You’re listening to climate change. This is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Patrick Gilman on the program today from the Department of Energy. Patrick’s an expert on wind energy, and great to have you on the program. Patrick, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Matt.

Patrick, tell us a little bit about your position at the DOA and what you’re doing there and what led you to that position.

So I work within the Wind Energy Technologies Office in DOD, which is one of a bunch of technology specific offices that are set up to do research and development to improve clean energy technologies and help get them deployed more quickly into the marketplace.

My specific role is I’m modeling and analysis program manager, which means that I help us understand what wind energy is doing in the marketplace today, what wind energy technology improvement opportunities are, and how they might impact wind energy’s role in the electricity sector going forward.

I’ve been with the DOD for 14 years and came to the position, kind of in a serendipitous way, I went to college, the little liberal arts school called Whitman, in the Wheatfields, around Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Washington. And when I was there, they were building the first wind energy projects in Oregon and Washington at the time, within view, of of town.

And I found out that the college owned the land underneath a turbine, so started going out there for visits, and thought, hey, this would be a pretty cool thing to be involved in, fast forward a couple of years, and had the chance to move abroad and lived in China for a while. And when I was there, just the fact that you never saw blue sky really drove home to me the importance of working on the choices around how we use energy and what kinds of energy we use.

And so when I went to grad school, had the opportunity to kind of combine those, those two things and did some work on the the growth of the Chinese wind energy market, which kind of led me into this job at the DOD. And so here I am, almost 15 years later, still working on wind energy and its place in our energy future.

Well, it’s an exciting area to be working on. And my understanding is that wind energy now is the cheapest form of generating electrical energy at this point in time. Is that Is that an accurate statement?

Yeah, there are some places in the country where wind energy is now the cheapest source of new generation of any technology, even on an unsubsidized bases. But we’re working to reduce the costs even further, both because we think there’s significant room for those costs to come down still, but also so that we can make wind energy cost competitive, basically everywhere in the United States, so that it can be an option in every state in the country.

I mean, when I take a step back from this, it almost seems kind of absurd, or like a dream state that when I was growing up to think that wind energy would be something we would rely upon, it was almost like laughable because that was Don Quixote. That was that was hundreds of years ago, we relied upon wind energy, but in the future, of course not. That’s ridiculous. Like we didn’t, there was not even a thought of that, or at least from my perception. What, what changed?

I think, I think a couple of things changed. One is that, you know, in the 1970s, with the, the energy crisis that happened then, and the realization that we really needed to think about where we get our energy and how we use it, a lot of interest came up in exploring technologies like wind and solar, that don’t burn fossil fuels that aren’t subject to sort of the volatility in that in the politics and the economics around them.

And, you know, so people in, you know, in the United States, in places like Denmark really started to work on the technology. And over the past couple of decades. You know, that, that work in innovation, and also some, you know, important policy support given both at the state and federal levels in the United States, has brought down wind energy costs to the point where it, it really started to make sense on an economic basis for people to pursue it.

And then just in the past decade, we’ve really seen, you know, as we’ve seen those costs come down. We’ve really seen that deployment curve go up to the point now where, you know, as, as you know, we don’t really talk about renewable energy and alternative energy terms anymore, right? It’s mainstream. And as, as you noted, wind energy is now the cheapest source of electricity in many parts of the country. And so it just makes good economic sense.

Right, so what is the is the government doing on a federal level to roll wind energy out further? And how did the the inflation Recovery Act or inflation Reduction Act? You know, give more wind in the sales, if you will, to those efforts.

So there’s a couple of things. I mean, first, we at the Department of Energy, our role is to help improve the technology and to address challenges to its deployment. And so the federal government has invested quite a bit of money to improve wind technology over the years and help drive the cost reductions that I just talked about.

It’s also been really important at the state and the federal level, to have stable and solid policy support to make sure that there’s a market for wind energy technology. And the inflation Reduction Act takes a couple of really big steps forward there with respect to wind. First, it provides for long term extensions to tax credits for wind energy, installation and production, which helped make the economics more favorable everywhere, that you might deploy wind energy, and so that we expect to see Help Help demand for wind increase significantly.

Also, it provides incentives to wind manufacturing to help make manufacturing wind turbine components, like wind turbine blades are more cost effective in the United States to ensure that as wind energy demand goes up, and more wind energy is deployed, that we are making those turbines in the United States, and that the benefits from that manufacturing stay in the United States.

Well, how are we doing as a country in terms of manufacturing the wind technology here, I know that in the solar domain, a lot of it’s being manufactured in China, I talked with previous guests about the IRA working to improve the manufacturing capacity of the US in solar.

Where do we stand regarding wind as far as what percentage of our wind technology has been created at home in the US?

So it’s kind of a mixed story in wind. But I think, on the one hand, it’s been a really significant success. Most of the wind, most of the content in a in a wind farm that’s installed in the unit United States is domestically produced. So we manufacture most of the components in the sort of the machine head that sits on top of the tower.

In the United States, we produce most of the towers in the United States, until recently, we produced most of the blades that are used in wind turbines in the United States, but over time, as particularly as blades have gotten larger and more difficult to build. And because when blades are very labor intensive, manufacturing has started to sort of become less competitive in the United States.

So for example, we’ve, we have had several major wind turbine blade manufacturers close down shop in the United States over the past couple of years, and expand operations in places like neck, Mexico, where the labor is, is cheaper. And so what the inflation Reduction Act will help to do is to reduce that cost premium of producing in the United States.

And at the same time, we’re working pretty hard on different ways to innovate wind energy manufacturing, so that over the long term, it becomes more cost competitive to produce those components in the US.

And in terms of the curve of adoption of wind technology, where we add on that on that curve, and where are we hoping to get and and how fast are we climbing? And what you know, are we realistically going to meet the targets that the government has set for renewable energy, in particular and wind?

Yeah, so the United States, about 9% of our electricity right now comes from wind energy. And that is up significantly from when I started, it’s probably around 1%, or even maybe below. So wind energy is has grown significantly over the past decade. And we’re, we anticipate that there is still significant growth ahead of us, as I mentioned, the inflation Reduction Act, you know, puts forth a really stable and positive positive policy environment for wind.

And we continue to see cost reductions, which we think will help drive deployment that said, we’re deploying about, you know, between 10 to 15 gigawatts on an annual basis which when you think about that in In terms of the number of wind turbines, we’re installing several 1000, large wind turbines in the United States every year. On one hand, that’s a great success, right? Because there’s, that’s providing a lot of clean power. There are some states in the country that now get more than 50% of their energy from wind, Iowa and South Dakota, for example.

And we see parts of the grid, like the Southwest power pool that manages electricity, across sort of the Great Plains from Oklahoma up into the Dakotas and Montana, we see regularly them achieving 75% wind energy, but we’ve got a long way to go, as as you know, in order to decarbonize the grid by 2035, which is the Biden administration goal, we need to significantly accelerate the pace of wind deployment. And that’s going to be a real challenge, but we think it’s achievable.

Well, you’re listening to A Climate Change. And our guest today, Patrick Gilman, of the Department of Energy, works in the wind energy technologies department, particularly on modeling analysis. And so we’ll be back in just one minute to talk to Patrick about what the DoD is doing and what our future is going to look like visa vie when you’re listening to A Climate Change, this is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got Patrick Gilman, of the Department of Energy Works in the wind energy technologies division, particularly modeling, analysis and programming, I want to kind of get to the specifics of kind of the modeling and analysis that work that you’re doing there. And tell us about the significance of that.

Sure. So the Wind Energy Technologies Office basically has three goals. First, we want to reduce the cost of wind energy technology to make it affordable, more affordable for all Americans and make it cost competitive with other forms of electricity basically, everywhere in the United States, we want to help wind play more effectively in the grid.

