Better Plan, Wisconsin

FROM MICHIGAN

RIGA TOWNSHIP WIND TURBINE UNLIKELY

READ ENTIRE STORY AT SOURCE: WTOL, www.wtol.com

July 7, 2011

By Tim Miller,

Opponents of wind turbines in Lenawee Co. may have won a bigger victory then they realize.

Thursday, the developers announced they are backing down.

Wednesday night, hundreds of people against wind turbines cheered at a meeting when the Riga Township trustees approved a new zoning ordinance.

It allows wind turbines, but puts major restrictions on where they can go.

Developers must have setbacks from non-participating properties, of four times the height of the turbine. Noise generated by the turbines cannot exceed 45 decibels during the day, and 40 at night.

Because of the strong setbacks, Exelon Wind and Great Lakes Wind, partners in the so-called Blissfield Wind Project, say they cannot put one turbine in Riga Township, despite having more than 4,500 acres of land available under signed agreements with landowners.

Doug Duimering of Exelon Wind said, “We don’t have enough land to place turbines legally in Riga Township. Being compliant with the technical limits in this ordinance is impossible.”

Duimering said they’ve determined Exelon would have to get almost every landowner in the township to sign on.

“Frankly, they need to be sited in the west where there is a lot of open space,” Kevon Martis of the Informed Citizens Coalition said.

Martis says the Riga trustees sided with the citizens, over outside developers.

But many in his group at first saw it as a compromise, and not the total victory it appears to be.

“It took a little while on the phone and we will be handling out some mailers and stuff around the township to make people aware,” Martis said.

Exelon Wind will now turn its attention to neighboring Ogden and Palmyra Townships, hoping any ordinance they approve would have fewer restrictions. The Informed Citizens Coalition likely has more battles ahead.

Exelon Wind says it will have representatives at any future meetings in the other towns.

Another wind developer, Juwi Wind LLC, has been interested in Riga Township.

An official told WTOL 11 he can’t comment yet on their future plans.

But if the surrounding areas use the Riga ordinance as a model, the developers’ green energy dreams may drift away.

From the UK

WIND TURBINES HIGH COURT HEARING: DAVIS FAMILY FIND PLENTY OF SUPPORT

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE AT SOURCE: The Guardian

July 2011 09:00

A COUPLE who have been thrust into the national media spotlight with their High Court wind farm battle say everyone has been “very supportive” so far.

Television cameras, photographers and reporters have been following Jane and Julian Davis’s plight since the trial started on Monday.

The case will decide whether the sound produced by eight wind turbines near to their farm in Deeping St Nicholas – which they claim left them unable to sleep – is causing a noise nuisance.

The couple were joined by their daughter Emily (21) at the High Court to hear opening submissions on Monday.

Mrs Davis said: “The High Court is a wonderful old building. It’s very atmospheric. It’s quite amazing to be there.”

She added: “Everyone has been very supportive. People have seen the story and made their own minds up about whether there is an issue or not.

“I think it’s less about wind farms than a family where things have gone wrong.”

The judge, Mr Justice Hickinbottom, visited Deeping St Nicholas for several hours with legal teams on Tuesday.

Yesterday Mrs Davis was due to give evidence to the court, while her husband will appear in the witness box today. Two of the defendants – Nicholas Watts and RC Tinsley Ltd – are due to give their evidence on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Davis family are seeking an injunction for the alleged noise to be stopped by removing two turbines and modifying the operation of a third, and for their losses and damages of about £150,000 and legal costs to be paid.

Alternatively, they want the defendants to pay for a new three-bedroom house with the same acreage of land they had at the farm which is estimated to cost about £260,000, as well as losses, damages and legal costs.

Their story so far has appeared on the BBC, Daily Express, Daily Mail,

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.

STUDY FINDS WIND TURBINES CAN BE TOUGH ON NEIGHBORS PROPERTY VALUES

READ ENTIRE STORY AT SOURCE: The Post-Standard, www.syracuse.com

July 6, 2011

By Charles McChesney 

Potsdam, NY — Wind farms reduced the value of nearby real estate in two Northern New York counties, but not in a third.

