On July 27, the Burlington Free Press printed replies on Vermont's energy future from the five Democratic (primary) and one Republican candidate for governor. Here are their statements regarding wind, with commentary following in italics. Dunne and Bartlett did not mention wind.
Dubie: Last November, Bolton Valley became the nation's second ski area, and Vermont's first, to install its own wind turbine -- a 121-foot-tall Northwind 100, manufactured by Vermonters at Northern Power in Barre. It will produce 300,000 kw annually.
As of 10:11 a.m., August 23, 2010, the Bolton Valley wind turbine had produced 125,809 kWh since October 2009. So, apart from confusing kilowatts (rate of production) with kilowatt-hours (energy produced), Dubie is basing his claim on a projection that almost one year later can be shown to be wrong. In its first year of operation, the Bolton Valley wind turbine is likely to produce less than half of the energy predicted (yet still claimed).
Racine: There are locations throughout the northeast that make sense for solar, wind, biomass, and hydro, and if we take a regional approach, we can site these power sources with the least impact possible.
This assumes that these projects must be built. As for wind, its poor production of almost no value to the grid does not justify its erection anywhere. The least impact possible is to forget about it.
Markowitz: I am a strong supporter of community wind projects, hydropower, solar, biomass and geothermal energy production. As governor, I will review our regulatory process to ensure that renewable energy projects get a fair hearing and fast results.
Since energy projects are developed by well capitalized corporations and inordinately affect host communities and environments, the concern should be that those who are adversely affected or who advocate for the environment are able to get a fair hearing.
Shumlin: To meet our electricity needs we will need power delivered from small community-based solar projects to utility scale wind farms and everything in between. As outlined in a Vision for Vermont, I will work with the Treasurer's office to leverage the state's ability to borrow money at affordable rates and issue a series of Vermont renewable energy bonds so that every Vermonter who wants to can literally invest in our energy future. The revenue generated through these projects, guaranteed through electricity sales to the utilities, will help pay the bonds off.
The "everything is needed" approach as presented by Shumlin lacks any sign of rational evaluation of costs and benefits. The only people who would benefit from this circular funding model are the manufacturers and installers — it is a job creation program, but without regard to its effect on the environment and hosting communities, or to its actual contributions to a reliable electricity supply.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, Vermont
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query vermont. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query vermont. Sort by date Show all posts
August 23, 2010
April 30, 2010
Advocates Say Vermont Lags In Wind Power
On Vermont Public Radio this morning, Lawrence Mott, chairman of Renewable Energy Vermont, complains "that the state needs to develop guidelines on where wind projects can be built".
The problem, of course, is actually that Vermont already has such guidelines. Large-scale development above 2,000 feet is not allowed.
In a plea for "guidelines", Mott is really demanding that wind development be exempted from them.
This is such an obvious situation of predatory industry versus the environment that he should be laughed out of the room.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
The problem, of course, is actually that Vermont already has such guidelines. Large-scale development above 2,000 feet is not allowed.
In a plea for "guidelines", Mott is really demanding that wind development be exempted from them.
This is such an obvious situation of predatory industry versus the environment that he should be laughed out of the room.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
July 6, 2012
Sanders voted yes
Alexander Cockburn wrote in The Golden Age Is In Us (1995), entry from September 6, 1994:
I thought the point of having an independent socialist in Congress was precisely that: to be an independent and a socialist. Instead of which we have Bernie Sanders (supposedly the ‘independent socialist’ from Vermont), hack Democrat. He voted for Clinton’s budget, and now he’s voted for the crime bill, a milepost in the development of the repressive corporate state.
This summer we passed, for the first time, the million mark for people in US prisons (not counting city and county jails). Steve Whitman of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown calculates that the imprisonment rate for blacks is now 1,534 per 100,000, compared with a white rate of 197. The central aim of the crime bill, passed on August 25, is to lock up even more black people. ...
People designated as gang members can have their sentence for certain offenses (even those unconnected with gang membership) increased by up to ten years. ... There's no medical or scientific distinction between the two substances, but poor people use crack and rich people use powder. ... Get five years for first-time possession of more than five grams of crack; get no jail time for possession of the same amount of coke powder. The crime bill did nothing to alter such inequities.
This is to pass over the rest of the fascist panorama of the bill: the three-strikes provision, the enhanced mandatory sentencing, the stripping of federal judges of their power to enforce constitutional rights of prisoners, the ending of Pell grants which provide funding for prisoners to get higher education, the car searches, the hysterical and unjust treatment of sex offenders, and on and on, through the expansion of the death penalty to cover more than fifty crimes.
... Sanders voted yes. I asked him why and he faxed me four paragraphs of pitiful blather — almost all other ‘Progressives’ had voted yes; rejection of this bill would have meant a worse one down the road ...; there was money in the bill for cities and towns and for battered women's shelters.
For over a decade I've listened to the rap from Sanders and the Progressive Coalition in Vermont about the need for an alternative to the two-party system. Some alternative! Sanders’ record is scarcely more liberal than that of Vermont’s Republican senator, Jim Jeffords. To their everlasting shame, not one squeak, so far as I can ascertain, was raised by the Vermont Pwogwessives abut Sanders’ crime bill vote. I suppose the money for battered women’s shelters caused them not to notice one of the most rabid expressions of racism in the nation’s legislative history.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
I thought the point of having an independent socialist in Congress was precisely that: to be an independent and a socialist. Instead of which we have Bernie Sanders (supposedly the ‘independent socialist’ from Vermont), hack Democrat. He voted for Clinton’s budget, and now he’s voted for the crime bill, a milepost in the development of the repressive corporate state.
This summer we passed, for the first time, the million mark for people in US prisons (not counting city and county jails). Steve Whitman of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown calculates that the imprisonment rate for blacks is now 1,534 per 100,000, compared with a white rate of 197. The central aim of the crime bill, passed on August 25, is to lock up even more black people. ...
People designated as gang members can have their sentence for certain offenses (even those unconnected with gang membership) increased by up to ten years. ... There's no medical or scientific distinction between the two substances, but poor people use crack and rich people use powder. ... Get five years for first-time possession of more than five grams of crack; get no jail time for possession of the same amount of coke powder. The crime bill did nothing to alter such inequities.
This is to pass over the rest of the fascist panorama of the bill: the three-strikes provision, the enhanced mandatory sentencing, the stripping of federal judges of their power to enforce constitutional rights of prisoners, the ending of Pell grants which provide funding for prisoners to get higher education, the car searches, the hysterical and unjust treatment of sex offenders, and on and on, through the expansion of the death penalty to cover more than fifty crimes.
... Sanders voted yes. I asked him why and he faxed me four paragraphs of pitiful blather — almost all other ‘Progressives’ had voted yes; rejection of this bill would have meant a worse one down the road ...; there was money in the bill for cities and towns and for battered women's shelters.
For over a decade I've listened to the rap from Sanders and the Progressive Coalition in Vermont about the need for an alternative to the two-party system. Some alternative! Sanders’ record is scarcely more liberal than that of Vermont’s Republican senator, Jim Jeffords. To their everlasting shame, not one squeak, so far as I can ascertain, was raised by the Vermont Pwogwessives abut Sanders’ crime bill vote. I suppose the money for battered women’s shelters caused them not to notice one of the most rabid expressions of racism in the nation’s legislative history.
human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, Vermont
March 1, 2007
Second Vermont Republic
Thomas Naylor, founder of the current Vermont independence movement, writes:
The U.S. Empire is going down -- with or without Vermont. The federal government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate America. National and Congressional elections are bought and sold to the highest bidders.
Vermont is no exception to this rule.
Nationally, we have a single political party, the Republican Party, disguised as a two-party system. The Democratic Party is effectively brain dead, having had no new ideas since the 1960s.
The United States of America has become unsustainable politically, economically, agriculturally, socially, culturally, and environmentally. It is also ungovernable and, therefore, unfixable.
Go saoraid!
Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism,
The U.S. Empire is going down -- with or without Vermont. The federal government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Corporate America. National and Congressional elections are bought and sold to the highest bidders.
Vermont is no exception to this rule.
Nationally, we have a single political party, the Republican Party, disguised as a two-party system. The Democratic Party is effectively brain dead, having had no new ideas since the 1960s.
The United States of America has become unsustainable politically, economically, agriculturally, socially, culturally, and environmentally. It is also ungovernable and, therefore, unfixable.
Go saoraid!
Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism,
June 9, 2009
Big wind, little power
In the introduction to a story on Vermont Public Radio this morning about the proposed 80-MW wind turbine facility in Ira and neighboring towns, it was stated that "If completed, it would be the second largest energy producer in the state after Vermont Yankee."
With 400–500-feet-high machines sprawling over two prominent mountains in western Vermont, it would actually be the biggest facility in the state.
But its likely average output of less than 20 MW (less than one-thirtieth of the output of Vermont Yankee) would put it quite a bit farther down the list in terms of actual energy production.
The gross imbalance of cost and benefit is obvious.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights, Vermont
With 400–500-feet-high machines sprawling over two prominent mountains in western Vermont, it would actually be the biggest facility in the state.
But its likely average output of less than 20 MW (less than one-thirtieth of the output of Vermont Yankee) would put it quite a bit farther down the list in terms of actual energy production.
The gross imbalance of cost and benefit is obvious.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights, Vermont
March 23, 2009
Zero emissions?!
On March 11, Elliot Burg, Vermont Assistant Attorney General, announced a call for accurate emissions advertising. This was made in reponse to a request by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group to examine "zero emissions" claims by Entergy, the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which is up for relicensing.
The attorney general's office concluded that "while greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear generation of electricity are negligible, such emissions do occur when uranium is mined, processed and transported".
Entergy agreed to revise the wording of its ads.
We agree with the attorney general that "All participants in the public debate on climate change policy should ensure that factual statements about carbon emissions clearly and truthfully specify what the emissions claims refer to".
Therefore, we submit two examples of misleading claims similar to Entergy's.
From the "Environmental Benefits" section of the Sheffield Wind (First Wind/UPC) web site:
In addition, wind can not operate without support from more reliable and dispatchable sources on the grid, that is, the turbines do not operate without carbon-emitting back-up, which may therefore be used more often or at lower efficiency. A program for expanding industrial wind is also a program for expanding quick-response natural gas plants (as T. Boone Pickens well understands).
Related to this, industrial-scale wind energy is often claimed to be "clean" and "green", despite not only the above facts but also the acres of clear land required around each turbine, the degradation and fragmentation of habitat (by roads and power lines as well as the turbine sites themselves), the noise, lights, and vibrations from its operation, and the direct threat to birds and bats from the massive spinning blades and new transmission lines.
If Entergy's "zero emissions" claim needs to be clarified as referring only to the actual generation of electricity, then so too do similar claims for wind (ignoring its actual effects on the grid, as described above).
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
The attorney general's office concluded that "while greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear generation of electricity are negligible, such emissions do occur when uranium is mined, processed and transported".
Entergy agreed to revise the wording of its ads.
We agree with the attorney general that "All participants in the public debate on climate change policy should ensure that factual statements about carbon emissions clearly and truthfully specify what the emissions claims refer to".
Therefore, we submit two examples of misleading claims similar to Entergy's.
From the "Environmental Benefits" section of the Sheffield Wind (First Wind/UPC) web site:
The Sheffield wind farm is projected to produce 115,000,000 kilowatt hours of electric energy annually ... without air or water pollution and with no greenhouse gases, a leading cause of global warming. Wind power doesn’t pollute: Wind farms create zero air or water pollution.From "Environmental Benefits" section of the Vermont Community Wind Farm (Per White-Hansen and Joan Warshaw) web site:
Creating power without greenhouse emissions: Power produced from Wind is clean and does not tax the environment with fossil fuel emissions from other energy sources such as coal and oil. Wind Power = Zero Emissions. [This formula is repeated farther down the page.]Not only their manufacture and construction (each turbine includes roughly 200 tons of steel and petroleum-derived composites, shipped from around the world; it must be anchored in several hundred yards of concrete and rebar; clearing the site and constructing heavy-duty roads and new transmission lines also contribute carbon emissions), continuing maintenance (including regular changes of the 200 gallons of oil in each turbine) and repair (blade and gearbox failures are frequent) and eventual decommissioning cause the release of greenhouse gases.
In addition, wind can not operate without support from more reliable and dispatchable sources on the grid, that is, the turbines do not operate without carbon-emitting back-up, which may therefore be used more often or at lower efficiency. A program for expanding industrial wind is also a program for expanding quick-response natural gas plants (as T. Boone Pickens well understands).
Related to this, industrial-scale wind energy is often claimed to be "clean" and "green", despite not only the above facts but also the acres of clear land required around each turbine, the degradation and fragmentation of habitat (by roads and power lines as well as the turbine sites themselves), the noise, lights, and vibrations from its operation, and the direct threat to birds and bats from the massive spinning blades and new transmission lines.
If Entergy's "zero emissions" claim needs to be clarified as referring only to the actual generation of electricity, then so too do similar claims for wind (ignoring its actual effects on the grid, as described above).
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
July 17, 2006
East Haven Wind Farm denied permit
The Vermont Public Service Board announced today that it has denied the application for a "certificate of public good" by East Haven Wind Farm (Mathew Rubin and Dave Rapaport). Click the title of this post and scroll to July 17 for the final order, which includes the hearing officer's recommendation and subsequent comment.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights
We have carefully reviewed the parties' comments ... and find in those comments no basis for changing the Hearing Officer's recommendations. Instead, for the reasons that the Hearing Officer has presented in the Proposal for Decision, we adopt his findings, conclusions, and recommendations ...This is the precedent everyone on both sides has been waiting for. Maybe VPIRG and the Conservation Law Foundation can now return to protecting people and the environment instead of insanely promoting industrial development (of highly doubtful merit anywhere) in threatened rural and wild areas.
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED by the Public Service Board of the State of Vermont that:
1. The findings, conclusions and recommendations of the Hearing Officer are hereby adopted, as modified above.
2. The proposed Project will not promote the public good of the State of Vermont, and a certificate of public good shall not be issued pursuant to 30 V.S.A. §248.
Dated at Montpelier, Vermont, this 17th day of July, 2006.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, animal rights
July 1, 2006
Scudder Parker's wind turbine sales tour
WCAX-TV reported from Hinesburg (Vt.) on June 27:
That means that 384 (96 × 4) megawatts of wind power capacity would have to be installed to produce an average of 96 megawatts, or 15% of Vermont's electricity. That would require 256 330-ft-high machines like the four proposed in East Haven, or 192 400-ft-high machines like the 26 proposed in Sheffield and Sutton -- much more than "at least 100" which Parker promises.
They are obviously a lot taller and more intrusive than silos and church steeples (in fact, they're a lot taller than the Statue of Liberty, base and all), they are necessarily sited prominently, their jumbo-jet-sized rotors sweep vertical air spaces of 1-1.5 acres, and they are lit by strobes day and night.
For practical planning purposes, even more would be required. Because generation occurs only within a certain range of wind speeds and the rate of generation is cubically related to the wind speed between the "cut-in" and "rated" wind speeds (typically 8-30 mph), wind turbines generate power only two-thirds of the time and at or above their average rate only one-third of the time. And since the production responds only to the wind, it rarely correlates with user demand. Even with sufficient excess capacity from other sources on the grid to balance its intermittency and variability, the effective capacity of wind is therefore typically assumed to be a third of its expected output.
So 1,152 megawatts of wind -- 576 to 768 machines -- would be needed to reliably provide 15% of Vermont's electricity.
The absurdity goes beyond the outrageous scale for such little benefit, because if all of those turbines were actually producing power at once, most of them would have to be shut down, since base load plants can't rapidly ramp off and on.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
To talk power, Scudder Parker went to NRG Systems in Hinesburg, a company that manufactures wind measuring equipment used by wind power developers. ...Vermont uses over 5,600 gigawatt-hours of electricity in a year. That's an average load of about 640 megawatts (5,600,000 megawatt-hours divided by 8,760 hours in a year). Fifteen percent of that is 96 megawatts. The wind power salesmen say the turbines will generate more than 30% of their capacity in a year. The facility in Searsburg, however, generates only around 21% of its capacity each year. The national average output as reported to the federal Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency is 27%, but that apparently does not count out-of-commission turbines. Twenty-five percent (1/4) output is therefore a more realistic, though still generous, estimate.
Parker supports wind development and thinks the state can get 15% of its energy from wind, he says that would require at least 100 turbines on ridge lines all over Vermont.
"I don't see it as a question of aesthetics I see it as a question of people recognizing wind turbines as we recognize church steeples and silos in barns as a part of something that is making our economy healthy and giving us choices as a state."
That means that 384 (96 × 4) megawatts of wind power capacity would have to be installed to produce an average of 96 megawatts, or 15% of Vermont's electricity. That would require 256 330-ft-high machines like the four proposed in East Haven, or 192 400-ft-high machines like the 26 proposed in Sheffield and Sutton -- much more than "at least 100" which Parker promises.
