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542 points xbmcuser | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.731s | source
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Havoc ◴[] No.45038005[source]
The sudden US pivot towards actively suppressing wind energy is absolutely wild.

There are farms that are nearing completion and now are just in limbo.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/26/business/wind-project-can...

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bluGill ◴[] No.45038386[source]
It isn't sudden, it was always there. 15 years ago I drove from iowa to minnesota. In iowa there were wind turbines eveywhere, in mn billboards saying wind is not the answer. Today iowa des moines is 100% wind powered (i can only find press releases stating that, official numbers for the whole state are around 50%)
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tialaramex ◴[] No.45038586[source]
Likely explanation for those numbers is that if it's windy 100% of the power needs are fulfilled by wind and statistically the local wind turbines make enough power that if somehow Des Moines could store that and sip from it, they could run all the time on pure wind power. But in practice what happens is when it's windy Des Moines exports power and gets money, and when it's calm Des Moines buys power that wasn't from a wind turbine.

One political idea in the UK is to give people locality based energy pricing, so, if there's a wind turbine right near your community, sure, that's a bit annoying (they're loud because that wind is moving huge spinning blades, and maybe you like horizons, which are horizontal, the wind farm breaks that up) but hey, your electricity is super cheap. The idea being that's a direct incentive to welcome on-shore turbines and it's an effective subsidy to move electrical load nearer to production.

Today with national pricing that Wind Farm wants to be on the Scottish coast where it's windy, and the Energy Intensive industry wants to be in England where there are loads of people already, and then you have to move all that power across half a country to make it work, which is further expense and delay. Why not just move the industrial users, and to nudge them offer lower prices ?

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1. bluGill ◴[] No.45040530[source]
Likely - and it has been reported we supply wind power to Chicago. However I've never seen it officially stated what is happening and so the truth could be something neither of us have thought of.
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2. BobaFloutist ◴[] No.45041658[source]
>and it has been reported we supply wind power to Chicago.

Which is funny, given its moniker

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3. tialaramex ◴[] No.45042997[source]
I assume that's why it gets specifically called out, same if you're shipping apples to the entire US East Coast headline writers will pick up on the fact they're going to New York City.

It wouldn't actually make sense to put turbines in Chicago because it's a city, the wind force is disrupted by the human structures littered everywhere in a city - but obviously you'd expect a windy area to have a lot of turbines outside the city and not ordinarily need to import wind energy from hundreds of miles away.

4. viridian ◴[] No.45043030[source]
They like the wind so much they pay Iowa for extra helpings!