My dad always told me as a kid that wind turbines are just helicopters that are looking for worms undergound. And my dumb ass believed him.

8:00 "The equivalent of about 320 female elephants" . If you heard this and thought: "but my herd consists of male elephants, I must know the weight in male elephants", well it would be around 180 fully grown male elephants

This channel is really underrated. There is no flashy youtube pazazz, it’s just cleanly edited straight facts told in a voice that is very suited to the subjects covered. The channel knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else and that’s hard to come by these days

Nice video -- one quick note. You mentioned gear boxes, and the role that they plan in increasing the risk and maintenance costs associated with offshore turbines. When I was in a sustainable energy generation class in college, our professor mentioned that one important industry trend was offshore turbine manufacturers moving away from turbines with gear boxes and towards turbines with direct drives (where the shaft from the turbine blades connects directly to the generator) for offshore applications This makes the generator cost more (Generator size scales along with armature current, which is determined by the speed of the generator input shaft among other things -- this means you need thicker copper windings, a larger core, more everything), however, the increase in reliability (more up time generating product), decrease in maintenance cost, etc makes a direct drive worth it in many cases for this application. Super cool video -- thanks!

Hi Asianometry. Long time viewer here, from Lolland Denmark actually :P. Great presentation as usual. The wind farm at Vindeby (wind town, roughly translated) has sparked a lot of local companies, specializing in R/D for new wind farm concepts. One of these projects is a hybrid wind/wave power generating platform which is also now being tested at Lolland as well. Using both regular wind mills and wave turbines to generate energy. Lolland is also now home to the largest underwater tunnel construction project in the world (The Femern Belt project). This is a combined train and highway tunnel, which will stretch all the way from Rødby Lolland to Puttgarten in Germany (18 km in total).

Thank god for this channel, it's great.

Three blade rotors have more constant loads on the bearings in the presence of wind shear than two blade rotors.

Good summary. I happen to have studied the topic extensively and all important parts are there. Additional bullet items that can be included (in part 2 installment? ☺) are. - the interest of floating wind farms. e.g. West coast of Taiwan offers shallow sea beds but East coast doesn't (opposite USA). - floating wind farms can be laid out in the most windy areas because seabed depth is less of a constraint and best load factor areas can then be reached (i.e. >50%). - some floating wind farms are now studied with no back haul link to the coast because their production would be used to produce green H2 (locally stored, then regularly ferried to the ground). See Tractebel/Engie concepts. - 9:45 Cable shows 3 phases for power + command and control and telemetry cables smaller holes (typically for optical fibre). - Synchronous adaptation to the grid frequency and phase, despite variable windspeed. - absorption of reactive energy through phase adjustments - newest offshore power above 15MW (Siemens, etc). - Denmark H2 islands - with multiple countries back haul cables for both production and interco usa. - geopolitical aspects of redistributing natural resources to otherwise oil-destitute countries (Morocco, Namibia, Chile...) with the goal of developing the Green H2 economy.

Good video overall, i enjoyed the international take on it. As an enthusiast myself, i do have some notes for the video: - "There hints that off shore wind is competitive with subsidies". The first offshore windfarm build without subsidies in my country of Denmark, was in 2019 in Hirtshals. And in this spring 2023, the government postponed all processing of projects that was driven by their own initiative. For decades there's been an "open door" process, where beside the centrally planned offshore windfarms, any organisation could request their own project. This was halted in january, as seemlingly so many projects was signed in and all without subsidies, that the level of the interest was thought to conflict with the EU's very strong and enforced "anti-trust" regulations (as it's called in web-english, but the EU anti monopoly and competetive-free-market regulation are vastly different to that of US anti-trust) - I'm glad that you included a section of the planned expansion in Taiwan. It was good to hear that you found evidence for the good wind opportunities around the island. But it is at his point a little disappointing that you hadn't found that the noth sea in Europe is actually not a natural hot spot for the wind farms. There's wind, but it would be more efficient many other places. This fact would have made an analysis on why the before mention state of cost and lack of need of subsidies obvious. This is by the reports i read manly due to the infrastructure surrounding the windmills and off shore farms, and their manufacturing, being readily available after decades of investment. It could be a good notion to those who seek to understand why a offshore windfarm would require massive governmental funds in their region despite some academic report stating the wind potential is massively higher than the build up north sea.

