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Wind Issues in Vermont
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- Divided Communities – Foreign corporations with government subsidies
- Enel (Italy), Iberdrola (Spain), Gaz-‐Metro (Canada), Nordex (Germany)
- Expensive Regulatory Process, Intervenors Consistently Ignored by PSB
- $0 for Towns to participate in the Public Service Board process
- Economics – $$ to “host” town, neighboring towns get $0 or token payments, and negative impacts
- Confidential power costs
- Selling Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) out of state, while getting credit for the SPEED program requirements
- Aviation – Interference with radar and safety issues for airports, gliders, hang gliders
- Aesthetics – Vermont’s landscape and “Unspoiled” “Beautiful” “Mountains”
- Tourism and second home economic impacts have not been evaluated
- Flashing red lights visible beyond 10 miles
- Noise & Health – PSB standard 45 dBA, a level that guarantees complaints
- Infrasound – noise produced by wind turbines, not regulated
- Sleep disturbance, nausea, vertigo, headaches, increased blood pressure
- Setbacks from Property Lines – National norm is 1.1x total height, 1.5x for ice throw. Vestas recommends 1300 foot setbacks.
- 188 feet permitted on Georgia Mountain for 420 foot tall turbines
- 196 feet permitted on Lowell Mountain for 459 foot tall turbines (adjoining property owners sued by wind developers in both cases)
- Shadow Flicker and reflection/glare
- Safety Issues – Blade throw, ice throw, collapse, fire
- Land Access – Posted land around turbines
- Property Values – Lempster NH: dozens of homes for sale around wind project; home sales in Sutton VT chilled
- Clarkson Univ. study – 17% property value decline in 2 of 3 NY counties
- Technology Failures
- Clipper Turbines known to be a flawed design – Sheffield/First Wind
- Gearbox failures regardless of manufacturer at 5-7 years
- Danes acknowledging lifespan is 10-15 years, not 20-25
- Environmental & Natural Resource Impacts
- Bears
- Birds
- Bats
- Wildlife
- Habitat fragmentation
- Connectivity
- High Altitude Forests
- Carbon sequestration
- Headwaters
- Wetlands
- Water Supplies
- Sensitive Soils
- Steep Slopes
- Blasting
- Stormwater Runoff
- Iron Floc, Oil
- Intermittency & Claims about number of homes powered
- Until we have storage, intermittency is an issue
- Electric cars promise storage, not yet affordable
- Claims about # of homes powered based on nameplate, not actual output
- Grid Integration Issues
- Grid constraints – curtailment when electricity not needed or cannot be integrated into the system
- GMP must do $10 million upgrade, cost not factored into PSB review
- Lack of Independent Monitoring for Noise, Wildlife and Water Impacts
- Lack of Transparency
- Inadequacy of Decommissioning Funds & Plans
- Lack of Planning for Statewide & Cumulative Impacts
- Do Wind Turbines in New England Reduce Fossil Fuel Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
- Northern New England wind projects competing with other renewables like biomass and hydro
- Producing electricity when there is no demand. Solar better match to shave peak load.
- Oil, coal and nuclear being displaced by natural gas
- Coal plants run infrequently, primarily when cold and natural gas price is high
- Oil usage for electric generation was .6% in 2011, sometimes needed for reliability
- Coal and nuclear are baseload plants that do not ramp
- Most efficient natural gas plant in the ISO-‐NE system is inefficient when it ramps in response to wind
- NE grid has no flex natural gas generators designed to ramp efficiently
- $2 billion has been spent to built 767 MW of big wind in New England at less than 30% capacity factor or about 200 MW of power with 5% reliability factor and no demonstrated fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emission reduction.