They are obviously a lot taller and more intrusive than silos and church steeples (in fact, they're a lot taller than the Statue of Liberty, base and all), they are necessarily sited prominently, their jumbo-jet-sized rotors sweep vertical air spaces of 1-1.5 acres, and they are lit by strobes day and night.
For practical planning purposes, even more would be required. Because generation occurs only within a certain range of wind speeds and the rate of generation is cubically related to the wind speed between the "cut-in" and "rated" wind speeds (typically 8-30 mph), wind turbines generate power only two-thirds of the time and at or above their average rate only one-third of the time. And since the production responds only to the wind, it rarely correlates with user demand. Even with sufficient excess capacity from other sources on the grid to balance its intermittency and variability, the effective capacity of wind is therefore typically assumed to be a third of its expected output.
So 1,152 megawatts of wind -- 576 to 768 machines -- would be needed to reliably provide 15% of Vermont's electricity.
The absurdity goes beyond the outrageous scale for such little benefit, because if all of those turbines were actually producing power at once, most of them would have to be shut down, since base load plants can't rapidly ramp off and on.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
June 10, 2006
Incomplete wind energy info at Vt. Guardian
To the editor, Vermont Guardian:
The sidebar accompanying the article "Wind developer pulls up stakes, state issues new regs" contains some inaccuracies and is incomplete in its list of proposals.
First, the current Searsburg facility generates only around 11,000 MWh per year, not the 14,000 claimed. This information is readily available in GMP's annual reports. The difference should also call into question the projections claimed for the many proposed projects around the state. [For more information, see "The Poor Record of the Searsburg, Vermont, Wind Plant."]
In February, Enxco (a subsidiary of Électricité de France) sold the development rights to expand the Searsburg facility into Readsboro to PPM Energy, a subsidiary of Scottish Power. This apparently includes the expansion within Searsburg.
The Glebe Mountain project from Catamount Energy (which is owned by Diamond Castle Holdings and Marubeni Energy International of Japan) was to entail not 27 turbines but 19, each of them with a rated capacity of 2.5 MW and a total height of 420 feet.
The proposal from UPC (a subsidiary of UPC Group, Italy) in Sheffield and Sutton would have a maximum capacity of not 45 but 52 MW, with 2-MW 399-ft machines.
Other projects not listed, besides the 6 MW starter facility in East Haven which was mentioned in the article, include further development (possibly around 50 MW) along the ridges from East Haven to Brighton (EMDC), around 50 MW on a ridge in Windham (UPC), and around 20 MW on Georgia Mountain in Milton (which Enxco may be behind). Through Vermont Environmental Research Associates, Enxco has been advertising for yet more "high-elevation woodland" on which to construct power plants. [For more details of regional projects, see "Large wind projects in Vermont and vicinity."]
The negative impact of these projects would be significant. The energy benefit, on the other hand, because of their variability and intermittency, would be nil.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
The sidebar accompanying the article "Wind developer pulls up stakes, state issues new regs" contains some inaccuracies and is incomplete in its list of proposals.
First, the current Searsburg facility generates only around 11,000 MWh per year, not the 14,000 claimed. This information is readily available in GMP's annual reports. The difference should also call into question the projections claimed for the many proposed projects around the state. [For more information, see "The Poor Record of the Searsburg, Vermont, Wind Plant."]
In February, Enxco (a subsidiary of Électricité de France) sold the development rights to expand the Searsburg facility into Readsboro to PPM Energy, a subsidiary of Scottish Power. This apparently includes the expansion within Searsburg.
The Glebe Mountain project from Catamount Energy (which is owned by Diamond Castle Holdings and Marubeni Energy International of Japan) was to entail not 27 turbines but 19, each of them with a rated capacity of 2.5 MW and a total height of 420 feet.
The proposal from UPC (a subsidiary of UPC Group, Italy) in Sheffield and Sutton would have a maximum capacity of not 45 but 52 MW, with 2-MW 399-ft machines.
Other projects not listed, besides the 6 MW starter facility in East Haven which was mentioned in the article, include further development (possibly around 50 MW) along the ridges from East Haven to Brighton (EMDC), around 50 MW on a ridge in Windham (UPC), and around 20 MW on Georgia Mountain in Milton (which Enxco may be behind). Through Vermont Environmental Research Associates, Enxco has been advertising for yet more "high-elevation woodland" on which to construct power plants. [For more details of regional projects, see "Large wind projects in Vermont and vicinity."]
The negative impact of these projects would be significant. The energy benefit, on the other hand, because of their variability and intermittency, would be nil.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
April 22, 2006
Why is VPIRG hiding?
It is no secret that VPIRG supports industrial-scale wind power development of Vermont's ridgelines. It has been at the forefront of arguing on behalf of the developers, even as it fights such heedless sprawl in every other issue they are involved in.
After the recommendation from the Public Service Board hearing officer to deny a permit to the four-turbine project in East Haven, the next project they are advocating for is a 26-turbine (each 399 feet high) development in Sheffield and Sutton. But the "group" sent out to rally the people in the developer's favor is called "Clean Power Vermont."
I looked up the group's internet domain (cleanpowervt.org) information some time ago and discovered that it was registered by VPIRG. The main organizer, Tyler Edgar, is an employee of VPIRG. (She was also the sole representative of an earlier group, "Clean Air Vermont," which held an "informational" meeting in Sutton before that town rejected the project by a margin of 6 to 1.) Joining her for the Sheffield push is Drew Hudson, field director of VPIRG. The domain information is now hidden, but the the web pages are still filled (at the time of this writing) with code referring to vpirg.org.
Although they may have been defeated in East Haven, VPIRG board members Dave Rapaport and Mathew Rubin (the developers) are now targeting the string of ridges between East Haven and Island Pond (town of Brighton) that overlook the protected "Champion" lands and the Nulhegan Basin, which has been recognized by National Geographic as one of the world's prime "geotourism" destinations. Obviously VPIRG/EMDC (Rubin & Rapaport's company) needs a favorable precedent to improve their chances of a permit and thus their fanatical -- and dishonest -- promotion of the Sheffield/Sutton installations.
Data: Italy-based UPC has applied to erect 26 two-megawatt (MW) turbines (Gamesa G87 models), each 399 feet high (requiring strobe lights day and night), their rotor blades each sweeping a vertical air space of 1.47 acres. The average output from this 52-MW facility can be expected to be only 25% of its rated capacity, or 13 MW. Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed below the ideal of 30 mph, however, it would generate at or above that rate only a third of the time, as shown by infeed curves from Germany and Ireland. Its effective capacity, its actual contribution to grid capacity planning, would be about a third of that, or 4.3 MW, since it is nondispatchable, variable, and imprecisely predictable. (This figure of the effective capacity, or capacity credit, of large-scale wind power on the grid is taken from studies by New York, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Germany, all of them supportive of wind power development; the Irish and German studies also noticed that as more wind power is added to the system, presumably as its penetration approaches the excess capacity that can readily serve to balance its fluctuating infeed, the capacity credit of new turbines approaches zero.)
At 4.3 MW effective capacity, the output from the Sheffield/Sutton plant would represent about two-thirds of one percent of Vermont's current electricity needs. Clearly the negative impacts of such a massive and prominently intrusive facility far outweigh this meager possible benefit.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
After the recommendation from the Public Service Board hearing officer to deny a permit to the four-turbine project in East Haven, the next project they are advocating for is a 26-turbine (each 399 feet high) development in Sheffield and Sutton. But the "group" sent out to rally the people in the developer's favor is called "Clean Power Vermont."
I looked up the group's internet domain (cleanpowervt.org) information some time ago and discovered that it was registered by VPIRG. The main organizer, Tyler Edgar, is an employee of VPIRG. (She was also the sole representative of an earlier group, "Clean Air Vermont," which held an "informational" meeting in Sutton before that town rejected the project by a margin of 6 to 1.) Joining her for the Sheffield push is Drew Hudson, field director of VPIRG. The domain information is now hidden, but the the web pages are still filled (at the time of this writing) with code referring to vpirg.org.
Although they may have been defeated in East Haven, VPIRG board members Dave Rapaport and Mathew Rubin (the developers) are now targeting the string of ridges between East Haven and Island Pond (town of Brighton) that overlook the protected "Champion" lands and the Nulhegan Basin, which has been recognized by National Geographic as one of the world's prime "geotourism" destinations. Obviously VPIRG/EMDC (Rubin & Rapaport's company) needs a favorable precedent to improve their chances of a permit and thus their fanatical -- and dishonest -- promotion of the Sheffield/Sutton installations.
