSRL spokesman said: "There was no risk to members of the public, no increased risk to the workforce and no release to the environment".[45] On 23 December 2019, the NDA announced completion of the transfer of all plutonium from Dounreay to Sellafield (the centre of excellence for plutonium management) where all significant UK stocks of this material are now held.[46] On 20 August 2020 a new date for the site to become available for other uses was announced of 2333, as part of a new draft strategy for reclaimation.[47] Framework contracts In April 2019, Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) awarded six framework contracts for decommissioning services at Dounreay. The total value of these contracts is estimated to be £400 million.[ NUCLEAR IS THE WAY to go lololololololololol
@@caelachyt Expensive to Build. Despite being relatively inexpensive to operate, nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build-and the cost keeps rising. ... Accidents. ... Produces Radioactive Waste. ... Impact on the Environment. ... Security Threat. ... Limited Fuel Supply.
Nonsensical.... wind turbines have a huge carbon foot print along with being made of carbon and oil products. It’s damaging to the environment, Wild life habitat, kills me grating birds, butterfly’s, and bats. It’s more costly to maintain , build, and produce electricity than any hydro, coal, or natural gas power plant...outrageously more expensive. Wind, solar, and the batteries are toxic and the natural minerals needed to be minded is a disaster for the natural habitat and environment. Besides the fact...it’s unreliable and has only a small capacity to create electricity. It’s insanity!
@Leon Wilcox He’s pointing out where renwables are lacking. Such a wussy for not acknowledging the problems we currently experience with renewables. They’re not some solution you can slap on and forget when dealing with climate change. There are no solutions just setbacks. You choose the setbacks you can deal with.
@Leon Wilcox Wow, crazy, people are allowed to LIGITIMATELY criticize something. Nothing should be immune. One day you will grow up and learn to actually communicate with people that have different views than you. I hope so at least.
@@CarriUSA You are right in some points, but not all. Wind turbines have a very competitive Levelized Cost of Energy (embracing all costs and profits) and, of course, it makes sense economically to invest in them when the natural resource is available. Think about it, investors have been involved in it even before it was cool. They will not simply lose money, because they are vegan lefties. About wildlife and noise problems, there are already solutions for them. Also, there are many countries in the world that managed to balance their grid with renewables and non-renewables. The real challenge is indeed to find out what to do with materials after replacing them and that is what companies are trying to work around right now. It is a very young technology and there is no reason not to expect that solutions for its current problems will be found in the near future.
@John M. That lack of decommissioning is related to legislation that needs to be updated, but the lawmakers are slower than the technology. And that is everywhere, but mainly on newer or coming technologies. It has already been improved and will continue to be. By balance the grid, I meant that the countries diversify the energy market, demanding energy from more expensive, but more stable sources when, for example, the wind drops or the sun goes down. It is way cheaper and the benchmark all around the developed world, having nothing to do with outages, which usually relate to the fact that the government was not be able to catch an increasing demand for energy. About subsidies, the government may subsidize flourishing markets like wind or even still key ones like fossil fuels. And about batteries, yeah that is real, but it is a known issue after the whole digitalization. The rare minerals are in all our telecommunication, computers, smartphones, everywhere. For wind turbines, there are many solutions that are already at work, at the top of my head I remember storage as hydro and hydrogen-source power. th-cam.com/video/7qGZlBXcEeg/w-d-xo.html www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
You forgot to mention the amount of gear oil and grease that the gearboxes and bearings require . They need regular oil changes and maintenance just like any other mechanical apparatus.
And Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), the most potent greenhouse gas that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has evaluated with a global warming potential of 23,900[28] times that of CO2 when compared over a 100-year period.
the maintenance provides jobs. large gear box oil is usually contaminated by condensation water gets in the gear lube. but as with oil pump gear boxes proper vents cut down on that. also the gear lube can be treated by heating past the boiling point of water the evaporate the water away. that heat isn't enough to harm the gear grease
Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year; with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil.
Just wanted to tell you that I appreciate you giving BOTH the negatives and positives of this method of energy production. Fair and balanced on this overly politicized topic is rare to find.
Over 500 gallons of oil in each of them. Blades are being buried. Concrete 30' deep only going to be removed to 4' when they're done. They're ruining Iowa's soil. They don't restore it. It's criminal. They cause wind turbine illnesses. A blind kid could feel when they came within range. If you're for controlling CO2 (which does not determine climate) then you should know that concrete is a *huge* emitter of CO2.
Being subsidized doesn't make windmills affordable or cost effective as presented. Huge amounts of money are being made by companies that are being propped up by our tax dollars. If they were cost effective they wouldn't need government subsidies.
I worked on a coal mine. Each truck consumed about 15,000 liters of diesel a DAY. We moved dirt to get to coal. Drilling, Blasting, draglines, dump trucks, wash plants, trains, shipping, road trains, burning. If wind turbines are more efficient then this process from start to finish. I’m all for it. People talk about the impact a turbine has on the environment. This doesn’t come CLOSE to the destruction I was part of to mine coal. Killing birds has NOTHING on what we did to keep your lights on at night with coal.
I absolutely agree, thanks for sharing your experience. The amount of birds that smack into buildings or get killed by cats is insanely larger if compared to the harm turbines make. Like 10000 times larger. Same goes for many other "problems" mentioned in the video. Common people don't realize these projects have a massive scale and, therefore, even if numbers look big, they may not be so big when compared to other energy production technologies.
@@francesco5254 100000%. We won’t even talk about what happens when it rains, and we had to pump pit water into the “flowing creeks”. I’m now in aviation (another fuel guzzling job) and fly over the Australian landscape. I’ll be night across nsw/qld flying with guys who come from overseas and they question. What are all these unmarked cities, they are on no charts or maps?…. They are not cities. They are endless coal mines. This doesn’t cover the gas mines, the underground mines etc. There’s 47 years of known oil reserves left. There’s a reason why countries like America who have oil, are importing it while it’s cheap. We import 100% of our oil. I guess when it gets prohibitively expensive that’s our kids problem. A semi intelligent person would use cheaper resources now to set ourselves up for the future. The longer we leave it the more prohibitively expensive it will get. Seeing a turbine on my farm, would make me incredibly happy to know I’m not propelling coal indefinitely. I would also sleep better knowing I’m helping move us away from consumable resources. Perhaps the “burden” of seeing mines needs to benefit everyone - ie, you pay the land holder, but if your “view” is affected, you get free electricity for life. I see their argument, but these guys will be dead in 20 years. What legacy are they leaving behind by sticking their heads in the sand. Our kids kids will be horrified that we burnt petrol to go to the gym to exercise 4 times a week. We WILL be known as the most privileged, entitled, wasteful generation that’s been known to human history. All of this is fruitless anyway. If a war breaks out. We can’t mine coal without diesel, we can’t farm, and we certainly can’t produce food, transport and store it….. why would we want to shield our country from oil dependence while we can….. 🤷🏼♂️
As one of the owners of a 106 turbine wind farm I worked on they have a 20 year payback. The main reason they built them was for the tax breaks. The ones i worked on were 1.5 MW and cost 1.5 million bucks a piece. Keep in mind also that if the grid goes down they shut down. The sub Sonics from blades is not pleasant. The fiber glass blades are not reclaimed. And they are not simple to work on. Try working on them. I have and don’t like it.
Without the government offering massive rebates the day they go online no company would invest money into wind power. It's not really green anymore. The original generators lasted longer and need less maintenance. Now we are mass produced the parts and the quality and longevity of the parts has been thrown out with the bathwater
@@kitemanmusic I live about 3 miles from the Wild Horse Mountain Wind Farm in Oklahoma. In the year that we have lived here they have replaced 5 sets of blades and the wind farm has only been in operation since 2018. They also only spin about 8-10 hours a day, bad placement maybe? At the moment there are 5 out of the 29 turbines that never spin, I assume they are out of commission. As much as I don't like to look at them during the day they are worse at night because of the miles long string of red beacon lights that flash about every 15 seconds in unison. I agree that we need to be working towards alternative energy but, it just hard for me to believe that wind is the answer.
@@kitemanmusic Most farms are built onshore to run for 25 years. At that stage they could be retrofitted with new turbine gearboxes and blades. Blades re regularly sanded down to cut dents and debris strikes as well as airborne damage such are the forces they absorb or they can be left running at a lower generation efficiency and lower profit. 20 years is the warranty contract
Also, check out some of the stories of decommissioned wind turbine blades. They just cut 'em up and bury them. And they take an enormous amount of land to do so.
We must always keep in mind that while the source of energy is renewable, the infrastructure is not. When renewable energy can completely power our grid all the time and also we can build renewable infrastructure without fossil fuels then we'll mostly be using nuclear power. That's the reality.
Obligatory nuclear energy comment. Very little land use, reuse of nuclear materials, Onagawa, there's a reason France is closer in hitting their emission reduction targets than Germany, etc.
"Very little land use" is only accurate for the actual power stations. The Uranium mining for the French power stations makes a large portion of Mali uninhabitable, especially due to it's excessive use of fresh water. This is the main reason why the French Army is "helping" the Mali government against the "terrorist uprising" in their country, since the "terrorists" would prefer to use their own country to raise cattle and grow food instead of mining and exporting Uranium which only helps the upper class in the capitol. And even in France itself the power stations have a very large impact on the fresh-water situation, and the health of the river fauna populations, since these stations require extreme amounts of cooling water.
"The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant was the *closest* nuclear power plant to the epicenter of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, *less than half the distance of the stricken Fukushima I power plant* ... *All safety systems functioned as designed, the reactors automatically shut down without damage, and no reactor damage occurred* ... Following the tsunami, two to three hundred residents of the town who lost their homes to the tsunami took refuge in the Onagawa nuclear plant's gymnasium, as the reactor complex was the only safe area in the vicinity to evacuate to."
@@rcole1175 Almost all of it is contaminated and needs to be transported to nuclear waste repositories. Taking down the reactor is almost as expensive as building it up in the first place. And you can't really re-use the building for anything, since everything you would do in it would have to follow the same strict nuclear safety rules than operating the power plant does, and that makes every activity 10 times as expensive as it would have to be normally.
1. Hybrid power plants (using both wind and solar) 2. More offshore than onshore winf turbines 3. Coloring the wind blades so as to avoid bird strikes. 4. Finding ways to reduce the use of diesel or petrol in construction and installation of wind farms. Inr way can be using wind turbines or solar panels for constructing newer turbines and/or panels. 5. Pyrolysis is one way to reduce landfilling. The easiest manner is the use of wind turbines in cement production as well as road construction. Their are claims being made now that we have found ways to profitably extract resins from wind turbines in an electricity positive manner.
Here we are in Texas where 35% of the grid is wind and it’s only supplying 7% of the energy needed leading to blackouts. Solar is providing 3%. It’s not reliable at all and leads to consumers having to make sacrifices
I was a tourist in the States in 1983 and came across a disused wind turbine farm in the middle of California. My host told me it was too expensive to demolish so it hadn’t been demolished yet.
I was toured through that area or one similar, it was incredible and beyond belief that such things were allowed, just a disgraceful eyesore. I do wonder if these really big new machines will suffer a similar fate as they require massive infrastructure and machines to build, they will need all of that and more to dismantle and dispose of. Will that in turn simply lead to an abandon in place mentality like Gen I turbines you describe.
@Sussell Your friend was partially right ..teachers unions and other invested in building these and getting large tax breaks.. after they were no longer profitable to run which was in some cases less than 10 yrs they were abandoned by their owners leaving the tax payer with the bill for removing them ...as you have seen removing them is not easy and if you even tried to remove the concrete base which is too small to be reused then the carbon footprint would be = to a small war ...as usual it's a lose lose for the taxpayer...we paid for those tax breaks we paid for the elec produced and we will be paying for the removal and disposal to landfills
The concrete pads alone are typically 10-20 feet thick and 60 feet in diameter. Removing that would be incredibly expensive. So I bet in 20-30 years there's going to be a lot of giant concrete circles left in the environment.
@@MegaRyan123456 Not a lot that I'm aware of, most governments require power station sites to be returned to a clean site at end of life. California's derelict wind turbines seem to be an outlier in this regard.
the world economic forum, and the UN think its "bad for the enviroment" wonder what getting rid of farming and grazing would do to food supplies LOL /s they basically want world famine.
@C7 Racehead Complex indeed--in Texas you have the issue where forests of mesquite and juniper have taken over vast swathes of land. They are very hardy trees, with the unfortunate affect of also lowering the water table and rendering a lot of land extremely difficult to use for any purpose.
Farming and grazing is great depending on how it is done. But it ain't gonna solve the energy crisis without people starving so that others can have bio-fuel in their cars.
Apparently the turbines are producing 'the brown-note'. The vibrations that people were complaining about in this report are causing indigestion and diarrhea in grazing animals, resulting in a general weakness that makes the animals uninterested in breeding. Farmers have been experiencing similar symptoms, to the point that they've had to move away from the turbines. So, realistically, the land isn't usable for farming or grazing, deepening the sense of buyer's remorse the farmers and ranchers are feeling - and this is after the 2 years they couldn't use that land while the turbine was being built.
Do a video on what is actually used to make each wind tower work also cost of installing and at what point the wind tower actually starts off setting the cost of the job!
Search for LCOE, levelized cost of energy. You'll find that coal and nuclear are now double the cost of wind or solar. The first two are already going away just from economic forces.
@@pcproffy Very true. And cost for nuclear does not include cost for 240,000 years of waste disposal.None has been dispose do for the 75 years of commercial nuclear energy production.
Sadly in all wind farms when the carbon cost of manufacturing, instaling the mills and their infrastructure is far greater than any CO2 offset by their power generation in their 30 year life. California has become a windmill junkyard. The environmental cost has been enormas, and after billion they still have brown-outs.
And now (2022-2023) apparently insurance underwriters who write insurance policies for wind farms are seeing massive amounts of claims because the numbers of wind turbines failing is on the rise.
I’m from germany and PLEASE do take us as a negative example! Keep your nuclear energy, build new, 3rd generation reactors that can use up nuclear waste and reduce its radioactivity from tens of thousands of years to a couple of hundreds. Keep them until fission reactors are feasible and sure... build some wind turbines, support solar roofs and hydrogen generation from excess capacity, but don’t plaster your countryside in wind turbines that are killing off wildlife and reducing quality of life through their rhythmic pressure waves that are shaking up buildings! We’re now paying the highest energy prices in the world, save for a few island nations. It is driving away our industry, throttling digital development and EV flourishing. Our grid is more unstable than ever, leaving factories with blackouts and all that for a ‘green’ illusion!
Your in trouble windmills and solar panels don't work ask Texas but if anyone figures out how to build an battery efficient enough and large enough to power a small city then you will be getting somewhere until then you need a traditional power grid
@@donturner9510 the reason the ones in Texas didn’t work is because they were never designed to be in that cold. Wind power isn’t reserved for warm places. You gotta remember that storms like that are extremely rare.
Nobody thinks that. But the amount of material needed to produce a MW of coal or gas is a fraction of the same amount of material needed to build a MW of wind. And it’s more reliable, too.
@@M0rmagil If you consider the actual footprint and include mountain top removal or open pot mining the equation starts to change. When you add the rail needed to move the coal it has swing even further. A powerplants footprint must include the energy source. Every part of the energy supply. Wind turbine can be recycled including the blades. Every part of the turbine is 100% recyclable. But the real issue is the amount of fuel needed to power a coal plant. If that is ignored then the equation is invalid.
@@andrewday3206 Go a day without your car, bus, or subway, don't eat all day, no water, no internet, no TV, no phone, no emergency services with a blanket and hot chocolate. Understand the things you hate so much before you criticize them.
Turbine blades as cheap housing materials, green bike and foot bridges, noise barriers on freeways... I’m sure we can think of something other than landfill. Great video 👍
@@UndecidedMF makes me think of the bill and Melinda gates foundation type of stuff, or those concrete coated tends in a bag that are filled with water and inflated to make quick structures in third world countries.
None of those things are limited to wind power. Every form of energy deals with those factors. You think they make nuclear reactors out of recycled materials? Wind is still our best option that leaves the least amount of destruction in it's wake.
@@mikegilyeat3213 Of course the aren't as hyped. They've had their day. And older types of power plants got plenty of government assistance when they were getting started too.
@@michaeldougherty6036 Except that for a given volume of materials, nuclear energy produces hundreds, possibly thousands of times more units of energy.
The issue is much more complex than you understand. Wind farms are essentially fuel reduction devices for gas power stations. The cost of integrating them into a grid is what matters, not the cost of the turbine itself. Without a power source capable of ramping up when wind ramps down, wind turbines have zero value. Nuclear is the only hope of decarbonizing our grids. Germany and France are real world test cases for that.
Nice job, skip over the bit when they are manufactured! They use so much resources to be made they can never pay for themselves, and when they are decommissioned the blades can't be recycled efficiently so they are buried. Real Green, ya right.
Several hundreds of them here locally. Years ago while in between jobs I took a fence building job. One of the many we built was for a lady out in the country. She was a secretary for a bigwig with the local wind farm company. While talking with her she said she had ask him if all of it was worth it. He said he didn't give a damn if they ever produced a single KW. Why? Because each tower was a million dollars a year in green credits they can sell to other companies. My thoughts about these local ones is this. It is over 2.5 million dollars each to build these here. That money is largely on my tax dollars as the company building these wind farms is highly subsidies. Why is any electricity produced by them not free then to tax payers? Doing the math on over 200 of them nearby we could burn dollar bills and make just as much electricity. A limited life span of these also makes me wonder the sense of them. Ever watch the vids of when these things breakdown and come flying apart? The pieces that come crashing down would easily destroy anything in their path. These things look good on paper and quell the tree hugging society but much like this vid points out if you take all things into consideration the concept needs a bit of rethinking much like nuclear power plants have undergone.
@Peter Breis yes and the ever growing giant lake of toxic waste growing in china. As long as you line the right pockets everyone, or at least those who could make ir an issue, will look the other way. Sometimes I wonder if the mafia of the 20's just went into politics and big business instead. That is exactly how twisted things have become.
I used to deliver cabins and containers onto wind turbine farms and was told on more than one occasion they never pay for themselves, as each full turn off the blade they get six pence, at that price they take fifty years to pay for themselves, but the turbines only last a max thirty to forty years.
Thats going to be highly varied based upon Power Purchase Agreements between the wind farm and the utility company. Some parts of the country (USA) have a wholesale PPA around $20/MWH and others have a PPA of $150/MWH, it depends of the demand for power. New construction in the USA is almost exclusively greater than 2MW per turbine (there are probably some outliers around the 1.5MW range). Let's say average PPA is $30/MWH and do some math. The cost of a turbine varies based on too many factors to account for in a YT comment, let's call it an even 2mil for tower+construction. $30×2MW×24HR=$1440/Day $1440×365=$525,600 $525,600×60%=$315,360/year (60% is for the average capacity factor, wind isn't always blowing 100%) $2,000,000÷$315,360=6.3 years to full payoff. There are labor and maintenance costs to factor in as well but in the scheme of things they are negligible, for the sake of fairness I'll tack on an extra 0.7 years until complete payoff. Normal life expectancy is around 20 years until repower. During a repower the company will replace the major components (generator, gearbox, main bearing, etc) and turn them loose for another 20 years of operation. If I could get 13 years of almost guaranteed profit for only 7 years of payment I would take it! All this is without government assistance/tax credits, thats a whole can of worms in itself... I hope putting some numbers to the mystery helped clarify things a little bit. Long story short, wind farms (at least in the USA) are generally profitable after a few years of operation.
You didn't even touch on the biggest issue associated with wind and solar...energy storage. When you include the cost of storage wind and solar are no longer competitive.
Nuclear is the most efficient and with SMR's coming into production in the next 10 years I see more countries moving this way to decrease their carbon emissions.
Ten years ago Fukushima had a melt down and the rods are still burning a hole in the ground. Gov't used to pump the contaminated ground water into holding tanks but ran out of real estate to hold it all. So now its getting released into the ocean.
@@maxmackinlay618 ...That radioactive material came from the earth in the first place. In order to use it as a fuel it needed to be refined [concentrated & purified] but it was in the ground to begin with. The ocean will dilute it to the point where it is no longer harmful, even if sensitive instruments might still detect it. Much, much more radioactive material was dumped into the Pacific Ocean by bomb tests performed by the USA, Britain, France & others in the 1950s. The Fukushima disaster was a predictable consequence of bad design and poor management plus the unfortunate occurrence of a big nearby earthquake that was bound to happen someday. The fatalities were mainly the result of flooding by the tsunami & badly executed evacuations, not the meltdown[s]. Note that molten salt reactors cannot melt down - the fuel is already molten and is properly contained in its liquid state. Zero explosion risk. Solid-fuel reactors are truly dangerous when things go wrong - IMSRs are walk-away safe if designed properly.
@@jrb_sland5066 Yeah but the guy you're speaking to thinks there is NO radioactivity on the planet other than bombs and reactors, so you can't explain to him that radioactive stuff is absolutely fine when spread around. Just like a human iirc is at 8 kilobecquerel, now a pile of humans would generate a half noticeable activity but other than that no one gives a f*** about human body radioactivity.
Crude oil comes from the earth. Doesn't mean you can let it flow unchecked into the ocean. BP spent millions containing the Gulf of Mexico leak. Japan cant even send a robot to fix their mess, the radiation will kill it. They know its a huge problem, with zero solution that will continue for eternity. Countries like communist China embrace nuclear power because they are unaccountable for any problems that arise.
The life-span of wind turbines is proving to be less than expected. Location and the elements they are exposed to in certain locations are a big factor. They last about 20 to 25 years. That's it. Can you imagine building a fossil fuel power plant and then tearing it down in 20 or 25 years to build an entire new plant to replace it? Of course not. What gets done with the blades when they have deteriorated beyond use? How much fossil fuels is used to build and construct the turbines? A LOT of fossil fuels used to transport, destroy, and burn the blades. There are a lot of "inconvenient truths" you need to acknowledge.
I am beginning to think the left doesn't want an answer to clean energy. Using this much land mass to gain single digit power solutions is just stupid, scars the natural landscape and diminishes future practical use of land resources.
The problem with going for nuclear is that people's irrational fear affects the discussion on the topic. We need a good pitch to sell the idea of nuclear power.
Wind turbines are killing migratory birds by the tens of thousands. I used to work for a state and my work involved rural property access. In 41 1/2 years the only property I could not get access to under any circumstances was an Appalachian ridge wind farm. Legally they had to let me in, but the policy was not to push. I am fairly certain they hadn’t cleaned up the dead birds.
"Cost are coming down all them time with many governments now offering more incentives to encourage more uptick." If you are referring to the incentives being the reason why they are "cheaper", then this statement would not be correct. The government just subsidizes some of the cost of the wind turbines, this does not make them cheaper is it just that an enterprise has to pay less to install them. The rest of the cost is still there but is covered by the government. I know it is a nagging statement but it is important that to understand, that just because somebody else covers part of the cost of something, that this would in turn make it "cheaper". Imagine if you want to buy a bun for 0.50 Cents and I give you 0.25 Cent. That does not mean the bun is "cheaper", somebody else just covered 50% of cost so it "appears cheaper". Ultimately prices will only really get lower when the market would increase production while demand stays about the same or does not grow in the same manner as production does.
@@BobG-eh5fc yes, I assume that everybody knows governments money = money from taxes for the most part. Over here in Germany it is even worse First it is subsidized thus effectively being pay for buy with taxes. Second because of the increased cost of operation, cost for electricity in Germany is the highest of all the EU countries (according to some statistic even the highest world wide). Third Germany actually has to pay other countries to take the overproduces electricity when there is too much energy generated by wind (and solar) to not damage the power grid. So all in all Germany loses money by switching to renewable. So this whole things is a just a huge cost for all German citizen. There are some German parties that are against subsidizing renewable and also against shutting down working nuclear plants. But those parties (FDP, AFD) are not very popular (FDP ~ 5-6%, AFD ~ 10-15% depending on the polls).
I'm with you on alternative energy sources. As soon as you introduce climate change into the discussion you have lost me. Climate Change as it is currently embodied is just globalist socialism. Let renewable energy source make their way via the free market. The results will be far far more beneficial. Government incentives breed corruption and shoddy workmanship.
@kcbob this is a common counter point that a lot of people have. First remember that the waste is incredibly condensed. One pellet of uranium can create as much energy as 2,000 lbs of coal. Uranium the size of a can of coke can produce enough energy for an entire life span of a person. Disposal can be easily contained and sealed so that it has no impact on ground water and no radiation seepage.
@@brandonmoore1344 Thanks for your time to reply, but I did not mean about the waste. I meant that since this is not a renewable energy source, it heats up the plaernet just like fossil fuels do. So suppose we replace all fossil fuels with nuclear, we still have the same greenhouse effect problems, don't we ? We need to take our energy from the Sun so that we do not add more energy into our system from other sources. Other than that, I like nuclear energy.
What can anyone say to a young woman who already knows everything worth knowing? Add that to the fact that she's very political and lies to promote an agenda. Her claims about how much time we have left is nonsense as has been the claims made by similar thinking people who came before her. Many claimed there would no longer be snow by the year 2016... Someone forgot to tell the people in Texas.
Matt overlooks the fact that Wind turbines are efficient in a very limited range of wind speed. Most turbines will generate power starting at 3-5ms but at that speed electric generation id nominal at best. The ideal speed for a turbine is 12-16 ms and at 25 ms turbines have to be shut down as they can't handle that speed. When considering the short life span of a wind turbine, the inconsistent power generated and the cost to build and remove, wind turbines barely produce enough clean energy to offset the amount CO2 that was used to build them.
Joe M -vertical wind turbines produce power are low wind speeds and are self limiting in high winds so blade centrifugal force us not a limiting factor. Large three bladed wind turbines have tip speeds approaching 200 mph with the result that raindrops and hailstones act like shot blasting delaminating blade leading edges requiring replacement every few years -especially offshore maintenance costs are very high and access difficult at at times impossible .
Fact: Wind turbines offset their energy required from production in their first year of production and far less in most cases. I don't understand why this idea is even entertained by people at all. The math isn't even that hard to do yourself. A 3 Megawatt (MW) wind turbine has about 500 tonnes of steel including the nacelle, tower and foundation. 400 cubic meters of concrete for the foundation. It takes about 70kg of coal to produce 1 cubic meter of concrete = 28 tonnes of coal and for the nay sayers, lets double that to cover the manufacturing, shipping and installation of the concrete to 56 tonnes per turbine. Now the 500 tonnes of steel. It takes about 770kg of coal to manufacture a tonne of steel = 385 tonnes of coal. Again for the nay sayers lets double that number to 770 tonnes for manufacturing, shipping and installation of the turbine. Now lets add those two together and you get 826 tonnes of coal required for manufacturing, shipping and installation of each turbine. Thats a big number, no doubt. But! it takes about 1 tonne of coal to generate 2 Megawatt Hours (MWH) of electricity. So for a turbine to offset its manufacturing, shipping and installation it will need to produce 1,652MWH of electricity. Still with me? Now lets talk turbine electricity production. A 3MW turbine is capable of generating 3 megawatts at peak output, but it doesn't run at peak all the time. Thats the capacity factor. A good average capacity factor is about 30% which is low for modern turbines, but we're working on averages. So that means that 3MW turbine is 0.9MW turbine on average. Now we need to get to megawatt hours. 0.9MW x 24 hours per day = 21.6MWH of production per day, per each turbine. Now lets take that and divide our previous number of 1652MWH by 21.6MWH to find out how many days of production it will take to offset its manufacturing, shipping and installation. Still with me? 76.5 days. Thats it. Each turbine produces as much energy as took to build it in 2.5 months. I challenge you to find these same numbers from any source other than anti wind sites. Run them yourself and try to show my math is out by 95 times.
@@JimP226 yes but they only operate about 30% if the 8600 hours per year -solar panels generate power for 4300 hours a year and tidal turbines about 6500 hours a year .Tidal turbines are unaffected by sea conditions and even onnfull days solar panels produce power -wind turbines produce nothing when there us no wind and they shut down in high winds to avoid destruction by excess centrifugal forces .And wind turbines especially offshore require a lot of very expensive maintenance and blade changes every 3 or 4 years.
@saladdogger the problem is that over the year there are only around 2000-2500 hours of wind so 70% of the time a turbine is not generating power .Firstly a turbine.can only extract at most 16/27 th of the energy in the wind ( Betz Law ) .Secondly even when there us wind if it is below a minimum then the turbine won't produce power above a certain speed the turbine shuts down And thirdly they needvs huge about of maintenance and blade replacement every few years .The problem with all wind and solar " green energy " is that it is intermittent and most is produced in the summer months when the power demand is at its lowest .
@saladdogger they will certainly produce more power than they use in manufacturing but until we have large scale commercially viable electricity storage the intermittent output of wind solar and tidal will remain a problem requiring gas coal oil or nuclear back up if at least 80% of peak demand .What we need to do is reduce demand with better electrical efficrncy of equipment lighting insulation heatpumps etc
If that’s what you took away from this video, you are extremely naive. Not everybody lives in Iceland, Geothermal just isn’t readily available for the majority of consumers. Also, if the environmental downsides of wind energy turns you off, I have some seriously bad news about nuclear energy. The “way to go” is to diversify into all forms of energy generation wherever it’s viable. You don’t live in a desert and decide that hydroelectric power is the way to go. Use what works.
"Costs are coming down..." because taxation is going up as a result of government interference in the natural law of supply and demand: 1. We (politicians) want people to use wind turbines. 2. People are not voluntarily using wind turbines, because they're expensive. 3. We will tax the people more, and subsidize our cronies to sell wind turbines.
I wish you might have looked into the adverse effects of low frequency vibrations on farms. I've seen a small study where farmers were losing their livestock and even the families had to move away because of serious ailments. Seems the vibrations were causing the livestock to become ill and unable to reproduce and the farmers were unable to sleep and came down with unexplained ailments.
You might be on to something! My friends bought a farm a few years back less than a mile from a bunch of wind turbines. Some of their chickens get frostbite in the winters. Plus they go to bed by 11 and have to sleep until 7am every day. In one big vibration their truck went off the road and it got totaled.
I do not know about livestock being unable to reproduce, but turbines do create hearable noise that can prevent neighbors to sleep. Nowadays, the majority of countries where the wind industry is in have legislation against night noises. I know that there are huuge fines in Germany, for example. For such a case, the turbine is set to produce less at night and therefore produce less noise.
I am not an engineer, but my two best friends are both power engineers. They both tell me that wind turbine energy is mostly a joke and only political motivation keeps it alive. They have lengthy explanations for their stance, but I can’t articulate it in this space. I am curious so I watch these videos to find out what I can. Additionally, I read extensively on the topic. The jury is out and we will not know in our lifetimes whether wind is the way to go.
Meanwhile in UK we have had windfarms for Decades. It is now the cheapest new generation option. Renewables now exceed 40% of all UK Electrical Power Generation.
"So, yes, maybe wind power does come with more downsides that many of us first realized." That is because "many of us" don't listen. All of these issues were brought up 50 years ago. Next time, maybe "many of us" should wait until after these issues have been solved before making these sorts of mistakes and leaving it up to others to figure out how to fix them, while patting yourselves on the back for being so unquestionably righteous.
It really doesn't though. Thing is, no one really has access to these machines. No one gets tours inside them. Dirty Jobs did a segment on wind turbines,which to be honest, was kinda a joke. A lot more work goes into maintaining our machines than that.
We have here a basic misunderstanding of the concept known as "development". Light bulbs were developed. V-8 engines were developed. And successful developments take time and cost money.
Every single turbine made is a prototype. I work with turbines. There’s always a better way to harness the energy. You don’t make a computer mode to solve these issues. If we let computer models decide how to run the energy, the turbines aren’t safe for human interaction (the technicians doing maintenance). They’re already deathtraps for unaware people like you, which is not an insult but there are many factors that make these machines deadly. Wind turbines need to be as efficient as possible with the ability to be troubleshot and be provided maintenance to. This video is still full of the lack of knowledge it takes to understand why turbines operate the way they do. The bird problem could be solved by reducing the main culprit of growing populations of feral cats but turbines seem to be peoples choice of blame. Turbines of all kinds NEED to be built and tested. There’s no other way around it regardless of what anyone thinks. They need to prove safe, effective, and efficient before we ever stop making new kinds of turbines. Learn about them. They’re a lot more fascinating than people give them credit for.
Lifecycle cost analysis isn't what you should be looking at - it's a misleading metric. A more meaningful assessment is the impact on electricity prices. Counterintuitively, wind, despite having a low cost, tends to make power prices rise because you end up paying for it and also the dispatchable power source.
My favorite place to go camping in my van is in windmill parks because most people do not want to get near them so it is the most quiet place you can find...
