Wind Impacts Railroad Safety? And Other False Flags

The crew discusses the Federal Department of Transportation's
concerns over wind turbines interfering with railroads, the USDA's
stance on renewable energy projects on farmland, new treasury rules
for wind and solar projects, and highlight the Sunflower Wind Farm
in Kansas for its community impact and operational success. Sign up
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wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be
a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com
today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro,
and Rosemary Barnes.  Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime
Wind Energy Podcast. Hold on tight. I told my producer before we
started, this is gonna be a. Bumpy rise. So for all our listeners,
hold on. Uh, it's a lot of news in the wind and solar world at the
minute. Phil Tarro is in California. Joel Saxon is back from
Australia in Austin, Texas, and first up is the Federal Department
of Transportation. Complaining about how close wind turbines could
be to railroads and create an interference, and it'd be a safety
crisis. Uh, federal transportation officials and a new scientific
research report, [00:01:00] Joel, are sounding an urgent
alarm about wind turbines being. Too close to railroad tracks and a
comprehensive study from California's Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm
confirms, quote unquote confirms that wind farms can severely
interfere with critical radio communications used by trains. Now,
uh, what they don't want you to do is to read the report. That's
what they don't want you to do. And, uh, as a group of engineers,
we're going to read the report and see what it says. And what it
says is that they have a safety system on trains because they used
to run into each other quite often. And what they've done is they
have a overriding system that's run by radio communication that if
a train goes too fast and some of these more frequented train
tracks or in. High density population bases like Chicago or
Baltimore, one of these places that they can actually slow the
train down or stop the train in some cases, what it sounds like if
they're [00:02:00] on a collision course, and that
becomes important on commuter rails. And, um, if they have toxic
chemicals on trains, that they don't want them to have accidents.
So they put the system in. And the system is based on Joel. The
world's oldest communication form.  Joel Saxum: It's VHF
radio, right? So to those of you that don't know what VHF radio is,
it's basically like, uh, close to the frequencies you'd use as a
walkie-talkie as a kid. Um hmm. Right. Uh, or a CB radio. Right.
We're, we're quite a ways past that now. Uh, so wifi, cell modems,
satellite communications are all regular things within basically
any other industry. Uh, of course, but this one, yeah, we're still
using VHF technology that we used. I, that's been around for a long
time for radio communication back from World War ii. Or before
that? Oh yeah.  Allen Hall: Right around World War ii.
How far do those, uh, walkie-talkie radios typically  Joel
Saxum: work? Well, it depends if you, I guess if it depends if
you buy 'em from Walmart or if you buy 'em
a, [00:03:00] a, a professional one. But, uh, depending
on what watt radio is in 'em, I mean mile two miles maybe. 
Allen Hall: Exactly. And that's how this train system works.
So every. Couple of miles, they have a repeater to transmit the
signal up and down the train tracks. Well, it became really
important because, you know, these wind turbines are interfering
with this train signal and may have a collision. So what they did
is they commenced the study to go look at if there's interference,
uh, bouncing off the wind turbines, and if you read the report,
they talk about wind turbine blades, possibly spinning and creating
this interference pattern. And particularly if the wind turbine
blades are made outta metal, it could be this big problem. Well. No
wind turbine blade is made outta metal today. And you know, the
chances that the wind turbine blades line up in a particular
orientation to cross interference is practically  Joel
Saxum: dang near zero. You know, there's something else we
didn't think about here. We were kind of talking about this before
we talking about metal blades and turbines. Of course, that's not a
thing. Uh, but they did this study in Tehachapi. If you've, of
course a ton of our listeners have been to Tehachapi.
It's [00:04:00]like the wind mecca in the United States,
right? Those are all lattice towers. Lattice towers have. A
different effect on radio signals than the Monopile towers that
we're used to that are most everywhere else in the, in the wind
industry. But La Latt, lattice Towers can definitely do, do
something to radio signal.  Allen Hall: So my first
thought was to reach out to Joel when I read the report and say,
Joel, there must be railroad tracks near wind turbines existing
already. Joel Saxum: How many Joel? Yeah. So we, we went and
found some data online of uh, basically we know where the turbines
are. We, US wind turbine database. Um, and then found the some
shape files of where the railroad tracks are in the United States
and duplicated their study to put like a buffer on the tracks that
one, 1.2 miles took a look at it. And there is about 6,500 turbines
in the United States that are within a mile or 1.2 miles of a
railroad track. That makes sense, right? These wind farms are, you
know, along highways, [00:05:00] uh, a lot of 'em. Um.
And railroad tracks follow highways. They're kind of co-located,
right? So of the 75,000 and change there's about 6,500. So eight
and a half, 9% of turbines in the United States are within a mile
or two or a mile, 1.1 or 1.2 miles of, of a railroad track. 
Allen Hall: Well, evidently it's a concern now, so we have to
do something about it now. My first question was, well, this system
must work in cities. That's what it's there for. There must be
buildings and roads and bridges and draw bridges and other things
in the way of this signal. And sure enough, I was right. They, they
do have buildings in the way, and you know what they do? They put a
repeater in. You put a repeater in, just like a cell phone repeater
to make the signal, uh, strength much higher to avoid the
interference problem. And it works. So the DOT's running around
right now, and the head of the DOT Sean Duffy is, is exclaiming
that, uh, wind turbines are the downfall of
the [00:06:00] railroad community and they're gonna push
back wind turbines, uh, from railroad tracks. So Joel, you better
prepare for how many turbines to be moved back. 6,000 6,500.
Yeah.  Phil Totaro: So have we gone into crazy land? A
couple of things. First of all, Tehachapi never had metal blades.
The, even the oldest turbines there, if they had, uh, any kind of
blades other than fiberglass, they were wood. Um, and I don't think
Tehachapi had wooden blades, uh, out there for like 40 years. The
funny thing about all this is that it's, uh, you know, stuff like
this, it's probably not gonna be that much of an issue because, as
Joel just mentioned, if you're only talking about 8% of the, you
know, installed base in the United States, well guess what? There's
92% of the installed base that doesn't have this problem to deal
with. So that's, you know. I'd take 92% over 8% any day. And, and,
and look, the, the government actually, even though
they [00:07:00] may kind of sound stupid at, at times or
even try to deliberately portray themselves as stupid at times, um,
they, they actually do get it. Uh, I know a lot of people are going
to, you know, find it funny that I would say something like that.
But if you look, and, and the reason I can say this is if you
actually look at what they did with like these IRS tax rules, um,
you know. What they're actually doing is facilitating manufacturing
in the United States. So my point of all this is while they're out
there saying, you know, wind turbines are evil, in reality, the
industry is actually going to thrive for the next, you know, 18
months or so, we're, we're still gonna have problems. And, and
they're absolutely pouring gas on a fire. Needs to actually be put
out rather than have gas poured on it. But the, you know, their
rhetoric is one thing and their actual actions are another. 
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of blade monitoring. Well, along Phil's line of thought, the
agriculture department will no longer support solar and wind
projects on productive farmland. According to the agriculture
Secretary Brooke Rollins, the move targets what officials call the
destruction of prime agricultural soil. For green new deals,
subsidized solar panels. Now the emphasis here at first is on solar
panels. But wait, there's more. [00:09:00] USDA
previously provided over $2 billion for renewable projects through
its Rural Energy for America program.