A Failed Promise
3 October 2009 | by John Third
Wind power has far more problems than solutions
Wind power is the darling of the greens with the seductive promise of unconstrained, perpetually renewable energy. This rhetoric does not withstand detailed and rational scrutiny.
Solid research demonstrates a different and quite contrary picture. It demonstrates a quite different experience locally and internationally to the romantic image of wind as the power generation panacea.
The last few years has seen the consent applications for some 1000MW of wind power in New Zealand. Local communities have pitched themselves against well funded and highly organised wind power developers.
This article outlines suppressed and little known issues and examines the environmental aspects, economics and effects on the electricity system. It weighs the claimed benefits against the actual environmental effects of installing large scale industrial wind turbines in close proximity to communities.
Wind generation will drive the need for even more capital investment to build gas or diesel generation to cover its unreliability.
It will likely more than double the price all industries and consumers have to pay for their electricity, reducing New Zealand’s competitiveness and wealth.
The claimed benefits from emissions will prove illusory. The wind power investment committed and planned in Wellington alone of close to $1 billion is a massive cost for little more than icons to the green dream.
Communities are being exposed to noise torture and potentially very serious health effects without compensation or any real means to avoid, mitigate or remedy the problems.
Visual pollution
Wind turbines stand out in the landscape as they need to catch the maximum wind. Typically, a modern wind turbine is 110-120 meters tall with blades up to 90 to 100 metres in diameter. This is twice the height of the Auckland Harbor Bridge with the blades sweeping an area larger than the playing field of the Westpac stadium.
Proponents describe these as ‘architectural and sculptural’ whilst those living close to them describe them as ugly, imposing and dominating their views.
No one can own a view, but the amenity values of residents are seriously compromised by the proximity of these 40-storey high structures.
The dynamic effect of rotating blades across the horizon potentially causes shadow flicker and sunstrike, depending on the alignment with homes. The only people who like the turbines close to their homes are those being paid to allow them on their land.
The Resource Management Act (RMA) requires that impacts including visual impacts are avoided, remedied or mitigated.
Avoiding the effects is impossible and little can be done to mitigate their effects when huge turbines are prominently positioned on ridge tops directly above homes.
Builders of wind farms have made minimal efforts to remedy the effects apart from minor contribution to community funds largely controlled by the wind turbine operators.
The effects of the industrial turbines are not contained within the property on which the complex is built but spills over into neighbouring properties up to 10 km away, significantly decreasing the visual amenity of nearby residents without remedy or mitigation.
Noise pollution
Noise is one of the major areas dispute. The proponents claim the turbines are quiet and meet national standards. They say you won’t hear them and that you’ll be able to maintain a normal conversation directly underneath them. If you do hear them, it will sound like the gentle lapping of waves on a beach.
Real-life experience tells of noise like a jet overhead, that never goes away or of a concrete mixer in the sky that wakes people up and prevents them getting back to sleep.
Mr. Murray Martin of Akoutere near Palmerston North wrote of his experience with the Manawatu Gorge wind farm, some 3.5 km from his home on the normally upwind side of that installation.
“We lived in hope that adverse noise impacts would not arise and that we could all live in peace and harmony with the wind farm. I now find that in a Southeasterly wind, when it is calm or relatively calm at my home, I am woken by noise from the turbines which is similar to a jet plane that never lands. This noise is very annoying and it prevents me from sleeping – even when the windows are closed. There have even been occasions when we have had to move to another room in the house to try and get some sleep. We all know what it is like to try and function properly without sleep! To me this is simply unacceptable.”
Around the world there is a growing body of evidence of horrendous problems with turbine noise.
Gail Mair lives with her Italian husband in Tuscany in Italy. They bought their dream home and looked to retire there. On the night of their housewarming party a wind farm was commissioned next door.
She maintained a meticulous diary of their experience. It makes repeated references to feeling nauseous, anxious, nervous, depressed and weeping. Symptoms which disappeared when she moved away and returned as she came back.
Wind turbine developers play on the asymmetric level of knowledge between themselves and the communities they are seeking to establish in. The cornerstone of their approach is the so called wind turbine noise standard.
The national standard for wind turbine noise is more than ten years old and, while it is currently being reviewed, the current draft retains much of the framework of its predecessor.
Opponents of wind farms claim the standard was primarily developed by acousticians working for the wind industry and that it fails to protect residents from serious sleep deprivation reulsting from wind farm noise.
The contemporary turbines being installed now were not in existence at the time the standard was developed.
The New Zealand noise standard sets maximum levels for noise outside properties.
It assumes significant reduction of that noise by building structures to ensure bedrooms meet World Health Organization standards for noise for an uninterrupted sleep at night.
However this is based on European building construction standards and materials whose greater density and smaller windows offer much greater sound-protection than those in New Zealand.
The throbbing noise from wind turbines is many times more annoying than other noises of similar loudness.
The special characteristics of the swish and beat of blades and the vortices of wind they create give a continuous and inescapable noise described as ‘unavoidable and intensely annoying’.