Matt, I suggest you do a similar video on the impact of aging PV panels. This video made me wonder what the current state of PV pannel recycling is. Thanks
In Rousset, France, you will find Europe’s first solar panel recycling plant - possibly the first dedicated facility in the world. It is run by Veolia and PV Cycle, and it has the capacity to process every retired solar panel in the country at the moment. Panels are dismantled by robots and each component recycled. Glass, which makes up two thirds of the panel, is ground up and returned to the glass making industry. 10-15% of the panel is aluminium, which is easily recycled. Silicon and cabling are processed for the metals. The only thing that can’t be recycled is the 10% plastic, which is burned in steel plants. If you stop to think about it, there is a very good reason why we haven’t seen plants like this earlier. Solar PV panels last for 25 years, and have only been common and affordable for the last 15 to 20. We’re just now seeing solar panels retired in sufficient numbers for there to be a reliable supply. Commercial recycling hasn’t really been possible until now.
@solaroid55 The video he made about it explains pretty clearly about how solar panels are recycled. Do you even do elementary research before posting your endless misinformation on here?
Ancient info, a few early wind turbines, decades ago, did catch fire but modern wind turbines don't. Fossil fuel plants are not immune to catching fire or worse also
@@troyb3659 Troy. Don't bug little Stevie. He is a good little go greenie that thinks he can change what has gone on with the earth for four and a half billion years by paying more taxes!!!!
@@stevehayward2533 On the way to SW Texas I saw one of these "new" wind turbines engufled in flames, gearbox failure oil running down the pylon and the whole thing in flames. the blades eventually fell off and partially burned also...so hmmmmm. Was told it was not the first one that burned. Ground was Saturated with unburned oil also!
I don' believe in this solution. The impact to the environment is enormous and people will fight them and the associated hi voltage power lines with a vengeance.
How about stopping the madness of destroying our landscapes, our fishing grounds and our bird populations by using a reliable, stable, and safe energie source. Until nuclear energy is back on the agenda, governments are not serious about 'fighting climate change'. If that's a sensible goal is another discussion alltogether.
@@ArruVision Why is fighting something that is inevitable a sensible goal? Climate changes, it has done so as long as the earth exists. Always has, always will. I believe our impact is negligeable and you may disagree, but climate has always shifted, and people have always adapted. So make sure we're ready to adapt. Don't waste energy fighting the inevitable.
Guess you haven't heard about Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nothing safe or reliable about what happened there. Stability is also questionable if one considers that radioactive contamination can last for thousands of years.
Stuart Poss Shutting down nuclear in Japan after Fukushima has already killed more people (by ways of air pollution from other energy sources) than the meltdown. Re Chernobyl you'll have to bring that up with people who DO want to build new RBMK reactors with no containment like the ones in Chernobyl. And regarding the Yucca Mountain accident, please fill me in!
Last report I heard, if you took all the waste water from all the unclear powerplants in the world, it would fill an Olympic swimming pool . . . That's it. Like you say, it's a political problem, not a technical one.
@@armandovanhaaren7028 Nah, it'll be safe to handle without protective equipment in about 10,000 years, but loooong before that science will figure out how to neutralize it. Breeder reactors burn waste and create more fuel than they use. Small Modular Reactors are the wave of the future.
@@scubaeqhp fuel is not the only radioactive waste a nuclear power plant produces . The entire building is radioactive and everything you use to demolish it with .
Wind turbines are ugly and destroy the often beautiful landscape they are put up in. Too often the production and eventual removal of alternative energy, do greater damage than conventional power sources. However, that is often hidden, so thank you for pointing out some of these problems.
How about hydro-ELECTRET power??? Electret NOT electric, just to be clear. Why no one ever talks about Electrets honestly boarders on or honestly, strides deep into the land of conspiracy. I mean is it a conspiracy? By definition it’s a rather strong yes, and most have come to agree on this. WHY? The Who what when where and why. Oh and were; were you ever? Have you ever? Oh whatever could it be, this electret culled key to independence. If your from the States of Northern America’s the.man this likely will sound like some sort of word salad of imagined so called green energy…but why? Well it seems the only mention of Electrets in your realm or sphere of existence is that of the “Electret Microphone” and even that is quite sparse. Then electret battery capacitor restrictions…. What the heck happened to the cpsc.gov???? I needed to link skmethjng.
@@Coincidence_Theorist i never heard of electret thats good i might do some research on that. But do tell so far what you know about electret and why it would be best fit alterative than this turbine
The color black absorbs heat, which breaks down the chemicals and fibers of the blades causing premature failure and component separation(ie throwing the tons of blade hundreds of feet to kill what ever it randomly lands on.) or into the ocean to leak toxic chemicals into the water.
I do wonder why we don't see piles of dead birds at the foot of tall buildings, electricity pylons, large trees and other tall structures? Might it simply be that this "wind turbines kill birds" thing is simply a load of cobblers?
@@Brian-om2hh I suspect it is PARTLY that the “bird killer” thing is overrated. (Think of how many birds must be killed due to habitat destruction to mine and burn coal etc. and how little we hear about that.) However, buildings, pylons etc. tend to be easily visible; and they are not moving, I suspect that wind turbines, due to being light in colour, and the blades being both slender and moving are more difficult for birds to see. I do see a difference. I am still fine with wind turbines.
@@Brian-om2hh ummm, how many tall buildings, electricity pylons and trees MOVE at 150+ miles per hour... and the .gov has done multiple studies that document the environmental impacts of all structures(required by the .gov for most all major installations)... feel free to educate yourself. It is all free and online.
Matt, I think your analysis has been extremely generous to wind power by omitting a major environmental truth.. In Europe (and I'm sure elsewhere) we often experience high pressure weather systems which result in low wind speeds and no power generated. During these conditions back-up power is required from other generation sources. This requires additional plant to be constructed and this is often hot-spinning reserve (fossil fuel). Even if this hot-spinning reserve was displaced by battery storage solutions it is still adding additional construction environmental footprint (ecological, carbon-footprint from concrete, and substantial earth resources for batteries).
As always critics with this point of view leave aside the fact, that intermeshing grids are a major relief to this problem. Guess it is good enough to not mention the possibility to send the electricity between nations. As it is already and is widely build up in europe for exact this reason.
Not a metrologist are you. Weather systems cover entire continents. Look at the carbon intensity of the grid on low wind days in Europe. Why don't you???
@@jamesgreen1305 In fact, i did have a class in metrology back then. And i i know the Cabon Intensities on a windy day and a calm day. So where is your point? It's 50% renewables now. Sure the rest comes from other sources. But it won't stay like this. For sure.
@@juliane__ you obviously fooled me with your ignorance of the facts about carbon intensities on European windless days. You just have to look at polluting Germany. And what about windy Scotland where Glasow was provided by 70% nuclear power during COP 26??? You obviously don't know your facts. Bye.
Let’s put the issue of disposing of turbine blades into perspective: Less than 0.150 g of blade material must be disposed of or recycled per kWh generated over the lifetime of the wind turbine. That compares to over 150 g of natural gas used per kWh by a gas-fired power plant, and 412 g of CO2 emitted. The numbers speak for themselves!
I mean, a gram of blade material definitely takes more than a gram of CO2 to produce. But you are correct that the lifecycle emissions are far lower with wind
I have a feeling that wind turbines will ultimately go the way of the compact fluorescent light bulb. Sounded good on the surface but ultimately filed under "bad idea".
While LED bulbs are indeed better, I would still content that CFs were a bad idea. As compared with their predecessor (the venerable incandescent bulb) CFs are very costly to manufacture, have 3x the number of components, require expending significantly more energy to produce each one, yet have a shorter lifespan. For the consumer, a $1 incandescent would cost you $4 or more for something that puts out the same amount of light. Not to mention, the issue of the mercury content in each and every one of them - Seldom do people dispose of them properly and that mercury just ends up in a landfill. So yeah, at the end of the day, I'm still gonna file them under "bad idea" and yes; there's almost a note-for-note parallel with wind turbines. I'm not against progress, change or ingenuity but I'm fairly sure, history won't smile upon the notion that wind could play a significant role in powering humanity's energy needs.
I partially agree, every form of energy has upsides and downsides. What really irks me are politicians that NEVER discuss the downsides of wind or solar and want us to pay trillions (literally) to put up more of these things. And they never discuss the upsides of coal (with proper exhaust filters and scrubbers), natural gas and nuclear.
I feel like you missed some important criticisms of wind energy. They're harming endangered birds. They don't always produce energy when it's needed most, and produce too much when it isn't needed, and that energy has to go somewhere.
@@Antoniobrady yes and no, there are many ways to store energy (they can be inefficient so long as they are powered by renewables). Currently we have instance, pumped storage (I believe is great for areas with elevation change) and batteries. There are others that haven't broken into the market like flywheels and more efficient batteries (Real Engineering recently posted about).
The bird death from wind turbines is equal the bird death caused by nuclear power stations per produced MWh, and is only 1/15th of the bird deaths caused by fossil fuel power per produced MWh. Those are in turn small compared to the number of birds killed by traffic and is absolutely dwarfed by the number of bird deaths caused by domestic cats. theconversation.com/wind-farms-are-hardly-the-bird-slayers-theyre-made-out-to-be-heres-why-79567 Your other points are solved by improved power transmission networks and decentralised battery storage (the latter incidentally also functions as stand by power which negates the need for the very expensive fossil fuels stand by power stations in use today).
Fewer people = less pollution. Birds and bats are killed by the sudden pressure change, not just from flying into the blades. Wind farms are a hideous eyesore with only a 20 year lifespan, and they take a lot of mining and fossil fuel to construct.
Great video. Maybe you could do one on hydro power. In Washington state, lobbyists are trying to remove dams and replace them with solar and wind farms, which makes no sense to me.
Oil and coal will run out. The wind and sun will always be available until the solar system dies. If you diversify energy sources, like using wind, solar, geothermal, etc all together, you will have more reliable and consistent energy.
From 27 July 2019 A Tasmanian wind farm has killed three eagles in the past few months, and 37 eagles across its wider operations since 2002, amid fears 10 new wind farms planned for the island will cause extinctions.
Wind farms take an average of about 5 months electricity production to pay all associated costs. Solar takes about a year. Coal takes about 3 years......
Great work as ever Matt, a couple of things that I think will build on your video. Bird deaths - Whilst it is sad that 500,000 birds are killed by wind turbines in the USA each year, glass covered buildings in the USA kill up to 1 BILLION birds per year. So whilst some like to say it's the turbines that are reducing bird populations, it's more likely that it's the love of glass sided buildings. SOURCE www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/07/how-many-birds-killed-by-skyscrapers-american-cities-report Also again I agree that decommissioning the blades is currently an issue, it is one that we will work out in time. Also it has been noted in Europe that blades are lasting LONGER than predicted, which is actually causing issues in the market, as windfarms that were meant to be decommisioned are still running! SOURCE www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1683023/calls-scrap-danish-turbine-limit Finally if you really care about birds, don't buy a cat SOURCE eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/ Looking forward to your next video, subscribed, notified and commented :-)
Undecided with Matt Ferrell No problem Matt, I sold my business and retired last year so have plenty of time for research. I think that as I’m based in Europe, my searches pull details in slightly different order. If you would like any research help or views from across the pond, do get in touch.
@@Muppetkeeper I think the issue is the type of bird that is being killed.. ie: prey birds and bats -- we shouldn't be valuing the death of an eagle or bat, to that of a more common species. There really isn't enough data to come to a conclusion either way as of yet, so time will tell. One major problem that everyone seems to overlook is the loss of habitat from installing solar/wind-farms in the first place; this will become more of an issue with expansion of wind and solar -- thus, inflicting damage to environment we are trying to save.
@@magnusjohansson4272 Agreed, survival of a species (but not necessarily an individual) needs to considert when planning for anything. That said, environmental conserns are usually considered when installing windturbines today. Bird strikes can also be reduced by modern technologie - just googel "wind turbine bird radar".
@@derradfahrer5029 I actually watched a video about flight detection technology before watching this video; the blades slow just enough so that the bird can detect it.. knowing how effective it will be needs more time, but it looks good. On your second point about finding appropriate sites for farms.. this is where I become worried, because for wind and solar to provide enough energy.. we're going to need a lot of land and I fear that significant damage will be unavoidable. I am honestly a fan of nuclear.. especially the potential it holds with molten salt reactor (MSR) technology, but people seem to have an irrational fear toward nuclear in general. I don't think that renewable sources will ever be able to provide the world's energy demand, so if liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) don't come to fruition.. I don't know what the future has in store for us as a species.
What about infrasound? Wind farms create it. People get physically ill down wind of windfarms. Infrasound is created by the compression of air as the blade goes past the mast. It is a unpleasant consequence of windmills/windfarms.
You forgot to mention how much lead and nickel must be mined for each turbine and also the mass boneyards in Wyoming to house the broken down propellers.
Don't forget the vast strip mines already in existence (from coal and gold). I'll bet one of them could store all of the expired blades for the next 50 years.
@John Buckin fact there are efforts being made in that direction. "Another creative recycling option produces pellets or boards that can be used in carpentry applications. In 2019, Global Fiberglass Solutions began producing a product called EcoPoly Pellets in the U.S. and will soon additionally produce a panel version. These products are certified as being recycled from decommissioned wind turbine blades through radio-frequency identification (RFID) tracking from the blade to the end-product. EcoPoly Pellets can be transformed into a variety of products such as warehouse pallets, flooring material, or parking bollards. Based on its demand forecasts, Global Fiberglass Solutions anticipates being able to process 6,000 to 7,000 blades per year at each of its two plants in Texas and Iowa." - excerpt from story blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-recycling
I've noticed on alot of old wind turbines oil running all down the sides, so when they build them offshore, where's all that oil going besides into the sea?!😳
@@markjohnson7887 The oils we use are completely synthetic and pose little risk to the environment. Not to mention offshore machines have channels and capture points so that oil never escapes the tower. We've had machines blow gearboxes and dump a couple hundred gallons, but not one drop hits the ground. There is always risk, no matter what is done, but just because some meathead says wind turbines cause cancer, doesn't make it so.
You realize that building out of wood is _literally_ making structures out of Carbon that was pulled from the atmosphere, right? Once a tree is finished growing, the amount of Co2 it absorbs drops significantly. So if we can grow trees sustainably, replanting them every time we cut them down, which is how all construction lumber in this country is produced, we will actually pull more carbon from the air than a static forest would. Building with trees is carbon _negative_ . So yes it makes sense, you just have no idea what you're talking about.
@@derpmansderpyskin This nonsense of lowering CO2 doesn't have any logic. Present average in atmosphere is one .of lowest in last 10 000 years. Actually, all green earth cover needs more CO2 - Sahara was green when CO2 level was 5 times of todays.
There are two methods one is chemical-not green, second is with shredding machine which could be solar powered and the powder can be reused. I'm not expert this is what I've learned from British TH-cam channel "Just have a think".
SEIA, Solar Energy Industries Association, has been working on a recycling program for the last few years. Most all of a panel can be recycled or reused, especially given the large amount of silicon (sand, really) and metal used. Challenges remain, not least of all localizing those recycling facilities and monetizing them like other commercial/municipal recycling centers.
Had we had all these worries and care one century ago, there would have been no fossil fuel extracted. Why do we keep this double standard against renewables?
@@acmefixer1 Ever heard of citizen groups worried for how to recycle a refinery? Or about the birds killed by coal powerplants (which kill three times the birds of wind turbines per kWh produced)? Me no.
@@markotrieste Or how many humans did Three Miles, Chernobyl, and Fukushima kill? Not counting Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are still some people who advocate more nuclear plants.
@@ibrahimidris8499 the costs of externalities of non-renewables aren't often talked about or factored into consideration. think of the negative health effects from inhaling the exhaust from a coal power plant
Really glossed a lot of pertinent info pertaining to landfills. The environmental impact of delivering non-toxic waste to modern landfills far outweighs any impact of having it safely and eternally buried.
So overall I support wind power and have even worked in the wind industry as a turbine technician, but please don't kid yourself. Wind power in no way is completely clean. If you hate the use of oil, well guess what? Turbines use oil for the tur one gearbox, and they can spill? I wasn't the cause of the issue, but I was responsible for helping to clean a leaked turbine oil spill, that unfortunately did leak out of the turbine and damage the crops of the farmers land on which it was located. I won't say this is common, but it does happen.
Whether it's traditional electrical generation or renewables, you'd still need the infrastructure to be built either way. So, to me, the environmental aspect of building these wind turbines is a moot point.
The problem with wind turbines is they produce far less energy that it takes to build, install and maintain them. In short, fossil fuel use goes up just to have those wind turbines running with not enough energy in return to make up for it. Wind energy is not green energy at all. It is really just a waste of time and energy.
@@AmbientMorality One has to factor in all energy used including mining for all of the raw materials, refining of raw materials, manufacturing of all parts, all transportation costs for all materials both raw and finished, installation processes and maintenance. The wind turbines are massive and each requires a great deal of internal components including a massive turbine, internal networks, switches, controllers, gateways, censors, transformers and large amounts of cabling. All those things are very energy intensive to create and operate. The problem in the end is that there simply is not enough energy in the wind to recover the energy put into them. One of the laws of physics is that energy is conserved. It takes energy to make energy. In the case wind turbines, it takes more energy than it can create.
