Better Plan, Wisconsin

At 500 feet, the turbines going up in the Town of Glenmore in Brown County are the tallest in the state. Those in the wind industry continue to insist the presence of wind turbines has no effect on property values. 

ACCIONA ENDS PLANS FOR WIND FARM IN MAGNOLIA

SOURCE: Janesville Gazette

October 4, 2010

By Gina Duwe

MAGNOLIA TOWNSHIP — Plans that once called for up to 67 wind turbines dotting the countryside of Magnolia Township have ended.

An official with Acciona, a global energy company, confirmed that it has decided not to develop the EcoMagnolia project.

“That’s a case where I think … it was not an adequate wind resource for us to commit our full development for the project area,” said Chip Readling, lead developer for projects in several states, including Wisconsin.

Data gathered from a meteorological tower that stood for about three years at County B and Highway 213 showed “the project did not align well with our business goals,” he said.

“(It was) just a matter of wind,” he said.

Acciona still owns the project rights.

Plans are not as certain to the north.

The met tower that’s been up for nearly two years in Union Township will be taken down after the corn surrounding it is harvested.

The company’s meteorological team will analyze the data gathered from that tower—at County C and Highway 103—and decide whether to pursue a project, Readling said.

“We think it’s certainly a site we want to continue to watch,” he said.

If the company decides to move forward, the next step would be putting up a taller met tower—262 feet tall—to record wind speeds at the height of a turbine hub.

Readling said the company had no timeline and was not to the point of having landowners sign contracts.

He also said he could not release any of the wind speeds from either of the met towers.

In 2008, EcoEnergy said the average wind speed was 14.7 mph, measured at 197 feet on the Magnolia tower. The average was for a year starting in April 2007.

EcoEnergy first started the development of the Union project to include three turbines west of Evansville with Wisconsin Public Power buying the power produced for sale to Evansville Water and Light customers.

Acciona bought the rights for the Union and Magnolia projects from EcoEnergy in 2007.

Lost in the shuffle of the sale was the town permit for the Union met tower. The permit expired last fall, and Acciona failed to renew it. The town and company settled on a $6,000 fine for being out of compliance. Acciona officials are finalizing paperwork to make the payment, Readling said.

Reaction

Tom Drew, the landowner who hosted the met tower in Magnolia, said he hadn’t heard anything from the company since spring.

The plan to end the project was news to him.

He had not signed any contracts beyond the met tower, he said, and wasn’t really disappointed about the project not moving forward.

“To me, it was just nice clean energy,” Drew said. “That part is what I looked at. I never thought it would be any big windfall for anybody.”

When the project first started, his wife, Laurie, worked part time for about 18 months for EcoEnergy, setting up the company booth at events. She said she did it “to get a pulse on the company.”

Spring Valley resident Lynda Kawula doesn’t find relief in Acciona’s plan for Magnolia. Kawula and her husband, Kevin, live on the township border and feared having to move if turbines went up too close to their house.

“I don’t think it’s over yet,” she said.

Her research about wind turbines led her to start a website, betterplan.squarespace .com, advocating against wind farms that are sited too close to residents.

“If they could get these things sited correctly, everybody would come out happy,” she said.

Since the development plans emerged, the Kawulas have become engrossed in local and state government, have followed and taped the meetings of the state wind siting council’s rule-making process and visited with residents living on wind farms.

She plans to write a book about the wind industry in Wisconsin.

She has spent 10 nights in three different locations among two wind projects in the state.

“The relief part is funny,” she said. “Because I’m so tied up with people who are living with the turbine (problems) now, even if it’s not coming here right now, I’m still concerned about them and the little help they’re getting.”

WIND FARMS CAN CHANGE THE WEATHER

SOURCE: USA TODAY

October 4, 2010

By Doyle Rice

Large wind farms can influence local air temperatures, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The data was collected over seven weeks in the summer of 1989 at the San Gorgonio wind farm near Palm Springs, Calif.

The study revealed that the wind farm caused the local area to cool down during the day and warm up at night, according to authors Somnath Baidya Roy and Justin J. Traiteur of the University of Illinois.

For instance, on one day of the study, the temperature at 1:00 p.m. upwind of the wind farm was about 100 degrees, but was about 93 degrees downwind, due to the effects of the windfarm.

The authors theorize that the turbulence generated by the turbine rotors, which can enhance the vertical mixing of warm and cold air, led to the temperature changes.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the only meteorological field campaign conducted in an operational wind farm," the authors write in the study. "The wind farm consisted of 23-meter-tall turbines with 8.5-meter-long rotor blades arranged in 41 rows that were spaced 120 m apart."

Because many wind farms are located on agricultural land, the scientists say, local weather changes can affect crop productivity.

And what can be done? "The impacts of wind farms on local weather can be minimized by changing rotor design or by siting wind farms in regions with high natural turbulence," the study found. "Using a 25-year-long climate dataset, we identified such regions in the world. Many of these regions, such as the Midwest and Great Plains in the United States, are also rich in wind resources, making them ideal candidates for low-impact wind farms."

The authors add that "wind power is on the verge of explosive growth, most of it being in the industrial sector consisting of large wind farms."

As USA TODAY reported last year, wind projects are being proposed near the Texas Gulf, the Atlantic Coast, the Great Plains and Upper Midwest.

President Obama said in April 2009 that he would allow turbines along the Atlantic as one way to help meet a goal by environmentalists and the industry of generating 20% of the nation's electricity through wind by 2030. Currently about 1% of U.S. power comes from wind, according to the American Wind Energy Association.