Wind power found wanting

ABS Energy Research of London has recently published its 3rd "Wind Power Report." It costs £830, but the description gives one an idea of the main issue, namely, that the claimed benefits from wind power are not actually seen.

Introduction

... Significant industry issues are emerging as operational data becomes available from the major wind power operators such as E.ON Netz, Eltra and ESB.

In 2003 the Irish government declared a moratorium on further wind power development. This opens many questions about the assumptions and claims made for wind power.

Key Findings

The wind power industry is reaching a highly controversial phase in its development as solid operational data becomes available about its performance, limitations and effects on the grid.

The ABS report concludes that governments, developers and operators should seriously consider their options regarding wind power.

Wind power reports have now been published by energy agencies and the network operators in USA, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Ireland, delineating critical problems. Deutsche EnergieAgentur (dena) has published a comprehensive report on German wind power on behalf of the Federal Government, together with the utility and wind and industries.

The dena report assessed the capacity credit of wind power in Germany in 2003 as 890-1,230 MW, i.e. 6% of installed wind capacity of 14,603 MW, rising to 1,820-2,300 MW for 36,000 MW installed in 2015, with a reserve capacity requirement of 7,000 MW.

The claimed savings in GHG emissions has been questioned.

Denmark exported over 80% of wind generated electricity to Norway in 2004, which has 98.5% carbon-free hydro generation, because wind delivered a surplus of 84%, according to the CEO of Eltra, almost nullifying any emissions savings.

Wind's intermittency places a large strain on system balance.

A new understanding is emerging about the relative efficiencies and emissions of base load operation of fossil fuel plant versus plant used in back up of a variable source.

Wind power has been promoted for politico/environmental reasons and wind developers have benefited from substantial subsidies, leading to exaggerated claims. A reality check is needed.

Reasons to Buy

With the first real evidence of performance from some of the most authoritative sources in the power industry, the claims for wind power are being called into question.

Anyone involved in this industry should have this information and be aware of these results.

Be wary when the wind industry describes a criticism of wind power as a "myth."

Industry figures like the CEOs of E.ON Netz and Eltra do not deal in myths and solutions, they have real experience and more data than anyone else. They record what has actually happened.

You can save yourself a lot of money and read "The Low Benefit of Industrial Wind," which appears to contain much of the same information, for free.

wind power, wind energy

Wind power = tons of concrete

According to the June 17 Dodge City Daily Globe, reporting on the "inauguration" of the Spearville Wind Energy Facility in Kansas (which is under construction),

It took 1,822 truckloads of concrete to build the 67 foundations for the wind towers, and each foundation required 272 cubic yards of concrete. The height of each tower will be 262 feet, compared to the tallest building in Kansas, the Epic Center in Wichita, which is 325 feet.

That's 27 truckloads of concrete, at least 27 tons, for each turbine. Along with the roads and new high-voltage transmission structures that the article also mentions (to get the energy from western Kansas to where it's actually needed), that's a serious impact on the prairie ecology.

And added to the height of the tower is the sweep of the blades that extend another 126 feet, for a total height of 388 feet, lit up and moving (and making noise) night and day.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

Tug Hill: A Cautionary Tale

The following is by Calvin Luther Martin of Malone, N.Y., dated June 19, 2006.

Sue Brander is an older woman. In her sixties, I would hazard to guess. She's a gardener, raises Morgan horses and, in years past, was a "major event" organizer. Sue's also a professional writer.

Sue lives in a little town in the Mohawk Valley, New York. Right about the center of the state (close to Herkimer, NY, if you know the geography). Hilly, lovely area. Lots of Amish around.

This past winter Sue showed up on my radar screen: I spotted an article she wrote in the Richfield Springs, NY, newspaper, on wind turbines coming to town. It was obvious this woman named Sue Brander was much concerned.

Last week Sue staged a modest "major event" in Stark, a village near her home. She put together a 3-hour conference on wind energy, featuring Gordon Yancey, owner of the Flatrock Inn, smack in the middle of the Tug Hill Plateau (Lewis County, NY). Gordon is worth inviting to a wind conference because his inn is surrounded by 135 (give or take) industrial turbines. The closest being 1000' away. The Tug Hill turbines went on-line this past January. Sue also had Nick Pressley, owner of an environmental engineering firm, speak about environmental impacts of wind plants. She had another expert address the finances of wind energy and Dr. Nina Pierpont speak (by teleconference) about health hazards of living close to turbines.

