May 9, 2008
England, Letters

Windfarms: why they are flawed

Many readers will be wondering why there is so much concern about Nuon’s proposed windfarm at Swinford.

How many readers actually know the reality of wind turbines?

There is much hype, and windfarms are presented as a good thing. If only that were true!

Readers may have noticed that there is little comment about whether they work or not. That is because the Government has declared that the planning authority “should not make assumptions about the technical and commercial feasibility of renewable energy projects”.

Any protest that demonstrates (even worse, proves) that they are a waste of resources is disqualified from consideration. How’s that for democracy?

Who says windfarms are useless? The biggest operator of them, in the country that has more installed wind turbine capacity than any other country in the world – that’s who.

That company is E.ON Netz and the country is Germany. It has reported on the performance of its wind turbines – equivalent to 3,500 of the turbines proposed for Swinford: One of E.ON Netz’s most notable conclusions is that wind energy cannot replace conventional power stations to any significant degree.

A Nuon spokesman was reported as saying of the Swinford action group: “I hope they are not going to be quoting a lot of myths about windfarms.”

Perhaps Nuon thinks that the experience of E.ON Netz is just a myth.

Windfarm developers also claim that noise is not an issue. To quote from Nuon’s own document “Operational noise limits are met and no mitigation measures are necessary”.

I have at least 10 scientific reports from learned bodies, showing that either the noise is a problem, or that the standards used to show the opposite are seriously flawed.

All the reports referred to can be viewed via their web pages, addresses of which are on:

www.SSWFAG.org.uk

Keith Kilbane, Chairman – Stop Swinford WindFarm Action Group


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/05/09/windfarms-why-they-are-flawed/