| ▲ | sandworm101 7 hours ago |
| I am all for green energy, but these windfarms were designed years ago. Since then, solar has progressed in leaps whereas wind has not. Im not so sure that fighting the olds over wind farms is the fight worth winning. Let them cancel the wind farms if that means a free hand to develop solar. |
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| ▲ | ianburrell 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Solar and wind are good complements. Solar works during the day and best on clear, windless days. Wind blows best during the night and on cloudy, stormy days. Solar is best in summer and wind in winter. Wind also works better in some areas that don't have solar. UK has a lot of offshore wind, but less solar. The US Northeast has a lot of wind but lags behind on solar. Wind has dropped significantly in price over the decades and is competitive in price with solar. I saw article about early Scottish wind farm being upgraded so that one new turbine equals the whole old farm. |
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| ▲ | sandworm101 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I theory yes, but grid storage favors solar. Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities. They are not perfect partners. The rich/old paticularly hate wind because they do not like looking at it. (The link to golf courses is not by accident. Wind farms and golf course tend to appear together due to them both gravitating towards areas with shallow waters.) We still here stories about blinking shadows interupting sleep cycles, even causing cancer. So perhaps we let them alone for another decade and allow solar+storage to take up the slack. Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind. (Shallow sea means no commercial traffic/ports. That means cheap land for non-industrial things like yacht clubs and big houses, which give rise to golf courses. So the rich/old dont like seeing the wind farms that, inevitably, want to live just offshore of their yacht/golf clubs. See Nantuket.) | | |
| ▲ | sunshinesnacks 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | None of the points you were responding to are “in theory”. You are proposing something that sounds like killing the US wind industry and then simply bringing it back later. That probably would work well, especially when projects have development lead times of several to many years. | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > grid storage favors sola In what way? > Solar can be placed much closer to consumption, literally on the roof of the consumer. Wind exists in large farms away from cities. You still need the grid to exist, so 100 miles one way or the other doesn't affect cost very much. > Then, when the nimby people are no longer in power, we bring back wind. NIMBY never goes away. There are some situations where you don't want to burn up your political capital fighting them, but in general if you can get a project through then do it. | |
| ▲ | marcosdumay 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I theory yes, but grid storage favors solar. With solar you get to overbuild it and charge you batteries once a day. Wind has way more peaks and bottoms, so you can sell your battery capacity several times most days. But the GPs point is exactly that you need fewer batteries if you have both. Fewer batteries tends to be cheaper than more, and this pair is a very common case. |
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| ▲ | Rapzid 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Whether or not these wind farms are economically viable sounds like something for the companies building them to work out. |
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| ▲ | monero-xmr 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | They are 100% not viable without tax dollars | | |
| ▲ | bronson 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Neither is petroleum, nuclear, or the highway system. What's your point? | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wind is the worst of all, otherwise the UK would have the cheapest energy in the West, instead of the highest | | |
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| ▲ | malfist 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You don't appear to be "all for green energy" if you want to prohibit some forms of green energy. In fact that appears to be the stance of someone who opposes green energy |
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| ▲ | leosussan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That definitely won't be what they're using that free hand for, unfortunately. I wish it weren't true, but the Republican party is sticking to its blanket opposition to anything that isn't fossil-fuel related. Add it to the growing list of stuff to be annoyed / angry about. |
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| ▲ | aspbee555 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| solar only runs during the day and when it is not cloudy, wind farms can run constantly with low weather impact multiple energy sources are what is important to make up for where solar falls short. sure solar is amazing, but it will never replace everything on its own |
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| ▲ | anon7000 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Solar + battery is good enough & cheap enough (and recyclable enough). But agreed that multiple renewable energy sources aren’t a bad thing! Solar + battery is just so good at staying stable and productive for decades with no moving parts, minimal maintenance, and unbeatable scalability | | |
| ▲ | Rapzid 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The market realities don't pan out. Texas has a huge and diversified renewable energy sector. Wind was supplying nearly 45% of energy capacity last night, with solar providing close to 57% during its peak yesterday. Power storage discharge peaked around 13% and it's typically only used to round out capacity in the early morning and evening when peak demand coincides with low solar generation... https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards And that's in Texas where there is tons of sun and wind. I would imagine markets where wind, and in particular off shore wind, could make a lot more sense compared to attempting 100% solar generation. If I had to wager, maybe where they are building offshore wind generation.. |
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| ▲ | Jedd 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > solar only runs during the day and when it is not cloudy Solar PVC output directly and immediately correlates to sun landing on the panels. Solar thermal runs well into the evening, and its output is not impacted by the occasional cloud. | | |
| ▲ | sunshinesnacks 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s only because of the thermal storage. The output of the solar collectors is massively impacted by clouds, also just by haze and aerosols, much more than PV, which is happy with diffuse and direct sunlight. Then there’s the cost, which has not been good for CSP’s market share. |
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| ▲ | tzs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It doesn't mean a free hand to develop solar. The Trump administration hates solar, too, and is doing as much as it can to hinder solar development. Also, wind and solar have different production patterns, such as how they perform seasonally, how weather affects them, and how they perform at different times of day. You are much better off including a good mix of them in your system. |
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| ▲ | Analemma_ 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| What olds? The shutdown here was ostensibly for national security reasons. > Let them cancel the wind farms if that means a free hand to develop solar. That's not actually a bargain anyone has the power to agree to in a binding way. The people protesting the appearance of wind farms are on the coasts, the people protesting solar are in the country's interior. There's no "deal" you can make to get the latter instead of the former. Just build all the power generation and then we'll have cheaper electricity and a more resilient grid. |
