Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heard lots of grumbling from an acquaintance in Germany that a big issue is, I quote, "Bavarians not wanting either overground nor underground power lines that would bring power from north to south, so at best we sell wind power from north to west and the south of germany buys nuclear from france" ;)
It's a huge issue, see the depressing web page on Südlink. Massively delayed, much more expensive, and less efficient because it has to be underground. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink Germany, like the UK, has dynamic national electricity pricing, which makes no sense when the interconnections are not powerful enough to actually make it a single electricity market.
The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
191–200 of 334 posts
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.
Yeh I'm about 2km from a large wind park, it's the least obnoxious thing imaginable. Jogging through them at night with their dim red blinking strobes or watching them work overtime on a windy winter day is great and gives you a sorely needed feeling of optimism and hope for the future. Yes directly underneath them there is some gentle swooshing noises but I think beyond 500m it's basically imperceptible. Nothing I'd…
>>Not properly recognizing / or caring about the societal benefit of clean abundant energy or the future.
I think we should devote every single spare inch of land to wind turbines and harness as much of wind energy as possible. But I won't pretend like the bloody things are not keeping me up at night when I can hear them.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.
I don't mind them in the distance. I would love if these stupid things were 40km away. The closest is like 500 meters away from my house. They're awful. I live in the country for the peace and quiet and dark at night. Now with a wind farm, there is a constant background hum that reminds me of living near a highway in the city, and a swishing noise that's louder than the cicadas and other night time bugs. Also, the re…
No. You recognize the drawbacks and still support the project for the good of others. That's the opposite of NIMBY, it's a high level of emotional maturity.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#194Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-... . And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. Like th…
This is all true, the NIMBYs are real and we must construct additional pylons... but the largest part of curtailment costs come from the UK energy sector's project mismanagement. 1. We have two undersea cable projects (EGL1&2) to provide transmission capacity between all the new windfarms in Scotland, and SE England where it's used. Both projects are years late. 2. But we keep approving and switching on more windfarm…
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
People oppose everything. * Lattice overhead powerlines? Eyesore (should use the new T style ones), house values, wind noise, hums, WiFi interference, cancer, access roads, hazard to planes, birds * T-frame pylons: boring ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electr... ), eyesore (we prefer the lattice ones), most of the above too * Underground: damaging to the environment, end stations are eyesores…
Saw multiple people on HN literally 2 days ago complaining about how noisy solar is. Absolutely baffling.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#196Massive scale out of EV's should help with this - each car becomes a storage unit absorbing excess energy production. You really need a continental if not global scale grid system to constantly distribute the energy inputs. Only a few geographical units are big enough to make this happen, China being really the only one who can do it, and is doing it.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.
Me. If it literally in my back yard. It's a tradegy of the commons game theory thing. I benefit from the power but please rig it somewhere else.
Nobody wants new waste dumps anywhere near (tens of miles) of their own houses, and each time there's an insane amount of blockades and protests.
Bureaucracy gets very messy because towns and provinces and regions (equivalent to less federated us states, more or less) and the central government start having legal disputes over those things that drag decades.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeh I'm about 2km from a large wind park, it's the least obnoxious thing imaginable. Jogging through them at night with their dim red blinking strobes or watching them work overtime on a windy winter day is great and gives you a sorely needed feeling of optimism and hope for the future. Yes directly underneath them there is some gentle swooshing noises but I think beyond 500m it's basically imperceptible. Nothing I'd…
I live about a mile down from two large wind turbines and you can absolutely hear them, especially at night - it's a low droning noise that especially on quiet nights and in the summer when you have your windows open it actually bothers me to a point where I considered selling the house multple times already - but decided that rolling the dice on noise pollution and ending up with something even more annoying just is…
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#199This is why you don't let "markets" run things at national scale. Short-term profits and for-profit policy lobbying are utterly incompatible with building intelligent, robust, future-proof infrastructure.
Even food distribution?
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#200The UK has notoriously long build times for new power lines which heavily contributes to this problem. I think the FT said a new connection for a big user or power supplier often takes ten years, with planning alone now reaching 4.5 years and half of all new connections getting sued, which is insane considering the productivity loss and how it’s a already known problem. Sadly the government seems dar more interested…