SUSAN KING REACTS TO WIND TURBINE FIRE ON HER TAYLOR COUNTY RANCH

Credit:  By Cassandra Garcia

SOURCE: KTXS News, www.ktxs.com

October 3, 2011

“I’m watching a turbine on my land on fire, throwing fire balls on my property. I think it needs to be very clearly delineated: if you have property and machinery that is the source of a fire that damages someone land or uses someone’s resources who is responsible for the cost,” said King.

ABILENE, Texas — Texas State Representative Susan King is speaking out about the fire on her Taylor County ranch that was sparked by a wind turbine.

Just after 10 o’clock Sunday night, Buffalo Gap, View and Ecca Volunteer Fire Departments responded to a fire at the Taylor County ranch of Texas House Representative Susan King.

They used eight trucks to quickly contain the fire to about 2 acres.

Monday, King said it’s that timely response that has her looking at how their services can be repaid.

“They leave their families in the middle of the night. They’re willing to do it for zero. They do assist them from time to time but in no way is it enough. I think with the drought we need to take a hard look at how we pay these people, not with their salaries, but paying for fuel or access to water and equipment,” said King.

Now, she’s looking into how she can take last night’s scary experience and shed light on what she calls “silence” in a very young energy sector.

“I’m watching a turbine on my land on fire, throwing fire balls on my property. I think it needs to be very clearly delineated: if you have property and machinery that is the source of a fire that damages someone land or uses someone’s resources who is responsible for the cost,” said King.

Volunteer fire departments do not bill for the cost of these types of accidents but always urge companies to donate.

KTXS spoke to Next Era Energy Monday who told us in a statement “We have supported each of these volunteer fire departments in the past financially to help them purchase needed equipment because we recognize the important work that they do.”

We wanted to find out more, so we asked Ecca Volunteer Fire Department about those donations, they told us that they haven’t gotten help from Next Era in about 4 years.

THUNDERSTORM DAMAGES WIND TURBINE IN LINCOLN COUNTY

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT SOURCE Minnesota Public Radio, minnesota.publicradio.org

July 6, 2011

by Mark Steil,

Worthington, Minn. — Friday’s severe thunderstorm damaged at least six wind turbines in Lincoln County.

Severe thunderstorm damaged at least six wind turbines in Lincoln County, July 1, 2011. (Photo courtesy of Lincoln County's Emergency Management Office)

On this turbine, winds tore off blades, and the hood atop the tower that protects the turbine and electronic equipment housed inside. (Photo courtesy of Lincoln County's Emergency Management Office)

The storm produced strong winds, hail and a small tornado in the southwest region of Minnesota

The storm damaged wind turbines near the town of Lake Benton. said Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Jeanna Sommers. She says one machine appears a total loss.

“One-third of the top of it is bent down,” Sommers said. “Blades are completely off of it.”

Sommers says the storm damaged other nearby turbines as well. Some are missing blades. On others, strong winds tore from the top of the tower the hood that protects the turbine and electronic equipment housed inside.

The same storm also damaged farms and power lines. It also produced a tornado which caused at least minor damage for two-thirds of the houses in the town of Tyler. The county board is asking for a federal disaster declaration to help them deal with the storm damage.

NOTES FROM THE MIDWEST

NOW IS THE TIME TO LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD ON WIND FARMS

By Joan Null, Whitley County Concerned Citizens,

The Rock River Times, rockrivertimes.com

July 7, 2011

I am from Whitley County, Ind. (just west of Fort Wayne), and our county has been targeted by a wind developer. We’re doing all we can to put a stop to the project.

After seeing Dave and Stephanie Hulthen’s blog, we wanted to see for ourselves just what it was like to live in the midst of industrial wind turbines. The following is my story about our visit to DeKalb County, and was shared with the residents of our county.

Please go to this link, http://lifewithdekalbturbines.blogspot.com/, and take a really good look at the picture of the house and the wind turbine. Then, scroll down to the entry for Monday, March 14. The visitors they are talking about are eight members of Whitley County Concerned Citizens. I was one of those visitors.

We walked around that yard and stood in front of that porch, and looked out the windows of that house from the inside. It’s a beautiful house, inside and out. And the natural setting is amazing. But, you just can’t begin to imagine being surrounded by 146 turbines — spinning motion every direction that you look when you’re outside, and reflected in every shiny surface inside.

Spinning motion outside the kitchen window where you stand to do dishes, outside the windows of your front door, through the windows of your sun porch, as a backdrop watching your kids play on the swing set, outside the dining room windows, reflected in the TV screen, reflected in the glass of the pictures on the walls, reflected in the glass doors of the kitchen cabinets.