@@herbb8547 Yes, that's included in lifecycle GHG emissions calculations. I don't think any credible analysis indicates that the lifecycle GHG emissions per kWh are higher than competing non-renewable energy sources. easily
Hey Matt, you said the pyrolosys of the old fibreglass blades is inefficient because it requires power... but... if that power is also provided by a turbine, then it becomes VERY efficient! I'd advise being careful about saying the use of power is automatically 'not green'. It's all about how we generate the power, isn't it?!
I worked for Vestas, one of the largest wind turbine companies in the world. We would have to wait at times six to eight hours for a work break or lunch. The shifts were 12 hours long with mandatory overtime that went on for months. I left the company. I don't know what working conditions are like now. A worker died there when a heavy piece of equipment fell on him.
" A lot of truck journeys" "Even tho it can be thought of as a form of recycling, It's not all that great". Now there is a quantitative analysis, NOT...
Agreed, lots of qualitative negatives, but no numbers. If the Co2 inputs are 1% or less of the energy outputs...does it really matter - its net positive
I would have hoped that when you mentioned concrete, diesel, landscaping, service roads, cabling, converter stations and so on, you had pointed out that all other means of creating energy needs same infrastructure often in much greater scale. One example is our fifth nuclear reactor (Olkiluoto 3) in Finland. It has been built since 2005 and it still not complete. While not producing any CO2 when operational, it can hardly be seen as totally emission free either. And uranium, oil, coal, natural gas doesn´t just appear next to power plant like wind and sun does. They need mining, drilling, transporting and refining and tons of additional infrastructure and energy to be ready to use. You can even add thousands of people commuting to do all that to equation. Or decommissioning and recycling parts from traditional power plants or problems related used nuclear fuel. I would say that new tech wins every time. I bet you know all this and I hope you made a video about truly comparing environmental impacts of different ways to produce energy. Pointing out ones downsides seems a bit unfair.
I don’t personally see the NIMBY argument that wind turbines are eyesores; I think they are magnificent, awe-inspiring structures! I’d be fine with having them in my community.
@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut Um, no? You need to be standing like 100 feet away from a wind turbine to hear them. If you live anywhere near a road you're getting like an extra 20 dB of noise than if you literally lived right next to a wind turbine.
@@0hypnotoad0 A standard onshore wind farm will still generate 40dB 500m away on flat land. That's definitely not huge, but it's still quite noticeable. Offshore wind just makes a lot more sense, structures can be far larger, no disruption to the land, and no land disputes with nimbys.
I feel the same way. I just wish I had enough wind in my area, for them to get the capacity factor necessary to make them cost effective. Since we don't, wind turbines are very rare in my state.(Utah)
@@TheRichardHonor "Not huge" is a wild understatement, 40 db will be audibly masked by the noise of your refrigerator. The actual wind on the side of your house itself will likely produce more noise than that.
I feel like we need a list of costs in terms of pollution, deaths, resources needed to be removed from the earth, man hours, land and money costs for 1 twh for each type of power including all the resources needed for the entire life span of the product.
@@troyb3659 Absolutely not. Fossil fuel electricity directly kills over 4 million people, and helps kill an additional 26 million. This is out of a worldwide total of just 55 million deaths. Also, it takes 5 months energy production to pay off a wind farm. A year to pay off solar, and 3 years to pay off coal. Also, fossil fuels cost just America almost a trillion dollars a year in missed work, medical bills, and early deaths. AND fossil fuels kill far more birds than wind.
@@lordgarion514 ohh jeeze.....thats like saying a glass of water is responsible for drownings what a stupid twisted liberal logic mind screw you have to get that.....
@@troyb3659 ONLY if the water is being accidentally released into the air and causing people to drown. Your analogy is shit TBH. We burn the fossil fuels, and they release poisonous chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactive elements, that people breath and eat.
The big problem is the turbines aren’t living up to their expected life blade are being replace after a couple years and whole wind farms are being destroyed with explosives before their useful life expectancy !Remember they only make power when the wind blows , if you only. Look at wind mills as green energy and don’t look at the cost to manufacture erect and the dismantle I would say they wind mills are cost affective when they never make it to their expected life expectancy !A gas fire power plant produces more power and make more power for longer when you need a sustainable energy source that doesn’t depend on the wind or sunshine!
What do you think about wind power vs. the downsides? And if you liked this video, be sure to check out my video "The truth about nuclear fusion power - new breakthroughs": th-cam.com/video/Wc8SJqAPVaM/w-d-xo.html
Undecided with Matt Ferrell I sort of roll my eyes when the discussion devolves into the relative eco-friendliness all the way back to the manufacturering and installation process. EVERYTHING has to be manufactured and installed-- nuclear, solar (and associated batteries), wind, hydro, oil and gas. EVERYTHING has a negative global energy impact. Clearly, burning fossil fuels, every day, to actually produce the energy is the elephant in the room. Can we please stop the focus on the 1% of energy use and keep the focus on the 99%?
It’s important to make it clear that because wind is intermittent and requires 24/7/365 backup by reliable energy (normally fossil fuels), that wind and solar can’t be cost effective. If you build a 300MW wind farm, you also have to build (or keep open) a duplicate backup fossil fuel energy plant to provide energy for the 50%-100% of time wind or solar aren’t working properly. So you now are paying for 2 energy plants vs only 1 before, but all the cost estimates for solar/wind exclude the cost of the mandatory back up plant. This type of “Enron Pro-Forma Accounting” fraud is rampant in the solar/wind area. Having to pay for double the energy plants is the primary reason people are shocked by skyrocketing energy cost where ever solar/wind are added. There are no exception, everywhere solar and wind are installed, energy prices skyrocket for consumers. Solar and wind have to cost more, a lot more.
alliejr You are spot on! So many people view energy as just a “free” gust of wind or ray of sunshine, but that a very superficial understanding. Energy is the entire life cycle process from converting raw matter into reliable and affordable energy that scales, to its disposal when obsolete. When view in their full life cycle context, solar and wind are anything but green or clean...They are dirty and destructive toxic messes.
I would really like to see your take on vertical Turbines, Wind and Water(like Turbulent). I heard Vertical Windturbines are more Birdfriendly and take up less space, because the blades are not sticking out. Some claim they are even more efficient is that true?
Steve Fortuna You would IF batteries could store enough to meet base-load, avg hourly demand, peak and peak hourly demand plus days of storage, but that’s not possible given today’s current tech snd cost. Likely to change in future, but as it stands today, solar and wind only add cost and instability to grid.
I think the bottom line in any energy production source is that the old adage of "there's no free lunch" comes into play.
Eh have never heard of nuclear
Tell that to democrats! I still prefer a mix of solar and natural gas peaker plants with nuclear. This Country is too large with too many climates to effectively use wind and solar alone. Democrats will figure a way to tax the heck out of this as well.
@@garry8390 There's still radioactive/toxic waste to deal with there....
@@kevinkarbonik2928 Radioactive waste is less dangerous than conventional waste in landfill. It's a non issue
No...it's simply this "Energy is neither created ....nor destroyed....it just changes form or shape".....
I live in an area where a "wind farm" sprang up.
Initially, it wasn't bad, other than the eyesore it created. It ruined the view of the countryside, day and night.
Just very recently, a Second Phase was started, (which we were not told of, and by the time it was made public, it was finalized where the placement of the new turbines were going. Effectively, we were locked out of the process) and is nearly complete. With that Second Phase, 2 wind turbines were placed very, very close to my home (one being about 3/10's of a mile away, the other about 1/2 mile away). Literally just 4 days ago, they got them powered up, running. When they are in operation, it sounds like a jet flying high overhead in the sky, but in the same place without moving. It produces a constant sound from the blade tips passing through the air. It is very, very annoying.
I can see why people complain about them.
Have you watched the video showing what happens when those blades come off?
@@diyr791 ...
Yes, I have.
Ironically, very shortly after I posted my comment on here, a wind turbine nearly 3 miles away from my residence caught fire.
It was quite the spectacle around here, being it's a small community.
One blade fell off. The fire eventually went out.
And, as I write this comment today, that burnt out husk of the turbine is still standing. Nothing has been done to remove it.
So, now we have an additional eyesore.
@@dlopester13 Your exactly right Diego, a farm went in around me and the closest one is 3100 ft away. The view and picturesque setting of the old family farm is ruined, the noise is loud enough i can hear it in the house. our choice to move back to farm 10 years ago has now become a huge mistake in the last 3 years.
I know how you feel, well almost anyway. I'm surrounded by them now too. Even though these look like they're right over my property line, they're at least 3/4 of a mile away and most are further than that. I can't imagine them being any closer like yours are. Still, it sounds like there's heavy traffic on a non-existent highway about a mile away. That swoosh, swoosh, swoosh drives me nuts too. No more quiet evenings outside. At night it's rows of flashing red lights literally for miles in every direction. I can't wait to see what it has done to my property value now that I want to move away from my life long home (almost 60 years)!
@@30dayride67 20 year lifespan is what these are too be. If i live that long i can enjoy watching them come down. Disheartening at the least... And what brought them into the area was greedy government money hungry farmers. Thats a whole nother rant but farmers in my area r nowhere near needing assistants yet they have people hired to seek out grants, programs and assistants available to them and abuse the tax payer money.
Wind turbines also have to be shut down when it gets too cold, too hot, and ironically, too windy.
Your point?
@@JimP226 When you need power most your wind turbines are down...
@@JimP226 @witold SzafaRyn has it exactly. On that brutal winter week, when your solar panels are producing zero, it's -20 and your grandma really, really needs her heat to work, you might as well start dividing up her assets because they're going to have to shut the wind turbines down.
It's rare to shut it down because it's too cold or hot. You'd have to have very strong gusts over 25m/sec. The irony is that if there's a power outtage they won't work, they need power to get started.
I have a PhD in wind energy, and have worked in the industry the last decade, designing wind turbine blades and other systems for major wind turbine manufacturers.
Wind turbines are usually designed to operate in a temperature range of minus 20 to plus 40 degrees. Survival temperatures are usually minus 30 to plus 50. I worked on a turbine designed for northern Sweden where it gets very cold, and in situations like that the customer will request a special low-temperature package. So the operating temperature for that project was minus 30 and the survival temperature even lower.
Wind turbines do stop operating and turn their blades out of the wind in gale-force winds. You have that part correct.
Another commenter replying to this comment said they need electricity supply to start up and that is not true. The blades are rotated so that they can catch the wind when they need to start up in low wind speeds. There is some electricity supply for auxiliary equipment like the control cabinets or heating in cold climates, and that generally comes from the grid. But if there is a power outage separating the turbines from the grid, then that would mean that the electricity produced by the turbine would have nowhere to go and of course then they couldn't operate anyway.
As someone whose home has just been surrounded by a wind farm, they suck way more than those who don't live by them realize. I also went back to college for environmental sciences because I very much care about the environment, so I'm not just being crabby here. I've lived in this area nearly 60 years now. We have tons of migratory birds that pass through our numerous ponds and marshes. I guess time will tell if they manage getting past these monstrosities with whirling blades moving at around 200 mph. I know we usually have Bald Eagles, but I haven't seen a single one since the turbines went up this fall. I've loved the quiet of the night here all of these years. The masses of stars in the sky were beautiful. Now I close the drapes to stop seeing the hundreds of red flashing lights that surround my property from every direction. I hate the thought of having to keep my windows closed on beautiful spring evenings to get the sounds of the motors and the swoosh of the blades out of my head. The gravel roads are a mess of deep tire tracks and washboards. The massive power lines, poles, transformers by the dozens and of course a new power station. There will be quieter days at times when the winds are silent, but they don't tend to build these turbines in places where there are too many windless days. The turbines will also shut down in high winds which seems ironic. I can say with 100% certainty that the recorded number of birds these things kill won't come close to reality as nature's cleanup crews will leave little to no trace of the bodies by the time the sun comes up the next morning.
What have I learned about this green movement? Most people (including all political parties) want to improve our impact on the environment. Unfortunately, we are being scammed in order for certain groups to reap huge financial gains and/or power. We know there are so many cost-effective ways that are proven to work to clean up our environment. We have huge improvements coming for greener and more efficient solar and wind energy as well as battery technologies. There are also other energy sources being explored. The problem is that certain groups have invested heavily in what we have available today and they want to force us to buy it before better options replace it. The powers that be don't want to implement any of the cost effective, proven methods and I truly believe it is because they don't enrich or empower the right people. Some of the things these billionaires like Mr Gates are doing are NOT good at all. They are using chemicals to block out the sun which ends up contaminating our water and soil, but our government isn't interested in stopping him. The assault on livestock production is ridiculous. Far more energy and chemicals are used in growing plants. There are some changes that would be beneficial to make in our raising of livestock, but eating meat is not the enemy of the environment. Livestock can destroy land or it can add great benefit to the land depending on how it is managed and the land itself.
AGREE
I agree…..
There is no doubt that there are downsides to wind turbines, especially if they are sited in the wrong places that bring them into conflict with migratory bird routes and or existing land uses/iconic locations. I have my doubts about the life cycle costs of offshore wind farms and they are not free from environmental impacts either. All of that said, we need to get our energy from somewhere and I would argue that wind turbine technology can be part of that solution, BUT we need to be really clear on the impacts of where they are located and be very particular about where they are permitted to be installed.
A planet run by greed. Very simple.
What think you about Nuclear?
Im thinking nuclear is the way to go. Really.
Think again
@@hizzlemobizzle - Elaborate.
REALLY ,LOL .
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority ownership
On 1 April 2005 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) became the owner of the site, with the UKAEA remaining as operator. Decommissioning of Dounreay was initially planned to bring the site to an interim care and surveillance state by 2036, and as a brownfield site by 2336, at a total cost of £2.9 billion.[24]
A new company called Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) was formed as a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to handle the decommissioning process. By May 2008, decommissioning cost estimates had been revised. Removal of all waste from the site was expected to take until the late 2070s to complete and the end-point of the project was scheduled for 2300.[25]
Apart from decommissioning the reactors, reprocessing plant, and associated facilities, there were five main environmental issues to be dealt with:
A 65-metre (213 ft) deep shaft used for intermediate level nuclear waste disposal was contaminating groundwater, and would be threatened by coastal erosion in about 300 years time. The shaft was never designed as a waste depository, but was used as such on a very ad-hoc and poorly monitored basis, without reliable waste disposal records being kept. It was originally used to construct a tunnel for the sea discharge pipe. Later use of the shaft as a convenient waste depository had resulted in one hydrogen gas explosion[26] caused by sodium and potassium wastes reacting with water. At one time it was normal for workers to fire rifles into the shaft to sink polythene bags floating on water.[27]
Irradiated nuclear fuel particles on the seabed near the plant,[5] estimated to be about several hundreds of thousands in number,[28] caused by old fuel rod fragments being pumped into the sea.[5] The beach had been closed since 1983 due to this.[5] In 2008, a clean-up project using Geiger counter-fitted robot submarines was planned to search out and retrieve each particle individually.[5] Particles were still being washed ashore at Sandside Bay beach and one particle at a popular tourist beach at Dunnet in 2006.[29] In 2012, a two million becquerel particle was found at Sandside beach, twice as radioactive as any particle previously found.[30]
18,000 cubic metres (640,000 cu ft) of radiologically contaminated land, and 28,000 cubic metres (990,000 cu ft) of chemically contaminated land.
1,350 cubic metres (48,000 cu ft) of high and medium active liquors and 2,550 cubic metres (90,000 cu ft) of unconditioned intermediate level nuclear waste in store.
1,500 metric tons (1,500 long tons) of sodium, of which 900 metric tons (890 long tons) are radioactively contaminated from the Prototype Fast Reactor.
