Renewable Energy World has just published a commentary I wrote, urging wind industry professionals to reassess their current one-size-fits-all approach to community noise standards.  You can read it in full, with links to sources and comments from others, on their site.  They’ll be seeding it into their email newsletters during the week, likely triggering a few waves of readership and comments.

Here’s a pdf if you want to download it to read it offline. I’m reproducing it here as well:

Looking for Wind Industry Leadership in Reducing Noise Impacts

By Jim Cummings, Acoustic Ecology Institute

The wind industry is at an important fork in the road regarding community noise standards. After years of successfully using relatively small setbacks in farm and ranch country, recent years have seen a surge of noise complaints, troubling annoyance-level surveys, and widespread fear of new wind development.  Though sound levels of 45-50dB have been taken in stride by many, even most, places where early industrial wind development took place, it’s becoming apparent that for some types of communities, sound levels of even 40dB are triggering high levels of community push-back.  The industry’s first responses to this emerging problem have been counterproductive: discounting the prevalence of complaints, vilifying acousticians seeking to understand the shift, and most fundamentally, insisting to county commissions nationwide that “widely accepted” community noise standards that have worked elsewhere are applicable everywhere.  It’s high time that forward-looking industry insiders take the lead in forging a more flexible, collaborative relationship with communities, acknowledging that the noise tolerance we are used to is not universal: some rural regions are far less amenable to moderate, yet easily audible, turbine noise.  Companies that accept this fact — rather than ignoring or fighting it — will build corporate reputations that could make them the go-to developers across much of rural America.

A few tidbits highlight just how counterproductive the current entrenched “everything is fine” stance has become:

Read the rest of this entry »

The town of Falmouth, Massachusetts continues to grapple with noise complaints from a large number of landowners living within a half mile or so of the two wind turbines erected at the town Wastewater Treatment Facility.  Acting Town Manager Heather Harper, who’s been the town’s point person on seeking solutions since the first turbine began operations just about one year ago, is currently dealing with fallout from the State DEP expressing concerns about the analysis presented by the town’s formal noise study, as well as tensions generated by a challenge to the initial permits granted to erect the turbines.

Harper says that while she anticipated some negative reactions to the turbines, the intensity of the response has surprised her.  When the project was proposed, and throughout the planning process, local support was solid.  “Many of the neighbors did participate in that process,” Harper notes in a recent article in the Falmouth Enterprise.

This is very similar the situation in some other communities when setbacks are in the quarter to third of a mile range, where enthusiastic local support is followed by surprise about the noise impacts once the turbines start turning.   In Falmouth, an unusually large number of residents spoke up about their problems with noise: around fifty people participated in early informal community meetings held by neighbors trying to assess how widespread the issues were, and 18 banded together to hire a lawyer to help them address their concerns with the local planning boards.  (See earlier AEI coverage of Falmouth issues)

The town is exploring options for reducing the sound at times, but doesn’t want to jeopardize the value of the turbines to the town, in generating electricity for municipal buildings.  The neighbors rejected a proposal from the town to shut the turbines down between midnight and 3am in high winds, saying that noise issues were problems outside this time range.  They are suggesting that permanent noise or wind monitoring stations be installed, that could trigger curtailments in conditions when noise is most bothersome (no details were offered in the Enterprise article about what these conditions may be). Christopher Senie, the neighbors’ lawyer, admits that there is no perfect solution, but they want to find a middle ground that minimizes neighbor’s negative experiences while making the turbines beneficial to the town.

Meanwhile, the Cape Cod Commission has approved new wind farm regulations for the region, which includes setbacks of 10x the rotor diameter, which for the Falmouth turbines would have amounted to 2700 feet.  While noise problems can persist beyond this range, most complaints about chronic noise impacts come from residents under a half mile away.  The CCC proposal also includes a so-far fairly vague provision that would allow closer siting if a noise study suggests sound will have “minimal impacts” to nearby residents; the plan is that future technical bulletins will clarify what that means.

This short story from Australia neatly sums up the divide in many communities over wind farm development.

Black Springs resident Kerry Heinrich (above) is happy to have wind turbines in her backyard. At yesterday’s launch of the Waterloo wind farm – 30km from Clare – Ms Heinrich said the 37 wind turbines created only “background noise”.