And they are so HUGELY out of proportion to everything else. The two closest ones to their home are 1,400 feet away — and they look like you could just reach out and touch them — they’re enormous. Dave pointed out a line of turbines that were 6 miles away, and some that were 8 miles away. They looked like they were just at the end of the field. (Note: the wind ordinance that the Plan Commission proposed for Whitley County last October called for a 1,200-foot setback).

Dave and Stephanie Hulthen are a very nice young couple in their mid 30s, living in their dream home. They have four young children, and they live directly across the road from the farm where Dave grew up, and Dave’s parents still live. Dave makes beautiful custom cabinets and furniture in his shop at home.

Their focus is “people need to know the truth about what it’s really like to live with turbines, and the wind companies don’t tell the truth.” Dave has a degree in physics, so he really understands a lot about how the whole system works. They are all about proper setbacks. Ironically, when Dave wanted to build his cabinet shop (very nice metal building), their county code said the shop had to be “set back” from the road at least as far as the front of his house “in order to be aesthetically pleasing.” No joke!

Dave drove us around through the wind farm, telling us the stories of various families who live there. Then, he drove to the edge of the wind farm, so that there were no turbines in view in front of us. He called our attention to the fact that we were looking at “normal” surroundings — farms and houses. Then, he said, “now I’m going to turn the vehicle around,” and suddenly you’re assaulted with this view of huge, spinning sticks towering over farmland and houses. The feeling is gut-wrenching. Before I went, I honestly thought that looking at them wouldn’t be all that bad. I was more concerned about other issues. But, I have to admit that looking at them and being surrounded by them affected me more than I thought it would. I can’t imagine our beautiful countryside looking like an industrial wasteland; and not just for a short time … but for the next 30-40 years.

There was also a constant drone of noise — and the generators weren’t even operating — they weren’t producing electricity that day. Also, there was the “whoosh, whoosh” of the blades. The shadow flicker varies from house to house depending on the distance and directional relationship between the house, the turbines and the sun. For Dave and Stephanie, the shadow flicker is like a disco strobe light at sunrise, lasting 45 minutes, from May through September.

They said some days are so bad, so noisy, and some nights so sleepless, they look at each other and say, “put the FOR SALE sign in the yard.” And then they remember, “Oh, yeah — nobody will buy our house, we’re in the middle of 146 turbines.”

Their dream has been shattered by turbines.

If you’ve not made the trip to a wind farm, and talked to those who live among the turbines — please do. The key is talking to people, seeing from their perspective, hearing directly from them how daily life has been affected by the turbines. You won’t get the complete picture just by driving down the road and looking at them.

And please write to your county commissioners. Let them know of your concerns. County officials have told us they need to hear from people in all areas of the county, not just in Washington, Jefferson and Cleveland townships. Please share this information with anyone you know in Whitley County. This is a countywide ordinance that is being considered, and the next phase of the wind farm may just target your part of the county. The time to let your voice be heard is now.

Editor’s note: Joan Null was referred to The Rock River Times by the mayor of Lee, Rich Boris, after he and I met at several meetings addressing proposals for industrial wind complexes in Boone and Ogle counties. Boris has been very active opposing complexes in Lee and DeKalb counties. I thank him for his referral, and strongly suggest readers visit the Hulthens’ blog noted below. Very opposed to industrial wind because of the hell his life has become, Dave Hulthen testified at an Ogle County Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on a text amendment to Ogle County’s wind ordinance. His powerpoint presentation, complete with stunning pictures, shows the commonly-touted setbacks of 1,300 to 1,500 feet are completely ineffective. As Vermont has now legislated, setbacks of a mile-and-a-half are less offensive; but even at that distance, many of the drawbacks of industrial wind turbines in agricultural or natural areas still persist. Readers and environmentalists should be very aware of all the proposed industrial wind complexes in Stephenson, Winnebago, Ogle and Boone counties. It’s the beginning of a possibly huge network and costly power grid, complete with eminent domain issues, and just the substantial sections now proposed will ruin our rural quality of life and viewscape for decades to come. — Frank Schier

FROM THE UK

DEEPING WOMAN TELLS OF WIND FARM NIGHTMARE

By ET News staff, www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk 7 July 2011

A woman has told how she resorted to red wine and sleeping tablets to escape the “nightmare” noise nuisance from a nearby windfarm.

Jane Davis, who is suing the landlords, owners and operators of eight wind turbines near Grays Farm in Deeping St Nicholas, told the High Court in London yesterday that she tried a number of “coping mechanisms” to deal with the humming noise.

