I love the look of big wind turbines. I just don't understand why so many people think that they're a blight on the landscape.

6:00 Awesome talking to a real Engineer not just the marketing guy from a big company.

I don't get why people would not want to see these magestic creators of clean energy, when I see majestic wind turbines in the distance I feel nothing but pride that man has harnessed the energy of nature and that every new windmill is a step away from the old dirty polluting energy production that has killed and caused suffering to millions of people as much as it has brought benefit, clean energy is truly amazing and liberating.

Love this episode, this is exactly the sort of thing that I was hoping my patreon money would pay for. Car reviews are still great but the story behind renewables and battery tech is equally exciting and deserving of screen time.

A great interview. He should be promoted! Really good presenter.

Exactly how I like my fullycharged show most: educational discussions with a very interesting speaker, keep it up!

Another great episode with another guest who speaks with great clarity on camera

I am completely addicted to Fully Charged, Robert is a joy to hear & watch I have learnt so much from the show! Roberts humour is completely on my wave length. Johnny & Robert are a good pairing, both bright sparks with their own brands of expertise. The amount of organising that it must take to produce the videos must be phenomenal.

Just this coming Monday I'll be enrolling on a doctorate in offshore wind structures - I'm really excited about it. My supervisor tells me it should reduce the cost of offshore wind significantly.

I watch fullycharged, not only to see renewables going forward but also when I have bad mood, thank you so much Robert! 👍

Excellent episode - really informative with the pertinent questions asked. Thanks Robert, more like this please!

Absolutely LOVE it. We have big wind farms out in the eastern part of Washington State where I live and I want to see more.

Beautiful aren't they, so soothing to watch...

Brilliant video!! Love it ! Really great questions ! Straight to the point ! 👍🏻

Your episodes are improving every month. This episode was really BBC quality or better. Great job by you and your team. Nice drone video clips too. Another point for putting wind turbines in farm fields or pastures is that tall trees are usually not a problem. One bit of encouraging news from the USA is that an additional 2 GW of wind energy installation was approved for construction in Iowa (a heavily farmed state).

About 15 years ago, I was deadset against wind farms. I thought, as I live in Scotland, that they spoil the landscape and makes it look ugly. Now, as I have gotten wiser and more interested in green technology I love them, I want to see more of them!

That last shot of the wind turbines was sick!

Thank you Robert and Charles for a most informative video. Why has the government taken this approach to wind power? No one has asked me if I mind having huge wind turbines near my home. I'd love it, and would proudly show them off to visitors. Where do they get the idea that we, as a nation, would rather screw the planet than have wind turbines? Surely a public information campaign is in order, at the very least to explain that bigger turbines = cheaper electricity.

Great bit of analysis. Thanks

Brilliant video and discussion. Thank you!

Fantastic interview really insightful to hear some of the questions being asked I’ve had in my head for a long time. Thanks for this

Beautifully shot with excellent audio. Thanks.

Watching this, even as a pacifist, it's really difficult not to want to punch some people (the current and previous government) very hard on the nose.

It’s interesting to see this video, only 3 years on (Autumn 2019), we have offshore wind power that costs less than wholesale prices, we have 8MW turbines and we have Terrawatt+ wind farms being built in around 18 months...

Amazing and great info. It is beautiful and simple. In the USA we have so much open space and windy areas. I hope to see more and more

Very professionally, answered many questions I had, you get better and better and better, thank you

Great show, brilliant interviewee - so good to see someone talking so clearly about such an important and interesting topic.

Extremely informative episode Robert! Great interview with great conversation.

Great news New Zealand produces 82 % of its electricity using renewables we have wind 💨 hydro geothermal and solar.

Those are so beautiful. In Sweetwater, Texas there are windmills from horizon to horizon. Absolutely stunning to behold, day or night. There is also a Tesla Supercharger location there now.

Very informative and the production quality was very nice as well. I really enjoyed this episode.

Very nice vid. Those are just off the A14, and it always makes me warm inside when I drive past. When you see how much of the UK _doesn't_ have any turbines, you realise how much potential there is. Fascinating to know that we can get 40% c.f. in the UK inland on a boring flat bit. That's a big step up from the 22% at the time McKay wrote SEWTHA. I would really like to talk to this chap some more about exactly what the limits on wind and PV penetration on the grid are, and what the implications/costs for storage/backup/demand management are. It's a complaex subject hugely argued about online, and hard for the layman to get good, reliable detail on.

