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I live in a school bus, traveling the country. I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful; I always marvel at them when we drive by. Does anybody here kno
by jMyles 10y ago
I live in a school bus, traveling the country. I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful; I always marvel at them when we drive by.
Does anybody here know how to break into this industry, working on a mobile, on-site basis? Maybe with embedded tech?
- noonespecial 10y ago>I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful They are. Like living sculptures. There's just something extremely dignified about them. Like finally growing up after the childishness of strip-mining. The adults are here.
- akhilcacharya 10y agoI never thought about it that way, but that's a neat perspective.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoI couldn't disagree more. They popped up as I was growing up - littering the coastline and countryside. They can be seen from great distances and serve to make the place seem an awful lot smaller. I for one can't wait until we develop a way to live without them - the only condolence is that they move us away from the coal and gas industries. I do hope that solar leaves them in its wake and we can be done with the monstrosities.
- metaobject 10y ago"littering the coastline" Your word choice is interesting.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoI consider them and most of our industrial buildings a kind of litter on our landscape. Some (and I stress 'some') of the old Victorian bridges are exceptions, and there is the occasional building (mainly churches, pubs, and manors) which integrate in an aesthetically pleasing way, but then again we have already turned all the land to farmland so maybe there is little left to protect inland.
- marze 10y agoCompared to ripping the tops of mountains in West Virginia and states nearby and filling in the beautiful valleys to strip mine coal, a huge win.
- coin 10y ago> Compared to ripping the tops of mountains Or consider nuclear, which is much cleaner, safer and lower coast than all other energy sources
- labster 10y agoSo open pit uranium mines are that much better than ripping the tops off of mountains for coal?
- VMG 10y agoHow many mines are needed for the production and maintenance of wind (or solar) of comparable capacity?
- grigjd3 10y agoTons of them. Materials required for solar cells and turbines have to come from somewhere.
- ethbro 10y agoYou're forgetting the "It's different when it happens in Africa / India / China / South America" caveat to most arguments.
- labster 10y agoI'd normally agree with you, but the top Uranium producers are Canada, Kazakhstan, and Australia. Uranium mining is a first (and second) world problem.
- 10y ago
- noonespecial 10y agoI guess it's a matter of perspective. I suppose the true end-game is for tech is to be completely invisible. The great thing about wind and solar is that when you're done with them, you can pretty much just pack them up and haul them off. Strip-mining? Not so much.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoI agree they are much better than strip mining and I said as much, they just are not beautiful.
- ashark 10y agoMaybe it depends on where they are? I think the ones in Iowa and Kansas look great, but that might be because there's not much else to look at. And if the old-and-rural endless plains meet towering-tech-wonder-behemoth aesthetic isn't your thing, there's so much nothing there that you can just drive a while and not see them (or anything else) and have that, too.
- hueving 10y ago>Strip-mining? Not so much. I assume you don't know much about strip mining, because strip mines in first world countries reclaim the land they mine as they follow the seam.
- foofoo55 10y agoI also find them an eyesore, audibly irritating[1], and the documented bird deaths are awful[2]. But, I'll take them over coal any day. [1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0114183 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... [2] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-w...
- MagnumOpus 10y agoMeh about [2] - house cats and glass&steel skyscrapers kill an awful lot more birds than that. There is absolutely no outcry against either; that's how we know the outrage against windmills killing birds is planted and artificially kept alive.
- MrTonyD 10y agoAnd I was reading that most "capped" underwater oil wells are actually leaking oil - and there are many thousands. So oil is silently killing incredible amounts of sea life. So, while I regret the loss of animal life to wind turbines it is much better than the loss of life to oil. (And new wind turbines in the ocean are being placed at heights which almost eliminate bird impacts and also being designed with structures which won't attract birds as a place to perch, unlike prior generations of wind turbines.)
- ams6110 10y agoOil leaks naturally out of the sea floor also.
- AReallyGoodName 10y agoTransport too. I suspect that's the biggest bird killer. Which really just goes to show how good wind is. The worst complaints aren't actually a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
- chinathrow 10y agoI do hope we can come up with just about anything than nuclear.
- 7952 10y agoDamage to landscape seems like a trivial price to pay.
- hsjhgktfdy 10y agoSolar has a much larger physical footprint than wind and there's no getting around that even at 100% efficiency (which will never be obtained). Footprint that unlike wind, cannot be used for agriculture or accessed by much wildlife; it's fenced in and covered with panels. Here in upstate New York there are planned wind and solar farms in the region and every one of both brings out a certain crowd of torches and pitchforks. There's no pleasing some people. The energy has to come from somewhere, and right now coal, gas, and nuclear together make up most of the fuel mix.
- mavhc 10y agoAre the torches burning sustainable wood? What are they doing about the wood particle pollution? Were the pitchforks forged in coal powered furnaces? Did they drive to protest? We need nuclear, solar and wind, or 90% of people to die and the rest live in caves.
- Gravityloss 10y agoSolar might require a bigger footprint but it is easier to place close to the point of use, at least up to a certain extent...
- glenstein 10y agoThe disagreement between you and the parent commenter illustrates something that I think is fascinating about NIMBYism with respect to windmills. NIMBYism depends on the idea that the aesthetic judgments of windmills are objective, shared across people. Windmills really do look bad, objectively. Normally talking about aesthetic experiences as if they are universal is frowned upon, because the judgment of beauty is taken by many people to have an intrinsic quality of subjectivity to it. But that appears not to be a problem in the community of people that oppose wind turbines.
- lqdc13 10y agoThere is some subjectivity to beauty, but there is also some objectivity. For example, things that incorporate golden ratio tend too look good. If you look at parent's comment: "They are. Like living sculptures. There's just something extremely dignified about them. Like finally growing up after the childishness of strip-mining. The adults are here. " You can see that the judgement of beauty here is tainted by social implications, energy concerns, and possibly political environment. This is only my reading of it though so maybe the parent meant something else. I personally find them attractive but I haven't spent much time around them at all.
- vacri 10y ago> Windmills really do look bad, objectively. And yet if you were to make the same argument about a coal or even nuclear plant, you'd be considered a loon. Coal plants don't just look awful, they also stink up the surrounding areas. And while I've heard plenty of people say they like the look of windmills (I'm one myself), I've never heard anyone say they like the smell of coal plants.
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoMost folks don't know what a coal plant looks like. For example, I can put a few wind turbines or the classic towers from a nuclear plant into artwork and folks get the reference. I paint in a coal plant, and folks just think factory. Nuclear plants, the Simpson-esque version I picture, are beautiful in their own right, btw, as are nearly all factories. It just depends on framing.
- TheSpiceIsLife 10y agoSeeing thousands of hectares of solar panels everywhere you go might not be so awe inspiring. Could be quite dull and monotonous. Although I guess beauty is subjective.
- unlmtd 10y agoSolar is dirty and hard/impossible to repair. Bio fuels are a much smarter way to create energy from the sun, especially since electric power cannot substitute liquid fuel. Solar panels won't go very far. If someone has a good place for solar panels, and xe still brings in food by fuel transport, that person isn't sharp. #growfoodmotherfuckers
- mikestew 10y agoThey popped up as I was growing up - littering the coastline and countryside. I guess you've never seen them blow the top off a West Virginia mountain to get the coal out. Windmills can be replaced by solar, but that mountain isn't coming back. (Caveat: don't know if that's still done or not, but it was done plenty in the past.) If feel ya on the aesthetics (though I personally like them), but if you're complaining about windmills "littering the coastline", then maybe blowing the tops off mountains doesn't happen in your backyard. Instead you got windmills. Consider it your aesthetic tax for having reliable, inexpensive electricity.
- Sanddancer 10y agoMountaintop removal is still done pretty often because it's the economically cheapest way to do it, damn the economic, social, and environmental consequences of that action.
- astrodust 10y agoWest Virginia might end up flatter than Kansas at the rate we're going.
- empath75 10y agoThe could coat the country with neon flashing windmills playing the nyan cat song 24 hours a day and it would still be better than fossil fuels.
- Sanddancer 10y agoI grew up as the last oil wells in the South Bay part of LA were being brought down. I've been by the Tehachapi wind farm, the Mojave wind farm, driven past the Solar One/Two demonstration plant [1]. They all have an environmental and observation impact, all the technology does is change where that impact is felt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project#Solar_One
- barking 10y agoI totally agree with your point about how they make the country seem smaller, it's my main gripe about them. I also feel like mountains were were about the last place we hadn't domesticated apart from the odd telecoms mast but now we've found a use for them. There is nowhere wild left.
