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Comment by cbb330 | Hacker News Reader

1. Your reply to parent said dams’ output is small

2. parent refutes the data

3. You reply again with same message

Can you address the parent’s concern that the data you’re reporting is incorrect? (Solar metrics are based on max / theoretical output and not real output)

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Parent did not refute the data, parent said they did not care that a vastly greater quantity of renewables were being installed than the hydro capacity being removed, due to concerns about capacity factor. My second comment therefore showed that the hydro capacity being removed is insignificant relative to hydro alone, without reference to other renewables.

“Comparing max wind capacity to actual outputs from dams is nonsensical. Wind typically produces 30% or less of its max capacity over any period of time and it does so unreliably. The energy from damns is much more valuable.”

Still absolute amount is a factor. A small river dam with 0.09% power can absolutely not be worth it if it is old, in the wrong spot, has huge detrimental effects on downstream areas etc. Everything has to be taken into account.

Sure hydro powers well with wind and solar, but a dam can still be overall a bad thing. And I say this as a guy who grew up next to a dam which is one of 12 dams on that river and I don't have a problem with any single one of them.

Building structures that guide rivers is never a thing where the thing you did decades ago will turn out to be the most clever, most efficient and environmentally best solution. That means people who live with and around rivers have to be able to adapt their plans to what they learned. And sometimes that means realizing a particular dam in a particular place does more harm than good, while this is the polar opposite for some other structure.

The person you quote was mistaken; I cited nameplate capacity, not production output, for both hydro and wind. (My wording could have been clearer.) Furthermore, capacity factors are almost identical: US wind production in 2022 was 35.9% of capacity, while the corresponding figure for hydro was 36.3%.

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