Data: Italy-based UPC has applied to erect 26 two-megawatt (MW) turbines (Gamesa G87 models), each 399 feet high (requiring strobe lights day and night), their rotor blades each sweeping a vertical air space of 1.47 acres. The average output from this 52-MW facility can be expected to be only 25% of its rated capacity, or 13 MW. Because of the cubic relation of output to wind speed below the ideal of 30 mph, however, it would generate at or above that rate only a third of the time, as shown by infeed curves from Germany and Ireland. Its effective capacity, its actual contribution to grid capacity planning, would be about a third of that, or 4.3 MW, since it is nondispatchable, variable, and imprecisely predictable. (This figure of the effective capacity, or capacity credit, of large-scale wind power on the grid is taken from studies by New York, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Germany, all of them supportive of wind power development; the Irish and German studies also noticed that as more wind power is added to the system, presumably as its penetration approaches the excess capacity that can readily serve to balance its fluctuating infeed, the capacity credit of new turbines approaches zero.)
At 4.3 MW effective capacity, the output from the Sheffield/Sutton plant would represent about two-thirds of one percent of Vermont's current electricity needs. Clearly the negative impacts of such a massive and prominently intrusive facility far outweigh this meager possible benefit.
wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont, environment, environmentalism, ecoanarchism
December 24, 2005
Vermonters of the Year
To the Editor, Vermont Guardian:
All of the currently proposed wind power projects in Vermont (up to 312 MW) would provide only 10% of our current needs. They are practically irrelevant to the unlikely loss, desired or otherwise, of Hydro Quebec and/or Vermont Yankee.
Wind power does not respond to demand. It may or may not be there when needed. The Searsburg facility, for example, generates no power at all almost 40% of the time. With widely distributed installations on a system, as in Germany, their average infeed is reached only a third of the time. Even when the wind is blowing well, the system must be ready (i.e., burning fuel in "spinning reserve") to provide power when the wind drops again at any time.
We will therefore need as much other electricity sources with wind as we would without. If we come to depend on the small amount of power the wind turbines will provide, we will, like the Danes, be using the expensive spot market even more.
It is not just unnecessary but offensive to entertain industrial-scale development of the ridgelines, with strobe lights and noise and ecological degradation that far surpasses anything now on the mountains, for such obvious nonsense.
While annual honors are being given out, Vermont Guardian, in unquestioningly presenting the sales pitch of Dave Rapaport and other developers as news, has clearly earned "dupe of the year."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
All of the currently proposed wind power projects in Vermont (up to 312 MW) would provide only 10% of our current needs. They are practically irrelevant to the unlikely loss, desired or otherwise, of Hydro Quebec and/or Vermont Yankee.
Wind power does not respond to demand. It may or may not be there when needed. The Searsburg facility, for example, generates no power at all almost 40% of the time. With widely distributed installations on a system, as in Germany, their average infeed is reached only a third of the time. Even when the wind is blowing well, the system must be ready (i.e., burning fuel in "spinning reserve") to provide power when the wind drops again at any time.
We will therefore need as much other electricity sources with wind as we would without. If we come to depend on the small amount of power the wind turbines will provide, we will, like the Danes, be using the expensive spot market even more.
It is not just unnecessary but offensive to entertain industrial-scale development of the ridgelines, with strobe lights and noise and ecological degradation that far surpasses anything now on the mountains, for such obvious nonsense.
While annual honors are being given out, Vermont Guardian, in unquestioningly presenting the sales pitch of Dave Rapaport and other developers as news, has clearly earned "dupe of the year."
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
October 7, 2005
Big wind steals Peter Freyne's brain!
Peter Freyne flakking for Enxco and GE? He certainly follows their line that Free Press editorials opposed only to industrial-size turbines on Vermont's ridgelines are obstructing all progress on energy issues ["Freep Wins Award!," Inside Track, October 5].
Even as evidence shows that giant wind turbines will contribute very little to our energy future, and as big wind's supporters nonetheless insist they are essential to any solution, Freyne says it is the Free Press that has made them a "fetish."
If anyone has been "dogmatic in its approach to Vermont's energy future," as Lawrence Mott is quoted, it is he and others determined to plant their 400-foot-high erections across otherwise undeveloped land -- despite their many negative impacts, negligible benefit, and diverse local opposition.
Freyne also quoted Mott referring to "changing times" and "the latest information." Where is Freyne's usual journalistic instinct? What has changed about multinational corporations swindling landowners and paying off politicians to take over land and resources? What is the latest information other than more PR from the industry about sales projections?
Freyne is almost always more insightful and witty, but here he resorts to lame terms like "boneheaded," "shortsighted," and "blanket idiocy," as if blind to the possibility of a reasonable alternative. It is not just the Free Press but a wide range of individuals throughout Vermont -- and the world -- who question the wisdom of large-scale wind power. Anyone who looks beyond the sales material quickly discovers that industrial wind power is little more than a shameful boondoggle. (It is not surprising to learn that the modern large-scale wind industry was pioneered by Enron.)
Many members of Renewable Energy Vermont are working for real change in energy use -- small-scale and more sustainable alternatives to the centralized utility structure that giant wind turbines from GE (which acquired Enron's wind division) only reinforce. But Enxco, a part of the French nuclear power consortium EDF, and other pushers of large-scale wind power also are members and have clearly skewed REV's vision.
Like George Bush blaming Osama bin Laden for the violence in Iraq, REV's "Energy Ostrich Award" to the Free Press for opposing big wind only underscores their own "head-in-the-sand" viewpoint.
categories: wind power, wind energy, Vermont
Even as evidence shows that giant wind turbines will contribute very little to our energy future, and as big wind's supporters nonetheless insist they are essential to any solution, Freyne says it is the Free Press that has made them a "fetish."
If anyone has been "dogmatic in its approach to Vermont's energy future," as Lawrence Mott is quoted, it is he and others determined to plant their 400-foot-high erections across otherwise undeveloped land -- despite their many negative impacts, negligible benefit, and diverse local opposition.
Freyne also quoted Mott referring to "changing times" and "the latest information." Where is Freyne's usual journalistic instinct? What has changed about multinational corporations swindling landowners and paying off politicians to take over land and resources? What is the latest information other than more PR from the industry about sales projections?
Freyne is almost always more insightful and witty, but here he resorts to lame terms like "boneheaded," "shortsighted," and "blanket idiocy," as if blind to the possibility of a reasonable alternative. It is not just the Free Press but a wide range of individuals throughout Vermont -- and the world -- who question the wisdom of large-scale wind power. Anyone who looks beyond the sales material quickly discovers that industrial wind power is little more than a shameful boondoggle. (It is not surprising to learn that the modern large-scale wind industry was pioneered by Enron.)
Many members of Renewable Energy Vermont are working for real change in energy use -- small-scale and more sustainable alternatives to the centralized utility structure that giant wind turbines from GE (which acquired Enron's wind division) only reinforce. But Enxco, a part of the French nuclear power consortium EDF, and other pushers of large-scale wind power also are members and have clearly skewed REV's vision.
Like George Bush blaming Osama bin Laden for the violence in Iraq, REV's "Energy Ostrich Award" to the Free Press for opposing big wind only underscores their own "head-in-the-sand" viewpoint.
categories: wind power, wind energy, Vermont
August 5, 2005
The difference between theory and practice
According to the New Hampshire Public Interest Research Group, the "wind farm in Searsburg, Vermont, produces enough power for 2,000 Vermont homes" ("New Energy Solutions," www.nhpirg.org).
According to Green Mountain Power (GMP), Searsburg's average annual production has been around 11,000 MW-h for the last two years, and their average residential customer uses about 7.5 MW-h per year. Searsburg therefore produces power equivalent to that used by fewer than 1,500 Vermont homes.
After a facility is built, there's no longer any excuse for using sales projections. There's a record of actual performance. Of course, it seems to be invariably disappointing in the case of wind power, so naturally the advocates choose to ignore it.
And lest 1,500 homes sounds significant, remember that production does not necessarily correspond to actual need (so the homes are not using the power), and residential use is less than a third of GMP's load. (Residential use is a little more than a third of the total load nationally.) Searsburg's 11 200-foot-high towers, with all the roads and clearcutting and new transmission lines, produce less than 0.2% of Vermont's electricity. (Vermont has about 600,000 people.)