You did some very effective *silent messaging* here. Subtle but *very powerful*. Subliminal imagery to stomp on three of the biggest "arguments" of the fossil fuel propagandists. Arguing quietly. Quite clever, actually. *Image 1:* All those *big birds* flying by. None of which managed to kamikaze themselves. And all of which are clearly still alive, despite the presence of a big wind farm on their flight path for the last two years. *Image 2:* The *rural rhythms* of the hay baling etc going on in the background, just a typical day on the farm.. Sure, wind turbines "take up a lot of space". But that "space" is mostly in a vertical plane, rather than a horizontal plane. Total amount of "space" actually "taken up" is maybe 2% of the land area. The rest is just typical English countryside, and life goes on as normal underneath, completely oblivious to the giant energy machines above. *Image 3:* The drone footage, revealing just how gosh-darn *pretty* the entire scene is, even with the turbines there. If this is "industrialisation of the countryside", I think I can live with it. (I live in the province of Mpumalanga, one of the most intense coal mining areas of the world. Anyone who thinks the countryside is uglified by wind turbines should come and have a look at what happens to an area once an open-cast coal mine starts up.)

very nice, thank you.

can you do a video on domestic wind turbines and what's allowed/disallowed. Thanks.

Thanks, we really enjoyed this! Nice mix of business and engineering!

I don't know if you read these comments Bob..but so far Red Dwarf XI has exceeded all expectations.thanks to all the guys that made it possible.thank you for making me laugh for all these years and thanks to Craig and co too.becoming a patreon to this channel was my thank you to you all.massive respect and love to you all.

Great show and interview as usual.

My favourite youtube channel. Amazingly well done. Love it.

Love it. He seemed to know his stuff, and a nice sounding chap.

Excellent video. Clearly the UK government really needs to get off it's bottom and get it's priorities right. Perhaps this video could be shown prime-time on TV? Your presence Mr. Llewellyn would guarantee an audience.

Excellent interview! Thank you for this unique expertise from an industry professional.

nice interview...lots of info..thanks

Nice one fellas. Good to see some aerial shots : )

I love these, having stood directly under a few in Norfolk I think they are rather graceful and beautiful. Just a modern version of the old windmills we used to mill flour etc. I'd have no objection to having then near me.

I love how quiet they are.

Loved this ep. Saw part of it on the non recap recap, but much more detail.

Great video!

Great interview... and nice drone shots!

More brilliant info Robert well done love the program.

Amazing that four years on 1 turbine in the North sea will provide as much power as this whole wind farm, (13 megawatts). Not to say they should not be installed on land as well. I too think they are majestic, particularly in the landscapes as in this video.

excellent video. great channel.

Loved this.

Absolutely brilliant

Great interview!

I frequently travel along the Minnesota / Iowa border in the US which in the last decade it has seen an explosion of wind farms. There is something eerily beautiful about the sea of blinking red warning lights they generate.

In Iowa in the USA Mid American Energy is currently supplying over 45% of it electricity from wind and in another 3 years it will be over 80%.

*These to me are a lovely sight, just like the Windmills of old Amsterdam, each time I drive in my super clean Diesel down the M1 or A14 to make me feel less Guilty. Although achieving regularly 70+ MPG with a light right foot, wind Power is Great, and in a Valley as well.*

Brilliant interview.

Your videos is so good! Keep it up!

Another informative show ..go UK !

Very informative video. One thing I like to see is how wind farms are often put on land that is being used for something else. In the video, I could see the hay bales. In Texas where I live, they have wind farms married up with cotton fields. Nothing like killing two birds with one stone.

Thank you for the informative video :)

one big wind turbine per village payed for by that village is the way to go. love the show

Terrific interview

I bet a drone can pass right through those spinning blades...that would be an epic shot.

Great video, presenting and info ;0) Thanks :0)

Life wouldn't be the same without you guys making the world laugh.

so relaxing

amazing!

