John Droz, Jr. sends this new item
In October of 2013, a major wind project was targeted for coastal North Carolina. I decided to use this as a test case for AWED’s model wind ordinance.
The results were excellent from the get-go.
For example, with no money and no organization behind this, we were able to:
— setup an informative website,
— get the media to oppose the project,
— get the majority of local citizens to oppose the project,
— get several major local organizations (e.g. Chamber of Commerce) to oppose the project,
— get essentially all our local and state legislators to oppose the project.
— get the two involved communities to draft comprehensive ordinances.
etc.
Note that none of this was easy, as there were numerous substantial obstacles to overcome. For example the Sierra Club conducted a major statewide campaign to support the wind project, and to discredit me and our efforts.
Despite the challenges we persisted.
This coordinated effort was too much for the developer, and last night they officially threw in the towel. (Here is a newspaper article.)… It took just 3± months of a focused campaign to win.
This came about because of two fundamental reasons:
1 – the developer realized that the involved communities would impose quality protections for citizens, businesses, the environment and the military, and
2 – the developer saw that there was very strong community (and thus legislative) support for those protections.
The protections (and the words for them), are spelled out in AWED’s model wind ordinance:
— 1 mile setbacks to property lines,
— 35 dBA turbine sound limits, at property lines, 24/7,
— a simple but powerful Property Value Guarantee,
— community controlled environmental tests,
— proper decommissioning funds and conditions, and
— an escrow account to pay for town expenses, maintained at $50k for the life of the project.
Probably the greatest frustration in my 35± years of environmental/energy work, is that when faced with such intrusions, that almost every community worldwide seems to basically try to reinvent the wheel.
I’m passing this on to you because I hope you can profit from our experiences. This was a community victory, and a superior example of what can be done elsewhere, when citizens work together in a constructive, productive way.
Consider this final thought: NC passed an RPS in 2007 mandating renewable (wind) energy. A half dozen major wind projects have been proposed since then. We have aggressively fought each of these, using AWED methodology — with no money. As of today there is not a single industrial wind turbine in the entire state.
Draw your own conclusions. See MUCH more at WiseEnergy.org.
regards,
John Droz, jr.
Physicist & Environmental Advocate
Morehead City, NC
John Droz, Jr.
Thanks so much for your story and inspiration.
Here in southern Alberta, turbines have defaced our once beautiful prairie, foothills and mountain vistas. But people seem to be slowly waking up.
Thanks.
Clive
Congratulations and thank you for the “recipe”
Willem Post, PE digs into the details at:
A More Realistic Cost of Wind Energy November 29, 2013
The Energy Information Agency (EIA.gov) provides comparative levelized costs of electricity.
e.g., Levelized costs electricity generation.
Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Utility Scale Electricity Generating Plants April 2013
Table on p 6
Happy hunting
Michael Finn says:
My general observation about wind power is that it does carry with it local environmental impacts which are not greater than other energy production ventures, overall.
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Where did you “observe” that? Do you compare the local environmental impact of a 2400 MW nuclear plant to 6,000(SIX THOUSAND) 1.5 MW turbines having an average annual output of 25%. Oh, and let’s not forget we still need the nuclear plant as a backup.
How about comparing the local environmental impact of a shoebox 1000 MW natural gas turbine to 2,500 1.5 MW wind turbines???
Do you think any locals would notice the difference??
Sounds good, but insufficient. Energy in noise spectrum of industrial wind turbines increases towards low frequencies at a rate of 12 dB/octave, the lower cutoff being well below 1Hz. That means it is neither measured by standard noise control equipment nor is it regulated. However, this high energy / low frequency component, although inaudible, has a well understood detrimental effect on the human auditory and vestibular system with diverse consequences to general health and comfort.
Low frequency infrasound penetrates / circumvents any conceivable sound barrier or enclosure freely, so once it is emitted, there is no protection against it, only distance. But these low frequencies are not attenuated in air and can’t travel much vertically, so exposure only decreases slowly with distance, a 1 mile wide protective zone being absolutely insufficient.
You were successful in this particular case, but a general solution is urgently needed. It involves proper statutory limits to industrial infrasound pollution along with standard equipment for authorities to enforce it. That is, no A-weighted filters on noise control equipment and microbarometers to measure frequencies below regular microphone cutoff.
Low frequency noise level should be sufficiently attenuated at homes, workplaces, malls, roads, schools, churches, everywhere people are supposed to spend extended periods ever. I would prefer to include domestic and perhaps wild mammals as well, they have the same cochlea (inner ear) we have.
– Wind Turbines can be Hazardous to Human Health
– Responses of the Ear to Infrasound and Wind Turbines
– Why A-weighted Wind Turbine Sound Measurements are Misleading?
– Wind Turbine Syndrome
It is beyond shame Sierra Club utterly ignores an obvious case of environmental damage, even promotes it with all devices at its disposal.
An Environmental Advocate defeats the installation of a wind farm. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.
@Berényi Péter – Well said. I flinch every time I see someone talking about dB(A) levels for these things: the dB(A) curve is 50 decibels down on the midrange at 20 Hz, and falls by over 12dB per octave (18 dB/8ve, IIRC) as the frequency gets lower. By the time you reach the single-figure frequencies of a wind turbine, the figures will be essentially meaningless. (Which is, perhaps, why dB(A) figures are popular with wind enthusiasts.) dB(A) was intended to be used for measuring midband frequencies typical of industrial machinery in factories, and should not be used for subsonics at all.
The dB(C) curve (about 12 dB down at 10 Hz) is better, but ideally wind turbines should be measured with either a dB(Z) meter (with a flat frequency response) or – ideally – with a new curve giving proper emphasis to subsonics and reduced readings at higher frequencies.
And – Good work, John Jr. You bring hope to the heart.
Oh, WordPress, with your lack of a Preview …
Hmm, somebody please explain: are we against wind power on principle, or just poorly-located wind power?
Clive: I remember growing up in rural Alberta where there were windmills everywhere, mostly slowly pumping water up from the wells for the cattle.
✔ The Sierra Club believes in renewable energy.
✔ The Sierra Club believes in tackling global warming.
✔ The Sierra Club used to believe in receiving fossil fuel funding.
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the dbA is decibel acceptible which is a weighted and subjective scale. A dbA value of 35 is appropriate to background interference in a classroom.
I agree with you about the “become a derelict eyesore” possibility for windfarms. To generate the full potential for wind energy in my portion of the far western Great Plains would require something like 30,000 wind turbines in just one county. We have a couple of hundred turbines visible at present and the average person has no capacity to extrapolate to 30,000 and imagine what the view of the Rockies would be like. Then imagine what to do with tens of thousands of fatigued-out blades every decade.
Michael Finn says:
February 1, 2014 at 8:08 am
After weighing the positives against the negatives, was this project a good idea overall, or was your effort just another NIMBY success story.
My objection to wind energy is that it is not economically viable unless subsidized by taxpayers. I don’t appreciate paying for it through either taxes or higher utility rates.
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You answered your own question.
Michael D says:
February 1, 2014 at 10:41 am
Hmm, somebody please explain: are we against wind power on principle, or just poorly-located wind power?
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I think most wind power is great.
Except where mandated by the goverement or paid for by tax dollars.
Matthew W: The US Interstate Highway system was paid for by tax dollars, but has paid for itself through indirect benefits. So I have some openness to tax-funded infrastructure.
If someone could manage to get the NC legislature sufficiently “prepared” with booze, hookers and cocaine to amend the mandate and qualify thorium breeder reactors as “renewable”, some good might yet come of it.
Lobbying done right. LOL.
Does the Audoban Society have a position on these bird killers? Anybody know? I couldn’t find anything on their site. Well,probably not. For the usual reasons. But you can’t be certain as the damage windmill generators do to birds is well documented.
Michael D says:
February 1, 2014 at 10:41 am
Hmm, somebody please explain: are we against wind power on principle, or just poorly-located wind power?
As long as it lowers my taxes and electrical costs and makes the grid more reliable I’m all for it.
Steve from Rockwood says:
February 1, 2014 at 10:31 am
An Environmental Advocate defeats the installation of a wind farm. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.
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It’s all in the math. What do you want your county to have? 1 nuclear plant (good for six counties where I live) or 6,000 wind turbines which will become rusted hulks in 20 years? 1 nat gas plant or 2,000 turbines? Of course there are adjunctive issues, like indetermincy, back-up, the seasonal and daily production curves of [wind] turbines, the issue of where does the construction material of a [wind] turbine come from, and many, many other weaknesses that wind has for large scale power production. There was a study done a couple of years ago by Robert Bradley(and I confirmed that short tons of coal mined = kwhrs) where at the time all of the energy produced by all the US [wind] turbines was equal to the energy produced by the Cardinal coal mine i think it was. One single mine = all US [wind] turbines. Compare the environmental destruction. “These people” have most of us hoodwinked where any analysis of this situation is forbidden. It’s Green! It’s Great! Let’s Do it! Why not ask, is that all there is to it? REAL environmental advocates like John Droz are not afraid to ask these questions and give you the answers. Compare what he says to the almost complete lack of real information you receive from the mainstream so-called environmentalists. They will tell you NOTHING.
