logoalt Hacker News

appstorelotterytoday at 12:56 PM2 repliesview on HN

> Doesn't this mean that solar/wind are insanely lucrative?

I used to work in wind energy in the Netherlands, it is only profitable there due to government subsidies. It was/is an enormously complicated system to understand on the whole. I was on the environmental impact side (visualizations) during the permitting process. It's high-risk & enormously expensive during the permitting process (i.e. getting permission to build the wind farm), and beyond that I understand it's a bidding process and again, super complicated on the energy trading side once you're operating. My experience was that the wind farm operators seemed to be doing well financially, but insanely lucrative? I'm not sure about that vs. non-renewables. Everyone I worked with (including myself) believed in green energy as a part of a larger mission to make the world a slightly better place. EU directives on renewables is what pushed the mission forward; the dutch on the whole (surprisingly), do not love wind turbines in their back yard.


Replies

CalRoberttoday at 2:59 PM

:-( I'm sitting here looking at huge wind turbines out my front window and I absolutely LOVE them. I get to live in a solarpunk future where I can get where I need to without a car, my kids run out the door and play without getting run over, and I can see clean energy being made for my home (and that of my neighbours).

I'm sure a lot of the cranky old people near me don't like them, but they hate everything and go out of their way to find things to complain about, to be honest.

card_zerotoday at 4:18 PM

I wondered what the ratio of traditional windmills to modern turbines is, and the answer is about 36. https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-does-the-...

Maybe you should build them 36 traditional windmills instead. Or, like, 9 traditional-looking giant ones.