Wind advocacy rather weak

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) issued an amusingly inept response to Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander's Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005.

I agree with them about the "siren song" of nuclear power, and I am glad to read that Alexander has worked with them to protect the Smoky Mountains and pursue cleaner use of coal.

While they criticize him for listening to energy lobbyists more often than good sense in supporting the current energy bill, however, they also criticize him for trying to insert this bit of good sense against the wishes of energy lobbyists.

What are their answers to Alexander's charges against the wind energy industry?

1. A blindfolded person can tell the difference between the noise of a freight train and that of a wind turbine facility.
2. Thousands of giant wind turbines will not scar the landscape as much as mountaintop-removal coal mining.

That is not to say, of course, that wind turbines are not very noisy or do not scar the landscape. And just as we will still have freight trains, we will also still have coal mining to the same extent whether we build a hundred thousand wind turbines or none.

SACE correctly recognizes the seriousness of our energy issues, including reducing pollution and preserving wild places. But they forget to show how industrial wind power helps in tackling these issues. In fact, they can't. Giant industrial wind facilities are scarring our landscapes and ruining the lives of their neighbors. They are destroying wild places and the lives of animals on the ground and in the air. And they are not giving us anything in return.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

"Utilities put cap on wind power"

An article in the May 18 Asahi Shimbun:

Just when it looked like smooth sailing for wind power generation, electric power companies, its main buyers, have placed limits on their purchases, citing the unreliability of the clean energy. ...

Until recently, regional utilities have cooperated by purchasing all of the electricity generated by wind power suppliers.

But introducing too much of the electricity, whose supply can fluctuate wildly, can cause problems for utilities' power grids.

According to Tohoku Electric, which purchases about 40 percent of wind power generated nationwide, wattage can change between zero to 80 percent of its capacity within a single day.

Electric power companies worry a supply shortfall will result in blackouts, while excess supply may destabilize frequencies, which could cause malfunctions at factories, for example.

To avoid such risks, utilities control supply by monitoring shortages and sufficiencies and compensate by raising or lowering supply at thermal generators by means of computer-controlled systems.

If there is no wind, the utilities must rely entirely on other facilities. And even when wind power can satisfy all of the demand, they must continue operating thermal generators to be ready for any abrupt shortfalls in wind power. ...

categories:  wind power, wind energy

"100 percent wind-powered"

The Sunday New York Times Travel section went to Boulder, Colo., and recommends an eatery that boasts it is "100 percent wind-powered."

The claim is amusing, since they're getting the same electricity their nonwind-powered neighbors are getting. They're just paying extra so they can say it's different.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

Giant wind turbine foundations

From "Wind farms remain pricy propositions," The Citizens Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), May 15:

The Waymart Wind Farm, located in Clinton and Canaan townships in Wayne County [Pa.], contains 43 1.5-megawatt turbines ...

The blades are shipped from Brazil and the gearbox for each turbine is brought over on barges from Denmark.

Each turbine weighs 190 tons and requires a sturdy foundation to keep the structure stable.

At the Waymart site, the turbines rest on concrete foundations extending 30 to 40 feet into the bedrock. The foundations are reinforced by 14-foot and 12-foot diameter pipes, and the turbine is fastened to a bolt carriage that runs through the entire foundation.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Not so insignificant harm

From today's Herald Sun of Melbourne:

Andrew Richards, external affairs manager for Australia's biggest renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro, admits that as wind power generation increases, more work needs to be done on how it fits into the existing power grid.

But he rejects outright claims that wind farms can increase greenhouse gases because they cause existing brown coal generators to "throttle back" and produce higher emissions.

"Coal-fired power is at its most efficient at maximum load, there is no doubt about that," said Mr Richards, who also sits on the board of the Australian Wind Energy Association.

"But it is a bit of a furphy to say that wind power is causing greater emissions at this stage.

"With the current state of output from wind in Victoria, we are just background noise compared to demand fluctuations."

That is to say, if in the future there is enough wind power capacity installed that when the wind blows just right its output rises well above "just background noise," then other plants will be forced to operate at less efficiency, increasing their emissions. So, as long as wind power's presence on the grid is insignificant, there is no need to worry about its fluctuations causing greater emissions from coal plants.

As noted in response to a similar comment about spinning reserve, yet another advocate seems to be asserting that wind power works great as long as it's not actually contributing anything of significance.

Yes, it's working great for the developers and green credit marketers. But it is destroying more and more of our last rural and wild places. It is destroying the lives of people and animals. For nothing.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

The Fenner wind farm show

Sue Sliwinski of the Sardinia (N.Y.) Preservation Group writes about the frequent developer-sponsored tours from around New York to the wind facility in Fenner. Her husband, Ed, went on one but thought he'd take a look the day before as well. He noted a mowed field near the turbines, the hay all taken in. On the tour the next day, they were led from the bus to stand under an operating turbine (known to be the quietest spot). But the only thing they could hear was a tractor in the nearby field. Someone went over to tell the fellow to turn it off for a bit, and with that noise gone the gravelly swishing of turbines was a relative relief. Then back to the bus and to the wining and dining part of the tour.

Sue has heard about other tours having to deal with that same tractor:

"This caught my attention because there are other accounts of visits to other wind farms by developers and they're almost all identical:

"Everyone boards a big fancy bus, the developers make rounds to chit chat with all along the way, they get to the wind farm, pull right up under a turbine, get out, and have to kindly request that the farmer over in the next field turns off his tractor because it's noise is louder than the turbine. Then after about 20 minutes it's time for lunch: back on the bus down to the nearest village where you probably can't even see the turbines anymore. There you listen to locals proclaim their pleasure about having them in their town, and more importantly the mayor or supervisor along with several leasers join you for lunch and verify every single wonderful claim made by the developers. Then they pile back onto the bus and sing rah-rah songs all the way home.

"No kidding -- I've heard the same exact story a number of times from different places. Every once in a while an article will turn up describing the day exactly that way, too."

Ed Sliwinski has visited Fenner and another facility in Weathersfield several times on his own to record the sights and sounds. The lights at night are notably intrusive. They light up the top of the tower and the nacelle (the bus-sized generator housing at the top of the tower) as well as the blades near the hub. That's bad enough, but as the blades turn the reflected light does, too, making it even more distracting and industrial.

One time at Fenner, on a windless foggy day, he recorded the eerie screeching that many people have described. The sound may be from the whole assembly turning on the tower to unwind the cable inside, which becomes twisted from turning the blades into the wind. It was too foggy to see what was going on way up there.

Another noise he described hearing is like gunshots, an explosive popping as the towers cool in the evening after a sunny day.

On some of his early visits, Ed talked to a Fenner town supervisor, who told him, "The honeymoon is over." Major complaints from residents have been increasing, he said. He also mentioned a violation of the setback agreement of 2,000 feet from any home: The company did not consider it as applying to "mobile" homes.

Also see Pam Foringer's account of her life next to the Fenner wind power complex.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Lamar!

The Appalachian range in the mid-Atlantic states is being aggressively targeted for industrial wind development. The Allegheny Ridge alone, in the border areas of West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, is under assault by plans for at least 1,000 giant turbines. U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Warner of Virginia have introduced the Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005. Here are some excerpts from Alexander's May 13 speech.

Our legislation provides for local authorities to be notified and have a role in the approval of the siting of tens of thousands of massive wind turbines that will be built in America under current policies. It also ensures that the federal government does not subsidize the building of these windmills -- which are usually taller than a football field is long - within 20 miles of a military base or a highly scenic location, such as a national park or offshore. ...

One part of our energy debate will be about wind power, which is the subject of our legislation today. This is because several of our colleagues have proposed something called a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, which would require power companies to produce 10 percent of all their electricity from renewable sources by 2025. These renewable sources are wind, hydro, solar, geothermal and biomass. ...

It is important for our colleagues to know that a Renewable Portfolio Standard or RPS is all about wind. ... Experts agree that the bottom line is that a requirement that electric companies produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, if it could be achieved at all, would mean that about 70 percent of the increase would come from wind. In other words, we would go from producing about 1 percent of our electricity from wind to 7 or 8 percent.

Testimony before our Energy Committee and most other sources suggest that to produce this much wind energy in the United States could require building more than 100,000 of new, massive wind turbines. We have less than 7,000 such windmills in the U.S. today, with the largest number in Texas and California.

Testimony also indicated that, even without the RPS, if Congress continues its sustained generous subsidy for wind production for the next 10 years, it will guarantee that the U.S. has about 100,000 of these windmills by 2025. According to the Treasury Department, this wind subsidy, if renewed each year for the next five years, would reimburse wind investors for 25 percent of the cost of wind production and cost taxpayers $3.7 billion over those 5 years. General Electric Wind, one of the largest manufacturers of wind turbines, has experienced a 500 percent growth in its wind business this year due to the renewal of the wind production tax credit last year.

I want to make sure that my colleagues know that there are serious questions about how much relying on wind power will raise the cost of electricity, questions about whether there are better ways to spend $3.7 billion in support of clean energy, questions about whether wind even produces the amount of energy that is claimed. My studies suggest that at a time when American needs large amounts of low-cost reliable power, wind produces puny amounts of high-cost unreliable power. We need lower prices; wind power raises prices. We will have an opportunity in our debates and further hearings to examine these questions.

But the legislation we offer today is about a different question: the siting of 100,000 of these massive machines.

The idea of windmills conjures up pleasant images -- of Holland and tulips, of rural America with windmill blades slowly turning, pumping water at the farm well. My grandparents had such a windmill at their well pump. That was back before rural electrification.

But the windmills we are talking about today are not your grandmother’s windmills.

Each one is typically [over] 100 yards tall, two stories taller than the Stature of Liberty, taller than a football field is long.

These windmills are wider than a 747 jumbo jet.

Their rotor blades turn at [well over] 100 miles per hour.

These towers and their flashing red lights can be seen from more than 25 miles away.

Their noise can be heard from up to a half mile away. It is a thumping and swishing sound. It has been described by residents that are unhappy with the noise as sounding like a brick wrapped in a towel tumbling in a clothes drier on a perpetual basis.

These windmills produce very little power since they only operate when the wind blows enough or doesn’t blow too much, so they are usually placed in large wind farms covering huge amounts of land.

As an example, if the Congress ordered electric companies to build 10 percent of their power from renewable energy -- which as we have said, has to be mostly wind -- and if we renew the current subsidy each year, by the year 2025, my state of Tennessee would have at least 1,700 windmills, which would cover land almost equal to two times the size of the city of Knoxville.

If Virginia were to produce 10 percent of its power from wind and the subsidies continue, it would probably need more than 1,700 windmills. These windmills would take up enough land to equal the land mass of three cities the size of Richmond, Virginia.

In North Carolina, to supply 10 percent of electricity from wind if the subsidies continue, it would take up the landmass of the Research Triangle -- the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area.

According to testimony before our committee, in Tennessee and Virginia, these windmills would work best and perhaps only work at all along ridge tops.

So, if present policies are continued, we could expect to see hundreds of football field sized towers with flashing red lights atop the blue ridges of Virginia, above the Shenandoah Valley, along the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, on top of Signal Mountain, and on top of Lookout Mountain and Roan Mountain in Tennessee and down the Tennessee River Gorge, which the city of Chattanooga has just spent 25 years protecting and now calls itself the scenic city. ...

What will this do to our tourism industry? Will 10 million visitors a year who come to enjoy the Great Smokies really want to come see ridge tops decorated with flashing red lights and 100-yard tall windmills?

What happens to electric rates when the federal subsidy disappears?

Who will take down these massive structures if we decide we don’t like them or if they don’t work?

Who is making the money on all this?

Why are some of European countries who pioneered wind farms now slowing down or even stopping their construction in some places?

Clearly there are more sensible ways to provide clean energy than spending $3.7 billion of taxpayers’ money to destroy the American landscape. ...

While we are debating the wisdom of wind policies, these massive turbines are being built across America, 6,700 of them so far, 29 of them in Tennessee. The Tennessee Valley Authority recently announced it had signed a 20-year contract with a group of investors from Chicago to build 18 huge windmills atop a 3,300 foot ridge on Buffalo Mountain in East Tennessee.

So the purpose of our legislation is to give citizens the opportunity to have some say in where these massive structures are located in their communities and to make sure that the Congress does not subsidize the destruction of the American landscape near our national parks or other highly scenic areas or build such tall structures dangerously close to our military bases.

First, the bill ensures that local authorities are notified and have a role in the approval of new windmills to be built in their areas of jurisdiction. This means that at the same time a proposed windmill is filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC would notify the local authority with zoning jurisdiction. ...

Second, our legislation provides protection to highly scenic areas and to military bases. It does so my eliminating tax subsidies for any windmill within 20 miles of a World Heritage Area (which includes many national parks), a military base or offshore.

Under the bill, placement of a windmill within 20 miles of such a site shall also require the completion of an environmental impact statement. Further, any windmill that is to be constructed within 20 miles of a neighboring state’s border may be vetoed by that neighboring state. In other words, if the neighboring state can see it, and don’t want it, they can veto it.

I believe that during our debates we will find there are better ways to produce a low-cost, reliable supply of American energy than by spending $3.7 billion over the next 5 years requiring power companies to produce energy from giant windmills that raise electric rates, only work when the wind blows, and destroy the American landscape. ...

In the United States of America, Mr. President, the wholesale destruction of the American landscape is not an incidental concern. The Great American Outdoors is an essential part of the American character. Italy has its art. Egypt has its pyramids. England has its history. And we have the Great American Outdoors.

While we debate the merits of so much subsidy and reliance on wind power, we should at the same time protect our national parks, our shorelines and other highly scenic areas, and we should give American citizens the opportunity to protect their communities and landscapes before it is too late.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines