Wind Farms!

[Woodbutcher]

A company is trying to set up a wind farm over here. There is a group of people opposed to the location, saying untold dangers lie in it to people and wildlife. Does anybody have any links to the verifiable bad effects that might be caused by the generators, or are people reacting again to urban legends? No rumours, please, just the facts.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/c ... 562452.htm (Industrial accidents.)

http://www.windaction.org/news/11200 (A bit more woo-ish.)

[ficklefiend]

God I detest the Beeb's policy on not linking to the journal articles they are talking about. Totally ludicrous.

Seems to be a problem for bats. Bat conservation is always a big deal in the UK.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7581990.stm
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abs ... 08)00751-3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/nor ... 445963.stm
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi ... ne.0000297

Other fair complaint is noise. I have never been near enough one to hear it, but I understand they do make some amount of noise. Youtube is abound with people filming the noise of wind turbines, most of them you can only hear the noise of the wind.



It bothers some people if their house is close. But then most of us need to live near roads, even my parents little village in the country (where my photo is taken) you get faint noise from the main road which is miles away and helicopters flying over every half hour or so. Unfortunately background noise happens to most people, I don't see why people near windfarms can really complain.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I camped next a wind farm in California for five days. The winds varied from 5-25 knots during that time. At night you could hear the turbines IF you listened. It rapidly became "white noise" and drowned out the damn crickets.

[Rum]

The NIMBY sindrome (not in my back yard) strikes again! Cumbria probably has the highest concentration of wind turbines in the UK. The are banned inside the national park area but they are all over the rest of the place. I find them rather beautiful and not in the least noisy. In fact we stopped underneath some a year or so ago when we were out and turned off the car engine just to see how noisy they were. No bother at all!

[JimC]

I have been right up close to huge wind turbines in Western Australia, and the noise impact is minimal, IMO...

From what I have read, there is a very occasional bat/bird casualty, but not to the extent where it would be a serious problem...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The "Science" channel recently ran a bit on the "hazards of wind farms", overblown as per that station's editorial policy of course.

[Faithfree]

The NIMBY syndrome is big here in Australia, so there are plenty of people complaining about plans for wind generators in their local areas - usually the same people that are complaining that the government has sold out to the big oil companies and isn't encouraging alternative energy strategies. My own experience of them up fairly close is that they are fairly quiet, and from what I've read they kill about the same number of birds as the bit of highway that goes past them.

[M]

I would be opposed on the basis that I think they are scary.

There are loads where my in-laws live (Cumbria, not lakes) and we told our girls that's where wind comes from.

[Faithfree]

Of course it is best that people don't live right next to them, because in rare incidences they have failed spectacularly. The one below, from Denmark, being the most famous. Wind turbines have a governor which normally limits their rotational speed to tolerable levels irrespective of the wind speed. From what I understand, the governor in this one failed during a wind storm, which was why it was being filmed at the time. Anyone understand Danish?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeoVaqdwZXw&NR=1[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FZtmlH ... re=related[/youtube]

[Rum]

Of course it is best that people don't live right next to them, because in rare incidences they have failed spectacularly. The one below, from Denmark, being the most famous. Wind turbines have a governor which normally limits their rotational speed to tolerable levels irrespective of the wind speed. From what I understand, the governor in this one failed during a wind storm, which was why it was being filmed at the time. Anyone understand Danish?

He is saying 'fuck me, look at this'!..and no I don't understand Danish.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Anyone understand Danish?

Not even the Danes.

[leo-rcc]

He did say that some debris was found over 400m away.

[leo-rcc]

I'm not a huge fan of windmill parks by the way, the amount of space they take in for such a small amount of power is not cost effective.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He did say that some debris was found over 400m away.

I love those kind of statements.

"Some of the debris was (possibly) lethal."

"Some of the debris was found X distance away."

"Therefore, lethal debris was spread X from the original site."

It's all in the spin.