1 00:00:00,012 --> 00:00:03,941 Hello. We're on electric power technologies, and 2 00:00:03,941 --> 00:00:10,976 we covered coal and natural gas and hydro. And now, we're looking at other renewable 3 00:00:10,976 --> 00:00:14,906 electric power technologies other than hydro. 4 00:00:14,906 --> 00:00:17,496 Hydro has been around for probably 100 years. 5 00:00:17,497 --> 00:00:22,856 It has been around 100 years. So, now we're looking at other renewable 6 00:00:22,856 --> 00:00:27,849 electric power technologies, mainly wind and solar. 7 00:00:27,850 --> 00:00:33,769 So what about wind turbines as electrical renewable energy? 8 00:00:33,769 --> 00:00:41,614 There the, they, of course the, they have a rotor that is rotated by the wind and 9 00:00:41,614 --> 00:00:48,501 generates electricity, and we extract the kinetic energy from the wind. 10 00:00:48,501 --> 00:00:56,221 There's been a tremendous growth in wind energy, and it makes up a, over, over a 11 00:00:56,221 --> 00:01:01,187 between 1 and 2% of our current electrical needs. 12 00:01:01,188 --> 00:01:08,353 All of the US wind farms are on land, such as is shown in, in this picture right 13 00:01:08,353 --> 00:01:12,890 here. The, most of them are out in west Texas 14 00:01:12,890 --> 00:01:19,858 and in the midwest out in the desolate areas of the US where and, where there's 15 00:01:19,858 --> 00:01:24,365 great wind. It turns out that Europe has about 50 16 00:01:24,365 --> 00:01:30,086 offshore wind farms that are out in the oceans, close to the shore. 17 00:01:30,086 --> 00:01:33,893 So, I wanted to just mention those in passing. 18 00:01:33,893 --> 00:01:40,941 There, there's a lot of potential there. But the first one in the US that's been 19 00:01:40,941 --> 00:01:45,531 permitted is up in Nantucket Sound Massachusetts. 20 00:01:45,531 --> 00:01:53,472 It's been about 10 years since the, the developer of that has been trying to get a 21 00:01:53,472 --> 00:01:58,884 permit to build a wind farm out in the Nantucket Sound. 22 00:01:58,885 --> 00:02:03,682 And it, that permit is now held by the developer. 23 00:02:03,683 --> 00:02:12,371 There are also several proposed wind farms along the Atlantic coast off of New Jersey 24 00:02:12,371 --> 00:02:15,359 and that area. Virginia also. 25 00:02:15,359 --> 00:02:20,889 So it's, it's it, they, there's better wind off the shore than on land. 26 00:02:20,889 --> 00:02:26,967 And significantly better, and it doesn't have to be much better in order to produce 27 00:02:26,967 --> 00:02:32,290 a lot more power, as it turns out. And the other advantage to it is that it's 28 00:02:32,290 --> 00:02:37,026 closer to the large electrical users, that being the large cities. 29 00:02:37,026 --> 00:02:42,512 As I've said, most of the land wind farms are in the midwest, and there are not many 30 00:02:42,512 --> 00:02:47,694 people living in the midwest, so they don't need much electricity out there. 31 00:02:47,694 --> 00:02:54,467 So, they have to put transmissions lines in to get the power to the big cities like 32 00:02:54,467 --> 00:02:58,092 Chicago. And, or, or Los Angeles in order to get it 33 00:02:58,092 --> 00:03:01,697 to the user. The good thing about the offshore wind is 34 00:03:01,697 --> 00:03:07,448 that they're close to the shore where the big cities, and New York City obviously, 35 00:03:07,448 --> 00:03:11,494 the prime example is, that uses a lot of electricity. 36 00:03:11,494 --> 00:03:15,194 Now, the cost. I mentioned is, the wind is better. 37 00:03:15,194 --> 00:03:19,043 So that you get more power from a individual turbine. 38 00:03:19,044 --> 00:03:24,736 But the cost to put it out there is higher because of the water and the insulation 39 00:03:24,736 --> 00:03:29,776 and the maintenance issues with maintaining them offshore in the water 40 00:03:29,776 --> 00:03:35,021 versus in, on, on the land. The major components of the turbines, of 41 00:03:35,021 --> 00:03:39,637 course you have the rotor and over here that's turned by the wind. 42 00:03:39,637 --> 00:03:45,423 And you have a gearbox and the gearbox to the shaft comes in, the rotating shaft 43 00:03:45,423 --> 00:03:48,927 comes in. Comes in to the gearbox, the gearbox slows 44 00:03:48,927 --> 00:03:53,231 the speed down and turns the generator to reduce the electricity. 45 00:03:53,231 --> 00:03:58,809 The, the gearbox is a major component, a major cost component of the wind turbine. 46 00:03:58,809 --> 00:04:03,872 And the reason for that is, is that the rotor only turns about 10 or 15 rpm's 47 00:04:03,872 --> 00:04:08,593 revolutions per minute. You see that's, that's pretty slow that's 48 00:04:08,593 --> 00:04:13,989 one time every 4 seconds or so. But if you turn the generator that slowly, 49 00:04:13,989 --> 00:04:18,165 then you're going to have to have a very large generator. 50 00:04:18,165 --> 00:04:23,797 The slower the generator is turns, then the bigger it has to be, to produce the 51 00:04:23,797 --> 00:04:27,988 same amount of power. If you have a high-speed shaft and a 52 00:04:27,988 --> 00:04:34,307 high-speed generator, then the size of the generator is smaller in order to generate 53 00:04:34,307 --> 00:04:39,831 the same electrical power. So it, this is a major technology issue. 54 00:04:39,831 --> 00:04:47,734 The, the speed comes in at about 1500 in R, 15 RPM and goes out at about 1800 RPM, 55 00:04:47,734 --> 00:04:55,925 so the ratio is over 100 to 1 in general. And that, that's a major component that we 56 00:04:55,925 --> 00:05:02,034 don't hear too much about. But as I mentioned, the wind causes the 57 00:05:02,034 --> 00:05:07,119 rotor, or rotate the hub. And it's just like an airplane wing, 58 00:05:07,119 --> 00:05:12,885 except in reverse rather than the propeller adding speed to the air coming 59 00:05:12,885 --> 00:05:17,746 over the propeller it, it takes energy from the propeller. 60 00:05:17,746 --> 00:05:23,401 Excuse me, from the air. And to, and turns the, the shaft. 61 00:05:23,402 --> 00:05:27,906 The blades, actually, the, the pitch will twist. 62 00:05:27,906 --> 00:05:33,024 So the blades twist. And, in order, depending on the wind speed 63 00:05:33,025 --> 00:05:37,803 that's the main thing. The maximum efficiency and be able to 64 00:05:37,803 --> 00:05:43,941 extract the most energy from the wind which the ideal pitch varies with the wind 65 00:05:43,941 --> 00:05:50,544 speed in order to make the genera, make the rotor extraction of the kinetic energy 66 00:05:50,544 --> 00:05:56,818 from the wind work it is optimum rate. So, it's a very sophisticated technology 67 00:05:56,818 --> 00:06:02,022 and it's all automated. It senses the wind speed and decides for 68 00:06:02,022 --> 00:06:07,322 what pitch it should need and what RPM it needs to be rotating at. 69 00:06:07,322 --> 00:06:11,977 And bears it in order to stay on that optimum. 70 00:06:11,977 --> 00:06:18,990 Moving to solar, there are basically two kinds of solar, photovoltaic 71 00:06:18,990 --> 00:06:23,937 installations. One is the, what I classified as the 72 00:06:23,937 --> 00:06:32,145 distributed, or example of the distributed solar power, that's generally located on 73 00:06:32,145 --> 00:06:37,359 homes. And here's one, I believe we've seen this 74 00:06:37,359 --> 00:06:42,885 picture before. The solar panels are located on the top, 75 00:06:42,885 --> 00:06:49,176 roof and the sunlight hits it. And due to the solar state phenomena, 76 00:06:49,176 --> 00:06:57,149 converts the solar energy to electricity. You've got to watch out for shading and 77 00:06:57,149 --> 00:07:04,672 you got to point the, the modules in the southern direction and tilt it upward. 78 00:07:04,673 --> 00:07:10,621 So that's one, one example of solar photo tags that we see a lot. 79 00:07:10,621 --> 00:07:15,116 But another one is the central solar photovoltaic farm. 80 00:07:15,116 --> 00:07:21,671 And in that farm, you, they're very large, it's exactly the same panels as are on the 81 00:07:21,671 --> 00:07:27,604 roof, but there a lot more of them. And the as you scale things up, things can 82 00:07:27,604 --> 00:07:32,449 get cheaper per unit. So, that generally is a little bit cheaper 83 00:07:32,450 --> 00:07:37,820 per kilowatt of, of peak electricity that they can be generating. 84 00:07:37,820 --> 00:07:44,901 Then on individual residences where the installation is more difficult, the wiring 85 00:07:44,901 --> 00:07:49,441 is a lot more to each of these distributed systems. 86 00:07:49,441 --> 00:07:53,301 So, they're pluses and minuses to each one of them. 87 00:07:53,301 --> 00:07:59,337 And but they're getting to be more and more solar photovoltaic farms built by 88 00:07:59,337 --> 00:08:05,727 utilities, since they like to add large centralized facilities like their power 89 00:08:05,727 --> 00:08:09,277 plants. That's what they're used to and used to 90 00:08:09,277 --> 00:08:14,052 building. This is another this thermal technology 91 00:08:14,052 --> 00:08:20,904 that we just talked about, solar thermal. Excuse me, solar, photovoltaic, but this 92 00:08:20,904 --> 00:08:27,112 technology is one that's been around awhile, and it is a trough, it's a 93 00:08:27,112 --> 00:08:31,432 parabolic trough. It's linear and there's a pipe that runs 94 00:08:31,432 --> 00:08:36,827 on the, right along the focal point where the, the sun that comes in and hits the 95 00:08:36,827 --> 00:08:41,392 reflector is focused on. And concentrates it and generates a high 96 00:08:41,392 --> 00:08:44,884 temperature in the fluid flowing through the pipe. 97 00:08:44,884 --> 00:08:49,160 And carries it to a central boiler that is just like the coal boiler. 98 00:08:49,160 --> 00:08:56,432 Except, again, the steam is boiled with a hot fluid coming from the, the fluid that 99 00:08:56,432 --> 00:09:02,680 is heated by the solar energy. And this reflector rotates around with 100 00:09:02,680 --> 00:09:08,680 time of day and depending on how high or low the sun is, and on the southern 101 00:09:08,680 --> 00:09:14,026 hemisphere, if we're in the northern hemisphere of the world. 102 00:09:14,026 --> 00:09:20,612 So, this is one that, that you don't hear too much about but there are significant 103 00:09:20,612 --> 00:09:25,503 number of these out in the, out in the west and deserts. 104 00:09:25,503 --> 00:09:31,675 Even in the US. This, this is a concentrating solar power 105 00:09:31,675 --> 00:09:35,972 plant. It's the same principle as the trough 106 00:09:35,972 --> 00:09:40,594 concept. Except in this case, we, we have mirrors, 107 00:09:40,594 --> 00:09:46,550 hundreds of mirrors out here. And this covers like maybe as much as 108 00:09:46,550 --> 00:09:53,851 hundreds of acres that's all, each one of these mir mirrors track the suns in a 109 00:09:53,851 --> 00:09:58,797 manner so that it reflects the sunlight up to the, the tower. 110 00:09:58,797 --> 00:10:05,603 And again, ste, water is pumped into this tower and all that solar energy is 111 00:10:05,603 --> 00:10:10,156 concentrated on that. A tube that's carrying the water and it 112 00:10:10,156 --> 00:10:15,732 boils the steam and goes through a steam power cycle just like the coal fired power 113 00:10:15,732 --> 00:10:20,775 plant, except the heat source is not combusting in the coal, but the pipe 114 00:10:20,775 --> 00:10:24,425 temperature is generated by the solar energy. 115 00:10:24,425 --> 00:10:31,631 So it's a, it I think I covered all the points here that I have listed. 116 00:10:31,631 --> 00:10:39,351 So, those are the solar power plants and the technologies that we have. 117 00:10:39,351 --> 00:10:46,555 And we, that pretty well covers the general technology of the dominant 118 00:10:46,555 --> 00:10:54,008 electric power technologies that we use to get all of our electric power. 119 00:10:54,008 --> 00:10:55,085 Thank you.