“I think they are quite stunning,” she said. “They are just part of the landscape now.”

Yet others were far less happy on the first day of operation. Stop Industrial Wind Turbines chairwoman Ally Fricker said the community was “bitterly divided” about the farm.  A small group of protesters concerned about turbine noise and sleep disruption held signs including saying “turbines kill rural communities” and “more research needed.”

It all comes down to how much, if any, background noise someone is ready for, it seems.  Time will tell whether the homes in this particular community are close enough to the turbines to cause ongoing problems, or only occasionally audible noise.

The biannual Wind Turbine Noise conference, sponsored by the Institute for Noise Control Engineering Europe, is being held from April 11-14 in Rome.   This week, conference organizers announced the line up of papers that will be presented, and as always, it looks to be a greatly informative few days.  I can hardly wait until the proceedings CD is prepared, ordered, and arrives on my doorstep!

See Wind Turbine Noise 2011 website

See list of papers to be presented

Just came across a fairly detailed article looking at wind energy in Holland, and more generally, in Europe.  The article focuses on local resistance to a large windfarm being planned on the coast of Holland, but it included this section, citing the European Wind Energy Association on the long project timelines and high rate of local resistance and legal challenges:

“In Holland, there’s hardly any project that doesn’t get delayed,” said Michiel Muller, the wind unit manager of Ecofys, a research and consultancy firm on sustainable energy, who is not connected with the Urk project.

Across Europe, each installation faces a slew of hurdles, starting from the required Environmental Impact Assessment to regulatory approvals by often more than a dozen authorities. It takes an average of 55 months to wade through the bureaucratic tangle before work can begin, the European Wind Energy Association said.

Of some 200 wind energy projects studied in 2007-8 in Europe, 40 percent were ensnared in lawsuits, and 30 percent more faced slowdowns because of local resistance or questioning from nonprofit environmental groups, the association said. It had no figures on how many projects were killed before they got started.

Down East magazine, a Maine institution, has published a series of stories on wind power in Maine, with enough detail to be valuable to people in any rural state who are trying to find the proper balance on wind development.  The series includes in-depth articles on the University of Maine’s leadership in developing floating far-offshore wind farms and on controversy surrounding the potential for many ridgetop wind farms in the relatively wild mountains of western Maine, and an editorial noting the quick and fearful reactions of many communities to just the thought of a new wind farm.

In the article detailing facts about Maine’s current wind power sites and proposals (which reads as generally supportive of wind development), the short section on noise impacts, noting both the moderate noise levels and big impact reported by some neighbors, was followed by a surprisingly blunt recommendation about setbacks: “Half a mile, at minimum. But most agree that a mile is more advisable, as virtually no complaints have been lodged by neighbors this far from a wind turbine.”

The wildlands article makes the case for protecting Maine’s highest ridgetops (over 2700 feet) from development, and focusing on smaller-scale, distributed alternative energy generation, including solar as well as wind, built closer to existing power infrastructure.

The article on the future of floating offshore wind is especially inspiring.  The UMaine team plans to test three 1/3-scale turbines in 2012, with comprehensive environmental monitoring, including subsea impacts, and follow that with a full-scale 3-5MW turbine by 2014, the first “stepping stone” multi-turbine 25MW wind farm 20-50 miles offshore by 2016, and expansion to 500MW or more by 2020.   Here’s an excerpt:

“This is a one thousand-megawatt farm covering an eight-square-mile area,” says Habib Dagher, the man who created this vision and is now leading a team of engineers, environmental scientists, government policymakers, and offshore construction and energy industry leaders called the DeepCwind Consortium who hope to make it, the world’s first floating wind farm, a reality. “In the Gulf of Maine, that’s like an outhouse in the corner of a football field.”

Make that three outhouses. DeepCwind’s goal is to have three such wind farms bobbing twenty to fifty miles off the Maine coast and generating enough energy to power three million homes by 2030. It’s a breathtaking idea, and still it doesn’t fill the frame that has been drawn by Habib Dagher. He envisions Mainers converting to electricity to heat their homes and power their cars (the cost makes no sense now, he concedes, but it will in two decades, given the price increases predicted for fossil fuels) and the state becoming the Silicon Valley of offshore energy. Towers, blades, and other components will be manufactured right here, using technologies and materials pioneered by the University of Maine’s AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center, which he founded and directs.

A group in Maine has petitioned the state Board of Environmental Protection to amend the noise rules in the state Site Location Law to set lower limits for wind farm noise than for other sources of community noise.  The group, the Citizen’s Task Force on Wind Power, is formally asking the state to consider a question that has become central to siting controversies nationwide: is the nature of wind turbine noise different enough from road or factory noise to warrant lower noise limits?  The BEP will hold public hearings to consider the question.

A growing number of acousticians and medical professionals have raised concerns that standard community noise standards are not likely to provide the same level as protection from wind farm noise as they do from other noise sources.  There are several reasons put forward for this, including:

• The prevalence of amplitude modulation.  The pulsing quality to the sound, rising and falling slightly in loudness at about once a second, adds to its noticeability and annoyance (this is often related to the presence of a wind shear, or higher wind speeds at the top of the turbine blade rotation than at the bottom).
• The low-frequency character of turbine noise.  Separate from the controversial question of direct health effects from exposure to moderate levels of infrasound, wind turbine noise is weighted toward lower frequency audible sound as well, which travels farther than higher frequencies, penetrates homes better, and is not fully represented in A-weighted dB measurements.
• The unpredictable 24-hour nature of the sound.  Other common community noise sources quiet down at night, often becoming totally inactive, rather than continuing at the allowed 45dB.
• Large difference of turbine noise and natural ambient at night is disruptive. Night time wind farm noise at current 45dB standard can easily be 15-25dB louder than quiet rural ambient noise level.

Currently, state regulators are relying on the state’s generalized community noise standards in approving wind farms.  According to Cynthia Bertocci, an analyst for the BEP, a public hearing will be held to address the petition to change the regs for wind farms, though a date has not yet been set.  The Citizen’s Task Force proposes nighttime noise limits of 35dB at homes; while turbines would still be audible outside in many cases (night time ambient in rural areas is often 20-25dB, and sometimes even lower), noise inside should be minimal.  This would like require setbacks of close to a mile.

The Wisconsin legislature has moved quickly to enact most of newly elected GOP governor Scott Walker’s job-creation bills during a special session he called after his inauguration, with one glaring exception: Walker’s proposal to increase wind turbine setbacks from 1250 from homes, to 1800 feet from property lines.  As noted in this earlier post, and in a more detailed commentary on the Renewable Energy World website, Walker’s proposal seems to AEI to be a step in the right direction toward forging a new social framework that will actually support the long-term success of the wind industry, by helping avoid long, costly siting debates, lawsuits, and property-value claims. The proposed larger setbacks would come along with provisions allowing closer placement of turbines if the company works out an agreement with nearby neighbors.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, negotiations are underway to perhaps come up with some sort of middle ground between the existing regulations and Walker’s proposal, with leaders of the GOP majority sharing Walker’s concerns that the 1250 standard is insufficient.

UPDATE, 2/11/11: The Wisconsin legislature held a hearing to consider suspending the statewide wind farm regulations adopted by the state PSC last year, scheduled to go into effect shortly.  While the GOP-led legislature did not move forward with Governor Walker’s bill to increase setbacks to 1800 feet from property lines, they are considering revisiting the question.

Today in Toronto, an Ontario Superior Court will begin hearing a challenge to wind farm siting provisions of the province’s new Green Energy Act, which set a minimum distance from wind turbines to homes at 550 meters.

The Ottawa Citizen has a good, detailed article about the legal challenge, which you can read here.

UPDATE: Here’s a new Citizen story on the day’s proceedings.

What could be interesting about this case is that they are directly challenging the claimed comprehensiveness of key previous studies of the health effects of wind farms. These literature reviews, the court challenge claims, were incomplete, and failed to provide necessary medical evidence of the safety of the current setbacks. The litigants hope to submit expert testimony from two doctors whose own studies have led them to recommend much larger safety zones to protect citizens from sleep disruption, stress, and other health-related effects. Perhaps the most important witness Read the rest of this entry »

Note: See a longer article on I wrote Walker’s move, which was published on the Renewable Energy World website

When Scott Walker was inaugurated as Wisconsin’s new Governor earlier this month, he called a special session of the state legislature, dubbed the “Wisconsin in Open for Business” session.  All bills will be focused on improving the state’s business climate, something that is always a GOP priority, and which in these tough economic times, has widespread support.

But his regulatory reform bill has a wild card tucked inside: a new and stricter setback standard for industrial wind farms.  While the proposal is being attacked as a job-killer, it appears to AEI that the Governor has his pulse on one of the key ways that the wind industry might gain easier acceptance in the years to come.

In response to tough local rules that were seen as anti-wind, the Wisconsin legislature called for statewide standards that localities cannot exceed; after a couple years of meetings, the state’s PRC recently adopted a new statewide standard of 1250 feet from homes.  Governor Walker’s bill would increase setbacks statewide to 1800 feet from property lines.

While this would still not protect neighbors from hearing wind turbines, which are often quite audible at a half mile and can be heard to a mile or more in some situations (many suggest setbacks in these larger ranges), it is a substantial increase.  Wind industry spokesmen immediately slammed the change, claiming that it would basically preclude new wind farms in the state and kill jobs.  These critiques ignore a key provision of the Governor’s proposal: neighbors closer than 1800 feet can agree to let turbines go up, presumably in exchange for some compensation from the wind company.

It appears that Governor Walker understands that what will move the wind industry forward is regulations that may help local communities to feel more comfortable about the likely impacts of new wind farms, rather than standards designed primarily to ease the placement of new wind farms.  The combination of larger setbacks, and provisions for neighbors to sign waivers, is the right direction for growing this industry without sacrificing the quality of life of rural communities.

Here are three articles in the local press on the proposal: Simple announcement of the bill, and statement from Governor A fairly balanced article that includes comments from developers and those supporting the measure Longer, also balanced report, with quotes from AWEA, the Governor, and local supporters of the proposal

A few months back, there was a bit of a news and comment flurry when the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm announced plans to pay neighbors $5000 for noise wavers, in order to build turbines closer to homes than Oregon’s unusually strict 36dB noise limit would allow. While the plan was dissed by many as an attempt to buy off neighbors, it seems to me that agreements like this are a valid way of addressing concerns about noise, especially in that they provide local authorities an avenue that may help them justify larger set-backs (or lower decibel limits) to protect residents who don’t want to hear turbines, while allowing developers to arrange exceptions with people who either don’t care about noise or feel that a payment is fair compensation.

But of course, noise waver or easement provisions don’t guarantee that the developer can build turbines closer to every resident.  Caithness Energy is dealing with this in Oregon now, as this unusually frank article details. The entire article is important reading for nearly anyone working on this issue, but here are a few highlights:

Richard and Joanne Goodhead were clear from the start that they were not willing to live with turbine noise of up to 50dB, as the waiver would allow, and told Caithness, the developer, they wanted to be bought out. “(The Caithness representative) said ‘We’re not in the real estate business,’ Goodhead said. ‘I said, fine — I’m not in the windmill business.’” After a month of negotiations, which included offers of $6000 per year for 20 years, and later, the revenue from one turbine, Caithness relented, and bought the Goodhead’s land and home.

Two other homes near the Shepherd’s Flat wind farm, which is still under construction, have been sold; one was bought by an attorney who works for Caithness, acting on behalf of another local landowner who is part of the wind project.

Invenergy’s Willow Creek wind farm, just south of Shepherd’s Flat, has also been struggling with noise issues, finding it difficult at times to meet the 36dB limit.  According to the Goodheads, the local antelope population has noticeably declined since it began operating.

Read more: http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20101227/UPDATE/101227031/Wind-farm-splits-neighbors-who-take-cash-or-leave#ixzz19WgqwrR2

A new but long-simmering front has opened in the push-and-pull struggle between wind companies advocating the status quo and communities uncertain about how to deal with reports they hear from elsewhere that suggest industrial-scale wind farms have unintended consequences, including chronic noise impacts and reduced property values.