- djrogers 10y agoThis can vary greatly on the type of windmill... I live near the Altamont wind farm, and the oldest windmills are undeniably ugly, and so small that they required tons of them. The next generation windmills were less ugly, but still too small. I always found them rather unobjectionable, but I could see one quibbling with that. The current giants being put up though? They look great! They have these 90 foot blades that look like they were designed by an advanced alien race, their size makes them operate with a slow graceful sweep, and the relatively low density of them leaves the hillsides more visible as well.
- ocschwar 10y agoAltamont is a disgrace for the whole industry. They had incentives to install and retain mills at the site, but almost no difference to the bottom line on how much power they produced. That's why these ancient mills are still there, even if they're missing turbine vanes.
- shouldbworking 10y agoI've always marveled at watching something so huge move at great speeds in near silence. I have a large wind farm nearby and I've gone out a few times on windy evenings to watch the turbines for a bit.
- Pxtl 10y agoI dunno, I always find them unsettling. I mean, I love them from an environmental perspective, and I think they look quite charming when static... But when spinning they just look so impossible. Like something that big shouldn't move like that.
- eagletusk 10y agoWind Farms are built by people living in RVs already, so you've got that figured out. Three months here 6 months there. Embedded software is extremely hard to do mobile, and anyways all of the electronics tech is designed in Germany. Getting a entry level job in wind is about being nearby and willing to work. If you have a college degree you can always be a field Engineer. I'm an Electrical Engineer in the wind industry now, previously I was in the field, and previously I was an embedded software/hardware engineer.
- jMyles 10y ago> Getting a entry level job in wind is about being nearby and willing to work. So like, if I see people working at a wind farm, just go up and introduce myself?
- Filligree 10y agoSure, why not? Worst case, they'll know how they got hired.
- jMyles 10y agoOK - I'll report back and let HN know how it goes. :-) (I have a full-time gig at the moment right now until September, so it'll be a little while).
- toomuchtodo 10y agoPlease keep us updated!
- eagletusk 10y agoFind the construction trailer ask for an application. Make sure you can pass a drug test and actually show up for work then I'd say your chances are 50% , 80 % if you find a job site that is just starting construction. If you want to know where they are building go through Abilene, TX and ask.
- 10y ago
- ThomPete 10y agoWindmill technology is fairly low tech. there are a few things around the wings but besides that it's not really a "tech" business IMO.
- daveguy 10y agoAny energy company is a technology company.
- tormeh 10y agoHow did you reach that conclusion? Those things scream "advanced material tech" to me. Almost as much as space rockets.
- maxerickson 10y agoThe towers are just lots and lots of steel. A lot of them are made in facilities that were built to make railcars (including big tank cars).
- CydeWeys 10y ago> The towers are just lots and lots of steel. And a lot of engineering is involved to optimize that design, to build the towers as strong as is necessary to survive high wind loads while using as little material as possible so as to minimize cost. You're trivializing something that has a lot of thought put into it just because you don't really understand it well. I can guarantee you that more thought, simulation, and calculation goes into the design of windmill towers than goes into the average software project.
- maxerickson 10y agoAnd from a material standpoint they are still just lots and lots of steel. If it helps, I'm not a software engineer and have an unused degree in mechanical engineering.
- 10y ago
- Bluestrike2 10y agoAny chance you're interested in rock climbing? Some of the repair work can only be handled by rope workers. There aren't a lot of them, and they're certainly in demand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUjCD-fFU9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUjCD-fFU9k http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06/06/06climatewire-companies-recruit-rock-climbing-enthusiasts-t-4736.html http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06/06/06climatewire-compan...
- jnordwick 10y agoI do climb, and I love heights (I'm a little weird). That would be an awesome job.
- jnordwick 10y agoThis sounds an awful lot like the people from the 1950s who thought that dams looked awesome. The dam in the Yosemite Valley was put there because many thought it would look beautiful and bring more people out into nature. It is almost universally considered a huge mistake.
- _ph_ 10y agoI do think that dams look awesome. But of course you shouldn't build them to make the landscape look nicer. Especially today, more dams should be built, both to ensure water supply and as the ideal support for wind and solar. Dams are the cheapest form of mass energy storage - many of them can even run "reverse" and store surplus energy by pumping water up into the dam.
