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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

A wind turbine "uses" very little land. The area under the turbine can be used for many other things. That doesn't stop NIMBYs.

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the sight and sound impact of a wind turbine is real though newer models are a lot quieter. if i lived out in the country where it was quiet i'd be against someone putting them up super close as well.

just calling everyone a "NIMBY" is not a valid response to criticism of externalities.

Well if you want to use cheap carbon free electricity but don't want to see turbines that makes you a NIMBY in the most literal sense of the word.

"cheap" and "carbon free"

Pretty sure wind is about as cheap and low-carbon as energy gets. Hydro might be better, but it’s not feasible in most locations.

On shore wind has the lowest LCOE (even excluding subsidies) of any utility scale type of energy; significantly lower than coal, and a bit lower than solar or nat gas.

This has been true since about 2015 (if you include pollution externalities) but solar is on track to move ahead about now. The more important thing is that both are below fossil fuel alternatives, and can complement each other.

The exact blend depends on the location of course, but any sensible grid will likely include both of them (and mixes of distributed solar, onshore, offshore wind). Generally solar and wind should be about 80% of the generation mix, and the precise balance (after including the cost difference over the next few decades) globally leans towards solar being the dominant of the two in most plans and predictions.

edit: this has now made me wonder if anyone calculates the LCOE of 'optimal' solar/wind mix for the region.

Mixes are great. I think people are underestimating the ability of batteries, though. With the new 30% ITC in batteries (and rapidly declining costs), expect to see a lot of new utility-scale batteries over the coming years. We could see 100% of the generation come from solar if we have reliable battery storage; in many areas the bottleneck on getting solar installed is cannibalization risk and interconnection times (i.e. transmission lines / transformer access), not economics. Batteries are what get us from 20% generation (during peak daylight hours) to 95-100%.

I was curious about the sound impact and found these two videos: 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-sUDSwsE_w, 2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgN2G9d0dc.

The first video has pretty sound (pardon the pun) methodology.

Findings: Unless you're within 200m of a turbine, the background ambient sounds are louder than the sound of the turbine.

Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Anecdotally, having lived in areas where wind farms were repeatedly proposed and then rapidly shot down by neighbors, the NIMBYism was never about science, much less methodology. The kinds of people living in places where you'd want to build wind farms (rural ag land, mainly) tend to be pretty traditional, conservative, anti-government, independent, and basically it's-my-land-dammit types. You can show up with presentations and videos and visualizations and simulations and offer free power and cash incentives and all that, but it usually boils down to "No, because I don't like it, and I don't like you, and I don't trust people like you". It doesn't matter how technically sound a project is if it still seems like "here's another bunch of suits trying to sell us something that only benefits the city dwellers we hate 500 miles away, while telling us they know our land better than we do."

Their values and systems of belief/reality-building and trust networks are totally different. Successfully negotiating that doesn't mean "my numbers are more correct" but understanding the different subcultures, what's important to them, and being able to respectfully and empathetically communicate according to their needs, not yours.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm under no delusions that you can convince these people.

My primary reason for sharing it was to avoid other (reasonable) people from walking away with some false belief that there might be something to the noise issue. There isn't anything to it.

I'm not trying to convince this person. However, there might be others who don't have the time to do the research. This comment is for them.

If they are so un problematic why not fill for example central park with them? And then parks in other cities. The ground under can be still used for recreation, when there isn't risk of falling ice. Seems like small trade-off for any ecoconsious person.

There are some sensible regulations wrt placing wind turbines. For example you don't want the blades' shade to hit homes for more than a couple of minutes and you want sufficient distance to buildings so that the blades can fall off without hitting any. These regulations however are not strong enough for NIMBYs who don't want to even see any turbines.

Presumably you mean farming? And,more particularly, industrial farming since the turbines would probably scare animals and endanger birds near it.

Or are there examples of more intensive uses under wind turbines?

"Industrial" farming? You mean using tractors instead of mules?

Crops grow just fine around a wind turbine, regardless of farm size. And they don't get scared of it either.

I'm having a difficult time understanding your arguments.

https://talkbusiness.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Wind-Far...

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/19/world/windfarms-w...

Just what about these turbines makes farming / ranching more difficult?

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