Paul Gipe, a career green energy advocate and prominent author on wind power, joined us on the podcast to talk about electric vehicles, wind power policy, changes in technology and policy he's seen over the year, vertical axis wind turbine design, ducted turbines, small wind turbines, solar power, off-shore wind and more. His most recent book is called Wind Energy for the Rest of Us.



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Transcript EP37 - Paul Gipe, Author of Wind Energy for the Rest of Us



Hey, great. Uh, great interview with, uh, Paul Gipe this week, really knowledgeable person and been around the industry for a long time and has a lot of great insight into wind turbines and electric vehicles.



It was just a really fascinating discussion. Yeah. So our guest today is Paul  and if you're not familiar with Paul, then. I guess, where have you been? I mean, Paul, Paul's been all over the web for a long time, uh, covering, uh, wind energy. He's been sort of like a wind energy lifer, uh, has worked as, I mean, I'm looking through his bio here.



It's hard to know where to start, but a policy analyst for numerous organizations over the years. Um, he's been a principal in firms, uh, evaluating wind turbine technology. He's written eight books on wind turbines, his most recent one, Wind Energy For The Rest of Us: A Comprehensive Guide to Wind Power and How To Use It, is a, just a huge reference for everything when energy.



I mean, it's, if you want to know about small wind turbines, big wind turbines, ducted, the history of them, all the, you know, materials failure, like easily got so many case studies in there. Um, so we, we reached out to Paul Gipe because he's just seems like one of the, again, like the wind energy lifers who has spent a significant amount of his career, you know, fighting the good fight essentially for wind energy.



Yeah. And it's, it's one of those really nice people to come across a that you meet in the wind turbine industry that just has a lot of history. And especially the technical side he's know he's a good combination of the technical aspects and the policy aspects, because we don't get into too much, but there's a lot of governmental policy and regulations that play in the electric market.



Altogether and, and Paul kind of ties the two together, which was really hard. Yeah. So back in 2004, uh, Paul was working or started working as the acting executive director for the Ontario sustainable energy association. He's talked a bunch about his work over in Canada and, and some of the, just the great things they've done with renewable energy over there.



Um, and now, like you said, we, we talk, uh, so kind of like the scope of this conversation. We talk a little bit, a bit. In the beginning about, um, electric vehicles. Cause he has a current, a big passion for the electric car he drives. And as a guy who's just overall interested in saving the planet, interested in renewable energy, interested in green energy.



And you know, he refers to himself as, as a, as a greenie, uh, which Paul's, Paul's a funny guy. Um, but he's been around the whole, you know, We talk about solar. We talk about wind and small wind, and there's been a lot of challenges. And like you said down, and there's not only mechanical and engineering and technology challenges, but he talks a lot about the fights and, uh, just the, the difficulty in getting policy changes that are going to make wind more viable.



And, and one of the things he speaks to is, uh, the fact that we should be farther along today. Then we are, yeah, we should always be farther along or that's al...