Martin D. Heintzelman and Carrie M. Tuttle, of Clarkson University, studied 11,331 real estate transactions over nine years and found that the value of property near wind turbines dropped in Clinton and Franklin counties. But they found no impact in Lewis County.

The paper they produced, “Values in the Wind: A Hedonic Analysis of WindPower Facilities,” hasn’t been finalized, Heintzelman said, but an earlier version has been shared by opponents of wind farms. (Hedonic is a economic term referring to estimating value or utility).

A March version of the paper, distributed by opponents of a wind-farm proposal for Cape Vincent in Jefferson County, found an overall decrease in values among properties neighboring wind turbines in Clinton, Franklin and Lewis counties.

But Heintzelman said the research was reviewed, and combining the counties, it turned out, “was not a reasonable approach.”

The refined findings are, he said, “somewhat more nuanced.”

Heintzelman said past research, including a study of Madison County, showed wind farms had little or no impact on real estate values. But he found that hard to believe.

“Anytime you put a large industrial or manufacturing facility in someone’s backyard,” he said, there is bound to be some impact.

So he and Tuttle, a graduate student, statistically analyzed real estate data, mostly from the state Office of Real Property Services.

They found that placing a wind turbine a half mile from the average property in Franklin or Clinton counties would result in a loss of property value of $10,793 to $19,046. The impact drops off as properties become more distant, he said. At the distance of three miles, the impact is $2,500 to $9,800.

But Lewis County, with the 321-megawatt Maple Ridge Wind Farm, was different. “Lewis County does not see negative impacts,” Heintzelman said.

Asked whether the study’s findings hold lessons for communities weighing wind-power projects, Heintzelman said it could be worth considering how those who have wind turbines near, but not on, their property might be compensated if they see their real estate drop in value.

Other than that, he said, “Sadly, no, I don’t think I have any specific advice.”

[Click here to download the study ,courtesy of National Wind Watch

THE REALITY OF WIND POWER

 energy.aol.com 27 June 2011 By Margaret Ryan,

Wind turbines cost more to operate and maintain than planned, often have poor reliability, and place costly strains on other generators warns one early wind adopter, but so far the public is willing to bear the costs.

Kevin Gaden, wholesale power director for the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska (MEAN) and NMPP Energy, a public power consortium covering parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming and Colorado, detailed his members’ experiences at the American Public Power Association conference in Washington last week.

Gaden said his members decided a decade ago that renewable energy was coming and they wanted to gain experience in the sector. They found their customers embraced the idea, and readily agreed to pay more to get renewable power.

MEAN now gets 5% of its electricity from five wind facilities, including one in South Dakota that averages more than 40% capacity factor, far better than the U.S. average of 30%.

But Gaden warned a packed conference session that public perception of wind has not caught up with the realities of operating wind in a commercial generating system. While newer turbine designs and engineering have improved, he said, “Overall reliability is less than advertised.”

Turbines are still faulting on issues like finding the right lubricating oil for the Nebraska climate, Gaden said. Maintenance is costly because specialized equipment and personnel have to be brought to remote wind sites, making long-term relations with a reliable turbine supplier a must.

When they’re damaged by things like lightning strikes, repairs can require a crane that can reach the turbine, 200-300 feet above the prairie, at $1,000 an hour, he said.

State renewable energy credits, seen by renewables advocates as a way to compensate for higher costs, sell for $1 apiece and make little difference, he said.

As in other parts of the country, wind is often plentiful at night and not available during the day, and drops off during summer peaks, so wind power isn’t there when it is most needed. Gaden said the Great Plains winds track better with consumers’ winter demand.

But that wind variability, with wind often gusting and then calm in quick succession, puts a costly burden on other generators in the system, he said.

Less Than Zero

Interstate grid operators take day-ahead bids for hourly power and fill their anticipated needs with the cheapest bids first. But all generators are paid the same amount as the highest bid taken. Gaden said wind operators benefit from tax credits for every megawatt-hour generated, so they bid into the system at zero or less. That ensures their generation will be taken, and they will get the price paid conventional generators.

