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Wind produces noise, has moving parts that require quite a bit of maintenance, too much wind and the breaks are applied, too little they don't turn, they requir
by sschueller 5y ago
Wind produces noise, has moving parts that require quite a bit of maintenance, too much wind and the breaks are applied, too little they don't turn, they require a very large foundation made of an enormous amount of concrete and may cause issues with birds depending on location.
Additionally small wind mills don't make economic sense and that is why they are getting bigger and bigger. This limits where you can install them and make the approval process a huge burden. Compare this to solar which can be installed on almost any size house.
We can easily store this energy with hydro storage and hydro damns. Hydro storage is an amazing thing as it requires very little maintenance and can go from 0 to 100% in seconds which is great for areas that require a lot of power in a short amount of time. Even nuclear power doesn't have such a quick ramp up/down.
- guerrilla 5y ago> Wind produces noise Don't live in the middle of a grain field surrounding a wind turbine then. Seriously, I live around tons of these and you can't hear it until you get near and they're almost always in the middle a field or between several fields, so you can't really get near. Are there louder ones in different countries that can be heard further away or something?
- sschueller 5y agoNoise doesn't only affect humans.
- elric 5y agoFunny how people are suddenly concerned with other species when a wind turbine is placed near their home. But when an out-of-sight coal plant belches out tons of pollutants which affect thousands of species, that concern seems to vanish. Quaint.
- Smithalicious 5y agoThe discussion is comparing solar to wind, nobody is suggesting coal as an alternative, so this complaint seems out of place.
- elric 5y agoNot really. It's an observation on human nature. It's about how certain problems are only problems when they fit a narrative, and can be conveniently ignored otherwise. It seems like the toxicity of solar panel production is also conveniently being ignored, or how much water it requires. Certainly less than coal, but more than wind turbines.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoIt’s less water over the life of the product though.
- guerrilla 5y agoWell, let me know when you have a study showing how the mice and vipers in those fields are affected.
- DocTomoe 5y agoWell, there is a DLR (essentially Germany's NASA) study about the effect of wind turbines on insects [1]. It's not pretty. Neither is the study on the effect on birds [2] by NABU, one of our "Sierra Club"-style organisations. [1] https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/01/20190326_dlr-studies-interactions-flying-insects-wind-farms.html https://www.dlr.de/content/en/articles/news/2019/01/20190326... links to an English-language interview. [2] https://bergenhusen.nabu.de/imperia/md/nabu/images/nabu/einrichtungen/bergenhusen/projekte/windenergie/impact_of_repowering.pdf https://bergenhusen.nabu.de/imperia/md/nabu/images/nabu/einr...
- cinntaile 5y agoIt's not pretty is not what the research concluded. "From the currently available figures and the DLR model calculation, we cannot conclude either that wind energy plays a significant role in the reduction of insect numbers, or that it has no impact. " Needs more research.
- guerrilla 5y agoThere's no mention of sound or noise in either one of those.
- DocTomoe 5y agoThe insect study focusses on getting hit by the turbine wing, that's right. The bird study only talks about effects, without specifying effects, and takes note about bird-specific things like "avoidance distance", which is linked to - among other factors - noise. Tbh: it does feel like you are moving goalposts because the studies do not show what you'd like them to show, that wind energy is green and ecologically friendly. We see that a lot.
- marmarama 5y agoNo. I live near a large onshore wind farm with 2.5MW wind turbines and go walking near them regularly. They are inaudible from more than 200m away.
- DocTomoe 5y agoCould that be related to other maritime noises, like waves or seagulls? I walk through one of these eyesore fields regularly, and I can hear them easily from 200m away.
- pas 5y agoI like the wind farm views. It's very subjective of course. Though most people don't like change, and since old power generating stations were high density (eg. a coal plant, just a big building and a smokestack) the new low-density things are naturally running into this change resistance.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoSome people seem to develop an allergy to the frequency, the way some people are sensitive to MSG or Gluten while others are unharmed. There haven't been many studies that I'm aware of but I've met enough people who reported these symptoms that I don't think they're making things up.
- guerrilla 5y agoIs there evidence that that is a real thing opposed to completely made up nonsense like many other "sensitivities" [1] that are popular right now? Real question; I'm not qualified to know the difference. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivi...
- hannob 5y agoNo, it's a classic nocebo. There recently was a bit of a scandal in Germany because for years a major government authority has reported levels of "infrasound" from wind turbines far above what was physically plausible. A lot of the fearmongering relied on those numbers - yet it turned out they were due to a calculation error.
