The Scotsman June 11, 2009

Wind farm will never produce power readily available at flick of a switch
Yet again we see the misleading statement that Whitelee wind farm “generates enough electricity to power 180,000 homes” (”O power of Scotland, we’ll see your like again… and again and again, 10 June).

Indeed, it might just about make that total amount of electricity each year, but it will never be reliably available “at the flick of a switch”. Sometimes it will make none, occasionally a lot more and most of the time will wobble up and down on each side of that average amount.

So there we have the problem. Would you continue to visit a shop which was often and unpredictably closed and when open could rarely supply you with a desired commodity in the right amount? Of course not, and the only way such an establishment could avoid bankruptcy would be legislation to keep it open and a constant drip-feed of cash from another source.

That is exactly what the Renewables Obligation and Climate Change Levy exemption do for windpower, resulting in electricity at twice the “supermarket” price for which all consumers pay in a hidden price-hike. No-one can avoid this because of the “obligation” to purchase legally binding on the supply companies.

(DR) JOHN ETHERINGTON

Llanhowell

Solva, Pembrokeshire

The application, all 7.0GB of it, has been lodged at Daventry and the consultation period has almost expired. The determination meeting is likely to be in mid-July or perhaps early August. Almost all the statutory consultees have argued against the proposal or have been neutral about it, and almost all the parish councils have reacted in the same way. The most significant opposition has been from English Heritage, on grounds relating to the highly-valued Cold War Thor Missile site and the setting of numerous scheduled and listed buildings in the area. It turns out that, far from being the ‘least worst’ of the sites under consideration in this area, RAF Harrington is probably the ‘most worst’ of all. Of the ‘popular vote’ letters lodged at Daventry Planning, the vast majority opposed the development. Further details of the application can be found on the Daventry DC website , reference DA/2009/0168.

Chris Heaton-Harris, MEP for the East Midlands, has written to Daventry District Council objecting to the proposed wind farm.  The following is an exract from his website http://www.heatonharris.com

Wind farms and the natural environment

I am currently working with a number of local groups around the East Midlands about proposed wind farms in their area. You can read about my general thoughts on wind energy here and one specific example, in Hanging Houghton, here.

Below is the objection I have placed with Daventry District Council planners to the Harrington Windfarm proposal. If you would like more information about this or would like me to help you object to a local on-shore windfarm proposal, please e-mail me at cheaton@europarl.eu.int

Application DA/2009/0168 for construction of 7 wind turbines known as the Harrington Wind Farm

I wish to object to the above planning application.

Over the last couple of years I have become increasingly concerned that planning authorities are under pressure to pass planning applications for renewable energy schemes. This, in itself, is sensible. However, some schemes currently being placed before planners could, as the academic paper I attach, actually do not good whatsoever for the environment in reducing our carbon emissions and actually do more harm than good if you take into account visual and audible environmental factors.

Indeed, as the attached paper highlights, the potential “mean capacity factor” is extremely low in this part of the Midlands and unless our weather patterns change dramatically, it seems that this figure will never reach the 30% aspirational figure set by British Wind Energy Association.

As Daventry planning authority looks set to have a large number of similar proposals to this one coming forward in the coming months, may I suggest it would be worthwhile ensuring that these proposals, before they are passed, do actually lessen the UK’s carbon footprint and improve the overall environment, rather than the reverse.

In this particular case, I would be surprised if the cultural and historical nature of the site were not of interest to English Heritage. Part of this site was home to the Carpet Baggers and is still a place of pilgrimage for families of the American forces who flew from there. It was also a Thor Missile site during the Cold War and as such is considered of national importance,

I very much doubt that the noise impact assessment study given in this case would stand up to scientific scrutiny. In particular I doubt whether the baseline survey was properly carried out in terms of location(s) where the measurements were taken, the equipment used and its calibration and if any extraneous or distorting events (heavy rainfall for example) are included in the data given.

Thus I would like to make a Regulation 19 (of the Town and Country Planning Act) request in order for that the planning authority and objectors to this decision have access to the information on noise levels and wind-speeds, to allow independent verification of the information provided by the proposer of the scheme.

I also harbour concerns about the following matters:

Landscape & Visual Intrusion: These turbines will be up to 126.5 metres high - they will have a huge impact on the local landscape changing the character forever, and destroying the tranquility and rural nature of the area. There will be significant visual effects to around 6 - 8km from the site.

