Finding Land for US Wind Farms Might Be Easier Than We Thought - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

• ›

  You misspelled "thoughthth".

  • Re: Title are you OK?

    It's in honor of Start Wars day.

    As in, "Uthe the thoughth, Luke!"

    • Mayth the Fourthhh

      Luke to "Father" Darth: "Thattth Impothibull!"

  • Re: Title are you OK?

    Nobody miththpelled anything. It'th how everyone talkth, right?

    • Re:

      Well... at least one very recent former President.:-)

• Come to Europe. We are sowing both wheat and windmills in the ground for decades and they are growing very well together.

  • Re: A bit late to party...

    Same in the USA. This article is raving about how wondrous the discovery was, that you can do exactly what you've been doing, for the last 20 years, right now....

    • Re:

      I suggest we put windmills in baseball stadium on the foul ball posts, they could be used to light the stadiums at night and maybe even cook some hot dogs.

      • Re:

        Nah. Put one right smack in the middle of the field and add a random blocking factor to a home run hit. Add a bit of interest to kind of a boring game.

        I'm also in favor of installing some sort of motorized moving backboard to basketball hoops. If you can hit a moving target with that three pointer you actually deserve that extra point.

• I mean... isn't this massively astoundingly obvious? To anyone who's seen wind turbines ever?

  They're basically a small pole with the interesting bit a very long way up in the air. You can put them on land and use the land. You can put them in the sea and let it be sea. Also the US has an abundance of land.

  How on earth did anyone ever thing wind turbines might use up all the land in America?

  • Re:

    Well, you need around 10mx10m and a small access road. That's about it.

    • Re:

      Apart from them all needing to be wired as well.

      • by jsonn ( 792303 ) on Saturday May 04, 2024 @03:56PM (#64447960)

        Sure, but the wiring is generally done underground here or directly next to the access road.

  • Re:

    Yes. You misunderstand the purpose of these studies. Studies like this exist so you can call out politicians who are pandering and ignoring the obvious.

    It's like that time Brian Cox was on a panel on climate change with known political piece of shit liar in Australia - Malcolm Roberts, where the piece of shit said there's no evidence that climate change was real, to which Brian Cox replied: "I brought the graph" holding up an a4 print of the data, and sending the entire media into a frenzy about how the pie

• According to The Tinted One, windmills cause cancer, insomnia inducing hums, kill whales, reduce real-estate values*, and fly apart under heavy winds with the blades slicing shit up.

  Some troll(s) posted bunches of fake videos showing windmills exploding under heavy wind, killing horses etc. The gullible fall for it because it fits their preconceived notions.

  * Okay, maybe he has point there, but that's ALL he actually cares about because it affects him him and him.

  • Re:

    Basically, all you build on a property can reduce real-estate values, because to build anything else, you have to remove it first.

  • Re:

    Plus rich people hate seeing them. Eww put those on the land where all the poors live!!! Not within sight of my beachfront property!

  • Re:

    Maybe such videos would persuade people who don't actually live in an area where wind turbines are built. But for those who leave near them, they see them every day and would know that the videos are silly.

    My father, a Trump supporter, owns land in the Oklahoma panhandle that has a wind turbine on it. He's quite happy with the $8K per year the power company pays him for use of his land. He doesn't care that it's "green" energy, he just sees...greenbacks.

• They don't like competition, they want to sell natural gas, oil, anything that will perpetuate global change.

  They seemed to have either Brainwashed the majority of Americans at this point, or released enough bots to overwhelm decent, thinking people on the internet, because all I see on forums now are the pro-fossil fuel people.

  • Re: I just assume Big Oil will spend money to stop

    I just flew over the Permian basin in west Texas. The land is covered with a grid of a zillion wells. And each well sits on a nearly empty pad which, had to be there for the fracking gear they only had there during drilling.

    Seems like putting a wind turbine on at least some of these pads is a way to make a quick buck. And I gotta believe the people doing the drilling aren't going to let politics get in the way of making money.

    • Re: I just assume Big Oil will spend money to sto

      I think this was over on Reddit. Person was concerned that a piece of property they were buying showed that there have been oil wells on it. Somebody explained to him that in Texas, there wasn't anywhere, that didn't have oil wells on it, at one time...

    • Re:

      >> covered with a grid of a zillion wells

      I've seen that too, hundreds of square miles are stippled with wells. Most of the wind farms are in the panhandle though, because it is more windy and there is access to transmission lines that will carry the electricity to population centers.

      "the industry will spend $3.4 billion this year on building 470 miles of new transmission lines and upgrading 808 existing miles, according to data from ERCOT. About $11.6 billion worth of transmission projects are in the

  • Re:

    Petroleum and wind do not compete. Wind power produces electricity. Petroleum produces transportation fuel, lubricants, plastics, and so much else. Sure, there's some petroleum used for electricity but that's tiny outside of Hawaii and Alaska.

    The producers of natural gas just love wind power because nothing else can provide backup power to wind like natural gas. There's some exceptions to this, such as hydroelectric dams but there's not a lot of rivers worth damming any more since we've been building hy

    • 1 hidden comment
• My BIL farms in central Kansas and has been approached by multiple outfits looking to put turbines on some of his land. He tells me that the turbine companies all insist on total control of additional uses. His description is much like this: "Maybe next year we'll let you plant, maybe not. Maybe we'll let you graze, but only certain types of cattle. Maybe we'll insist that you keep the hell off."

  • Re:

    Well, I can see at least three non-exclusive paths forward:

    - Your BIL says "don't let the door hit you on your way out" (probably what is happening now)
    - Your BIL says "here's how much I'd typically make from farming that parcel. Either add that as an annual payment on top of the contract you're offering, or don't let the door hit you on your way out."
    - The energy companies will figure out how to compromise once they run out of places to put new turbines, and dual-use becomes the norm.

    • Be sure to ask for a bond that covers removal and restoration when the equipment is no longer used. The door won't hit them because they will be running too fast.

• Would you want to do your work with a multi-ton moving piece of machinery overhead? Infinitesimal chance of being crushed is more than zero chance.

  Also, it's much easier to cut hay (i've done this) or I presume work other crops in nice long lines rather than curving around structures. People without farm experiences could talk about riding mowers in the same context.

  • 1 hidden comment

• In Iowa (part of the US) we're already doing that.

  But this article if from the Washington Post. I'm sure they don't care about red states like mine. Do that mean it would be a huge innovation in blue states where farming barely exists?

  • I don't think this is a red state versus blue state issue - it's simply speaking to how planners have typically incorporated the land into their plans. I expect the planners have not spent much time in farm country. Or it may just stem from the fact that traditional electricity generation facilities typically does completely tie up the land where it is placed (think hydro dams, coal / nuclear / gas plants).

    Washington is a blue state with a lot of farming (although the farming areas are certainly "red"). Whenever I drive through the areas with wind turbines, I see lots of cows grazing underneath - except where the undergrowth just scrub. And when I've attended talks about wind farming (I'm in a STEM department at a university), the ability to also use the land for other things is frequently mentioned as a strong selling point.

    • Re:

      It's the Washington Post. We don't have to think. Their bias is strong and well-known.

      • Re:

        Well, I think we've identified part of the problem right there.

        • Re:

          If you identified anything other than WaPo,, try again.

• This is where mineral rights came from. You can get a farmer to sell you the rights to the oil and let them still
  use the land for cattle or farming. They also do the same thing with radio towers. Radio towers have guy
  wires but still leave most of the land usable for farming. Air rights already exist to some extent as well.

  • Re: This is not new. same as mineral rights but u

    Speaking of mineral rights, you can't dig on land if you don't have the mineral rights. It would be interesting to find out if mineral rights interfere with wind turbines.

    I know it is a big deal for oil wells and underground mines caverns to not meet. Even a near miss can be disastrous.

    • Re:

      Wind energy rights are sold separately from mineral rights.

      My father owns a piece of land in the Oklahoma panhandle. Years ago, his mineral rights earned him thousands of dollars a year for the oil that was pumped out of the ground. Then Next Era energy came along and paid him to build a wind turbine on the land. He now gets about $8K per year based on the amount of electricity produced by the wind turbine. He then sold the land to a farmer, but kept the mineral rights and the wind rights. Everybody was hap

• You need access roads and (underground) power lines. That cuts the land up into smaller parcels that can't be plowed or harvested easily using large farm technology. Although I think a smart wind developer could probably work with a farmer to lay out pylons and roads.

  Grazing cattle is reasonably compatible with such structures. I've seen a lot of cattle grazing in and around high voltage transmission line corridors. It shouldn't be too much trouble to teach the cows to duck every time a blade comes around.

  • Re:

    It's easy to teach cows to duck because they're chicken.

• Solar cells belong on rooftops or desert not on farm land, nor forests or any other valuable nature. Wind turbines are only ugly and noise...

  • Re:

    It's a thing, farmers use land that has solar panels on it, to raise livestock or grow crops.

    https://www.energy.gov/eere/so... [energy.gov].

    Personally, I don't think wind turbines are ugly. They're certainly less ugly than the power poles and lines that crisscross the country!

• Wind turbines themselves do not take up a lot of land. Road access to the turbines is really a limitation. Also the best candidate areas are ones that have constant wind. That might be an issue to use the same land for agriculture depending on the crop.
• In the US, we have plenty of land to put wind turbines. But, the best wind is in the mid west. Far from population centers. What is needed is long distance power lines to bring it to the place it is needed. People don't like power lines running past their homes.

• In wind rich Alberta our incompetent nutjob of a Premier has decreed that you can't build a windfarm within 35 kilometres of pristine viewscapes [mylethbridgenow.com].

  If you're wondering was a "pristine viewscape" is you're not alone [ctvnews.ca]. But I'm guessing the definition depends on whether you're buddies with the Premier or not.