She and her husband Julian are seeking an injunction to stop the noise and £400,000 damages, or damages of up to £2.5 million to compensate them for being driven out of their family home by the noise.

Mrs Davis told the court that when the turbines first began to operate in 2006, she assumed that they would get used to the outlandish noise.

She said: “We found that didn’t happen. I think our first coping mechanism was probably red wine and putting a fan on to try and blot out the noise and allow us to sleep.

“We had sleeping tablets but we were very reluctant to take these because they can lead to a long-standing problem.

“It is my normal practice to sleep with the window open – it doesn’t matter how cold it is.

“So we tried to sleep with the window shut but that didn’t seem to make any difference.

“We could still feel and sometimes hear the pulsing beat through the windows.”

The couple even resorted to friends’ sofas to try to catch up with sleep that they had lost as a result of the noise, she said.

The couple finally left the family home at Grays Farm in December, 2006.

Mrs Davis said she found it hard to deal with lack of sleep at the best of times but the steady disruptions made by the turbines finally forced them out.

Asked what she and her husband wished to achieve through their case, she said: “We would like the noise to stop, the nuisance to stop, and we would like to go home and start our lives again after this five-year intermission.”

All the defendants deny that the turbines created any noise nuisance, suggesting that the couple have become “unduly sensitive” to the noise of the windfarm.

The hearing continues.

FROM PENNSYLVANIA

Note from the BPWI Research Nerd: The wind turbine related bird and bat kill rates in Pennsylvania have made news several times in the past few years with numbers considered to be shockingly high.

Sadly these numbers are far less than the turbine related kill rates in the state of Wisconsin

In a recent Green Bay Press Gazette Article , turbine related bat kills in Wisconsin were reported to be as high as 50 per turbine per year, a number that is not not only ten times what the wind companies say is the national average, but it is considered to be unsustainable. To the best of our knowledge the bat kill rates from wind turbines in our state are the hightest in North America. And to the best of our knowledge no one is doing anything about it.

BLOWING' IN THE WIND

READ ENTIRE STORY AT THE SOURCE: Outdoor Trails, Staff Writer, lancasteronline.com

May 16, 2011

By AD CRABLE,

Since 2007, 73 percent of the owners of wind projects in the state have signed the Wind Energy Voluntary Cooperation Agreement.

Among the notable exceptions is Florida Power & Light and its subsidiaries, which have the most turbines in the state. High bat mortality has been found at some of them.

Are proliferating wind turbines killing a large number of birds in Lancaster County and Pennsylvania? No, say the Game Commission and power companies. You’ll have to take their word for it.

Every other day since March 1, a searcher has walked a grid pattern under the two new wind turbines on Turkey Hill, looking for the carcasses of birds that may have been killed by the turning blades.

So, have there been any bats, tundra swans, birds of prey or endangered songbirds unfortunately whacked by the 135-foot-long blades?

Project owner PPL Renewable Energy and the Pennsylvania Game Commission know, but they’re not telling.

Certainly there is no reason to think many birds are being sliced and diced at the Manor Township site.

But shouldn’t the public be allowed to know if there are? After all, the turbines were partially built with federal stimulus funds, your tax dollars.

How about bird scientists with the Pennsylvania Biological Survey, the Game Commission’s independent scientific advisers who monitor the state’s bird populations? Should they be privy to the mortality rate at Pennsylvania’s proliferating wind turbines?

The group certainly thinks so, but the body count is not shared with them, either.

Instead, the Game Commission, apparently to gain turbine owners’ participation, agree to share information with each other but not anyone else.

The agreement states, “It is understood between the parties that information resulting from the cooperator’s compliance with this agreement shall be treated with the highest affordable level of confidentiality available unless otherwise agreed to in writing by both parties.”

When I requested the results of dead bird searches at the Turkey Hill project, PPL said it “was following the Game Commission’s protocol in keeping it in confidence.”

This is the questionable state of affairs several years into wind energy taking hold in Pennsylvania.

The Game Commission is responsible for the state’s birds and mammals.

As wind technology advanced like a sudden gust of wind several years ago, it became clear there were no comprehensive regulations in place to protect wildlife.

Working with energy companies — and at least initially independent advisers such as the PBS — the Game Commission fashioned a voluntary agreement designed to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts on wild animals.

Mainly, we’re talking about birds, and especially bats, which seem to be most prone to running into turbine blades.

Since 2007, 73 percent of the owners of wind projects in the state have signed the Wind Energy Voluntary Cooperation Agreement.

Among the notable exceptions is Florida Power & Light and its subsidiaries, which have the most turbines in the state. High bat mortality has been found at some of them.

