NO industrial wind turbines in National Forest

Dear Bob Bayer, Project Coordinator, USDA Forest Service --

Please do not allow the construction of industrial wind turbines on National Forest lands in Readsboro, Vt., as proposed by PPM Energy.

Such construction would be a permanent loss of the land for any other purpose. It would require acres of clearing for each turbine, new heavy-duty roads, and excavation (including blasting) for steel-reinforced concrete bases that would remain in the ground forever.

The motion and consequent noise and vibration of the giant turbines are a threat to flying animals -- birds, bats, and insects -- and would disturb the lives of animals on and in the ground.

Their height and required safety lighting would adversely transform the character of a rare natural landscape.

These and other impacts far outweigh the potential benefit of the facility as a source of nonpolluting renewable energy.

As you know, wind energy is highly variable, intermittent, and nondispatchable. Thus, integrating it into the grid is problematic.

Other sources must be kept available to balance the infeed from wind. They may continue to burn fuel in standby mode, burn fuel at lower efficiency in a ramped down state, or burn extra fuel in more frequent starts.

The beneficial effect of wind as a clean source of energy is therefore substantially diminished as a supplier to the grid.

In many cases, the infeed from wind may simply be absorbed as a tolerable variation in line voltage, thus not displacing any other source at all.

In sum, forest land and habitat should not be sacrificed for such a negligible potential benefit that will not measurably alter our energy use.

Reject the proposal of siting wind turbines in the National Forest.

The forest is not renewable.

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

Protected wolves and hyenas disappearing in Indian district

From newindpress.com, via National Wind Watch:

Three years ago, Gajendragad [in Gadag district] was recognised as a safe haven for highly endangered species like the Indian grey wolf and striped hyenas, but then came wind farming and wind mills with huge noisy fans and human traffic to maintain these machines. It drove away these species from their habitat.

Dr H N Kumara, wildlife biologist, observed the changes during his visits to the place. ‘‘Some years ago, I could sight huge packs of animals during my visits. My week-long stay here had revealed that these places were an ideal den for the wolves. But after a couple of years, the habitats were destroyed and wolves disappeared,’’ he explained.

The hills were destroyed for the construction of roads and huge mills by a private firm, replacing the dry decidous place. The only beneficiary is cattle, for they can graze free and without fear. ‘‘There were a lot of wolves here. And the sight of grazing sheep was rare. Now the situation is the reverse. The wolves have gone,’’ said Goni Basappa Koralahalli, a shepherd.

[Poachers also take advantage of the new roads. --Ed.]

Prashant Rathod says he had sighted wolves several times, but it was more than a year ago. Now no one comes across wolves. The status of the Indian striped hyena, an endangered species, is no different. They have disappeared since the past three years.

‘‘This is a significant habitat for these hyenas and we had seen some near goshalas around Kalakaleshwar temple. But they are gone. It is possible that too much human interference might have driven them away,’’ he said.

Power generation is permitted on this government land and about five megawatts of power is generated. Officials from the forest department were not available for comment on the alarming migration of animals. The forest department had reported many incidents where bears made life miserable for people in Arasikere and parts of Hiryur recently.

The Indian grey wolf (Canis lupus) is found in the Deccan plateau and differs from its Himalyan cousin. Though considered secondary predators with significant roles in the food chain, the numbers of this nocturnal and diurnal species is dwindling rapidly due to poaching, loss of habitat and threat from feline species.

The species is protected under Wildlife Act Schedule 1.

The Indian striped hyena, a scavenger species was sighted in places like Gajendragad, Chitradurga, parts of Tumkur region, around Doroji, Sandur and Bidar.

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

Corrosion grounding off-shore wind

From Environmental Data Services (U.K.), via Friends of the Irish Environment, comes a report of a Sept. 20 article in the Norwegian engineering journal Teknisk Ukeblad about off-shore wind energy facilities being shut down because of corrosion damage to gearboxes, rotor blades, and other mechanical components. Affected sites include Nysted and Horns Rev off the Danish coast, Barrow in the Irish sea, and Kentish Flats in the Thames estuary. Vestas has suspended sales of its 3-MW off-shore turbine.

The Swedish engineering journal Ny Teknik also carried an article on the subject on Sept. 19, confirming Vestas' problems and noting that the technology still needs a lot of work (how much more money will we throw down this dead end?) to withstand the harsh environment off shore.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines

Non Aux Eoliennes!

Demonstration this Friday, October 6, in front of the Environment Ministry in Paris at 2:00 in the afternoon

Community and environmental groups from all over France will be demonstrating against the madness of industrial wind turbine development. They will be demanding that the Environment Ministry protect the environment instead of wreck it.

