Where I live on the outskirts of Chico, I have an almost constant supply of wind. I’ve considered a wind turbine as a way of getting closer to being “off-grid” so that I don’t have to pay PG&E the exorbitant rates. After reading this ChicoER story, I think I’ll pass on a wind turbine and focus on more solar. – Anthony
From the Chico Enterprise-Record: Disturbing the silence: Wind turbine not sustaining to neighbors’ sleep
By HEATHER HACKING – ChicoER Staff Writer
CHICO — A year and a half ago when Don Steinsiek installed a wind turbine at the top of Stilson Canyon Road, he was excited to harness the wind.He had been interested in the technology for a while, and when tax credits and rebates became available, he went for it.
The wind will vary, but he figured with the incentives, he could pay off his $82,000 investment in six or seven years.
When energy generation is greater than his use, he can sell electricity to the grid for 5 cents a kilowatt. But overall, he said the turbine provides energy for about two-thirds of his energy use.
It sounded like a good plan, and fit with the trend toward renewable energy sources. But neighbors say the wind turbine ruins the quiet nature of the neighborhood, lowers their property values and deprives them of sleep.
At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting there was a lengthy discussion of Steinsiek’s turbine.
The state is passing new rules that will make it easier to install small wind structures, explained Tim Snellings, county development services director. Unless Butte County passes its own rules before Dec. 31, the new state rules will apply, he continued.
Neighbors took the opportunity to talk about the wind turbine.
O.J. Sutherland lives at the bottom of the hill from the turbine. He described the sound as similar to a “hovering helicopter to a whining or moaning sound.”
He told the supervisors some neighbors have changed the rooms in which they sleep, others wear earplugs and some just can’t sleep.”We no longer have a quiet neighborhood. There is only one acceptable relief — to remove it,” Sutherland said.
Farther down the road is Gary Marquis, who said for 20 years he has heard frogs and crickets. “Now I listen to a wind turbine,” he said.
Read the full story here at the ChicoER
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I’ve been to Wild Horse windfarm in Washington State.
It’s located two miles from the nearest residence.
I personally wouldn’t live any closer then that to a wind farm.
Of course all the electricity from the Wild Horse Windfarm is sold to Californian’s as they apparently enjoy paying for transmission losses and excessive rates.
We’ve had a mechanical noise problem from an apartment building’s ventilation extractor fan for years. I’ve been aware of it for a very long time because for some reason my house sits at a focal point for the noise, while many neighbours claimed they could not hear it, or only noticed it if I point it out. The sound disappeared the closer one got to the apartment building (from my house) as the spread of the building’s rooftop prevented soundwaves from travelling downward. Fortunately I was not the only person who lives at a focal point for this sound; a neighbour on another street had also suffered for years (losing sleep at night over this), and we carried on a joint complaint campaign to get the noise taken care of, with unsatisfactory results. The building superintendent eventually just hung up if we called, so my neighbour and I put together petitions and a notice of lawsuit, and he plastered the neighbourhood with information about the source of the irritating high-pitched mechanical sound (sort of like a faulty alternator) and what to do about it. Finally we are enjoying a quiet summer! The point is that just because someone cannot hear a sound at a certain location does not mean that it does not exist or does not constitute a major problem elsewhere. Solar increasingly sounds like the better option, from a noise pollution perspective.
Ever heard propeller driven airplanes? Solar, bring lots of money.
There is a reason no one ever talks about how cheap wind and solar generated electricity is. Solar is great for satellites.
Just in time for summer, the Warmists announce 2010 is the hottest year in the history of the planet.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38263788/
:0
There is another nasty side to windmills/farms:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7437040/Eco-friendly-but-not-to-eagles.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/25/wind-turbine-bats.html
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/06/16/wind-farms-spell-extinction-for-bats-other-wildlife/
I live within a half block of a hospital ER and its heliport. I can sleep through ambulance sirens and hovering helicopters. If the wind turbine manufacturers would just add air-raid sirens to their windmills then people wouldn’t notice the turbine noise.
Wind power will only produce on average about 20% of its nameplate rating.
Wind power is not environmentality friendly. It takes a lot of dirty energy to manufacture and install a wind turbine facility.