Well done Mr. Droz!
My reply to Michael D says:
February 1, 2014 at 10:41 am
Hmm, somebody please explain: are we against wind power on principle, or just poorly-located wind power?
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1. Poorly sited wind was done for multiple reasons. Prior to electricity de-regulation (in the Northeast US), any power plant had to produce X amount of power and if it couldn’t, fines were imposed by NEPOOL (New England Power Pool, now known as ISO-NE).
2. The existing wind plants are also in a corridor that has and will be used for purposes such as Transmission and pipeline R.O.W.s. The entities doing this are former Enron employees who may have violated RICO statutes (among other items).
3. Grid reliability has been an issue when implementing intermittent generation and has caused electricity prices to nearly double in the NE region and triple in Europe.
4. Plant reliability has been terrible with numerous gear box, blade, fire and other failures. The reliability and output are way over stated.
5. Billions of taxpayer dollars have literally been pissed away by the cronyism involved. This includes former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers ownership stake in First Wind/IVPV/UPC et.al.. This also includes TS Tim Geithner’s multiple meetings with the above and fast tracking stimulus moneys to them.
6. The money laundering (and related issues) is another very long story.
I could continue writing a post here as long as the Bible itself (no kidding), but for now I leave you with the above.
john from DB
This sort of reminds me of the fact that Nuclear plants often have to maintain a background radiation level that is lower than many natural levels found in nature.
Back when I was a Naval Nuke in Idaho we would get our plant alarms tripped by some of the commercial folks out in the desert. We then had to do a full site survey to prove it wasn’t us.
There is a plan afoot to integrate all this unreliable power into the grid and as a bonus open the grid up to hackers.
Stop The Smart Grid
Berényi Péter said on February 1, 2014 at 9:29 am:
” — 35 dBA turbine sound limits, at property lines, 24/7
Sounds good, but insufficient. Energy in noise spectrum of industrial wind turbines increases towards low frequencies at a rate of 12 dB/octave, the lower cutoff being well below 1Hz.”
The truth is not as bad as Berényi Péter says. For one thing, natural noise sources don’t have slopes of multiples of 6 dB/octave, but odd multiples of 3 dB/octave. White noise has a slope of 3 dB/octave, towards higher frequencies. Natural slope alterations from this are by multiples of 6 dB/octave, so an accentuation towards low frequencies by one order of of sloping would make this 3 dB/octave towards low frequencies. This is known as brown or Brownian noise.
As for the noise of air turbulence, in a range of frequencies where the size of the turbulent eddies and an associated object are both well below half a wavelength, the frequency spectrum is sloped towards higher frequencies even in comparison to white noise. I have heard this in many different situations. Only, I don’t know whether the difference is one slope (making the total slope 9 dB/octave towards higher frequencies) or two slopes (making the total slope 15 dB/octave towards higher frequencies). However, this would be the situation with the noise spectrum generated by a wind turbine around and below 1 Hz.
As for higher frequencies, such as above some lower or middle audio frequency, I can believe the spectrum slope would be 12 dB/octave more towards lower frequencies than white noise is, making the total slope 9 dB/octave towards lower frequencies. This would happen at frequencies so high that the turbulent eddies are mainly larger than half a wavelength.
And so do we all, but infrastructure spending ought to lower transaction costs and increase mobility. In addition it ought to return benefits in excess of what the tax dollars left in private hands might accomplish. In doing so, the infrastructure could be purchased not just with tax dollars, but with bonds serviced with user fees. Can you demonstrate that wind energy accomplishes any of this?
Followup on one of the links provided by Berényi Péter: The one that mentions Van den Berg 2006. That’s no slope of 12 dB/octave towards low frequencies. It’s mostly around 10 dB/decade towards low frequencies, which is 3 dB/octave.
Also, I am going to look into the methodology mentioned in that study, since the reported slope does not change by 12 dB/octave when going from frequencies where the turbulent eddies and associated objects are much larger than a half wavelength, to where they are much smaller than a half wavelength.