Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 331 posts

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#201

Post by lobster_johnson »

anigbrowl wrote: post #168
jMyles wrote: post #6

I live in a school bus, traveling the country. I think wind turbines are absolutely beautiful; I always marvel at them when we drive by. Does anybody here know how to break into this industry, working on a mobile, on-site basis? Maybe with embedded tech?

I live in a school bus, traveling the country I'd love if you could share a couple of lines on the economics of that, like what your setup and ongoing expenses are like, and what's the biggest headache it involves. If you prefer, my gmail address is the same as my username. Thanks.

Reminds me of Hank [1]: http://www.hankboughtabus.com.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6261948

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#202

Post by _ph_ »

sedachv wrote: post #195
_ph_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why? Over the year they would release the same water as the river without the dam would do - just not in a peak flood but reduced to a constant flood rate.

Dammed rivers release less water because of increased evaporation. Another problem is riverbed deepening which lowers the groundwater table. Where the water pools up is also important - having a bunch behind a dam when former wetlands and floodplains are dry is obviously not conducive to the ecosystems in those wetlands and floodplains.

Doesn't that all very heavily depend on the exact nature of the system the dam is part of? We all know of the environmental problems of the Assuan dam in Egypt. But that does not mean that properly planned dam cannot be very beneficial. One shouldn't just build a dam where it is convenient but with careful analysis first. There are plenty of places where a dam just means less cities flooded occasionally but otherwise has little eco system impact.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#203

Post by tertius »

AReallyGoodName wrote: post #145
MagnumOpus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh about [2] - house cats and glass&steel skyscrapers kill an awful lot more birds than that. There is absolutely no outcry against either; that's how we know the outrage against windmills killing birds is planted and artificially kept alive.

Transport too. I suspect that's the biggest bird killer. Which really just goes to show how good wind is. The worst complaints aren't actually a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

When there's no wind there's no power. Or really, when there's no wind we just turn on the gas.

Also, it + solar will not meet needs.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#204

Post by Ben2Wilson »

I want to publicly thank Binaryreap3r for their professional hacking service. Which I'm happy to recommend to you. Has your Social account been attacked by a hacker? Do you need to get back into your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Google+ account?, Have you lost your email or social media password and want to crack/recover it from computers?. Are you being cyber stalked and wish to find the source and stop the cyber predator?, Have you been scammed online? Do you need to locate and report the perpetrator?. Do you want to encrypt your data and protect your sensitive informations?. Any social engineering problem you may have. I know a white hat hacker that delivers!. He helped out with an issue and I think he's good what he does. Contact binaryreap3r@gmail.com or text +16155497267 for all yoiur professional hacking needs.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#205

Post by Ben2Wilson »

I want to publicly thank Binaryreap3r for their professional hacking service. Which I'm happy to recommend to you. Has your Social account been attacked by a hacker? Do you need to get back into your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Google+ account?, Have you lost your email or social media password and want to crack/recover it from computers?. Are you being cyber stalked and wish to find the source and stop the cyber predator?, Have you been scammed online? Do you need to locate and report the perpetrator?. Do you want to encrypt your data and protect your sensitive informations?. Any social engineering problem you may have. I know a white hat hacker that delivers!. He helped out with an issue and I think he's good what he does. Contact binaryreap3r@gmail.com or text +16155497267 for all yoiur professional hacking needs.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#206

Post by adsfqwop »

Bjartr wrote: post #110
afpx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when you live nearby them.... I am 100% in support of renewables. However, I also know several home owners near wind-rich areas. And, the noise pollution from the turbines is awful. Unfortunately, my friends are poor (as typical) and have little say in the matter.

I'm surprised you can be out of shadow distance of a turbine and still hear it. If you're inside the shadow distance, you have bigger problems.

Just in Holland and Germany alone there are over 1000 separate citizen groups trying to get compensation for those suffering from the noise. You could start to suspect that the problems seem to be more serious than just something inside the shadow distance.

Just out of curiosity here's the noise profile (spectrogram) of a turbine at 1,37 km (0.85 miles), measured inside a home, where we can see the base frequency and several harmonic multiples:

http://i.imgur.com/m31hhR5.png

Here's the same turbine at 5km (3.1 miles), again inside a house, where the turbine is shut off at 11 a.m.:

http://i.imgur.com/pRJeunj.png

As we can see this low frequency noise can travel very long distances, and when you have wind farms with multiple turbines they can even create interference patterns, that could amplify the problems further.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#207

Post by jimmaswell »

jimmaswell wrote: post #162
mambodog wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean 'on average, nuclear is safer than rooftop solar'. How about nuclear vs. large scale solar? Large scale solar + wind? These are more realistic equivalents to nuclear.

This still seems to just mention rooftop but it's still telling how far US nuclear is below its next runner up, Hydro - .1 to 5 deaths/trillion kWh

Meant to link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#208

Post by jimmaswell »

anigbrowl wrote: post #177
jimmaswell wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the page I found, "more Americans have died from installing rooftop solar than have ever died from the construction or use of American nuclear power plants". On average, nuclear is safer. The likelihood of another Fukashima is even lower now that it's happened and been documented.

That's certainly a delicious cherry you picked. I'm pro nuclear myself, but ignoring people's legitimate worries about worst-case scenarios is not a great advocacy strategy.

It's hardly cherry picking. Look at this chart: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#209

Post by maxerickson »

CydeWeys wrote: post #183
maxerickson wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And from a material standpoint they are still just lots and lots of steel. If it helps, I'm not a software engineer and have an unused degree in mechanical engineering.

From a reductive material standpoint, everything is just a collection of ingredients. Processors are "just" silicon. That doesn't make them trivial to engineer. What is your point?

It's thick, rolled plate steel. The manufacturing process isn't amenable to the exquisite engineering you are imagining and steel is cheap.

They are pretty damn sure it is strong enough. It isn't the minimum material necessary to ensure that.

Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people

#210

Post by x1798DE »

tim333 wrote: post #28

For comparison a recent Vox article had coal mining jobs at 50,000 employees. Another reason to favour renewables. http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/21/14671932...

Why would a technology being labor-intensive be a reason to use that technology? Human labor is an extremely expensive resource.
Post reply on HN