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Liquid_Cascabel t1_ixlk4wh wrote

Reply to comment by CrDe in Are wind turbines good for the environment? by Patagonica

>But the main problem is that it's not so cost effective. I don't have the graph in mind but in energy you put in watts for production, exploitation and decommission of wind turbines compared to the watts you get in return is not high.

Not true, you tend to earn it back in under a year (design lifetime: 20-25y) and developers will naturally seek out the windiest areas to improve their ROI.

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WhenCaffeineKicksIn t1_ixmmfyb wrote

The problem here is not the overall power amount, but the power density. What a wind turbine produces in years, a regular steel or aluminium mill (or a production line for fiberglass which the same turbine blades are built of) consumes in days or less.

Basically, one cannot fabricate new wind turbines and even replace decommissioned ones using wind electricity only, another high-density energy sources are needed for it.

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Liquid_Cascabel t1_ixn11h7 wrote

Why would you have that as a requirement anyway?

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WhenCaffeineKicksIn t1_ixn8mox wrote

Partly because of "sustainability" component, partly because of general considerations.

A bit offtopic on the latter: the current "green energy" movement seems to be much more political than rational, onten pushing for the so-called "eco energy sources" without any regard on how these will integrate into the overall electric consumption balance. For example, one of the crucial elements of last-year Texas energy crisis was over-reliance on the renewable energy sources (solar and wind) while decommissioning the ecology-unfriendly coal and gas plants which served as balancing reserves, so at the moment of partial power outage due to freezes the rest of electric grid couldn't refill in time, which caused a cascade effect. It wasn't the only cause (cue the state economy on expensive gas supplies and historical electric network desync on a federal scale), but it can be considered as a "last straw" in that particular event.

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