In addition to working with the Game Commission to reduce effects on birds, wind companies agree to do pre-construction surveys of birds and animals at proposed sites, and to count any mortality from turbines for two years after startup.

That advance scouting of bird habits and pooling of information has been effective, according to the Game Commission.

Turbines have been moved, bat-roosting locations have been pinpointed and protected, and even a few turbine sites have been abandoned, the agency says.

Indeed, at Turkey Hill, the number of turbines was reduced from four to two, the two turbines that were built were set back farther from the Susquehanna, vegetation is kept close-cropped so as not to attract predators and electrical lines were buried to discourage perching birds near the turbines — all because of pre-construction wildlife surveys, points out Steven Gabrielle of PPL.

“We’re not required to do this. We’re spending a lot of time and money to do this because we respect preserving the environment,” Gabrielle says.

Then why not prove it by making available the results of all those commendable approaches, I say.

Another who is very unhappy with the no-tell approach is George Gannon, a professor of biology and ecology at Penn State-Altoona who worked with the Game Commission in setting up the wind energy cooperative agreement on behalf of the PBS.

He voices this complaint, “There is no independent scientific peer review of anything submitted by the wind companies, as these data are not permitted to be seen by anyone else.

“This is contrary to the very basic premise of how good science works.”

He mentions a 2009 case in West Virginia where a federal court found that a wind company’s hired bat consultants reached a conclusion favorable to the client, but turned out to be inaccurate when the actual data was reviewed.

“It was Ronald Reagan who said ‘trust but verify,’ ” continues Gannon. “Unfortunately, with the system in place, the PGC cannot verify the work submitted by wind developers and the people of Pennsylvania cannot verify either the developers or the PGC.”

In 2007, a PBS wind energy and bats subcommittee accused the Game Commission of “side-stepping” input and review from the PBS in developing the cooperative agreement with wind energy developers.

The group, which included two PGC biologists, unanimously urged the agency to abandon the protocol used in evaluating bats and bat mortality at wind turbine sites and to “develop a more realistic, more meaningful, and more scientifically sound protocol.”

The current agreement “puts the interests of the wind industry before the interests of the Commonwealth,” the PBS group said.

The Game Commission recently issued its second wind energy summary report that includes 150 wildlife surveys and research under the voluntary agreement from 2007 through June 30, 2010.

Among the tidbits (no names, of course):

The number of bat deaths comes out to 24.6 per turbine per year.

Among birds, the average death rate was 3.9 per turbine per year.

Three state-endangered birds were killed: two blackpoll warblers and one yellow-bellied flycatcher. All three were deemed to be migrants passing through and not from local breeding populations.

No large mortality events were recorded, defined as more than 50 carcasses found in a single day.

Surveys conducted as part of the agreement have located new locations of state- and federally-listed bats.

As part of the cooperative agreement, the Game Commission has said it will not pursue liability against cooperating wind turbine companies that kill birds, as long as they comply with the conditions of the agreement.

The agency is proud of its efforts.

“The Cooperative Agreement has allowed Pennsylvania to become one of the national leaders for determining and addressing wildlife impacts from wind energy development, as well as providing critical data needed to address future wind energy project proposals,” said William Capouillez, director of the agency’s Bureau of Wildlife Habitat Management.

With some transparency on behalf of the Game Commission and wind turbine operators, maybe the public would come to the same conclusion.

FROM NORTH DAKOTA

IBERDROLA SAYS FALLING SUZILON BLADES WERE A ONE-TIME ACCIDENT

READ THE WHOLE STORY AT THE SOURCE: Bloomberg, www.bloomberg.com

May 18, 2011

By Natalie Obiko Pearson,

Iberdrola SA (IBE), the world’s biggest renewable energy producer, has found that falling blades from a Suzlon Energy Ltd. (SUEL) generator at a U.S. wind farm was a one-off accident unrelated to the turbine’s history of cracked blades.

“This type of failure is a singular event,” said an Iberdrola report, a copy of which was mailed by Suzlon to Bloomberg News, on a joint investigation by the two companies into the incident.

Iberdrola suspended operations at the 150-megawatt wind farm in Rugby, North Dakota after blades from a Suzlon S88 turbine fell from their mount, the company said on March 21. The same model suffered cracked blades starting in 2007, which had prompted a $100 million global retrofit program by India’s largest maker of windmills for power production.

The accident at Rugby was caused by the failure of a bolt connecting the rotor assembly to the nacelle, the report said. Stress may have been put on the bolt because of a misalignment of the connecting surfaces between the rotor hub and mainshaft flange, it said.

All 70 turbines and 3,360 bolts were inspected and seven bolts replaced as a precaution before Iberdrola and Suzlon agreed the site was safe to return to service, it said.

“Suzlon, who is permanently onsite, will perform additional checks in conjunction with regular maintenance activities,” it said.

Suzlon has more than 2,000 sets of S88 turbines operating worldwide and its global fleet are performing above industry standards, spending only 3 percent in downtime for maintenance, the company said in an e-mail.

Suzlon shares plummeted 83 percent between the time it announced the defect in January 2008 and completed retrofitting in October 2009 as customers, including Rosemead, California- based Edison International (EIX), canceled orders.

Incidents at Wilton Wind Farm Concern Some Residents | Video

SOURCE: http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=48567 May 2, 2011 Brian Howell

Those who live by a wind farm near Wilton are concerned about safety. A blade on a turbine broke in heavy wind over the weekend. Residents say a string of recent incidents show something needs to be done, but state leaders say they are safe. A similar incident occurred earlier this year near Minot and a few months ago, the entire nose of a turbine fell to the ground near Rugby. The fiberglass on this wind turbine blade near Wilton peeled away like a banana in the middle, and residents who live near the wind farm are concerned. Wilton resident James Theurer said: "I would be worried to send my kids up anywhere around on there. I mean, even up onto the roads. The towers are close enough to the roads that if they`re up there doing something that something could happen, in the winter, the ice (could) fly off and hit one of them or, you know, even for their safety out here in the yard." Some say a bigger buffer zone is needed between wind farms and homes. They say the broken blade is proof that turbine failures occur and the risks are too great to place these structures only a third of a mile from homes. But public service commissioners say neighbors are safe, because the farthest the blades would fly if they`re spinning as fast as they could, would be about 200 feet, which they say is well short of the required buffer zone. "We go to great care to make sure that the distance between a turbine and an occupied dwelling is safe under the worst case scenario. I think Burleigh County has certainly done the same thing with their ordinance," said Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer. Residents say natural disasters, like tornadoes, are always on their minds. Cramer said: "You can`t guard against every eventuality. If something like a tornado was to come through, of course, and hit any infrastructure, with the velocity and the speed with which it throws things around, it doesn`t matter if it`s a barn or a grain elevator, or a wind turbine, there are just some things you can`t guard against." Residents say living next to a wind farm is not pleasant. "I wouldn`t buy another piece of property like this, this close to the towers," said Theurer. Cramer says the exact cause of the Wilton blade`s break is unknown, but he points out that a Grand Forks company manufactures the blades, and he says there have been similar problems in other states with the same blades.

Turbulent Wind Turbine Wakes Studied

SOURCE: Earthtechling.com

by Caleb Denison, May 2nd, 2011

Much like the jet engines of a commercial airliner leave “jet wash” in their wake, wind turbines also disturb the air behind them as they spin, if to a lesser degree. This effect is the focus of  a study called the Turbine Wake and Inflow Characterization Study (TWICS). The study is led by Julie Lundquist, assistant professor in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder, and involves researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNLL) in Livermore, Calif.

In a statement, Lundquist points out that the turbines used in today’s massive wind farm projects stretch up into a complicated part of the atmosphere. Apparently, the wakes they create at these heights could affect the atmosphere and influence other wind turbines downstream, possibly causing damage and decreasing efficiency. As part of the study, the team intends to perform experiments that will help make a detailed study of wakes created by wind turbines. The hope is that these profiles could answer questions about how gusts and rapid changes in wind direction affect turbine operations and help turbine and wind farm developers improve layout and design.

image via Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The researchers will use several methods to study the wakes and develop these profiles. One of the methods will involve using an instrument developed at NOAA called a high-resolution scanning Doppler lidar which will monitor a wind turbine at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center in south Boulder. According to LLNL, the lidar “produces three-dimensional portraits of atmospheric activity and can capture a wedge of air up to 3,280 feet from the ground and 4.3 miles long. Robert Banta, an atmospheric scientist with NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory has worked with the instrument and said that, while the wake effect has been studied in wind tunnels and other models, the atmosphere is very different because it is more complicated and variable.

The study will also use a specialized laser called a Windcube lidar and a sonic detection and ranging system, called a Triton sodar, to measure wind and turbulence. What’s more, NREL installed two 135 meter (about 442 ft.) tall meteorological towers to measure air temperature and provide even more wind and turbulence data.



OSHA TO FINE LM WIND POWER $136,500

SOURCE Grand Forks Herald, www.grandforksherald.com

April 25 2011

Tu-Uyen Tran,

In two days in October, inside of wind-turbine blade No. 106, the amount of a hazardous substance called styrene reached 1,889 parts per million and then 2,195 parts per million, triggering air-quality alarms at LM Wind Power in Grand Forks.

