Manawatu residents say they are being "driven stupid" by noise from wind turbines, despite living twice as far away as those planned for Makara.categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
Two residents who live up to three kilometres from Te Apiti and Tararua wind farms spoke at the resource consent hearing for Meridian Energy's proposed Makara wind farm yesterday.
On the Makara Guardians group's last day of evidence, Wendy Brock described three consecutive days of relentless noise and throbbing from 18 turbines 2.5km from her Ashhurst home.
"You have this drone, you can't escape it. After three days the residents were just worn down, fed up."
Meridian's Project West Wind proposes 70 turbines, some within 1km of homes. The Makara turbines would also be 35 metres taller than Te Apiti's.
Mrs Brock said Meridian's consultation for Te Apiti did not prepare residents for the noise levels.
"The turbines make noise, lots of it."
... Meridian has already paid an undisclosed sum to move one Manawatu family who could not live in their house because of noise and vibrations.
Daniel Sproull's farm lies within sight of both wind farms. He said he feared for Makara residents if Meridian's 70 turbines were allowed.
"If these go ahead and your place is downwind, you're stuffed."
The turbines' sound at Te Apiti, 3km away, was like a truck rumbling past his house, though "it doesn't pass in seconds, it can rumble for hours".
The turbines were enough to "drive you stupid".
Several nights he was woken by turbine noise, thinking the clothes dryer had been left on overnight or road works were directly outside his property, he said.
November 21, 2005
"Neighbours Warn of Din From Wind Turbines"
From the Nov. 16 Wellington, New Zealand, Dominion Post:
Save the world, save the ridgelines
To the Editor, Vermont Guardian:
I am puzzled by Jane Newton's stand against opposition to industrial wind turbines (letter, Nov. 16). Are not the ridgelines part of the world that needs protecting? If we allow our own back yard to be destroyed merely for corporate profit, how can we go on to save the rest of the world from the same process?
I am surprised by her apparently unquestioning acceptance of claims from the developers that wind power is a step in the right direction. Despite decades of experience, and at least ten years of substantial installation, proponents can not point to any savings of other fuels. It won't move us away from fossil or nuclear fuels, let alone war, exploitation, and pollution. Besides a lack of positive impact, the negative effects are not negligible.
Just as military invasion is sold as "spreading democracy" and corporate piracy as "bringing opportunity," the needless industrialization of our last rural and wild landscapes with wind turbines just as falsely sold as "clean energy."
Newton suggests countering corporate crime in small ways, yet dismisses the crimes of big wind as minor. A scam is a scam, destruction destruction. The fight against it at every level can -- and ought to -- begin in our own back yards. My experience in working with many individuals against big wind is that their concern does not stop at their own ridgelines. The network of individuals and groups helping each other extends around the world. Their activism should be praised not denigrated.
In August 2004, the Point Pierce Aboriginal community of Australia watched 40,000 years of Dreaming destroyed by the construction of 50 wind turbines at Wattle Point. This past autumn, Zapotecos of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico asked Mark Duchamp, a bird conservationist who fights giant wind turbine facilities in Spain and Scotland, to help them against "the imposition of neoliberal megacorporations destroying nature and our cultures" (the whole letter in Spanish is reproduced on the web at www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=2565).
Giant wind turbines on our ridgelines won't reduce the use of other sources of energy in Vermont or anywhere else on the grid. According to a Nov. 18 article in the Times Argus, the U.S. president of the Italy-based company targeting Sheffield and Sutton shamelessly boasted of construction on "state-owned virgin mountain tops" on Maui, Hawaii. It's corporate invasion and conquest, nothing else.
The fight against big wind is not to deny the necessary struggles Newton is active in. It is to join them.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism
I am puzzled by Jane Newton's stand against opposition to industrial wind turbines (letter, Nov. 16). Are not the ridgelines part of the world that needs protecting? If we allow our own back yard to be destroyed merely for corporate profit, how can we go on to save the rest of the world from the same process?
