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Comment by robertakarobin | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile the administration of the US says that wind farms are "losers": https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/09/trump-...

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With virtually unlimited donations they are paid to say it.

From that article:

> “Just about all the windmills are made in China,” Trump said. “They make them and sell them to suckers like Europe and suckers like the United States before."

> “All you have to do is say to China: 'How many windmill areas do you have in China?' So far they're not able to find any," he said. "They use coal and they use oil and gas and some nuclear, not much, but they don't have windmills."

It then goes on to cite data from the US Department of Energy showing how wrong Trump is.

Compared to solar, they are kind of noisy though. If you are used to not hearing the constant traffic "rumble" that exists almost everywhere, they add quite a lot of "rumble" themselves.

What's the closest you've lived to a windfarm?

I've lived within 500 meters of a pretty large one and the highway more than a kilometer away from where I lived was far more noisy than the turbines.

I was gonna say about 500 meters from one big wind turbine, and it was pretty noisy. But now when I look it up, seems it was installed in the 90s sometime, maybe it was just really old or badly maintained.

And I agree with that highway traffic is way noisier, no doubt. That's why I mentioned in places where you don't have that "traffic rumble" before there is a wind turbine. I guess the difference is more noticeable then, compared to if you always had that traffic rumble anyways.

The designs made in the 90's were relatively inefficient which is one reason why they're noisy. But at the same time: it's impressive that a turbine from those days is still up and running today and that says something about the engineering that went into that thing. Lots of lessons have been learned and a modern turbine is so quiet you can stand right underneath it and barely hear it, which I find absolutely incredible. A 75 meter diameter rotor intuitively should make a lot of noise, but they really don't. The main driver is the precision with which the filament is laid on the blade was well as how close the back edge of the blade approaches zero. That's the biggest source of noise and you'll always have some either because you don't quite get there or because you do and the back edge starts to flutter. It is one of those very annoying engineering trade-offs where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Work out the tip speed on one of those big machine and you'll be even more impressed.

I remember quite vividly, first the weeks of construction, and then that our silence was just gone. Used to be you sat in the garden and heard nothing but birds and wind, no traffic, no nothing. After it appeared, there was always this rumble (like you hear when living close to a road/highway/traffic), but also a swooshing sound as they rotated.

I think the main reason the difference was so stark, was because that place never had traffic around it, so it went literally from nothing to something, and if there would have been other noises before, it surely wouldn't have been so noticeable.

One time I drove up to the very base of a ~2MW wind turbine.

Couldn't hear anything besides the road several hundred metres away.

Yes, I don't think people think how noisy traffic and roads really are :)

The interesting thing would be to hear it when you don't have that constant background rumble, you know like what I wrote about in my comment you replied to.

Thing is, I couldn't hear anything at all from the turbine and the only noise I could pick up was the road.

At approx 256m attenuation is 21dB. Road noise reaches 85dB, which means I was hearing it at 64dB at most.

I should have heard something, anything from the turbine, yet I didn't.

Yeah, I guess modern turbines are better than the one they put next to us. We used to have complete silence (no roads nearby), but after installing it the silence was gone. Not sure what else to tell you, I'm sure we wouldn't have noticed it if we already were used to road rumble, but we weren't, guess that's why it was so noticeable.

The environment and how long time your ears been in it, matters a lot for how loud or not we perceive noise, I can imagine most modern ears basically tune out the traffic rumble you hear almost everywhere.

That isn't true. We have several turbines near us. One just across the street. Even on days without traffic noise, we can't hear them.

Which is why you put them in the sea or in places with sparse population.

Which is awesome for us who move to places with sparse population to get a silent environment :)

I'd much rather they put them in areas that are already ruined with traffic rumble, at least the difference would be minimal instead of "silence" vs "rumble".

Which greatly increases the cost of setting them up.

Are they? I haven't noticed the sound myself, although I don't live next to windmills and just travel in areas with wind power from time to time... I also grew up next to train tracks and now live next to an interstate near an airport so may have a high tolerance for background noise!

There is one turbine near where I live in Scandinavia that is very noisy. It is a low thumping sound that penetrates houses and is horrid. Those living within a km perhaps more won a court case to remove it but the owner has appealed and appealed and during the years or appeals the thing keeps turning and keeps being noisy so people can’t sleep. My understanding is the simulation and calculations of the noise that were part of the planning process were flawed and did not accurately model the terrain.

Meanwhile, not 5 km away, there are a bunch of turbines with people living around them and no problem.

So the exact slopes etc of the terrain is very important.

That sounds very much like either tower thump or a broken bearing, I think the neighbors would have a better case if they pushed the safety angle because a turbine in a bad state of maintenance is dangerous.

Then they'll be forced to fix it and it will be quiet again. You can ask them if it always was that noisy, if it wasn't then that's an extra arrow in their quiver. I'm very much pro renewables but safety is a major concern and operators that do not work safely and/or ignore valid complaints are a net negative for renewables.

In this case it is the terrain. The sound is funnelled somehow. In the planning process the owner has to commission a study that reports if the terrain shape is ok and compute the noise on nearby houses etc. Apparently you can get what you pay for. In the appeal a more independent study pulled the original study apart.

Trump also said solar is bad.

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