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Comment by VBprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

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Depends a lot on the area. Most of the solar installations are in the richer southern areas on private houses, whereas the large wind installation can be mostly seen in eastern and northern germany.

This might be true about sheer number of installations, but by wattage most of the power comes from massive solar fields, not rooftop PV. According to Wikipedia [0], the five biggest installations are all in the Brandenburg area (a poorer region in the northeast), though anecdotally I see medium size fields all the time along the railways in Bavaria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Photovo...

Lots of conservative backlash against wind energy in the south. "Asparagus landscapes" was a slogan used to get votes of people who don't want wind turbines around.

Also fear mongering for infrasound etc.

That aside, the north is better suited for wind energy because topological reasons. The sea would be even better. Problem is the still lacking infrastructure to transport energy southward where heavy industry actually needs it.

I don't know where you got your numbers from. Wind power generated 20% of electricity in 2018 and 26% in the first half of 2019.

AG Energiebilanzen says its 17.3% for 2019.

Source: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-c...

The article. Admittedly there is another 3% for offshore wind turbines but I haven't been that far north.

the linked article cites "Clean Energy Wire" as the source.

Probably because wind turbines are much taller than solar panels.

Sure. I mean that is pretty obvious. But I think what I was surprised by is that solar is generating half as much energy while being below the 'noise floor' in terms of visual impact, such that I have no recollection of seeing any large solar installations.

In this context the ecocide caused by the construction of windturbines is especially alarming

Do you mean the death of birds due to wind turbines? As best as I can tell, that is dwarfed by the birds killed by domesticated animals.

Or to apples to apples it killed by coal for that matter. It is a bizzare mental blindspot that people never ask that question - but birds always seem to come up mainly as NIMBY pretexts anyway.

The impact on the environment is severe in many aspects. The impact on the power grid as well. Germany already have to pay other countries to accept Germany's excess electricity in the other countries's power grids.

you say "domesticated animals" but is that not cats exclusively?

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