Historically, much of Dounreay's nuclear waste management was poor. On 18 September 2006, Norman Harrison, acting chief operating officer, predicted that more problems will be encountered from old practices at the site as the decommissioning effort continues. Some parts of the plant are being entered for the first time in 50 years.[31]
In 2007 UKAEA pleaded guilty to four charges under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 relating to activities between 1963 and 1984, one of disposing of radioactive waste at a landfill site at the plant between 1963 and 1975, and three of illegally dumping radioactive waste and releasing nuclear fuel particles into the sea,[32][33] resulting in a fine of £140,000.[34]
In 2007 a new decommissioning plan was agreed, with a schedule of 25 years and a cost of £2.9 billion, a year later revised to 17 years at a cost of £2.6 billion.[23]
Due to the uranium and plutonium held at the site, it is considered a security risk and there is a high police presence.[5] The fuel elements, known as "exotics", are to be removed to Sellafield for reprocessing, starting in 2014 or 2015.[35][out of date]
In 2013 the detail design of the major project to decommission the intermediate level waste shaft was completed, and work was to begin later in the year. The work would include the recovery and packaging of over 1,500 tonnes of radioactive waste.[36] As of 2013, the "interim end state" planned date had been brought forward to 2022-2025.[37] In March 2014 firefighters extinguished a small fire in an area used to store low-level nuclear waste.[38]
PFR Fire
On 7 October 2014 a fire on the PFR site led to a "release of radioactivity via an unauthorised route". The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) concluded that "procedural non-compliances and behavioural practices" led to the fire, and served an improvement notice on Dounreay Site Restoration Limited.[39][40] In 2015 decommissioning staff expressed a lack of confidence in management at the plant and fear for their safety.[41]
In 2016 the task of dismantling the PFR core commenced.[42] Plans were also announced to move about 700 kg (1,500 lb) of waste Highly Enriched Uranium to the United States.[43][44]
On 7 June 2019, there was a low-level radioactive contamination incident which led to the evacuation of the site. A DSRL spokesman said: "There was no risk to members of the public, no increased risk to the workforce and no release to the environment".[45]
On 23 December 2019, the NDA announced completion of the transfer of all plutonium from Dounreay to Sellafield (the centre of excellence for plutonium management) where all significant UK stocks of this material are now held.[46]
On 20 August 2020 a new date for the site to become available for other uses was announced of 2333, as part of a new draft strategy for reclaimation.[47]
Framework contracts
In April 2019, Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) awarded six framework contracts for decommissioning services at Dounreay. The total value of these contracts is estimated to be £400 million.[
NUCLEAR IS THE WAY to go lololololololololol
@@caelachyt Expensive to Build. Despite being relatively inexpensive to operate, nuclear power plants are incredibly expensive to build-and the cost keeps rising. ...
Accidents. ...
Produces Radioactive Waste. ...
Impact on the Environment. ...
Security Threat. ...
Limited Fuel Supply.
@@hizzlemobizzle - Well, that's supposed to be the panacea that is the so called Thorium Salt Reactors; those issues are greatly mitigated.
My nephew worked on wind turbines and described the massive amount of oil lubricates leaked from most towers.
Nonsensical.... wind turbines have a huge carbon foot print along with being made of carbon and oil products. It’s damaging to the environment, Wild life habitat, kills me grating birds, butterfly’s, and bats. It’s more costly to maintain , build, and produce electricity than any hydro, coal, or natural gas power plant...outrageously more expensive. Wind, solar, and the batteries are toxic and the natural minerals needed to be minded is a disaster for the natural habitat and environment. Besides the fact...it’s unreliable and has only a small capacity to create electricity. It’s insanity!
@Leon Wilcox He’s pointing out where renwables are lacking. Such a wussy for not acknowledging the problems we currently experience with renewables. They’re not some solution you can slap on and forget when dealing with climate change. There are no solutions just setbacks. You choose the setbacks you can deal with.
@Leon Wilcox Wow, crazy, people are allowed to LIGITIMATELY criticize something. Nothing should be immune.
One day you will grow up and learn to actually communicate with people that have different views than you. I hope so at least.
@@CarriUSA You are right in some points, but not all.
Wind turbines have a very competitive Levelized Cost of Energy (embracing all costs and profits) and, of course, it makes sense economically to invest in them when the natural resource is available. Think about it, investors have been involved in it even before it was cool. They will not simply lose money, because they are vegan lefties. About wildlife and noise problems, there are already solutions for them. Also, there are many countries in the world that managed to balance their grid with renewables and non-renewables. The real challenge is indeed to find out what to do with materials after replacing them and that is what companies are trying to work around right now. It is a very young technology and there is no reason not to expect that solutions for its current problems will be found in the near future.
@John M. That lack of decommissioning is related to legislation that needs to be updated, but the lawmakers are slower than the technology. And that is everywhere, but mainly on newer or coming technologies. It has already been improved and will continue to be.
By balance the grid, I meant that the countries diversify the energy market, demanding energy from more expensive, but more stable sources when, for example, the wind drops or the sun goes down. It is way cheaper and the benchmark all around the developed world, having nothing to do with outages, which usually relate to the fact that the government was not be able to catch an increasing demand for energy.
About subsidies, the government may subsidize flourishing markets like wind or even still key ones like fossil fuels.
And about batteries, yeah that is real, but it is a known issue after the whole digitalization. The rare minerals are in all our telecommunication, computers, smartphones, everywhere. For wind turbines, there are many solutions that are already at work, at the top of my head I remember storage as hydro and hydrogen-source power.
th-cam.com/video/7qGZlBXcEeg/w-d-xo.html
www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower
You forgot to mention the amount of gear oil and grease that the gearboxes and bearings require . They need regular oil changes and maintenance just like any other mechanical apparatus.
And Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), the most potent greenhouse gas that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has evaluated with a global warming potential of 23,900[28] times that of CO2 when compared over a 100-year period.
the maintenance provides jobs. large gear box oil is usually contaminated by condensation water gets in the gear lube. but as with oil pump gear boxes proper vents cut down on that. also the gear lube can be treated by heating past the boiling point of water the evaporate the water away. that heat isn't enough to harm the gear grease
Conservative estimates put U.S. direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry at roughly $20 billion per year; with 20 percent currently allocated to coal and 80 percent to natural gas and crude oil.
@@erniew5805 digging trenches with spoons would provide jobs for the entire nation!! Let's do it
@@r-gart they are not maintaining wind turbines with spoons.
Just wanted to tell you that I appreciate you giving BOTH the negatives and positives of this method of energy production. Fair and balanced on this overly politicized topic is rare to find.
Left out a lot of the negatives.
Over 500 gallons of oil in each of them. Blades are being buried. Concrete 30' deep only going to be removed to 4' when they're done. They're ruining Iowa's soil. They don't restore it. It's criminal. They cause wind turbine illnesses. A blind kid could feel when they came within range. If you're for controlling CO2 (which does not determine climate) then you should know that concrete is a *huge* emitter of CO2.
Good, you pay for them.
Being subsidized doesn't make windmills affordable or cost effective as presented.
Huge amounts of money are being made by companies that are being propped up by our tax dollars. If they were cost effective they wouldn't need government subsidies.
He gave no negatives
I worked on a coal mine. Each truck consumed about 15,000 liters of diesel a DAY. We moved dirt to get to coal. Drilling, Blasting, draglines, dump trucks, wash plants, trains, shipping, road trains, burning.
If wind turbines are more efficient then this process from start to finish. I’m all for it. People talk about the impact a turbine has on the environment. This doesn’t come CLOSE to the destruction I was part of to mine coal. Killing birds has NOTHING on what we did to keep your lights on at night with coal.
I absolutely agree, thanks for sharing your experience. The amount of birds that smack into buildings or get killed by cats is insanely larger if compared to the harm turbines make. Like 10000 times larger. Same goes for many other "problems" mentioned in the video. Common people don't realize these projects have a massive scale and, therefore, even if numbers look big, they may not be so big when compared to other energy production technologies.
@@francesco5254 100000%. We won’t even talk about what happens when it rains, and we had to pump pit water into the “flowing creeks”. I’m now in aviation (another fuel guzzling job) and fly over the Australian landscape.
I’ll be night across nsw/qld flying with guys who come from overseas and they question. What are all these unmarked cities, they are on no charts or maps?…. They are not cities. They are endless coal mines. This doesn’t cover the gas mines, the underground mines etc.
There’s 47 years of known oil reserves left. There’s a reason why countries like America who have oil, are importing it while it’s cheap.
We import 100% of our oil. I guess when it gets prohibitively expensive that’s our kids problem. A semi intelligent person would use cheaper resources now to set ourselves up for the future. The longer we leave it the more prohibitively expensive it will get.
Seeing a turbine on my farm, would make me incredibly happy to know I’m not propelling coal indefinitely. I would also sleep better knowing I’m helping move us away from consumable resources.
Perhaps the “burden” of seeing mines needs to benefit everyone - ie, you pay the land holder, but if your “view” is affected, you get free electricity for life.
I see their argument, but these guys will be dead in 20 years. What legacy are they leaving behind by sticking their heads in the sand.
Our kids kids will be horrified that we burnt petrol to go to the gym to exercise 4 times a week. We WILL be known as the most privileged, entitled, wasteful generation that’s been known to human history.
All of this is fruitless anyway. If a war breaks out. We can’t mine coal without diesel, we can’t farm, and we certainly can’t produce food, transport and store it….. why would we want to shield our country from oil dependence while we can….. 🤷🏼♂️
As one of the owners of a 106 turbine wind farm I worked on they have a 20 year payback. The main reason they built them was for the tax breaks. The ones i worked on were 1.5 MW and cost 1.5 million bucks a piece. Keep in mind also that if the grid goes down they shut down. The sub Sonics from blades is not pleasant. The fiber glass blades are not reclaimed. And they are not simple to work on. Try working on them. I have and don’t like it.
Thanks for sharing your experience! 👍
I trust comments like these more than an analysis from politicians or TV "experts"
20-year payback. How long to the blades last?
Without the government offering massive rebates the day they go online no company would invest money into wind power. It's not really green anymore. The original generators lasted longer and need less maintenance. Now we are mass produced the parts and the quality and longevity of the parts has been thrown out with the bathwater
@@kitemanmusic I live about 3 miles from the Wild Horse Mountain Wind Farm in Oklahoma. In the year that we have lived here they have replaced 5 sets of blades and the wind farm has only been in operation since 2018. They also only spin about 8-10 hours a day, bad placement maybe? At the moment there are 5 out of the 29 turbines that never spin, I assume they are out of commission. As much as I don't like to look at them during the day they are worse at night because of the miles long string of red beacon lights that flash about every 15 seconds in unison. I agree that we need to be working towards alternative energy but, it just hard for me to believe that wind is the answer.
@@kitemanmusic Most farms are built onshore to run for 25 years. At that stage they could be retrofitted with new turbine gearboxes and blades. Blades re regularly sanded down to cut dents and debris strikes as well as airborne damage such are the forces they absorb or they can be left running at a lower generation efficiency and lower profit. 20 years is the warranty contract
Also, check out some of the stories of decommissioned wind turbine blades. They just cut 'em up and bury them. And they take an enormous amount of land to do so.
They can be recycled into bridges, playgrounds or ground up to use as concrete filler
No, they don't take an enormous amount of land to bury. Apparently you have cycled enough miles of this planet of ours. It's enormous.
That is not true. They are ground up and made into dildoes.
Cause digging for oil and disposing of all that crap is a piece of cake, huh Gomer.
Cause paving thousands of square miles with roads and burning tons of coal is more environmentally friendly I suppose?
We must always keep in mind that while the source of energy is renewable, the infrastructure is not. When renewable energy can completely power our grid all the time and also we can build renewable infrastructure without fossil fuels then we'll mostly be using nuclear power. That's the reality.
renewables are still very good for domestic home use (I.e home solar panels & micro wind turbines).
Obligatory nuclear energy comment.
Very little land use, reuse of nuclear materials, Onagawa, there's a reason France is closer in hitting their emission reduction targets than Germany, etc.
"Very little land use" is only accurate for the actual power stations. The Uranium mining for the French power stations makes a large portion of Mali uninhabitable, especially due to it's excessive use of fresh water. This is the main reason why the French Army is "helping" the Mali government against the "terrorist uprising" in their country, since the "terrorists" would prefer to use their own country to raise cattle and grow food instead of mining and exporting Uranium which only helps the upper class in the capitol.
And even in France itself the power stations have a very large impact on the fresh-water situation, and the health of the river fauna populations, since these stations require extreme amounts of cooling water.
"The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant was the *closest* nuclear power plant to the epicenter of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, *less than half the distance of the stricken Fukushima I power plant* ... *All safety systems functioned as designed, the reactors automatically shut down without damage, and no reactor damage occurred* ... Following the tsunami, two to three hundred residents of the town who lost their homes to the tsunami took refuge in the Onagawa nuclear plant's gymnasium, as the reactor complex was the only safe area in the vicinity to evacuate to."
Obligatory no thanks response to anyone suggesting nuclear energy.
So what can be done with a nuke plant after it's experation date???
@@rcole1175 Almost all of it is contaminated and needs to be transported to nuclear waste repositories. Taking down the reactor is almost as expensive as building it up in the first place. And you can't really re-use the building for anything, since everything you would do in it would have to follow the same strict nuclear safety rules than operating the power plant does, and that makes every activity 10 times as expensive as it would have to be normally.
waiting you to make a Nuclear energy video on the new tech.
New breeder reactors are awesome, and immensely safer than the old reactors. And they can run off the leftover waste from the old one's...
@@amjrpain919 New technologies need to prove themselves. That said, I am also excited about the new breeder reactors.
@@amjrpain919 Thorium and Molten Salt Reactors are also pretty darn great techs in the nuclear power world
1. Hybrid power plants (using both wind and solar)
2. More offshore than onshore winf turbines
3. Coloring the wind blades so as to avoid bird strikes.
4. Finding ways to reduce the use of diesel or petrol in construction and installation of wind farms. Inr way can be using wind turbines or solar panels for constructing newer turbines and/or panels.
5. Pyrolysis is one way to reduce landfilling. The easiest manner is the use of wind turbines in cement production as well as road construction. Their are claims being made now that we have found ways to profitably extract resins from wind turbines in an electricity positive manner.
Here we are in Texas where 35% of the grid is wind and it’s only supplying 7% of the energy needed leading to blackouts. Solar is providing 3%. It’s not reliable at all and leads to consumers having to make sacrifices
I was a tourist in the States in 1983 and came across a disused wind turbine farm in the middle of California. My host told me it was too expensive to demolish so it hadn’t been demolished yet.
I was toured through that area or one similar, it was incredible and beyond belief that such things were allowed, just a disgraceful eyesore. I do wonder if these really big new machines will suffer a similar fate as they require massive infrastructure and machines to build, they will need all of that and more to dismantle and dispose of. Will that in turn simply lead to an abandon in place mentality like Gen I turbines you describe.
@Sussell Your friend was partially right ..teachers unions and other invested in building these and getting large tax breaks.. after they were no longer profitable to run which was in some cases less than 10 yrs they were abandoned by their owners leaving the tax payer with the bill for removing them ...as you have seen removing them is not easy and if you even tried to remove the concrete base which is too small to be reused then the carbon footprint would be = to a small war ...as usual it's a lose lose for the taxpayer...we paid for those tax breaks we paid for the elec produced and we will be paying for the removal and disposal to landfills
The concrete pads alone are typically 10-20 feet thick and 60 feet in diameter. Removing that would be incredibly expensive. So I bet in 20-30 years there's going to be a lot of giant concrete circles left in the environment.
@@lindsaydempsey5683
How many old coal power stations sit there because there to expensive to remove 🤣
@@MegaRyan123456 Not a lot that I'm aware of, most governments require power station sites to be returned to a clean site at end of life. California's derelict wind turbines seem to be an outlier in this regard.
What the “F” is wrong with farming and grazing ?
See a lot of that in west Texas. Although also a lot of the land isn't used that much.
the world economic forum, and the UN think its "bad for the enviroment"
wonder what getting rid of farming and grazing would do to food supplies LOL /s
they basically want world famine.
@C7 Racehead Complex indeed--in Texas you have the issue where forests of mesquite and juniper have taken over vast swathes of land. They are very hardy trees, with the unfortunate affect of also lowering the water table and rendering a lot of land extremely difficult to use for any purpose.
Farming and grazing is great depending on how it is done. But it ain't gonna solve the energy crisis without people starving so that others can have bio-fuel in their cars.
Apparently the turbines are producing 'the brown-note'. The vibrations that people were complaining about in this report are causing indigestion and diarrhea in grazing animals, resulting in a general weakness that makes the animals uninterested in breeding. Farmers have been experiencing similar symptoms, to the point that they've had to move away from the turbines. So, realistically, the land isn't usable for farming or grazing, deepening the sense of buyer's remorse the farmers and ranchers are feeling - and this is after the 2 years they couldn't use that land while the turbine was being built.
Do a video on what is actually used to make each wind tower work also cost of installing and at what point the wind tower actually starts off setting the cost of the job!
Search for LCOE, levelized cost of energy. You'll find that coal and nuclear are now double the cost of wind or solar. The first two are already going away just from economic forces.
@@pcproffy you are joking right? those sources are so skewed.
@@pcproffy th-cam.com/video/wPDr8odygJo/w-d-xo.html
@@pcproffy Very true. And cost for nuclear does not include cost for 240,000 years of waste disposal.None has been dispose do for the 75 years of commercial nuclear energy production.