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
According to Green Mountain Power (GMP), Searsburg's average annual production has been around 11,000 MW-h for the last two years, and their average residential customer uses about 7.5 MW-h per year. Searsburg therefore produces power equivalent to that used by fewer than 1,500 Vermont homes.
After a facility is built, there's no longer any excuse for using sales projections. There's a record of actual performance. Of course, it seems to be invariably disappointing in the case of wind power, so naturally the advocates choose to ignore it.
And lest 1,500 homes sounds significant, remember that production does not necessarily correspond to actual need (so the homes are not using the power), and residential use is less than a third of GMP's load. (Residential use is a little more than a third of the total load nationally.) Searsburg's 11 200-foot-high towers, with all the roads and clearcutting and new transmission lines, produce less than 0.2% of Vermont's electricity. (Vermont has about 600,000 people.)
categories: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism
October 12, 2004
Burlington Electric Supports Wind
To the editor, Burlington Free Press:
Patty Richards [director of resource planning for the Burlington Electric Department] (My Turn, October 12) claims that wind produces electricity 80% of the time. This is contradicted by the record at Searsburg, which produces electricity barely 60% of the time, according to audits by the Electric Power Research Institute. In Germany, grid manager Eon Netz reports that two thirds of the time, wind facilities are generating less than their annual average annual output.
Average output in Vermont is likely to be no more than 25%. Only one third of the time will a wind facility be producing at that level or above. To suggest, as Richards does, that Searsburg's fitful generation of less than 0.2% of Vermont's electricity "has increased reliability" is simply ludicrous.
Richards describes how the grid responds to a customer's turning on a light switch. Unfortunately, the wind does not cooperate in this scheme. Output from wind facilities is dramatically erratic and rarely corresponds to actual demand for electricity. Denmark's wind installations generate electricity equivalent to 20% of their consumption, but most of it has to be exported because the extra power isn't generated when it's actually needed.
It is true that in balance wind doesn't produce pollution when making electricity. Much of the time, however, wind turbines are not making electricity, yet they continue to draw power from the more polluting sources that are still working. And because of the unstable output, more reliable and more polluting backup generation has to be dedicated to cover for it.
Because of wind's low output and almost useless contribution, it is misleading to say that wind towers on the mountain ridges will stop the acid rain and global warming that threatens them. Wind towers -- with their acres of clearance, huge foundations, transformers, roads, and power lines -- represent only another form of destruction. They do nothing to mitigate acid rain or global warming.
Only a tiny fraction of Vermont's electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, none from coal. Even if wind could make a significant contribution, Richards' insistence that it would stay in Vermont therefore contradicts her threat that without wind the mountains will die.
About 200 MW of capacity would be required to match the output of Burlington's McNeil plant, which provides less than 8% of Vermont's electricity from a visually discreet location. That is three times more than the wind resource recognized as available for development. Richards' description of "wind turbines spinning gracefully in a few spots along our hill tops" either underscores their negligible contribution or is a lie.
So it comes, as Richards admits, down to a question of aesthetics. Hurling empty threats about global warming and acid rain and fossil and nuclear fuel dependence, knowing that wind power does nothing to alleviate those problems, she accuses opponents of using fear tactics! She asserts that wind turbines are visually appealing and only someone ignorant of the poisons in our air would oppose them.
Considering that the installation of wind turbines on our "hill" tops brings its own environmental and quality-of-life problems and that they will do nothing about pollutants from other sources, the aesthetics of the 330-foot-high erections are obvious: They are expensive, intrusive, destructive of rare habitat, and useless.
Patty Richards [director of resource planning for the Burlington Electric Department] (My Turn, October 12) claims that wind produces electricity 80% of the time. This is contradicted by the record at Searsburg, which produces electricity barely 60% of the time, according to audits by the Electric Power Research Institute. In Germany, grid manager Eon Netz reports that two thirds of the time, wind facilities are generating less than their annual average annual output.
Average output in Vermont is likely to be no more than 25%. Only one third of the time will a wind facility be producing at that level or above. To suggest, as Richards does, that Searsburg's fitful generation of less than 0.2% of Vermont's electricity "has increased reliability" is simply ludicrous.
Richards describes how the grid responds to a customer's turning on a light switch. Unfortunately, the wind does not cooperate in this scheme. Output from wind facilities is dramatically erratic and rarely corresponds to actual demand for electricity. Denmark's wind installations generate electricity equivalent to 20% of their consumption, but most of it has to be exported because the extra power isn't generated when it's actually needed.
It is true that in balance wind doesn't produce pollution when making electricity. Much of the time, however, wind turbines are not making electricity, yet they continue to draw power from the more polluting sources that are still working. And because of the unstable output, more reliable and more polluting backup generation has to be dedicated to cover for it.
Because of wind's low output and almost useless contribution, it is misleading to say that wind towers on the mountain ridges will stop the acid rain and global warming that threatens them. Wind towers -- with their acres of clearance, huge foundations, transformers, roads, and power lines -- represent only another form of destruction. They do nothing to mitigate acid rain or global warming.
Only a tiny fraction of Vermont's electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, none from coal. Even if wind could make a significant contribution, Richards' insistence that it would stay in Vermont therefore contradicts her threat that without wind the mountains will die.
About 200 MW of capacity would be required to match the output of Burlington's McNeil plant, which provides less than 8% of Vermont's electricity from a visually discreet location. That is three times more than the wind resource recognized as available for development. Richards' description of "wind turbines spinning gracefully in a few spots along our hill tops" either underscores their negligible contribution or is a lie.
So it comes, as Richards admits, down to a question of aesthetics. Hurling empty threats about global warming and acid rain and fossil and nuclear fuel dependence, knowing that wind power does nothing to alleviate those problems, she accuses opponents of using fear tactics! She asserts that wind turbines are visually appealing and only someone ignorant of the poisons in our air would oppose them.
Considering that the installation of wind turbines on our "hill" tops brings its own environmental and quality-of-life problems and that they will do nothing about pollutants from other sources, the aesthetics of the 330-foot-high erections are obvious: They are expensive, intrusive, destructive of rare habitat, and useless.
September 1, 2004
VPIRG Issues Own Proposal for State Energy Plan
Vermont Public Interest Research Group proposes meeting 15% of Vermont's electricity needs with industrial wind plants. Of course, wind-generated power doesn't meet needs at all, unless those needs happen to coincide with a good sustained wind. Anyway, they estimate 272 1.5-MW wind towers, in 10-12 facilities, would produce that 15%. They fudge the impact, however, by saying wind could provide 15%-20%; the latter figure would push the number of towers to 362 (or 370, by my calculations).
Even the industry shills at Fair Wind Vermont are appalled. They've been trying to play down the impact of 5-6 "well sited" facilities, and here comes VPIRG giving away the game. [Well, not all of them: David Blittersdorf of anemometer maker NRG systems says we should go for 50%!]
The American Wind Energy Association estimates the wind resource in Vermont to be able to supply an average output of 537 MW, or 5000 GW-h/yr. The developer of East Haven Windfarm, Mathew Rubin, has said that only one eighth of that resource is not restricted from development. That would reduce the possible wind-generated output to an average of 67 MW, or 625 GW-h/yr, which is about 11% of Vermont's electricity consumption and would require 194 1.5-MW towers (assuming the 23% capacity factor of the existing Searsburg facility).
That is already an appalling possibility to most residents around those "available" sites. VPIRG, however, proposes defying their own environmentalist and public-interest values to not only ignore the wishes of the people affected by wind-turbine installations but also throw out existing protections of federal, state, and private land to build even more (along with the necessary roads, power lines, and PCB-containing transformers). And they call this a "green" solution!
Even the industry shills at Fair Wind Vermont are appalled. They've been trying to play down the impact of 5-6 "well sited" facilities, and here comes VPIRG giving away the game. [Well, not all of them: David Blittersdorf of anemometer maker NRG systems says we should go for 50%!]
The American Wind Energy Association estimates the wind resource in Vermont to be able to supply an average output of 537 MW, or 5000 GW-h/yr. The developer of East Haven Windfarm, Mathew Rubin, has said that only one eighth of that resource is not restricted from development. That would reduce the possible wind-generated output to an average of 67 MW, or 625 GW-h/yr, which is about 11% of Vermont's electricity consumption and would require 194 1.5-MW towers (assuming the 23% capacity factor of the existing Searsburg facility).
