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Amazing video by Technology Connections. It's a long one, but don't miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

Wind sometimes runs out (as in, calm weather) and wind turbines do eventually run out after a few decades. But, 3 gallons of gasoline-equivalent per minute seemed a bit small for my intuition, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to compare it to pumpjacks for oil.

I'm doing these calculations in metric, because the US traditional units are insane, and nobody should subject themselves to that.

3 gallons is about 11.3L, so 11.3L per minute is 678 L per hour, or about 16 kL of "gasoline-equivalent" per day.

Apparently a pumpjack pumps about 5 to 40 "barrels" of crude oil per day. A barrel is 159 L so that's 795 L to 6360 L per day.

So, the back of the envelope "how much 'energy' does this big mechanical thing produce" seems fairly similar, ignoring a whole lot of complexity.

this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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