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Comment by dudul | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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?

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