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It's a pretty solarpunk fact that small, distributed wind turbines use steel more efficiently than big centralised ones (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The most steel-intensive power source – by far – is the modern wind turbine. The steel intensity of a wind turbine depends on its size. A single, large wind turbine requires significantly more steel per megawatt of installed power than two smaller wind turbines.

The link is from the-most-solarpunk-website and is mostly about steel in general, but I wanted to pull out that one fact.

Wind and solar energy are not "good for the environment"; they pollute; it's just that we hope they pollute less than the alternative. One major reason they pollute is because they require a lot of steel to build. But the household-scale or village-scale ones use less

de Decker is citing: Topham, Eva, et al. “Recycling offshore wind farms at decommissioning stage.” Energy policy 129 (2019): 698-709.

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[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe 9 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Steel can be pretty easily recycled, so it's not too bad all in all.

An addition benefit of using smaller but wider scale turbines is the reduced need for electrical transmission lines. A large chunk of our problems is the transmission lines needing updated/expanded on to handle more electrification.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The larger the wind turbine the better an investment it is.

For better or worse our green transition is primarily capitalist. That matters a lot here.

Wind speeds are significantly higher every meter you get above the ground. The larger the blade the better it performs. Windmills can't cluster together too closely since they induce turbulence...

It all means that bigger is better here.

[–] Olgratin_Magmatoe 6 points 5 months ago

It all means that bigger is better here.

I don't disagree with anything you said. I was only pointing out an additional benefit outside of the one the post mentions.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

The larger the wind turbine the better an investment it is.

For better or worse our green transition is primarily capitalist. That matters a lot here.

Wind speeds are significantly higher every meter you get above the ground. The larger the blade the better it performs. Windmills can’t cluster together too closely since they induce turbulence…

It all means that bigger is better here.

I don't see anything punk about this at all, sorry. Reads anti-punk beginning to end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Steel can be pretty easily recycled, so it’s not too bad all in all.

All in all, it is roughly 9% of greenhouse gas emissions

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That‘s interesting. My understanding was that wind speed/force rises exponentially with heigth and so a 150 high turbine is much more powerful than a 50 m high turbine - and not only 3 times as powerful, as one expects.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The exponential relationship is between speed and energy, rather than height and speed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

wind and solar are essentially energy multipliers. I do not know of any wind solar being completely manufactured using wind and solar.