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hackermatic | 2 years ago

I'm surprised that wind is such a small part of the US's projected future energy mix. Does anyone know why? Wind power works overnight, it leaves a lot more usable land than solar does, and there's a lot more capacity to be exploited. It's strange even considering the political backlash against wind power in some areas.

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jillesvangurp|2 years ago

The US is a bit behind in catching up with the rest of the world on this front. There are some positive exceptions like Texas where they figured out quite early that it's cheaper to power refineries with renewables than with fossil fuel. So, Texas has a lot of solar and wind at this point. And why not, it's a sparsely populated state that is very suitable for tapping into both.

The complacency in the rest of the US of course has a lot to do with the fact that there's a very loud and active pro fossil fuel lobby that kept insisting coal was the future even while a lot of coal plants were going out of business. A lot of states invested in gas plants instead of wind generation because of that too. And now that renewables are clearly cheaper, a lot of those investments are starting to look pretty bad.

fbdab103|2 years ago

My knee jerk thought is that you have to work significantly harder to secure land for windmills. They have to be distributed such that you require huge tracts of land and/or to secure rights to install a tower on someone else's property. Each of those towers then need additional transmission lines.

While solar might generate less energy per unit area, it is at least condensed so that you could get away with buying a plot and fully exploit the area. You can add additional (unconnected) plots as cheap land becomes available.

I could also see the advantage that solar has quite limited opex after installation. A fleet of windmills may require significantly more resources to keep operating after years of service.

ceejayoz|2 years ago

Drive through Indiana and it’s pretty clear farmers are happy to site lots of windmills in their fields.