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I am completely open to discussion as to cost determination methodologies.

JSwile's post still makes a good case for renewables being cheaper than fossil fuels.

YMMV

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 03:07 pm: Edit

What is interesting is not the actual numbers, but the trend: renewables (and battery storage) are constantly getting cheaper and we have no idea of how cheap they can get. Sort of a Moores law for renewables.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 05:33 pm: Edit

As a note, I didn't include hydroelectric in my list for one reason: nearly any site suitable for it at commercial scale already has it.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 10:35 am: Edit

I think renewable sources will get to a diminishing returns point. Batteries & Capacitors are maybe not there yet.

So your solar is now, 20% efficient for ordinary installations, 24% for premium. So in 10 years they get to 24 and 29% respectively,

"Modern wind turbines convert 25% to 45% of the available wind energy into electricity. They are restricted by the Betz Limit, a law of physics stating that no turbine can capture more than 59.3% of the wind's kinetic energy." Google AI

so i wonder if enough wind turbines can effect weather patterns? My gut says "No. Puny humans."

". While they do not cause global climate change, massive wind farms trigger highly localized, microscopic changes in temperature, humidity, and precipitation downwind." Google Ai

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 02:25 pm: Edit

Wind farms also slaughter birds.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 06:52 pm: Edit

And solar farms are turning irreplaceable agricultural fields into waste lands.


Garth L. Getgen

By Michael F Guntly (Ares) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 06:54 pm: Edit

"Most suitable sites for hydroelectric already have it"

Some of those sites could be losing it in the not too distant future.
See "Lake Powell" and "Colorado river".

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 07:46 pm: Edit

The Smøla Wind Farm in Norway managed to solve the bird problem: they painted one wind turbine blade per unit black. Bird strikes dropped off dramatically (a good 70%) after doing so.

As for solar panels, there is such a thing as agrivoltaics: growing crops that do better with partial shade between and under the panels. Adding the partial shade has proven to increase yields for crops such as broccoli, celery, lettuce, etc. Some locations have also taken to grazing sheep beneath the panels - the shade is good both for the sheep and the grass that they graze, and the sheep keep the weeds down around the panels.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, June 29, 2026 - 09:26 pm: Edit

Jessica, first I have heard of this, but it gives me great comfort to know someone has a solution.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 12:08 am: Edit

Another solution for solar is to put it over parking lots, in sunny areas no one much objects to having extra shade over their car. That's a limited area, but at least arround here, it's almost completely unexploited.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 11:37 am: Edit

It's becoming ubiquitous in the Los Angeles area.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 02:54 pm: Edit

"irreplaceable agricultural fields into waste lands.
"

Well, you can put a wind farm on grazing lands. Sheep and cows don't jump that high.

Then there are barren areas like Southern NM and Texas. I worked in NM for a year (hated it) and it would use more shade... There are plenty of places that wind would be good. Along ridgelines, relatively unpopulated mountains, etc. If norway can do it, so can ND, etc...

By Randy Green (Hollywood750) on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 03:36 pm: Edit

I'm not going to be the one telling a farmer what he can or cannot do, with his irreplaceable farm land. Especially as margins decrease and it may be that the only way he (or she) can make a profit is to rent out the land. Or sell it if they so wish.

As Jessica said, agrivoltaics is a thing now. But even if it wasn't, I'm not telling someone what they can do with their own land.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 - 05:26 pm: Edit

The problem is solar panel tend to leach out heavy metals and make the land unusable for food crops for decades. Also, a lot of them used weed killer to kill off every last blade of grass. Such, some newer sites claim to be 'green' but really aren't.

I'm all for solar panels ... on warehouse and box-store roofs.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 11:28 am: Edit

Garth: with the solar panels manufactured today, the materials are insoluble and non-volatile at ambient conditions, and don’t mix with water or vaporize into air. The cadmium used now is in the form of cadmium telluride, which is non-volatile, non-soluble in water, and has 1/100th the toxicity of free cadmium. Meanwhile, the small amount of lead involved is entirely encased in hail-test rated tempered glass (as is the cadmium telluride). Long story short, the old concerns about leeching heavy metals into the soil beneath an installed panel are no longer an issue.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 11:30 am: Edit

"Jessica, first I have heard of this, but it gives me great comfort to know someone has a solution."

Now if we can just get U.S. solar farms to spend a couple hundred bucks on paint per turbine (if the EPA would require it, I'd do a happy dance).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 05:08 pm: Edit

I could do a happy wave, dancing is beyond what my damaged frame can manage.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 05:45 pm: Edit

"Panels manufactured today" ... sure, if they meet the standard. Most are still made in China. I don't trust them to follow the rules, given their track record on too many other things. "Old concerns ... no longer and issue." The damage has already been done. There are thousands of solar farms covering hundreds of thousands of acres of farm land that will never grow another crop again in our lifetime.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Oh Garth, it is not like you (based on years and years of conversations on this very BBS) to be so utterly depressed about an issue.

Sure, China has a bad reputation, is not noted for keeping promises or even treating its own fairly (or even humane treatment for non citizens…)

There are several factors that you may not be aware of:

1. Wind farms across the nation have closed, filed bankruptcy, or even (sadly) been abandoned by owners when the subsidies ended(happened when trump took over in 2016, and again in 2024 .)

2. As a number of these failed wind farms financed land purchases, once they failed, payments to the banks stopped and in many cases the banks started foreclosure procedures, meaning the land gets new owners.

3. The clean up on many sites is/will be expensive, aside from the concrete pads the wind turbines were mounted on., the land generally is classed as undeveloped (several reasons, but for agricultural purposes farm land tends to be contoured for water management, that the wind farms didn’t care about, so drainage ditches and or drainage tiles were damaged or destroyed.