I am surprised by her apparently unquestioning acceptance of claims from the developers that wind power is a step in the right direction. Despite decades of experience, and at least ten years of substantial installation, proponents can not point to any savings of other fuels. It won't move us away from fossil or nuclear fuels, let alone war, exploitation, and pollution. Besides a lack of positive impact, the negative effects are not negligible.
Just as military invasion is sold as "spreading democracy" and corporate piracy as "bringing opportunity," the needless industrialization of our last rural and wild landscapes with wind turbines just as falsely sold as "clean energy."
Newton suggests countering corporate crime in small ways, yet dismisses the crimes of big wind as minor. A scam is a scam, destruction destruction. The fight against it at every level can -- and ought to -- begin in our own back yards. My experience in working with many individuals against big wind is that their concern does not stop at their own ridgelines. The network of individuals and groups helping each other extends around the world. Their activism should be praised not denigrated.
In August 2004, the Point Pierce Aboriginal community of Australia watched 40,000 years of Dreaming destroyed by the construction of 50 wind turbines at Wattle Point. This past autumn, Zapotecos of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico asked Mark Duchamp, a bird conservationist who fights giant wind turbine facilities in Spain and Scotland, to help them against "the imposition of neoliberal megacorporations destroying nature and our cultures" (the whole letter in Spanish is reproduced on the web at www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=2565).
Giant wind turbines on our ridgelines won't reduce the use of other sources of energy in Vermont or anywhere else on the grid. According to a Nov. 18 article in the Times Argus, the U.S. president of the Italy-based company targeting Sheffield and Sutton shamelessly boasted of construction on "state-owned virgin mountain tops" on Maui, Hawaii. It's corporate invasion and conquest, nothing else.
The fight against big wind is not to deny the necessary struggles Newton is active in. It is to join them.
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism
November 19, 2005
Stooped
'"Just when you thought you'd seen it all, the Republicans have stooped to new lows, even for them," said Ms. Pelosi, who assailed Republicans as impugning Mr. Murtha's patriotism.' --New York Times
To show the Republicans that Democrats can stoop even lower, Pelosi then urged her party to vote with them against Democrat Murtha's plan to remove troops from Iraq. And all but three members of the House did.
To show the Republicans that Democrats can stoop even lower, Pelosi then urged her party to vote with them against Democrat Murtha's plan to remove troops from Iraq. And all but three members of the House did.
November 18, 2005
Wind developers and the urge to conquer
From today's Barre-Montpelier (Vt.) Times-Argus:
A few supporters of the project argue for property rights, even as they sign away control of their own property for decades in a lease written by the lessee and drastically impinge on the rights of the neighbors to enjoy their property.
But the revealing comment is about the "state-owned virgin mountain tops" on Maui. It's about conquest and nothing else. That's why progressives, feminists, and environmentalists oppose these projects. Industrial wind power provides no mitigating benefit that even begins to justify this rape and pillage.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, feminism, ecofeminism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
"Officials behind a major wind project proposed here unveiled more details of their plans Thursday evening, meeting with the planning commission as required by the state law that regulates energy projects.Sheffield and Sutton residents appear to be overwhelmingly opposed to the project, which will sprawl across three mountain ridges. After the usual private dealings with town officials, whom they easily wooed, the company is clearly upset by the public response. Despite an earlier promise to heed the public's wish, UPC never intended to abandon its quest. Besides the show of force to the planning commission reported here, they have hired an advertising firm to organize a "grass roots" support campaign.
"Massachusetts-based UPC Wind Management presented the update, bringing in its president, power sales director, project manager, lawyer, publicist and environmental consultant. They were joined by Avram Patt, general manager of East Montpelier–based Washington Electric Co-op.
"UPC has ... U.S. offices in Maine, New York, San Diego, Toronto and Maui, Hawaii, where UPC's first U.S. wind project is under construction on state-owned virgin mountain tops," Gaynor said." [Paul Gaynor, president of UPC, which is actually based in Italy]
A few supporters of the project argue for property rights, even as they sign away control of their own property for decades in a lease written by the lessee and drastically impinge on the rights of the neighbors to enjoy their property.
