PSC sued over wind farm rules

Farmers want stricter regulations

 SOURCE: Fox11online.com

Oct 8 2010

MADISON - A western Wisconsin couple is suing the state Public Service Commission over its proposed new rules for wind farms.

The suit alleges the PSC did not make the proper environmental impact study before coming up with the rules, which were proposed in August.

The attorney for David and Deloras Vind, who own a farm near Arcadia in Trempealeau County, said he hopes a judge would force the PSC to reconsider the rules and come up with a new proposal that includes longer setbacks, tougher noise restrictions and more protections for property owners.

Friday afternoon, a PSC spokesman told FOX 11, "the PSC has approved the rule consistent with its statutory obligations and it will vigorously defend against this lawsuit."

The rules are set to considered by a state Senate committee Oct. 13.

SAVE THE DATE:

PUBLIC HEARING
Senate Committee on Commerce, Utilities, Energy, and Rail

The Senate Committee on Utilities, Energy and Rail will hold a public hearing on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:00 AM, 411 South at the State Capitol in Madison relating to Clearinghouse Rule 10-057 siting of wind energy systems.

Senator Jeffry Plale, Chair

CLICK HERE FOR SOURCE 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CLEARING HOUSE RULE 10-057

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PSC WIND SITING RULES

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The public is encouraged to attend and and speak at the hearing regarding the PSC's wind siting rules.



VIDEO: SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES

What happened to a community after turbines started turning? Some saved $60.00 on their electric bill. Some had their lives ruined. Those who saved $60.00 say, "Worth it"

US Renewable Energy Market Likely To Fall Without Incentives

SOURCE: NASDAQ

October 6, 2010

By Cassandra Sweet, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Solar and wind-farm developers are increasingly anxious about a key federal incentive that could prompt a slowdown in the U.S. renewable energy market if it is allowed to expire at the end of the year.

Government incentives included in the Recovery Act Congress passed last year helped the industry survive the brutal recession and the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in decades. The magic serum has been a government program that provides a 30% investment tax credit to developers in the form of a cash grant for building new solar and wind farms. The cash gives developers access to more capital.

The program is slated to expire Dec. 31, casting a cloud over the nascent clean energy industry and rallying supporters. Both federal and state governments have looked to green technology as a potential engine of economic growth and job creation. On Saturday, President Barack Obama used his weekly address to make that case.

"There is perhaps no industry with more potential to create jobs now--and growth in the coming years--than clean energy," Obama said.

Government incentives and regulations have long spurred the U.S. renewable- energy industry. Environmental requirements established in California and other states helped the industry establish itself. Later, federal incentives allowed it to grow, reduce costs and better compete against rivals in Europe and China, where governments have provided more lavish incentives and financial support.

Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to preserve support for the nation's renewable energy industry.

Later this year, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State, plans to introduce an amendment that would extend the cash-grant program. A similar attempt failed in June.

Sens. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico and Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas have introduced legislation that would require U.S. utilities to use renewable sources for 15% of the electricity they sell by 2021. But the senators don't plan to include an extension of the cash-grant program, or other incentives in the bill, said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee.

Bingaman, who chairs that committee, and Sen. Olympia Snow, a Republican from Maine, introduced a bill last week that would make $2.5 billion in tax credits available to clean-technology manufacturers. However, the bill would not extend the cash-grant program, or extend renewable energy investment tax credits past their current 2012 expiration date--another key provision developers are pressing for.

Without an extension of the tax credits, many developers say they won't invest in new projects beyond those they're currently planning to build.

The U.S. wind-power market, which has struggled this year amid low power demand and depressed prices for fossil-fueled power generation, will continue to slide if the cash-grant program is not extended, said Michael Garland, chief executive of San Francisco-based wind-power developer Pattern Energy.

"We are 50% down this year and we'll be 50% down next year without the cash- grant extension," Garland said. "You can't expect the wind industry to live through a setback like that."

The U.S. solar-power market, which grew nearly 40% in 2009 and is on track to nearly double this year, is also likely to slow down if the cash-grant program ends in December, said Arno Harris, chief executive of solar-power developer Recurrent Energy.

"At the scale this industry is at now, it doesn't make sense" to remove the federal incentive, Harris said.

Banks that arrange financing for U.S. solar and wind farms also have expressed doubts about the pace of U.S. renewable energy development if the cash-grant program is allowed to expire.

"It has spurred a lot of the growth we've seen this year," Gisela Kroess, a director at UniCredit SpA (UCG.MI), said at a renewable-energy finance conference Thursday. Kroess added that "the outlook is uncertain" for the cash grant program's extension and with it, growth of U.S. renewable-energy financing deals.

UniCredit is one of six lenders that agreed last month to provide financing for a 45-megawatt California solar farm being developed by Eurus Energy--a Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501.TO) and Toyota Tsusho Corp. (8015.TO) joint venture -- and U.S. independent power producer NRG Energy Inc. (NRG).

While Cantwell and other Western state senators aim to extend the cash-grant program, as part of a strategy to create jobs and support the growing U.S. clean-energy industry, they are likely to face resistance from other lawmakers.

On Saturday, Obama warned Republican lawmakers want to reverse incentives for clean energy projects, which would threaten jobs, increase U.S. reliance on foreign oil and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage to China and other nations.



Residents in this Ontario Community had problems getting into a public meeting about a proposed wind farm in their community unless they agreed to give their names to wind developers who hired local police to help with enforcement.

Below, a news story on what happened once the meeting got started.

With new wind siting rules in the state of Wisconsin that will overturn local ordinances created to protect residents in rural communities, will scenes like these soon take place in our state?

SECOND FEATURE: WIND TURBINES IN THE NEWS

FOR THOSE NEAR, THE MISERABLE HUM OF CLEAN ENERGY

SOURCE: The New York Times

October 5, 2010

By Tom Zeller, Jr

VINALHAVEN, Me. — Like nearly all of the residents on this island in Penobscot Bay, Art Lindgren and his wife, Cheryl, celebrated the arrival of three giant wind turbines late last year. That was before they were turned on.

“In the first 10 minutes, our jaws dropped to the ground,” Mr. Lindgren said. “Nobody in the area could believe it. They were so loud.”

Now, the Lindgrens, along with a dozen or so neighbors living less than a mile from the $15 million wind facility here, say the industrial whoosh-and-whoop of the 123-foot blades is making life in this otherwise tranquil corner of the island unbearable.

They are among a small but growing number of families and homeowners across the country who say they have learned the hard way that wind power — a clean alternative to electricity from fossil fuels — is not without emissions of its own.

Lawsuits and complaints about turbine noise, vibrations and subsequent lost property value have cropped up in Illinois, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, among other states. In one case in DeKalb County, Ill., at least 38 families have sued to have 100 turbines removed from a wind farm there. A judge rejected a motion to dismiss the case in June.

Like the Lindgrens, many of the people complaining the loudest are reluctant converts to the antiwind movement.

“The quality of life that we came here for was quiet,” Mrs. Lindgren said. “You don’t live in a place where you have to take an hour-and-15-minute ferry ride to live next to an industrial park. And that’s where we are right now.”

The wind industry has long been dogged by a vocal minority bearing all manner of complaints about turbines, from routine claims that they ruin the look of pastoral landscapes to more elaborate allegations that they have direct physiological impacts like rapid heart beat, nausea and blurred vision caused by the machines’ ultra-low-frequency sound and vibrations.

For the most extreme claims, there is little independent backing.

Last year, the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, along with its Canadian counterpart, assembled a panel of doctors and acoustical professionals to examine the potential health impacts of wind turbine noise. In a paper published in December, the panel concluded that “there is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.”

A separate study financed by the Energy Department concluded late last year that, in aggregate, property values were unaffected by nearby wind turbines.

Numerous studies also suggest that not everyone will be bothered by turbine noise, and that much depends on the context into which the noise is introduced. A previously quiet setting like Vinalhaven is more likely to produce irritated neighbors than, say, a mixed-use suburban setting where ambient noise is already the norm.

Of the 250 new wind farms that have come online in the United States over the last two years, about dozen or so have generated significant noise complaints, according to Jim Cummings, the founder of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, an online clearinghouse for information on sound-related environmental issues.

In the Vinalhaven case, an audio consultant hired by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection determined last month that the 4.5-megawatt facility was, at least on one evening in mid-July when Mr. Lindgren collected sound data, in excess of the state’s nighttime sound limits. The developer of the project, Fox Island Wind, has contested that finding, and negotiations with state regulators are continuing.

In the moonlit woods behind a neighbor’s property on a recent evening, Mr. Lindgren, a retired software engineer, clenched a small flashlight between his teeth and wrestled with a tangle of cables and audio recording equipment he uses to collect sound samples for filing complaints.

At times, the rustle of leaves was all that could be heard. But when the surface wind settled, a throbbing, vaguely jetlike sound cut through the nighttime air. “Right there,” Mr. Lindgren declared. “That would probably be out of compliance.”

Maine, along with many other states, puts a general limit on nighttime noise at 45 decibels — roughly equivalent to the sound of a humming refrigerator. A normal conversation is in the range of 50 to 60 decibels.

In almost all cases, it is not mechanical noise arising from the central gear box or nacelle of a turbine that residents react to, but rather the sound of the blades, which in modern turbines are mammoth steel appendages well over 100 feet long, as they slice through the air.

Turbine noise can be controlled by reducing the rotational speed of the blades. But the turbines on Vinalhaven already operate that way after 7 p.m., and George Baker, the chief executive of Fox Island Wind — a for-profit arm of the island’s electricity co-operative — said that turning the turbines down came at an economic cost.

“The more we do that, the higher goes the price of electricity on the island,” he said.

A common refrain among homeowners grappling with sound issues, however, is that they were not accurately informed about the noise ahead of time. “They told us we wouldn’t hear it, or that it would be masked by the sound of the wind blowing through the trees,” said Sally Wylie, a former schoolteacher down the road from the Lindgrens. “I feel duped.”

Similar conflicts are arising in Canada, Britain and other countries . An appeals court in Rennes, France, recently ordered an eight-turbine wind farm to shut down between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. so residents could get some sleep.

Richard R. James, an acoustic expert hired by residents of Vinalhaven to help them quantify the noise problem, said there was a simpler solution: do not put the turbines so close to where people live.

“It would seem to be time for the wind utility developers to rethink their plans for duplicating these errors and to focus on locating wind turbines in areas where there is a large buffer zone of about a mile and one-quarter between the turbines and people’s homes,” said Mr. James, the principal consultant with E-Coustic Solutions, based in Michigan.

Vinalhaven’s wind farm enjoys support among most residents, from ardent supporters of all clean energy to those who simply say the turbines have reduced their power bills. Deckhands running the ferry sport turbine pins on their hats, and bumper stickers seen on the island declare “Spin, Baby, Spin.”

“The majority of us like them,” said Jeannie Conway, who works at the island’s ferry office.

But that is cold comfort for Mrs. Lindgren and her neighbors, who say their corner of the island will never be the same.

“I remember the sound of silence so palpable, so merciless in its depths, that you could almost feel your heart stop in sympathy,” she said. “Now we are prisoners of sonic effluence. I grieve for the past.”

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD: The turbines mentioned in the story below will be close to 500 feet tall if blade tip length is included. The turbine height here is for hub height of the tower itself, minus the blades. Scroll down to the previous post to see a 500 foot turbine in a project now being constructed in the Town of Glenmore, Brown County by the same company proposing this project in St. Croix county.