Sadly in all wind farms when the carbon cost of manufacturing, instaling the mills and their infrastructure is far greater than any CO2 offset by their power generation in their 30 year life. California has become a windmill junkyard. The environmental cost has been enormas, and after billion they still have brown-outs.
And now (2022-2023) apparently insurance underwriters who write insurance policies for wind farms are seeing massive amounts of claims because the numbers of wind turbines failing is on the rise.
I’m from germany and PLEASE do take us as a negative example!
Keep your nuclear energy, build new, 3rd generation reactors that can use up nuclear waste and reduce its radioactivity from tens of thousands of years to a couple of hundreds.
Keep them until fission reactors are feasible and sure... build some wind turbines, support solar roofs and hydrogen generation from excess capacity, but don’t plaster your countryside in wind turbines that are killing off wildlife and reducing quality of life through their rhythmic pressure waves that are shaking up buildings!
We’re now paying the highest energy prices in the world, save for a few island nations. It is driving away our industry, throttling digital development and EV flourishing. Our grid is more unstable than ever, leaving factories with blackouts and all that for a ‘green’ illusion!
We have thousands of windmills in our part of the country and they only run about 20% of the time
where are you located?
@@daverichards1990 south west corner of Alberta
interesting because it is more than 40 percent of the state of Iowa's energy portfolio.
Your in trouble windmills and solar panels don't work ask Texas but if anyone figures out how to build an battery efficient enough and large enough to power a small city then you will be getting somewhere until then you need a traditional power grid
@@donturner9510 the reason the ones in Texas didn’t work is because they were never designed to be in that cold. Wind power isn’t reserved for warm places. You gotta remember that storms like that are extremely rare.
I heard that when a gas or coal plant is built, it just magically appears overnight!
Nobody thinks that.
But the amount of material needed to produce a MW of coal or gas is a fraction of the same amount of material needed to build a MW of wind. And it’s more reliable, too.
@@M0rmagil
If you consider the actual footprint and include mountain top removal or open pot mining the equation starts to change. When you add the rail needed to move the coal it has swing even further. A powerplants footprint must include the energy source. Every part of the energy supply. Wind turbine can be recycled including the blades. Every part of the turbine is 100% recyclable. But the real issue is the amount of fuel needed to power a coal plant. If that is ignored then the equation is invalid.
@@andrewday3206 the rails already exist.
@@isaaclang6031
So the fuel required to move the coal is magically pollution free?
@@andrewday3206 Go a day without your car, bus, or subway, don't eat all day, no water, no internet, no TV, no phone, no emergency services with a blanket and hot chocolate. Understand the things you hate so much before you criticize them.
Fun fact: Energy companies are exempt from liability for killing endangered birds
Turbine blades as cheap housing materials, green bike and foot bridges, noise barriers on freeways... I’m sure we can think of something other than landfill. Great video 👍
Definitely in the same mindset with you on this. With a little creativity we can find solutions to these problems.
@@UndecidedMF makes me think of the bill and Melinda gates foundation type of stuff, or those concrete coated tends in a bag that are filled with water and inflated to make quick structures in third world countries.
Lifespan, non-renewable materials, environmental costs, economic costs, on and on....
None of those things are limited to wind power. Every form of energy deals with those factors. You think they make nuclear reactors out of recycled materials? Wind is still our best option that leaves the least amount of destruction in it's wake.
@@michaeldougherty6036 They're just not as hyped as wind and other EPA climate projects
@@mikegilyeat3213 Of course the aren't as hyped. They've had their day. And older types of power plants got plenty of government assistance when they were getting started too.
@@michaeldougherty6036 Except that for a given volume of materials, nuclear energy produces hundreds, possibly thousands of times more units of energy.
@@randallsemrau7845 Exactly. Nuclear power is so much more energy dense than chemical energy. There's almost no comparison.
I think Thorium molten-salt reactors will be our best option for electric power generation in the future !!!
What future ?
Or just regular uranium reactors. But it has to ne nuclear
Are you sure you don't just want a free ride someone else pays for?
1 in every home!
Not from what I've heard and read online - - they say Thorium isn't fissionable, and its conversion(in a breeder reactor) to U-233 isn't practicle
The issue is much more complex than you understand. Wind farms are essentially fuel reduction devices for gas power stations. The cost of integrating them into a grid is what matters, not the cost of the turbine itself. Without a power source capable of ramping up when wind ramps down, wind turbines have zero value. Nuclear is the only hope of decarbonizing our grids. Germany and France are real world test cases for that.
Nice job, skip over the bit when they are manufactured! They use so much resources to be made they can never pay for themselves, and when they are decommissioned the blades can't be recycled efficiently so they are buried. Real Green, ya right.
Several hundreds of them here locally. Years ago while in between jobs I took a fence building job. One of the many we built was for a lady out in the country. She was a secretary for a bigwig with the local wind farm company. While talking with her she said she had ask him if all of it was worth it. He said he didn't give a damn if they ever produced a single KW. Why? Because each tower was a million dollars a year in green credits they can sell to other companies. My thoughts about these local ones is this. It is over 2.5 million dollars each to build these here. That money is largely on my tax dollars as the company building these wind farms is highly subsidies. Why is any electricity produced by them not free then to tax payers? Doing the math on over 200 of them nearby we could burn dollar bills and make just as much electricity. A limited life span of these also makes me wonder the sense of them. Ever watch the vids of when these things breakdown and come flying apart? The pieces that come crashing down would easily destroy anything in their path. These things look good on paper and quell the tree hugging society but much like this vid points out if you take all things into consideration the concept needs a bit of rethinking much like nuclear power plants have undergone.
That's how every government business or transaction work.
@Peter Breis yes and the ever growing giant lake of toxic waste growing in china. As long as you line the right pockets everyone, or at least those who could make ir an issue, will look the other way. Sometimes I wonder if the mafia of the 20's just went into politics and big business instead. That is exactly how twisted things have become.
I used to deliver cabins and containers onto wind turbine farms and was told on more than one occasion they never pay for themselves, as each full turn off the blade they get six pence, at that price they take fifty years to pay for themselves, but the turbines only last a max thirty to forty years.
Thats going to be highly varied based upon Power Purchase Agreements between the wind farm and the utility company. Some parts of the country (USA) have a wholesale PPA around $20/MWH and others have a PPA of $150/MWH, it depends of the demand for power. New construction in the USA is almost exclusively greater than 2MW per turbine (there are probably some outliers around the 1.5MW range). Let's say average PPA is $30/MWH and do some math. The cost of a turbine varies based on too many factors to account for in a YT comment, let's call it an even 2mil for tower+construction.
$30×2MW×24HR=$1440/Day
$1440×365=$525,600
$525,600×60%=$315,360/year
(60% is for the average capacity factor, wind isn't always blowing 100%)
$2,000,000÷$315,360=6.3 years to full payoff.
There are labor and maintenance costs to factor in as well but in the scheme of things they are negligible, for the sake of fairness I'll tack on an extra 0.7 years until complete payoff. Normal life expectancy is around 20 years until repower. During a repower the company will replace the major components (generator, gearbox, main bearing, etc) and turn them loose for another 20 years of operation.
If I could get 13 years of almost guaranteed profit for only 7 years of payment I would take it!
All this is without government assistance/tax credits, thats a whole can of worms in itself...
I hope putting some numbers to the mystery helped clarify things a little bit. Long story short, wind farms (at least in the USA) are generally profitable after a few years of operation.
You didn't even touch on the biggest issue associated with wind and solar...energy storage. When you include the cost of storage wind and solar are no longer competitive.
Nuclear is the most efficient and with SMR's coming into production in the next 10 years I see more countries moving this way to decrease their carbon emissions.
Shhhhh don't say that to wind/sun/water activists. Nuclear involves something other than one of the four elements so they get all scared
Ten years ago Fukushima had a melt down and the rods are still burning a hole in the ground. Gov't used to pump the contaminated ground water into holding tanks but ran out of real estate to hold it all. So now its getting released into the ocean.
@@maxmackinlay618 ...That radioactive material came from the earth in the first place. In order to use it as a fuel it needed to be refined [concentrated & purified] but it was in the ground to begin with. The ocean will dilute it to the point where it is no longer harmful, even if sensitive instruments might still detect it. Much, much more radioactive material was dumped into the Pacific Ocean by bomb tests performed by the USA, Britain, France & others in the 1950s.
The Fukushima disaster was a predictable consequence of bad design and poor management plus the unfortunate occurrence of a big nearby earthquake that was bound to happen someday. The fatalities were mainly the result of flooding by the tsunami & badly executed evacuations, not the meltdown[s].
Note that molten salt reactors cannot melt down - the fuel is already molten and is properly contained in its liquid state. Zero explosion risk. Solid-fuel reactors are truly dangerous when things go wrong - IMSRs are walk-away safe if designed properly.
@@jrb_sland5066 Yeah but the guy you're speaking to thinks there is NO radioactivity on the planet other than bombs and reactors, so you can't explain to him that radioactive stuff is absolutely fine when spread around. Just like a human iirc is at 8 kilobecquerel, now a pile of humans would generate a half noticeable activity but other than that no one gives a f*** about human body radioactivity.
Crude oil comes from the earth. Doesn't mean you can let it flow unchecked into the ocean. BP spent millions containing the Gulf of Mexico leak. Japan cant even send a robot to fix their mess, the radiation will kill it. They know its a huge problem, with zero solution that will continue for eternity. Countries like communist China embrace nuclear power because they are unaccountable for any problems that arise.
The life-span of wind turbines is proving to be less than expected. Location and the elements they are exposed to in certain locations are a big factor. They last about 20 to 25 years. That's it. Can you imagine building a fossil fuel power plant and then tearing it down in 20 or 25 years to build an entire new plant to replace it? Of course not. What gets done with the blades when they have deteriorated beyond use? How much fossil fuels is used to build and construct the turbines? A LOT of fossil fuels used to transport, destroy, and burn the blades. There are a lot of "inconvenient truths" you need to acknowledge.
🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗
That's one thing I've never understood about putting them in west Texas. There are regular high wind dust storms out there.
Go Nuclear!
I am beginning to think the left doesn't want an answer to clean energy. Using this much land mass to gain single digit power solutions is just stupid, scars the natural landscape and diminishes future practical use of land resources.
Clean to operate money pit to get rid of
The problem with going for nuclear is that people's irrational fear affects the discussion on the topic.
We need a good pitch to sell the idea of nuclear power.
@@coffeejack7458 and privatize the gains and socialize the losses because that's what all corporations want
@@thomass5169 spot on!
Wind turbines are killing migratory birds by the tens of thousands. I used to work for a state and my work involved rural property access. In 41 1/2 years the only property I could not get access to under any circumstances was an Appalachian ridge wind farm. Legally they had to let me in, but the policy was not to push. I am fairly certain they hadn’t cleaned up the dead birds.
"Cost are coming down all them time with many governments now offering more incentives to encourage more uptick." If you are referring to the incentives being the reason why they are "cheaper", then this statement would not be correct. The government just subsidizes some of the cost of the wind turbines, this does not make them cheaper is it just that an enterprise has to pay less to install them. The rest of the cost is still there but is covered by the government.
I know it is a nagging statement but it is important that to understand, that just because somebody else covers part of the cost of something, that this would in turn make it "cheaper". Imagine if you want to buy a bun for 0.50 Cents and I give you 0.25 Cent. That does not mean the bun is "cheaper", somebody else just covered 50% of cost so it "appears cheaper".
Ultimately prices will only really get lower when the market would increase production while demand stays about the same or does not grow in the same manner as production does.
"The rest of the cost is still there but is covered by the government" Actually, you mean covered by the taxpayers!!
Good point.
@@BobG-eh5fc yes, I assume that everybody knows governments money = money from taxes for the most part.
Over here in Germany it is even worse
First it is subsidized thus effectively being pay for buy with taxes.
Second because of the increased cost of operation, cost for electricity in Germany is the highest of all the EU countries (according to some statistic even the highest world wide).
Third Germany actually has to pay other countries to take the overproduces electricity when there is too much energy generated by wind (and solar) to not damage the power grid.
So all in all Germany loses money by switching to renewable. So this whole things is a just a huge cost for all German citizen. There are some German parties that are against subsidizing renewable and also against shutting down working nuclear plants. But those parties (FDP, AFD) are not very popular (FDP ~ 5-6%, AFD ~ 10-15% depending on the polls).
I'm with you on alternative energy sources. As soon as you introduce climate change into the discussion you have lost me. Climate Change as it is currently embodied is just globalist socialism. Let renewable energy source make their way via the free market. The results will be far far more beneficial. Government incentives breed corruption and shoddy workmanship.
Noticed the same thing, usually anything the government “subsidizes” make it “more” expensive.
Thousands of bald eagles, golden eagles, herons, hawks and other endangered species killed by these contraptions are unavailable for comment.
Ultimately the best way to produce clean energy with no carbon emissions is nuclear power
But it's greenhouse footprint positive.
@kcbob this is a common counter point that a lot of people have. First remember that the waste is incredibly condensed. One pellet of uranium can create as much energy as 2,000 lbs of coal. Uranium the size of a can of coke can produce enough energy for an entire life span of a person.
Disposal can be easily contained and sealed so that it has no impact on ground water and no radiation seepage.
@@brandonmoore1344 Thanks for your time to reply, but I did not mean about the waste. I meant that since this is not a renewable energy source, it heats up the plaernet just like fossil fuels do. So suppose we replace all fossil fuels with nuclear, we still have the same greenhouse effect problems, don't we ? We need to take our energy from the Sun so that we do not add more energy into our system from other sources. Other than that, I like nuclear energy.
@@dimitristripakis7364 sorry my reply was supposed to be for the other comment. Tbh I need to read more in order to answer you question
@@brandonmoore1344 Oh you re right, Im sorry.
You haven’t touched on the topic of bees and birds staying away from wind turbines therefore not pollinating properly
9:15 Have you talked to AOC about we will never have a 100% green source of energy? I think we have about 10 or 11 years left.
What can anyone say to a young woman who already knows everything worth knowing? Add that to the fact that she's very political and lies to promote an agenda. Her claims about how much time we have left is nonsense as has been the claims made by similar thinking people who came before her. Many claimed there would no longer be snow by the year 2016... Someone forgot to tell the people in Texas.
AOC thinks Moby Dick is a venereal disease.
Just ask a Texas Republican how to run a power grid. ROFLMAO
@@davidbach7003 Or even worse, as YOU!!! ROFLPMPLMAO
Left of what? Hector, you and AOC have no idea what you are talking about.
Matt overlooks the fact that Wind turbines are efficient in a very limited range of wind speed. Most turbines will generate power starting at 3-5ms but at that speed electric generation id nominal at best. The ideal speed for a turbine is 12-16 ms and at 25 ms turbines have to be shut down as they can't handle that speed. When considering the short life span of a wind turbine, the inconsistent power generated and the cost to build and remove, wind turbines barely produce enough clean energy to offset the amount CO2 that was used to build them.
Joe M -vertical wind turbines produce power are low wind speeds and are self limiting in high winds so blade centrifugal force us not a limiting factor. Large three bladed wind turbines have tip speeds approaching 200 mph with the result that raindrops and hailstones act like shot blasting delaminating blade leading edges requiring replacement every few years -especially offshore maintenance costs are very high and access difficult at at times impossible .
Fact: Wind turbines offset their energy required from production in their first year of production and far less in most cases. I don't understand why this idea is even entertained by people at all. The math isn't even that hard to do yourself. A 3 Megawatt (MW) wind turbine has about 500 tonnes of steel including the nacelle, tower and foundation.
400 cubic meters of concrete for the foundation. It takes about 70kg of coal to produce 1 cubic meter of concrete = 28 tonnes of coal and for the nay sayers, lets double that to cover the manufacturing, shipping and installation of the concrete to 56 tonnes per turbine.
Now the 500 tonnes of steel. It takes about 770kg of coal to manufacture a tonne of steel = 385 tonnes of coal. Again for the nay sayers lets double that number to 770 tonnes for manufacturing, shipping and installation of the turbine.
Now lets add those two together and you get 826 tonnes of coal required for manufacturing, shipping and installation of each turbine. Thats a big number, no doubt. But! it takes about 1 tonne of coal to generate 2 Megawatt Hours (MWH) of electricity. So for a turbine to offset its manufacturing, shipping and installation it will need to produce 1,652MWH of electricity. Still with me?
Now lets talk turbine electricity production. A 3MW turbine is capable of generating 3 megawatts at peak output, but it doesn't run at peak all the time. Thats the capacity factor. A good average capacity factor is about 30% which is low for modern turbines, but we're working on averages. So that means that 3MW turbine is 0.9MW turbine on average. Now we need to get to megawatt hours. 0.9MW x 24 hours per day = 21.6MWH of production per day, per each turbine. Now lets take that and divide our previous number of 1652MWH by 21.6MWH to find out how many days of production it will take to offset its manufacturing, shipping and installation. Still with me? 76.5 days. Thats it. Each turbine produces as much energy as took to build it in 2.5 months.
I challenge you to find these same numbers from any source other than anti wind sites. Run them yourself and try to show my math is out by 95 times.
@@JimP226 yes but they only operate about 30% if the 8600 hours per year -solar panels generate power for 4300 hours a year and tidal turbines about 6500 hours a year .Tidal turbines are unaffected by sea conditions and even onnfull days solar panels produce power -wind turbines produce nothing when there us no wind and they shut down in high winds to avoid destruction by excess centrifugal forces .And wind turbines especially offshore require a lot of very expensive maintenance and blade changes every 3 or 4 years.
@saladdogger the problem is that over the year there are only around 2000-2500 hours of wind so 70% of the time a turbine is not generating power .Firstly a turbine.can only extract at most 16/27 th of the energy in the wind ( Betz Law ) .Secondly even when there us wind if it is below a minimum then the turbine won't produce power above a certain speed the turbine shuts down And thirdly they needvs huge about of maintenance and blade replacement every few years .The problem with all wind and solar " green energy " is that it is intermittent and most is produced in the summer months when the power demand is at its lowest .
@saladdogger they will certainly produce more power than they use in manufacturing but until we have large scale commercially viable electricity storage the intermittent output of wind solar and tidal will remain a problem requiring gas coal oil or nuclear back up if at least 80% of peak demand .What we need to do is reduce demand with better electrical efficrncy of equipment lighting insulation heatpumps etc
Put up a couple of windmills so they could charge more for "green, climate saving energy". Geothermal and nuclear, is the way to go.
Like in Texas where they charge 32.000% more for gas and 10.000% more for electricity to people that have a variable rate .
The problem with nuclear is that no one wants to store the nuclear waste cus its expensive
@@Max-bw4uc Thorium reactors are the way to go
If that’s what you took away from this video, you are extremely naive. Not everybody lives in Iceland, Geothermal just isn’t readily available for the majority of consumers. Also, if the environmental downsides of wind energy turns you off, I have some seriously bad news about nuclear energy. The “way to go” is to diversify into all forms of energy generation wherever it’s viable. You don’t live in a desert and decide that hydroelectric power is the way to go. Use what works.
@@Max-bw4uc extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What’s your evidence?
"Costs are coming down..." because taxation is going up as a result of government interference in the natural law of supply and demand:
1. We (politicians) want people to use wind turbines.
2. People are not voluntarily using wind turbines, because they're expensive.
3. We will tax the people more, and subsidize our cronies to sell wind turbines.
I wish you might have looked into the adverse effects of low frequency vibrations on farms. I've seen a small study where farmers were losing their livestock and even the families had to move away because of serious ailments. Seems the vibrations were causing the livestock to become ill and unable to reproduce and the farmers were unable to sleep and came down with unexplained ailments.
You might be on to something! My friends bought a farm a few years back less than a mile from a bunch of wind turbines. Some of their chickens get frostbite in the winters. Plus they go to bed by 11 and have to sleep until 7am every day. In one big vibration their truck went off the road and it got totaled.
@@fishhuntadventure wat..
Placebo is one hell of a drug
I do not know about livestock being unable to reproduce, but turbines do create hearable noise that can prevent neighbors to sleep. Nowadays, the majority of countries where the wind industry is in have legislation against night noises. I know that there are huuge fines in Germany, for example. For such a case, the turbine is set to produce less at night and therefore produce less noise.
Oh come on, they allowed them on their property for the money...
I am not an engineer, but my two best friends are both power engineers. They both tell me that wind turbine energy is mostly a joke and only political motivation keeps it alive. They have lengthy explanations for their stance, but I can’t articulate it in this space. I am curious so I watch these videos to find out what I can. Additionally, I read extensively on the topic. The jury is out and we will not know in our lifetimes whether wind is the way to go.
Meanwhile in UK we have had windfarms for Decades.
It is now the cheapest new generation option. Renewables now exceed 40% of all UK Electrical Power Generation.
"So, yes, maybe wind power does come with more downsides that many of us first realized." That is because "many of us" don't listen. All of these issues were brought up 50 years ago. Next time, maybe "many of us" should wait until after these issues have been solved before making these sorts of mistakes and leaving it up to others to figure out how to fix them, while patting yourselves on the back for being so unquestionably righteous.
It really doesn't though. Thing is, no one really has access to these machines. No one gets tours inside them. Dirty Jobs did a segment on wind turbines,which to be honest, was kinda a joke. A lot more work goes into maintaining our machines than that.
We have here a basic misunderstanding of the concept known as "development". Light bulbs were developed. V-8 engines were developed. And successful developments take time and cost money.
Every single turbine made is a prototype. I work with turbines. There’s always a better way to harness the energy. You don’t make a computer mode to solve these issues. If we let computer models decide how to run the energy, the turbines aren’t safe for human interaction (the technicians doing maintenance). They’re already deathtraps for unaware people like you, which is not an insult but there are many factors that make these machines deadly. Wind turbines need to be as efficient as possible with the ability to be troubleshot and be provided maintenance to. This video is still full of the lack of knowledge it takes to understand why turbines operate the way they do. The bird problem could be solved by reducing the main culprit of growing populations of feral cats but turbines seem to be peoples choice of blame. Turbines of all kinds NEED to be built and tested. There’s no other way around it regardless of what anyone thinks. They need to prove safe, effective, and efficient before we ever stop making new kinds of turbines. Learn about them. They’re a lot more fascinating than people give them credit for.
Lifecycle cost analysis isn't what you should be looking at - it's a misleading metric. A more meaningful assessment is the impact on electricity prices. Counterintuitively, wind, despite having a low cost, tends to make power prices rise because you end up paying for it and also the dispatchable power source.
My favorite place to go camping in my van is in windmill parks because most people do not want to get near them so it is the most quiet place you can find...
"Woosh!, woosh, woosh, woosh, (on and on, all night!)
Matt, I suggest you do a similar video on the impact of aging PV panels. This video made me wonder what the current state of PV pannel recycling is. Thanks
In Rousset, France, you will find Europe’s first solar panel recycling plant - possibly the first dedicated facility in the world. It is run by Veolia and PV Cycle, and it has the capacity to process every retired solar panel in the country at the moment. Panels are dismantled by robots and each component recycled. Glass, which makes up two thirds of the panel, is ground up and returned to the glass making industry. 10-15% of the panel is aluminium, which is easily recycled. Silicon and cabling are processed for the metals. The only thing that can’t be recycled is the 10% plastic, which is burned in steel plants.
If you stop to think about it, there is a very good reason why we haven’t seen plants like this earlier. Solar PV panels last for 25 years, and have only been common and affordable for the last 15 to 20. We’re just now seeing solar panels retired in sufficient numbers for there to be a reliable supply. Commercial recycling hasn’t really been possible until now.
@solaroid55 The video he made about it explains pretty clearly about how solar panels are recycled. Do you even do elementary research before posting your endless misinformation on here?
And when they burn up they do it spectacularly
Ancient info, a few early wind turbines, decades ago, did catch fire but modern wind turbines don't. Fossil fuel plants are not immune to catching fire or worse also
@@stevehayward2533 i missed the part where fossil fuels were made from fiberglass....
@@troyb3659 Troy. Don't bug little Stevie. He is a good little go greenie that thinks he can change what has gone on with the earth for four and a half billion years by paying more taxes!!!!
@@stevehayward2533 On the way to SW Texas I saw one of these "new" wind turbines engufled in flames, gearbox failure oil running down the pylon and the whole thing in flames. the blades eventually fell off and partially burned also...so hmmmmm. Was told it was not the first one that burned. Ground was Saturated with unburned oil also!
They don't do it often, nor do our machines murder 10 people at a time when they do, like oil rigs, out in the ocean. Deepwater Horizon, for example.
I don' believe in this solution. The impact to the environment is enormous and people will fight them and the associated hi voltage power lines with a vengeance.
Almost every sentence that contains the word "undeniable" is false.
Like this sentence 😄
Undeniably.
How about stopping the madness of destroying our landscapes, our fishing grounds and our bird populations by using a reliable, stable, and safe energie source. Until nuclear energy is back on the agenda, governments are not serious about 'fighting climate change'.
If that's a sensible goal is another discussion alltogether.
scsirob It is a sensible goal. But you’re right, without nuclear we’ll never get there in time, with nuclear everybody wins!
@@ArruVision Why is fighting something that is inevitable a sensible goal? Climate changes, it has done so as long as the earth exists. Always has, always will. I believe our impact is negligeable and you may disagree, but climate has always shifted, and people have always adapted. So make sure we're ready to adapt. Don't waste energy fighting the inevitable.
Guess you haven't heard about Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nothing safe or reliable about what happened there. Stability is also questionable if one considers that radioactive contamination can last for thousands of years.
@@ArruVision except of course, people living next to places like Chernobyl, Fukushima and Yucca Mountain.
Stuart Poss Shutting down nuclear in Japan after Fukushima has already killed more people (by ways of air pollution from other energy sources) than the meltdown. Re Chernobyl you'll have to bring that up with people who DO want to build new RBMK reactors with no containment like the ones in Chernobyl. And regarding the Yucca Mountain accident, please fill me in!
Going nuclear solves a lot of the problems with renewables and fossil fuel plants. The waste is a politial problem, not a technical one.
Last report I heard, if you took all the waste water from all the unclear powerplants in the world, it would fill an Olympic swimming pool . . . That's it. Like you say, it's a political problem, not a technical one.
@@leonielson7138 Correct. And over time it decays away to zip. Toxic materials are toxic forever.
@@scubaeqhp over time ? Like 300k years .
@@armandovanhaaren7028 Nah, it'll be safe to handle without protective equipment in about 10,000 years, but loooong before that science will figure out how to neutralize it. Breeder reactors burn waste and create more fuel than they use. Small Modular Reactors are the wave of the future.
@@scubaeqhp fuel is not the only radioactive waste a nuclear power plant produces . The entire building is radioactive and everything you use to demolish it with .
Wind turbines are ugly and destroy the often beautiful landscape they are put up in. Too often the production and eventual removal of alternative energy, do greater damage than conventional power sources. However, that is often hidden, so thank you for pointing out some of these problems.
We will all be living in old turbine blades eating grass and blue mussels.
How about hydro-ELECTRET power??? Electret NOT electric, just to be clear.
Why no one ever talks about Electrets honestly boarders on or honestly, strides deep into the land of conspiracy.
I mean is it a conspiracy? By definition it’s a rather strong yes, and most have come to agree on this. WHY? The Who what when where and why. Oh and were; were you ever? Have you ever? Oh whatever could it be, this electret culled key to independence.
If your from the States of Northern America’s the.man this likely will sound like some sort of word salad of imagined so called green energy…but why?
Well it seems the only mention of Electrets in your realm or sphere of existence is that of the “Electret Microphone” and even that is quite sparse. Then electret battery capacitor restrictions….
What the heck happened to the cpsc.gov???? I needed to link skmethjng.
@@Coincidence_Theorist i never heard of electret thats good i might do some research on that. But do tell so far what you know about electret and why it would be best fit alterative than this turbine
That's pretty much it.
@@Coincidence_Theorist Tasmania has hydro power. It's a good thing.
There was one observation made, that making the blades black substantially reduced bird deaths as they saw them better.
?
The color black absorbs heat, which breaks down the chemicals and fibers of the blades causing premature failure and component separation(ie throwing the tons of blade hundreds of feet to kill what ever it randomly lands on.) or into the ocean to leak toxic chemicals into the water.
I do wonder why we don't see piles of dead birds at the foot of tall buildings, electricity pylons, large trees and other tall structures? Might it simply be that this "wind turbines kill birds" thing is simply a load of cobblers?
@@Brian-om2hh I suspect it is PARTLY that the “bird killer” thing is overrated. (Think of how many birds must be killed due to habitat destruction to mine and burn coal etc. and how little we hear about that.) However, buildings, pylons etc. tend to be easily visible; and they are not moving, I suspect that wind turbines, due to being light in colour, and the blades being both slender and moving are more difficult for birds to see. I do see a difference. I am still fine with wind turbines.
@@Brian-om2hh ummm, how many tall buildings, electricity pylons and trees MOVE at 150+ miles per hour... and the .gov has done multiple studies that document the environmental impacts of all structures(required by the .gov for most all major installations)... feel free to educate yourself. It is all free and online.
Matt, I think your analysis has been extremely generous to wind power by omitting a major environmental truth.. In Europe (and I'm sure elsewhere) we often experience high pressure weather systems which result in low wind speeds and no power generated. During these conditions back-up power is required from other generation sources. This requires additional plant to be constructed and this is often hot-spinning reserve (fossil fuel). Even if this hot-spinning reserve was displaced by battery storage solutions it is still adding additional construction environmental footprint (ecological, carbon-footprint from concrete, and substantial earth resources for batteries).
Of course he's generous towards it. He's a woke millenial.
As always critics with this point of view leave aside the fact, that intermeshing grids are a major relief to this problem. Guess it is good enough to not mention the possibility to send the electricity between nations. As it is already and is widely build up in europe for exact this reason.
Not a metrologist are you. Weather systems cover entire continents. Look at the carbon intensity of the grid on low wind days in Europe. Why don't you???
@@jamesgreen1305 In fact, i did have a class in metrology back then. And i i know the Cabon Intensities on a windy day and a calm day. So where is your point? It's 50% renewables now. Sure the rest comes from other sources. But it won't stay like this. For sure.
@@juliane__ you obviously fooled me with your ignorance of the facts about carbon intensities on European windless days. You just have to look at polluting Germany. And what about windy Scotland where Glasow was provided by 70% nuclear power during COP 26??? You obviously don't know your facts. Bye.
Let’s put the issue of disposing of turbine blades into perspective:
Less than 0.150 g of blade material must be disposed of or recycled per kWh generated over the lifetime of the wind turbine.
That compares to over 150 g of natural gas used per kWh by a gas-fired power plant, and 412 g of CO2 emitted.
The numbers speak for themselves!
I mean, a gram of blade material definitely takes more than a gram of CO2 to produce. But you are correct that the lifecycle emissions are far lower with wind
It's important to ask the question "is it worse than the current option?"
I have a feeling that wind turbines will ultimately go the way of the compact fluorescent light bulb. Sounded good on the surface but ultimately filed under "bad idea".
Compact fluorescent light bulbs aren't going away because they were a bad idea, but because a better idea came along, LED light bulbs.
While LED bulbs are indeed better, I would still content that CFs were a bad idea. As compared with their predecessor (the venerable incandescent bulb) CFs are very costly to manufacture, have 3x the number of components, require expending significantly more energy to produce each one, yet have a shorter lifespan. For the consumer, a $1 incandescent would cost you $4 or more for something that puts out the same amount of light. Not to mention, the issue of the mercury content in each and every one of them - Seldom do people dispose of them properly and that mercury just ends up in a landfill. So yeah, at the end of the day, I'm still gonna file them under "bad idea" and yes; there's almost a note-for-note parallel with wind turbines. I'm not against progress, change or ingenuity but I'm fairly sure, history won't smile upon the notion that wind could play a significant role in powering humanity's energy needs.
I partially agree, every form of energy has upsides and downsides. What really irks me are politicians that NEVER discuss the downsides of wind or solar and want us to pay trillions (literally) to put up more of these things. And they never discuss the upsides of coal (with proper exhaust filters and scrubbers), natural gas and nuclear.
@@Geomephysicus Correct.
I feel like you missed some important criticisms of wind energy. They're harming endangered birds. They don't always produce energy when it's needed most, and produce too much when it isn't needed, and that energy has to go somewhere.
Too much output... seems like an argument for investing in energy storage methods, maybe a decentralized battery network.
That technology doesn't really exist. If it did we would be using it.
@@Antoniobrady yes and no, there are many ways to store energy (they can be inefficient so long as they are powered by renewables). Currently we have instance, pumped storage (I believe is great for areas with elevation change) and batteries. There are others that haven't broken into the market like flywheels and more efficient batteries (Real Engineering recently posted about).
He mentioned both, so tune yer ear in,
The bird death from wind turbines is equal the bird death caused by nuclear power stations per produced MWh, and is only 1/15th of the bird deaths caused by fossil fuel power per produced MWh. Those are in turn small compared to the number of birds killed by traffic and is absolutely dwarfed by the number of bird deaths caused by domestic cats.
theconversation.com/wind-farms-are-hardly-the-bird-slayers-theyre-made-out-to-be-heres-why-79567
Your other points are solved by improved power transmission networks and decentralised battery storage (the latter incidentally also functions as stand by power which negates the need for the very expensive fossil fuels stand by power stations in use today).
Fewer people = less pollution. Birds and bats are killed by the sudden pressure change, not just from flying into the blades. Wind farms are a hideous eyesore with only a 20 year lifespan, and they take a lot of mining and fossil fuel to construct.
Great video. Maybe you could do one on hydro power. In Washington state, lobbyists are trying to remove dams and replace them with solar and wind farms, which makes no sense to me.
I love how proponents of wind and solar energy pretend, that the sun always shines and the wind always blows.
batteries always store. What will be your argument as energy storage technology meets the demand?
@@hizzlemobizzle Dumb Ass. It never will meet demand.
@@stevehall9585 You have just joined the great persons of history who have said it can never be done.
@@hizzlemobizzle Can't store what isn't collected.
Oil and coal will run out. The wind and sun will always be available until the solar system dies. If you diversify energy sources, like using wind, solar, geothermal, etc all together, you will have more reliable and consistent energy.
If only that Giant Meteor 2020 had shown up like it was supposed to, all this would be solved now.
Biden beat Trump, so they steered it away. /s
From 27 July 2019 A Tasmanian wind farm has killed three eagles in the past few months, and 37 eagles across its wider operations since 2002, amid fears 10 new wind farms planned for the island will cause extinctions.
It seams to me they cost more to construct and dispose of then the energy they produce over their lifetime.
Wind farms take an average of about 5 months electricity production to pay all associated costs.
Solar takes about a year.
Coal takes about 3 years......
Great work as ever Matt, a couple of things that I think will build on your video.
Bird deaths - Whilst it is sad that 500,000 birds are killed by wind turbines in the USA each year, glass covered buildings in the USA kill up to 1 BILLION birds per year. So whilst some like to say it's the turbines that are reducing bird populations, it's more likely that it's the love of glass sided buildings.
SOURCE www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/07/how-many-birds-killed-by-skyscrapers-american-cities-report
Also again I agree that decommissioning the blades is currently an issue, it is one that we will work out in time. Also it has been noted in Europe that blades are lasting LONGER than predicted, which is actually causing issues in the market, as windfarms that were meant to be decommisioned are still running!
SOURCE www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1683023/calls-scrap-danish-turbine-limit
Finally if you really care about birds, don't buy a cat
SOURCE eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/
Looking forward to your next video, subscribed, notified and commented :-)
Really appreciate that you shared that. Awesome info!
Undecided with Matt Ferrell No problem Matt, I sold my business and retired last year so have plenty of time for research. I think that as I’m based in Europe, my searches pull details in slightly different order. If you would like any research help or views from across the pond, do get in touch.
@@Muppetkeeper I think the issue is the type of bird that is being killed.. ie: prey birds and bats -- we shouldn't be valuing the death of an eagle or bat, to that of a more common species. There really isn't enough data to come to a conclusion either way as of yet, so time will tell. One major problem that everyone seems to overlook is the loss of habitat from installing solar/wind-farms in the first place; this will become more of an issue with expansion of wind and solar -- thus, inflicting damage to environment we are trying to save.
@@magnusjohansson4272 Agreed, survival of a species (but not necessarily an individual) needs to considert when planning for anything. That said, environmental conserns are usually considered when installing windturbines today. Bird strikes can also be reduced by modern technologie - just googel "wind turbine bird radar".
@@derradfahrer5029 I actually watched a video about flight detection technology before watching this video; the blades slow just enough so that the bird can detect it.. knowing how effective it will be needs more time, but it looks good.
On your second point about finding appropriate sites for farms.. this is where I become worried, because for wind and solar to provide enough energy.. we're going to need a lot of land and I fear that significant damage will be unavoidable.
I am honestly a fan of nuclear.. especially the potential it holds with molten salt reactor (MSR) technology, but people seem to have an irrational fear toward nuclear in general. I don't think that renewable sources will ever be able to provide the world's energy demand, so if liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR) don't come to fruition.. I don't know what the future has in store for us as a species.
Offshore wind turbines can be good for ocean ecology. All those dead sea birds floating around the towers reverse the food chain for the fish.
What about infrasound? Wind farms create it. People get physically ill down wind of windfarms. Infrasound is created by the compression of air as the blade goes past the mast. It is a unpleasant consequence of windmills/windfarms.
You forgot to mention how much lead and nickel must be mined for each turbine and also the mass boneyards in Wyoming to house the broken down propellers.
of the oil required for lubrication. cost per watt is atrocious.
Don't forget the vast strip mines already in existence (from coal and gold). I'll bet one of them could store all of the expired blades for the next 50 years.
@John Buckin fact there are efforts being made in that direction. "Another creative recycling option produces pellets or boards that can be used in carpentry applications. In 2019, Global Fiberglass Solutions began producing a product called EcoPoly Pellets in the U.S. and will soon additionally produce a panel version. These products are certified as being recycled from decommissioned wind turbine blades through radio-frequency identification (RFID) tracking from the blade to the end-product. EcoPoly Pellets can be transformed into a variety of products such as warehouse pallets, flooring material, or parking bollards. Based on its demand forecasts, Global Fiberglass Solutions anticipates being able to process 6,000 to 7,000 blades per year at each of its two plants in Texas and Iowa." - excerpt from story
blog.ucsusa.org/james-gignac/wind-turbine-blades-recycling
Sure but if you're running a conventional coal or gas power plant you need to mine metals for their turbines too!
A damn good description of a wind turbine blade. They are made to look like airplane propellers, NOT Dutch windmill sails.
I've noticed on alot of old wind turbines oil running all down the sides, so when they build them offshore, where's all that oil going besides into the sea?!😳
We don't use 'old' machines in the ocean. We maintain those machines better than you maintain your own car.
@@jacoblaughbon3323 So accidents never happen? Good to know..
@@markjohnson7887 The oils we use are completely synthetic and pose little risk to the environment. Not to mention offshore machines have channels and capture points so that oil never escapes the tower. We've had machines blow gearboxes and dump a couple hundred gallons, but not one drop hits the ground. There is always risk, no matter what is done, but just because some meathead says wind turbines cause cancer, doesn't make it so.
Yep, just like the land based ones will wash lubricating oil down into the ground during rains.
@@jacoblaughbon3323 ooof
So let's cut down trees, a known carbon sink and build wind turbines. Makes sense.
You realize that building out of wood is _literally_ making structures out of Carbon that was pulled from the atmosphere, right? Once a tree is finished growing, the amount of Co2 it absorbs drops significantly. So if we can grow trees sustainably, replanting them every time we cut them down, which is how all construction lumber in this country is produced, we will actually pull more carbon from the air than a static forest would. Building with trees is carbon _negative_ . So yes it makes sense, you just have no idea what you're talking about.
@@derpmansderpyskin LMAO
@@derpmansderpyskin This nonsense of lowering CO2 doesn't have any logic. Present average in atmosphere is one .of lowest in last 10 000 years. Actually, all green earth cover needs more CO2 - Sahara was green when CO2 level was 5 times of todays.
@@RetiredPilot I'm sorry you don't know how trees work?
@@derpmansderpyskin I know I guess only young people know everything. It is sad that we built a world that now people want to destroy.
Wind costs 1300 times more than natural gas. This makes no sense, especially for those considering environmental consequences.
that number is complete nonsense. Are you forgetting to add in the cost of fuel?
I think they’re unpredictable production puts a significant burden on the grid.
Amen Pat. That is exactly the problem. Is why natural gas plants are loving this.
Thank you for the objective view of the subject.
Good topic and content! What's your take on recycling challenges when it comes to solar power gen ?
There are two methods one is chemical-not green, second is with shredding machine which could be solar powered and the powder can be reused. I'm not expert this is what I've learned from British TH-cam channel "Just have a think".
SEIA, Solar Energy Industries Association, has been working on a recycling program for the last few years. Most all of a panel can be recycled or reused, especially given the large amount of silicon (sand, really) and metal used. Challenges remain, not least of all localizing those recycling facilities and monetizing them like other commercial/municipal recycling centers.
Government subsidies do not reduce cost, they increase it drastically due to mismanagement of funds.
Had we had all these worries and care one century ago, there would have been no fossil fuel extracted. Why do we keep this double standard against renewables?
markotrieste said,
"Why do we keep this double standard against Renewables?"
What do you mean by double standard??
@@acmefixer1 Ever heard of citizen groups worried for how to recycle a refinery? Or about the birds killed by coal powerplants (which kill three times the birds of wind turbines per kWh produced)? Me no.
@@markotrieste Or how many humans did Three Miles, Chernobyl, and Fukushima kill? Not counting Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are still some people who advocate more nuclear plants.
@@ibrahimidris8499 the costs of externalities of non-renewables aren't often talked about or factored into consideration. think of the negative health effects from inhaling the exhaust from a coal power plant
@@garyzhang6662 Agreed, thank you.
I love your nuanced and balanced view about wind turbines. Not blind faith, not overly critical. Way to go!
Appreciate that.
@fladave99 Mills are you okay?
@fladave99 Mills show me something to prove this.
@@ilovewindex487 Asking conspiracy theorists for proof, ha.
@@Lizard1582 lol
Really glossed a lot of pertinent info pertaining to landfills. The environmental impact of delivering non-toxic waste to modern landfills far outweighs any impact of having it safely and eternally buried.
Why not use vertical wind turbines, I seem to havng read about them decades ago. Not as much an eyesore as these huge monsters.
So overall I support wind power and have even worked in the wind industry as a turbine technician, but please don't kid yourself. Wind power in no way is completely clean. If you hate the use of oil, well guess what? Turbines use oil for the tur one gearbox, and they can spill? I wasn't the cause of the issue, but I was responsible for helping to clean a leaked turbine oil spill, that unfortunately did leak out of the turbine and damage the crops of the farmers land on which it was located. I won't say this is common, but it does happen.
The ‘REALY’ smart people will be looking into creating energy that DOSEN’T include wind turbines.
Wrong. Wind and solar are neck in neck right now in terms of $/kWh. In the future itll simply come down to who can produce at the lowest cost
@@seriousbees your choice but personally I don’t like either. 👍
I wonder if the ‘REALY’ smart people can spell ‘REALLY’ correctly
The 'realy' smart people? So not you then.
They are suppressed by the green energy fairy tale Marxists
But what happens when We run out of things to make with the Recycled turbines?
@Sen Se The old wooden turbines were also less efficient
@Sen Se But would we be able to make them tall enough to reach the fast winds at high altitudes?
Whether it's traditional electrical generation or renewables, you'd still need the infrastructure to be built either way. So, to me, the environmental aspect of building these wind turbines is a moot point.
The problem with wind turbines is they produce far less energy that it takes to build, install and maintain them. In short, fossil fuel use goes up just to have those wind turbines running with not enough energy in return to make up for it. Wind energy is not green energy at all. It is really just a waste of time and energy.
@@herbb8547 hahaha thanks for the laugh
@@herbb8547 This is not true for any major wind turbine installation.
@@AmbientMorality One has to factor in all energy used including mining for all of the raw materials, refining of raw materials, manufacturing of all parts, all transportation costs for all materials both raw and finished, installation processes and maintenance. The wind turbines are massive and each requires a great deal of internal components including a massive turbine, internal networks, switches, controllers, gateways, censors, transformers and large amounts of cabling. All those things are very energy intensive to create and operate. The problem in the end is that there simply is not enough energy in the wind to recover the energy put into them. One of the laws of physics is that energy is conserved. It takes energy to make energy. In the case wind turbines, it takes more energy than it can create.
@@herbb8547 Yes, that's included in lifecycle GHG emissions calculations. I don't think any credible analysis indicates that the lifecycle GHG emissions per kWh are higher than competing non-renewable energy sources. easily
Awesome educational video but the title offsets. Also after working in the field, 4 years, many improvements still to come.
Hey Matt, you said the pyrolosys of the old fibreglass blades is inefficient because it requires power... but... if that power is also provided by a turbine, then it becomes VERY efficient! I'd advise being careful about saying the use of power is automatically 'not green'. It's all about how we generate the power, isn't it?!
I worked for Vestas, one of the largest wind turbine companies in the world. We would have to wait at times six to eight hours for a work break or lunch. The shifts were 12 hours long with mandatory overtime that went on for months. I left the company. I don't know what working conditions are like now. A worker died there when a heavy piece of equipment fell on him.
Sorry to hear about your workmate, wouldn't blame you for leaving
Worked for sky climber myself
F those farms
Accidents are waiting to happen without a break. Humans need energy too to get the job done.
How many birds die a year from fossil fuels?
" A lot of truck journeys" "Even tho it can be thought of as a form of recycling, It's not all that great". Now there is a quantitative analysis, NOT...
Agreed, lots of qualitative negatives, but no numbers. If the Co2 inputs are 1% or less of the energy outputs...does it really matter - its net positive
I would have hoped that when you mentioned concrete, diesel, landscaping, service roads, cabling, converter stations and so on, you had pointed out that all other means of creating energy needs same infrastructure often in much greater scale. One example is our fifth nuclear reactor (Olkiluoto 3) in Finland. It has been built since 2005 and it still not complete. While not producing any CO2 when operational, it can hardly be seen as totally emission free either. And uranium, oil, coal, natural gas doesn´t just appear next to power plant like wind and sun does. They need mining, drilling, transporting and refining and tons of additional infrastructure and energy to be ready to use. You can even add thousands of people commuting to do all that to equation. Or decommissioning and recycling parts from traditional power plants or problems related used nuclear fuel. I would say that new tech wins every time.
I bet you know all this and I hope you made a video about truly comparing environmental impacts of different ways to produce energy. Pointing out ones downsides seems a bit unfair.
Agreed! I would love a side by side comparison of emissions based on different parts of the process (set up, maintenance, disposal).
💯🙏👍👌
But what is the reason for the 18 year delay in construction? Are they purely technical delays, or is some of it financing and political?
I don’t personally see the NIMBY argument that wind turbines are eyesores; I think they are magnificent, awe-inspiring structures! I’d be fine with having them in my community.
@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut Um, no? You need to be standing like 100 feet away from a wind turbine to hear them. If you live anywhere near a road you're getting like an extra 20 dB of noise than if you literally lived right next to a wind turbine.
Yes, I happen to think they are quite elegant and serene looking.
@@0hypnotoad0 A standard onshore wind farm will still generate 40dB 500m away on flat land. That's definitely not huge, but it's still quite noticeable. Offshore wind just makes a lot more sense, structures can be far larger, no disruption to the land, and no land disputes with nimbys.
I feel the same way. I just wish I had enough wind in my area, for them to get the capacity factor necessary to make them cost effective. Since we don't, wind turbines are very rare in my state.(Utah)
@@TheRichardHonor "Not huge" is a wild understatement, 40 db will be audibly masked by the noise of your refrigerator. The actual wind on the side of your house itself will likely produce more noise than that.
You did not mention the amount of OIL in each and every turbine . Turbines are noisey and KILL BIRDS.
I feel like we need a list of costs in terms of pollution, deaths, resources needed to be removed from the earth, man hours, land and money costs for 1 twh for each type of power including all the resources needed for the entire life span of the product.
coal wins, hands down
@@troyb3659 wouldn't Nuclear win though?
@@troyb3659
Absolutely not.
Fossil fuel electricity directly kills over 4 million people, and helps kill an additional 26 million.
This is out of a worldwide total of just 55 million deaths.
Also, it takes 5 months energy production to pay off a wind farm. A year to pay off solar, and 3 years to pay off coal.
Also, fossil fuels cost just America almost a trillion dollars a year in missed work, medical bills, and early deaths.
AND fossil fuels kill far more birds than wind.
@@lordgarion514 ohh jeeze.....thats like saying a glass of water is responsible for drownings what a stupid twisted liberal logic mind screw you have to get that.....
@@troyb3659
ONLY if the water is being accidentally released into the air and causing people to drown.
Your analogy is shit TBH.
We burn the fossil fuels, and they release poisonous chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactive elements, that people breath and eat.
Sounds like from start to finish it takes more energy to build and get rid of than the machine could ever make.
Same with electric cars.
Actual figures from actual studies show they do make more energy back than they took.
These recycling ideas are great and everything but there's one thing they're not: scalable!
That's because you have a tiny mind. (Is your MIND "scalable"?)
The big problem is the turbines aren’t living up to their expected life blade are being replace after a couple years and whole wind farms are being destroyed with explosives before their useful life expectancy !Remember they only make power when the wind blows , if you only. Look at wind mills as green energy and don’t look at the cost to manufacture erect and the dismantle I would say they wind mills are cost affective when they never make it to their expected life expectancy !A gas fire power plant produces more power and make more power for longer when you need a sustainable energy source that doesn’t depend on the wind or sunshine!