Really love the channel

Brilliant video! The world needs more engineers who not only know their stuff, but know how to communicate to ordinary people and make things clear. This guy certainly delivered. I think the cost question is a fairly complicated one. As pointed out here, the U.K. grid can absorb more intermittent renewable energy without having to employ storage. But at some point storage is needed. Pumped hydro is extremely cheap as well as energy efficient if - and only if - you are close to a dam. EVs can play a big role in delivering a stream of still useable capacity, although to make this efficient and easy standards are needed that don't exist at the moment (to ensure the various packs can plug into such a system without too much overhead/engineering having to be done). But how should the cost of storage be accounted for? On the one hand, it is a consequence of intermittancy, and as such logical to attribute to any intermittent source. On the other hand, combined with prioritized delivery for intermittent sources the storage may just as well be used as the capacity reserve - typically from natural gas plants or nuclear plants, which have slow response times and need some time to modify their output. Probably I am talking nonsense and just sharing my confusion, but I am really not sure how to think about this. Nor do I have any real sense of what ballpark storage costs would actually be relative to the production cost, so I don't even know how big this problem is! I did spot one error. He said "some countries have gone to 80-90% renewables". But Norway is at 98%. In fact, we are a net exporter and make more renewable electricity than our total electricity consumption. But our domestic use is 2% EU-mix because electricity prices are higher in Europe much of the time and our energy companies make more money by selling some on the continent and re-importing at times when prices are lower. Anyway, he was of course speaking of intermittent renewable sources, and hydropower isn't intermittent. In fact it is eminently controllable and can respond quite quickly to changes in demand. I still remember a day in school when I was probably about nine when a guy from the local energy company came in to tell us about their job. He explained how they turned up the taps and increased production every day when the news began and people were turning on their (CRT) televisions. For reasons that have never become clear to me any small mismatch between consumption and production results in a change in the frequency of the AC voltage, nominally 50 Hz, and this was their primary way of knowing whether to increase or decrease output. I digress, but only because this was an inspiring video. I love the EV stuff, but it is important to include the larger context now and again!

What a delightful video. Informative and clear, beautifully shot, even the music was nice.

What an utterly fantastic piece of journalism. Really enjoy your videos Robert, keep up the great work.

I think turbines are fantastic. There's almost a utopian magnificence to them. It really makes you feel like you're living in the future. Some people call them an eyesore but they often forget the alternative. I live in South Wales where we have Aberthaw (coal), Barry (gas) and Baglan Bay (gas) and they're all bloody hideous in comparison to a bunch of turbines.

Thanks for this, really interesting and I always wondered about those outage questions myself! As for people not wanting them because they 'ruin the landscape', they actually 'change the landscape' and I think you'll find that we as a species have been doing that for centuries! Personally I see them as majestic and a sign that we're heading somewhere good! Felt odd watching an Amazon Fire advert with Clarkson beforehand though! :D

Windmills are beautiful

I notice they were very loud, too. Stopped to look at some by my dad's home in Iowa--couldn't hear them over the crickets in the fields.

What a quiet place...

Great video. We could have done with someone like Charles to explain our community wind energy project, which got scuppered by a naysayer claiming mineral rights on the land to block our project.

Need more videos like this instead of the fancy fancy car ones that really touch few folks in reality.

As lived 16 years lived in UK/Scotland the Biggest natural resource in UK is Wind & tidal. All energy can be shifted to Renewable. Sadly Govt had been very slow. More renewable mean less Gas & Oil from Russia & Middle East.

I actually find wind turbines to be quite aesthetic

Where I live Near Mojave, at the far west side of the Mojave desert, we have Huge 120m height onshore stations. Our area alone produces a little over 6.5% of california energy needs in 2014. The info about all this is a little hard to find, but it's out there.

getting to be one of my favourite channels

Shout out to the amazing camera man!

Nice camera work :)

Yet another video good video :)

Those turbines look incredible.

Hydel power can serve as the storage unit for all these intermittent power sources like wind and solar. When wind is available use half of the power to pump downstream water up into the dam. And when these sources aren't producing any power, use the extra water to generate extra electricity. Basically like a battery pack, but very big one, and a very cheap one.

its called Burton Wold wind farm. since the turbines have been put in the public are no longer allowed near the place yet it used to be publicly accessible to everyone.

In Spondon Derbyshire some clever bugger installed two large wind turbines that hardly ever run they installed them in the flight path of east midlands airport and when they run they block the radar coverage to the north for the airport. The turbines can only be turned on if the wind is blowing in certain direction as not to interfere with the planes because they have to land into wind and take off into wind. It's s been reported that the radar will have to be changed or the turbines for them to ever run at the same time. My comment on this is what a cock up.

Very informative, would like to know more about the costs involved and installation procedures

"The only way to describe it is Massive wind", yet the title is Big Wind. Keep it up Robert.

that was so informative!!! thank you! can we just get on wind and solar already! its on my roof!

I've always thought those large turbines would be a great place into which a large battery bank could be installed. When the wind slows, the batteries could level the load. The amount of peak-shaving and trough-filling could be determined by the capacity of the batteries vs the capacity of the turbine. It could even be made such that the turbine put out its rated power 100% of the time.

I like this channel!

You did not comment on the straw being loaded onto a lorry in the background, probably for Elean power station near Ely. So as well as producing wind energy, grain for food, the land is also producing thermal power sustainably.

Awesome video, would have been cool if you could go up one.

they are so elegant