Let's start with this:

How far should a 400 foot tall industrial wind turbine be built from your home?

• Manufacturer’s Recommendation: 1,300 feet
• Protection from ice and blade throw: 1750 feet
• U.S. National Research Council: 2,500 feet
• Flicker: 3,300-5,000 feet
• Germany: 1 mile
• France: 1 mile
• Nina Pierpont Study: 1.25 miles
• Kamperman and James Study: 1.2 miles
• Rural Manitoba, Canada: 6,500 feet
• California: 2 miles
• Michigan Requirement: 1,000 feet
• WISCONSIN: 1000 feet

Looking into the 'noise' about wind turbines

(Click here to read this story at its source)

When the state of Michigan commissioned recommendations to help formulate wind energy policies, acoustic expert Rick James saw two problems with the commission. The commission lacked both the expertise of an acoustic engineer and a medical doctor.

Without these two perspectives, a major concern of wind turbines — their potential physical side effects due to the sounds they emitted — were overlooked.

To counter this oversight, James has been working since 2006, consulting and sharing current research results that shed more light on this issue.

Thursday, James travelled to northern Michigan, meeting with Sherman Township residents at the behest of the local Save Our Sherman group.

“The state set the setback at 1,000 feet, looking at it from an economic perspective,” James said. “If they looked at it from a public health perspective, the setbacks would be at least a mile.”

James highlighted two primary concerns with the health effects of wind turbines. The first is the simple audible annoyance that he cited as causing sleep disturbance, among other conditions.

While wind turbines produce a relatively quiet sound when compared to other common noises such as cars, airports, or railroads, a study in Sweden showed that people find the sound more annoying.

“It causes the problem with sleep disturbance not because it’s overly loud, but because it can be equated to Chinese water torture. It’s the constant, drop, drop, drop.”

“One factor we didn’t understand is that people choose to live in rural communities to get away from the noise,” James explained. “What they are looking for is something only rural America can offer — peace and quiet.”

The second health concern related to wind turbines is connected to the inaudible, low-frequency sound produced. While this concern has been rejected by wind companies, James himself has done research that proves that windmills produce a constant low-frequency sound.

“I found it dominant, omnipresent. Unlike the audible whooshing, which is there only part of the time when the wind is just right, the low frequency is there all of the time,” James said.

Low-frequency sounds, which are created by large and stable sound waves, are known to travel for great distances and penetrate nearly every substance.

However, the medical dangers of the low-frequency sound waves are still highly debated and not yet conclusive.

One study that James cites comes from New York. After encountering several patients living near wind farms who complained of symptoms ranging from migraines and dizziness to uneasiness, Dr. Nina Pierpont began one of the first peer-reviewed comprehensive medical studies of the effects of low-frequency sound emitted by wind ¨ turbines.

According to James, the study asked patients with symptoms to physically move away from the wind turbine area — and the symptoms disappeared. She then had them move back, and the symptoms returned. The process was repeated, and she collected the data. The results of her study may be viewed for free at www.windturbinesyndrome.com. Pierpont attributes this to the low-frequency sound, what she refers to as Wind Turbine Syndrome.

James argues that while the medical effects of windmills hasn’t yet been fully studied, communities should proceed with caution.

Like smoking and fast food, “Do we really want to wait 30 years to determine if there are health risks?” he asked.

James recommends extending the minimum setbacks from residences to windmills to at least one mile. He explained that wind farms in the western part of the United States have not seen nearly the number of complaints as the eastern half — because the turbines are located much further from people’s homes.

“I’m not against wind energy,” James assured. “The message is that we have rushed into this too fast.”

James did not speculate on whether Sherman Township should proceeded with wind development but urged township “to make some good rules” to prevent potential concerns to public health.

Differing recommendations

Setback recommendation from wind turbines to residences

• Manufacturer’s Recommendation: 1,300 feet
• Ice and blade throw: 1750 feet
• U.S. National Research Council: 2,500 feet
• Flicker: 3,300-5,000 feet
• Germany: 1 mile
• France: 1 mile
• Nina Pierpont Study: 1.25 miles
• Kamperman and James Study: 1.2 miles
• Rural Manitoba, Canada: 6,500 feet
• California: 2 miles
• Michigan Requirement: 1,000 feet
• WISCONSIN: 1000 feet

How far can a wind turbine throw debris? When this one exploded, debris covered an area of half a mile.

Wind Power Exposed: The Renewable Energy Source is Expensive, Unreliable and Won’t Save Natural Gas.

Peter Glover and Michael J. Economides

(Click here to read at source)

This is not what President-elect Barack Obama's energy and climate strategists would want to hear. It would be anathema to Al Gore and other assorted luminaries touting renewable energy sources which in one giant swoop will save the world from the “tyranny” of fossil fuels and mitigate global warming. And as if these were not big enough issues, oilman T. Boone Pickens’ grandiose plan for wind farms from Texas to Canada is supposed to bring about a replacement for the natural gas now used for power generation. That move will then lead to energy independence from foreign oil.

Too good to be true? Yes, and in fact it is a lot worse.

Wind has been the cornerstone of almost all environmentalist and social engineering proclamations for more than three decades and has accelerated to a crescendo the last few years in both the United States and the European Union.

But Europe, getting a head start, has had to cope with the reality borne by experience and it is a pretty ugly picture.

Independent reports have consistently revealed an industry plagued by high construction and maintenance costs, highly volatile reliability and a voracious appetite for taxpayer subsidies. Such is the economic strain on taxpayer funds being poured into wind power by Europe's early pioneers -- Denmark, Germany and Spain – that all have recently been forced to scale back their investments.

As a result this summer, the U.K., under pressure to meet an ambitious E.U. climate target of 20 percent carbon dioxide cuts by 2020, assumed the mantle of world leader in wind power production. It did so as a direct consequence of the U.K. Government's Renewables Obligations Certificate, a financial incentive scheme for power companies to build wind farms. Thus the U.K.'s wind operation provides the ideal case study -- and one that provides the most complete conclusions.

The U.K. has all the natural advantages. It is the windiest country in Europe. It has one of the continent's longest coastlines for the more productive (and less obtrusive) offshore farms. It has a long-established national power grid. In short, if wind power is less than successful in the U.K., its success is not guaranteed anywhere.

But wind infrastructure has come at a steep price. In fiscal year 2007-08 U.K. electricity customers were forced to pay a total of over $1 billion to the owners of wind turbines. That figure is due to rise to over $6 billion a year by 2020 given the government's unprecedented plan to build a nationwide infrastructure with some 25 gigawatts of wind capacity, in a bid to shift away from fossil fuel use.

Ofgem, which regulates the U.K.'s electricity and gas markets, has already expressed its concern at the burgeoning tab being picked up by the British taxpayer which, they claim, is “grossly distorting the market” while hiding the real cost of wind power. In the past year alone, prices for electricity and natural gas in the U.K. have risen twice as fast as the European Union average according to figures released in November by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. While 15 percent energy price rises were experienced across the E.U., in the U.K. gas and electricity prices rose by a staggering 29.7 percent. Ofgem believes wind subsidy has been a prime factor and questions the logic when, for all the public investment, wind produces a mere 1.3 percent of the U.K.'s energy needs.

In May 2008, a report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates warned that an over-reliance on offshore wind farms to meet European renewable energy targets would further create supply problems and drive up investor costs. No taxpayer respite there. But worse news was to come.

In August, the most in-depth independent assessment yet of Britain's expanding wind turbine industry was published. In the journal Energy Policy gas turbine expert Jim Oswald and his co-authors, came up with a series of damning conclusions: not only is wind power far more expensive and unreliable than previously thought, it cannot avoid using high levels of natural gas, which not only it will increase costs but in turn will mean far less of a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions than has been claimed.

Oswald's report highlights the key issue of load factor, the actual power generated compared to the theoretical maximum, and how critical it is to the viability of the wind power industry. In 2006, according to U.K. government statistics, the average load factor for wind turbines across the U.K. was 27.4 percent. Thus a typical 2 megawatt turbine actually produced only 0.54 MW of power on an average day. The worst performing U.K. turbine had a load factor of just 7 percent. These figures reflect a poor return on investment. But this poor return is often obscured by the subsidy system that allows turbine operators and supporters to claim they can make a profit even when turbines operate at a very low load factors. So what’s the bottom line? British consumers are paying twice over for their electricity, funding its means of production and paying for its use as end users.

Variability is one of the chief criticisms levelled at wind power. When the wind drops or blows too hard, turbines stop spinning and you get no power. Wind turbine advocates have claimed that this can be avoided by the geographical spread of wind farms, perhaps by creating an international “supergrid.” But, as Oswald's report makes clear, calm conditions not only prevail on a fairly regular basis, they often extend across the country with the same conditions being experienced as far away as France and Germany. Worse still, says Oswald, long periods of calm over recent decades occurred in the dead of winter when electricity demand is highest.

Periods of low wind means a need for pumped storage and essential back-up facilities. Oswald told The Register online news service that a realistically feasible U.K. pumped-storage base would only cope with one or two days of low winds at best. As regards back-up facilities, Oswald states the only feasible systems for the planned 25 gigawatt wind system would be one that relied equally on old-style natural gas turbines. As Oswald says however, the expense of a threefold wind, pump storage and gas turbine back-up solution "would be ridiculous."

The problems don’t end there. The British report highlights what more and more wind farms would mean when it came to installing gas turbine back-ups. "Electricity operators will respond by installing lower-cost plant ($/kW) as high capital plant is not justified under low utilisation regimes."

But cheap gas turbines are far less efficient than big, properly sized base-load turbines and will not be as resilient in coping with the heavy load cycling they would experience. Cheaper, less resilient plants will mean high maintenance costs and spare back-up gas turbines to replace broken ones that would suffer regular thermal stress cracking. And of course, the increasing use of gas for the turbines would have a detrimental effect on reducing carbon dioxide emission – always one of the chief factors behind the wind revolution.

Oswald's report concludes also that the all this wear and tear will further stress the gas pipeline network and gas storage system. "High-efficiency base load plant is not designed or developed for load cycling," says Oswald. Critically, most of the issues raised in the independent report have not been factored into the cost of wind calculations. With typical British understatement, Oswald concludes that claims for wind power are "unduly optimistic."

We think they've been blown away.

In response to a questionnaire submitted by Union Township to wind developers regarding the noise made by wind turbines the developers defended their noise specifications with statements that indicated they may have opened "some medical books" to get an answer. Those who are currently unable to sleep because of turbine noise in Fond du Lac county might take issue with this armchair diagnosis provided by a wind farm salesman. Our Grade For His Response?

A big, red F.

Here is the response: "Turbines are sited to have maximum sound level of 45dBA, well below levels causing physical harm. Medical books on sound indicate sound levels above 80-90dBA cause physical (health) effects. The possible effects to a person's health due to "annoyance" are impossible to study in a scientific way, as these are often mostly psychosomatic, and are not caused by wind turbines as much as the individuals' obsession with a new item in their environment."

Community noise experts Kamperman and James took issue with this and published a formal response to the questionnaire, highlighting major deficiencies in the wind developers' statements, including:

* The tone and context of the statement implies that 45 dBA is fully compatible with the quiet rural community setting.

* No acknowledgement is made of the dramatic change this will be for the noise environment of nearby families.

* No mention is made of how the wind facility, once in operation, will raise evening and nighttime background sound levels from the existing background levels of 20 to 30 dBA to 45 dBA.

* There is no disclosure of the considerable low frequency content of the wind turbine sound; in fact, there are often claims to the contrary.

* They fail to warn that the home construction techniques used for modern wood frame homes result in walls and roofs that cannot block out a wind turbine's low frequencies.

* They do not disclose that the International Standards Organization (ISO) in ISO 1996-1971 recommends 25 dBA as the maximum night-time limit for rural communities. Sound levels of 40
dBA and above are only appropriate in suburban communities during the day and urban communities during day and night. There are no communities where 45 dBA is considered acceptable at night.

* Making statements outside their area of competence, wind industry advocates, without medical qualifications, label complaints of health effects as "psychosomatic" in a pejorative manner that implies the complaints can be discounted because they are not "really medical" conditions. Such a response cannot be considered to be based in fact.

TO READ MORE ABOUT NOISE AND SITING OF WIND TURBINES, DOWNLOAD THE FULL KAMPERMAN AND JAMES "HOW-TO" GUIDE BY CLICKING HERE

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: Developers and Wind Lobbyists alike compare the sound of industrial wind turbines to that of a refrigerator. The source of this statement seems to come from Tom Gray, a lobbyist for the American Wind Energy Association, and he can't seem to decide how far from the refrigerator you need to be in order to make the comparison, as illustrated by the video below.

UPDATE ON THE ICE THROW FROM AN INDUSTRIAL WIND TURBINE

(Click here to read it at its source)

Residents complained when the 260ft wind generator began hurling shards of ice, some measuring two feet long, after the cold snap over the weekend.

Operators Cornwall Light and Power turned off the machine in Kings Dyke, Whittlesey, Cambs, which is situated next to several homes and an industrial estate.

The energy company has also opened an investigation amid fears that the ice could have caused serious injury to people living and working near the turbine.

Tyson Clark, who owns a carpet showroom next to the generator, said he called Cornwall Light and Power demanding that it be turned off when lumps of ice started falling on his premises.

He told his local newspaper, the Wisbech Standard: "We have been told the turbine will stay off until the company has some satisfactory answers to why it happened."

The turbine was restarted a day later but had to be switched off again after more people complained.

Peter Randall, who runs a nearby welding company, said: "We were assured that ice could only cause a problem in severe weather conditions like those in Scotland, and two days later we got javelins thrown at us.

"I am worried about the safety of my family and everyone in the area, we should not have to put up with this."

The £2million turbine was criticised by many local residents when it was erected.

Whittlesey county councillor Ronald Speechley said: "It's worrying. Ice froze on the blades and, when it started moving, it started throwing it all over.

"It could be very dangerous."

A spokesman for Cornwall Light and Power said: "Following reports of ice shedding on Saturday, we shut down our wind turbine at Whittlesey.

"Our people have visited the site and nearby residents, and we have agreed that the turbine will not generate until we are fully satisfied that there is no risk of ice shedding."

What do wind developers see when they look at communities like ours? It's green, but it has nothing to do with the environment.

Here are some excerpts from one of the best pieces of writing about the wind industry we've read. It comes to us from Magaret Collins.(CLICK HERE TO READ IT AT THE SOURCE)

When wind developers target a community they typically employ three very effective strategies.

First, they cleverly use their “green” facade to gain acceptance by local politicians, environmentalists and an uninformed public.

Second, knowing that few people understand the complexity of wind power issues, they make unsupportable claims.

Finally, if the first two don’t work, they garner support from locals by essentially buying them off – with taxpayers’ money!

Other than a handful of property owners who will make a few thousand dollars a year leasing their land for wind turbines, the only people who will benefit are the out-of- state wind developers and their wealthy investors who are hoping we are too foolish to realize that we are once again about to be exploited.

....As you no doubt have guessed by now, it’s all about the money.

The only reason wind turbines are built is because they are fantastic tax shelters for wealthy investors.

Federal tax subsidies for wind now exceed $7 billion, and at over $23.00 per megawatt hour, far exceed those for any other type of generation facilities.

These billions are shrewdly applied by the wind industry to hire lobbyists and make political donations, thus keeping the subsidies flowing. Taking advantage of the fear of global warming, the industry has very skillfully lobbied and placed promoters in government positions so as to influence Congress, governors and legislators to enact “renewable energy mandates” and provide ever-increasing tax breaks favorable to wind development. Crafty entrepreneurs like T. Boone Pickens create $50 million saturation ad campaigns to curry public support for continuation of these massive taxpayer subsidies. He does not plan to lose money.

Gullible local officials are easily swayed by the promise of huge tax revenues that rarely materialize. Unions and workers support these projects, hoping to get a piece of the action, only to find out later that most construction work is performed by out-of-state workers, and permanent jobs relegated to one or two low-paying maintenance positions. Sadly, the vast majority of people have successfully been brainwashed and are clueless as to the folly of wind turbines and the damage they will cause. Support for wind energy is based solely on politics, ignorance and smart lobbying, not on science.

At some point it will become apparent that wind simply does not and cannot be made to work, just as it is now becoming obvious that corn-based ethanol does more harm than good.

Eventually, governmental and public support will wane and the increasingly expensive tax credits will be eliminated as we turn to clean energy sources that actually work, such as geothermal and nuclear energy. But before that occurs, many more billions will have been wasted and much damage will be done, irrevocably.

Wind developers hope to get as many turbines up as quickly as possible before the subsidy spigot is turned off. When that happens, there will be wide-scale abandonment of existing wind turbines. Since removal costs will be prohibitive, they will become rotting hulks, littering hundreds of miles of ridgetops, a sad legacy to inflict upon our children.

SECOND FEATURE: How close should your house be to a turbine on fire? The state of Wisconsin says 1000 feet. That's 350 steps. Unless your township adopts an ordinance with a better setback, 350 steps from your door is what it will be.

Bloomfield Wind Tower Fire

Bloomfield had an unexpected fire call today at Tower 23, a 262 foot wind tower northwest of town, burst into flames. Officials say three men were injured in the fire. One was sent by Life Flight to Sioux City with extensive burns.

One man, who was atop a tower when a turbine exploded, received first- and second-degree burns in the fire Tuesday morning. Two others, who were nearby, were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

The fire occurred just after 11:00 AM in Bloomfield and the Bloomfield Fire and Ambulance arrived shortly after.

