Wind turbines: 15 jobs, five votes and a forever altered landmark – Bluefield (WV) Telegraph

Posted on January 30, 2010 by morgan

From Bluefield Daily Telegraph Managing Editor, Samantha Perry:

Published: January 22, 2010 06:04 pm

Wind turbines: 15 jobs, five votes and a forever altered landmark

By SAMANTHA PERRY
Bluefield Daily Telegraph

The photograph hanging in a place of honor above my desk is symbolic of Bluefield and the two Virginias. It is Mel Grubb’s famous “fog photo,” the one that shows the mist rolling in over East River Mountain toward the twin cities. Some have a different name for the picture, simply calling it as they see it: “The Phenomenon.”

For those unfamiliar with the region’s geography, it looks like a picture of a waterfall overtaking a small city.

But we know better. It’s simply nature running its course.

And on the day this photo was taken, the fog is rolling across the mountain and into the two Bluefields in a spectacular display of beauty and grandeur.

lll

I’ve looked at this photograph quite a bit during the past year as the debate to place wind turbines atop East River Mountain has resulted in unwavering strong opinions from many residents, bitter feelings among others and, ultimately, a divided community — not just in Tazewell County, but across the state line in Mercer as well.

The brouhaha actually began in late 2008 when it was learned that Dominion and BP Wind Energy had acquired more than 2,500 acres along the East River Mountain ridgeline to place large wind turbines. Immediately, many local people were not happy. Some were outraged at the thought of “destroying” the natural beauty of the mountain by peppering it with giant, metal windmills. Others disagreed, believing the plan could bring much needed development and jobs to the region.

In the months that followed, pros and cons of the windmills were written about in countless stories and letters to the editor in this paper. The Tazewell Board of Supervisors also began studying the issue, along with a proposed ridgeline protection ordinance. Basically, if adopted, the ordinance would prohibit structures more than 40 feet tall on protected ridgelines, and ultimately halt the BP and Dominion project.

Although the board has procrastinated on public hearings and voting on the ordinance for more than a year, the public finally had a chance to speak out earlier this month, and board members have assured the public they will attempt to vote on the ordinance Feb. 2.

lll

As someone born and raised in Mercer County, I admit I feel a certain kinship with East River Mountain — and I think many others do as well. Although we may not own land on the mountain, as lifelong residents of the region we do feel an “ownership,” of sorts.

East River Mountain is iconic. A landmark. It’s the Natural Wonder of our part of the world. Allowing large-scale development on the mountain — and in my book, 400-foot structures qualify as “large-scale” — would forever change the local landscape.

Do the benefits of the windmills outweigh the negatives?

Dominion and BP have reported the project would bring $600,000 in tax revenue into the county in its first year, and $10 million in tax revenue over 20 years. No doubt, that’s a lot of money. But other reports note a significant decrease in property values for homes with a viewshed of the turbines.

Jobs, of course, are another big issue. Although hundreds will be employed during the construction phase of the project, there’s no doubt many, if not most, of those workers will be brought in from other areas. A report on the project indicated there will be no more than 15 people employed long term.

With employment numbers that low, wouldn’t we generate more jobs by simply opening a Taco Bell? (And I guarantee a Taco Bell in the Bluefield, Va., area would bring excitement instead of anger from most residents.)

lll

After being immersed in the windmill debate via our newspaper for more than a year — and openly looking at the issue from both sides — I personally do not support the project. But it’s not my call to make — it is a decision that should be decided by the residents of Tazewell County.

At the public hearing on the project, 71 individuals spoke in favor of the ridgeline ordinance, while 18 spoke against it. That’s an overwhelming anti-windmill majority.

Here at the newspaper, we have received an abundance of letters to the editor about the issue. Although I haven’t kept a specific count, the vast majority were also against the turbine project.

So now the question is whether or not members of the Tazewell Board of Supervisors will listen to their constituents. Those “in the know” about Tazewell County politics are reporting that board member David Anderson, who represents the Bluefield area, is anti-windmill, while board chairman Seth White appears to be tilting in favor of windmills — at least based on some of his recent comments. Some believe new board member Jim Campbell Jr. will vote along with Anderson, while John Absher, the other new board member, may side with White. Of course this is pure speculation — no one knows how these board members will ultimately vote.

However if this scenario does play out, there would be one vote left — Mike Hymes, who represents the Southern District of Tazewell. It’s interesting to think that, potentially, one person could hold the power to forever change the vista of one of the region’s most beloved landscapes.

Again, these possible yea or nay votes are nothing more than conjecture. But, nevertheless, each board member should think long and hard about his vote, and the long-term consequences.

Their actions on Feb. 2 will have a lasting impact on this region, the thousands who live here and the countless others who enjoy the view when they travel through Southwest Virginia. And that’s not a decision that should be taken lightly.

Samantha Perry is managing editor of the Daily Telegraph. Contact her at sperry@bdtonline.com

Commentary ends!

Reader Tammy Sheets commented with this letter to the Editor:

Published: January 27, 2010 05:21 pm

Windmills will forever scar mountain

Bluefield Daily Telegraph

I thank you for your candid and honest article, “Wind turbines: 15 jobs, 5 votes and a forever altered landmark.” I wish the area residents would read Wendy Todd’s account of living next to a wind turbine “farm” at Mars Hill to get her firsthand account of life next to these large monstrosities. Her second paragraph is simple and heart breaking. “The wind turbines have changed our lives forever.” She states that it has destroyed the wildlife, the beautiful views, the property values and forever scarred the mountain. It even disturbed streams, ponds and wetlands. Mars Hill only has 28 turbines. We have 40-60 proposed for East River Mountain. If 28 does this much damage what will we have left with the 40-60 proposed for this area? This is not even to mention the health effects associated with the turbines. Mrs. Todd did not write all of this just to write it. She spelled out the terrible destruction and change that had been done to a beautiful place in America that she wanted to raise her children up in, with the same beautiful country feeling and surroundings that she had grown up in. Her home had been in her family for several generations.

I encourage all residents of Tazewell to do their research on existing wind farms and see the truth. Knowledge is power. The saying, “farm land lost is farm land lost forever,” can aptly be applied here in the form of, “East River Mountain lost is East River Mountain lost forever.”

I hope our supervisors take a page from the recent elections in Massachusetts. The will of the majority must be heard. The majority of the people have spoken and Dominion/BP are not welcome.

Tammy Sheets

Bluefield, Va.

Posted in Environment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Rethinking wind power – John Droz, Jr. | Cleantech Group

Posted on January 30, 2010 by morgan

Post shared courtesy of the Cleantech Group.

Physicist John Droz argues that wind fails six of seven tests as a commercial power source, and is “an insult to science and mankind.”

For the first hundred years or so of commercial electric power, there have been six over-riding concerns about commercial electricity generators:

  1. Could they provide large amounts of electricity?
  2. Could they provide reliable and predictable electricity?
  3. Could they provide dispatchable1 electricity?
  4. Could they service one or more of the grid demand elements2?
  5. Could their facility be compact3?
  6. Could they provide economical electricity?

1. Dispatchable means a source can generate higher or lower amounts of power on-demand, i.e. on a human-defined schedule.

2. Grid Demand Elements = Base Load (the minimum amount of steady rate electric power required 24/7) + Load Following (regulation of power output in response to moment-to-moment changes in system demand, so as to maintain the system within predetermined limits) + Peak Load (the maximum load during a specified period of time).

3. Compact is the ability to site an electrical facility on a relatively small and well-defined footprint, preferably near high demand, e.g. cities. This would save on transmission lines which are extremely expensive, unsightly, and produce power loss.

The primary goal of all of these efforts was to achieve capacity. To ensure reliability at the lowest cost, grid operators consider capacity in several ways as they evaluate electricity sources, but the most important is Capacity Value. The layperson’s definition of this is: ”the percentage of a machine’s rated capacity that grid operators can be confident will be in available during upcoming times of greatest demand.” Knowing this accurately is the key to reliable system grid performance.

Many options were proposed to satisfy these six criteria. To maximize public benefit (i.e. to ascertain whether the suggested source would comply with all of the needed condition, each was individually and scientifically vetted (before being allowed on the grid).

Over time, what resulted from these assessments was that we selected the following sources to provide commercial electricity: hydroelectric, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and oil. (Oil is by far the smallest source.)

Note that each of these current sources meet ALL of the above six essential criteria — and if they don’t (like oil recently becoming more expensive), then they get replaced, by other conventional sources that do.

As a result, today, and a hundred years from now, these sources can provide ALL of the electrical needs of our society — and continue to meet all six criteria.

So what’s the problem?

A new criteria has been recently added to the list of criteria: environmental impact — and the current number one environmental impact consideration is greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. CO2).

So why has this joined the Big Six? It is a direct result of the current debate on global warming. In response to intense political pressure, governments have acquiesced to these forces to make emissions an additional criterion.

Having government step in and mandate that utility companies change the principles that have been the foundation of our electrical supply system for a hundred years is disconcerting, transforming such a successful system based on a position that is not yet scientifically resolved.

Furthermore, this new criteria for electrical supply sources now has taken priority over all the other six. It has, as of late, become the ONLY benchmark of importance — the other six have essentially been put aside, and are now given only lip service.

In this unraveling of sensibility there is one final incredible insult to science: alternative sources of commercial electricity that claim to meet this new super-criteria (to make a consequential impact on CO2 reduction) don’t even have to prove that they actually do it!

Let’s look at the environmental poster child: wind power, and examine each of the six time-tested criteria, then the new one…

  1. Does industrial wind power provide large amounts of electricity?
    Yes, it could. However, its effectiveness from most perspectives is inferior. For instance (because of the wide and unpredictable fluctuations of wind), it only produces, on average, about 30 percent of its nameplate power. Another example of its dilutedness is that it takes over one thousand times the amount of land for wind power to produce a roughly equivalent amount of energy as does a nuclear facility.
  2. Does industrial wind power provide reliable and predictable electricity?
    NO. Despite the wind industry’s absolute best efforts it is not reliable or predictable compared to the standards set by our other conventional electrical sources. What’s worse is that when power is really needed (e.g. hot summer afternoons) wind is usually on vacation.
  3. Does industrial wind power provide dispatchable electricity?
    NO. Again, due to its unpredictability, wind can not be counted on to provide power on demand, i.e. on a human-defined schedule.
  4. Does industrial wind power provide one or more of the grid demand elements?
    NO. It certainly can not provide Base Load power, which is what is needed to supply an underlying 24/7 demand. It can not provide Load Following, which is in response to moment-to-moment changes in system demand. It can not reliably provide Peak Load, which is needed maximums during specified periods of time (like hot summer afternoons when lots of air conditioners are on, and the wind is usually still).
  5. Is industrial wind power compact?
    NO. As mentioned above, to even approximate the nameplate power of a conventional facility, like nuclear, takes something like a thousand times the amount of area. Wind promoters are desperately trying to convince gullible politicians that it can have some real capacity value. Their tinkertoy ‘solution’ is to try to connect multiple wind farms spread over vast areas. In addition to being speculative, all of this, of course, completely undermines the objective to be a concentrated power source.

    And another ‘feature’ of wind power is that most of the windiest sites (and available land) are a LONG way from where the electricity is needed. This will result in thousands of miles of huge unsightly transmission towers and cables, at an enormous expense to ratepayers — most of it completely unnecessary. Kite flying will be a thing of the past.

  6. Does industrial wind power provide economical electricity?
    NO. It is artificially subsidized far more than any conventional power source. A 2008 U.S. Energy Information Administration report concluded that just some of the federal subsidies for wind energy amount to $23+ per megawatt-hour. By contrast, normal coal receives 44¢ per megawatt-hour, natural gas 25¢, hydroelectric 67¢, and nuclear power $1.59. In addition to these, there are significant state subsidies and mandates. Several months ago, there are some 200 bills pending before Congress to add more incentives.

    And now let’s add the latest rule du jour:

  7. Does industrial wind power make a consequential reduction of CO2?
    NO! No independent scientific study has ever shown that wind power saves a meaningful amount of CO2. In fact, the most independent scientific study done (by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences) says the opposite. Its 2007 report concludes that (assuming the most optimistic conditions) the U.S. CO2 savings by 2020 will amount to only 1.8 percent. An earlier EIA report said 1.3 percent. These are trivial quantities!

What about the critical factor of Capacity Value? The result of the above deficiencies is that wind power has a Capacity Value of about 10 percent. Compare this to the conventional sources, where essentially all of them have a Capacity Value over 90 percent: a stunning disparity.

How can this possibly be? How could the world be rushing to widely deploy an electrical source that fails five out of six of our historically important criteria, AND has no scientific proof that it even meets this new emissions criterion?

It’s all about the money. Lobbyists for businesses, and parties who want a piece of this massive market are leaving no stone unturned. Environmentalists who have taken their eye off the ball are promoting this palliative non-solution. Politicians eager to be seen as ‘green’ are saying yes to everything the color of money.

Wind power proponents typically try to rationalize away its shortcomings saying that things will ‘get worked out’. What essentially is happening though, is that politicians are trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Some of these significant problems may never be resolved.

Another consideration is that understanding wind power’s inherent electrical generation shortcomings might put some other issues into perspective. For instance, it is entirely legitimate to be concerned about bird and bat mortality, noise intrusions, flicker effect, property devaluation, etc. But what if they were ‘fixed’ — would wind power then be okay?

Let’s say that (to help with some of these issues) a conscientious town’s ordinance required a one mile separation of wind turbines from all houses. Is wind power then an acceptable source for providing commercial power? The fact is that this excellent regulation would in no way address the fundamental electrical grid limitations of wind power identified above. Wind power will not be acceptable until all seven criteria are met.

Does wind’s abysmal failure mean that all renewables are a similar scam? No. Each proposed new power source needs to be objectively evaluated, independently. For example, based on MIT’s 2007 report, industrial geothermal holds significant promise.

In any case, this profound turn of events in how we select our sources of electrical power (by abandoning our successful and time-tested criteria) is having, and will continue to have, incalculable negative impacts on every person on the planet.

There is a solution — and it will cost a lot less that a trillion dollars. 90 percent of what we do spend should be on improving the conventional sources that already work. The remaining amount could go towards exploring new options that by definition would have to meet or exceed conventional sources (i.e. the six criteria). Then add conservation.

John Droz is a physicist with energy expertise whose position is that environmental and energy issues should be solved based on science, not the influence of lobbyists. For supporting data, a presentation of Droz’s is available at EnergyPresentation.Info. His views are not necessarily those of the Cleantech Group.

via Rethinking wind power | Cleantech Group.

Posted in John Droz | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Uh Oh!!! Cold keeps Minn. wind turbines from spinning. Why use video when a still photo will do? Well, we have it anyway.

Posted on January 29, 2010 by morgan

Click on the link below to see the short video news report.

Cold keeps Minn. wind turbines from spinning

Wind turbines placed in cities across Minnesota to generate power aren’t working because of the cold temperatures.

The Minnesota Municipal Power Association bought 11 turbines for $300,000 each from a company in Palm Springs, Calif.

Special hydraulic fluid designed for colder temperatures was used in the turbines, but it’s not working, so neither are the turbines.

There is a plan to heat the fluid, but officials must find a contractor to do the work.

via KSTP TV – Minneapolis and St. Paul – Cold keeps Minn. wind turbines from spinning.

Posted in Wind Energy Shenanigans | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Settlement reached at Beech Ridge industrial wind installation.

Posted on January 29, 2010 by morgan

h/t Allegheny Front Alliance

From the Charleston Daily Mail:

Wednesday January 27, 2010

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) – A Maryland developer has agreed not to build 24 turbines and will abandon 31 proposed sites at a West Virginia wind farm, settling a lawsuit by environmental groups worried about potential harm to the endangered Indiana bat.

Under the deal announced Wednesday, Beech Ridge Energy of Rockville will seek incidental take permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as ordered last month by U.S. District Judge Roger Titus. He had temporarily halted construction of the Greenbrier County project, which now will have no more than 100 turbines.

Beech Ridge Energy also agreed to operate turbines only during the bats’ annual hibernation period, from mid-November to March 31, when they are not migrating.

D.J. Schubert, a biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute of Washington, D.C., said the settlement was a reasonable compromise that protects the bat population but also lets the builder proceed with an alternative energy project.

“It’s a victory for all parties who are supportive of green energy but who feel that green energy companies have to be held to some standard in terms of ensuring their projects do not harm and threaten the environment,” Schubert said. “A standard has been set now, and we certainly hope the renewable energy industry takes heed.”

Joe Condo, vice president and general counsel for Beech Ridge Energy’s parent company, Invenergy LLC of Chicago, said the company was also pleased.

“This compromise will permit Beech Ridge Energy to continue employing skilled West Virginia construction workers to finish building the project and to proceed with the hiring of the full-time local operations team,” he said in a statement.

Beech Ridge can immediately begin building as many as 67 turbines, Condo said, and the terms of the agreement mean the company can “begin providing clean energy to West Virginia in the first half of 2010.”

The Animal Welfare Institute and the Williamsburg, W.Va.-based Mountain Communities for Respons ible Energy had sued both Beech Ridge and Invenergy, which planned to appeal the judge’s December ruling.

Under the settlement, however, the developers agreed to drop their appeal and the plaintiffs agreed they will not challenge any incidental take permits the Fish and Wildlife Service may issue.

Such permits are required when landowners, companies, state or local governments build projects that might harm wildlife that is listed as endangered or threatened.

The plaintiffs also agreed in court documents signed Tuesday that they will not file more complaints with the West Virginia Public Service Commission over siting certificates for the project.

Posted in Beech Ridge, Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Charter of Palermo – To protect Europe’s “essential cultural landscape heritage” from the “leprosy of wind.”

Posted on January 29, 2010 by morgan

We are pleased to provide the following presentation given by Mr. Jon Boone last spring in Palermo.  Mr. Boone is a frequent resource for the work here at AT and we thank him for his permission to post this important information for your review.

At the invitation of the Sicilian government, Mr. Boone, an intervenor in two MDPSC wind hearings and author of many publications about wind technology, joined more than thirty other speakers from Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and Britain to present at an  international industrial wind conference entitled, The Landscape Under Attack, held on

March 27 and 28, 2009 in Palermo. Speakers at the conference confirmed that thousands of massive wind turbines are planned for Italy. In response, leaders in Sicily, Rome, Tuscany, and Calabria met with energy experts throughout Europe and the United States to exchange ideas and agree on principles for protecting both the landscape and the consumer.

The conference’s keynote speaker, Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, former president of France, called for strong measures throughout Europe to protect the continent’s essential cultural landscape heritage. He was followed by Raffaelo Lombardo, Sicily’s president, who vowed to keep his region safe from what a prominent Sicilian journalist, in the conference’s wake, called the “leprosy of wind.” Carlo Ripa di Meana, former Italian minister of the environment and current president of Italia Nostra, the oldest and most influential Italian conservation organization, organized the event and served as its host.  Other speakers included leaders from Italy’s nature and conservation groups, politicians such as the mayor of Salemi, a small town in southwestern Sicily, and energy experts from the University of Rome.

On the first day, Boone gave a lecture entitled, Wind Technology is Overblown, in which he demonstrated that wind can only provide supplementary energy (not power), which itself requires a lot of supplementation, in the process subverting the technology’s ability to offset meaningful levels of greenhouse gas emissions. The next day, he showed his documentary, Life Under a Windplant, which he made as part of his MDPSC testimony. All presentations were translated simultaneously in English and Italian.

The conference concluded with a Charter, a statement of purpose, which called for an immediate moratorium on wind development, a thorough examination of its costs and benefits, and protection in perpetuity for the landscape’s cultural heritage.

Mr. Boone’s speech – Wind Energy is Overblown – as presented in Palermo in 2009, is provided for your convenience. A slide presentation to accompany the speech can be found immediately following the text.  The red numbers in the text correspond to slide numbers. You can download a text version without numbers here.:

Mr. Boone’s slide presentation which accompanied his remarks (modified to fit presentation format):

The resulting Charter of Palermo:

Jon Boone has been a formal intervenor in two Maryland Public Service Commission hearings. He produced and directed the documentary, Life Under a Windplant, which has been freely distributed within the United States and many countries throughout the world.

Mr. Boone also developed the website Stop Ill Wind, where anyone can read his complete direct testimony, with many related documents, in the Synergics wind case before the Maryland Public Service Commission.

His essay, The Aesthetic Dissonance of Industrial Wind Machines, was published in the journal, Contemporary Aesthetics. A revised copy of his June, 2006 speech given in Wyoming County, The Wayward Wind, was published last year by McGraw Hill. His paper, Less for More: The Rube Goldberg Nature of Industrial Wind, is pending publication.

A lifelong environmentalist, Mr. Boone helped found the North American Bluebird Society and has been a consultant with the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in New York.

He is a former university academic administrator and now a painter who receives no income from his work on wind technology and resides miles from any proposed wind project. .

Mr. Boone seeks only informed, effective public policy–and an environmentalism that eschews wishful thinking because it is aware of the unintended adverse consequences flowing from uninformed, unscientific decisions.

Posted in Jon Boone | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Industrial wind – the modern day Hobo?

Posted on January 29, 2010 by morgan

Industrial wind – the modern day Hobo?  Possibly, but the Hobo actually worked for the handout it received.

Thanks to the Allegheny Front Alliance for directing us to this article:

January 26, 2010

Saved by Stimulus in 2009, Wind Industry Pushes for RES

By MIKE SORAGHAN of Greenwire

The federal stimulus package turned what could have been a disastrous 2009 for the wind industry into its best year ever.

But industry promoters warn that things could get bleak again if Congress does not enact a “renewable energy standard” that orders power companies to use a set percentage of power generated by wind, sun or other renewable sources.

“We thought we were going to lose half our industry,” said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association. “Then the Recovery Act came along, and we were able to create jobs.”

Wind farm installations created 1,500 to 2,000 construction, operations and maintenance jobs, according to AWEA. But the uncertainty of federal policy caused manufacturing to drop off and cost an equivalent loss of jobs in that portion of the industry.

The wind industry installed more than 9,900 megawatts of generating capacity, AWEA said. The association says that is enough to serve more than 2.4 million homes, about as many as there are in Washington state. Bode said that meant the United States should edge China for the lead in wind power installation for 2009.

Before the stimulus passed, the industry was projecting that wind power development could drop by as much as 50 percent compared to 2008. The renewable portion of the $787 billion legislation created construction, operations and maintenance, and management jobs, according to AWEA.

“It’s a real tribute to the administration to see that the industry needed a lifeline and delivered,” Bode said.

But the lack of an RES caused investment in the manufacturing sector to drop compared with the previous year, she said. New orders dropped, and suppliers found themselves stuck with high inventory. There were one-third fewer wind power manufacturing facilities online, announced and expanded.

Bode said the wind industry needs the economic certainty created by an RES for manufacturers to expand their U.S. operations.

“We need to set hard targets,” Bode said. “Frankly, the country is going to need this energy.”

But what Bode calls certainty, others call a government handout to “Big Wind” that gives wind an unfair advantage over fossil fuels.

“Where’s the gratitude from Big Wind?” said Patrick Creighton, spokesman for the Institute for Energy Research. “After a record year in taxpayer handouts, Big Wind now wants guaranteed market share through mandated use of their expensive, inefficient and unreliable power source?”

Creighton stressed that wind is an intermittent power source.

“You can install all the pinwheels you want,” Creighton said. “but if the wind doesn’t blow, electricity is not generated.”

Bode called that criticism unfair. She said every form of energy, starting with oil, has benefited from government support. The nuclear industry is insured by the federal government, and oil has had tax credits going back to 1920 and has a “series of exemptions from environmental rules,” she said.

“Each industry has been given long-term assurance by the government,” Bode said.

Posted in Wind Energy Shenanigans, Wind Power subsidies | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Watertown Daily Times | Noise, shadow flicker from wind farms causing an uproar

Posted on January 28, 2010 by morgan

RURAL MINNESOTA: State is fourth-largest wind power producer; projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars being opposed
MONDAY, JANUARY 18, 2010

ELKTON, Minn. — Every sunny morning, shadows from the massive rotating blades swing across their breakfast table. The giant towers dominate the view from their deck. Noise from the turbines fills the silence that Dolores and Rudy Jech once enjoyed on their Minnesota farm.

“Rudy and I are retired, and we like to sit out on our deck,” Dolores said. “And that darned thing is right across the road from us. It’s an eyesore, it’s noisy, and having so many of them there’s a constant hum.”

Just as they are being touted as a green, economical and job-producing energy source, wind farms in Minnesota are starting to get serious blowback. Across the state, people are opposing projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Opposition is also rising in other states. It’s not likely to blow over quickly in Minnesota, which is the nation’s fourth-largest producer of wind power and on track to double its 1,805 megawatt capacity in the next couple of years.

To be sure, many people who live more than half a mile from machines are not bothered by noise, and those with turbines on their property enjoy an economic windfall. They typically sign 30-year easements and receive up to $7,500 a year for each turbine on their land.

But the Jechs do not own the land across the road, where a turbine stands about 900 feet from their 100-year-old farm home. Flickering shadows from the 122-foot blades make east-facing rooms seem as if someone is flipping a light switch for hours at a time. “We can pull our drapes, we can put earplugs in, or we can wear dark glasses, I guess, but it doesn’t really make the problem go away,” said their daughter Patti Lienau.

After complaining to the developer, they received two large evergreen trees to partly block the view, and $3,000 a year to compensate for the noise. But Lienau said that no money can restore tranquility for her “shell-shocked” 85-year-old father, who struggles with panic attacks and anxiety.

The rising numbers of complaints have taken Minnesota regulators by surprise.

“I’ve been doing this for 14 years and people are raising issues I’ve never heard of,” said Larry Hartman, manager of permitting in the state’s Office of Energy Security.

For the most part, Hartman said, wind farms have been welcomed by struggling farmers and revenue-hungry counties. However, some projects are drawing fire, often from non-farmers who built country homes and commute to nearby cities.

“The rural area isn’t what it used to be anymore,” said Kevin Hammel, a dairy farmer about nine miles east of Rochester, Minn., where wind developers are active.

Hammel supported wind generators initially, but changed his mind after a developer took him and a busload of neighbors to visit a wind farm. The tour made him feel like he was in an industrial park, he said. Yet others admire the sleek, graceful turbines with towers up to 325 feet tall, topped by generators the size of a bus.

Federal subsidies and state mandates for utilities to produce more electricity from renewable sources are accelerating wind farm development.

Minnesota regulations require that wind turbines be at least 500 feet away from a residence, and more to make sure sounds do not exceed 50 decibels. In most cases, that amounts to at least 700 to 1,000 feet, depending upon the turbine’s size, model and surrounding terrain. Whether 50 decibels is too loud depends upon individuals, who perceive sound differently, but it approximates light auto traffic at 50 feet, according to wind industry reports.

Critics say setback distances should be tripled or quadrupled. Nina Pierpoint, a New York physician who has examined the issue, describes “wind turbine syndrome” with symptoms that include sleep disturbance, ear pressure, vertigo, nausea, blurred vision, panic attacks and memory problems.

Last month, the American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations released a report that reviewed those claims and said they lacked merit.

Rita Messing, a supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Health, co-wrote a report last July to help guide the state on noise decisions.

Wind turbines emit a broad spectrum of sound, she said, including higher frequencies covered by state noise regulations and lower frequency sounds that are not. Her report does not recommend changes in the state noise rules, but notes that local governments can impose longer setbacks.

That needs to happen, said Tom Schulte, who’s upset about a proposed wind farm near his new home in Goodhue County. “When I built this house, the county told me where to build: how far from my neighbor, how far from a fence line, how far from a feedlot, and out of 23 acres there wasn’t a whole heckuva lot of land left where I could have put a house,” Schulte said. “And yet somebody can plop a 400-foot-tall turbine 500 feet from my house and the county steps back and says they don’t have any say about it.”

The debate over noise and setbacks will drop into St. Paul this month when the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission takes up the matter. Comments filed by 16 wind developers said the state’s noise rules and setback distances do not need to be changed, that “shadow flicker” from rotating blades can be solved by better modeling and siting, and that there’s no evidence that low-frequency sounds affect human health.

Others are not convinced and want Minnesota to re-evaluate the rules. People who live near wind turbines are “experimental subjects, who have not given their informed consent to the risk of harm to which they may be exposed,” said Per Anderson of Moorhead. He postponed plans to build a house on land near three proposed wind farms in Clay County.

Some people challenge the industry’s claim that 50 decibels is no louder than light traffic or a refrigerator running. Brian Huggenvik, who owns 17 acres near a proposed wind farm two miles from Harmony, said he has driven to various wind farms and listened to the noise to judge for himself. Huggenvik, an airline pilot, said turbines can also produce a whining sound, similar in frequency to a jet engine idling on a taxiway, though not as loud. “It’s not like living next to a highway with constant sound and your mind blocks it out,” he said. “It’s something that you just can’t get used to. It is a different kind of sound.”

BY THE NUMBERS
• Minnesota is among the nation’s leaders in wind energy production, ranking fourth behind Texas, Iowa and California

• The state’s first wind farm was Kenetech Windpower’s 73 machines built in 1994, which produce 26 megawatts of power for Xcel Energy

• More than 60 wind farms have sprouted up in Minnesota with a total energy capacity of 1805 megawatts

• Today’s typical machines produce 1.5 megawatts each

Source: American Wind Energy Association

via Watertown Daily Times | Noise, shadow flicker from wind farms causing an uproar.

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Quixotic Quest for Power – Greg Pollowitz – Planet Gore on National Review Online

Posted on January 27, 2010 by morgan

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Quixotic Quest for Power   [Greg Pollowitz]

Investor’s Business Daily:

As we’ve evolved from a NIMBY (not in my backyard) nation to a full-fledged BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody) republic, power lines aren’t too popular. Seems that every other square foot is the protected habitat of an endangered critter or a “pristine” part of the earth that must be preserved.

Wind turbines generally operate at only 20% efficiency compared with 85% for coal, gas and nuclear plants. A single 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would generate more dependable power than 2,800 1.5-megawatt occasionally operating wind turbines sitting on 175,000 acres.

Wind provides only 1% of our electricity compared with 49% for coal, 22% for natural gas, 19% for nuclear power and 7% for hydroelectric. To replace natgas’ 22% with wind would require building 300,000 1.5-megawatt turbines occupying an area the size of South Carolina. Again, ask the NIMBYs where they want them.

We have advocated a new Manhattan Project to build new nuclear power plants. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal, and our shale oil reserves by themselves dwarf Saudi oil reserves by a factor of three. And this doesn’t count the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the Outer Continental Shelf.

As the men of La Mancha have found out, tilting at windmills may be entertaining, but the answer to our economic and energy woes is not blowin’ in the wind.

via Quixotic Quest for Power – Greg Pollowitz – Planet Gore on National Review Online.

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Ahhh! The beautiful sounds of industrial wind in nature. Who needs songbirds, anyway?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by morgan

Click on the link – Sound is Art! to hear the wonderful Mojave Wind Turbines, as recorded by Michael Peters

What wondrous music!  I’ll be taking down my bird feeders as soon as I can find an old industrial metal cage fan to mount as replacement.

After all, bird seed is getting expensive and wow, the wind is free.

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Selling Industrial Wind: Government, the Media and Common Sense – UPDATE

Posted on January 27, 2010 by morgan

UPDATE 1/30/2010:  Mr. Boone’s work is published at MasterResource.

Note supporting comment to the article by John Droz: One more consideration about Denmark’s “success” with wind energy. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) the average cost of electricity for residential customers in the US is about 10¢/KWH.

The average cost of electricity for residential customers in Denmark is about 35¢/KWH!

This is what we want to duplicate?

Note how often the NYT, REL, AWEA mention that fact.

Allegheny Treasures Post begins here:

We thank Mr. Jon Boone for granting AT permission to post his essay on the topic of:

Selling Industrial Wind: Government, the Media, and Common Sense

This week, the New York Times dutifully featured two media events primed to gin up public—and Congressional—support for industrial wind technology. The first was a “study” released by the Department of Energy and authored primarily by David Corbus of the National Renewable Energy Lab. It claims that, for a startup cost of around $100 billion public dollars, “wind could displace coal and natural gas for 20 to 30 percent of the electricity used in the eastern two-thirds of the United States by 2024.” Corbus acknowledged that such an enterprise would require substantial grid modification but said the $100 billion was “really, really small compared to other costs,” which the Times failed to identify.

A few days later, the paper ballyhooed the American Wind Energy Association’s annual report, which touted the growth of wind last year and projected that the country would soon get 2 percent of its electricity from wind energy. The report fretted about the American wind gap with Europe, which AWEA (falsely) alleged gets 5 percent of its electricity from wind, compared to only about 1 percent in the USA, while stating “Denmark has essentially achieved that goal already, and sometimes produces more wind power than it can use.” AWEA’s stalking horse for this event, energy consultant Tim Stephure, said, “By 2020 wind’s installed capacity could be five times higher than it is today, reaching about 180,000 megawatts.”

To achieve this goal, from its present base of 35,000 wind turbines and an installed capacity of about 35,000MW, the industry must build, in each of the next ten years, an installed capacity of 14,500MW. Maybe in some alternate universe. Moreover, to reach 2 percent of the nation’s electricity within existing wind capacity, current projects must produce at a capacity factor of 58 percent, their theoretical maximum. The current national wind capacity factor is 28 percent. Furthermore, as Danish engineer Hugh Sharman has said, if Denmark did not have a relatively huge Scandinavian “sink” in which the Danes could dump its considerable excess wind (which it does for most of its actual wind generation), and if that sink did not have hydro as its principle source of power, Denmark would be awash in both carbon dioxide emissions and wind turbines in the production of electricity while facing daily threats of grid meltdown.

As for the NREL’s latest effort, it’s not even rational. Would anyone think it was desirable for rescue squads in the country’s eastern region to employ drunk drivers to operate 20 percent of their ambulances? Wind behaves just like a very drunk driver, never able to walk a straight line. Integrating either wind energy on the grid or drunk drivers on the highway has enormous consequences for public safety, reliability, cost, security, and productivity. Not to mention quality—and length—of life.

New York Times reporters should have a passing knowledge of the tenets of scientific methodology. Foremost is the desirability of eliminating or reducing to an absolute minimum any bias on the part of those participating in an experiment. This is why double blind experiments are so important. Magicians know how easy it is to fool someone who wants to be fooled. And snake oil salesmen have been expert in this endeavor since the dawn of time. Corbus and the NREL wind staff have a major financial stake in the perception that wind energy is effective. AWEA is a trade group. Sadly, the Times presents the “findings” of these organizations as if their conclusions were scientifically vetted and disinterested.

The NREL document, like a similar report last year issued by this agency, is essentially a prod to influence federal legislation (such as a national RPS) that would enable wind “all the hell over the place (to quote one wind booster).” Given such coordinated timing with the AWEA annual report, it was evidently also released to complement yet another GE ad campaign in the upcoming Winter Olympic coverage on NBC. Some will recall that GE had purchased Enron’s wind projects when the latter company went belly up and now is the world’s fourth largest wind distributor. It is NBC’s parent company. Not least, the report will also reinforce the new national ad campaign designed to boost Congressional support for natural gas—the one that says how natural gas will enable “renewables” such as wind and solar (but fails to address the cost and thermal consequences of doing so).

Both AWEA and the NREL work synergistically to prime the public to support wind technology, trusting that their propaganda will be conveyed by the media as an article of faith, without, as far as I can discern, any fact checking whatsoever.

At several quiet junctions, the NREL admits wind cannot be a capacity resource. Except for a few engineers, almost no one understands how damning this admission is. Our modern system of power insists on capacity value–getting a specific amount of energy on demand and controlling it whenever desired. And so the issue is how to make people believe that a source of energy, which is highly variable and unresponsive and provides no capacity value while inimical to demand cycles, can effectively provide 20 percent of the region’s electricity by 2024–only 14 years from now. This claim is particularly egregious given that wind does not even provide modern power performance–only desultory energy. Since energy is the ability to do work and power is the rate work is done, wind technology delivers fluctuating energy at a rate appropriate for 1810, not 2024.

Is it possible to integrate such a random, variable, capacity-less source of energy with modern machine power at a level equal to 20 percent of the generation necessary to match demand in 2024? Yes, under the category that virtually anything like this is possible. But what are the odds? And who’s going to keep score? And what are the penalties if it does not? The only place that is even close is Denmark, with about 20 percent of its installed capacity from wind. But most is shunted to Scandinavia. Germany, with about 5 percent of its actual generation from wind, is struggling mightily, and often must curtail its wind energy altogether to protect the grid. More wind there would require more conventional generation to shadow the wind projects–at between 80-90 percent of the installed wind capacity. And note this post from Der Spiegel about expanding nuclear reactor life spans in that country.  There seems to be no penalty for lying in the energy marketplace

Even if it were possible to integrate so much wind, consider the thermal consequences while thinking about whether or not such a volatile phenomenon could close fossil-fired or nuclear facilities. Every variation of wind energy must be balanced by reliable conventional generators, working overtime to do so. Occasionally, all that wind will produce virtually nothing. What conventional plants can then close so that the grid doesn’t have to shut down when this occurs? What will happen when all that wind spikes upward suddenly, requiring that conventional generators be shut off instantly?

Integrating a level of wind energy at 20 percent of the region’s total generation would (1) unleash large quantities of CO2 emissions as conventional generators would be operating much less efficiently (generally, a 2 percent increase in inefficiency results in a 14-16 percent increase in carbon emission for thermal plants—the heat rate penalty); (2) require additional conventional wind shadowing units at 90 percent of the installed wind capacity; (3) require building thousands of miles of new—and virtually dedicated transmission lines to bring wind from remote areas and to keep it from tying up the transmission of existing production (that is, resolving the transmission scheduling problems); and (4) require installing whole new systems of voltage regulation to accommodate the wind flux. And there are many other things that would be necessary.

Consequently, $100 billion wouldn’t pay for a first installment. Indulging the fantasy that wind technology could provide 20 percent of the region’s electricity if only we could bypass a fusty federalism and spend trillions on a smart grid, retrofitting modern technology to meet the needs of ancient wind flutter, is monumentally silly, a sure sign that pundits and politicians, not scientists, are now in charge of the Department of Energy.

Wind technology was a bulwark of human enterprise for millennia, but largely disappeared as soon as steam technology was discovered. Instead of Clipper ships, we now sail almost entirely for recreation–not modern production. Instead of using wind to pump water and grind grain, as the Dutch did historically to reclaim the land from the sea and make their famous beers, we now use modern precision power to improve the quality of life for billions of people. There are compelling reasons related to vastly increased productivity and improved quality of life for this rapid technological changeover.

Wind is, in the final analysis, a faith-based proposition, requiring people to close their minds and clap their hands to revive it from a life and death struggle against unbelief, bringing the technology back from the oblivion that the steam engine consigned it to.

One of the issues such wind promotions raise, particularly those from the NREL, is how political our information-assessment government agencies have become. And this indictment includes the National Academy of Science, whose reports now are largely written by those with a substantial financial stake in the outcome; there’s not even a presumption that bias has been removed. And the media don’t even question this anymore, simply taking it as business as usual. The politicalization of knowledge, particularly in areas as important to our modernity as energy, is a major unreported story.

Jon Boone

Oakland, Maryland

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