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If you made a graph of the amount of land area being used for wind and solar, you’d have a hard time finding a way to actually visualize how little land that is

If you made a graph of the amount of land area being used for wind and solar, you’d have a hard time finding a way to actually visualize how little land that is…

bluGill 1y ago
That graph would be misleading - wind may only have a tiny footprint, they cover a lot more area. In some parts of iowa there are wind turbines in all directionsas far as the eye can see. That is how my iowa utility can claim I'm 103% wind - they generated more wind power than all customers used. (But there are other utilities in iowa so state wide and official numbers are not as good - though iowa is number 2 in the us for windpower)
- avianlyric 1y ago
  When people talk about land usage for wind, they normally include the entire clear area of land around each turbine. Nobody is claiming a huge wind farm technically has a tiny footprint because only the base of each tower touches the ground. The US if fucking huge, seeing “as far as the eye can see” is only about 28 sq miles, even if we assume we’re looking for wind turbines only (so can see 100m tall turbines with their bases over the horizon), you’re looking at 1500 sq miles. The U.S. is 3.5 million square miles. That’s three orders of magnitude greater than the area with wind turbines are far as the eye can see in every direction covers. Or put another way, if you stood in the middle of a wind farm filled with the worlds largest onshore wind turbine stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see, that would be a land area about equivalent to 0.042% of the U.S. I don’t think there are wind farms even remotely close to that size. Another way of looking at that number, is wind turbines evenly distributed across the US, so that a turbine as always just visible over the horizon from anywhere, would only consume 0.042% of the U.S. So yeah, it would be very hard to visualise show just how little land the U.S. wind turbines currently cover.
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    Yeah. And I’m not sure how America does it but all the wind turbines I’ve seen in Ontario are just sitting in farmers’ fields. No fences. Spread out. The footprint is really quite small. I could see it being larger if one stuffed them so close together that the incorporated land really couldn’t be utilized well, but even then, it’s such a tiny amount of land. Especially compared to basically every other land use.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      That is the problem - farmers like that rent he turbine pays - but the town people can't get that and so will oppose them.

If you made a graph of the amount of land area being used for wind and solar, you’d have a hard time finding a way to actually visualize how little land that is…

bluGill 1y ago

That graph would be misleading - wind may only have a tiny footprint, they cover a lot more area. In some parts of iowa there are wind turbines in all directionsas far as the eye can see. That is how my iowa utility can claim I'm 103% wind - they generated more wind power than all customers used. (But there are other utilities in iowa so state wide and official numbers are not as good - though iowa is number 2 in the us for windpower)

avianlyric 1y ago
When people talk about land usage for wind, they normally include the entire clear area of land around each turbine. Nobody is claiming a huge wind farm technically has a tiny footprint because only the base of each tower touches the ground. The US if fucking huge, seeing “as far as the eye can see” is only about 28 sq miles, even if we assume we’re looking for wind turbines only (so can see 100m tall turbines with their bases over the horizon), you’re looking at 1500 sq miles. The U.S. is 3.5 million square miles. That’s three orders of magnitude greater than the area with wind turbines are far as the eye can see in every direction covers. Or put another way, if you stood in the middle of a wind farm filled with the worlds largest onshore wind turbine stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see, that would be a land area about equivalent to 0.042% of the U.S. I don’t think there are wind farms even remotely close to that size. Another way of looking at that number, is wind turbines evenly distributed across the US, so that a turbine as always just visible over the horizon from anywhere, would only consume 0.042% of the U.S. So yeah, it would be very hard to visualise show just how little land the U.S. wind turbines currently cover.
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  Yeah. And I’m not sure how America does it but all the wind turbines I’ve seen in Ontario are just sitting in farmers’ fields. No fences. Spread out. The footprint is really quite small. I could see it being larger if one stuffed them so close together that the incorporated land really couldn’t be utilized well, but even then, it’s such a tiny amount of land. Especially compared to basically every other land use.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    That is the problem - farmers like that rent he turbine pays - but the town people can't get that and so will oppose them.