There was a company in Japan called Challenergy that had a VAWT generator that had a special blade that would allow for near hurricane speed winds. Their pilot product was broken in a very strong wind, and last I heard, they were investigating if the problem was with the machine, or if debris from the hurricane was the cause of the destruction

The increased sarcasm in this vid really makes it a 11/10. Ducking great

“Big concrete thingy” ahh yes my thesis topic we meet again.

This is an extraordinary contemporary overview. I learn so much when I view this program.

This has been interesting. My state in Australia has just pledged to build offshore windfarms after successfully built some land based ones over the years. Will be looking forward to see which ones of these methods they'll be going for.

Thanks!

As a naval architect, offshore wind is the next big growth area in the maritime and offshore industry. It’s a fascinating industry and will likely overtake land-based wind farms at some point, due to the steadier winds and sheer gigantification.

5:46 I was waiting for a grab from Tenet! My favourite movie. Thank you!

Been watching your videos since the beginning. Always love your research and presentation skills. Would you be able to do a review video of Asian Space Technology? What countries have astronauts? What the capabilities of their space agencies are, if they have one? Some of the most historic moments for Asian space industry. Etc Thanks!

I would love to see the TRUE economics to “electricity sellers” examined in detail, esp. given that wind power is generally not dispatchable so it is only “statistically available.” In other words, the TRUE economics would have to include costs of the “dispatchable sources” (eg gas turbines) and/or storage technologies that are REQUIRED to augment the wind power generation to ensure “always available when needed.”

This is an outstanding video ! 🙂 Very clear and not overburdened with small engineering details. The idea of going offshore sounds very promising. Onshore turbines can be an eyesore plus other annoyances in populated areas.

Hello from Wind turbine blade manufactuing industry! Even turbine blades amazing because all that massive blades are handmade. Blade manufacturing process not includes so much machinery. Every blade has some defects and every blade needs repair during the production. Generally people think blades are manufacturing with using alluminum or steel but these blades manufacturing with using composites. We use glassfiber mostly and for the structural part of the blade we using with carbonfiber. Maybe you can make a video about blades! Denmark has the market leader company called Vestas. They are leading the wind energy business. All offshore wind farms that you mentioned at Denmark, builded by Vestas.

"The Danish have been using wind energy for centuries" Yes. And for just as long they have been dependent on massive imports from Sweden and Norway in the form of hydropower and nuclear power.

My wife is from miaoli county I’m Aussie and I’ve been there a few times, you can see the wind farm quite easily there it’s huge

The NIMBYs in my country are constantly trying to stop off-shore wind turbine installations. Like why? It's off-shore, who cares? There are initiatives to build a nuclear power plant, but sadly that seems like a hopeless pursuit.

The scale and scale up of wind power industry here in the Port of Rotterdam is quite impressive tis see

Excellent video, thank you! At my job we are working on products for offshore wind farms where we need to hit every nail in the head when it comes to lifetime, reliability and resistance to the environment. Even the most simple products needs an extreme amount of care and testing before being deployed in the field due to conditions described in this video

Hope floating wind farm becomes cheaper and turns out not aging the wind turbines too fast. The capacity factor gain would be large 60% compared to 30-40% for on shore wind. And there's theoretically enough wind resources for all our energy needs. Would need quite a few turbines though of course and cables.

Hi from Denmark! I had no idea the first off-shore wind farm was Danish. I always knew we had a surprisingly large presence in the windmill production and development space, but not to this degree. One tiny issue this has caused though, is that every government in the last 30 years have been married to the idea of 100% wind energy, despite it never getting anywhere close, and its obvious drawbacks (what do you do if the wind doesn't blow for an extended period of time?).

Great Video. I really enjoy you going into topics surrounding renewable energy production and storage.

Another interesting point that I was hoping would be made is the fact that the beaches where a lot of the wind farms are going up are also where an invasion force would like to and I wonder if sinking pylons into the seafloor does anything you discourage landingcraft

the UK subsidy for wind, which is a contract for difference that companies bid over backed by the government, has actually made the government billions in recent years, and makes wind offshore wind the cheapest form of energy in the UK.

12:11 I saw that power plant when I was working as a cadet aboard an LNG tanker! I remember thinking it was cool how it was painted different colors.

Wind in the Netherlands actually doesn't rely on subsidy since 2018.

offshore Wind farms are very prominent in North germany near the coast and in the north Sea! It brings in Energy for all of Germany and long Power Lines from North to South germany are planned because the southern automotive industries use most of the electricy in Germany.