Loss of amenity: These turbines will be located within 120 metres of a bridleway, which will be significantly affected during construction. It is also used by horses and the British Horse Society recommends a minimum distance of 3 times the overall height to avoid startling a horse. 4 turbines are at a distance less than this, one of which is only 73 metres away.

Impact on wildlife: This area is well known for its local wildlife including a large population of bats, in particular the Noctule and Leisler bats which are considered
nationally uncommon and scarce; the red kite and the golden plover.

Proximity to homes and businesses: The nearest turbine will be around 550 metres from the Museum, 710m from Foxhall Cottages, 830m from Draughton Heath, 600 m from Sunnyvale Farm, and less than 1 km from Draughton properties. whilst there is currently no guidance issued in England, Scottish planning policy guidance states that “development up to 2 km (away from dwellings) is likely to be a prominent feature in an open landscape. Scottish Ministers would support this as a separation distance between turbines and the edge of cities, towns and villages so long as policies recognise that this approach is being adopted solely as a mechanism for steering proposals to broad areas of search and, within this distance, proposals will continue to be judged on a case-by-case basis”.

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News

August 25, 2008

Wind turbines can kill bats without touching them by causing a bends-like condition due to rapidly dropping air pressure, new research suggests.

Scientists aren’t sure why, but bats are attracted to the turbines, which often stand 300 feet (90 meters) high and sport 200-foot (60-meter) blades.

The mammals’ curiosity can result in lethal blows by the rotors, which spin at a rate of about 160 miles (260 kilometres) per hour.

But scientist Erin Baerwald and colleagues report that only about half of the bat corpses they found near Alberta, Canada, turbine bases showed any physical evidence of being hit by a blade.

A surprising 90 percent showed signs of internal haemorrhaging-evidence of a drop in air pressure near the blades that causes fatal damage to the bats’ lungs with a condition called barotrauma.

In humans, the condition is related to the bends and can affect divers and airplane passengers during ascents and descents.

The “Bends”

“As a turbine blade goes around, it creates lift-like an airplane’s wings-and there is a small zone of [dropping] pressure, maybe a meter or so in diameter, on the tips of the blades,” explained Baerwald, a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary, in Alberta.

“Bats fly through this area, and their lungs expand, and the fine capillaries around the edges of the lungs burst.”

The bats’ lungs subsequently fill with fluid, and the animals essentially drown.

“We compare it to divers-they are pretty much dying of the bends,” Baerwald said.

Bats have no natural defence against the unnaturally dramatic pressure changes.

“Bats can actually detect pressure changes, but we’re talking large-scale, relatively slow changes, like the coming of a storm front,” said Baerwald. “This is something entirely different.”

Most bats that fall victim to turbines are migrating species, such as hoary bats, eastern red bats, and silver-haired bats.

There are not enough data to determine how wind turbine fatalities might be affecting populations of these slow-reproducing mammals.

Birds are also killed by blows from wind turbine rotors but their rigid, tubelike lungs can better withstand air pressure changes.

The study appears this week in the journal Current Biology.

Curiosity Killed the Bat

“They are the first to have done a large scale look at this barotrauma,” Bat Conservation International (BCI) biologist Ed Arnett said of the researchers.

“It’s fascinating information,” said Arnett, who is not involved with the study.

“But ultimately it might not matter so much how [the bats] die but what is attracting them to the turbines in the first place.”

Preventing the bat deaths has challenged experts for years.

“We’ve partnered with industry and federal agencies to raise and spend about two million dollars looking for a solution,” said BCI founder and president Merlin Tuttle.

Laurie Jodziewicz, of the American Wind Energy Association in Washington, D.C., said where the turbines are placed may be the key.

“Bats are not being [killed] at all the wind projects all over the country-it is happening in some places and not others,” she said.

“We’re trying to determine before construction what areas might be risky.”

Turbines create drops in pressure drop during normal operations, so the problem could possibly be addressed by changing when the turbines run, according to BCI’s Tuttle.

“A large portion of the kills occur at the lowest wind speeds,” he said, “and at those low speeds [the turbines] are not generating appreciable electricity anyway.”

Bats also are at particular risk during migration periods in late summer and early fall, when many turbine related fatalities occur.

Arnett, Baerwald, and others are currently conducting tests to see if raising the “cut-in” wind speed at which rotors begin to turn will save bats-particularly during peak migration periods.

“It won’t eliminate the problem, but it’s a good step in the right direction,” Tuttle said.

NOTE: About 90 percent of the bats studied suffered from barotrauma. The name of the ailment was restored to this article for clarification purposes after initial publication.