For details, go to the Collectif 6 Octobre web site.

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

Wind turbines and noise

From abstracts of papers presented at the Wind Turbine Noise 2007 conference, Sept. 20-21, Lyon, France:

"In wind turbines the drive train, especially the gear box, is a significant source of noise. Significant contributions come from the gear mesh and from resonances of the structure like the main frame or the torque arm. The structure-borne noise from these sources is transferred either to the rotor or to the tower and radiated to the environment. The contributions to the noise spectrum from these sources are single tones in the frequency range from about 100 Hz to about 600 Hz."

--paper describing passive and active vibration absorbers manufactured by the German company ESM

"The larger proportion of the general population who live far from them think wind turbines are great -- while the smaller proportion representing people with homes near where wind turbines were subsequently erected have concerns, particularly about noise. On a popular vote basis, as seen by elected officials, the choice is clear, but on a justice basis, who looks out for the impacted few? ...

"The results for one wind farm, the Kingsbridge wind farm near Goderich Ontario, which has the closest distance between the wind turbines and the Environment Canada weather office monitoring station, show that about 31% of the hours of the year show an unmasked noise output above the Ontario Standard, and for nearly 10% of the hours of the year, the noise is significantly above the provincial standard (over 3 dBA), in many cases about 10 dBA above the background level produced by the wind at the receptor. In the 6 months from October 2006 to March 2007, on 64% of the days, there were hours of unmasked noise. This demonstrated the problem to be chronic and significant in nature. For another Ontario wind farm, the results in the summer period between May 1st and August 31st, 2006 showed 59% of the days demonstrated the problem, with it occurring 48% of the nights, and 33% of the nights showing the condition sustained for 3 or more hours. ...

"The presentation will go through the results in detail. They will show that the current Ontario interpretation by the Ministry of the Environment is not adequate to protect the public from excessive annoyance."

--William K. G. Palmer, Canada

"Previous studies have shown that wind turbine noise could be annoying at sound pressure levels lower than those known to be annoying for other community noise sources, such as road traffic. This could be due to the special characteristics of wind turbine noise (amplitude modulation) that make the sound easily perceptible. It could furthermore be due to atmospheric situations influencing large modern wind turbines more than older ones, leading to higher sound exposure than accounted for in the planning process."

--Eja Pedersen, Sweden, and Jelte Bouma, Roel Bakker, and Frits van den Berg, the Netherlands

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, human rights, animal rights

Save the Rupert River from hydro and wind power

To members of the Save the Rupert coalition:

I am in complete solidarity with your opposition to yet more destruction of the James Bay region by Hydro-Québec.

I must, however, note that wind power, although it certainly should have been mentioned in the EIA, is not a viable or desirable alternative.

And like big hydro, which was initially considered to be green and turned out not to be, big wind is not green, either.

At $1.5 million per installed megawatt, the alternative wind projects represent perhaps 3,000 megawatts of nameplate capacity. The American Wind Energy Association's "rule of thumb" for onshore wind turbines is that they require 60 acres of clearance for every installed megawatt.

So the alternative to a 135-square-mile hydro reservoir would be 280 square miles of wind turbines.

Along with the impacts of clearing, heavy-duty roads, and massive steel and concrete platforms, the environmental toll would continue with a broad spectrum of noise that disturbs wildlife (and people), and blades sweeping up to 2 acres of vertical airspace at tip speeds of 150-200 mph that kill substantial numbers of birds, bats, and insects.

The adverse impacts of large-scale wind power are increasingly documented, including by some of the groups in the Save The Rupert coalition. Again, like big hydro, big wind can no longer be thought of as green.

Furthermore, wind is an intermittent and variable energy source, which requires balancing by other sources. The ideal partner for wind is hydro. In fact, wind is likely the reason for the Rupert River project. Hydro-Québec recently called for offers to provide 2,000 megawatts of wind power (they received almost 8,000 MW of proposals). If those projects were to be built, adding to the hundreds of megawatts already installed in Québec, they would need new balancing power from another source.

Thus the company's need for new hydro capacity -- not to provide needed electricity (which, as you say, is not in fact necessary), but to make wind viable so that they can profit from the unwarranted perception that it is a green alternative.

Again, wind is not an alternative to the Rupert River project but the reason for it.

I join you in opposing this latest assault on wilderness. And hope that you also oppose the same assault by wind power projects.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

Sibylline gesture

The first image is from 1473 Ulm, Germany. The second is a painting by Dirck van Baburen from the 1600s. They are both found in From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, by Marina Warner (1994).