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.”

SCIENTIST CHALLENGES THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM THAT WHAT YOU CAN'T HEAR WON'T HURT YOU

SOURCE: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institutes of Health,

July 28, 2010

A wind turbine is a rotary device with a gigantic propeller as big as a football field that turns in the wind to generate electricity. Although wind turbines are more often found in Europe than in the United States, they’re rapidly becoming more popular here as a “green” energy source. Most people consider that a good thing, except the rotors of wind turbines also generate noise, particularly in the infrasound range, that some people claim makes them feel sick.

Since frequencies that low can’t be heard, many scientists who study hearing have assumed they can’t have any effect on the function of the ear. But a little known phenomenon related to the infrasound generated by wind turbines is making some scientists challenge the common wisdom that what we can’t hear won’t hurt us.

Infrasound is a subset of sound broadly defined as any sound lower than 20 Hertz (Hz), which is the lowest pitch that most people can hear. It’s all around us, even though we might only be barely able to hear a lot of it. The whoosh of wind in the trees, the pounding of surf, and the deep rumble of thunder are natural sources of infrasound. Whales and other animals use infrasound calls to communicate across long distances. There is also a wide range of manmade infrasounds, for example, the noise generated by industrial machinery, traffic, and heating and cooling systems in buildings.

Alec Salt, Ph.D., is an NIDCD-supported researcher at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the inner ear. For years, he and his group have been using infrasound as a way to slowly displace the structures of the inner ear so that their movement can be observed. In their experiments, infrasound levels as low as 5Hz had an impact on the inner ears of guinea pigs.

“We were doing lots of work with low-frequency tones,” says Salt, “and we were getting big responses.” What they were observing in the lab, however, didn’t jibe with the scientific literature about hearing sensitivity, which was in general agreement that the human ear doesn’t respond to anything as low as 5Hz. Since human ears are even more sensitive to low frequencies than guinea pig ears, that didn’t make sense.

Salt and a colleague conducted a literature search, focusing not on papers about hearing sensitivity, but on the basic physiology of the inner ear and how it responds to low-frequency sounds. During the search, Salt found anecdotal reports of a group of symptoms commonly called “wind turbine syndrome” that affect people who live close to wind turbines.

“The biggest problem people complain about is lack of sleep,” says Salt, but they can also develop headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability and fatigue, dizziness, and pain and pressure in the ear.

Continuing his search, Salt began to see a way in which infrasound could impact the function of the inner ear, by the differences in how inner ear cells respond to low frequencies. In function, our ear acts like a microphone, converting sound waves into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. It does this in the cochlea, the snail-shaped organ in the inner ear that contains two types of sensory cells, inner hair cells (IHCs) and outer hair cells (OHCs). Three rows of OHCs and one row of IHCs run the length of the cochlea. When OHCs are stimulated by sound, special proteins contract and expand within their walls to amplify the vibrations. These vibrations cause hairlike structures (called stereocilia) on the tips of the IHCs to ripple and bend. These movements are then translated into electrical signals that travel to the brain through nerve fibers and are interpreted as sound.

Only IHCs can transmit this sound signal to the brain. The OHCs act more like mediators between sound frequencies and the IHCs. This wouldn’t matter if the OHC behaved the same way for all frequencies—the IHCs would respond to what the OHC amplified—but they don’t. It turns out that OHCs are highly sensitive to infrasound, but when they encounter it, their proteins don’t flex their muscles like they do for sound frequencies in the acoustic range. Instead they actively work to prevent IHC movement so that the sound is not detected. So, while the brain may not hear the sound, the OHC responses to it could influence function of the inner ear and cause unfamiliar sensations in some people.

Salt and his colleagues still aren’t sure why some people are sensitive to infrasound and others aren’t. It could be the result of anatomical differences among individual ears, or it could be the result of underlying medical conditions in the ear that cause the OHCs to be ultrasensitive to infrasound.

Regardless, it might not be enough to place wind turbines further away from human populations to keep them from being bothersome, since infrasound has the ability to cover long distances with little dissipation. Instead, Salt suggests wind turbine manufacturers may be able to re-engineer the machines to minimize infrasound production. According to Salt, this wouldn’t be difficult. “Infrasound is a product of how close the rotor is to the pole,” he says, “which could be addressed by spacing the rotor further away.”

Salt, AN and Hullar, TE, “Responses of the ear to low frequency sounds, infrasound and wind turbines.” Hearing Research online 16 June 2010

COUNTY BOARD APPROVES WIND TURBINE ORDINANCE

SOURCE: Kewaunee County News, www.greenbaypressgazette.com

July 28 2010

By Kurt Rentmeester,

A week after the Kewaunee County Board approved a wind power resolution, some leaders question why it’s being done if a state Public Service Commission that sets such requirements is only weeks away.

In addition to new PSC requirements, Kewaunee County Supervisor Chuck Wagner said the county can’t regulate town zoning.

“The county rule is a recommendation. My problem is it’s all irrational hype. These people are making recommendations without having any significant data to back them up,” Wagner said.

The resolution addresses the same concerns that the towns of Carlton, West Kewaunee, Two Creeks, Mishicot and Two Rivers approved last month, as they are part of a proposed area for 111 wind turbines established by Oregon-based Element Power.

Wagner suggested tabling the resolution until July 18, but the board adopted the resolution on a 17-3 vote, with support from County Supervisors Jim Abrahamson and Bruce Heidmann. County Supervisor Jan Swoboda moved to adopt the resolution and Donald Delebreau seconded it.

“My intention was to give the support to town of Carlton and I felt there was no reason we don’t support other communities,” Swoboda said. “The PSC obviously will do what they think is best for the state.”

County Supervisor Linda Sinkula supported the measure in a Health Board resolution July 13 before bringing it to the board.

“At least it’s letting our legislators know there’s a concern and that we’d just like them to look at this,” Sinkula said. “We’d like them to look at the PSC rulings before they’re approved.”

Wagner said supporters have not investigated where the state and the municipalities are on these issues. He also said the state comment period is over and the state Legislature this year will not be back in session.

Supervisor Bruce Heidman said the measure needed to be rewritten.

“It was poorly written. That was my main problem with it,” Heidmann said. “There’s was nothing specific about the setbacks and other aspects of the resolution.”

County Supervisor Jim Barlow said the county needed to act on the resolution to make its case to state legislators.

“In part, if the PSC is going to have a ruling by the end of August, we can’t wait because they’re going to have something by the end of the month,” Barlow said. “We need to do what we can. Unfortunately, all we can do is end a resolution expressing some of our wishes.”

Residents speak

Andy Knipp, a town of West Kewaunee resident, said his greatest concern about wind turbines involve is the health impact on residents and on land values.

“Before anyone allows this to be built, the residents want to know what impact it will have on property values,” Knipp said.

Tina Steffen, a town of West Kewaunee resident, asked the county board to fight on her behalf to establish a policy to protect residents from the impact of wind turbine expansion.

“We have a Smart Growth Plan in the township,” Steffen said. “I’m not allowed to put a 50-story building up. These towers are 50 stories high and they’d be going up in an agricultural zone.”

Mike Paral of Kewaunee said costs for renewable energy were handed down from Madison, but local governments are nearly broke. The state can’t use taxes anymore, he said.

“Now I’m not against wind power,” Paral said. “You can have all the wind power you want — where it belongs. There are a lot of areas in the United States that have wide-open areas that have a thousand of these. Wisconsin is not one of them, much less Kewaunee.”

SECOND FEATURE

Download the resolution from the Brown County board of health and human services by CLICKING HERE

 PUBLIC COMMENT TO PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION FROM RESIDENT OF PSC APPROVED GLACIER HILLS PROJECT CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION:

To the landowners in the Ledge Wind Project:

If you believe wind turbines are a good fit for a farm operation, a free source of clean energy, and a benefit to your community, I invite you to come to the Glacier Hills Project and witness  the total devastation occuring during construction.

Seeing firsthand what is happening here would turn any responsible landowner's stomach.

Heavy rains have created erosion that will take years to repair.

The number of huge construction equipment and trucks burning fuel is staggering.

Good productive farmland is being ripped apart, and will never be the same.

The level of disgust is even affecting the most loyal supporters of this project.

Hatred of this project is growing worse as each day passes, and we will be forced to live with this for the rest of our lives, all because a few irresponsible landowners, myself included, were taken in by wind developers lies.

All this for chump change.

 I affirm that these comments are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.
 

Gary Steinich

Cambria, WI

 SECOND FEATURE

TESTIMONY

Comments submitted by Wisconsin resident, Joe Yunk, to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, July 2010

My name is Joe Yunk; I currently reside at the address of N2630 Townhall Rd in Kewaunee County.

My prior address was North 7905 County Trunk P, Algoma, Wisconsin which was in the Wisconsin Public Service (WPS) wind farm by Rio Creek, Wisconsin. I moved from the Algoma address to my current address on or about October 2009 to get away from the effects of the WPS wind farm.

I have been following the current proposed Element Power LLC (EEP) wind farm development that I now find myself living in.

I want you to know what I went through while living in the WPS wind farm. I am hopeful that this information will help you make the right decisions with regard to any PSCW approvals for any other wind farms in Wisconsin.

I would hate to see other peoples’ lives to be as negatively affected as mine has been as a result of living in a wind farm. There is no doubt in my mind that I will relive the awful experience once again if the EEP wind farm for Kewaunee County is approved.

In 1998 the WPS wind farm construction began about 300 yards from my home. I had built this home in 1980 on 6.5 acres of land which was our home farm that I lived on all my life. I was born on November 28, 1954. I had two turbines within one-half mile, one of those turbines was about 1,300 ft from my house and 600 ft from my property line.

In the summer of 2000, the turbines of the WPS wind farm began operation. Inasmuch as I had lived on this farm all my life, I knew the neighbors well, and it wasn’t long after the turbines began operating our lives began to change.

In conversations with my neighbors, I learned, they too were experiencing constant disturbing noise, shadow flicker and just the constant presence of the turbines. By presence I felt uneasy and irritated by the size and closeness of these 220 ft. turbines.

All the people living in this wind farm were guinea pigs/lab rats, no one knew what we were in for. It was in the fall of 2000 when neighbors and families began to divide over the effects of the wind farm. And that continued throughout the time I lived there.

When the turbines began to operate, a hotline was established directly to WPS to report any problems.

I had beef cattle for about two years prior to the turbines operating and never lost any animals. However, shortly after the turbines began to operate, I had beef cattle become ill and die. I reported this on the WPS hotline and nothing was done. I lost ten animals valued at $5,000 [each] over a two year period and couldn’t afford to continue.

Because of noise complaints to WPS, within a year, two families’ homes were purchased by WPS and demolished.

Additionally, at the same time WPS was settling nuisance suits with other neighbors. They were offering to buy out my neighbors but offered prices way below market value to stop the complaints.

However, they never offered me any buyout opportunity and I wanted out! It was hard for me to leave my home place of 54 years. Over time, however, living with the constant sleep deprivation and irritation of the noise and flickering I decided to sue WPS to have them pay me fair market value for my home so I could afford to move.

I knew that I might be risking everything I had worked for all my life, but I didn’t care at this point. I didn’t even try to sell my place outright because I didn’t want anyone else to have to live as I did in this wind farm. I really wanted WPS to buy me out and to demolish the home.

I retained an attorney and filed suit with WPS. Shortly after, WPS offered me $110,000 on my property that appraised for $168,000. I decided not to take their offer, but proceed with the suit.

I gave deposition in the summer of 2008, we were scheduled to go trail in September 2009 and WPS offered me a settlement in August of 2009 for $163,000. With this settlement I was responsible for my attorney fees. My attorney advised me to accept this offer. After paying my attorney fees, I ended up with $158,000.

Later, my home and property were listed with a real estate agency for sale by WPS for 30% below the appraised value.

From my experience in living in this wind farm, it is apparent that setback away from property lines is absolutely necessary. I could hear the turbines a mile away from my house. The PSCW’s standard setback from a property line should be 1.5 miles.

Now, my new home and property on Townhall road is within the confines of the EPP proposed wind farm. I`d like to know what you recommend I do now?

WIND TURBINES IN THE NEWS:

Annie Hart Cool of Falmouth said a turbine was erected within 1,500-feet of her home and has disrupted her husband’s sleep so severely he’d forced to sleep in the basement. He is an air-traffic controller, she added, and can’t afford to lose sleep. And the turbine is absolutely adversely impacting property values, she said.

“Wind turbines are like living next to a train or a dump,” Cool said. “These are realities, I’m a real person and this is really happening to me.”

 SOURCE: State House News Service, www.wickedlocal.com

In this short clip, Dr. Jevon McFadden pushes for a noise level that may be more beneficial to wind developers than residents of rural Wisconsin.

If the World Health Organization says nighttime noise levels should be 40 decibels or less why is he recommending a louder noise limit?

Does he know something they don't?

Unfortunately for residents of rural Wisconsin, no one is asking the question.

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SECOND FEATURE

 NEIGHBORS ON THE BARRICADES AGAINST

WIND TURBINES IN DENMARK

 SOURCE:  Jyllandsposten: http://jp.dk/indland/article2131636.ece

July 24, 2010

By Peter Skeel Hjorth

The postcard image of Denmark in harmony with wind turbines has shattered.

Protests from more and more Danish neighbours of wind turbines on land have stopped wind power projects and made local politicians reluctant to approve licences. This is evident from a front page article in yesterday’s edition of Jyllandsposten which is one of the country’s biggest national newspapers.

Denmark has up till now systematically been highlighted as the good example where the population live in harmony with more than 5000 wind turbines that produce 20 per cent of the country’s electricity. The postcard image of Denmark with Vestas and Siemens as the main producers of wind turbines has shattered.

Several places around the country see acrimonious conflicts between the authorities and neighbours of wind turbines, writes Jyllandsposten.

The case about a national test centre is not the only example of growing resistance. With a broad majority behind it in the Danish parliament the government will build a test centre for seven 250 meter high sea wind turbines in Northern Jutland and clear 5 square kilometres of forest area to create the right wind conditions. For more information click here www.nationalttestcenter.dk.

One of the strongest critics of Danish wind power, the well-known journalist and columnist Claes Kastholm Hansen, calls it a democratic scandal.

“People are thoroughly fed up having their property devalued and their sleep disturbed by big wind turbines 130 and up to 200 meters high” , says the chairperson of a new Danish national association to Jyllandsposten.

The association was started about a year ago. 40 Danish protest groups have already joined, and more are on their way. Several places protests have put a stop to the erection of wind turbines or made the council exercise restraint, writes the newspaper. On Sealand the Swedish energy giant Vattenfal has been forced to abandon the erection of three huge wind turbines. A narrow majority in the local council voted no to two of them after severe pressure from protesting neighbours.