Click on the image below to watch a crop duster fly through an industrial wind farm with the turbines turned off. Many aerial applicators have expressed concern about the safety of flying in wind projects.

SECOND FEATURE

What's the "Dean Report" and why does it matter to wind project residents? Here's what windaction.org has to say about it

The Dean Report

(CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD)

Acciona Energy's Waubra wind farm, located in western Victoria, Australia is the largest operating wind facility in the southern hemisphere.

Excerpt from the Dean Report: 

Further research has shown that the acoustic energy from wind
turbines is capable of resonating houses, effectively turning them into
three-dimensional loud speakers in which the affected residents are now
expected to live.

The phenomenon of natural resonance combines to produce a cocktail of
annoying sounds which not only disturb the peace and tranquility
once-enjoyed by the residents, but also stimulate a number of disturbing
physiological effects which manifest in the physical symptoms described
above.

In the opinion of the author, backed up by residents' surveys and scientific
measurements and analysis of the noise of turbine can be a significant
detractor for those living within 10 kilometres of them.

More research is urgently needed to determine the extent of the nuisance
effects and what setbacks are required to minimise the negative effects on
resident communities.

The long term medical implications are considerable and need to be
researched before any further applications for wind farms are consented.

Failure to do this, in the opinion of the author, will significantly effect
the utilization of this technology and will produce long-term consequences
that will be to the detriment of the whole of society.

Notes:

[1] The Waubra wind energy facility is located near Ballarat, in western
Victoria, Australia. It is the largest operating wind facility in the
southern hemisphere consisting of 128-1.5 megawatt turbines for a total
installed capacity of 192 megawatts. The turbines were first turned on in
February 2009; the facility was fully operational by July 2009.
[2] Noel Dean and his family moved away from their farm in the spring of
2009 when the headaches and other symptoms worsened

LIGHTNING STRIKE BURNS DOWN WIND TURBINE

Source: Sioux City Journal, www.siouxcityjournal.com

August 2, 2010

By Michele Linck,

PETERSON, Iowa — A lightening strike started a fire in a wind turbine Saturday morning, destroying the turbine and one of three new blades that had been laid out on the ground beneath it in order to be installed as replacements. Damages totaled $760,000, according to Peterson Fire Chief John Winterboer.

The turbine was owned by Aes Wind Generation Inc., of Alta Iowa.

Winterboer said the call came in at 7:30 a.m., but firefighters were on the scene until 3:30 p.m. because they had to wait for the turbine and its three blades to burn enough to fall the 210 feet to the ground before they could extinguish the smoky blaze.

Winterboer said the company valued the turbine at $700,000 and the new blades at $60,000 each. He said his department was able to save two of the new blades. “We got the fire out and saved them,” he said on Sunday.

Passersby who called 911 initially reported several turbines were on fire, Winterboer said, but it was only drifting smoke they saw amongst other nearby turbines.

Although Peterson is in Clay County and the burning turbine was is Buena Vista County, the Peterson Fire Department was the closest and got the call. Winterboer said that was the third or fourth turbine fire his department had put out in about 12 years.

MORE ABOUT WIND TURBINES AND LIGHTNING

Wind Turbines and Lightning

SOURCE: http://www.nachi.org

by Nick Gromicko and Rob London

 

 Wind turbines are tall, isolated towers composed of sensitive electronics, all of which are factors that make lightning a persistent and real threat. A properly installed lightning protection system, however, will intercept the lightning and effectively and safely conduct it to the earth without risking physical destruction to the wind turbine. This issue has become increasingly critical as wind turbine systems become more sophisticated and vulnerable to lightning. Lightning protection systems costs less than 1% of the total capital expenses while improving the cost-effectiveness and reliability of a wind turbine substantially. 

First, a few facts to convey the danger that lightning poses to these power-producing windmills…

• According to a German study, lightning strikes accounted for 80% of wind turbine insurance claims.
• During its first full year of operation, 85% of the down time experienced by one southwestern commercial wind farm was lightning-related. Total lightning-related damage exceeded $250,000.
• The German electric power company Energieerzeugungswerke Helgoland GmbH shut down and dismantled their Helgoland Island wind power plant after being denied insurance against further lightning losses. They had been in operation three years and suffered more than $540,000 (USD) in lightning-related damage.

Wind Turbine Component Damage

 

The following systems, arranged in order from most to least vulnerable, may be damaged by lightning strikes:

• damage to the control system. These include sensors, actuators, and the motors for steering the equipment into the wind. According to the updated National Fire Protection Association handbook: “While physical blade damage is the most expensive and disruptive damage caused by lightning, by far the most common is damage to the control system”;
• damage to electronics. Wind turbines are deceptively complex, housing a transformer station, frequency converter, switchgear elements, and other expensive, sensitive equipment in a relatively small space;
• blade damage. A lightning strike to an unprotected blade will raise its temperature tremendously, perhaps as high as 54,000° F (30,000° C), and result in an explosive expansion of the air within the blade. This expansion can cause delamination, damage to the blade surface, melted glue, and cracking on the leading and trailing edges. Much of the damage may go undetected while significantly shortening the blade’s service life. One study found that wood epoxy blades are more lightning-resistant than GRP/glass epoxy blades;
• damage to generators; and
• batteries can be destroyed, or even detonated, by a lightning strike.

Note that lightning dangers increase with turbine height.

 

The National Lightning Safety Institute finds that lightning codes, in reference to the danger lightning poses to wind turbines, “provide more benefit to commercial vendors than to those seeking relief from lightning's effects” and that “devices that claim to offer absolute protection abound in the marketplace, confusing specifying architects, engineers, and facility managers.”

 

An article published in Solar Age Magazine offers the following recommendations for wind turbine lightning protection and inspection:

• Every wire that enters the electrical panel box should have a surge suppressor grounded to an existing ground rod. The installation should have only one ground rod, which should make “better contact with the moisture in the ground than do the tower footings.”
• Lightning rods are not likely to protect the windmill’s electronic equipment. Furthermore, lightning rods may obstruct the flow of wind around the turbine’s blades, reducing the system’s efficiency. This advice contrasts with that offered by Machine Design Magazine, which states that “Franklin-type lightning rods protect [wind turbines] against direct lightning strikes.”

In summary, wind turbines are extremely vulnerable to lightning, but the danger can be mitigated by lightning protection systems.

VIDEO: THROWING CAUTION TO THE WIND:

 Wind farms are springing up as easy investments in green energy. Scientific studies have raised serious concerns about the impact they could have on human health. But few are paying much attention.

As Sylvia Squair reports, some doctors and scientists are now joining concerned citizens, urging the government and the industry not to throw caution to the wind.

SECOND FEATURE:

What started out as a welcomed clean energy source has now become a public health issue, Neil Andersen said, and will only get worse when a second identical turbine on the same parcel becomes operational in the next six months.

“We’re seriously thinking about selling our home and getting out of here,” Andersen said. “I have headaches and my head is spinning. My wife wakes up crying her head off. We don’t know what to do.”

Turbine Noise Ruffling Feathers

SOURCE: Cape Cod Times, www.capecodonline.com

August 1, 2010 By Aaron Gouveia,

FALMOUTH — Neil and Elizabeth Andersen prefer open windows to air conditioning, but their home is now hermetically sealed despite the warm and breezy weather.

Although Neil, 57, and Elizabeth, 53, have spent more than 20 years enjoying Falmouth’s fresh air and working in their meticulous gardens on Blacksmith Shop Road, they now remain indoors and devote effort to blocking out the constant noise emanating from Wind I, the 400-foot-tall, 1.65-megawatt wind turbine whirling less than 1,500 feet from their front door.

What started out as a welcomed clean energy source has now become a public health issue, Neil Andersen said, and will only get worse when a second identical turbine on the same parcel becomes operational in the next six months.

“We’re seriously thinking about selling our home and getting out of here,” Andersen said. “I have headaches and my head is spinning. My wife wakes up crying her head off. We don’t know what to do.”

On Friday, Neil Andersen said his wife’s doctor told the couple Elizabeth has already suffered at least some hearing damage. She is scheduled to see a specialist in two weeks and was also given a prescription to combat vertigo.

The couple believes the cause of their medical maladies is the noise from the turbine, which they say has left them with dizziness, headaches and many sleepless nights.

The $4.3 million town-owned turbine began whirling in March. Since then, town officials say they have received “sporadic complaints” about noise from a handful of neighbors, usually when wind speeds increase.

‘I have to move away’

The turning blades are visible through the trees from the Andersens’ house. On Thursday, with westerly winds blowing at approximately 12 mph, the sound of the turbine was audible, but tamer than usual, the Andersens said.

Described as alternating between the “sound of a hovering jet that never lands” and a pronounced “whooshing” noise during periods of higher winds, Neil Andersen said he wears noise-reducing headphones while in his yard and has installed fountains in his garden to drown out the noise from the turbine.

Elizabeth Andersen sleeps with multiple fans going and simultaneously listens to a white noise machine. Neil Andersen said the only way he can sleep is to retreat to the basement.

The Andersens have complained to selectmen, the board of health, zoning officials and, on Thursday, even attempted to file a battery complaint against the turbine at the Falmouth Police Station.

The couple is not alone.

Barry Funfar, a 63-year-old veteran and Ridgeview Drive resident who lives roughly 1,700 feet from the turbine, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder before the turbine’s installations, but he said the noise from the windmill is exacerbating his condition.

What’s worse, it is also driving a wedge between Funfar and his wife because she does not want to move from the home they’ve shared for 30 years.

“My doctor tells me there’s no way I’ll be able to cope living next to that windmill,” Funfar said. “I have to face it. I have to move away.”

But Dr. Robert McCunney, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Biological Engineering and a staff physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, spoke in Bourne last month and said studies have not show a link between low-frequency sound from wind turbines and adverse health effects.

McCunney, who did not return a phone call seeking comment, said last month that the “swish, swish” of the blades rotating through the air causes only annoyance among people who live near turbines.

Sound study under way

Dr. Michael A. Nissenbaum, a diagnostic radiologist at the Northern Maine Medical Center, disagrees with McCunney.

Nissenbaum spearheaded a pilot study in Mars Hill, Maine, in which he examined people living within 3,500 feet of 27 1.5-megawatt turbines, and compared them with people of similar demographics who lived three miles away.

He found the 22 people living nearest to the turbines took four times as many new or increased prescription medications, and also suffered higher incidences of sleep deprivation.

“The question then becomes, ‘Do industrial-sized wind turbines placed close to people’s homes result in chronic sleep disturbances?’ The answer is an unequivocal yes,” Nissenbaum said.

Nissenbaum recommended any turbine of more than 1.5-megawatts should be at least 7,000 feet away from homes.

Back in Falmouth, Town Manager Robert Whritenour said he is aware of the noise complaints and the town has taken steps to mitigate the problem.

The Wind I turbine automatically shuts off when wind speeds reach 22 mph, Whritenour said, to reduce turbine noise when it is loudest. The town also hired Harris Miller Miller & Hanson Inc. of Burlington to conduct a sound study, the results of which will be released in the next two weeks, Whritenour said.

According to state Department of Environmental Protection air pollution and quality guidelines, a source of sound violates noise regulations when it increases the ambient sound level by more than 10 decibels.

The baseline noise level varies depending on the location.

Christopher Senie, a Westboro-based attorney representing 14 Blacksmith Shop Road neighbors, said noise tests should have been conducted earlier and he criticized town officials for skirting their own zoning requirements.

Senie said erecting a turbine in an industrial zone should have required a special permit process through the Falmouth Zoning Board of Appeals. But Senie said town officials mistakenly believe the special act of the Legislature authorizing the town to build and finance the turbine gave them a “free pass” regarding the special permit. “Towns are not exempt from their own zoning laws,” he said.

When asked about the special permit, Whritenour said, “I’m not going to get into that,” and he stressed that the project went through a detailed permitting process and followed all necessary rules “step by step.”

Senie and his clients met with the board of health recently to air their grievances. He wants to create a new health regulation regarding wind turbine noise and submit it to the board, which could then adopt it without approval from town meeting.

Falmouth Health Agent David Carignan said members of the board of health are doing independent research to familiarize themselves with the issue and will consider Senie’s suggestions.

“We’re not saying no to the people who want to talk about it,” Carignan said. “The board has not deliberated on a specific course of action other than to continue to participate in the discussion.”

THIRD FEATURE

Turbines too loud for you? Here take $5,000

“The lady that came said everyone else signed,” said Jarrod Ogden, 33, a farmer whose house would be directly opposite several 300-foot turbines once Shepherd’s Flat is completed. “But I know for a fact that some people didn’t. I’m all for windmills, but I’m not going to let them buy me like that. I think they’re just trying to buy cheap insurance.”

 SOURCE: The New York Times, www.nytimes.com

July 31 2010

By William Yardley,

IONE, Ore. — Residents of the remote high-desert hills near here have had an unusual visitor recently, a fixer working out the kinks in clean energy.

Patricia Pilz of Caithness Energy, a big company from New York that is helping make this part of eastern Oregon one of the fastest-growing wind power regions in the country, is making a tempting offer: sign a waiver saying you will not complain about excessive noise from the turning turbines — the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of the future, advocates say — and she will cut you a check for $5,000.

“Shall we call it hush money?” said one longtime farmer, George Griffith, 84. “It was about as easy as easy money can get.”

Mr. Griffith happily accepted the check, but not everyone is taking the money. Even out here — where the recession has steepened the steady decline of the rural economy, where people have long supported the massive dams that harness the Columbia River for hydroelectric power, where Oregon has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives to cultivate alternative energy — pockets of resistance are rising with the windmills on the river banks.

Residents in small towns are fighting proposed projects, raising concerns about threats to birds and big game, as well as about the way the giant towers and their blinking lights spoil some of the West’s most alluring views.

Here, just west of where the Columbia bends north into Washington, some people are fighting turbines that are already up and running. In a region where people often have to holler to be heard over the roar of the wind across the barren hills, they say it is the windmills that make too much noise.

“The only thing we have going for us is the Oregon state noise ordinance,” said Mike Eaton, an opponent of the turbines.

Oregon is one of a growing number of places that have drafted specific regulations restricting noise from wind turbines. The Oregon law allows for noise to exceed what is considered an area’s ambient noise level by only a certain amount. But what those ambient levels are is sometimes disputed, as is how and where they should be measured.

And while state law limits turbine noise, the state office that once enforced industrial noise laws, housed within the Department of Environmental Quality, was disbanded in 1991, long before wind power became a state priority.

“We have the regulations still on the books, and entities are expected to comply with those regulations,” said William Knight, a spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Quality. “But there really isn’t anybody from D.E.Q. going around to find out if that’s occurring. I’m not sure who you’d call out there in Columbia Gorge.”

Local government is one answer. In May, after testimony from private acoustic experts, the Morrow County Planning Commission agreed with Mr. Eaton, his wife, Sherry, and a small group of other opponents that Willow Creek, a wind farm directly behind the Eatons’ modest house on Highway 74, was indeed exceeding allowable noise levels. The commission ordered the company that operates the site, Invenergy, to come into compliance within six months.

Invenergy quickly appealed — and so did the Eatons and their allies. The county’s board of commissioners also asked the planning commission to clarify its decision. A hearing is scheduled for this month.

“The appeals were all based on the same questions,” said Carla McLane, the county planning director. “What does ‘not in compliance’ mean, and what does it take to be in compliance in six months?”

Opponents say the constant whooshing from the turbines makes them anxious and that the low-level vibrations keep them awake at night. Some say it gives them nausea and headaches. Many other residents say they hear little or nothing at all, and the question of whether windmill noise can harm health is in dispute.

