Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worldwide energy demand, though, is consistently going up Y/Y.
But this article is about the _US_ wind industry, and US installers won't be installing worldwide
The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
81–90 of 331 posts
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
As we electrify our transit sector, there will be a bump in consumption.
Those stats are not for electricity, they're for total energy consumption including transportation.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what people thought about software 20 years ago.
*40 years ago. I was getting my CS degree 20 years ago (1997). At that point there was no doubt that software was going to be a long, sustained and growing field. 40 years ago ~1977 you would have had to be a very forward thinker to imagine the state of personal computing and software needs.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#84Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#85Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#86From a programming/hardware hacker perspective, are there any opportunities in wind generation worth exploring? Perhaps mini-turbines, or a turbine array with wind positioning?
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#87From a programming/hardware hacker perspective, are there any opportunities in wind generation worth exploring? Perhaps mini-turbines, or a turbine array with wind positioning?
There was some hype around microturbines a few years back but a lot of the ROI claims were found to be, um, "optimistic." I assume that today's PV tech makes them even less interesting even if some of the assumptions that go into pricing solar can be questionable as well.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#88I worry many of these jobs will be temporary. We're just ramping up production of turbines and other equipment. Installations will peak within the next (maybe) 10 years and from then there will be less and less demain as maintenance will be the only thing we will require.
2. The thing you worry about is in other words that wind power will be a cheap sustainable energy source.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#89From a programming/hardware hacker perspective, are there any opportunities in wind generation worth exploring? Perhaps mini-turbines, or a turbine array with wind positioning?
There was some hype around microturbines a few years back but a lot of the ROI claims were found to be, um, "optimistic." I assume that today's PV tech makes them even less interesting even if some of the assumptions that go into pricing solar can be questionable as well.
On the other hand, ignoring integration and installation costs, solar panels scale linearly with size. So small solar makes much more sense than small wind.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the beauty of capitalism. You can just let it run its course and not worry about it. If something is less efficient, it will not be able to compete in the market for very long.
My basic idea was that when seeing this headline people don't go "more people? great!" but instead go "more people? how can we fix that?"
Having said that, there is nothing wrong with employing more people, as long as they are creating marginal economic value. Hiring 10 people to make $10M is better than 5 people to make $9M for a company.