RESIDENTS VOICING CONCERNS OVER WIND TURBINE PROJECT IN ST. CROIX COUNTY

SOURCE: WQOW TV, www.wqow.com

October 4 2010

Town of Forest (WQOW) – Much of our countryside is filled with cornfields and forests. Now, imagine the landscape dotted with wind turbines. That’s the picture being painted in one town and many people there are hot about it.

A Wisconsin energy company wants to build almost 40 wind turbines in the Town of Forest, that’s in St. Croix County. Each turbine would be more than 325 feet tall. Emerging Energy, LLC. has been exploring the idea for a few years and then in August, the town board approved the deal.

“We don’t feel there was a lot of information given at the township level to the citizens,” says Matt Radintz, a concerned resident.

That isn’t their only concern.

“We’re concerned about some of the effects of the wind turbines in our area,” says Radintz.

They’re talking about the shadows created – along with noise.

“We did hear the low frequency hum, it was a constant hum and with the turbines also a whoosh, it actually sounded like a jet plane going over head constantly, but you get the pulsating whoosh,” a woman who had recently visited a wind farm in Iowa told the crowd Sunday night.

The Town of Forest isn’t zoned, which is why residents feel their community was targeted for the project. The state is working on coming up with unified rules to address wind turbines, but because the project is already approved the town would be exempt.

“There are specific regulations right now that have yet to be determined at the state level, that will determine the setbacks and we feel that the reason this got pushed through is to get underneath those,” says Radintz.

Since the agreement was made, the group has held several meetings and hopes a petition can persuade the board to rethink the plan at least until there’s more information available.

“We want them to take a step back look at all the issues that we’re concerned about and put it on hold until we have some answers,” says Radintz.

WQOW News 18 spoke with an employee from Emerging Energy Monday. Bill Rakocy says the agreement in August was just the next step in getting the turbines built. The plan is to have them built no later than 2013. Rakocy says there were a couple of hearings held in 2008 and again this year about the project.

The project is part of an effort to have ten percent of the state’s energy come from renewable resources by 2015.

 EXTRA CREDIT: Who is Bill Rakocy? He's developing the St. Croix project, but what else does he do?

From the TOWN OF MISHICOT
Office of the Town Clerk
618 Tisch Mills Road
Mishicot, WI 54228
Phone: 920-776-1597
e-mail address: mishicottown@charter.net

POSTED TO THE DOCKET ON JUNE 28, 2010

To whom it may concern:

At the annual meeting of the Town of Mishicot, on April 13th, 2010, it was brought to the attention of the people in attendance that the appointment of Bill Rakocy of Emerging Energies to the State Wind Siting Council should be terminated due to conflict of interest.

Emerging Energies has land under contract for seven wind turbines in the Town of Mishicot that has been denied by the Manitowoc County Wind Ordinance. By Bill Rakocy's own admission he has stated that he would benefit from a lesser setback on the standards. The standards of the PSC should be created to address health and safety with the back of engineering standards and not personal profit of wind developers.

This letter is sent in response to a majority vote of those in attendance at said annual meeting.

Sincerely,

The Mishicot Town Board

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

At Wind Siting Council meetings, member Bill Rakocy has been vocal about wanting as few restrictions on his wind development business as possible.

Questions have been raised about wind siting concil members with  financial interest in the outcome of the rules having a direct hand in creating them.

“We’re  excited to develop as much wind [power] as we can in Wisconsin,”  says partner Bill Rakocy."

“The  permitting process is a rather long-term effort,” says Rakocy. “A   conditional use permit is good for two years, typically, and it may take   you all of that two years to get the balance of the project details  put  in place. And then there’s production tax credits available from  the  federal government, and if they expire in the midst of the project,  all  your work is for naught.”