This may not be the first time it’s bubbled to the surface, but it’s the first one I’ve noticed: the Hammond, NY Town Council is considering a ordinance that would require wind farm developers to compensate property owners who see drops in their land values because of the presence of wind turbines. The proposal also requires the company to buy out any property owner who objects to living near a turbine. Iberdrola Renewables says these provisions in the rules “would eliminate any possibility” for a planned wind project in town.  Read the rest of this entry »

This is pretty amazing: researchers at CalTech working in biomimicry have completed the first field trials of an array of small vertical axis wind turbines, in which they pack the arrays tightly together, aiming to take advantage of possible boosts in output created by capturing the vortex flow patterns from each other.  The concept is modeled on studies of fish schools, and the realization that the move far more efficiently through the water than do individual fish.  Air pattern modeling and initial field tests suggest that these tightly packed arrays may generate 100watts per square meter, ten times the energy density of today’s industrial wind farms.  This could mean more energy in the same area, or, more likely, the same or somewhat more energy using far less land than today’s wind farms use.  With machines that are quieter and only 30 feet tall!

Energy per unit area of proposed tightly packed small turbines vs. several existing utility-scale windfarms

Each 30-foot turbine generates only around a kilowatt of output, as compared to today’s massive 1500-2500kw industrial turbines; this is the reason that all the many vertical axis designs have been considered only useful for home use, rather than utility-scale generation.  But the fish-inspired layout produced far more power per square meter of land used than today’s wind farms.  The first field test Read the rest of this entry »

A new study of property values in the vicinity of a large wind farm in Illinois provides reinforcement for both sides in the debate.  I first saw mention of the study in an American Wind Energy Association press release that touted its consistency with previous studies that found no significant price impact in homes near wind farms.  After downloading and reading through the report, I find that the results do indeed match previous studies, though in my reading the results are subtler than the overall averages suggest, just as they were with the big DOE-funded study that came out about a year ago.

The new study, entitled “Wind Farm Proximity and Property Values: A Pooled Hedonic Regression Analysis of Property Values in Central Illinois, 2010” used complex multi-factor statistical analysis to compare many factors that affect the sales price of a home (that’s lay-speak for the “pooled hedonic regression analysis with difference-in-differences estimators” that were used).  The bottom line is interesting and potentially reassuring: Read the rest of this entry »

Alec Salt, a Washington University scientist who studies the inner ear, has discovered that outer ear cells may respond to very low frequency infrasound, well below the frequencies that are audible or otherwise consciously perceptible.  Salt suggests that his discovery may help explain why some individuals seem to be more dramatically affected by low frequency wind turbine noise than would be expected.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and other Communicative Disorders, is a literature survey that looks especially at the physiological responses of guinea pigs exposed to infrasound down to 5Hz.  Humans can generally hear sounds as low as 20Hz; sounds below this frequency are called infrasound.  Guinea pigs are often used in lab studies, since their hearing mechanisms are similar to those in humans; in fact, human ears are more sensitive to low frequencies than are guinea pigs.  The crux of his findings center on the ways that hair-like cells in our ears, the Outer Hair Cells (OHCs) and Inner Hair Cells (IHCs), work together to translate sound pressure at various frequencies into the perception of sound in our brain.  For audible frequencies, the OHCs amplify the vibrations they receive from sound waves, triggering hair-like structures on the IECs to ripple and bend; it is this movement of IHCs that create the electrical (neural) impulses that our brain perceives as sound.

The surprise in Salt’s study was that OHCs also react to infrasound.  Rather than, as might be expected, simply not being affected by infrasound, OHCs are “highly sensitive” to it, Read the rest of this entry »

I just came across this fascinating article from the Martha’s Vineyard Times that discusses a recent trip by local residents and planners up to Maine to participate in a Sustainable Island Living conference sponsored by the Island Institute, which catalyzed the construction of the controversial wind farm on Vinalhaven.

The entire article is well worth reading, but I’ll highlight these two thoughtful comments from experienced local planners after they visited the Vinalhaven turbines:

Bill Veno, senior planner for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, talked to some Vinalhaven residents about their concerns, and noted, “Something that strikes me is that the way communities have traditionally looked at noise and have a noise limit with decibels, that tool wasn’t really designed for the type of noise that seems to be involved with wind turbines. Because it’s not really the decibels so much, and it’s not exactly a pure tone situation, and so we’re really trying as a society to figure out where that appropriate level is.”

Veno’s wife Aubyn noted that “When we were at the site, it sounded to me like airplanes flying overhead. But then we stopped at the bus driver’s house, who lived about three-quarters of a mile away, and got out of the bus and listened from there, and it sounded really just like ocean waves do in the distance from our house on the Vineyard.” (Ed. note: this confirms that the turbines are indeed audible, even at three-quarters of a mile; if your rural home does not, in fact, have ocean waves or a constant road noise in the distance, the turbines will be a new sonic presence.)

Nick  Puner, a former Westchester County planning member now living on Martha’s Vineyard, said, “The Vinalhaven turbines dominate the landscape, and they’re awesome. They’re not ugly, but they’re right on top of everything. I definitely think it’s a mixed bag.”  He also felt that the sound was very close to that of the background noise that day, though clearly audible: “I didn’t think it was that dramatic, but on the other hand, I don’t dismiss that somebody could be seriously upset by the constancy of it,” he said. “One person’s music is another person’s noise.”

Two of the “hot button” wind farms of 2010 are headed into the new year with continuing local rancor, despite conciliatory talk from authorities in each town when neighbors began to raise noise issues a year ago.

In Vinalhaven, Maine, where three turbines went online in October 2009, providing power for the local electric co-op, the State Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has agreed with neighbors that the turbines are exceeding state noise limits at times (see this detailed Bangor Daily News article and this recent OpEd by a neighbor)

Fox Islands Windfarm, Vinalhaven (courtesy Bangor Daily News)

The DEP ruled that recordings paid for by local residents suggest the turbines are “likely to exceed” night time noise limits of 45dB when the wind speed is higher at the top of the turbines than the bottom; the recordings found noise levels up to 47dB.  George Baker, CEO of Fox Island Wind, the local LLC formed to build the turbines, notes that FIW’s noise consultant “absolutely doesn’t agree” with the finding, suggesting that ambient noise contributions to the overall sound mean that the turbines themselves are operating at just under the acceptable noise limit.  The DEP gave FIW until January to submit an operational plan that will slow the turbines when wind conditions match those during the recordings.

Baker contends that the conditions are rare, and occur only in summer.  However, many locals have reported Read the rest of this entry »

I was pleased to be able to attend the 8th Wind and Wildlife Research Meeting, which took place in Denver from October 19-21.  Sponsored by the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative, this event brings together folks from agencies, the academic research community, some NGOs, and the wind industry.  The major focus is direct impacts on wildlife, including bat and bird strikes and habitat disruptions (see this recap of the meeting from NWCC, and view or download most presentations and posters here). This year, for the first time, noise had a place at the table, with an oral presentation by one of the lead researcher on the recent breakthrough National Park Service research into animal listening areas (see this AEInews post), and a poster by yours truly, embedded below.

In conversations with participants, there was a lot of interest in the emerging fact that even moderate noise levels can have a dramatic effect on animals nearby.  I stressed the point that while noise may rarely be a primary factor in animal impacts, the increased stress caused by dealing with elevated noise levels can often create synergistic effects that amplify the effects of other known impacts.

My detailed poster introduced what is known about individual variability to noise within animal populations, summarized some impacts of moderate noise on wildlife, explained noise levels around wind farms, and suggested several situations in which noise impacts on a more-sensitive subset of the local population could be a factor in wind farm impact planning (click image to view on SlideShare, or click full screen to view larger):

Two interesting though not quite definitive (see update at bottom) news reports came across my desk in the past couple of weeks, both of which signal a potentially dramatic shift away from developing new land-based wind farms in Europe.  The Energy Minister of the new UK coalition government as well as the CEO of the Danish government-owned energy company both made public statements suggesting that they will be looking away from further development of wind farms on land, in response to increasing public resistance.

In the UK, the Conservative Party reflected the concerns of their largely rural constituency and had expressed far more doubts about large-scale onshore wind farms than had the Labour Party.  While Labour’s Energy secretary Ed Miliband said opposing wind farms is “socially unacceptable”, adding society should view people who blocked planning applications in the same light as drivers who refused to wear a seatbelt, the new Energy Minister Lord Marland said in early August that the “future for this country” in terms of wind energy lies in offshore schemes rather than land-band developments that have sparked anger in Westcountry rural and coastal communities.  While about 70% of the wind farm project approved by the former government are under construction,  Marland stressed that “It is our determination that there should be no dramatic increase in this (wind farms approved by Labour) and that the emphasis should be offshore, where the supply of wind is much more reliable. There are of course constraints in the environment… and fishing and shipping communities need to be listened to, but offshore is the future for this country.”  Perhaps most strikingly, the new coalition government plans to abandon a controversial set of local and regional renewable energy targets, which had been driving much of the new wind farm permitting. For more, see this article.