Can anyone hear a cock crow? 

Nuon’s website notes with glee, and we were horrified to hear, that the Brixworth Planning Committee recommended that the Brixworth Parish Council support the Harrington proposal.  Our dismay on hearing the news was the greater when we heard that Nuon had been granted an audience at the Brixworth Planning Committee meeting, when no one from the SNTHWF group was invited.  Furthermore, the planning reasons for opposing a similar development between Brixworth and Hanging Houghton are almost identical on the Harrington site - there are valid objections on matters regarding heritage (in the case of Brixworth the church, and at Harrington the Thor Missile Site); there are valid objections on matters regarding landscape.  We have to wonder, therefore, at the sagacity of Brixworth Planning Committee’s decision and would be interested to know if any of those that gave the reported ‘general assent’ to Nuon’s proposal actually read the Environmental Statement and associated appendices and figures as distinct from just the non-technical summary of the ES and the spin put on it by the Nuon staff whose presentation they heard.

We believe this is yet further reason to ensure that residents who live close to the Harrington site, and others who have an interest in the area, be they walkers, bird watchers, cyclists or horse riders, protect this landscape, the rich heritage, the precious wild life and fight this development by lodging objections with Daventry Planning Department. 

We are pleased to note that the Draughton with Maidwell Parish Council have sent a letter of objection to DDC.  We note that several of the councillors examined the proposal, including the full Environmental Statement, in detail, reporting back to others, and their vote against the proposal was unanimous.

Planning application notices were posted around the site on 9th April.  Members of the public have 21 days from the date of the notices to object.  The current deadline was therefore 30th April 2009, but we understand from the planning office that letters received before the proposal is submitted to the planning committee, and that date is as yet unpublished, will be recorded in the file.  We therefore urge you to make your voice heard - YOU could make a difference!

Financial Post, 08 April, 2009
By Michael J. Trebilcock

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character. On the negative side of the environmental ledger are adverse impacts of industrial wind turbines on birdlife and other forms of wildlife, farm animals, wetlands and viewsheds.

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario’s current rate of about 6¢). Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.” Aase Madsen , the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2008, on a dollar per MWh basis, the U.S. government subsidizes wind at $23.34 - compared to reliable energy sources: natural gas at 25¢; coal at 44¢; hydro at 67¢; and nuclear at $1.59, leading to what some U.S. commentators call “a huge corporate welfare feeding frenzy.” The Wall Street Journal advises that “wind generation is the prime example of what can go wrong when the government decides to pick winners.”

The Economist magazine notes in a recent editorial, “Wasting Money on Climate Change,” that each tonne of emissions avoided due to subsidies to renewable energy such as wind power would cost somewhere between $69 and $137, whereas under a cap-and-trade scheme the price would be less than $15.

Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system creates incentives for consumers and producers on a myriad of margins to reduce energy use and emissions that, as these numbers show, completely overwhelm subsidies to renewables in terms of cost effectiveness.

The Ontario Power Authority advises that wind producers will be paid 13.5¢/kwh (more than twice what consumers are currently paying), even without accounting for the additional costs of interconnection, transmission and back-up generation. As the European experience confirms, this will inevitably lead to a dramatic increase in electricity costs with consequent detrimental effects on business and employment. From this perspective, the government’s promise of 55,000 new jobs is a cruel delusion.

A recent detailed analysis (focusing mainly on Spain) finds that for every job created by state-funded support of renewables, particularly wind energy, 2.2 jobs are lost. Each wind industry job created cost almost $2-million in subsidies. Why will the Ontario experience be different?

In debates over climate change, and in particular subsidies to renewable energy, there are two kinds of green. First there are some environmental greens who view the problem as so urgent that all measures that may have some impact on greenhouse gas emissions, whatever their cost or their impact on the economy and employment, should be undertaken immediately.

Then there are the fiscal greens, who, being cool to carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems that make polluters pay, favour massive public subsidies to themselves for renewable energy projects, whatever their relative impact on greenhouse gas emissions. These two groups are motivated by different kinds of green. The only point of convergence between them is their support for massive subsidies to renewable energy (such as wind turbines).

This unholy alliance of these two kinds of greens (doomsdayers and rent seekers) makes for very effective, if opportunistic, politics (as reflected in the Ontario government’s Green Energy Act), just as it makes for lousy public policy: Politicians attempt to pick winners at our expense in a fast-moving technological landscape, instead of creating a socially efficient set of incentives to which we can all respond.

Financial Post
Michael J. Trebilcock is Professor of Law and Economics, University of Toronto.

Total electricity generation must be equal to total demand second-by-second around the clock and total UK demand varies around the clock, second by second, from middle-of-night base load to peak demand rise when people reach the end of Coronation St and switch electric kettles on almost simultaneously around the nation.
This rapid rise is matched by fossil generating plant, hydro and pumped storage. This is mainly automatic by closed loop monitoring grid frequency (50Hz) which has to be maintained within +/- a small fraction of 1%.Nuclear is not used for frequency control for economic reasons (it shortens the economic life of the fuel, but it can be, and is, used as force majeure). When frequency falls below 50.00Hz, valves open automatically on all fossil plant to increase steam flow to turbine generators, and vice versa. Hydro is also used, but we don’t have much.
Wind generators can only generate what the variable wind provides (within rather tight limits as well. Off design point operation (at lower wind speeds) loses output very fast because wind energy flux varies as (wind speed) cubed. When the wind speed falls or rises, most of the compensation from other generators is fossil-sourced in UK and this standby generation has to be available at all times for grid management. It is set statistically as a strategic fraction of total generation to cover plant failures, and now also, to cover unpredictable wind output. The fossil stations on standby must be ticking over at low load with boilers and turbines primed at high temperature for fast pick-up. At this condition they are operating at very low thermal efficiency with higher atmospheric emissions. As wind generating capacity increases, more fossil stations must operate in this standby mode because the potential fall or rise in wind output to grid increases. Hence, more emissions attributable to wind, which the operators of wind do not pick up the tab for!
Not only that, but we are running out of conventional capacity we can use. The European emissions directive has given fossil plant operators a fixed budget of CO2 (plus other gases), after which they must back fit emission control plant. The operators of such plant then decide that the cost of backfitting is not worth it and shut down their plant for economic reasons. They are using their budget of emissions faster because they are compensating for more and more wind output. This is forcing many of them to review the economics of backfit earlier than they expected. The operators of Cockenzie have already said they will close down as soon as they have used up their emissions ration. This behaviour is accelerating the onset of grid frequency control difficulties. Germany has big problems already.
Grid control experts prescribe a fractional limit of wind as a % of total capacity for sensible grid management, maybe around 40% but expert opinion varies. In the days before electricity privatisation, the CEGB had a statutory duty to maintain grid stability. No single company now has that duty. The new mantra is that market forces will provide (just like it works with banks and pensions).

November 09You can download Newsletters here.  Newsletter 3 describes planning policies and reasons for objecting to the planning application, together with the planning application process.

Newsletter 1:  october-08

Newsletter 2:  december-08

Newsletter 3:  April-09

Newsletter 4:  August 09

Newsletter 5:  November 09

From the Sunday Times - March 29, 2009

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor  

The view from the top could not be clearer: Ed Miliband, the minister for energy and climate change, said last week that opposing the onward march of wind turbines - on which the government is pinning its hopes of meeting its targets on renewable energy - should be as “socially unacceptable” as not wearing a seatbelt or failing to stop at a zebra crossing.

Hmm. Tell that to the people who believe the view over Britain’s last remaining wildernesses is about to be destroyed for ever - and for a very dubious set of returns. Will wind farms turn out to be a truly revolutionary source of energy for the future or an expensive folly?

Whatever the final answer, there’s no doubt about the expense. Over the past decade developers have grown rich on lavish - and, critics would say, misdirected - government subsidies. Wind farming is the new gold rush.

So far, renewable power companies have erected 2,390 wind turbines at 200 onshore sites. Another 4,800 are planned, with many more to follow. The power generated will be carried away by lines of pylons crossing Snowdonia national park and areas of outstanding natural beauty in Anglesey, Kent, Lincolnshire and Somerset. For enthusiasts such as Miliband, this destruction is the price Britain must pay.

Alas, it’s not the only price. A quick calculation shows just how lucrative wind farms can be for the lucky few: take the output of a 3-megawatt (MW) turbine, standing about 550ft high. In a good wind it can generate enough power tomeet the annual needs of about 1,600 households.

The owner of such a machine could expect to sell the 9,200MW hours of power generated in a year for about £331,000 at today’s prices. Not bad, but the real profit lies elsewhere, in the form of little bits of paper known as renewable obligation certificates (Rocs). Under a government scheme, the wind farmer is allowed to “create” one Roc for each megawatt hour of electricity generated - and to charge the consumer for doing so.

