Most Americans comfortable with solar panels, turbines in their communities | Hacker News Reader

Most Americans comfortable with solar panels, turbines in their communities

washingtonpost.com

41 pointsrbanffy83 comments

Solar farms don't produce toxic fumes or excessive noise. I think they also look cool. I've never been near a wind turbine so I don't know what it would sound like. Maybe don't put one 10 feet from my front door and I'm fine.

I would gladly take a wind turbine by my house, especially if it meant drones were restricted from flying near it.

Are you drones a problem near your house?

It prevents them from ever being a problem being flown near a house

In my neighborhood, a drone would likely be shot down if it were over someone else's property.

If the war in Ukraine has taught me anything, it’s that you’re unlikely to be able to shoot down a drone if you even notice it at all.

IDK. My neighbor is pretty good hitting clay pigeons.

So am I. Drone moves very differently from clay pigeons. But now I'd like to try...

This summer we had a drone hovering high over the community pool, spying on women and teens sunbathing. We never managed to figure out where it was coming from.

Not currently, but it is definitely something I worry about for the future. I'm pretty adamant in my support for (relative) peace and quiet in public spaces, but recently those around me have seemed to care less and less, which worries me.

For the time being, just living close to a small airport should do.

Wind turbines are pretty noisy, so you might not want it right next to your house. That's a bit like living next to a high way.

Edit: OK, since this topic is fairly controversial I just wanted to say that it's probably not as loud as a highway, but it is noisy!

There is a wind farm by the highway east of Seattle. I enjoy looking at them when I drive through that area.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Horse_Wind_Farm

The wind farm driving east from LA into Palm Springs is really fun to drive through as well, it has 1,224 wind turbines!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gorgonio_Pass_wind_farm

The benefit of utility scale solar is, if the land is going to be developed, it’s one of the lowest impact land uses one could have near them. It’s just quiet glass and steel, and will remain as such for 20-30 years (at which point everything might be removed, or the install is repowered with new panels and the old panels recycled). This is likely preferable to industrial or other higher impact development, and kicks the can fighting against those land uses decades into the future.

If the land is getting developed no matter what, I recommend folks strongly advocating for solar.

Also no evidence of impact on property values:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/10/03/large-solar-projects-...

https://www.conservativetexansforenergyinnovation.org/wp-con...

I think if the proper question is asked, you get the right answer. The issue is whether people understand what is the proper question.

The proper question is, "would you rather live near solar panels and wind turbines, or coal power plants?". Because someone is going to have to live near either.

The wrong question is if you merely ask, "do you want to live near a wind turbine?" Of course no one does.

It's like asking a toddler, "do you want to eat the broccoli or the peas?" Then they choose the right answer.

I don't know how loud they are when they're right next to your house, but certainly I wouldn't complain about wind turbines visible from my house. They look cool!

Where I grew up there were some turbines you could see on the way out of town and they always fascinated me as a kid.

Usually rural wind farms are placed on privately owned land. The landowners willingly lease land for hosting the turbines. This is not a lot different from land owners leasing land to grow crops or graze animals. Large land owners probably don't live "near" those turbines for the same reason they don't live near all their leased pasture land -- their holdings are too large for their primary residence to be near all of it.

In my experience the complaints about wind farms in the countryside come mostly from smaller landowners and/or people who don't get their income primarily from the land. This includes people who moved to a rural setting after retirement and "lifestyle" farmers who don't need significant income from their acreage.

In my county the hearings about a new wind/solar complex attracted supportive comments from a half dozen working farm families and negative comments from a zillion non-farming families. The small number of supportive farm families probably owned more land than the critics. They were hoping to collect lease payments from wind turbines to supplement income from agricultural output and offset the variability of agricultural profits.

It's hard to say which side of this conflict, if any, represents the "elites." The electricity will mostly go to urban areas, because that's where consumption is concentrated. (Of course, that's also true for typical rural products like beef, wine, and onions.)

The large farming landowners could be considered "elites" because they own a lot of land. But they're also typically making thin profits from each acre, and get rich only if they choose to sell the land.

The critics could be considered "elites" because they are basking in the rural ambience without depending on the agricultural or extractive activities that typically dominate rural areas. They'll be economically fine if wind farming is banned. Or if cows are banned. In that sense they share the sentiments of the anti-wind-farm crowd living in Martha's Vineyard, who believe that energy should be produced Somewhere Else where it is neither heard nor seen.

The main problem with wind turbines is the noise. There is a long-running court case in Oregon (can't remember the name) over a community driven from their homes by noise from a wind farm. There are similar cases in other countries.