But the revealing comment is about the "state-owned virgin mountain tops" on Maui. It's about conquest and nothing else. That's why progressives, feminists, and environmentalists oppose these projects. Industrial wind power provides no mitigating benefit that even begins to justify this rape and pillage.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, feminism, ecofeminism, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
November 17, 2005
Wind power titbits and news
According to a March 2004 report prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy by Craig Cox of Bob Lawrence and Associates (Alexandria, Va.), each of the foundations for the 108 GE 1.5-MW wind turbine towers in Lamar, Colo., contains 1,250,000 pounds of concrete and steel rebar.
According to a Nov. 17 story in the Providence (R.I.) Journal, the hole prepared for a single 660-KW Vestas V47 wind turbine tower at a Portsmouth Abbey is 13 feet across and 26 feet deep.
In Wayne County, Pa., it has been widely reported, the Waymart Wind Farm company is trying to get their tax assessment lowered from $282,410 to $31-45,000 per 1.5-MW turbine. In Meyersdale, Pa., the owners of the wind power facility pay the town $640 per 1.5-MW turbine instead of taxes. Nobody should be surprised that these people try to get out of paying their fair share. But who in supportive communities thinks the crumbs they might throw for a while are worth the tremendous loss of open or wild land?
Finally, the Baltic Times reported on Nov. 16 that Estonia is no longer favoring wind power over other renewables: 'Einari Kisel, head of the Ministry of Economy and Communications' energy department, puts it bluntly: "We do not want to have too many wind mills," he says. "The price of wind energy is expensive. The unstable production causes additional costs to other producers."' The wind developers argue that the high cost and low benefit can be mitigated by selling CO2 credits to countries that must meet Kyoto Accord targets (or at least buy enough tokens of non-CO2 production instead of actually reduce emissions). That is, embrace energy-laundering.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
According to a Nov. 17 story in the Providence (R.I.) Journal, the hole prepared for a single 660-KW Vestas V47 wind turbine tower at a Portsmouth Abbey is 13 feet across and 26 feet deep.
In Wayne County, Pa., it has been widely reported, the Waymart Wind Farm company is trying to get their tax assessment lowered from $282,410 to $31-45,000 per 1.5-MW turbine. In Meyersdale, Pa., the owners of the wind power facility pay the town $640 per 1.5-MW turbine instead of taxes. Nobody should be surprised that these people try to get out of paying their fair share. But who in supportive communities thinks the crumbs they might throw for a while are worth the tremendous loss of open or wild land?
Finally, the Baltic Times reported on Nov. 16 that Estonia is no longer favoring wind power over other renewables: 'Einari Kisel, head of the Ministry of Economy and Communications' energy department, puts it bluntly: "We do not want to have too many wind mills," he says. "The price of wind energy is expensive. The unstable production causes additional costs to other producers."' The wind developers argue that the high cost and low benefit can be mitigated by selling CO2 credits to countries that must meet Kyoto Accord targets (or at least buy enough tokens of non-CO2 production instead of actually reduce emissions). That is, embrace energy-laundering.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines
November 16, 2005
Wind power increases emissions from fossil-fuel plants
On May 14, the Herald Sun of Melbourne, Australia, carried a story that began, "Could wind power actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in Victoria?":
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
Andrew Richards, external affairs manager for Australia's biggest renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro, ... rejects outright claims that wind farms can increase greenhouse gases because they cause existing brown coal generators to "throttle back" and produce higher emissions."At this stage." That is to say, it appears, that as wind power becomes more than just "background noise" it does indeed cause greater 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."
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
November 15, 2005
New wind report blows away myths of proponents
A report that Britain has the best wind resource in Europe has been getting a lot of attention lately. This has in fact long been known and is evident in the higher capacity factor (actual output vs. full capacity) of installed wind turbines: 25% in the U.K. versus 15-20% on the continent.