That is already an appalling possibility to most residents around those "available" sites. VPIRG, however, proposes defying their own environmentalist and public-interest values to not only ignore the wishes of the people affected by wind-turbine installations but also throw out existing protections of federal, state, and private land to build even more (along with the necessary roads, power lines, and PCB-containing transformers). And they call this a "green" solution!
December 3, 2005
Wind developers destroy communities
The northeastern Vermont town of Sheffield, population 720, held a meeting Thursday night to determine levels of support and opposition to hosting 26 2-MW wind turbines on their ridgelines (six of the turbines would be in neighboring Sutton). Faced with a well informed opposition, the development company, Italy-based UPC, brought many of their officers to the area and hired a PR firm to create ads, lawn signs, and a "grass-roots" support group, paying a resident to pose as the coordinator.
Most effective, however, seems to have been to increase their offer from $150,000 to a vague $350,000 as a gift to the town each year. They even paid for the town's hiring of a lawyer to work on the deal. It is unclear whether they will also pay the hosting landowners' increased tax bills, or if this pay-off is instead of taxes. They have also promised the town a shiny new firetruck.
Sheffield is a poor town in a poor corner of the state, but by the tone of letters to the regional newspaper there seemed to be as much a desire of "natives" to spite "newcomers" (though not the carpetbaggers from UPC) as to reduce taxes or lease land to the industrialists.
So, on Thursday, they "came out of the woodwork" (as one news report described it) to spite themselves as well, destroying their own property to prove it is theirs to do so. They voted 120-93 in favor of UPC's passel of promises and their own delusions.
From the Associated Press:
Most common, however, is the not surprising belief in the claim that industrial wind turbines will make an impact on our use of other fuels. It's a convenient myth reinforced by the high environmental and social cost of big wind as proof that we are making a sacrifice. But the same energy use goes on as before (see "The Low Benefit of Industrial Wind"). And the developers sell green credits so that polluters can pollute even more. "Rube" is the word.
UPC hasn't yet applied to the state for a permit, so any project is still a long way off and may not even happen (insh'allah), but the damage to Sheffield is already done.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont
Most effective, however, seems to have been to increase their offer from $150,000 to a vague $350,000 as a gift to the town each year. They even paid for the town's hiring of a lawyer to work on the deal. It is unclear whether they will also pay the hosting landowners' increased tax bills, or if this pay-off is instead of taxes. They have also promised the town a shiny new firetruck.
Sheffield is a poor town in a poor corner of the state, but by the tone of letters to the regional newspaper there seemed to be as much a desire of "natives" to spite "newcomers" (though not the carpetbaggers from UPC) as to reduce taxes or lease land to the industrialists.
So, on Thursday, they "came out of the woodwork" (as one news report described it) to spite themselves as well, destroying their own property to prove it is theirs to do so. They voted 120-93 in favor of UPC's passel of promises and their own delusions.
From the Associated Press:
Supporters say the owners of the mountaintops have a right to do what they want with their land. They also say the wind farm would produce clean, renewable energy at a time when the country needs new sources of power, and would generate tax revenues for the town.From the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus:
Vermont has used other people's oil for years, said Jack Simons. "It's about time that we give something back," he said.
... There ended up being no opportunity for debate at Thursday's town meeting. Voters decided not to allow any presentations from opponents or supporters and the issue went directly to a decision.
Dolores Ham said that was what made her vote in favor. She was undecided going into the meeting and wanted to hear from both sides. When that didn't happen she decided at the last minute to vote in favor of the project. "It was spur of the moment," she said.
Supporters said their decision made a statement about the importance of renewable energy.
"I think people should see where their electricity comes from and maybe they'll think twice about leaving the lights on when they're not home, when they have the windmills on the hill for a reminder," said Jenny Cleary, who voted in favor of UPC's project.
... Backers cited property rights issues and the need for alternative sources of energy as reasons for their yes vote.From WCAX television:
... Holly Simpson, 31, voted for the first time in her life to support the wind project. Simpson said she registered to vote for the first time when she paid her property taxes last month. Nobody tried to persuade her, she said.
"I think people should be allowed to do what they want on their own property," Simpson said.
Others who voted 'yes' said new forms of energy need to be developed.
"We need clean energy. We're fighting over oil and America's young people aren't worth -- this is an alternative way of getting electricity and it's clean," says Leslie Newland who supports wind power.Note how the geopolitics of oil is brought up, even though Vermont gets almost no electricity from oil (or from coal, for that matter). Note how property rights are defended even as they are ready to sign away their own land to absentee lessees (!) to infringe on the property rights of their neighbors with 400-ft-high spinning grinding strobe-lit wind turbines. Note the deluded greed translated into the patronizing "lesson" that people should see where their power comes from (even though almost all of it will still be coming from Hydro Quebec and Vermont Yankee), that you should suffer -- even if meaninglessly -- for enjoying the privilege of electricity.
Most common, however, is the not surprising belief in the claim that industrial wind turbines will make an impact on our use of other fuels. It's a convenient myth reinforced by the high environmental and social cost of big wind as proof that we are making a sacrifice. But the same energy use goes on as before (see "The Low Benefit of Industrial Wind"). And the developers sell green credits so that polluters can pollute even more. "Rube" is the word.
UPC hasn't yet applied to the state for a permit, so any project is still a long way off and may not even happen (insh'allah), but the damage to Sheffield is already done.
categories: wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, Vermont
October 30, 2006
Exploitation and destruction: some things to know about industrial wind power
by Eric Rosenbloom
First, by industrial wind, I mean facilities of large wind turbines meant to supply the grid, the "pool" of electricity that must constantly balance supply and demand. "Large" is the first thing that demands attention. The machines proposed for Sheffield and Sutton, for example, are now to be 418 feet high: a 256' tower plus a 162' blade radius (with a vertical sweep area of 1.9 acres!). Several of them have to be lit by strobes day and night for airplane safety. The strobing effect of the lights is increased by reflections off the turning blades.
Not only are the height, turning blades, and lights visually intrusive and incongruous with rural and wild landscapes, the blades, generator gears, motors (that turn the machine into the wind and pitch the blades to maintain a constant rpm), and electrical transformers all make noise. From a ridgeline and especially at night, that noise can travel quite far. The French Academy of Medicine and the U.K. Noise Association both say that large wind turbines should not be closer than a mile from any residence.
Along with the readily audible (and artificial) noise that is many times louder than normal rural noise levels, there is a low-frequency aspect that has driven people from their homes. It doesn't affect everyone, but many people complain of headaches, insomnia, and nausea -- enough that several researchers have noted the resemblance to vibroacoustic disease and are documenting the phenomenon as "wind turbine syndrome."
Even as the wind companies deny that these and other impacts exist, their leases and "forbearance" easements with neighbors forbid the signers from complaining about them (or even telling anyone about the terms of the agreements).
The destruction of wild places and rural quality of life includes the wide strong straight roads necessary to transport the massive parts, the tons of steel and concrete in each platform, the clearcutting of several acres around each machine, and new transmission infrastructure (substations and power lines). It follows an all-too-familiar pattern of heedless exploitation. The only "green" the developers are interested in is that of the easy money.
UPC, the "Massachusetts" company targeting Sheffield and Sutton, is in fact backed by the Italian UPC Group. Enxco, which is still fishing for landowners in New England, is part of the consortium Electricité de France. PPM Energy, which bought Enxco's interests in the Hoosac Mountains of Vermont and Massachusetts, is owned by Scottish Power. Horizon Wind and Noble Environmental Power, both active in New York, are owned, respectively, by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Noble has just teamed up with Enxco's former agent to target sites in Vermont as well. Community Energy, currently targeting Lempster, New Hampshire, is owned by energy giant Iberdrola of Spain. Vermont's own Catamount Energy is an international operation owned by Marubeni Power of Japan and Diamond Castle Holdings, a group of investors whose experience includes Enron's glory days.
The major U.S. manufacturer of industrial wind turbines is GE, who bought the business from Enron. Another war profiteer and nuclear power pusher getting into wind is Halliburton, whose Kellogg Brown & Root division boasts of being a leader in offshore wind construction. One should be not a little dubious about "alternatives" or "solutions" offered by the same people who created the mess in the first place. What excites these companies is not so much the window dressing that hides their main activities, though that is indeed important: Think BP's "beyond petroleum" and GE's "ecomagination." Enron, along with their friend George Bush, set up a web of subsidies, market support, and tax schemes that created and almost completely pays for today's wind industry -- moving ever larger amounts of public money into private bank accounts. Enron even invented "green tags" to sell the electricity twice!
