The Problem with Wind Energy

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Credits:
Producer/Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Head of Production: Mike Ridolfi
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Writer/Research: Josi Gold
Animator: Eli Prenten
Animator: Stijn Orlans
Sound and Production Coordinator: Graham Haerther
Sound: Donovan Bullen
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
Head of Moral: Shia LeWoof

Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.

Thank you to my patreon supporters: Abdullah Alotaibi, Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung

[NMR]

Wind turbine service technician here, actually modern machines doesnt need to achieve 1500-1800 rpm to produce power, thanks to the converter system its possible to start producing usable power as low as around 900-1000 rpm (about 3.5 / 4 m/s of wind on 150m diameter machines at max blade pitch angle).
The way its done is simply to lower the voltage frequency on the generator side of the converters (while keeping 50/60Hz on the grid side).
The 1500-1800 range is now more of a "max power" range if the wind speed is high enough (4.2MW for a Vestas V150 MK3E for example, at about 11m/s).

About the maintenance on gearboxes in fact there is not really much to do most of the time, as soon as the service is correctly done (filter changes, oil levels) they can last more than the 7 years you are speaking without any issues. Of course gearboxes problems are possible, but they are pretty rare compared to the quantity of machines.

[giovannifontanetto]

I procrastinate studying actual engineering by watching real engineer videos.

[johnbearjunkyard]

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

[Yo_]

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

[lilllwizzzle]

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

[BrianWestlakes]

Nobody ever stops to think about the costs. First we have to send out surveyors into remote areas to drill test samples looking for wind. When we find large deposits of wind, there's the cost of setting up entire industrial scale extraction infrastructure at the site, fuelling the construction vehicles, running the plant and the generators to build the systems required to extract the wind. Then we dig it up, burning hundreds and thousands of tons of fuel a day in the vehicles getting the wind out of the ground. Then we transport the wind to wind refineries to make the wind into a form that's useable, which like the mines themselves didn't spring whole from the earth, I mean if it was sunlight we were talking about we could stop here after digging up the sunlight, and just burn it to create steam and get electricity that way. But no, then we have to refine the wind. Once it's refined it has to be transported to the site where the windmills are before it can finally be used. it's just so inefficient, and nobody ever talks about this side of renewables ...wait, this just in, they made a mistake upstairs, that was about petroleum products, featuring sunlight as coal. Apparently wind doesn't cost any energy to gather as a fuel source. That can't be right. That would mean oil companies have been lying to me, and why would they do that? What poSSible motive$ could they have to cau$e them to be di$honest? There'$ no plau$ible rea$on$ $urfacing when I $top to con$ider thing$.

[rossk]

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

[carterthiessen]

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

[oliviere]

Thanks for the video, but it's a bit outdated. Wind turbines nowadays have better power control systems that allow the "inertia" effect and allow 50/60Hz output and variable speed without all of the power going through an inverter. The gearbox has a design life equivalent to the turbine's design life (15 years in France generally).

On a turbine from REpower I worked on, the flowing was built -in:
- It has a winded rotor. No permanent magnets requiring rare earth.
- At partial load (low wind): partial load variable speed wind turbines (VSWT) utilize a method where the rotor operates at variable speeds while maintaining a constant 50Hz output on the stator. This is achieved through the injection of variable frequency current into the rotor, which is controlled to match the desired output frequency on the stator side.
- At full load (high wind), the pitch changes depending the wind speed and grid frequency to maintain the 50Hz
- VSWT can provide an emulated inertial response by using the kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of the turbine. This is similar to the inertial response provided by traditional synchronous generators. When there is a sudden drop in grid frequency, the turbines can quickly inject additional power to the grid, helping to stabilize the frequency. During frequency drops, the turbine can temporarily operate in overproduction mode, generating more power than its mechanical input by using stored kinetic energy. This rapid power injection helps to counteract the frequency drop.
After the frequency stabilizes, the turbine can reduce its output to recover its rotational speed and maintain optimal operating conditions.

[PJke]

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

[gameBB]

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

[justinadrowski]

My basic circuits EE professor actually started to talk about the inertia issue with wind & solar but we had curse content to get through so we didn’t get back to this subject(it was basic circuits). It’s nice to finally figure out why wind has the no inertia problem even though it has mechanical moving parts.

[dsmith]

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

[simontemplar]

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

[parkol]

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

[simonbowman]

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

[zebgraves]

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

[Space_Reptile]

little fun fact: enercon brand wind turbines (the ones wich have a egg shaped top housing and are very recognizable at 0:24) are the only widely used turbines w/o a gearbox, they instead have a large "pancake" style generator wich does not need any gears and is made specifically to generate peak power at the lower RPM the blades spin at
its also why the housing is egg shaped

edit: enercon recently celebrated 40 years and their first direct drive turbine, the E-40 was developed in the early 90s
direct drive is nothing new, nothing that needs to "prove itself", its been proven and reliable for over 30 years now

[robertmaxa]

Norway wants to put a bunch of wind turbines, off the coast, in the North Sea. I was in Ireland, this year, a few of weeks ago. One week in Dublin, and a day trip into Belfast. Beautiful countries, can't wait to go back and visit again.

[butwhytharum]

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