Thank you for making a video on one of my favorite topics: renewables

We have tons of these in the UK and they great. They are so far out at sea so visual pollution isn’t that big of a deal

The woman on the inflatable duck trying to use a pool noodle for an oar 😂

It’s only renewable as long as you have enough energy to build replacement turbines. We use traditional fuels to build them now, but I predict there won’t be enough energy to sustain the renewable energy industry in the future.

Currently binge watching your videos ❤

Bro your channel is sick. I like your topics. Keep it up 👏👏👏

Your choice of topics are amazing

You point out the complications of installing offshore versus on land but pass over the biggest advantage - transport. It is a LOT easier to move a huge blade over water than over land, especially as it allows you to build the blades in existing shipyards. This is why offshore wind turbines tend to be far larger than land based ones. Doubling the blade length quadruples the power (pi*r^2 and all that). Also you only cover off shallow water turbines. Many European ones are proper offshore semi-submersible platforms which do not require foundations (think of them as like an oil drilling rig).

Excellent presentation!

A few questions to rethink the wind farm: as mentioned, wind turbine is a highly mechanical assembly. How is the carbon footprint of wind turbine (including "gear box") compared with other energy sources? Due to the nature of wind turbine, the materials need special treatment for extra corrosion-resist. Cost is not an issue because when it's necessary to tackle the crisis of human being extinction, it's at the all cost to put it work. However, if wind turbine is worsening the man-made carbon footprint, that needs some more planning and researches. Second question: what is the percentage of energy which a wind farm can intercept? Wind is the the driving force of local weather or even climate. And we all know that the weather (atmosphere) system is a chaotic system which can respond exponentially with minute initial condition change. Whether there is the saturated point of wind farm capacity which can start influencing the local weather system is one of my long existing question. But I am kind of lazy to initiate this search :P Thank you for your videos, they are always informative and inspiring :)

A huge reality check for hust how hard these things are

We have loads of offshore wind turbines in the UK, you can see many from Brighton.

Off-shore wind has advantage over land-based turbines as windspeed over water is higher on average than over land for similar weather conditions (less surface drag and turbulence). Similarly the wind stream over water is more uniform, or laminar with height, thus the ratio of power intercepted by the wind from lower arc of the turbine blades more closely matches the power intercepted by the upper half of the blade arc sweep.

Haha, met you a year ago on the subscriber event in Taipei and you said you're planning a video about offshore wind "soon". Glad to see "soon" has arrived! A correction about floating platforms: they are not "hard to catch up", they are the only future and there are some practical reasons why you don't see them right now. Reach out to me if you would like to know more about Taiwan's or other countries' Floating Wind. I'm working on Taiwan's both platforms - TaidaFloat and DeltaFloat.

Offshore wind farms seem like a good place to also put tidal power generation facilities - possibly even make a dual generator, with the turbine mounted to a tidal generator. One note about this technology is transmission, as theoretically turbines could be put into distant chunks of ocean - such as the Pacific Ocean between Peru and Guam. But the power line transmission losses would make this unrealistic.

If you are in Scotland, wind is definitely more competitive than solar. In Morocco, the opposite is probably the case.

Obvious problem with offshore turbines is that the cables connecting them to the mainland can be cut by bad actors. Russia has an estimated 6 submarines which have been modified to be able to cut undersea cables, both power cables and fibre optic cables. Russian 'fishing' vessels been observed spending time mapping the cables from offshore wind farms in Northern Europe. China will be doing the same for Taiwanese offshore wind farms.

Hi, very nice video. Although, one small correction - the description of HVDC cables are correct - however a cross section of a cable shown in 9:48 is an High Voltage Alternating Current cable, which consist of 3 conductors (HVAC) ;)

Great video! A couple of notes: One advantage of offshore is that really long blades are easy to transport. Modern turbines like the GE Halide 14 MW have blades that are 107 m long, which are very hard to move around corners on land. They're actually made in coastal factories so they can loaded directly onto ships. My state of Massachusetts is relying on offshore for its future power needs. There are about 3 GW of plans in the works, and the first 800 MW plan, Vineyard Wind, just started construction. It should power up next year. It has been delayed for years by the Trump admin and by astroturf organizations that claim to be worried about humpback whales and fishing. Unfortunately, their costs have gone up, so several of the developers are trying to back out, claiming that they can't make money at the agreed upon prices. This could be real, it could be a negotiating tactic, or it could be strong-arming by natural gas interests. The gas people did sponsor a referendum in Maine to block a transmission line for Quebec hydro power, so nothing is beyond them.

