Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by okr 7 days ago
I find no arguments against solar. I can put it everywhere and has no moving parts. Once storing is solved, perfect.

But wind?? Huge nature areas are destroyed by beton fundaments, rotors break, and just in germany was a scandal lately about recycling, as the first structures need to be renewed.

2 comments

Wind power does seem to be generally not quite as good as photovoltaic solar power. But yeah every source of electricity has some downside. I don't have any good reason to care more about the possibility of rotors breaking or how to recycle the turbines, than I do about the possibility that a natural gas peaker plant might suffer a mechanical failure.
It's not like other forms of power generation don't have similar problems. Solar PV cells lose efficiency and need to be replaced. Nuclear has very long term storage concerns. Coal and natural gas plants have finite expected lifetimes before the whole plant needs to shut down.