SOURCE:  "Wind Power's Wind Fall" Marketplace Magazine <http://www.marketplacemagazine.com/content/357_1.php>

SECOND FEATURE

NOTE FROM THE BPWI RESEARCH NERD:

In an Wisconsin State Journal article [8/15/10] regarding new wind rules, reporter Clay Barbour refers to 'well-funded anti-wind organizations' in Wisconsin.

Better Plan contacted Barbour several times to ask about his source for this statement, but received no reply.

Balbour's article also contains quotes from Barnaby Dinges, who furthers the myth of the well-funded anti wind organization with statements like this:

“This isn’t like any grass-roots opposition we have seen elsewhere,” he said. “These aren’t just concerned citizens going to meetings. These are mass mailings, billboards, full-page ads. It’s more professional and it costs a lot of money.”

Dinges, who is not identified in the article as the head of an Illinois public relations firm called "The Dinges Gang", has been hired by wind developer Invenergy to push its projects in Wisconsin. Dinges Gang clients also include Abbott Laboratories, Illinois Casino Gaming Association, Montsanto and Jim Beam.

In the same article, Jennifer Heinzen, who is identified as a wind siting council member, says, “I have my suspicions that they are getting help from some groups from outside the state, but that has never been confirmed,” she said, referencing persistent rumors of coal and natural gas companies helping to kill wind projects here.

 Balbour's article fails to mention Heinzen is also president of RENEW Wisconsin, an organization which lobbies on behalf of wind development and accepts funding from 'tera watt' business sponsors' such as Alliant Energy, American Transmission Company, and We Energies. Like the Dinges Gang, RENEW also receives money from wind giant, Invenergy.

Why Balbour's article failed to identify Dinges and Heinzen's financial ties to Invernergy, and other corporate clients is unknown.

So how do local groups identified in Balbour's article as 'anti-wind' raise money?

Better Plan received this a few days ago.

Perhaps Clay Balbour will write a follow up story about how things are really done on a grass roots level in our state: old-fashioned community fund raisers and a lot of hard work by local residents.

FROM THE CALUMET COUNTY CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIBLE ENERGY: 

CCC4RE will be having our biggest fund raiser of the year in October: The Haunted Halloween Golf Cart Rides.

 It's alot of work and many many people are involved to get this to work.  Many volunteers will work all six nights and many work for days before getting it set up.

 I'll be working all nights and will help set up on the 23rd. I work in the concession stand where we serve hot dogs, walking tacos, nachos, hot chocolate, apple cider and other goodies along with my husbands' outstanding chocolate chip cookies.

 This helps to pay our bills. Let me know or if you have any other ideas.

Thanks,
Diane

Better Plan, Wisconsin hopes the event goes well and supports the true grass-roots efforts of the CCC4RE and all Badgers working to protect homes and families and wildlife and natural habitat from badly sited industrial scale wind turbines.

A bumper sticker we'd be glad to post on our car:

"I'd rather be riding a haunted golf cart in Calumet County in support of CCC4RE than living too close to a 500 foot wind turbine "

THIRD FEATURE

GOODHUE WIND SHRUGS OFF TOWNSHIP ORDER TO 'DESIST'

SOURCE: Finance & Commerce, finance-commerce.com

October 4, 2010

By Arundhati Parmar,

A proposed wind-energy project in southeastern Minnesota is pitting a local township’s board against the wind farm’s developers.

Last week, the Belle Creek Township board’s attorney sent a “cease and desist” letter to AWA Goodhue LLC, the developer of a 32,500-acre wind-turbine project in Goodhue County. The letter states that the developers have been doing construction work within the borders of the township in violation of an interim ordinance that the board approved earlier this summer.

On Friday, AWA Goodhue Wind’s attorney responded by essentially questioning whether the interim ordinance the board approved has any legal force under Minnesota law.

Minneapolis-based National Wind is the local developer of AWA Goodhue LLC, which is managing the project that aims to build 50 turbines. The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) and Goodhue County board of commissioners approved the project earlier this year, but it ran into opposition from residents who live near the 32,700-acre site