At an open meeting held Thursday at the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, commissioners discussed the the text of the proposed wind siting rule.

DOWNLOAD THE PROPOSED RULE BY CLICKING HERE

Commissioner Lauren Azar suggested a setback of 2200 feet from homes unless a developer can prove  a turbine could be sited closer to a residence and still meet noise and shadow flicker standards. 

She said the setback distance was based on information from PSC staff which indicated a 45dbA noise standard would be met at that distance.

However, Commissioner Azar also noted that the World Health Organization recommends 40 dbA as a nighttime noise standard, and indicated was the noise limit she preferred.

Residents under contract with developers could waive all standards and have turbines placed as close as 1.1 times the turbine height to their homes.

Chairman Callisto and Commissioner Meyer didn't offer their immediate opinions on Azar's suggestions.

Continued discussion of wind siting rules is scheduled for Monday.

Wind farms and wildlife: The heartbreak of the Horicon

Wind farms and Bats:

How are bats being killed in wind farms?

WIND FARM CONSTRUCTION VIDEOS

Video of what kind of changes a wind turbine brings to a farmer's fields.

Trenching and electrical cables

Access roads and soil disturbance

Torn up roads and compacted soil

Heavy equipment and cranes compact soil

How big are the shadows cast by industrial scale turbines? What do they look like? Why are they a problem?

What is shadow flicker like on houses in Wisconsin wind projects?

 SECOND FEATURE

RESIDENTS SAY STATE RULES FOR WIND FARMS LACKING

SOURCE: Sun Journal, www.sunjournal.com

August 19 2010

By Eileen M. Adams

DIXFIELD — Panelists and townspeople at a public hearing Wednesday night blasted what they believe are insufficient state regulations to govern the half-dozen or so wind farms proposed for western Maine.

The hearing was sponsored by the River Valley Alliance and the Friends of Maine’s Mountains, groups that oppose such developments. Other groups, such as the Friends of Spruce Mountain in Woodstock, were also at the hearing.

Among the panelists was Robert Rand, an acoustical engineer from Brunswick, who described the potential effects on people of the sounds made by the blades and generators of turbines.

During much of his talk, he played a recording of a turbine operation he said was made at a small operation in Freedom.

Such noise, he said, has the potential to adversely affect people living as close as 2 miles from an operating turbine. He said the frequency and decibel levels could result in the inability to sleep, high blood pressure and other maladies.

Paul Druan, chairman of the Weld Windpower Committee that is charged with developing a wind farm ordinance, said that when he attended a similar forum with the sound of turbines turning, one man became nauseated.

Sean DuBois, whose residence was not immediately available, said he believed more studies should be conducted on the possible adverse health effects.

“Don’t you think it’s too early to judge health effects?” he said.

Rand said he didn’t think so.

“There are people in Mars Hill, Freedom and an island on the coast who definitely have problems,” he said. “I’m concerned about the lack of peer-reviewed studies by the companies.”

He said that sounds from turning turbines do not decrease as quickly over water as they do over land.

A home should not be located less than 2 miles from a turbine, and even then, the sounds could affect people, he said.

Also speaking was Karen Pease, a resident of Lexington Township which is next to the state’s largest proposed wind turbine project in Highland Plantation. Independence Wind LLC, whose principals are former Gov. Angus King and Rob Gardiner, have proposed construction of 48 turbines.

She spoke of the effect the siting of wind turbines could have on real estate. She said Maine doesn’t have a sufficient number of houses on the market to do comparable studies, but one done in Illinois showed at least a 25 to 40 percent drop in value for homes about 2 miles from a wind project.

“Some are a total loss,” she said.

Also, she said, wind developers are not being required to provide a bond for decommissioning turbines so that they could be taken down and the land reclaimed.

Dan McKay, a major player in the organization of the hearing, said that with the number of people who live in the River Valley area, building what he estimated to be about 100 turbines made little sense.

“Turbines are a chance to shut down the recreational opportunities in the area,” he said.