That means generation from baseload units is only partially bought, and sometimes large units have to cycle up and down to accommodate the wind. This type of operation makes them far less efficient than the consistent operation they were designed for, and the increased wear and tear raises maintenance costs.

Gaden noted grid operators, who must keep the power supply stable, are looking at creating regional “energy imbalance markets” to account for the extra costs of offsetting renewable variability. Gaden said federal researchers had estimated ancillary resource costs at $2 per megawatt-hour, but in Nebraska, it turned out to cost $4.60.

Gaden said he’d asked Department of Energy experts how much carbon emissions were saved by wind, net of the less efficient operation forced on conventional fossil units. The answer, he said, was “we don’t know,” but the experts acknowledged there is an impact.

In the future, Gaden said, his public power members will probably continue to buy small shares of electricity from large wind projects, as long as customers want it.

REGULATORY UNCERTAINTY FOR WIND FARM DEVELOPERS

Read Entire Story Source: The Daily Reporter

By Clay Barbour

July 5, 2011

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — In the past six months, three wind farm developers with a combined investment of more than $600 million have stopped operations in Wisconsin — victims of regulatory uncertainty and what some now perceive as a hostile business environment for “green” energy.

The wind farms — planned for Calumet, Brown and Green Lake counties — would have created more than 1,100 jobs and helped Wisconsin reach its goal of generating 10 percent of its energy through renewable sources by 2015.

But new wind regulations, more than two years in the making, were shelved as the Public Service Commission works on a more restrictive set. Combined with a series of initiatives pushed through by Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature, industry officials and environmental advocates say Wisconsin seems more concerned with making green than being green.

“In a typical year, you win some and you lose some. It’s about a 50-50 breakdown,” said Jennifer Giegerich, legislative director for the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. “But this year, it has been one loss after another. We are going backwards, fast. And it’s scary.”

One day after Walker was elected governor, lame-duck predecessor Gov. Jim Doyle halted progress on a planned $810 million federally funded Madison-to-Milwaukee passenger rail project.

The governor-elect made no secret of his desire to kill the proposal. After his election, little stood in the way.

Since January, Walker and the GOP have proposed more than a dozen pieces of legislation that some say roll back or weaken environmental laws.

They exempted a parcel of land in Brown County from wetland protections, weakened the state’s clean water rules, cut state money for recycling by 40 percent, ended the office of energy independence, and got rid of loan and grant programs that encourage companies to become energy efficient.

GO TO THE DAILY REPORTER’S WIND ENERGY PROJECT PROFILE PAGE

Several proposals still are in play, including bills that change where utilities can buy renewable energy and how long renewable energy credits last. Advocates say both measures would severely damage the health of clean energy companies in the state.

“They are trying to take us backwards environmentally 20 or 30 years,” said state Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison, who worked for the Sierra Club for years. “It’s this corporate mindset. It has taken over.”

But for every bill that environmental advocates see as bad, others see as valuable and necessary.

Ask Walker why he killed the train and he will tell you it was because the project was a boondoggle and the state’s efforts were better focused on roads and bridges.

Ask him why he weakened clean water rules and he says it was to provide relief to local governments from statewide mandates.

Ask him why he fought to stop the new wind siting rules and he says he was protecting the property rights of people who live near wind turbines.

“Business and environment can go hand-in-hand,” Walker said. “In the past, some pushed radical policies at the expense of jobs. I believe we can both conserve natural resources and promote economic prosperity.”

There have been some bipartisan victories for the environmental movement. An attempt to rush through a controversial bill to speed up reviews of permit applications for mining died after questions were raised by members of both parties. A proposal to pare phosphorus rules also was dropped for lack of support. And originally, Walker planned to cut all money for the state’s recycling program as well as end the mandate enforcing it.

State Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, led the fight to restore most of the money and the mandate.

The co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee said he fought for the program because it’s better to invest in recycling now than to pay for more landfills later.

“But we have limited resources,” he said. “And we are always trying to find that right balance between what is achievable and what is just a lofty goal.”

Probably the oddest aspect of the business-vs.-environment debate is the role of wind energy. One might assume a fast-growing “clean energy” industry such as wind would appeal equally to both sides. But so far, that has not been the case.