Edison Mission Group Inc., a subsidiary of Edison International, is building the 80-megawatt Elkhorn Ridge wind farm north of Bloomfield.

Edison spokeswoman Susan Olavarria says the worker who suffered serious burns was taken to a hospital, but she didn’t know his current condition.

Olavarria says all the injured employees worked for subcontractor Vestas Wind Energy. Vestas officials said they don’t yet know what happened. Olavarria said the site has been closed down for public safety, and an investigation into the cause of the fire is under way by her company. She did not have a damage estimate.

The men were troubleshooting the tower during routine commissioning in order to bring the tower online.

Wausa News Staff

mywausanews.com

Looking for a good wind ordinance to present to your township board?

You've come to the right place!

Download this solid and defendable ordinance created by the town of Union in Rock County, Wisconsin by CLICKING HERE.

On November 13 this ordinance was unanimously approved and adopted by the town of Unions P&Z commission and the township board.

Unlike the state of Wisconsin's draft model wind ordinance, which has been recently pulled from the state website, this large wind ordinance is based on sound and verifiable medical and scientific data.

We are thank the citizens who made up the town of Union's Large Wind Study Committee, the Union P&Z board, and the town board for the countless hours they put into this ordinance which we believe to be the best one in the state.

We the people of the state of Wisconsin are grateful to have an ordinance which puts the importance of health and safety of our residents above the wishes and whims of wind developers who only have money on their minds.

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: One thing the Union ordinance does is give residents a safer setback from homes than the 1000 feet the state supports. One reason for a further setback is ice throw from the turbine blades in the winter. Though wind developers downplay this problem, as more and more turbines are being built in areas where they shouldn't be, the stories of what people are living with are getting harder to cover up.

Wind turbine's deadly ice shower

 Residents were left fearing for their safety after shards of melting ice fell on homes and gardens from the blades of a giant wind turbine.

For about four hours people in King’s Dyke, Whittlesey, had to take cover as huge lumps – some two feet long – showered them from the 80 metre high tower on Saturday morning.

Resident Peter Randall, whose son’s house lies a stone’s throw away from the turbine, said: “Somebody is going to get killed. There was huge lumps of ice shooting off and landing everywhere.

“No one wants to leave the house because they are frightened and worried about the ice falling.

“My son’s partner is pregnant and she is now worried sick about her unborn baby.”

Freezing overnight temperatures had caused the ice to form and after frantic calls to Truro-based firm Cornwall Light and Power, which owns the turbine, the £2 million machine was eventually turned off.

Maria Clark, who owns King’s Dyke Karpets, based yards from the turbine, said: “It has been really frightening, the turbine has been stopping and starting all morning. The ice makes such a loud noise when it shatters we thought a bomb had gone off in the yard.

“It scared a customer away. They were in the shop when it landed and said they did not want to risk their car and ran out.”

Pictured, from left, are Peter Randall, Tyson Clark and Andrew Randall with Sophia Nesbitt (10) and Tia Clark (10) with some of the blocks of ice which have fallen off the nearby wind turbine in the McCains factory.

This is not the first time the turbine has courted controversy.

Last month The Evening Telegraph revealed how residents had lodged complaints with the environmental health department at Fenland District Council due to alleged noise pollution and had demanded the turbine’s removal.

The huge machine, which measures 80 metres at its hub and 125 metres when one of its three blades is vertical, was put up in August.

A spokesperson for Cornwall Light & Power said: “We received a report of an ice shedding incident near our Whittlesey turbine on Saturday morning and immediately made arrangements for it to be switched off.

“The turbine will remain stopped until we have a clear understanding of what happened and any safety concerns have been fully addressed.

“Cornwall Light & Power is a reputable operator with a proven track record of generating clean electricity safely and we will act quickly to resolve this issue.

“In the meantime, any local residents who have concerns can call us directly on 01872 226930.”

MP for Cambridgeshire North East Malcolm Moss said the turbine should remain closed until a new risk assessment could be made, as the problem could also have national implications.

He said: “I had no idea this turbine was going up, it came out of the blue really and I am surprised they put one so close to homes and businesses.

“I assume that a risk assessment was put with the planning application, but if it was not then a full inquiry should be undertaken.”

Whittlesey councillor Ronald Speechley today said he would by lobbying the council to find out what can be done.

He said: “I have received a lot of complaints and the fact that ice has fallen off should be brought to light. This should have been thought of before they put the turbine so close to houses and the road.”

Some of the ice which fell off the turbine.

By Kirsten Beacock

Peterborough Evening Telegraph

2 December 2008