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Originally Posted by GH85Carrera
And even the wind power is not really green. It takes HUGE amounts of concrete for the foundation, and high tech materials to manufacture the windmill. Transport the components to the site, and the upkeep and maintenance of the windmill his high. They are worn out and need to be replaced before they ever go positive in energy production over the energy needed to put one up.
And we get a landscape covered in ugly windmills. And at night when the winds let up, they are just large aviation hazards. During the day the do a great job of killing lots of birds.
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Yep. And they are ridiculously noisy. That's why siting wind farms is so difficult (noise pollution and blight are primary concerns, in addition to the "windiness" of the location). And as Matt mentioned: NIMBY rules apply.
The largest elephant in the room is still the lack of efficiency, energy density footprint (kWh/m2), and the inconsistent production. Grid-scale wind is non-viable without peak/stability co-generation (spinning and non-spinning back-ups) to maintain grid balance, which is almost exclusively the domain of NG turbines. And in most cases, it's better just to use those gas turbines by themselves without the wind.
Grid-stability with wind requires a cogen source that is constantly ramping up and down, starting and stopping.
Even in the absolute best-case scenarios, grids start running into efficiency and balance issues (and exponentially higher costs) when wind-penetration reaches about 5% or more of the grid.
It simply isn't worth the trouble in utility-scale applications.