But if the land is purchased for agricultural purposes, responsible farmers will act to restore the damage to increase crop yields.

I suspect that it may not be as bad as you stated above.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 10:24 pm: Edit

"farmers will act to restore the damage to increase crop yields" ... not always possible. Talking to family back east, I heard about a canceled solar farm project. They took an old, working farm and leveled the fields by scrapping off several inches of top soil, brought in fill dirt from who knows where containing who knows what, compacted the ground with heavy equipment. Then the project stalled and sat for years, then abandoned. Even if the farmer could have bought the land back, it would have cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars to bring it back to life. Now it's a FedEx sorting facility and warehouses.

My sister has Amish friends who have relatives in up-state New York. They're being pressured to pack up and move out of some of the best farm land that area has to offer to make room for a solar farm. Sad. The Amish are some of the best farmland stewards in the world today.

As I said, I'm all for solar, if done right -- which means STOP taking good farm land. Sadly, there are people who will call you Evil Incarnate if you say anything remotely negative about solar or wind energy. In their mind, you must be 100% for 'renewable' energy and 100% against coal, gas, or lord forbid nuke power. No middle ground. I had to deal with someone like that at work for a couple of years. They're gone and I'm not, so good riddance.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, July 01, 2026 - 11:05 pm: Edit

Garth, again, I can not argue with you.

Sadly, it is true that some of the wind farms drastically changed topography of various sites, as you described.

More common in the mid west, the prairie lands are/were flat enough not to require huge earth moving procedures.

But even in cases as you described, you are ignoring the effects of time.

At present, FedEx processing plants have value, and one could argue that it is a better use of the land.

No one knows what new technologies will arrive or when…

It is possible some new genius will make technology that makes FedEx, USPS or UPS obsolete. That means the new spiffy processing center will get abandoned or bulldozed.

Heck, if world commerce became unavailable, farm land might move up in priority.

The United Kingdom, before WW2 was a net importer of food from all over the world.

When the war started and NAZI Germany sent uboats and surface raiders to attack merchant freighters, England had to adjust.

Suddenly parks, high way easements, hill sides, marsh lands all got pressed into food production.

Never got to the point of actually feeding the whole population, but it did somewhat offset the reduced supply of food during the war.

I imagine, if food became scarce, even here in the united states, marginal land will get put back into production.

Heck, you can see the public records of land usage changes compared to price increases for agricultural products.

As to the hardcore renewable enthusiasts, economics is not on their side. Without huge subsidies, many renewable energy projects are doomed to fail.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 04:02 am: Edit

Uncertain if the "Jessica and Jswile are not to communicate" rule applies here or only in RWM; if the former, Steve, please delete this.

Jswile: the figures you posted just four days ago ("UNSUBSIDIZED per kilowatt hour of electricity") put "Renewable Generation" at a competitive-to-lower costs per kWh than "Conventional & Fossil Generation". That would appear to contradict your claim now that "...economics is not on their side. Without huge subsidies, many renewable energy projects are doomed to fail."

Garth: More than 86,000 wind turbines were built in the US from 1981 to early 2024. with over 11,000 decommissioned since 1992. Nearly all of those 11,000 decommissionings were of old, small-yield models from the '80s and early '90s (which, at the time, were all-too-often installed without proper wind surveys to ensure site suitability...particularly with the lower height and blade span of those early systems).

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 07:03 am: Edit

I will reserve the right to respond pending a decision by SVC.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 11:03 am: Edit

In the interests of providing additional data:

Google Inquiry:

Quote:” There is no exact single number for total wind project cancellations across the U.S. since 1992.

However, historical data shows thousands of power projects have failed. Recently, high interest rates and regulatory blockades—including Defense Department national security holds and federal buyouts—have stalled or canceled massive amounts of capacity.

Recent Offshore CancellationsSince 2025, the U.S. government has spent billions to terminate major offshore wind leases and redirect developers toward fossil fuels and nuclear power:Total Cost: The administration paid roughly $2.5 billion to get companies to walk away from these projects.

Specific Projects: Developers like TotalEnergies, Duke Energy, and Invenergy accepted multibillion-dollar settlements to scrap arrays off the coasts of California, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina.Federal Funding:

The government also canceled $679 million in federal funding for a dozen other offshore projects.

Recent Onshore CancellationsLand-based wind farms have also suffered major setbacks due to permitting delays and a lack of tax credits:

The Defense Department has stalled at least 165 onshore wind projects (representing about 30 GW of power) due to military radar and security reviews.

Around 7 GW of planned capacity on federal lands was canceled or stalled over the course of a single year.

About 32% of all early-stage renewable projects across the country are facing strict new federal hurdles.

Long-Term Trends.

Since 2000 alone, developers have canceled over 1,400 power projects of all fuel types in the U.S..

A major reason for early-stage project failures is the "queue" problem:

many proposals never make it to construction because they fail to secure grid connections or do not make financial sense without tax credits.

The U.S. Department of Energy tracks ongoing active and shelved projects in its data systems.”

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 02:59 pm: Edit

behave, and then I don't have to decide. Besides, it's up to Jean not me.

By Mike Curtis (Fear) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 03:14 pm: Edit

Also, just because WebMom is not feeling well doesn't mean there are not others watching. Play nice.

-FEAR

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, July 02, 2026 - 04:43 pm: Edit

Thank you for the clarifications, Jswile; much appreciated.

The grid issue has been a growing thorn in the side of new energy projects of all stripes for the past couple of decades, and for any of a dozen different reasons - political, economic, NIMBYism, etc. - keeps getting kicked down the road rather than taken on by the horns.

The recent offshore and federal-land-based cancellations veer into politics, which we obviously cannot discuss, but certainly can note has been a major recent impediment.