If 20% of our electric generation capacity was replaced by wind power, it would reduce our dependency on foreign oil by a paltry 0.292%.
In theory, if 20% of our electric generation capacity was replaced by wind power, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a measly 0.00948%. In practice, like in Denmark, CO2 emissions have actually increased.
Wind power cannot replace fossil fueled generating plants to any degree. Germany predicts that by 2020, 96% of its wind turbines will have to be backed up by new dependable, dispatchable, coal fired power plants. Why pay for one electric generation system when the electric bill payers and taxpayers can pay for two!
The sad truth about most alternative energies like solar and wind is that they are unsustainable. Wind power has an Energy Returned On Energy Invested ratio of 0.29. Solar photovoltaic is 0.48. The manufacture, installation and operation of a wind turbine facility will consume more than 3 times the energy it will ever produce.
Take away the subsidies, grants, production tax credits, and double declining balance accelerated depreciation, and wind turbine facilities would never be built!
Climate craziness in the Chicago suburbs.
“School districts get state’s blessing to build wind farms”
Read more here:
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=391087
So, taxpayers are paying school officials, that are going to run a taxpayer subsidised wind farm.
Time to close the “free” money tap, it is out of control.
Plus all those bird collisions raining down on your roof…
Not to mention the cost of repairs and eventual removal of the tower…
And the neighbors’ complaints and/or laughter at your folly…
In the end, the energy density of wind is too impractical for most applications. But it can work in some places like offshore marine laboratories (http://soot.sr.unh.edu/airmap/IS_north.jpg) where transporting diesel fuel for generators is costly.
Years ago the local elementary school had a grant supported project to put a windmill in the playground. I think they kept a couple of pigs in the enclosure as well, fed with left over lunches from the school kids. It was a teaching thing I think. The turbine bothered the close by neighbors quite a bit but people living more than a few hundred yards away didn’t care much and nothing was done until one day in a tremendous wind storm the thing broke loose and began free wheeling at a frantic rate. All over town you could hear it, even upwind. It was like a jumbo jet flexing its mechanical muscle on the tarmac. I mean it was FANTASTIC!!! It’s been so long now that I can’t remember if it was only a few hours or a few days, but it was a while before the thing flew apart and the racket stopped. It was never repaired or replaced. The pigs were taken away as well. I guess all those thrown out lunches just go into the land fill now.
Excellent review of wind (and most other energy sources) power, especially as compared to nuclear:
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
Tim
From the article,
‘Grant said of the 160 similar turbines his company has installed, there have not been noise complaints.’
That, of course, depends on where those others were installed. Or if Mr Steinsiek got a faulty turbine which err when wind speed picks up.
‘Enterprise-Record staffers visited Stilson Canyon at 3 p.m.’
Like noise from everyday day life isn’t going to drench most high and low frequencies.
lol, maybe they should get an expert in home theater sound proofing to measure exactly where the unwanted noise hits and also wherefrom it bounces off of. :p
Some other reports on noise from industrial wind turbines…
UK noise association which recommends 1 mile as a minimum distance from a wind farm to a dwelling
the National Medical Academy of France, which recommends setbacks of 1.5 kilometres for 2.5 MW turbines to dwellings.
the independent Kamperman and James study (simple guidelines for siting wind turbines to prevent health risks 2008) 2 kilometres to peoples homes….’some residents living as far as 3 kilometres from a windfarm complain of sleep disturbance from the noise)
the independent Styles et al. report (microsiesmic and infrasound monitoring of low frequency noise and vibrations from windfarms 2005)….’There is clear evidence that wind turbines generate low frequency sound (infrasound) and acoustic signals’
The Portuguese study ‘Industrial Wind Turbines, infrasound and Vibro-Aucoustic DIsease 2007’….Which concludes ‘These results irrefutably demonstrate that wind turbines in the proximity of residential areas produce acoustical environments that can lead to the development of VAD in nearby home-dwellers.’
the white paper prepared by the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering University of Massachusetts Amherst ‘Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise’ amended January 2006
Dr Amanda Harry M B Ch B P G Dip E N T february 2007 study of wind turbine health effects
the Frey and Hadden 2007 report ‘Noise Radiation from wind turbines installed near homes: Effects on health
the Nina Pierpoint MD PhD independent report (New York) ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome…..recommendation 2 kilometre setbacks
Solomon Green says: “The mortality rate per turbine has been put at two birds per year.”
Try 14 in six months! – as this UK primary school found out:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929/Primary-school-forced-to-turn-off-wind-turbine-after-bird-deaths.html
The vertical windmill is said to be a quieter, safer design. These designs are supposedly safer for birds as well.
http://www.quietrevolution.co.uk/index.htm
http://windspireenergy.com/windspire/about-the-windspire/
the first looks rather like modern art, but the second one is just plain ugly.
Many windmills are currently being buil in Washington State. At least all the ones I’ve seen so far are in remote areas – wind farms – rather than residential areas.
That reduces the noise – but not the unreliability. Between the two winters, many windmills were added to the BPA system, increasing the capacity from 1695 MW to 2692 MW. This is a 58 % increase — yet the amount of power produced decreased by 29 %. See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/WindEnergy.htm#bpa
Here’a Norwegian documentary – though not in English the pictures say a lot.
http://www.nrk.no/nett-tv/klipp/282395/
The wind turbines in the Vineyards near me are very very quiet, but they never spin!
Infact, there actually there to GENERATE WIND, should the odd frosts come along they spin to protect the grapes – they run in reverse! And yet to the un-informed passer, by the Vineyards appear to be upstanding businessess utilising wind power for the good of the earth.
Still, the turbines are more efficient than the days gone by when they used to assemble 20 helicopters to hover over the grapes and dissipate the frost from forming!
So many people planted vineyards in cool regions here are the governments incessant forecasts of warming, how irronic that for the vineyards to survive they now have to fight frosts each year, that according to the govt and their scientists shouldnt exist!
This is not unique. There was a story in the UK Telegraph a while back about a woman who was told to take her wind turbine and stuff it because of the noise. If your house orientation has a sloped N-S roof, solar is fairly simple these days. If you live where there is a flat roof, it is trivial. There are turnkey Grid-Tie systems available from Outback Power and other folks. Cost of cells is about $2 a watt now. I run one side of my duplex plus my computer and communications from my system.
The town I live in, Lewes DE, has a University of Delaware campus just adjacent to our neighborhood. This year they’ve installed a wind turbine on the campus that they say will provide all of the University’s power needs. So far their hasn’t been any noticeable noise but the thing doesn’t spin very fast and is a monster compared to the one you’re talking about. UDel wind turbine
Turbine model Gamesa G90
Generator power 2 MW
Tower height 256 feet
Tower weight 203 tons
Blade length 144 feet
We, at one point in the early 80s, had the largest and noisiest windmill in the US here in NC on Howard’s Knob in Boone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard's_Knob
Not only was the windmill audible (by vibrating EVERYTHING), it was electically noisy as well, causing communication issues.
It was not missed once it was decomissioned and dimantled in1983….
Oh, and the research says that a turbine won’t affect home prices:
<a href="http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/news/article.aspx?704"<news report
A shi(f)t of wind
He had been interested in the technology for a while, and when tax credits and rebates became available, he went for it.
Does it mean the Gentleman has his eco-folly financed by his neighbors who has to pay their taxes in full?
He should be [snip] for the mere fact, not only for spoiling the serenity of the area…
Regards
A strongly recommended book:
The Wind Farm Scam
by John Etherington.
He writes from a UK perspective – and actually began writing as an ecologist with a strong conservative viewpoint – but is accurate, entertaining, and yet frightening in relating how the wind industry has scammed their data, the amount of power actually produced, the bird deaths that occur, and the acreage required. Best part is the good analysis of the power grid imbalances and turmoil created as wind power grows from a harmless trivial random “variation” to a country-wide, grid-wide debacle costing billions to the “rest of the world” – but paying millions to the politically-connected politicians and wind energy corporations.
He does little about house-sized units – if you are near the grid, in any place where you do not need overhead cables run at 10,000.00 dollars (and many permit meetings!) per mile of new wires, there is no justification economically.
If we pass a hat around can we get enough money together to build one of those puppies next to Al Gore’s mansion?