Nearly 200 proposed turbines are in various stages of development from the Rumford area to Highland Plantation. First Wind LLC of Newton, Mass., has proposed siting up to 19 turbines in Rumford and Roxbury; Independent Wind LLC is proposing the Highland Plantation project and 22 turbines in Roxbury; and Patriot Renewables LLC of Quincy, Mass., has proposed a total of about 50 turbines in Carthage, Dixfield, Canton and Woodstock.

McKay said signatures were being gathered on a petition asking the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to change the acceptable decibel level produced by turbines to 5 decibels above the ambient level in an area currently without turbines.

He said the signatures collected in several River Valley towns and Woodstock would be sent to the Citizens Task Force, which is circulating a petition statewide calling for more regulations on wind development.

THE RULES FOR WISCONSIN ARE HERE:

Click here to download the text of the new wind siting rules released today.

Click here to download a 'red-lined' text of the rules, which show what changes the PSC staff made to the siting council's recommendations.

The rules are now in the hands of the three PSC commissioners who will decide on the final version of the rules in a few weeks.

WIND TURBINES IN THE NEWS:

Blown in the Wind

SOURCE: SLATE.COM

By Robert Bryce

 Aug. 16, 2010

They like everything big in Texas, and wind energy is no exception. Texas has more wind generation capacity than any other state, about 9,700 megawatts. (That's nearly as much installed wind capacity as India.) Texas residential ratepayers are now paying about $4 more per month on their electric bills in order to fund some 2,300 miles of new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from rural areas to the state's urban centers.

It's time for those customers to ask for a refund. The reason: When it gets hot in Texas—and it's darn hot in the Lone Star State in the summer—the state's ratepayers can't count on that wind energy. On Aug. 4, at about 5 p.m., electricity demand in Texas hit a record: 63,594 megawatts. But according to the state's grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's wind turbines provided only about 500 megawatts of power when demand was peaking and the value of electricity was at its highest.

Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state's installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most. Texans may brag about the size of their wind sector, but for all of that hot air, the wind business could only provide about 0.8 percent of the state's electricity needs when demand was peaking.

Why does Texas get so little juice from the wind when it really needs it? Well, one of the reasons Texas gets so hot in the summer is that the wind isn't blowing. Pressure gradients—differences in air pressure between two locations in the atmosphere—are largely responsible for the speed of the wind near the Earth's surface. The greater the differences in pressure, the harder the wind blows. During times of extreme heat these pressure gradients often are minimal. The result: wind turbines that don't turn.

Lest you think the generation numbers from Aug. 4 are an aberration, ERCOT has long discounted wind energy's capabilities. In 2007, ERCOT determined that just "8.7 percent of the installed wind capability can be counted on as dependable capacity during the peak demand period for the next year." And in 2009, the grid operator reiterated that it could depend on only 8.7 percent of Texas' wind capacity.

The incurable variability of wind is not restricted to Texas. Consider the problems with wind energy during the frigid weather that hit Britain last winter. In January, the Daily Telegraph reported that the cold weather was accompanied by "a lack of wind, which meant that only 0.2 [percent] of a possible 5 [percent] of the UK's" electricity was generated by wind over the preceding few days.

Understanding wind's unreliability is critically important now, at a time when America's basic infrastructure is crumbling and in desperate need of new investment. In June, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that said that "communities will need hundreds of billions of dollars in coming years to construct and upgrade wastewater infrastructure." Add in the need for new spending on roads, dams, bridges, pipelines, and mass transit systems, and it quickly becomes clear that politicians' infatuation with wind energy is diverting money away from projects that are more deserving and far more important to the general public.

Imagine a company proposed to construct a bridge in Minneapolis, or some other major city, that would cost, say, $250 million. The road would be designed to carry thousands of cars per day. But there's a catch: During rush hour, the thoroughfare would effectively be closed, with only 5 percent, or maybe 10 percent, of its capacity available to motorists. Were this scenario to actually occur, the public outrage would be quick and ferocious.