It is misleading to focus on decibel level when discussing the nuisance value of wind turbines. Consider the sound of fingernails across a chalkboard (quiet but irritating) compared to a box fan (loud but soothing). Unless the decibel level is high enough to be physically damaging, people easily adjust to white noise such as a box fan or distant traffic. A wind turbine generates a set of harmonics that causes stress regardless of the decibel level.

I'd bet that most Americans also say they are comfortable living in black communities, but we know that most of them pay a lot to avoid black communities. Polls aren't good data for things like this.

I went to Amsterdam and we thought the turbine were awesome. We rode 2 hours to go see them.

I wonder if we should install wind turbines over roads in big cities. Maybe also in parks. And next to public buildings. Surely being green ins more important than aesthetics.

It makes about as much sense as placing wheat field or hog farm there.

Everybody says that until they're forced to live next to wind turbines. Solar yeah why not, but turbines are awful.

I had some friends next to solar panels on a hill. The amount of heat off of the panels raised the ambient temperature of their house by several degrees and raised their cooling costs ironically. The HOA sued the power supplier and they came to an agreement to pay them part of the output of the panels. Ended up being something comical, like 20$.

Interesting, I never knew that was possible.

Model solar panels as dark grey mirrors.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35070

An interesting article on the topic. They measured temperatures over a year at 3 nearby sites (desert, parking lot, PV plant; Fig. 4 shows them on a map).

Wow that's a significant temperature difference

Grass has an albedo of around ~0.2 which means that it converts ~80% of the incident sunlight into heat. Solar panels are pretty black and have efficiencies of ~20% which means that they convert ~80% of the incident sunlight into heat. The amount of heat produced by your friends' hill did not change due to the solar panels.

The grass could be conducting heat to the soil for storage and later emission back to space at night, or evaporative cooling.

I'm guessing in general solar is a win for the environment, I'm a big fan of the tech, it's the only way most people can generate power right at home without obnoxious fumes or noise or something.... But I wouldn't be surprised if the temperature did change.

Grass and other vegetation cools itself and with that the surrounding air by evapotranspiration, solar panels do not. Parking lots are warmer than meadows, built-up areas warmer than forested areas.

If you're inclined to experimenting and you happen to have (access to) a multimeter with a temperature probe you can test this for yourself. On a sunny day find a spot where you have bare dry dark soil close to vegetation-covered soil. Put the temperature probe (generally a thermocouple) on a stand ca. 2 cm over the bare soil and leave it there for a minute, then read the temperature. Do the same on the vegetation-covered soil and again read the temperature. You'll quickly find that the temperature over the vegetation-less area easily rises to 90°C while that over the vegetation-covered area does not tend to climb much over 40°C. Now add some convection - wind or natural convection - to move that hot air from that soil or from under those panels to a neighbouring area and you'll find that is does have a significant impact.

Here's the whole story about it https://signalscv.com/2023/08/solar-panel-dispute-likely-to-...

The vast majority of panels are installed on roofs where the most of the sunlight gets turned into heat anyway. The panels instead turn some into electricity and by providing an air gap give some insulation effect (cooler air flows under the panels cooling them and reducing infrared radiative heating of the roof surface, reducing attic temperatures).

Others have already addressed the plant argument.

I can attest to the roof mount solar panels both converting into electricity and as an air gap … huge win for me in the summer with the A/C on full blast and not paying a thing for it …

And these were installed on public land which reflected the heat onto onto people's homes.

Maybe you should get hired by a solar panels law firm and go to bat against nimbys in a court of law.

The vast majority of panels are on roofs where any reflection can't bother others.

Any new technology will end up causing problems for a small minority in very specific circumstances. That doesn't mean we should ignore those issues - but it hardly matters to anyone who wants to install solar panels on their roof.

Comical in the sense that offsetting the cost of cooling several additional degrees doesn’t anywhere near approach $20/mo, orrrr?

I'm genuinely curious, why so?

I don't live near any turbines but I don't see from my outside view why it would be a problem?

These things are awfully loud. I personally also find them ugly, bit to each their own on that. But the noise, i genuinely think it is probably unhealthy to live near Wind turbines.

Edit since I just remembered - I think they are also very disruptive for the ecosystem depending on where they are built.

How close are you talking? Here's [0] a video where someone goes out and gets a decibel meter to show that living near a road is _way_ more disruptive than living near a wind turbine. This is from over a decade ago.

Modern farms are being put 300+ metres away from the nearest houses, where they should be 30-40dB or so [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKgN2G9d0dc

[1] https://windexchange.energy.gov/projects/sound

It's not the decibel level but the frequency spectrum that is the problem. Windmill noise is low frequency and can be intrusive kilometers away.

Have you got any sources for that? I've done some reading over coffee this morning, and the two articles I found are [0] and [1]. With all due respect, I'm more likely to believe the Atlantic than "Stop These Things". Every other source I found just says that "yes, windmills emit low frequency sound", but that doesn't prove that it's intrusive km's away.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/wind-tur...

[1] https://stopthesethings.com/2019/05/07/far-out-german-study-...

This was the sixth down from the top when I googled "windmill noise kilometers".

https://news.flinders.edu.au/blog/2019/06/19/wind-farm-noise...

It is notable that the two papers mentioned used different criteria. The one claiming long-distance disturbance used "audible indoor", while the one casting doubt used "unlikely to cause problems".

> These things are awfully loud.

Roads.

> I think they are also very disruptive for the ecosystem

Roads.

Ok - did I say it was nice to live near a highway?

I grew up in an area with plenty of wind turbines, what's wrong with them? I never put much thought into them, they certainly weren't a burden to live near.

The greenwashing behind "renewable" energy seems to be working! Meanwhile, thorium gets zero attention. We people are always pulled by the nose by those with commercial interest!

I’m unclear why you’re double quoting this. How is wind energy not renewable? Solar? Both can be refurbished at the end of their usable life spans.

Thorium and other nuclear energy processes get plenty of news, and certainly on HN. But the problem is the regulatory landscape makes it neigh impossible in the US at least. Thorium also doesn’t have a lot of practical research behind it. AFAIK there are only reactors in India still operating with some in the EU next year (iirc). However “renewables” are commercially practical right now, which is probably where the commercial interest and nose pulling comes from. It’s hard to have a commercial interest in something that’s not practical to deploy in the present.

How are the propellers of wind turbines "renewable"? How are the solar panels "renewable"? How is the storage of this energy "renewable"? There's nothing renewable! With everybody being focused on "renewable" energy, we stopped the development of renewable nuclear technologies! Technologies like Radiant [0] get almost no attention!

Not to mention the visual pollution and the waste of farmland with the "renewable" energy sources!

[0]: https://www.radiantnuclear.com/

“Renewable” energy is commonly understood to refer to the fuel source

Yeah, we're again and again victims of oversimplifications, marketing gimmicks, and pseudoscience. Energy cannot be "renewable" and we're creating mountains of stuff that's not recyclable at the moment! Yeah, let the future generations worry about all this - we want to be wasteful today and fund questionable schemes like "carbon offsets!"

Turbines can be reconditioned. Solar panels retain about 80-90% of their efficiency after 25 years. The majority of materials in a solar panel (aluminum, glass, semiconductor materials) can be reclaimed and recycled.

We haven’t stopped anything in the nuclear space. Small nuclear and other novel technologies get reasonable funding given their maturity and regulatory friction.

Nuclear won’t take off until we get past the regulatory burden. We can’t sit around burning dinosaur juice hoping the government will modernize nuclear regulation. But we absolutely can pursue every avenue at once.

Meanwhile, on CNN [0]: "Wind energy has a massive waste problem. New technologies may be a step closer to solving it." Yeah, "maybe!"

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/28/world/wind-turbine-recycling-...

Most Americans don't live near wind turbines. The small minority that do live near them hate them. They are an unsightly blight upon rural landscapes, and if you're within half a mile of them, the low frequency sounds are disruptive and unwelcome.

EDIT:

If you are (a) not American, or (b) don't actually live near windmills, or (c) not living in rural areas where all windfarms are placed by elites who don't live there, then why would you downvote this comment? Your privilege is showing.

> They are an unsightly blight upon rural landscapes

One branch of my family lives near group of them, and I would not describe them in such way. Not convinced that USA rural landscape is so different in way that would be uniquely impacted by them.

Also, impact on landscape is quite competitive with other power sources.

> if you're within half a mile of them, the low frequency sounds are disruptive and unwelcome.

not noticed that, maybe it applies to some specific type of them

Having lived next to large windfarms I can't say they were any more unsightly than other common edifices of industry like pumpjacks, radio/cell towers, smokestacks, cooling towers, skyscrapers, tower cranes, or bridge towers. I kind of appreciated the calm repetitive motion of the blades spinning.

Wasn't close enough to note any low frequency noise so I can't say either way.

I'm not american, but I do live near quite a few. I have no problem with them.

In fact as someone who has walked up scafell pike, the highest point in England to be greeted with a view of Windscale, I would say I bloody love them, compared to the alternative.

The rural landscapes round these parts bear the scars of man, these are less deep than previous

I like the look of wind turbines and even large wind farms. The UK has large fields of them offshore which are awesome to see on or even below the horizon.

I cannot comment on the auditory impact, as I have not spent a large amount of time in the near vicinity of one. But surely they're less annoying than a generator or the noise from ICE vehicles we live in daily.

I don't object to them in principle, but I do find it intensly distracting to drive along a road with many wind turbines.

Rural landscape is kind of an oxymoron. It's not a natural landscape but we've been raised to think that it looks lovely.

Hopefully people can cope with enough wind turbines that we reduce emissions before the climate storms destroy too much of our modern infrastructure.

> before the climate storms destroy too much of our modern infrastructure.

That AND the rural landscape.

You were downvoted for telling the truth. Windmills are ugly. Stick a whole bunch of them off of Martha's vineyard and see how quickly the NIMBY appears.

Oh wait... https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2023/06/29/wind-energy-has-...

What are your opinions on pylons?

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/w/images/f/f7/Pylons-50...

I don't care but you can bring that up to the nimbys who do.

Ahhh yes, Martha's Vineyard, definitely reflects the demographics of the rest of America and is not at all a community of extremely rich people.

I think that was the point lol

Cite your sources. I live in an area surrounded by them and I don't seem them as a blight on our landscapes - in fact, many are erected on land that was otherwise virtually unusable scrub. More and more we are seeing farmers / ranchers that are finding ways to erect solar and wind plus still make use of the land for productive agriculture. There is a small contingent of vocal types in my area who are opposed to both solar farms and wind turbines, and it's the same group that is opposed to everything that smacks of progress.

> opposed to everything that smacks of progress.

Many people oppose anything that was invented after their childhood. It’s quite normal. Eventually they’ll learn wind farms are a good thing, much like the cars that replaced horses.

I live near a windfarm south of Boulder, CO. It's fine. Better than the nuclear weapons plant that used to be there.

I think you're being downvoted because of your comment about the "low frequency sounds".

That's myth[0] that's typically shared by anti-renewables/NIMBYs.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-17/wind-farms-david-leyo...

I am a commenter that ticks A, B, and C. Windmills are great. I've loved them ever since I was a kid. That said they aren't the perfect green energy source for a lot of reasons, and pretending they are totally carbon neutral and don't cause their own landscape issues doesn't help anyone.

LOL... farmers love them. They take up a tiny bit of field in exchange for extra revenue. Almost every farmer takes the deal when offered it.

> If you are (a) not American, or (b) don't actually live near windmills, or (c) not living in rural areas where all windfarms are placed by elites who don't live there, then why would you downvote this comment? Your privilege is showing.

"They are an unsightly blight upon rural landscapes, and if you're within half a mile of them, the low frequency sounds are disruptive and unwelcome." can be verified (or having own opinion on their looks) without being American and without living permanently near windmills.

I'm an American, and I live in a rural area near wind turbines.

I love seeing them. It always makes me feel a little more hopeful to see the concrete proof of genuine efforts being made to rid us of the fossil fuels that, if left unchecked, will cause (even more) catastrophic climate change.

I've never heard of anyone in my area being harmed by the wind turbines, and there are certainly enough far-right coal-rolling drill-and-burn folks around here who would trumpet it to high heaven if there were.

Are American turbines uniquely terrible compared to the rest of the world? I grew up in a rural European region with lots of turbines and they never seemed intrusive to me.

The French countryside is full of wind turbines, they ruin landscapes and kill millions of birds. Much better than coal smog, but France isn't replacing coal, it's replacing nuclear. Makes 0 sense

I don't think they are doing that anymore? I think they've seen the Germans embarrass themselves and are realizing nuclear is actually good.

Nuclear requires time to build and expertise to maintain. You can't correct decades of bad policy instantly, even if you have the will to do so (which Macron doesn't).

Well I am saying they are no longer trying to phase out, even if they haven't yet succeeded in phasing back in (e.g. getting all the broken plants back open).

"kill millions of birds."

They do, but ... maybe have some perspective:

"Merriman concludes that 1.17 million birds are killed by wind turbines in the US each year.

This is a lot of birds, but it is only 0.016% of the estimated 7.2 billion birds that live in the US. It is also significantly less than the 5–6.8 million killed each year by communication towers, the 60–80 million killed by automobiles, the 67–90 million killed by pesticides, or the 365 million to one billion killed by cats each year in the US, according to a study published in Nature."

https://www.energymonitor.ai/renewables/weekly-data-how-many...

So if you want to protect birds, you can do something about cats.

And here I thought Perdue was the biggest threat to birds in the US …

> kill millions of birds

This is a well trodden anti-wind/anti renewable talking point. See [0], way more birds are killed by cats than by wind turbines.

[0] https://www.energymonitor.ai/renewables/weekly-data-how-many...

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