These developers creep into a poor community, make deals with landowners, woo the town board with gifts and promises of cash, flattering them as forward thinkers, and only then make their plans public. Unfortunately for them, the internet has made it possible for the neighbors to quickly learn the facts about industrial wind and -- when they see what a destructive boondoggle it really is -- mount a grass-roots opposition campaign. But even if the developer is driven off, a divided and bankrupted community is left. Damage is done in any case.
Rural America is no different to these companies than indigenous communities or "third-world" countries. Enrich a few of the natives, persuade others of your "progressive" intentions, pay for a school or firetruck, pit the rest against each other, and take what you want. In Australia, the Point Pierce Aboriginal community lost 40,000 years of Dreaming (which is, like Vermont's ridgelines, otherwise protected) to the construction of an industrial wind facility. In Mexico, wind companies -- led by Spain's Iberdrola -- have divided the Zapotecos on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is the most important bird flyway on this side of the world (I haven't even mentioned the decimation of birds and bats by these machines, with blades moving 150-200 mph at the tips exactly where they fly). Some of the Zapotecos wrote about the wind companies to a Scottish bird protector who lives in Spain, describing "the imposition of neoliberal megacorporations destroying nature and our cultures." That is what is happening right in our own back yard.
Minuscule benefits
The appalling thing is that industrial wind turbines on the grid bring no benefits that can justify this destruction. They generate an average of only a sixth to a third of their rated capacity. They generate at or above that average rate only a third of the time. The output is highly variable, so other sources on the grid must work harder (burning more fuel less cleanly) to balance it. In most places, the times of high wind do not correspond to times of high electricity demand, so much of the already small production is wasted. The evils of coal and nuclear power are undeniable. Unfortunately, wind will never threaten the steady base supply they provide -- no matter how many giant turbines and interconnected high-voltage transmission lines we fill the landscape with. Nor has a single peak supply plant ever been shut down because of wind on the grid.
The people of Denmark have not allowed a new turbine to be erected in years. Construction has also dramatically slowed in Germany. Spain and The Netherlands recently halted subsidies to big wind. Australia is starting to balk at continuing support. Because opposition only grows in their own countries as the useless and wasteful destruction becomes ever more clear, overseas companies have moved into the U.S. market -- they know we'll ignore Europe's mistakes just as much as we ignore their successes.
But even in the industry's own promotional material, wind remains a marginal source. Conservation and efficiency easily surpass it in actually reducing fuel use, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions -- and they don't require industrializing our remaining rural and wild places to enrich a few multinational companies and investors and impoverish (not just financially) the rest of us.
More information is available on the web: my own site at www.aweo.org, the coalition of Vermont groups at www.rosenlake.net/vwv, and the coalition of groups throughout the U.S. and the world at www.wind-watch.org.
In closing, a quick word about NIMBYism: that is, supporting a project in principle but not in your own neighborhood. That defines the developers. Most of their opponents are fighting to protect not only their own back yards but those of their brothers and sisters everywhere.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights
First, by industrial wind, I mean facilities of large wind turbines meant to supply the grid, the "pool" of electricity that must constantly balance supply and demand. "Large" is the first thing that demands attention. The machines proposed for Sheffield and Sutton, for example, are now to be 418 feet high: a 256' tower plus a 162' blade radius (with a vertical sweep area of 1.9 acres!). Several of them have to be lit by strobes day and night for airplane safety. The strobing effect of the lights is increased by reflections off the turning blades.
Not only are the height, turning blades, and lights visually intrusive and incongruous with rural and wild landscapes, the blades, generator gears, motors (that turn the machine into the wind and pitch the blades to maintain a constant rpm), and electrical transformers all make noise. From a ridgeline and especially at night, that noise can travel quite far. The French Academy of Medicine and the U.K. Noise Association both say that large wind turbines should not be closer than a mile from any residence.
Along with the readily audible (and artificial) noise that is many times louder than normal rural noise levels, there is a low-frequency aspect that has driven people from their homes. It doesn't affect everyone, but many people complain of headaches, insomnia, and nausea -- enough that several researchers have noted the resemblance to vibroacoustic disease and are documenting the phenomenon as "wind turbine syndrome."
Even as the wind companies deny that these and other impacts exist, their leases and "forbearance" easements with neighbors forbid the signers from complaining about them (or even telling anyone about the terms of the agreements).
The destruction of wild places and rural quality of life includes the wide strong straight roads necessary to transport the massive parts, the tons of steel and concrete in each platform, the clearcutting of several acres around each machine, and new transmission infrastructure (substations and power lines). It follows an all-too-familiar pattern of heedless exploitation. The only "green" the developers are interested in is that of the easy money.
UPC, the "Massachusetts" company targeting Sheffield and Sutton, is in fact backed by the Italian UPC Group. Enxco, which is still fishing for landowners in New England, is part of the consortium Electricité de France. PPM Energy, which bought Enxco's interests in the Hoosac Mountains of Vermont and Massachusetts, is owned by Scottish Power. Horizon Wind and Noble Environmental Power, both active in New York, are owned, respectively, by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Noble has just teamed up with Enxco's former agent to target sites in Vermont as well. Community Energy, currently targeting Lempster, New Hampshire, is owned by energy giant Iberdrola of Spain. Vermont's own Catamount Energy is an international operation owned by Marubeni Power of Japan and Diamond Castle Holdings, a group of investors whose experience includes Enron's glory days.
The major U.S. manufacturer of industrial wind turbines is GE, who bought the business from Enron. Another war profiteer and nuclear power pusher getting into wind is Halliburton, whose Kellogg Brown & Root division boasts of being a leader in offshore wind construction. One should be not a little dubious about "alternatives" or "solutions" offered by the same people who created the mess in the first place. What excites these companies is not so much the window dressing that hides their main activities, though that is indeed important: Think BP's "beyond petroleum" and GE's "ecomagination." Enron, along with their friend George Bush, set up a web of subsidies, market support, and tax schemes that created and almost completely pays for today's wind industry -- moving ever larger amounts of public money into private bank accounts. Enron even invented "green tags" to sell the electricity twice!
These developers creep into a poor community, make deals with landowners, woo the town board with gifts and promises of cash, flattering them as forward thinkers, and only then make their plans public. Unfortunately for them, the internet has made it possible for the neighbors to quickly learn the facts about industrial wind and -- when they see what a destructive boondoggle it really is -- mount a grass-roots opposition campaign. But even if the developer is driven off, a divided and bankrupted community is left. Damage is done in any case.
Rural America is no different to these companies than indigenous communities or "third-world" countries. Enrich a few of the natives, persuade others of your "progressive" intentions, pay for a school or firetruck, pit the rest against each other, and take what you want. In Australia, the Point Pierce Aboriginal community lost 40,000 years of Dreaming (which is, like Vermont's ridgelines, otherwise protected) to the construction of an industrial wind facility. In Mexico, wind companies -- led by Spain's Iberdrola -- have divided the Zapotecos on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which is the most important bird flyway on this side of the world (I haven't even mentioned the decimation of birds and bats by these machines, with blades moving 150-200 mph at the tips exactly where they fly). Some of the Zapotecos wrote about the wind companies to a Scottish bird protector who lives in Spain, describing "the imposition of neoliberal megacorporations destroying nature and our cultures." That is what is happening right in our own back yard.
Minuscule benefits
The appalling thing is that industrial wind turbines on the grid bring no benefits that can justify this destruction. They generate an average of only a sixth to a third of their rated capacity. They generate at or above that average rate only a third of the time. The output is highly variable, so other sources on the grid must work harder (burning more fuel less cleanly) to balance it. In most places, the times of high wind do not correspond to times of high electricity demand, so much of the already small production is wasted. The evils of coal and nuclear power are undeniable. Unfortunately, wind will never threaten the steady base supply they provide -- no matter how many giant turbines and interconnected high-voltage transmission lines we fill the landscape with. Nor has a single peak supply plant ever been shut down because of wind on the grid.
The people of Denmark have not allowed a new turbine to be erected in years. Construction has also dramatically slowed in Germany. Spain and The Netherlands recently halted subsidies to big wind. Australia is starting to balk at continuing support. Because opposition only grows in their own countries as the useless and wasteful destruction becomes ever more clear, overseas companies have moved into the U.S. market -- they know we'll ignore Europe's mistakes just as much as we ignore their successes.
But even in the industry's own promotional material, wind remains a marginal source. Conservation and efficiency easily surpass it in actually reducing fuel use, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions -- and they don't require industrializing our remaining rural and wild places to enrich a few multinational companies and investors and impoverish (not just financially) the rest of us.
More information is available on the web: my own site at www.aweo.org, the coalition of Vermont groups at www.rosenlake.net/vwv, and the coalition of groups throughout the U.S. and the world at www.wind-watch.org.
In closing, a quick word about NIMBYism: that is, supporting a project in principle but not in your own neighborhood. That defines the developers. Most of their opponents are fighting to protect not only their own back yards but those of their brothers and sisters everywhere.
wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism, animal rights
August 10, 2012
A problem with solar power
Like wind, direct solar energy is diffuse, requiring a rather large apparatus to collect a useful amount. On a rooftop — a large area that is already collecting/reflecting the sun — solar panels may make a useful contribution to a single home or office. To expect more, however, means taking more solar energy, i.e., taking more from nature.
Vermont mandates a high payment for electricity from approved solar facilities up to 2.2 MW in capacity. A couple of solar projects under this program are a 1.0-MW facility in Ferrisburgh and a 2.2-MW facility in South Burlington.
The latter takes up a 25-acre field. That acreage is now an industrial site, without life. The field has essentially been paved with solar panels. Over the past 12 months its output has averaged 17.5% of its capacity, an average rate of 385 kW. The Ferrisburgh site averaged 15.9%, or 159 kW. In January, their average outputs were 5.4% and 7.3%, respectively, or 120 and 73 kW. Of course, that output followed the curve of daylight, decreasing every evening to 0, so they require complete duplication with some other source of power. Such duplication in the form of battery storage, as an off-grid home system uses, is impractical at the grid scale.
These facilities are clearly not making any meaningful contribution to Vermont’s electricity supply, which must meet an average load of about 650 MW. If the cost to taxpayers to subsidize these projects (i.e., provide generous profits for their owners, such as the governor’s friend David Blittersdorf) is judged to be worth it to learn about grid-level or industrial-scale solar, then what have we learned so far?
Using a capacity factor of 15% for sun-tracking solar and the ratio of 2.2 MW capacity per 25 acres, we would need almost 50,000 acres, over 75 square miles, to provide Vermont’s average load. That’s more than all of the land area of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, and Essex Junction combined.
(For comparison, the McNeil generating plant (wood and natural gas) in Burlington takes up about 16 acres and produces at a rate of 50 MW. Thirteen such plants, requiring 210 acres, would provide the state's entire average load. Using the McNeil plant to provide heat [instead of letting it escape up the chimney] as well as power has been explored in recent years and would essentially double its usefulness.)
If we based it on a January capacity factor of 5%, add the land areas of Shelburne, Williston, Essex, Milton, and most of Jericho.
Of course, the capacity factor represents output only during daylight hours, so less land might be required to meet demand during the day. On the other hand, demand is higher during daylight hours as well, so there would actually not be much leeway there.
And still, other sources would be needed as night falls — a complete duplicate system. In other words, solar would not replace any other sources. It would pave over more than half of Chittenden County to at best reduce the use of those other sources.
There’s a better way to reduce the use of existing energy sources — without taking from the earth yet more by building sprawling “renewable” energy facilities that require 100% backup. It is to reduce the use of energy.
But of course, no backers of politicians get rich by people consuming less.
Large-scale solar, like large-scale wind, is a consumption-based solution. It is a change of brand, nothing more.
Question, 11 July, 2014: Has anyone compared the (minuscule) carbon effect of covering a field with solar panels versus letting it return to carbon-capturing forest, or even versus just leaving it as a green field?
solar power, solar energy, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, Vermont
Vermont mandates a high payment for electricity from approved solar facilities up to 2.2 MW in capacity. A couple of solar projects under this program are a 1.0-MW facility in Ferrisburgh and a 2.2-MW facility in South Burlington.
The latter takes up a 25-acre field. That acreage is now an industrial site, without life. The field has essentially been paved with solar panels. Over the past 12 months its output has averaged 17.5% of its capacity, an average rate of 385 kW. The Ferrisburgh site averaged 15.9%, or 159 kW. In January, their average outputs were 5.4% and 7.3%, respectively, or 120 and 73 kW. Of course, that output followed the curve of daylight, decreasing every evening to 0, so they require complete duplication with some other source of power. Such duplication in the form of battery storage, as an off-grid home system uses, is impractical at the grid scale.
These facilities are clearly not making any meaningful contribution to Vermont’s electricity supply, which must meet an average load of about 650 MW. If the cost to taxpayers to subsidize these projects (i.e., provide generous profits for their owners, such as the governor’s friend David Blittersdorf) is judged to be worth it to learn about grid-level or industrial-scale solar, then what have we learned so far?
Using a capacity factor of 15% for sun-tracking solar and the ratio of 2.2 MW capacity per 25 acres, we would need almost 50,000 acres, over 75 square miles, to provide Vermont’s average load. That’s more than all of the land area of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, and Essex Junction combined.
(For comparison, the McNeil generating plant (wood and natural gas) in Burlington takes up about 16 acres and produces at a rate of 50 MW. Thirteen such plants, requiring 210 acres, would provide the state's entire average load. Using the McNeil plant to provide heat [instead of letting it escape up the chimney] as well as power has been explored in recent years and would essentially double its usefulness.)
If we based it on a January capacity factor of 5%, add the land areas of Shelburne, Williston, Essex, Milton, and most of Jericho.
Of course, the capacity factor represents output only during daylight hours, so less land might be required to meet demand during the day. On the other hand, demand is higher during daylight hours as well, so there would actually not be much leeway there.
And still, other sources would be needed as night falls — a complete duplicate system. In other words, solar would not replace any other sources. It would pave over more than half of Chittenden County to at best reduce the use of those other sources.
There’s a better way to reduce the use of existing energy sources — without taking from the earth yet more by building sprawling “renewable” energy facilities that require 100% backup. It is to reduce the use of energy.
But of course, no backers of politicians get rich by people consuming less.
Large-scale solar, like large-scale wind, is a consumption-based solution. It is a change of brand, nothing more.
Question, 11 July, 2014: Has anyone compared the (minuscule) carbon effect of covering a field with solar panels versus letting it return to carbon-capturing forest, or even versus just leaving it as a green field?
solar power, solar energy, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, Vermont
May 25, 2012
Vermont Wind Proposals
Also see: "Large wind projects in Vermont"
And listen (and chat or call in) to Wind Wise Radio, May 27, 7:00 p.m.: Stand Against the Wind — Chris Braithwaite and other guests talk about the destruction of Lowell Mountain in northern Vermont, co-hosted by Annette Smith, executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
December 12, 2006
Shumlin wants to focus on climate, focuses on wind instead
To the editor, Rutland (Vt.) Herald:
Peter Shumlin seems confused ("Senate leader wants to focus on climate," Dec. 11). It is unclear if he wants to get rid of Vermont Yankee (or at least store its waste somewhere else) or combat climate change.
If he is ready to throw out aesthetics and sacrifice Vermont's mountains for industrial-scale wind energy, how can he complain about carbon-free Vermont Yankee?
He is also mistaken about technological progress in wind energy. The only progress has been that the turbines get bigger, making them more environmentally damaging, not less.
One wonders, too, about his sobriety in this matter when he warns of temperatures rising 30 degrees. Hopefully, it was a typo. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a rise somewhere between 2 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.
I share Shumlin's concerns about both warming and nuclear power. An honest assessment of wind energy, however, reveals that it would not contribute even a small part towards solving either of these issues.
With sprawling wind turbine facilities, Shumlin would destroy the state in a gravely misinformed effort to save it. We need real solutions, not fashionable window dressing that will do much more harm than good.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
Peter Shumlin seems confused ("Senate leader wants to focus on climate," Dec. 11). It is unclear if he wants to get rid of Vermont Yankee (or at least store its waste somewhere else) or combat climate change.
If he is ready to throw out aesthetics and sacrifice Vermont's mountains for industrial-scale wind energy, how can he complain about carbon-free Vermont Yankee?
He is also mistaken about technological progress in wind energy. The only progress has been that the turbines get bigger, making them more environmentally damaging, not less.
One wonders, too, about his sobriety in this matter when he warns of temperatures rising 30 degrees. Hopefully, it was a typo. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a rise somewhere between 2 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.
I share Shumlin's concerns about both warming and nuclear power. An honest assessment of wind energy, however, reveals that it would not contribute even a small part towards solving either of these issues.
With sprawling wind turbine facilities, Shumlin would destroy the state in a gravely misinformed effort to save it. We need real solutions, not fashionable window dressing that will do much more harm than good.
tags: wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, Vermont
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)