This episode is sponsored by Wren, a website where you can  calculate your carbon footprint.

You can also sign up to  make a monthly contribution to offset your carbon footprint or  support rainforest protection projects. [♪ INTRO] Right now, wind energy is about  8% of the US electrical grid, and that is growing fast. In fact, worldwide, wind power is skyrocketing: global capacity increased  by over 10% in 2020 alone!

But wind farms are expensive to build. So as more get made, the question of  where to put them has become trickier. You’d think that we would just  always put them where it’s windiest, but it’s not quite that simple.

There are other things to consider,  like wind speed variability… and sometimes even nearby competition. See, wind turbines generate electricity  when wind blows over the rotors, which turns a generator, which converts that initial kinetic energy of the  wind into electrical energy. So, yes, the wind farm should be  in a place with lots of fast wind.

But if the wind speed varies too  much, that can cause a problem. Unlike with, say, nuclear power plants, the output is up to Mother  Nature, not the plant’s operators. Which is a problem when you’re  running an electric grid.

You need to know how much power  you’re going to get tomorrow, or over the next year. So lots of research focuses on predicting how the wind speed varies in different areas. More predictable variation makes  for more reliable wind farms.

And it turns out the windiest areas might also be the worst ones for that predictability. On top of that, if the weather outside  is too rough, that can be a problem. Take the Aleutian islands in Alaska.

They’re known as the ‘birthplace of wind’  for their extremely high wind speeds. But there is actually such a thing as too high! When testing wind speeds for  a potential wind farm there, a storm actually knocked over  the tower taking measurements.

To get wind power from that  site, they would have needed to install more expensive wind turbines that  could work properly in those conditions. In fact, it's been suggested  that that community might benefit more from a different  kind of green energy: tidal power! But ok, let’s say you’ve picked the  perfect spot for your wind farm: windy, but not too volatile.

Well, now you also need to worry  about… the other wind farms. Because wind turbines disrupt the  flow of air in the area around them, they can mess with other nearby turbines. Within a wind farm, it can be hard to work out the best way to arrange them so they  don’t interfere with each other.

Which also means that  competition between wind farms for the best wind can get fierce. In 2009, a new wind farm in Texas  was turned on upwind of another farm a few hundred meters away, and  reduced the first one’s output by 5%. Which might sound small, but it cost  them about two million dollars a year!

Luckily, one country knows a solution  to this problem: the Netherlands. After all, they have been dealing  with wind-stealing for centuries. The Netherlands has really strong  regulations about building windmills near other windmills, and it’s been suggested that similar principles could help  with wind farms, as well.

Because it turns out wind turbines don’t  like working in conditions that are too volatile, unpredictable, or crowded…  something I think we can all relate to. Wind energy is one way we are going to  bring down the world’s carbon emissions. But if you want to learn about  your own carbon footprint and take action, there’s Wren.

Wren is a website where you can  calculate your carbon footprint, then offset it by funding projects that  plant trees and protect rainforests. All you have to do is answer  a few questions to see what your carbon contribution is, and  learn a few ways you can reduce it. And if you sign up to offset your  carbon footprint, you’ll get updates telling you where your money  went, like what trees you planted.

We’ve also partnered with Wren to protect  10 additional acres of rainforest for the first 100 people who sign  up using our referral link! You can get started at the  link in the description, and thank you for supporting SciShow. [♪ OUTRO]