Resource Documents: Washington (14 items)

RSSWashington

---

Compilation of documents by KROWS

Author:  Kittitas Residents Opposing Windfarm Sprawl

Kittitas Residents Opposing Windfarm Sprawl (KROWS) have collected the following documents on their web site.

Post-Construction Bat and Bird Fatality Study at the Blue Sky Green Field Wind Energy Center, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin

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

Wind Turbine Size Comparisons

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

Author:  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.

Download original document: “Prefiled testimony of David Lipscomb before Washington state EFSEC”, June 2004

---

Real-time wind production — various regions

Author:  National Wind Watch

Mark Richey Woodworking, Newburyport, Massachusetts: hourly, daily, monthly production of a 600-kW turbine since June 2009 (100% daily generation would be 14,400 kWh)

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

Author:  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.]

Download original document: “Very Low Wind Generation Period of Jan-09, and 1-Year Lookback at Frequency of Very Low Wind Gen Periods”

---

« Later Documents • Home • Earlier Documents »

Click here to send in ordinances, contracts, research, testimony, presentations, etc.
Or see Contact page for more anonymous options.