The turbine noise frequency range ranges from a very low- up to a high-frequency noise.
The low frequency ‘infra sound’ is one of the most important contributors to nuisance noise. This low beat propagates long distances and easily penetrates building structures.
It resonates within structures effectively turning rooms into boom boxes.
Infra sound is inaudible to the human ear but is frequently sensed more than heard, being perceived as a pulsing in the chest or skull.
Effects on public health
Wind turbine neighbours are frequently disturbed and awakened by noise and find real difficulty in getting back to sleep.
Dr. Christopher Hanning is a prominent UK sleep physiologist. He has no doubt that wind turbine noise emissions cause sleep disturbance and ill health.
He argues that the pulsating nature of the wind turbine noise interrupts sleep to a much greater extent than is acknowledged by industry studies.
Noise from wind turbines is much worse at night than during the day, in contrast to almost every other noise source.
Current medical studies by Dr. Amanda Harry, Dr. Nina Pierpont and Dr. Alves Pierra point to a consistent set of serious health problems found among neighbors of industrial wind turbine installations. Dr Piedpont labeled these concurrent symptoms ‘wind turbine syndrome’.
The wind turbine industry has made extensive use of studies by Hayes McKenzie, a UK based acoustician firm who undertook a UK study of wind turbine noise.
However Hayes McKenzie are noise engineers and have no medical or physiological expertise.
They also have a long term relationship with the wind turbine industry. Meridian Energy uses Malcolm Hayes as the acoustic consultant in its New Zealand wind farm proposals.
Effects on Flora and Fauna
Flora and fauna are significantly affected by construction. The excavation of substantial foundations, building of roads and earthworks in the order of a million cubic meters for a modest development have a high risk of substantial contamination of waterways and the marine environment. Once erected, the rotating blades cause bird strike. At 50-60 rpm the blade tips are moving at 180-200kph.
There are reports in UK of substantial bat deaths from having their lungs collapsed by the pressure waves coming off the turbines. Not surprisingly, wild life appears to be abandoning areas around wind turbines with residents noting moles, rabbits and other wildlife disappearing once turbines began operating.
Connecting to the National Grid
The electricity transmission network in New Zealand is a relic of a previous era. Wind generation becomes a major problem as no one can predict when and how much it will generate.
It poses serious management issues for the system operator who must contract with other stations to have generation in reserve to fill in when wind suddenly drops out.
There are very few stations that can be instantly called and respond in a matter of minutes and requires large gas turbines to be running on idle to follow the fluctuating wind production.
Reliability and timing issues
New Zealand wind resources are very good by international standards. However 68% of the time they do not generate to full power. Periods of high wind broadly correlate with the periods of rain in our spring and autumn. So wind power rather than complementing the hydro system exacerbates the problems it has in our total system. Electricity demand is highest in winter nights which are characterized by calm, frosty conditions. Less than 4% of the installed wind capacity was available at these times. Wind is strongest in the spring and autumn periods when water is overflowing the hydro dams and forcing the spilling of water.
Human and Property rights
Common law accords property owners the “quiet undisturbed possession and enjoyment of their property”. The RMA allows development anywhere, so long as the effects of it are avoided, remedied or mitigated.
The law of Tort states that if someone brings or allows something unnatural onto their property and it escapes and causes damage, then the landowner is strictly liable for the damages that ensue.
RMA commissioners and environment courts have adopted view that wind turbine installations are “in the public good” and therefore on balance local communities should “put up with local affects in the interest of the National good. Already the breach of private rights to property and the escape of potentially dangerous noise radiation from properties are laying the foundation for group legal action against the promoters and consenters of these installations.
Economics of wind power
Wind power is expensive wherever it occurs in the world and exists in commercial scale only where it is subsidised or protected by legislation.
Typically wind costs 3 million dollars per MW to install.
The Meridian West Wind project in Wellington has a reported cost of $420 million for 142 MW of installed capacity.
The cost of electricity produced from wind is of the order of 11.6 cents per KWhr.
The average price received for wind power is just 6.6 cents per KWhr.
Therefore the Board of Meridian approved the expenditure of nearly half a billion dollars of tax payers money on a project that would produce electricity at twice the price it could sell it and further destroying the competitive position of much of New Zealand’s processing industries.
Effect on overall emissions
Proponents argue that wind power will reduce New Zealand’s carbon footprint and enhance the environment.
Certainly wind generated electricity will have no further emissions after the project is completed.
However, Aucklands factories cannot be allowed to suffer blackouts every time the wind falters. This unreliability of supply absolutely requires the construction of backup energy sources, such as gas or diesel turbines.
Such turbines would have to be kept running continuously at idle, ready to be ramped up or down in response to varying wind-energy generation. Operating backup energy sources like this is very inefficient, as well as continuously producing greenhouse gases.
Wind power then, while superficially appealing as a useful weapon in the fight to protect our environment, closer examination shows wind power generation to
suffer from a host of serious problems - problems that many people
prefer not to acknowledge, let alone start to address.