Workers were inside the confines of the giant blade, but a supervisor failed to get them out, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Styrene is a hazardous chemical used in fiberglass production and the maximum exposure OSHA allows is 600 parts per million, or ppm.

The October incident and several others throughout August and September at LM’s plant led to proposed fines totaling $136,500, which the agency announced Monday.

LM did not respond Monday to a message seeking comment.

“We’re working with the company,” said Tom Deutscher, area director for OSHA’s Bismarck office. “In the past they’ve really expressed a desire to work with us.”

The latest proposed fines, which LM can challenge, follows another set of proposed fines totaling $92,000 for various incidents that contributed to the death of a worker in July. LM is challenging that fine.

The Denmark-based company employs about 440 in Grand Forks.

Repeat offense

OSHA cited LM with four “serious” violations, with penalties totaling $28,000; two “willful” violations, with penalties totaling $70,000; and five “repeat” violations, with penalties totaling $38,500.

In one violation, OSHA said LM workers did not have proper protective equipment for working with styrene. “Severe chemical burns to the body were reported to the employer,” the agency said.

Excessive exposure to styrene can affect the central nervous system, according to the agency’s website, leading to “complaints of headache, fatigue, dizziness, confusion, drowsiness, malaise, difficulty in concentrating and a feeling of intoxication.” It is also considered a potential human carcinogen.

Maximum exposure

The maximum exposure at 600 ppm is only for a short period of time, Deutscher said. For an eight-hour shift, it’s about 100 ppm.

In another violation, OSHA said LM allowed one worker to be exposed to 277 ppm and another to be exposed to 275 ppm during their entire shifts.

Compounding LM’s violations is the allegation by OSHA that it knew there were problems but did nothing, which Deutscher said led to the willful violations.

The agency cited the fact that LM had air-quality readings for blade No. 106 and blade No. 1790, which reached 1,945 and 995 ppm, but didn’t get workers out from inside the blades as safety rules require.

LM was last cited for such violations in April 2008, OSHA said. Agency records indicate LM paid $17,400 in fines for 10 serious violations and one repeat violation. Those fines were reduced from $29,000 after the company worked with OSHA.

NEXT STORY

CROWDED WIND POWER HEARINGS HIGHLIGHT DIVISION

SOURCE Kennebec Journal, www.kjonline.com

April 26 2011

By Tux Turkel

AUGUSTA — First, Steve Bennett passed out pictures, which showed the wind turbine tower looming over his house in Freedom.

Then, he told the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee about the incessant noise, and the flickering light from rotating blades that enters his window and makes the room appear to be moving.

Anyone who says the intrusions from the Beaver Ridge wind farm don’t lower the value of his home “is delusional,” he said.

Bennett made his comments while testifying Monday on one of 13 bills meant to modify recent state policies that encourage wind power. Drafted by opponents of commercial wind energy, they represent a concerted effort to dilute the substance of a sweeping law passed three years ago to expedite wind energy development in Maine.

Monday was the first of two days of public hearings on the bills, which include a proposed moratorium on new wind power projects, a call to collect information on health effects, and an effort to amend the Maine Wind Energy Act, which was passed without opposition in the Legislature in 2008.

The crowd of people who waited to testify spilled out of the committee room, with both supporters and opponents lining up for the day-long session.

Bennett testified on a bill that would make developers compensate property owners within three miles of turbines for any loss in property value.

Opponents of the bills, largely representing the wind power industry, told the committee that various studies have failed to show that wind energy lowers property values.

Jeremy Payne, executive director of the Maine Renewable Energy Association, pointed to language in the bill requiring a developer to pay the asking price for a home that hasn’t sold within six months. Homes routinely sit on the market longer than that for reasons that have nothing to do with wind power, he noted.

The two sides’ failure to agree even on wind farms’ effect on property values highlights the gulf between those who see wind as an economic opportunity and an energy imperative and those who see it destroying Maine’s forested highlands for little good.

In the weeks ahead, lawmakers must decide whether to begin tinkering with parts of the Wind Energy Act or defer to a process in the law that requires a comprehensive review in 2013. One option, suggested by environmental groups, is to do that review sooner.

The law has frustrated residents, many of them in rural communities in northern Maine and the western mountains, who don’t want scenic ridges lined with 300-foot-tall towers and swirling blades. They have been largely unsuccessful in court challenges, and hope that the new, Republican-controlled Legislature will be more sympathetic to local control and property rights.

Wind opponents have found an unlikely ally in Rep. Larry Dunphy, R-North Anson, a paper mill supervisor who serves on the energy committee. He is sponsoring or co-sponsoring eight of the 13 bills.

A first-time legislator, Dunphy said he didn’t have a strong feeling about wind power until he started hearing from residents in his district who felt threatened by various project proposals in western Maine. He slowly came to the view that the industry provides relatively few jobs and threatens the region’s long-term potential for tourism.

“Once we build those roads and transmission lines and change the face of the mountains, it’s done,” he said.

On Monday, wind power supporters testified that the projects built to date in Maine take up only a tiny land area, analogous to a playing card on a football field. And they zeroed in on a top priority of Republicans including Gov. Paul LePage: the economy.

LePage’s position was represented in testimony by Ken Fletcher, a former Republican lawmaker who served on the committee and was recently appointed director of the state’s energy office. Fletcher will testify over the next two days that the governor opposes all 13 bills.

Payne, citing a recent study, said the wind power industry has invested nearly $1 billion since 2004, of which $378 million has been spent in-state to erect 195 turbines. More than 600 jobs were created in 2008 and 2009, during the peak of the recession.

Most of the turbines were put up by Reed & Reed Inc. of Woolwich. The company’s president, Jack Parker, told the committee that wind power has transformed his business. Any changes to the state law will send a signal to the industry that Maine doesn’t want the capital or the jobs, he said.

“Uncertainty is the enemy of investment,” Parker said.

Parker was accompanied in the committee room by construction workers wearing fluorescent yellow vests. They and other workers provided a show of support for the industry.

Their presence was offset by scores of residents, including sporting camp owners and those who now enjoy pristine, mountain views, who feel they are victims of Maine’s aggressive wind energy policies.

Sally and David Wiley, who have a home near the Fox Islands Wind Project on Vinalhaven, said they reluctantly have decided to sell their coveside house, because of noise from two nearby turbines.

The compensation law would allow residents who are afflicted by wind energy to move and recover the lost value of their properties, David Wiley said. “It’s simply the right thing to do.”

NEXT STORY

FICKLE WINDS, INTERMITTENT SUNSHINE START TO STRESS U.S. POWER SYSTEM

SOURCE: ClimateWire, www.nytimes.com

April 25, 2011

By Peter Behr

The growth of U.S. wind power has begun to create operating challenges for nuclear and coal plants that must be ramped up and down as wind speeds vary, panelists at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy conference reported last week.

The MIT Energy Initiative symposium on integrating large-scale wind and solar power attracted executives of utility and transmission companies, senior government officials and academic researchers, whose comments were off the record. Some papers prepared for the conference were made public by their authors, and they define a growing challenge of matching the current U.S. mix of power plants with new requirements to respond quickly to changes in wind and solar resources.

“The power system needs more flexibility to handle the short-term effects of increasing levels of wind,” said Ignacio Pérez-Arriaga, a professor at Spain’s Comillas University and a visiting professor at MIT.

He and other speakers predicted the expansion of renewable power will continue as a clear option for reducing power plant carbon emissions. Nearly half of global electricity supply will have to come from renewable sources if world carbon dioxide emissions are to be cut to half of current levels by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency, he noted.

But utility regulation has not adapted to a future of high renewables, he warned. And a high penetration of wind and solar generation is likely to make wholesale electricity prices more volatile. These and other potentially disruptive issues “raise concerns about attracting sufficient investment in … flexible plants” in competitive power markets, he said.

A paper by the Brattle Group says the expansion of renewable energy requires “more generation … that can quickly ramp up and down, possibly with short start-up times and minimal cool-down times.” Whether those needs for more cycling and peaking energy can be met by existing generators is not clear and must be given detailed study, the Brattle Group paper says.

Regulation, finance and operational changes needed

In the United States, the drop in demand for power that began with the recession in 2008 has left spare generation capacity that can be used to balance power supply to demand in this decade. But regulation, capital investment policies and operating practices all must change to maximize that potential, speakers said.

And right now, the difference in the peak demand for daytime power is growing in the United States, adding to the need for a more flexible system. Grid operators must plan for a future worst-case scenario of several consecutive days with very low wind and solar power coinciding with very high summer power demand, Pérez-Arriaga said. This is a key challenge in designing the long-term generation mix.

A major focus of the April 20 symposium was the impact of more frequent start-stop cycling of coal-fired generators, as they are called on to balance peaks and valleys in wind output.

Putting coal plants on a more rapid cycling schedule exposes valves, piping and other components to more extreme temperature shifts and potentially damaging changes in steam operation chemistry, said Steve Hesler, a program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, in a conference paper. These can accelerate wear and tear and induce corrosion and stress, raising the risks of cracking and failure of metals and welds, he noted.