There are a number of engineering justifications for using three blades ( i.e. solving various optimization problems), so aesthetic is just icing on the cake. ( Actually the aesthetic part is likely a consequence of 3 blades being more stable than 2 blades, which also likely makes them more visually balanced hence more aesthetically pleasing).

I used to live on one of the great lakes and I remember before i moved out there was a growing interest in outting offshore wind in the lakes, the largest opposition was local groups concerned they were "ugly" but i do now wonder if theres technical challenges involved as well given that the lakes are infamously untraversible by ship in the winters due to severe gales

I clicked on the video hoping for and expecting a cameo from our little country, and I'm not disappointed. The pronunciation of Vindeby did hurt my soul though.

Excellent video as always. Any plans on exploring other power sources? Hydropower and Geothermal?

lack of space forcing them to make offshore windfarms Taiwan 🤝 Netherlands

great channel. Keep it up. I can't help monetarily but i will try to watch and like as many videos as I can

While the Generators can indeed lower their operating Voltage and as such lower their output, most of the derating is done by the Blades and the Pitching system. The Blades Pitch out of the wind to ensure a steady production rate and protect the structure and generator from overexertion. As such the Pitch and their respective systems are responsible for the most breakdowns, given that it deals with the full load of the wind, though these breakdowns are smaller in scale and can be troubleshooted or solved quite easily when compared with issues with the Gearbox. And on the topic of feasibility: Wind and especially Offshore Wind is among the cheapest energy sources in terms of operating costs. Depending on the location nothing can even remotely compete. Source: working in EU Wind Industry.

At 08:35 in this video: THAT is a UNIQUE LOOKING VESSEL.

honestly i think wind farms are beautiful

3-8 meter monopiles I would consider small by the modern standard -- At the seabed level, they will be over 10 meters in diameter!

I work for a developer of Floating Offshore Wind Tension leg foundations and are struggling to get any traction from the industry. It amazes me that they are already hooked on other high cost ways to install floating WTGs. Tension leg platforms are low cost due to a relative low amount of steel required to build them and using cables (tethers) to hold them to the seabed is the most economic way to do this! We are hoping the industry wakes up soon and we can demonstrate TLP foundations for floating wind farms👿

there are wind farms too in nearby ilocos region of luzon in the philippines

Thanks Jon, for the excellent summary. Indispensable for anyone looking to get a 101 on the Taiwan renewable energy industry. I have also started following Angelica Oung who writes a lot on this topic.

I remember when they installed the first experimental turbine in Norway, it was just near where I lived and we would go out there just to look at this newfangled thing and ooh and aah at its grand scale(tiny compared to current ones). That was before the NIMBYs declared a culture war on the things and now a major development in Sweden where I live now is on hold because a NIMBY complained he can see the little red light on top of the things at night. It would be funny etc

I thought you posted on mondays but I’ll take it

Despite all its disadvantages I like offshore wind. The highly variable nature of wind power negates the low cost that wind power offers. The improvement in capacity factor of offshore is worth the additional x2 cost. Wind power is already pretty cheap; x2 cheap = cheap.

On the vertical mills, the disadvantage of not being able to set it out of the wind to prevent damage. Isn't it possible to "feather" the blades, as one does on a prop plane on engine failure. Ie rotate them perpendicular to the wind to avoid drag. Not sure about the forces involved though. These machines are huge.

The fewer the blades, the better the aerodynamic efficiency, but one blade is imbalanced, two blades forms an axis that is susceptible to torsion, so three is the minimum count that can forms a plane to resists torsion.

I'm an investor in windturbines. I can honestly tell you: business is good. Forget about those magic coins, wind energy is much more stable and more consistent returns. And don't shy away from the smaller opportunities: my first investment was in an 18 metre Lagerwey turbine for a farm, back when internet was literally in dial-up. And today, I have an app on my mobile phone which shows me how the wind is, and how my turbines are running and how much money they've generated the past hour.

Just a quick note, one of the big reasons that 2 blade systems aren't used as much is because it can cause changes in the moment of inertia when the turbine rotates to face a different direction; i.e. when the blades are vertically aligned the moment of inertia to face a different direction is much lower than when the blades are horizontal. Add in strong winds (when you might need to move to facing tangentially to the wind to reduce blade load) you will induce heavy vibrations and drastically increase the load and vibration on the thrust bearing under the nacelle which may lead to catastrophic failure.