- sedachv 10y agoA lot of people, including me, think the exact opposite: we should be tearing down as many existing dams as possible. Dams are extremely damaging to river ecosystems and are a huge contributor to coastline erosion and exacerbate droughts. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/dam-removal-nelson-dam-matiliha-rogue-river-hewlett-foundation-open-rivers/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/dam-removal-nelso...
- _ph_ 10y agoOne has of course to learn from the mistakes of the past when deciding where and how to plan and manage dams. But California seems to suffer alternating from floods after the snow melt and droughts in between. The current dam infrastructure is to buffer the floods and release the water at a more constant rate through the season. I cannot see how this could create droughts. Here in Germany we traditionally have more water than we need, but recently the weather is more extreme. We get stronger rains in shorter times, leading to flooding and times with less than usual water. More dam capacity is the obvious solution to that. Preferably, dams should not be built in the middle of a living river system, but higher up in the mountains, capturing the seasonal water. Also, where needed, small bypass rivers should be kept, allowing fish to migrate freely.
- anigbrowl 10y agoI live in a school bus, traveling the country I'd love if you could share a couple of lines on the economics of that, like what your setup and ongoing expenses are like, and what's the biggest headache it involves. If you prefer, my gmail address is the same as my username. Thanks.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoReminds me of Hank [1]: http://www.hankboughtabus.com http://www.hankboughtabus.com. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261948
- jMyles 10y agoHank's bus is much prettier than ours. :-) In addition to his superior craftsmanship, we also treat our bus like an engineering and teaching platform; we leave a lot of things taken apart (or in a raw, visible form) to use as teaching tools. It's a balance; though - we have an almost-2-year-old, so we have to have a certain order and steadiness to things so he can't (or doesn't want to) take them apart all the time.
- afpx 10y agoExcept when you live nearby them.... I am 100% in support of renewables. However, I also know several home owners near wind-rich areas. And, the noise pollution from the turbines is awful. Unfortunately, my friends are poor (as typical) and have little say in the matter.
- Bjartr 10y agoI'm surprised you can be out of shadow distance of a turbine and still hear it. If you're inside the shadow distance, you have bigger problems.
- adsfqwop 10y agoJust in Holland and Germany alone there are over 1000 separate citizen groups trying to get compensation for those suffering from the noise. You could start to suspect that the problems seem to be more serious than just something inside the shadow distance. Just out of curiosity here's the noise profile (spectrogram) of a turbine at 1,37 km (0.85 miles), measured inside a home, where we can see the base frequency and several harmonic multiples: http://i.imgur.com/m31hhR5.png http://i.imgur.com/m31hhR5.png Here's the same turbine at 5km (3.1 miles), again inside a house, where the turbine is shut off at 11 a.m.: http://i.imgur.com/pRJeunj.png http://i.imgur.com/pRJeunj.png As we can see this low frequency noise can travel very long distances, and when you have wind farms with multiple turbines they can even create interference patterns, that could amplify the problems further.
- mappu 10y agoThe charts extend only up to ~5Hz and the intensity already decreased a lot. Human hearing range commonly doesn't start until 20Hz. Do you have charts including higher frequencies?
- randomdata 10y agoI already asked the grandparent, but received no response[1]. What make/model generated that profile? And how does it compare to the same measuring setup used on other units? While they may all look the same at a distance, you can find vast design differences between them when you start to look closely. It seems unlikely that they would all generate the exact same noise. To put it another way, a car on the NASCAR circuit looks a lot like a road suitable car anyone can buy at the dealer's lot, but the sound is completely different. It pays to be specific. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174426
- davidf18 10y agoI think nuclear power plants are beautiful and work without wind and without sunlight to boot!
- stevenwoo 10y agoUnrelated to wind turbines, but related to living on the road - do you have no permanent address? What were the most difficult adaptions to make from living in a static location to living a vehicle like that?
- Broken_Hippo 10y agoThis is something I've often wondered myself - and it seems to be getting more difficult. The two most obvious (to me) would be a driver's license and voting, but I'm guessing vehicle insurance and banks want such a thing as well.
- jMyles 10y agoI need to write a FAQ for the bus. This will be one of the questions.
- stevenwoo 10y agoI look forward to it, a daydream for now but quite envious ( at least in theory!).