Hesler said that increased cycling of coal plants is already evident, resulting from the recession-caused drop in power demand, lower natural gas prices, and expansion of renewable generation. The bulk of the balancing services from U.S. coal plants is being met by smaller units built before 1970 that are typically run at relatively low capacities, rather than newer and larger coal plants whose owners run them as much possible to supply baseload power, Hesler wrote.

The smaller, older plants are most at risk from U.S. EPA regulation and competition from natural gas generation that currently benefits from low gas prices. As these older coal plants are retired, current flexibility of the generation fleet is likely to suffer, speakers said. “We’re running out of flexible coal units,” one participant said. “The newer plants aren’t built well enough to do load following” in response to variations in renewable energy output.

“I can’t imagine owners of coal plants … making significant capital investments around ramping,” said another participant.

Who pays for needed adjustments?

Both large coal units and nuclear plants are intended to be run full time, and the utility industry has spent decades training operators to do that. If they now are required to run the plants at varying outputs to respond to ups and downs in renewable energy, the risk of human error may rise, one conference participant said. “I’m sure they’ll get there, but the human factor is not be underestimated.”

Another participant said that manufacturers have designs for faster-responding gas-fired generators that would be better suited to handle the temperature and pressure stresses of ramping operations. But the industry has not seen utilities “rushing to the door” to purchase more adaptable but more expensive generators. “It’s an economic decision.”

The regulation of the U.S. electric power industry is still aimed at securing power at the lowest cost. But the changes in store for the power sector won’t come for free, one speaker said. “There is no way we can accomplish this at a lower cost. So the question is, who pays?”

Officials of the American Wind Energy Association sparred with a representative of the Bentek Energy consulting firm, who presented a new analysis, “The Wind Energy Paradox.” It asserts that increased wind energy output forces coal generation into inefficient start-stop operations that increase emissions of nitrogen- and sulfur-oxide pollutants.

To the extent that wind power will be backed up by gas-fired generators rather than coal, the gains in carbon emission reductions from wind are diminished, the Bentek report says.

The paper says that the increase in pollutant emissions caused by frequent cycling of coal- and gas-fired generation undermines the wind industry’s claims about the emission reduction benefits from renewables. “It’s not a very cost effective way” of saving carbon, SOx and NOx, the sulfur and nitrogen oxide pollutants, the report says.

AWEA responded via email, “There are more than two dozen different peer-reviewed wind integration studies from the U.S. and Europe, mostly by utilities. They show that the U.S. can accommodate a lot more renewable generation than we have today, at relatively modest integration costs and with significant emissions reductions.”

“Similarly, their [Bentek's] model only looks at hourly snapshots and would therefore exclude the vast majority of the emissions savings caused when wind energy causes emitting sources to turn off for an extended period of time,” AWEA said.

“The Bentek report overstates coal cycling costs and impacts by extrapolating from an extreme case of ramping a generator down from 100 to 40 percent of capacity in an hour which almost never happens. While it is fair to incorporate coal ramping costs and impacts, the study greatly overstates those impacts and does not reflect the way generators are committed and dispatched by grid operators,” AWEA said.

‘Fractured decisions’ expected from states and regions

The conference concluded with the question of whether the patchwork of federal and state regulation and the stalemate over national climate and transmission policies in Congress would help or hinder a transition to more renewable power.

“Considerable progress” is being made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, state regulators, regional transmission organizations and utilities in planning to accommodate more renewable power, tuning market incentives to create a more flexible system, and fairly allocating costs for this transition, the Brattle Group report says.

The reality is that states and regions will have the most to say about this process. “We do not see any grand, unifying theory of cost allocation for the costs of renewable variability, nor do the institutional differences, legacy generation, or indigenous resources across regions of the U.S. … lend themselves to uniform solutions,” the report says.

“While the road ahead may be contentious and laborious, there seems to be no technical or economic reason why a well-functioning regulatory system cannot find its way to a sustainable, reliable and economical destination.”

Other conference participants were far less optimistic that a divided Congress and White House can rationalize climate and energy policies.

A larger, more sophisticated transmission network, including long-haul high-voltage direct-current lines, would expand the footprint for solar and wind generation, smoothing the daily and hourly variations in renewable energy output, speakers noted.

One industry executive said that many papers submitted to the conference assume that a stronger inter-regional transmission network would ease the integration of renewable power into the grid. With some exceptions, notably in Texas, that goal faces huge political and industry opposition, the speaker said.

“We have no right to that assumption in the U.S., and we shouldn’t make it. We should assume instead we will be making fractured decisions.”