That's exactly the issue we are facing with wind energy. The reality is that towering wind turbines—for all their allure to certain political groups—are simply supernumeraries in our sprawling electricity delivery system. They do not, cannot, replace coal-fired, gas-fired, or (my personal favorite) nuclear power plants.

Despite these facts, wind-energy lobbyists have been wildly successful at convincing the public and—more importantly—politicians, that wind energy is the way of the future. More than 30 states now have rules that will require dramatic increases in renewable electricity production over the coming years. And wind must provide most of that production, since it's the only renewable source that can rapidly scale up to meet the requirements of the mandate.

The problems posed by the intermittency of wind could quickly be cured if only we had an ultra-cheap method of storing large quantities of energy. If only. The problem of large-scale energy storage has bedeviled inventors for centuries. Even the best modern batteries are too bulky, too expensive, and too finicky. Other solutions for energy storage like compressed-air energy storage and pumped water storage are viable, but like batteries, those technologies are expensive. And even if the cost of energy storage falls dramatically—thereby making wind energy truly viable—who will pay for it?

An unbiased analysis of wind energy's high costs and flaccid contribution to our electricity needs is essential in this time of economic constraint. Despite the dismal economic news, despite the fact that the wind-energy sector, through the $0.022 per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit, gets subsidies of about $6.40 per million Btu of energy produced—an amount that, according to the Energy Information Administration, is about 200 times the subsidy received by the oil and gas sector—wind-energy lobbyists are calling for yet more mandates. On July 27, the American Wind Energy Association issued a press release urging a federal mandate for renewable electricity and lamenting the fact that new wind-energy installations had fallen dramatically during the second quarter compared to 2008 and 2009. The lobby group's CEO, Denise Bode, declared that the "U.S. wind industry is in distress."

Good. Glad to hear it. It's high time we quit blowing so much money on the wind.

REVISIT NOISE STANDARDS

Noise standards paving the way for billion-dollar wind-farm developments across the country are biased and should be ripped up, academics say.

“One can only come to the conclusion that the concept is mainly a business promotion and public relations exercise which has been devised to appear to be taking into consideration the health and welfare of local residents but is designed to get the most out of the investment for the cheapest outlay, without causing the community to take serious legal action against the developer and territorial authority,”

- Philip Dickinson, Massey University acoustics professor who says the wind turbine noise standard, and those elsewhere in the world, appeared to be based on “scientific nonsense”.

SOURCE: The Press News , August 18, 2010   READ COMPLETE STORY BY CLICKING HERE

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

What happens when rules are written by those who stand to gain financially from the outcome?

Wind siting council member Larry Wunsch has been living with a 400 foot tall wind turbine sited just 1100 feet from his door for over two years.

Council Member Dwight Sattler lives about half a mile from the closest turbine to his house. He says he can sometimes hear them, but at half a mile it doesn't bother him.

At half a mile, no problem. At 1100 feet, the noise is bad enough to cause the Wunsch family to put their home up for sale.

Longer setbacks and lower noise limits mean greater protection for rural Wisconsin residents, but less money for those with financial interests.

Should the wind siting council consider what Larry Wunsch has to say when creating siting recommendations for our state?

Or should they follow Wind Sitng Council chairman Dan Ebert's lead and gloss over the issues to speed up the process in order to create guidelines which protect business interests instead of residents of rural Wisconsin?

SECOND FEATURE:

ANOTHER 'CAUSE UNKNOWN' TURBINE BLADE FAILURE IN ILLINOIS

SOURCE: The Times, mywebtimes.com

July 27, 2010 Dan Churney,

Barbara Ellsworth was troubled, but not surprised Saturday morning when she spotted a broken blade on a wind tower near her home.

“We thought, ‘Hah! We knew that would happen.’”

Ellsworth and her husband Mike live three miles south of Marseilles on East 2450th Road, about 1,200 feet from a wind turbine and about 2,500 feet from one of the two towers damaged during the weekend, possibly by high winds. Chicago-based Invenergy Wind operates the string of towers that run through southeastern La Salle County.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY