Resource Library -- latest additions
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.
Letter to Riga Township Planning Commission
On request of interested parties in Riga Township, I am writing to provide important information about siting wind turbines to protect public health with an adequate margin of safety. I am a Member of the Institute of Noise Control Engineering with over thirty years of experience in acoustics including many years working in industrial power generation noise control. I have conducted independent studies of wind turbine noise including actual field measurements of operating wind turbines in the State of Maine over the last year, where significant community reaction has occurred near wind turbine facilities equipped with smaller wind turbines than proposed for the Riga Township.
I understand that there have been suggestions of using a wind turbine noise limit of 45 dBA at a distance of 1300 feet or so in Riga Township. Experience in New England has proven that these noise levels at these distances for wind turbines sited in rural areas are associated with significant adverse community reactions, widespread complaints, appeals to stop the noise, and legal action. When siting large industrial wind turbines in quiet rural areas, lower maximum noise levels and farther distances are recommended to prevent adverse community reaction and protect public health and welfare with an adequate margin of safety.
This letter presents a discussion of community reactions to noise, guidelines for appropriate maximum permissible noise limits in rural areas, measured noise levels versus distance and observed community responses. I appreciate your consideration of this letter and believe you will find this information useful in your determinations of how to protect the health and welfare of Riga Township.
Download original document: “Letter to Riga Township Planning Commission”
Why is sharp-limited low-frequency noise extremely annoying?
Source: Krahé, Detlef
[Introduction] Low-frequency noise (LFN) is sound focused in the frequency range below ~100 Hz. For example, in Germany sound is defined as low frequency if the C- and A-weighted sound pressure level (SPL) differs by more than 20 dB. For a growing number of people LFN is an urgent problem, and many questions remain unanswered: Why does LFN seem to be a greater problem today than in the past? Are people more sensitive? Is LFN increasing?
It can be assumed that LFN was less common in the past, which doesn’t mean that it was quieter. It is difficult to prove, but not improbable, that A-weighting is in part responsible for increasing LFN, because A-weighting attenuates LFN strongly. Therefore, in the endeavor to meet the limits in regulations, which are mostly defined in dB(A), it is easier (meaning in most cases less expensive) to shift resonances of machines to the low-frequency range than to attenuate the vibration or the sound by technical means. In addition, A-weighting is to blame for an underestimation of the annoyance of LFN.
Another reason for increasing LFN may be found in the growing application of all kinds of noise protection, e.g., noise barriers, special windows, etc. All of these measures have a common property: low-frequency waves can pass through, over, or across them more easily than waves in the middle- or even high-frequency range. Therefore, it isn’t impossible that noise protection bears some responsibility for the problem of LFN. As reported by Persson Waye et al. (2003), after measures had been installed against noise coming from outside, people were suddenly hearing LFN from inside the house and were so annoyed that some of them preferred to sleep with open windows despite the resulting high noise level. Di et al. (2005) reported a similar problem.
In searching for an answer to the question of why some people prefer to endure a louder noise with a broader spectrum than LFN at a lower level, few clues are found in the literature. One clue can be found in the detailed LFN report by Leventhall (2003). According to Bryan (1976) referenced there, the annoyance of LFN is determined by edge steepness limiting the spectrum of LFN to higher frequencies in the way, that a steeper edge causes an unacceptable annoyance while a moderately steep edge is acceptable. The core question is: What is the basic cause for all of these reactions?
In Hansen (2007), many contributions dealing with the effects of LFN on people came to the assumption that the special effects of LFN are caused less by the peripheral processing in the outer, middle, and inner ear but more by the subsequent processing in the nervous system. This might explain the direct influence of LFN on mental health [Persson Waye et al. (2001)], which can be found also in physiologic investigations [Persson Waye et al. (2002)].
Presented at Acoustics ’08, Paris, June 29–July 4, 2008
Detlef Krahé
Univ. of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany
krahe/uni-wuppertal.de
Download original document: “Why is sharp-limited low-frequency noise extremely annoying?”
Electricity costs: The folly of wind-power
Source: Lea, Ruth
Wind-power: inordinately expensive and ineffective at cutting CO2 emissions
The focus on wind-power, driven by the renewables targets, is preventing Britain from effectively reducing CO2 emissions, while crippling energy users with additional costs, according to a new Civitas report. The report finds that wind-power is unreliable and requires back-up power stations to be available in order to maintain a consistent electricity supply to households and businesses. This means that energy users pay twice: once for the window-dressing of renewables, and again for the fossil fuels that the energy sector continues to rely on. Contrary to the implied message of the Government’s approach, the analysis shows that wind-power is not a low-cost way of reducing emissions.
Electricity Costs: the folly of wind-power, by economist Ruth Lea, uses Government-commissioned estimates of the costs of electricity generation in the UK to calculate the most cost-effective technologies. When all costs are included, gas-fired power is the most cost-efficient method of generating electricity in the short-term, while nuclear power stations become the most cost-efficient in the medium-term.
All that wind takes a lot of gas
Wind-power is acknowledged to cost more than traditional fossil fuel power stations. But estimates from Government-commissioned reports suggest that, when the cost of CO2 emissions is included, onshore wind-power becomes one of the more cost-effective means of generating electricity. Offshore wind does not however. [See p. 12 - p. 23] Unfortunately, these estimates fail to factor in all the costs of wind-power. These costs are due to the fact that energy output from wind is unpredictable and rarely occurs in areas of most demand:
… wind-power is unreliable and requires conventional back-up generating capacity when wind speeds are, for example, very low or rapidly varying … [p. 14]
This means that wind farms need to be supported by conventional capacity including gas-fired power stations that can be switched on whenever the available wind fails to match demand for electricity. Lea cites research by Colin Gibson, former Power Network Director at the National Grid Group, who has produced some of the most comprehensive estimates for these ‘add-on costs’.
When these add-on costs are included, the resultant levelised generating costs (£ per megawatt hour) for the main electricity generating technologies are, for medium-term projects:
- Nuclear pressurised water reactors (PWR): £67.8 per MWh.
- Gas-fired combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT): £96.5 per MWh.
- Gas CCGT with carbon capture and storage (CCS): £102.6 per MWh.
- Coal (ASC) with CCS: £111.9 per MWh.
- Advanced supercritical (ASC) coal-fired power plants: £133.2 per MWh.
- Onshore wind: £146.3 per MWh (including ‘add-on costs’ of £60 per MWh).
- Offshore wind: £179.4 per MWh (including ‘add-on costs’ of £67 per MWh).
(Note: one megawatt hour can run approximately 1000 desktop computers for 8 hours)
The most cost-effective technologies are nuclear and gas-fired. Onshore, and especially offshore, wind technologies are inordinately expensive.
Pumping out more CO2
Besides the prohibitive costs, the report shows that wind-power, backed by conventional gas-fired generation, can emit more CO2 than the most efficient gas turbines running alone:
In a comprehensive quantitative analysis of CO2 emissions and wind-power, Dutch physicist C. le Pair has recently shown that deploying wind turbines on “normal windy days” in the Netherlands actually increased fuel (gas) consumption, rather than saving it, when compared to electricity generation with modern high-efficiency gas turbines. Ironically and paradoxically the use of wind farms therefore actually increased CO2 emissions, compared with using efficient gas-fired combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) at full power. [p. 30]
This means that the cost of having wind is not just carried by consumers but by the environment as well.
Caught in a cross-wind
The report explains how two competing environmental policies have generated a perverse set of priorities. The renewables targets have forced the energy sector to focus on more expensive, less reliable power sources, rather than those most likely to reduce emissions while keeping costs to the rest of economy competitive:
- The Climate Change Act 2008 requires that Britain’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions be cut by 80 per cent by 2050 compared with the 1990 level and by 34% by around 2020.
- The EU’s Renewables Directive (2009) commits the UK to sourcing 15% of final energy consumption (FEC) from renewables by 2020. Renewable energy sources include wind, hydro and biomass, but not nuclear power. [pp. 4-5]
This means that UK legislation separately specifies an outcome (reduced CO2 emissions) and a process, more renewable energy.
The outcome itself is substantial and threatens many Britons’ standard of life and employment prospects if not achieved efficiently:
… consultants Redpoint Energy point out “… meeting these targets will mean a radical change in the way the UK produces and consumes energy over the coming decades.” [p. 4]
Unfortunately, the legislated process is ineffective at reaching its supposed outcome. The result of forcing unreliable renewables on the energy sector is higher costs to consumers as well as more CO2 emissions than are necessary for maintaining the electricity grid.
One outcome of this micro-managed approach is that commercial and public sector energy users are, paradoxically, charged under the Climate Change Levy for their use of electricity generated by nuclear power stations (nuclear plants emit no CO2 after construction). The CCL is designed to encourage greater use of renewable energy sources even though wind-power can result in higher CO2 emissions than efficient gas turbines. [pp. 6-7]
The report concludes:
[Wind-power] is expensive and yet it is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions. If it were not for the renewables targets set by the Renewables Directive, wind-power would not even be entertained as a cost-effective way of generating electricity or cutting emissions. The renewables targets should be renegotiated with the EU. [p. 30]
For more information contact:
Ruth Lea, Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project, 0207 799 6677
Civitas on 0207 799 6677
Notes
i. Ruth Lea is Director of the Manufacturing Renewal Project at Civitas and an economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group.
ii. Electricity Costs: The folly of wind-power is available to download here.
iii. Civitas is an independent social policy think tank. It has no links to any political party and its research programme receives no state funding.
Download original document: “Electricity costs: The folly of wind-power”
Wind energy production: Legal issues and related liability concerns for landowners
Source: McEowen, Roger
the 1800’s, farmers in the United States installed several million windmills across the Midwest and Plains to pump water and (later) generate power for lights and radios. Those windmills fit nicely into the existing landscape and generally did not create problems for others. Today, however, the wind energy industry is using the wind in a different manner by virtue of large- scale aerogenerators that have a tremendous impact on the visual landscape and the rural culture. In some communities, wind energy development has raised issues between neighbors, between private landowners and wind energy development companies, and between local officials and development companies.
Some farmers and other rural landowners have entered into long-term agreements with wind energy companies for the placement and operations of aerogenerators on their property. Generally, those agreements are drafted in favor of the wind energy company and require negotiation and modification of numerous provisions to make them fair from the landowner’s perspective.
In this article we provide an historical background behind the current emphasis on wind-generated electricity, address taxpayer subsidies that support the wind energy industry and detail the legal issues surrounding wind energy production and landowner agreements.
Wind energy production: Legal issues and related liability concerns for landowners
