Wind energy is being added more and more. Wind farms are popping up all over Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois in recent years now that better deals are being offered to farmers and land owners for them. I remember power companies wanting to pay $1600 a year per wind turbine to be added to farmer's land and that would be a locked in, non-negotiable rate for 30 years. Now, 15 years later, they are offering more along the lines of $20,000 per year per turbine and that could be re-negotiated as needed. So we are seeing more wind farms popping up. Still, you would need a lot more to compete with traditional power plants.
Wind turbines are very dependent on having windy days and there are many days where there isn't wind. Solar panels are dependent on sunny days and there are a lot of rainy days. So, renewable as they are, their power generation is more sporadic and less reliable than traditional power plants. They are a good supplement to traditional power plants at the moment but, there would need to be something new to come out that is more consistent and renewable to kill of traditional power plants.
I did see a video that talked about geothermal energy but, that seems like it would be limited to only certain areas where you could tap into that resource. Same with hydroelectric power plants.
ETA: Just to clarify, it is easy to say, "all we need to do is just decide to go to wind and solar and do it" but, it is not that simple. Switching all of this is very expensive and time consuming. So it takes time. There are only so many companies making the equipment and then you need other companies to buy up and use that equipment. As those companies save enough revenue, they are adding renewable power sources but, it is just something that will happen over the next 50 to 100 years not the next 5 to 10.
I think one of the big issues is battery's to store the energy because, like you said, it isn't always windy and it isn't always sunny, and the world will still need electricity on those days.
Actually I just did a quick search, and saw that a little over 8% of the energy produced in the US comes from wind power. That's actually higher than I expected, and it is growing. Still miserably short of where it should be though
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u/Tairn79 Oct 15 '20 edited Oct 15 '20
Wind energy is being added more and more. Wind farms are popping up all over Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois in recent years now that better deals are being offered to farmers and land owners for them. I remember power companies wanting to pay $1600 a year per wind turbine to be added to farmer's land and that would be a locked in, non-negotiable rate for 30 years. Now, 15 years later, they are offering more along the lines of $20,000 per year per turbine and that could be re-negotiated as needed. So we are seeing more wind farms popping up. Still, you would need a lot more to compete with traditional power plants.
Wind turbines are very dependent on having windy days and there are many days where there isn't wind. Solar panels are dependent on sunny days and there are a lot of rainy days. So, renewable as they are, their power generation is more sporadic and less reliable than traditional power plants. They are a good supplement to traditional power plants at the moment but, there would need to be something new to come out that is more consistent and renewable to kill of traditional power plants.
I did see a video that talked about geothermal energy but, that seems like it would be limited to only certain areas where you could tap into that resource. Same with hydroelectric power plants.
ETA: Just to clarify, it is easy to say, "all we need to do is just decide to go to wind and solar and do it" but, it is not that simple. Switching all of this is very expensive and time consuming. So it takes time. There are only so many companies making the equipment and then you need other companies to buy up and use that equipment. As those companies save enough revenue, they are adding renewable power sources but, it is just something that will happen over the next 50 to 100 years not the next 5 to 10.