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoIt's a bit of a hot take, but I think there's insufficient understanding of just how much of our everyday health complaints are psychosomatic, and just how much of our mental activity doesn't take place in the brain. An allergy to subsonics is certainly a made-up complaint, the only question being whether it's made up by the brain or the immune system. And the only practical difference between those two is that the brain is more plastic. If the subject doesn't practise deliberate reprogramming of their mental architecture, it doesn't matter much whether the illness is in the more or less pliable medium, because they don't have the tools to reshape it either way. I guess one could run an experiment by seeing whether it's amenable to talk therapy and categorise the issue that way, but it would still depend a lot on the therapist in question and the subject's willingness to participate.
- friedturkey 5y agoIndia’s demographic distribution is very different from America’s. May as well tell them to avoid tundras.
- arihant 5y agoAlso the land distribution is vastly different. 60% is agriculture, 24% is forest cover. Compare that to US where most of the land is cow pastures.
- frostwarrior 5y agoYou people talk about changing where you live as if replacing your house was cheap and easy.
- guerrilla 5y agoI don't know who "you people" are but I wasn't talking about anyone moving. People don't live in the middle of grain fields, so nobody needs to move.
- s_trumpet 5y agoThe average size of an agricultural holding was 1.08 hectares (2.67 acres) in 2015-16 and declining over time [1]. A lot of Indian land is small farms with houses clustered among them. That’s not to say that India doesn’t produce a lot of wind energy, though - it’s the second largest source of renewable energy after solar according to the most recent source I could get (Feb 2020) [2]. [1] https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=199780 https://pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=199780 [2] https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en check “Renewable Energy” under “Generation”
- guerrilla 5y agoIs 1.08 hectares enough for a sustainable grain farm? I would imagine those smaller ones are for vegetables but I could be wrong...
- jcfrei 5y agoI think you are forgetting about the environmental impact of hydro damns. It floods entire valleys, displaces lots of flora and fauna and it uses much more concrete than wind farms.
- oneoff786 5y agoThe advantage of hydro is that you can turn it on whenever you want. Environmental impacts aside, wind will never have that.
- vidarh 5y agoExcept when the reservoirs run dry, which many will do at times unless you spend only a rather small proportion of the available capacity. Norway is a huge energy exporter, but regularly imports because of reduced hydro generating capacity. Expanding storage capacity is generally a problem because of the massive environmental impact.
- pas 5y ago> Expanding storage capacity is generally a problem because of the massive environmental impact Meh. It could be put completely underground. (We could put nuclear power plants hundreds of meters deep underground too.) People don't want to spend on it is the real problem.
- goodcanadian 5y agoNorway is a huge energy exporter, but regularly imports because of reduced hydro generating capacity. I have recently come to the conclusion that hydro is a very good complement to wind because the hydro is dispatchable when the wind doesn't blow. As long as the average wind and hydro together exceed needed capacity, things should be good. As I understand it, this is what Norway is doing. Importing wind from Germany when there is excess and exporting hydro when there is a shortage.
- otherme123 5y ago
- terminalcommand 5y agoPlus wind energy kills birds. Engineers try to minimize this risk, but greedy entrepreneurs with connections to lobyists and the government tend to "flex" restrictions. Hydroelectricity also kills the nature, I heard that some argue that hydroelectricity shouldn't be classified as environmentally friendly.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoIt's odd to think no one has come up with a way to repel birds. It would be interesting to see all the things they've tried.
- sschueller 5y agoAirports have: https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/birds-at-work/ https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/birds-at-work/
- DocTomoe 5y agoYeah, that's one approach. Far more often, airports just shoot them.
- goodcanadian 5y agoSome work has been done. I seem to recall that painting the turbine blades to create a visible flicker helped keep birds away. I am sure some studies are ongoing. The number of birds killed by windfarms is miniscule compared to the number that die simply from flying into windows on skyscrapers, however.
- natmaka 5y agoStudies show that a windturbine kills approximately as many birds as a domestic cat does. According to a French study ( https://www.lpo.fr/la-lpo-en-actions/developpement-durable/energie/eolien/impact-sur-la-biodiversite https://www.lpo.fr/la-lpo-en-actions/developpement-durable/e... ): 0.3 to 18.3 birds/windturbine/year 5.2 according to Loss et al, 2013 and 8.2 according to Zimmerling et al. 2013.
- vandorjw 5y ago> Wind produces noise Wind will always produce noise. The rustling of trees, the whispering of grass, or he howling though narrow streets. Might as well capture the energy from the wind. If the wind "turbine" produces noise, this should be solveable by noise insulation. (which likely isn't done because it's not a large enough issue.)