8/4/08 Compare and Contrast! A Day in the Life of a wind developer and a day in the life of a family living in a wind farm
WONDER WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A WIND DEVELOPER?
We found this description of 'a day in the life of an assistant wind developer' on a career information website. (Click here to read it at the source)
We follow it with a description of a day in the life of a family living with what wind developers leave behind.
8:00 a.m. : After waking up in the Holiday
Inn in a remote part of Iowa, you get in your rented SUV and drive into
town to have a breakfast meeting at the local diner with the mayor.
Your development team has optioned a hilltop in the area for developing
a windpower facility, and you are now in the process of negotiating a
payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT agreement) with the town. It's probably
going to end up being a new fire truck, school playground, and the new
access road you will be constructing anyway up to your site. You are
flying solo on this meeting, confirming the outline of the agreement
with the mayor and putting in some time to continuing to build this
crucial relationship.
12:00 p.m. Back at the hotel, you participate in a conference call with the lead developer and engineers back in the home office. Your team is working up a cost estimate for the transmission system interconnect, in preparation for negotiating the price with the local utility. By law, utilities have to allow independent generators like your company to hook up to the grid, but there's little to prevent them from exacting a high price for doing so. The engineers are preparing some exhibits to counter the anticipated argument that the wind turbines will affect local voltage stability.
1:30 p.m. : Checking your email, you find
that one of the turbine manufacturers has responded to your company's
request-for-proposal (RFP) for the 20 turbines plus engineering,
procurement, and construction services. You'll plug their information
into the bid comparison spreadsheet you created when you're back in the
office tomorrow. On your voicemail is an "all clear" message from the
subcontractor who is conducting the archaeological study of the
site--he was tasked with verifying that there are no remains of
historical structures anywhere on the land (which would likely cause
the town to deny a building permit).
3:00 p.m. : On your two-hour-long drive to the airport to fly home, you stop at another farmer's home in the next town over. He had contacted your company when he heard that you were planning on building down the road, saying he was interested in showing someone his windy site. You walk around his land together, taking note of flagged trees (permanently bent over at an angle as a result of strong, uni-directional winds). While this is typically a symptom of a good wind resource, there's little conclusion anyone can draw until you install a met data tower and measure actual windspeeds for a year. The wind today feels very gusty, which could be a bad sign--too much turbulence in the local wind pattern causes wear and tear on turbines, resulting in high maintenance costs and shorter equipment life. You tell him you'll bring up the idea of looking more carefully at his site with your team at home.
7:30 p.m. : On the plane ride back to your home base, you do a little reading. Your department is working on formalizing the development process for wind plants in order to save time and money. The idea is to structure the process with a set sequence of activities from low-cost to high-cost and high-level fatal flaw checks to detailed design activities; after each major step in the process, a development oversight committee would decide whether to proceed or not. You read through the draft list to see if there's anything you can add, but it seems very thorough.
WONDER WHAT IT'S LIKE TO LIVE IN A WIND FARM AGAINST YOUR WILL? Here's a description of a day in the life of a family living with what wind developers leave behind. It's a recent entry from a noise log kept by a family in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.
July 6 2008 – 7:30 AM Wind S very low. I can hear turbines 4, 6 & 73 about equally from the back of our property Turbine 73 therefore would be over ½ mile or about 2940’ from me and #6 is just under ¾ of a mile from the back of our property. I have a small hand held sound level indicator and got a reading of 40db and at the moment the sound is fairly quiet but annoying.
7:50 AM I am reading a map at the dining room table and I can hear the turbines quite easily. The kitchen door is open. Again this is quite an intrusion on our normal life style and on our health.
8:00AM I can hear #73 while at the computer with music playing at the sound level of 30 on the computer. Turbine # 73 is 2480’ away. Sound audible in a well constructed, well insulated home should not be permitted by our government leaders including town, county, state and the PSC. I used to live in a peaceful rural area. Now thanks to the leaders we trusted we live in an industrial park type setting except we never moved. We were intruded upon. I doubt that a city planner would allow an industrial park to move into a residential area. My oldest son (age 33) just commented that at 2:00 AM he was going to “Have me call my legislator friends. They (turbines) were the loudest I have heard them”.
9:40 AM Turbine # 4 is fighting to see if it can rip the sky apart. It is very loud. Did you ever had to vomit but nothing came out but retching sound? You got the picture of what it is like at the moment.
5:10PM S wind. I filmed # 4 & 6. They were loud and I could hear # 73.
6:55 PM Wind SW. The turbines are now turned a little SW from where they were 45 minutes ago. Now they are louder. The jet flying over loud sound with a pulse added. It is sickening.
11:30 PM. Turbine 73 is the loudest. Then #4. Then #6. Thumping and jet sound.
(Download the entire noise log by clicking here)
The BPRC Research Nerd
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