Currently each Roc is worth £48, so our 3MW turbine is generating an additional £441,600 each year, simply from the sale of Rocs. Add this all together and that one machine will earn £772,600 a year, or just under £20m over a typical 25-year lifetime - assuming the subsidies continue at the same rate. And it will have cost only around £3m£4m to build.

In Britain while the government has thrown money at renewable energy generators, it seems not to have anticipated the huge additional costs that wind brings with it.

The problem is this: wind does not blow all the time, so if Britain is to keep the lights on when the breeze slackens, wind power needs support from other forms of power. This means that for every wind farm we build, there must be a coal or gas-fired power station waiting in the wings to take over.

Right now Britain has about 76 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity, mostly nuclear, coal and gas. The government has said it wants 30GW of our power to come from wind by 2030, but to achieve that it will also have to build or maintain an extra 30GW of back-up power stations. So by 2030 Britain will have to sustain power stations capable of generating 100GW of electricity to provide the power we now get from 76GW.

Then there are the new European Union regulations, which stipulate that Britain must get 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. To meet this target overall will mean producing some 30% of our electricity from renewables - and wind is the only mature technology able to deliver it.

Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University, believes this is too ambitious. “We could build and install the thousands of turbines and back-up power stations needed, but only at great cost,” he says. “It is bound to fail but no one dares talk about that - or not yet.”

The other thing government does not like to talk about is the cost to consumers. At the moment, subsidising wind turbines adds £12 to the typical annual domestic power bill of £474. This is small now but will surge as more turbines are built.

Will it be worth it? The renewables obligation, by the way, is just one of the charges for dealing with climate change already being added to our energy bills. The average power and gas consumer is already paying an annual extra £31 for carbon permits, under the EU emissions trading scheme, and another £38 for the UK government’s carbon emission reductions programme, which subsidises home energy efficiency programmes.

Many wonder if such mounting charges are politically sustainable. A couple of years ago Ofgem, the energy regulator, warned the government that the renewables obligation system was handing wind farm operators windfall profits that could provoke a consumer backlash - perhaps one as angry as the fuel tax protests of 2000. What price then for Miliband’s bleats about the “social unacceptability” of opposing wind power?

The total power generated by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain, is less than that contributed by a single medium-size conventional power station.

By Christopher Booker

Sunday Telegraph, 14 September 2008

I long had no particular views on wind farms one way or the other. But six years ago, when I first seriously looked at what they actually contribute to our energy needs and our environment, I had a profound shock. It was clear that the craze for wind energy had become one of the greatest self-deceptions of our time.

Far from being “free”, wind is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity yet devised. Without an almost 100 per cent subsidy, unwittingly paid by all of us through our electricity bills, no one would dream of building giant wind turbines in Britain, because their cost is not remotely competitive.

Turbines are hopelessly ineffectual. The amount of electricity they deliver is derisory. The total power generated by all the 2,300 turbines so far built in Britain — covering hundreds of square miles of countryside and sea — averages just over 600 megawatts in a year, less than that contributed by a single medium-size conventional power station.

Most serious of all, however, is the fact that wind energy is hopelessly unreliable, for the simple reason that wind speeds are not only constantly changing but wholly unpredictable. One minute a turbine may be whizzing round, generating at full capacity; the next the wind drops and the turbine is contributing only a fraction of its capacity or nothing at all.

To keep electricity supplies going, the grid must have permanently available alternative conventional power sources equivalent to the maximum capacity of the wind turbines, ready to step in when the wind stops. This in itself is hugely inefficient, adding greatly to costs and, as they have discovered on the Continent, threatening to destabilise the grid or bring it to a halt when wind speeds change dramatically.

The best-kept secret of the wind industry, however, which continues to fool both politicians and the media, is its trick of referring only to the contribution of windmills in terms of their “installed capacity”, as if that is what they will actually deliver. They talk about a “16 megawatt” wind farm “powering x thousand homes” as if that is the contribution it will make to our electricity needs. Yet in reality, thanks to the intermittency of the wind, a turbine will on average produce through the year only a quarter of its capacity.

The success of this deception means that politicians almost invariably exaggerate the potential benefits of wind power by a factor of four. And of course the other great trick is to conceal the fact that all this must be paid for by that huge hidden subsidy.

The real danger of the “great wind scam” is that it takes the eyes of politicians off the real energy crisis fast approaching us, so that we are not building the proper power stations we need to keep our lights on. That is why it will one day be looked back on as having been one of the most incomprehensible blunders of our age.