You need to do more research. The leader in offshore wind farm isn’t Europe, it’s mainland China for both technology and capacity.

There are security concerns with offshore wind. Ships have been spotted recently mapping offshore windfarms in Europe. I wonder how easy it is to sabotage a constellation.

Always love your videos

Turning the ocean into a factory… is that supposed to be a good thing?

at the bus stop 🎵 crushing rocks🎶

subsidiesru?, wind farms in denmark is so attractive that they're paying the government to for the rights that includes paying for the cost of normal land facilities, that the danish government is moving towards being co owners to get a share in the profits, this is unheard of in utility scale projects

Ask Orsted how great it is to have windmills. They just canceled their project in New Jersey because it was basically stupid.

It’s kind of interesting hearing the view of the UK from the outside, as wind is dismissed as a fad and onshore is currently banned in England at least - actually compared to other parts of the world the UK is a leader, yet this is never really shouted from the rooftops as it were, which is a bit sad 😔

Also,i was in the middle of a wind turbine farm inland,on a hill in romania,and i didnt hear any noise or sound that people complain about

It is much better to use power of up and down water movement. Check it out. Not sure how they are named, but I mean the big ones. Like 3 stores building capturing the waves movement in both directions. Not sure about fishes safety tho.

Thanks for the video, finally know what these weird yellow supports are that are showing up here in the harbor once in a while

Many thanks for once again a great video, one thing i thought would be mentioned but did not, how will these windturbines handle the rough Typhoon storms that Taiwan frequently encounter?

Off-shore wind turbines might double as hydroelectric stations when a huge tsunami hits. Very practical. 😏

People are d word,i actualy really like to see wind turbines from the beach,it means decelopment,power,seeing infrastructure we rely on working is cool

That's great, but they need to upgrade maritime charts to avoid ships running into an offshore wind turbine installation.

Glad to see a story with so much focus of my country of Denmark = )

I always thought the pitch of the blades were variable so that the shaft RPM can be adjusted that way. I didn't know there was a gear box, except for varying the blade pitch. I've seen wind turbines with the blades at different pitches. Still ones were edge on to the wind. Operating ones were flatter.

Where I live in Sweden we have a lot of wind power plants but at land. I personally think they look beautiful but there is so much opposition to them that they are going to build off shore wind farms just because people complain and make their local leaders reject any wind farms. This lead the fishermen complaining though. Everyone complains about expensive energy costs during winter but no one seems to want any new energy built. And we are going to need a lot more energy in the future. It’s the same issue as with housing. Everyone wants more housing but no one wants it built in their neighbourhood because it blocks the view or whatever the reason.

so basically, it is still not economic just check the electricity price between France and these countries

I almost had the chance to see the Formosa 1. 😢😢😢

It's a decent building in Tropico 6.

I'm not quite shure how a highly intelligent and skilled pyhsics major like you can hold up these highly volatile energy forms that much: It should be clear to everyone that 'the wind doesn't allways blow and the sun dosen't allways shines', so in this case you ALLWAYS need some sort of backaup powerplants, and what you think that would be? Yes, you just extend the production-life of your old inefficient and polluting coal plants(Like germany did this winter!) or you built some new combined-cycle Nat. Gas plants because they are cheap to purchase but expensive and risky(that someone cuts the supplys or a crisis in europe,.. ~5folds the prices) to supply with fuel. So, if you want to be carbon neutral but still want energy-security at least ~50% of your overall generation should be nuclear, the rest maybe can be a mix of 'everything else' including the 'volatiles'(renewables). :o)

Solid content

I will assume that the effects of salt water ingress to be as much of a problem as the windspeed, this will likely contribute to early failure. When you consider the cost of production, installation, maintaining and lifespan I wonder what the overall net energy benefit actually is? Are you perhaps spending a MW/h to generate a KW/h ? They should operate hydraulically on the water instead of electric. pump and compress the seawater and send all the pipes on on land station that will convert the hydraulic pressure of all the platforms to electric power. T

When you said it was held up due to red tape, environmental aspects? My thought was: "out of all energy options, this has the LEAST environmental impact.. So what are some people worried about?

I don't know much about green energy, but from what little I've read I'm under the impression that by and large wind, solar etc are still very inefficient and subject to a lot of environmental limitations, and the latest nuclear technology is actually much safer and seems like the way to go.

One of the earliest pioneers in wind power was Dr David Lindley, the father of one of my childhood friends. He worked for Taylor Woodrow trying to drive the project in the 70s onwards.