Rather than looking just at averages, the recent government-commissioned study from Oxford
University's Environmental Change Institute found that Britain is never becalmed. The researchers examined 35 years of meteorological data and found not one hour when the wind wasn't blowing at least 4 m/s somewhere in the island kingdom, that being the wind speed at which most industrial turbines start generating electricity. They also found that the wind is below that speed in more than 90% of the country only 1-2 hours per year. From this, they argue -- and news articles duly echo -- that wind power is not intermittent as opponents claim and is therefore a reliable source of energy.
The report itself (beyond the executive summary), however, distinguishes between intermittency and variability, noting that "it is the variation in output from one hour to the next [let alone one minute to the next] that poses challenges for its integration into electricity networks."
The electricity produced by a wind turbine at 4 m/s is the merest trickle, which the report also explains. So the planned tens of thousands of wind turbines would be justified by proponents because in one region there will always be a trickle of production. Rather than defeating the argument of wind power's intermittency, this study in fact underscores it by emphasizing the need for many widely dispersed wind plants to essentially act as a single small plant.
Even then, as the report also explains, the need for conventional capacity would be minimally reduced, "due to the variability of wind power." In their example, which assumes a 35% capacity factor for wind (despite elsewhere citing the actual 27% long-term average), the addition of 13 GW of wind plant capacity to an 84-GW network could replace only 3 GW of conventional capacity. They also explain that spinning reserve must be added as well to back up the wind, so some of that 3 GW has to remain. Their estimate is a very optimistic 5% of wind capacity, or 0.65 GW in the example, but German grid manager Eon Netz has determined their need for spinning reserve to be at least 50%. Even halving that need by assuming the U.K.'s wind is so much more steady than Germany's would mean that no conventional capacity would actually be displaced.
In addition to the new wind capacity (without any reduction of other capacity, and possibly an increase of conventional capacity for spinning standby), the report describes the need for new and upgraded transmission capacity and the costs of integrating nondispatchable and highly variable wind power.
Thus wind power is an expensive land-intensive intrusion that fails to make a meaningful contribution to our energy needs nor to cleaning up our ongoing energy use.
categories: wind power, wind energy
Rather than looking just at averages, the recent government-commissioned study from Oxford
University's Environmental Change Institute found that Britain is never becalmed. The researchers examined 35 years of meteorological data and found not one hour when the wind wasn't blowing at least 4 m/s somewhere in the island kingdom, that being the wind speed at which most industrial turbines start generating electricity. They also found that the wind is below that speed in more than 90% of the country only 1-2 hours per year. From this, they argue -- and news articles duly echo -- that wind power is not intermittent as opponents claim and is therefore a reliable source of energy.
The report itself (beyond the executive summary), however, distinguishes between intermittency and variability, noting that "it is the variation in output from one hour to the next [let alone one minute to the next] that poses challenges for its integration into electricity networks."
The electricity produced by a wind turbine at 4 m/s is the merest trickle, which the report also explains. So the planned tens of thousands of wind turbines would be justified by proponents because in one region there will always be a trickle of production. Rather than defeating the argument of wind power's intermittency, this study in fact underscores it by emphasizing the need for many widely dispersed wind plants to essentially act as a single small plant.
Even then, as the report also explains, the need for conventional capacity would be minimally reduced, "due to the variability of wind power." In their example, which assumes a 35% capacity factor for wind (despite elsewhere citing the actual 27% long-term average), the addition of 13 GW of wind plant capacity to an 84-GW network could replace only 3 GW of conventional capacity. They also explain that spinning reserve must be added as well to back up the wind, so some of that 3 GW has to remain. Their estimate is a very optimistic 5% of wind capacity, or 0.65 GW in the example, but German grid manager Eon Netz has determined their need for spinning reserve to be at least 50%. Even halving that need by assuming the U.K.'s wind is so much more steady than Germany's would mean that no conventional capacity would actually be displaced.
In addition to the new wind capacity (without any reduction of other capacity, and possibly an increase of conventional capacity for spinning standby), the report describes the need for new and upgraded transmission capacity and the costs of integrating nondispatchable and highly variable wind power.
Thus wind power is an expensive land-intensive intrusion that fails to make a meaningful contribution to our energy needs nor to cleaning up our ongoing energy use.
categories: wind power, wind energy
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