So that is, we’re operating the power system with more and more technologies like wind and solar, that are dependent on the weather, that we’re not impacting reliability, negatively, and that we’re providing value on all the services that the grid operators need to keep the lights on. And then finally, we’re trying to work to accelerate deployment.

As I mentioned, we need to do that significantly in order to meet the ambitious climate goals that the administration has set. And so my job within that context is to help us be good investors of taxpayer dollars, just like any other investor needs to do due diligence on on where they’re going to put their funds. We need to do that with taxpayer dollars. And so the modeling and analysis work that I lead is intended to help us be good stewards.

And there are a couple of different parts to that. First is we need a really good understanding of what’s happening in the wind energy marketplace and with wind energy technology. So we collect a lot of data and make it available to the public that shows you know technology, trends, trends and deployment, where wind turbines are being built, what kind of features they have things like that, and highly recommend that the wind energy technology market reports we put out every year on those subjects.

Second, we use those data and then a bunch of different different models and methods to look at specific innovation opportunities to make wind energy technology better, more affordable, getting at those cost reductions, help it play better in the grid, and then reduce barriers to its deployment so that we can accelerate deployment.

And then finally, you know, we work with other offices at DOD to do big studies looking at different potential energy futures, and think about how the innovations that we’re assessing fit into that future and can change it. So if we’re able to reduce costs by X amount, what What impact could that have on deployment you know, in the in the context of decarbonizing our grid over the past over the next, you know, 10 or 15 years.

So, in terms of decarbonizing the grid by 2035, how, how much growth does there need to be in the wind sector in order to kind of achieve that, that goal, I realized there’s other factors involved that are solar and other geothermal and other forms of energy creation, but what would the wind target be?

So, there’s lots of different pathways to to get to grid decarbonisation by 2035. And so we don’t have like a really specific target with respect to wind energy deployment. What we do see is that, you know, if you look across all the studies that folks have done looking at decarbonisation of the US electricity grid over that timeframe, Most of the electricity on the order of save, you know, 50 to 75% is coming from variable renewables like wind and solar.

And so what that tells us is that we need to expand deployment really significantly. So if you look at those studies, on the order of will need on the order of eight to 10 times more wind energy on the grid in 2035, to accomplish those targets than we do currently, we, for context, we have a little bit less than 140 gigawatts of wind energy already installed.

So we’re talking about, you know, increasing that number to a terawatt, so 1000 gigawatts or even more over the next decade plus, and that means we really need to ramp up the pace.

Okay, so it seems as though if you increase it by 10 times more, just my simple mathematics, if we’re 9% now have the total power, feeding the grid 10 times that would be 90% is the growth of the need for electrical power that much that that getting increased by 10 Time tenfold will not get us to 90%. of energy from wind.

So the the other thing that happened that needs to happen over that timeframe is if we’re thinking about decarbonizing, not just the electricity sector, but also the broader economy, which the administration has a goal of net zero carbon economy by 2050. We need to spend a lot of effort electrifying, different sectors of the economy, then use electricity now.

So right now, I drive, you know, a vehicle that has an internal combustion engine that runs on gasoline. And if we want to see if we want to be on on on, on course, to meet our 2050 economy wide targets, we need to be electrifying things like transportation, and industry now, and so what what we what we think that means is that the demand for electricity in the economy goes way, way up.

And that’s why even if we’re increasing wind energy generation by a factor of 10, we’re only getting two levels of wind energy like, you know, 40 to 60%, and not the 90%. That you mentioned. Okay.

That’s a it’s a good point. So I guess, one of the things that I’ve talked about with other guests is that if we’re creating all this electricity from from the wind and from solar, we’re going to need to store it and one of the things that can store this energy is hydrogen, hydrogen, and then you can you can move the hydrogen around and use it in different contexts for industry, possibly transportation. What is the what is your office doing in regard to, to that issue?

Yeah, so hydrogen is a really important part of the energy picture, particularly for, as you said, energy, long term energy storage, potentially helping fill gaps where, you know, in in extreme situations where there’s very little wind or solar resource available, and we’re working really closely with our colleagues and in the hydrogen and fuel cells Technology Office to do we to explore those opportunities.

One thing that we’re particularly excited about right now, is looking at how we can use a combination of wind and solar and battery storage to help decarbonize steel and cement production. Those are, those are both really energy intensive applications where right now you need in order to generate the heat for those processes, you need to burn fossil fuels like coal or natural gas, and where there really aren’t options. Right now it’s a fully decarbonized.

And so we’re working with with our partner technology offices at DOE, to explore ways that we can use wind and solar and battery storage to fully electrify the steelmaking and the cement production process, which, you know, would help significantly decarbonize those sectors of the economy as well.

Well, we’re where are we at in terms of decarbonizing steel and cement production in particular, and how would you see that decarbonizing through through wind and or energy’s input?

So, we’re really just getting started. The the DoD announced a hydrogen shot earlier in the administration looking at producing hydrogen at a cost of $1 per gallon per kilogram by the end of this decade and the majority of the costs associated with producing hydrogen through like trol assists, you know, with electricity, basically splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen atoms is the cost of the electricity in the process.

And so we’re looking at ways that we can, you know, for example, combine the electrical infrastructure associated with a wind turbine with the electrical, you know, the power electronics of, of electrolyzers that are used to produce hydrogen to see if we can reduce the costs of electricity going into hydrogen production, to make that hydrogen cheaper, so that it can be used in in steel production and cement production for heat.

So, how would that work in terms of reducing the, the electricity needs of an electrolyzer and kind of combination, creating cheaper hydrogen?

So I think that the key thing there is, it’s less about decreasing the need for electricity and more about making that electricity cheaper, if we can, if we can share some of the infrastructure associated with the electricity that’s produced by a wind turbine, with the, you know, the hardware that’s used to produce the electrolyzers.

So those are more closely linked and kind of integrated together, we can reduce the cost of electricity going in, which really reduces the cost of the hydrogen coming out. And that makes it cheaper and more cost effective to use hydrogen as opposed to natural gas or, or coal in in the heat that’s needed for steel and cement.

Well, that’s an exciting development and obviously something that we should be working on. I had heard that Denmark is also a leader in this, as you had said earlier, and they produce sometimes up to 100% of their, their electrical needs from their their wind generation, and they’re doing a lot of offshore wind.

Tell us a little bit about what offshore wind projects the US is working on. And, you know, we’ll be you know, making having a break in just a second, but at least you can start talking about it before we go into the break.

Yeah, so we see offshore wind as being a really important part of the both the wind energy picture but also the broader energy, decarbonisation picture going forward. The US has a goal right now of getting 30 gigawatts of offshore wind deployed by the end of this decade.

And we believe that achieving that would really help kickstart a new industry that not only would help with decarbonizing electricity along the coasts, but also bring a new industry to help revitalize working waterfronts across the country.

Well, that’s an exciting development, you’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host, and I’m talking to Patrick Gilman. We’ll be back in just one minute. Stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got Patrick Gilman, of the Department of Energy. Patrick’s an expert in wind energy technologies works with modeling and analysis.

And, Patrick, we were just talking about offshore offshore wind before the break. Why are we so far behind the I mean, the people, the country of Denmark and other countries in deploying offshore wind.

So I think there’s a couple parts of this story. I mean, the first is that offshore wind is a relatively, you know, compared to some of the other energy technology options that we have is a relatively new, relatively new player. And as a relatively new player, it’s been relatively higher cost. And what that’s meant is that, you know, because European Electricity is more expensive than it is in the United States, by and large, it’s been easier, both in terms of the economic case, but also the political case to provide policy support to offshore wind as a potential option.

In the United States, we’re we’re blessed with like a huge amount of land compared to say, the United Kingdom. And so we’re much farther ahead in say land based wind energy deployment. But behind an offshore wind, again, because we haven’t needed to access those more, more costly resources off of our coasts. That said, we’re, we’re on a pathway to catching up pretty significantly here over the next decade.

And the reason for that is because, you know, more and more states and the federal government obviously see the need to decarbonize the electricity sector and get get fossil fuel pollution out of it. And so states like Massachusetts and New York, lots of states along the Atlantic coast more broadly. have set ambitious targets for offshore wind deployment, there’s more than a 40 gigawatts of offshore wind that are now in the development pipeline, and that we expect to see deployed over the next decade and a half or so.

And the big, you know, a big part of that big part of those advantages of offshore wind, you know, those states can turn to it because they have less land available for doing things like deploying large wind or solar facilities. And because of the success of what’s happened in Europe, with offshore wind, we’re, you know, now there’s close to 50 gigawatts deployed, the costs have really, really come down to the point where now looking at an offshore wind farm in the United States, is not that much different in a cost perspective than deploying a large scale land or solar facility in those same states.

And more broadly speaking, I think we see the opportunity for the growth of a really important potential a new industry, that brings jobs back to working waterfront that have declined over the past 50 years, bringing manufacturing to ports, bringing new opportunities for maritime workers, and bringing new jobs into the communities that that host the ports and vessels associated with offshore wind.

I know there’s a geography issue with the difference between putting offshore wind on the East Coast and the West Coast, and that the West Coast has a steeper, declining shoreline. So it’s harder to kind of put it on the coastline. What about the Gulf of Mexico and Florida? And are those places places that are good candidates for offshore wind?

Yeah, so speak to the Gulf first, and I want to touch on the point that you made about the west coasts, we think that there’s a pretty significant opportunity in the Gulf for offshore wind deployment. And while the sort of the wind resources there are not as strong as they are in other parts of the country, you know, compared to say, the Northeast or off the coast of California, the big advantage that the Gulf has is a really large and skilled industrial base and workforce associated with offshore oil and gas that has really important relevant skills necessary to that are directly translatable to offshore wind.

And as we are working towards economy wide decarbonisation, especially, you know, offshore wind offers a really great potential pathway for workers transitioning from this oil and gas industry. So we think that there’s some really exciting things that could be done in the Gulf. With respect to the West Coast…

Let me just jump in there for a second on the Gulf and ask you about the danger of hurricanes and knocking out wind installations like this. What’s to save those from the damage of hurricanes?

Yeah, so that’s a really important point. And something that we’re working hard to address, the the technology standards to which all of the big wind turbine manufacturers need to build their turbans were really developed, you know, at least for the offshore context, with Northern Europe in mind. And obviously, in the North Sea.

They don’t have to deal with hurricanes. And so we’re working with the industry, with other federal agencies to update those standards so that the wind turbines that are deployed in places like the Gulf are robust to hurricanes. Now, obviously, you know, if you have a strong enough hurricane, almost no matter what you build, it’s going to it’s there’s going to be a significant issue.

But we’re, we’re working to make the technology significantly more resilient, so that on kind of a lifetime basis, they’re resilient to the kinds of storms that they’re likely to see.

Okay, and so what are what’s the DOA doing to have offshore wind deployed, say, off of California or the West Coast and maybe even Alaska? Because there’s a tremendous amount of shoreline there.

Yeah, so, um, as you mentioned, that the continental shelf drops off very quickly, the water gets very deep off of places like California and Oregon, as you move away from shore. And so that the technology that’s that’s been used in Europe, largely to date and the technology that people are planning to deploy on the east coast where you have a turbine, sitting on top, excuse me sitting on top of the foundation that’s drilled directly into the seabed, it doesn’t work.

And so you need to find ways to make those turbines sit on floating platforms. And so we’re working really hard to advance the cause of floating offshore wind and bring the cost down there. We just announced a couple of weeks ago a floating floating offshore wind shot, which you similar to the hydrogen shot that I mentioned, the, the administration is making a commitment to bringing all of the resources to bear from the different federal agencies that are involved to reduce the costs of floating offshore wind by 70%, by the middle of the next decade by 2035.

And to deploying 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind it off the coast of places like California, in the northeast and deeper waters off of Maine, for example, and in places like Hawaii over the next 15 years.

Well, those are big goals. And where are you at as far as actually getting the cost reduction of 70%? Where do we stand right now? And is it realistic to think that we can get a 70% cost reduction in that amount of time.

So that it’s it’s a really ambitious goal, and it’d be really clear about that. And it will require everything that the federal government and industry can throw at it to make it happen. But you know, if, if we’re able to that, you know, big challenge right now with floating offshore wind is that you have, the structures that the turbans sit on, are typically there, they’re copied over from, again, the offshore oil and gas industry where there’s been lots of experience with putting really big heavy things on top of flooding structures for a long time.

The challenge in in offshore wind with respect to flooding structures is that you need to build a lot of them and very quickly. And so we’re trying to figure out a way to get from that sort of one off builds that are common in the oil and gas space, to producing these giant platforms serially in serial production, like almost on an assembly line basis, so that we can churn them out much more quickly and cheaply. And that’s sort of the the fundamental kind of technical challenge.

The other thing that we need to do is continue to make offshore wind turbines which are already huge, by the way, even bigger, so that we need to deploy fewer of those platforms, and do less work out in the ocean and, you know, run less cable between turbines, because all of those things are really expensive. So the bigger we can make the turbines, the cheaper we can make the power.

So where do we see where do we see that going in terms of offshore, its contribution to our total energy needs and goals as compared to onshore? It 2035 or by 2050, say.

So, land based wind is going to play a larger role just in terms of the absolute amount that’s being deployed and is used in the electricity sector. And largely because there’s more room and it’s lower cost compared to some of the alternatives like like offshore wind, where we see offshore wind playing a really important role is in sort of coastal states where building land based wind and solar at the scales that are necessary to drive the carbon out of the grid isn’t really possible.

And where it’s more difficult to bring those wind and solar resources over long transmission lines to the coasts. So offshore wind is going to play a really important role in in places like the Northeast, where it’s difficult to build transmission, and where the the, the centers of electricity demand are really right along the coast, where, you know, in fact, quite close to the offshore wind resource. And in places like California, where there’s a huge amount of electricity demand. And again, where the resource is strong, and where again, it’s more challenging to build long haul transmission lines in from the interior of the country.

So where we see land based wind, potentially, you know, meeting up to half say of of the nation’s electricity needs, we see offshore wind as being a smaller resource on the order of say, five to 10%, but still playing a really significant role in places where it’s harder to build land based wind and solar and other clean resources.

Well, I appreciate your elucidating that for us, you’re listening to A Climate Change is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got Patrick Gilman, from the Department of Energy, wind energy technologies. And we’ll be right back in just a minute with Patrick, I’ve got a follow up question for him about how maybe we can address those energy needs a little bit differently. So stay tuned.

You’re listening to A Climate Change. This is Matt Matern, your host I’ve got Patrick Gilman and Department of Energy on the program and Patrick, we were just talking about offshore wind and the need for it along the coast as you had said, I was just curious as to whether or not may maybe if we have substantial offshore wind and solar and other forms of renewables.

Couldn’t we generate, as we were talking about earlier hydrogen and pumped that to the coastal regions that may not have as much access to say wind or solar energy themselves, but certainly you could ship or transport hydrogen via pipelines or things of that nature to to get that energy to them?

Yeah, I think that’s a really important potential application for offshore wind. And one thing we see happening already in Europe is plans for so called energy islands where they’re literally building lands off off the coasts to gather electricity from from wind and use it to produce hydrogen that they can use then, you know, drawn either for for long term storage when there’s periods where a wind is less productive, or for use and other things like making maritime fuels.

And there’s, there’s a big discussion right now happening that we’re kind of on the periphery on but we’re following or in how folks are thinking about decarbonizing shipping, for example, that offshore wind could help play a role in was shipping certainly is a big source of pollution, has there been much movement on decarbonizing it.

And, you know, maybe through hydrogen or other means, you know, again, we’re sort of on the periphery of that conversation, but that there’s a lot of folks are thinking about, you know, where we’re really focusing is, is again, and how we can most effectively combine wind and hydrogen, whether that’s, you know, thinking about directly like electrolyzing, hydrogen offshore at the site of offshore wind turbines, if or bringing electricity back to the shore and producing the hydrogen shore side.

We’re looking at a lot of those different potential technology combinations and what might make the most sense for applications like marine fuels in partnership with with our colleague offices and who work more exclusively on hydrogen and on maritime, decarbonisation. Maybe a couple of interesting potential technologies.

One was I saw sales on the some large container ships and and whether or not that was something you at the DOE, any of you at the DoD are working on or something or things like that. What are the kind of cutting edge new technologies we should be on the lookout for?

Well, we we in the Wind Energy Technologies Office, we haven’t done much work on on the maritime proposed propulsion side. Though I do think it, I occasionally try to convince some of our engineers that it would be fun to look at some of those new kind of sail concepts for containerships. But so far, no success there at least from from Rn.

But again, we’re really focused on trying to help our sister offices and agencies that are working, like really diligently on on issues like maritime decarbonisation figure out how they can use wind as a tool in those processes.

What about when done on people’s homes or on businesses or things of that nature? Smaller turbans? I mean, we’ve seen kind of a revolution and rooftop solar on people’s homes. I mean, even if it doesn’t generate a ton of power, is that is that a thing worth considering?

So we’re looking at distributed wind, that is when that’s being used to produce power on site or locally, not needing to be transported across huge transportation or trends transmission line, sorry, or being deployed in you know, 100 megawatt wind farms, we’re looking at distributed wind pretty hard right now, because there’s, there is a lot of potential there.

You know, an enroll study that we put out this year found more than 1.4 terawatts, 1400 gigawatts of economic potential today, for distributed wind in different sort of turbine size classes, ranging all the way from, you know, micro turbines that you would use to power a home all the way up to utility scale wind turbines deployed at like, say, a factory to provide on site power. And there are places where that makes a lot of sense.

So if you’re looking at an agricultural producer that uses a lot of electricity, like say, a dairy farm, out in the middle of the country, in rural areas, wind is a distributed wind is a pretty effective cost effective option. The smaller you go, and the more urban you go, the more challenging it gets.

So solar is super power, is that you can deploy it almost anywhere. You can put it on a roof, you can fit it into urban spaces, there are solar panels down the road from me that are installed on the wall of a tall building.

Wind, by contrast, you need open space. And you need good wind resources, which are hard to find when you get into sort of heavily built up environment. So it makes a lot of sense, in places where electricity costs are high, where the wind blows, and where there’s ample land. So in rural communities, we think distributed wind offers a huge amount of potential.

So in terms of effect on the environment, have, you know, I’ve talked to another guest on the program, and in the past, who was a doctor had PhD in fluid dynamics and, and also is involved in wind research and development. And what what is the effect of having all these wind turbine set up? Are we going to potentially adversely affect the, the wind patterns around the world? And what are the what are the studies on that?

Yeah, so we have looked at this a little bit, and, you know, at really, really high levels of deployment, so if you’re talking about, you know, say the terawatt of wind that’s needed to get to the grid, decarbonisation targets, it’s certainly possible that we’ll have some climatic effects, right, because you’re taking energy out. And that affects, particularly how air in kind of the lowest layer of the atmosphere mixes.

And so there have been studies that find, you know, a little bit of, of warming associated with large scale wind deployment. That said, the global benefits associated with deploying wind, we think significantly outweigh those potential challenges. So Lawrence Berkeley Lab, in their annual in technology, you know, the Market Report, tracks the benefits from from health and from climate associated with wind deployment, based on where, when plants have been built and the kinds of power that they’re displacing.

And, you know, this year for wind plants built in 2021, their estimate is that the value that wind provides both in terms of avoided climate impacts, avoided air pollution and associated health effects, and then just the direct value it provides to the grid in terms of energy and capacity, that those values sort of combined, are more than three times the cost of the wind energy from those facilities.

So there’s a lot of work that we do have to think about in terms of environmental impacts, not just, you know, sort of the wind patterns and weather and climate effects, as you said, but also impacts to wildlife impacts the local communities.

But we think that there’s, you know, a lot of the work that we do is focused on overcoming those impacts, mitigating them, and making sure that when does on a net basis, beneficial to the places where it’s deployed, in terms of efficiency, harder.

The turbine is getting more efficient, so that the amount of wind that it takes to turn the turbine is less so that, you know, ultimately, that would mean there was less stress on the, you know, the fluid dynamic issue, if you’re getting more efficient turbans? Is that is that occurring, so we need less wind to produce more power?

Yeah, something that a technology trend that that we’re seeing and have really helped to drive with, with research that we’ve done in the past is the United States, we’re seeing larger and larger rotors, so that longer intervals was longer and longer blades being put on machines of the same size.

So the average rotor size of a machine 10 years ago, was on the order of say, you know, 80 meters. Now it’s it’s like 120 meters. And what that means is that each of those wind turbine blades, even if you’re, you know, on a on the same sort of two or three megawatt machine, you’re able to capture a lot more wind from that same tower than you were with a turbine 10 years ago.

And that significantly reduced the cost, benefit big driver for the cost reductions that we’ve seen, and really significantly improved the value of wind to the grid in places where those turbines with larger rotors have been deployed.

So do you see that continuing to increase the the rotor size? Or is there an area of diminishing returns at some point?

So that it’s it’s complicated, but we definitely see rotor size, continuing to end crease in the US the biggest challenge actually to getting bigger blades put out on turbans is logistics. These are just really big pieces of, of equipment.

And they’re very difficult to move over the road or rail networks. And so we’re looking at ways to build longer blades both so that they fit within those sort of corridors that you need to go through.

So they fit under highway overpasses and around rail turns. But also thinking about how we can build blades in such a way that they’re modular so that you can transport a couple of smaller, still big probably, but smaller pieces and then assemble them on site to enable those those blades getting bigger.

Well, it’s been a pleasure having you on the program, Patrick Patrick Gilman, from the Department of Energy, wind technologies, wind energy technologies. Patrick, in closing, where do you see the future as far as in the next few years where your team is going to be focusing most of your energies.

So I think that I talked a little bit about offshore wind and floating offshore wind in particular, I think the other big thing that we’re going to be spending a lot of our time on is thinking about how we can help deploy wind in ways that are to that ensure that that benefits flow to local communities and stay with local communities and that local communities are helping to drive deployment decisions.

So we’re going to be thinking about how we can work with state governments and local governments to help make sure that their voices are considered in the development process, and that they’re getting a good deal when they’re seeking when they’re deploying wind energy so that we can continue to accelerate deployment and get the levels of wind and solar that we need on the grid to meet our clean energy goals.

Well, great work, Patrick, really great having you on the program and giving us a kind of an update and overview of the work that you’re doing and keep on. Keep on doing it and we’ll hopefully talk to you in the future and look forward to hearing great things from you going forward.

That would be great. Matt, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.