The argument over wind power has divided entire communities in the state’s rural areas.

Opponents complain of diminished property values, noise, moving shadows cast by the giant turbines and loss of sleep from the vibrations.

Advocates say most of those problems are unfounded and the rest are overblown. They argue wind energy is good policy and good business for the state.

Industry insiders hoped the new rules would end years of localized fights that killed at least 10 proposed wind farms in the past eight years and scared off several others.

But earlier this year, the governor introduced a plan to quadruple the required distance between wind turbines and neighboring property.

Though the governor’s proposal was not taken up, a legislative committee suspended the new rules and asked for major revisions.

“I had concerns about the rights of property owners from the get-go,” said state Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, committee co-chairwoman. “In the end, we felt it was better to send the rules back until a balance between the wind industry and landowners could be worked out.”

Currently the PSC is holding meetings with advocates and opponents, trying to iron out a compromise. Neither side wants to start from scratch, but PSC officials said they are at a standstill.

“The uncertainty is killing us,” said Dan Rustowicz, of Minnesota’s Redwind Consulting, a company trying to develop a wind farm in Buffalo County. “It’s a shame because Wisconsin has good wind. But we have other options. If you don’t have the political support here, why try and push that rope?”

NOISY WIND FARM LEGAL FIGHT BEGINS

Read entire article at source:, www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk

July 5, 2011

A couple who claim their lives have been blighted by the “horrible noise” of a nearby wind farm are seeking thousands of pounds damages in the High Court.

A hearing was told that Jane and Julian Davis moved out of Grays Farm in Deeping St Nicholas into rented accommodation in December 2006, six months after the eight-turbine wind farm began operating about half a mile from their home.

The tenant farmers claim the noise of the turbine blades became intolerable, disrupting their sleep and making them feel ill and it was so severe that it has made the farmhouse no longer marketable as a family home.

In what could be a landmark case for hundreds of other families, lawyers for the couple are seeking an injunction to modify the windfarm by removing two turbines and cutting the operating hours of a third machine to reduce the noise. They are also seeking £400,000 damages.

Alternatively, they are seeking damages plus a like-for-like replacement of their farm home worth around £2.5 million.

The defendants in the case include R C Tinsley Ltd and Nicholas Watts, who rented out their land for the wind farm, and Fenland Windfarms Ltd and Fenland Green Power Co-operative Ltd, operators of the turbines.

Before the hearing, Mrs Davis said: “I want to stop the noise so we can go back home and relax and sleep and live like we did five years ago.

“It is a horrible noise. It is unpredictable but occurs mainly in the course of the night.

“There is a hum and ‘whoom, whoom, whoom’ that are alien to an isolated rural environment.”

The hearing also heard claims from Peter Harrison QC, representing the couple, that even when they carried out their own tests to prove that the noise was there, Mr and Mrs Davis faced “an industry operator which refused to acknowledge the noise their turbines make and the effect that has had on the lives of these claimants”.

The defendants’ lawyers say it is “not doubted” that the Davis family has been affected by noise but say it is an “over-reaction” to what they can hear or they have become “unduly sensitive” to wind farm noise.

They deny “that there has been in the past or is presently any actionable nuisance” and that the defendants have reasonably attempted to investigate complaints.

The hearing continues.

From Kansas:

A TRANSMISSION PROBLEM

READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT THE SOURCE Salina Journal, www.salina.co

July 4, 2011

By MICHAEL STRAND

“Most of us found out about it when we started seeing stakes in our front yards,”

ELLSWORTH — The first time many property owners heard of plans to build a high-voltage transmission line along their street was when the marker flags and stakes showed up.

And by then, the decision had already been made.

“Most of us found out about it when we started seeing stakes in our front yards,” said Caleb Schultz, one of about 100 people who live along 10th and 11th roads in western Ellsworth County, where Wind Capital Group is planning to build a line to connect a wind farm in the northern part of the county to a power substation in Rice County. Construction is scheduled to start in September.

The 134 turbines will generate 201 megawatts of power, and “one of the necessary parts of the project is getting the power to market,” explained Dean Baumgardner, executive vice president of Wind Capital.

Baumgardner said the 31-mile route was chosen as the most direct route between the wind farm and the substation.

“Given federal regulatory agencies, environmental concerns and the effect on landowners, we want as direct a route as possible,” he said. “Fish and wildlife and the Corps of Engineers prefer we use areas that are already developed — rather than go through pristine areas.”

This doesn’t seem right

Kent Janssen said he first found out about the proposed transmission line by reading about it in the minutes of an Ellsworth County Commission meeting.

“But I had no clue about the size, that it was going to be a main transmission line, with 75-foot poles,” he said. “Just to have stakes start showing up, and being told this is going to happen just doesn’t seem right.”

Janssen said the line will run within 100 yards of some homes, and predicts the line will lower property values.

“There’s plenty of room to run this and not get within a quarter or a half-mile of a house,” he said, noting that such transmission lines usually cut cross country, rather than following a road.

Susan Thorton is also “disappointed” with both Wind Capital and the county commission.

“I really was disappointed that we found out through neighbors,” she said. “They should have gotten our opinions before decisions were made. We at least would have felt like we had our say — and if they’d listened to our concerns, it might not have turned out that way.”

It’s out of our hands

Ellsworth County Commissioner Kermit Rush said the discussion now needs to be between Wind Capital and people along the proposed route.

“It’s kind of out of our hands,” he said. “We have an agreement to let them use the right of way.”

Rush said that in the past, the county has worked with two other wind farm projects, “and those were never a problem.”

“As commissioners, we make a lot of decisions,” Rush said. “If we had to call the public each time, I’m not sure we’d get anything done.”

We all like wind power

None of those interviewed said they oppose wind power in general, or the Wind Capital project.

“I have no problem with wind power, or with transmission lines,” Thorton said. “Just not right on top of our homes.”

“I want to stress, I am for wind energy, and I’m for the transmission line,” Janssen said. “I’m happy for the guys up north that are getting the towers — we just want the line run in a responsible way.”

Janssen added that he’d been neutral on wind power up to 2006 — when the first wind company to build in Ellsworth County hosted a meeting with county commissioners to outline its plans to the public.

Done

As for not talking to people along the route first, Baumgardner said he’s been involved in projects like this for years, and “No matter who you talk to first, the other one always thinks you should have talked with them first,” he said. “We approached the county and township people first. We’ve met with every landowner along the route, now — but hadn’t when we first met with the local governments.”

NOISY WIND FARM DROVE COUPLE OUT OF THEIR HOME

READ ENTIRE STORY AT THE SOURCE The Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk

July 4, 2011

A couple who say they were driven out of their family farm by the “nightmare” hum of wind turbines have mounted a ground-breaking £2.5 million compensation bid in London’s High Court.

Jane and Julian Davis, moved out of Grays Farm, Deeping St Nicholas, near Spalding, Lincs, four years ago because of the strain of living with the incessant noise.

And now they are taking on a local windfarm and other defendants in a pioneering case which will test the law on whether the sound created by the turbines amounts to a noise nuisance.

Mrs Davis, whose husband’s family cultivated Grays Farm for over 20 years before they were uprooted by the noise, said it had been a “nightmare living there”, and that they had no option but to leave.

Speaking before today’s High Court hearing, she added: “The noise is unpredictable and mainly occurs at night, you can never get to bed with the assurance that you will stay asleep.

“It’s incredibly unpredictable.”

In a bid to recreate the effect, she mimicked a sound she said was “something between a whirr and a hum”, adding that it was the peculiar, insidious “character” of the noise which made it so unsettling.

“You can’t even have a barbeque,” she said.

The couple are suing local landowners – RC Tinsley Ltd and Nicholas Watts, on whose land some of the turbines have been sited – as well as Fenland Windfarms Ltd and Fenland Green Power Cooperative Ltd, who own and operate the turbines.

Their lawyers are seeking either a permanent injunction to shut down the turbines or damages of up to £2.5 million to compensate the couple for the disruptive effects on their lives.

They have not returned to their home since 2007, and are now living in Spalding.

Mrs Davis said before the hearing she had no quarrel with the appearance of the turbines – only with the unsettling effects of the noise.

“We want them to stop the noise so we can move back in,” she said, adding: “We want them to recognise that the noise is a nuisance so we can go back and get some rest and sleep like we did five years ago. ”

The couple’s QC, Peter Harrison, said that, for his clients, windfarms “have emphatically not been the source of trouble-free, green and renewable energy which the firms promoting and profiting from wind energy would have the general public believe”.

The Davis’ had, instead, faced an operator which “has refused to acknowledge the noise their turbines make and the effect that that has had on the lives of these claimants”.

“Their lives have been wholly disrupted by that noise”, he told the court, also alleging that the main operator had tried to “impose a code of silence on those examining or recording the noise that these turbines in this location have caused”.

They had, he claimed, tried to “attack the credibility and reasonableness of the claimants rather than examine what they were actually being told”.

“From the defendants’ witness statements, and the material they wish to put before the court, it seems that those attempts to undermine the claimants, to say they are over-sensitive, that they are exaggerating and over-reacting, will continue during the trial,” the barrister added.

He claimed the defendants had been irked by Mrs Davis’ eagerness to “speak publicly about her experiences” and that she was being attacked for simply refusing to “put up with the noise”.

“To not quietly accept your fate, it appears, is the ultimate provocation,” he said.

The QC said the case was not a test of the Governement’s Green policies, but concerned the Davis’ wish to “get on with their lives and get back into their house”.

Although the case will hinge on technical arguments about measuring the “Amplitude Modulation” (AM) given off by the turbines, there are also vexed issues about the extent to which the defendants were given a fair opportunity to monitor the noise levels.

The hearing before Mr Justice Hickinbottom continues.

FROM HAWAII

BIG WIND PROJECT HAS TO BE KILLED BEFORE IT KILLS OUR POCKETBOOKS

READ ENTIRE STORY AT THE SOURCE: Honolulu Star-Advertiser, www.staradvertiser.com

July 3, 2011

By Mike Bond,

Like some bizarre weapon of the former Soviet Union, Big Wind is finally being revealed for what it is: an engineering and financial tsunami that will enrich its backers and leave the rest of us far worse than before.

Its promised 400 mega-watts (MW), at the outrageous cost of $3 billion to $4 billion, makes no economic sense, but the full story is even worse.

Because wind is so inconsistent, Big Wind will produce only about 20 percent of that fictional 400 MW, or 80 MW (the Bonneville Power Administration, with 12 percent of America’s wind generation in one of its windiest locations, gets only 19 percent of its installed capacity).

And because most wind power is produced in non-peak hours when it can’t be used, turbines must then be shut down (curtailed). This “curtailment factor” lowers Big Wind’s potential 80 MW to about 48 MW. An additional 2-3 MW will be lost across the cable, bringing Big Wind down to 45 MW.

Moreover, wind requires backup fossil generation to run parallel offline for when the wind fluctuates or stops.

Called spinning reserve, this backup generation wastes millions of kilowatts and brings the Big Wind’s net generation down to about 40 MW.

And it’s why countries with extensive wind power like the United Kingdom, Denmark and Germany are finding wind power doesn’t reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

Hawaiian Electric Co. could build a new 40 MW power plant on 30 acres of Oahu rather than 22,000 acres of Molokai and Lanai, and with no billion-dollar cable, for a fraction of Big Wind’s costs and carbon dioxide emissions. Or for Big Wind’s $3 billion, HECO could install rooftop solar on 165,000 homes, generate more power than Big Wind, and create 1,000 Hawaiian jobs, whereas Big Wind will create only a handful.

With rooftop solar, customers need only HECO for load-balancing and low-demand night use, thereby depriving HECO of its cash cow, the captive consumer. That’s why HECO has limited rooftop solar to 15 percent on its circuits. It’s as if we’re told we can’t grow vegetables in our own gardens; we have to buy Mexican vegetables from a supermarket chain.

Conservation is even easier, since 2008 state agencies have cut electricity use 8.6 percent at almost no cost. This could easily be implemented throughout Oahu, twice Big Wind’s net generation and saving $3 billion to $4 billion.

In fact, no developer will even touch Big Wind unless the entire $1 billion for the undersea cable can be charged to HECO customers, raising our electricity bills by 30 percent.

Contrary to the governor and HECO et al., Big Wind should be in public scrutiny. This is known as democracy.

And they should admit other potential tragic costs of this project, including the desecration of 35 square miles of beautiful coastal wilderness, possible damage to archaeological sites and endangered birds, a reduction in neighboring property values, and dynamiting in America’s finest coral reef and the Hawaiian National Whale Sanctuary.

No wonder that opposition to Big Wind is 98 percent on Molokai and nearly that on Lanai.

And when our nation is suffering the worst financial crisis in its history, a pork-barrel project adding billions more to our deficits seems nearly treasonous.

“The truth shall make us free” is a maxim of democracy. The opposite is also true: Cover-ups steal our freedom.

The governor, HECO et al. should realize that Maui, Lanai and Molokai are not colonies, nor part of the former Soviet Union. It’s time we were given the truth about Big Wind, so this ridiculous project can be quickly killed before it eats us all out of house and home.

Molokai resident Mike Bond is a former CEO of an international energy company, adviser to more than 70 utilities and energy companies, and author of studies on electricity transmission, cable operations and power generation alternatives.

When Water Overpowers, Wind Farms Get Steamed.

 SOURCE: National Public Radio, www.npr.org

July 3, 2011

by Martin Kaste

The Pacific Northwest is suffering from too much of a good thing — electricity. It was a snowy winter and a wet spring, and there’s lots of water behind the dams on the Columbia River, creating an oversupply of hydropower. As a result, the region’s new wind farms are being ordered to throttle back — and they’re not happy.

It seems like a simple problem to fix: if there’s too much water behind the dams, why not just dump some of it? Just bypass the power generators and spill it? Would that we could, says Doug Johnson, spokesman for the Bonneville Power Authority. When you spill water over a dam, he says, it gets mixed with nitrogen from the air — and that’s not good for the salmon.

“What it can do is give the juvenile fish a condition similar to the bends, similar to what scuba divers experience,” he says.

So Bonneville — a federal agency that runs the power transmission system in the region — has been ordering wind farms offline, usually in the middle of the night when demand is lowest. Wind farm companies are crying foul.

Another Option

“This is not about fish protection, this is strictly about economics,” says Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman for Iberdrola Renewables, which has 722 wind turbines in the Pacific Northwest.

“There’s options,” she says. “In other parts of the country — in fact in every other region — these types of transmission providers will just go into a negative pricing situation.”

Negative pricing means paying people to take your surplus power. The wind farm companies say the dams could run at full tilt and Bonneville could pay customers in other regions — like California or British Columbia — to take the surplus.

Five wind power companies have filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force Bonneville to start doing so. Bonneville would prefer not to have to pay to get rid of power, Johnson says, because that cost would be a burden to power customers in the Northwest.

“What we’ve said is no. We’re willing to give away energy — we give away energy to a whole lot of people when we’re faced with the situation — but if we were going to just pay negative prices, and incorporate that into our wholesale power rate, and this is the only set of customers that are affected, we just aren’t prepared to do that,” he says.

A Challenge For Wind Power

Complicating matters is the fact that wind farm generators make much of their income from federal tax credits. The government pays them per megawatt hour, so they really don’t like it when those blades stop turning.

They also say Bonneville is forcing them to break contracts with utilities in places like California, which are required to buy a certain amount of renewable energy. Wind farms have encountered similar problems around the country. Mark Bolinger studies renewable energy markets for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“Transmission is probably one of the largest issues facing wind development in the U.S.,” he says. “In 2010, roughly 5 percent of all wind generation that could have happened was actually curtailed due to transmission constraints.”

Sometimes the reason is infrastructure — lack of room in the grid — and sometimes it’s financial, as in the case of Bonneville’s reluctance to pay other regions to take the surplus. Finally, there’s the economy. Until customer demand for power picks up some more, the tricky problem of too much power isn’t likely to go away.