Critics say those complaining about Willow Creek are just angry that they were not able to lease their land to wind developers. Some opponents say they would be happy if Invenergy just turned certain turbines off at night, but others say they want reimbursement for losing their pastoral way of life.

“What we’re really trying to do is get Invenergy to the bargaining table,” said Dan Williams, a builder who is part of the group frustrated with the noise from Willow Creek.

While Invenergy is still dealing with the noise issue even after Willow Creek, which has 48 turbines, has been up and running for more than 18 months, Caithness Energy, the company asking some residents to sign waivers allowing noise to exceed certain limits, hopes it can solve the issue up front. It also has more at stake.

Caithness is building a much larger wind farm adjoining Willow Creek called Shepherd’s Flat. The new farm is expected to have 338 turbines and generate more than 900 megawatts when it is completed in 2013, which would make it one of the largest wind facilities in the country.

Large farms like Shepherd’s Flat are regulated by the state. Tom Stoops, the council secretary for the Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council, said that large projects must prove they would comply with the noise ordinance and that noise waivers, or easements, were among the solutions. Asked if it was common for companies to pay people to sign such easements, Mr. Stoops said, “That’s probably a level of detail that doesn’t come to us.”

Ms. Pilz, the local Caithness representative, did not volunteer the information that Caithness offers people money to sign noise easements, though she eventually confirmed in an interview that it did. She also would not say how much money it offers, though several property owners said she had offered them $5,000.

“What we don’t do in general is change the market price for a waiver,” Ms. Pilz said. “That’s not fair.”

Some people who did not sign said that Ms. Pilz made them feel uncomfortable, that she talked about how much Shepherd’s Flat would benefit the struggling local economy and the nation’s energy goals, and that she suggested they were not thinking of the greater good if they refused.

“The lady that came said everyone else signed,” said Jarrod Ogden, 33, a farmer whose house would be directly opposite several 300-foot turbines once Shepherd’s Flat is completed. “But I know for a fact that some people didn’t. I’m all for windmills, but I’m not going to let them buy me like that. I think they’re just trying to buy cheap insurance.”

Dr. McMurtry on wind turbine concerns.

Click on the image above to hear why this Canadian doctor is concerned about the current state of wind turbine siting regulation.

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

Contracts signed by local landowners in Rock County were sold when Acciona bought the rights to develop an industrial scale wind project from fledgling wind developer, EcoEnergy.

EcoEnergy did not disclose how much profit they made from selling local contracts to the Spanish wind industry giant, but local landowners will not see a higher payout as a result, or an option to get out of the contract.

Five continguous Rock County townships have adopted ordinances that require wind developers to site turbines at least 2640 feet from non-participating homes.

In a matter of weeks, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin will issue wind siting rules that will overturn those ordinances along with those of many other Wisconsin Towns and Counties.

Better Plan Wisconsin [BPWI], has repreatedly asked Acciona about its plans for the wind project in Rock County which at one time included siting 67 industrial scale wind turbines in the Town of Magnolia's 36 square miles.

Acciona has thus far failed to respond.

Landowners who signed contracts with EcoEnergy early on are now angered to find that the offer of a reported $4,000 per turbine per year is far below the going rate being offered to farmers in other communities in our state.

Some have expressed a desire to get out of those contracts and renegotiate something on par with what other wind developers are offering. Others want out because they have witnessed the damage and fragmentation of farm fields left behind by wind development in other parts of our state and want no part of it.

Still others have seen their families and communities torn apart by this issue and no longer feel that it is worth it.

However, landowners in Brown and Columbia Counties are finding out just how hard it is to get out of the contracts they signed at the kitchen table with the once 'friendly' wind developer.

Doing business on a handshake has long been the tradition in rural Wisconsin.

It was something that worked well before out-of-state wind developers began to show up at farmsteads with big promises and iron clad contracts.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, like a bad neighbor, Acciona is there too.

SOURCE: Windaction.org

The Dean Report

(Posted July 28, 2010)