It was a powerful evening, I am told. ...

Three days later Sue sent out the e-mail about her (adult) daughter visiting the Tug Hill windplant a day after the conference.

If you live anywhere near New York State, do what the wind salesmen are always inviting people to do: "Go see for yourself." The usual invitation runs like this: "Go to Fenner and see for yourself."

But don't go to Fenner, NY, where there are 20 smallish turbines (which, we have reason to think, have their generators turned off much of the time, to cut the noise for this Poster Child Wind Farm). Go, instead, to Tug Hill, and experience those 135 goliath turbines. Go, experience what Gordon Yancey daily experiences. (I have seen Gordon weep in public over the industrial freak show and neurological nightmare he must now live with.)

Go to Tug Hill to see for yourself if you, too, "keep wanting to turn left, because the whole world is turning left." Or, maybe you're one of the lucky 80% of the population that doesn't suffer from inner ear sensitivity (motion sickness), producing the vertigo and nausea this man, Jeremy, describes. I suppose if you're one of that 80% you can drive away (in a straight line) from Tug Hill and announce, as wind salesmen routinely do, that it's fine to have wind turbines littering the residential landscape -- that you don't find them (literally) nauseating and (literally) vertiginous and, hence, everyone should experience them the way you do.

Yes, I have heard this said many times in public meetings in Clinton, Ellenburg, and Brandon, NY. The people who say this go to church on a Sunday morn' and they lay claim, in addition, to having a functioning brain and, hence, modicum of intelligence. A modicum of morality and intelligence, as it were.

But as I leave these meetings, I have my doubts. And I think the Leviathan named Almighty Dollar has swallowed them whole.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

Eyes opened by Tug Hill wind turbines

The following is by a resident of Stark, N.Y., dated June 19, 2006.

She started in on me about Tug Hill Plateau. "We went for a drive last night," she said. "We went to Herkimer for dinner and Jeremy wanted to go for a ride. We drove up to Barneveldt and stopped for ice cream. Then we went on to Booneville and Lowville."

That's where the 195-turbine wind factory is.

"You have to go there! It's awful! Just awful! We can't let this happen here. I've never seen anything so awful." ...

She went on and on. There was some wind, but not much, on June 17. The turbines were just hissing. They arrived there shortly before dusk, and stayed for the turnover to darkness, to see the lights on the turbine towers. They were there for not more than an hour, perhaps less.

"You absolutely cannot compare Fenner and Madison to this," she said. "These are much taller than Fenner and Madison. And there are more of them. This is more like what ours will be, 80 turbines in neighborhoods. There is no comparison. We have to get our Town Board members to go up there. You look at the horizon and you see tips spinning, and you know there are more, just over the next hill. It never ends. It's like having turbines from here to Herkimer."

After I drove her home, her husband insisted that I come inside and see the video on his cell phone. "I almost drove off the road," he said. "I kept wanting to turn left, because the whole world was turning left. I got dizzy, and I was dizzy for ten minutes after we left the area." ...

He began calculating the area of the rotor sweep. "They were spinning at 16 revolutions per minute," he said. "I counted the revolutions. There are three blades. That's 48 blade sweeps per minute." "That's how many times you're going to get strobe flicker if you're in the shadow of these things," he said. "And they give you window blinds to stop it? That won't work. And you sure can't sit outside in the yard with a strobe flicker like that." ...

Many times over the past six months, we had quarreled over these turbines. She didn't want to believe that neighbors planning to put turbines on their property would be doing any harm to us. When she heard Gordon Yancey [owner of the Flatrock Inn on the Tug Hill Plateau] on Thursday evening, they could barely hear at the back of the standing room only crowd. But they heard enough to convince them to go up to Lowville and see for themselves.

... She now knows these turbines could sicken animals and people. The motion. The low frequency sound. The stray voltage. ... She was not dizzy and didn't get motion sickness when they went to Lowville. But she saw what happened to her husband. The effects of motion and sound vary in the population. When she saw what happened to him, suddenly everything she heard and read came into focus. ...

"We have to get every lease holder to go up there to Lowville," she said. It's only 2 hours one way. We left at 6:00, and we were home by midnight. We stopped for dinner on the way. Everybody has to make it their personal mission to get one landowner to go up there and see this."

"I had nightmares about the turbines all night last night," her husband said this Sunday afternoon.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, animal rights

A note about NIMBY

Promoters of industrial wind development in rural and wild areas generally dismiss the defenders of those rural and wild areas as NIMBY, i.e., supporting wind power but "not in my back yard."

But where are the promoters pushing these developments? Not in their back yards! It looks like they're the real NIMBYs.

Most opponents of industrial wind don't support it anywhere. They've looked into it and found it wanting.

And a note about aesthetics

Related to the dishonest NIMBY charge is that we are concerned only with aesthetics. Aesthetics are, of course, an important part of most people's rejection of industrial wind turbines: Anything that big that is lit up and moves and makes noise and dominates the skyline had better be worth it, and it doesn't take long to discover that they are not.

But the industry would rather avoid that debate, so they dismiss their critics as mere aesthetes, concerned only with their precious views, blind to the whole planet sinking into a hellhole. (And don't ask if lining the hills with giant wind turbines can have a significant effect against the pursuit of that quagmire, because that would obviously mean you don't think the problem is so grave that doing anything, even if it doesn't actually do anything, is better than doing nothing. That is, The world is hell-bent for destruction, and you're just being negative!)

So who sponsors an art exhibit to show how "aesthetic" the giant turbines are? Industry lobbyists Andrew Perchlik and the American Wind Energy Association! It looks like they're the ones trying to make it an aesthetic issue. Unfortunately, they have to resort to imagination.

The reality is too obvious. They are giant intrusive machines way out of place in rural and wild areas. There's new roads and transmission infrastructure involved, too.

And their potential energy contribution is puny. Their ability to replace other fuels, particularly base-load providers such as coal and nuclear, is nil.

That's what really makes them ugly.

It's the same old story. A lot of hucksters are getting rich by making other people's lives hell. "The beauty [sic] of power" indeed.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism

Who wants wind power?

To the Editor, Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer:

The Reformer asks, in its argument for industrial-scale wind power (editorial, June 13), if Governor Douglas would like to see a nuclear plant in Chittenden County, a coal plant near Montpelier, or a natural gas plant near Rutland. Since most of the wind plants in Vermont are proposed up here in the northeast, one might also ask if advocates would like to see giant wind machines on the Northfield and Worcester ranges around Montpelier or lining the shore of Lake Champlain.

How about replacing the Bennington Battle Monument with a few wind turbines that would be over a hundred feet higher, distract with their movement and flashing lights, and disturb with their noise?

Faced with the prospect of actually having to live with the things, many who currently advocate industrial-scale wind power would, like their fellows in the northeast and everywhere else a project is proposed, start looking more seriously at the technology and more honestly weigh the costs and benefits.

They will discover that it is not a delusional love of the status quo or a lack of creativity that turns them against big wind. It is the obvious fact that the benefits are negligible yet the negative impacts are substantial.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Less incentive needed for wind power boondoggle

To the Editor, New York Times:

Since Goldman Sachs and others are already investing so much in renewable energy projects ("Let Them Go Green," editorial, June 12), one wonders why the Times thinks they need more incentive to do so. For example, the purchase of wind developer Zilkha (now Horizon) Renewable Energy was hardly a risk. According to legal firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, federal subsidies can pay for two-thirds of the value of a wind project. State subsidies may cover another ten percent. The modern wind industry (home of Zilkha/Horizon) was developed in Texas by George Bush and Kenneth Lay, and it shows.

Public investment may help to establish new beneficial technologies, but industrial-scale wind power is not one of them.

Because its generation of electricity depends on the wind speed, it is highly variable and can not significantly reduce our use of other fuels. This has been the experience in Denmark. The benefits are neglible, but the negative environmental and social impacts are substantial. The machines are huge -- now commonly more than 400 feet high -- and necessarily numerous, requiring new roads and transmission infrastructure in typically wild and rural landscapes.

We need less incentive for such a boondoggle, not more.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism