Resource Library Category: Washington (10 items)
Documents presented here are not the product of nor are they necessarily endorsed by National Wind Watch. This resource library is provided to assist anyone wishing to research the issue of industrial wind power and the impacts of its development. The information should be evaluated by each reader to come to their own conclusions about the many areas of debate.
Compilation of documents by KROWS
Source: Kittitas Residents Opposing Windfarm Sprawl
Kittitas Residents Opposing Windfarm Sprawl (KROWS) have collected the following documents on their web site.
Economic Importance of Bats in Agriculture
False Claims that “Wind Farms” Provide Large Economic and Job Benefits
Think Twice: Why Wind Power Mandates Are Wrong for the Northwest
True Cost of Electricity from Wind Is Always Underestimated and Its Value Is Always Overestimated
Evaluating the impact of wind turbine noise on health-related quality of life
Living With the Impact of Windmills
Wind Turbine Setbacks and Property Values
Prefiled testimony of David Lipscomb before Washington state EFSEC
Source: Lipscomb, David
Q: Are you familiar with the effects of noise on public health?
Ans: Yes. In addition to my work with the U. S. EPA, I have attended and made presentations to numerous International Congresses on Noise as a Public Health Problem. They include 1968 (Washington, D.C.); 1973 (Dubrovnic, Yugoslavia); 1978 (Friburg, Germany) and 1982 (Turin, Italy). These were gatherings of active researchers on the topic from around the world. Proceedings of the Congresses were produced and are contained in my library.
Q: Could you describe some of these effects?
Ans: Yes. The effects include loss of sleep, hearing damage, irritability, exacerbation of nervous and cardiovascular disorders, and frustration stemming from loss of control of one’s acoustical environment.
Q: Is a person able to control the physical reaction within their body to sound?
Ans: Only to a limited extent. Dr. Samuel Rosen, formerly physician at New York City’s Mt. Sinai Hospital stated: “You may be able to ignore noise – but your body will never forgive you.” The truth in this statement is that “coping” is a fatiguing activity. Therefore, the energy spent in coping with environmental noise or the frustrations it produces, is robbed from energy desired for other forms of activity.
Q: At what sound levels would your expect to see reactions of effects of noise?
Ans: Surprisingly small sound levels can cause certain reactions. For example, sleep studies have shown that subjects will shift two or three levels of sleep when the environmental sound is increased only 5 dB. Thus, a person in the Rapid Eye Movement (REM), the fifth stage of sleep, when the bedroom sound level is 35 dBA, will shift out of that essential level of sleep when the sound increases only to about 40 dBA. As a result, this negative health effect is known to lead to chronic fatigue and irritability.
Q: Could you please explain the effect of noise at night in residential areas?
Ans: Yes, recall that I mentioned low-frequency noise entering a house almost unimpeded. If that noise source is the predominant sound in a bedroom, any change in the sound level can influence a person’s sleep level, therefore, reducing the adequacy of rest afforded by sleep. Further, the noise source, if it is from the power generation plant, serves as a masking noise. That is, it covers up other sounds to which one may need to attend. For example, sounds from a child’s bedroom.
Q: Could you please explain the effect of low frequency noise and how it travels?
Ans: Yes, but to do so, I must introduce the term “wave length”. This is the distance covered by a sound during one cycle. For example, a mid-frequency 1000 Hz sound has a wave length of slightly more than 1-foot. Lower frequency sounds have longer wave lengths. Thus, a 100 Hz sound has slightly more than a 10-foot wave length. The longer the wave length, the more efficient the sound is in penetrating barriers such as walls of a structure. For the purposes of this investigation, I would define low frequency sounds as those falling below 100 Hz. Perhaps you have experienced life in an apartment when a neighbor plays a stereo loudly. The sound that penetrated to your quarters was the bass (low frequency sound). Also due to the wave length characteristics, low frequency sounds dissipate less over distance than do sounds of higher frequency.
Alberta, Australia, California, Delaware, Denmark, Germany, Grid, Idaho, Ireland, Maine, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Ontario, Oregon, Portugal, Spain, U.K., Washington •
Real-time wind production — various regions
Source: National Wind Watch
Denmark: Current production and imports/exports (kraftwærker = power plants; windmøller = windmills; nettoudveksling = net exchange; elforbrug = electricity consumption)
Denmark: Current consumption, production, and prices
Estonia: Current production, plus graphs (“diagrams”) of past 24 hours and 7 days of six 4-Energia wind energy facilities, also webcams (total capacities: Esivere 8 MW, Pakri 18.4 MW, Tooma I 24 MW, Virtsu I-III 15 MW, Viru-Nigula 24 MW, Mockiai 12 MW, Sudenai 14 MW)
France: Quarter-hour consumption and production
Germany: Quarter-hour wind production in EnBW control area (Baden-Württemberg)
Germany: Quarter-hour wind production in 50 Hertz transmission area (northern and eastern)
Great Britain: Current, last half-hour, and last 24 hours of generation by fuel type
Great Britain: Current, weekly, monthly, yearly demand and production
Ireland: Daily quarter-hour wind generation
Portugal: Real-time wind power generation and total power demand
Spain: Real-time wind generation, with percentage of capacity and percentage of demand (may not work in all browsers)
Spain: Real-time generation from all sources (may not work in all browsers)
Alberta: Weekly wind power operational and market reports
Ontario: Daily hourly generation (scroll to bottom of table for wind plant)
California: Daily hourly production, CAISO
University of Delaware, Newark: current power output (kW) of 2,000-kW turbine
Very Low Wind Generation Period of Jan-09, and a 1-Year Lookback at Frequency of Very Low Wind Gen Periods
Source: Bonneville Power Authority
The very low wind generation period of Jan-09 has ended, after:
• more than 11-1/2 continuous days with total wind gen <50 MW: 14-Jan-09 02:43:00 thru 25-Jan-09 17:13:00 (11 days, 14.5 hours);
and
• more than 8-1/2 continuous days <10 MW: 14-Jan-09 16:59:00 thru 23-Jan-09 07:37:00 (8 days, 14.6 hours)
How often in the past year have we seen others periods of “very low” wind generation?
The next plot shows the Percent of Time by Week Where Total Wind Gen Was <50 MW over the last 56 weeks. The installed wind capacity during this time was ~1,500 MW, so the 50 MW threshold represents ~3% of capacity. The full 56-week average was ~23%, that is, nearly a quarter of the time the total wind gen was less than 3% of total wind capacity.
Other than the very low wind gen period this month, the weeks of 1/21/08 (55.0%) and 10/27/08 (53%) had the next greatest frequency of low wind gen periods. There was a slight seasonality, with the fall months having somewhat more “very low wind gen” periods.
These very low wind gen periods highlight the high correlation (i.e., low diversity) among wind gen plants within the balancing authority area. [Twelve facilities totaling 1,301 MW were on line at the beginning of 2008; during the data period, five more facilities came on line, adding 470 MW; BPA's grid covers Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana.]
[The accompanying data file includes average wind generation for every hour in these 56 weeks. The average hourly average was 361.1 MW (24% of 1,500 MW). The aggregate of the BPA wind plant generated at or above that rate 3,623 out of 8,779 hours, or 41.3% of the time. This accords with Rosenbloom's law of wind turbine output: Whatever the capacity factor, any turbine or aggregate of turbines generates at or above its average rate only 40% of the time.]