And in early September, a short online article from Denmark quoted Anders Eldrup, the CEO of Dong Energy, as saying, “It is very difficult to get the public’s acceptance if the turbines are built close to residential buildings, and therefore we are now looking at maritime options.”  According to this article, which appeared on the Copenhagen Post website, it had been Dong and the government’s plan that 500 large turbines be built on land over the coming 10 years, as part of a large-scale national energy plan. This plan has hit a serious stumbling block, though, due to many protests, and the firm has now given up building any more wind farms on land.  I have been unable to find any other references to this shift in the online media (UPDATE, 9/12: see this fairly long article in the Telegraph, repeating the quote in more definitive terms, and highlighting Danish anti-wind sentiment) and likewise no public mention of it on Dong’s website; apparently some in the Danish Parliament were unhappy with the idea, so it remains to be seen whether this reflects the CEO’s opinion or substantial new policy.  In recent months, a rising tide of protests has appeared in Scandinavia, long at the forefront of wind energy development; this article looks at some of the new resistance.
UPDATE 10/27/10: Dong says the original press coverage was “grossly misinterpreted”: This much more detailed article notes that Dong has built no new onshore windfarms in Denmark for 5 years, largely due to the fact that the country already has the highest number of wind turbines per capita in the Europe, so is not now “exiting” online development. The article also downplays the extent of public opposition, and stresses that looking offshore just makes more sense in terms of generating capacity.  Dong continues to install land-based turbines in other Scandinavian countries, and is actively pursuing three repowering projects in Denmark (repowering is an upgrade in which aging smaller turbines already in place are replaced by new, larger models, thus generating more power from existing windfarms).

This month’s Renewable Energy World podcasts focuses on a question that AEI has been focusing on for the past couple of years: When is wind energy noise pollution?  The short online article summarizes a roughly half-hour audio program that centers on three interviews: one with a Texas rancher, one with a couple in Vinalhaven, Maine, and one with yours truly.  Intereviewer and Renewable Energy World editor Stephen Lacey did a very good job framing the issue, stressing that while wind energy has great potential for good, it is clearly industrial development and deserves honest scrutiny in terms of its impacts.  My part of the conversation begins at about 17:30 and lasts for about eight minutes.

Check out the story and podcast here on the Renewable Energy World website.

Gar Lipow over at Grist has a quite detailed post today that looks at the promise of various proposed “Flying Energy Generators:”  tethered kite- or plane-like flying platforms for wind generation, able to tap into orders-of-magnitude more available wind energy than ground-based towers.  The piece addresses questions and concerns that are sure to arise about such a “pie in the sky” idea, and concludes that several designs that have completed a proof of concept phase are ready and enticing targets for truly modest government or venture funding to quarter and full scale commercial prototypes.  Links to companies working on several of the most promising approaches will really whet your appetite for more. Well worth a look!
More Than Pie in the Sky: Flying Energy Generators, Maybe the Next Big Thing

Two pieces of wind farm noise news out of Australia this week, both of which address health concerns.  Residents near the Waubra wind farm in Victoria, which began operating in February 2009, have been affected by the noise, some to the point where they’ve moved away.  A recent report by the federal government health office came to the familiar conclusion that there is no “direct, causal” link between wind farm noise and health effect, but as is common in these reports, little attention was directed toward looking at indirect impacts of sleep disruption or annoyance, and the authors of the report did not meet with any of the people who have experienced changes in their health after wind farms became operational.

In response, a Melbourne Senator has called for further inquiry. Senator Steve Fielding noted that “I think it’s only fair that if a cluster of symptoms arise in a local population at approximately the same time we owe it to the people to take a closer look,” said Senator Steve Fielding. “We all want to live in a clean environment, but we need to make sure it’s not at the cost of the local population who have to live near wind farms. It may be the case that we need to set out guidelines as to how close wind farms can be built to someone’s home, but I wouldn’t want to pre-empt any Senate inquiry.”

Meanwhile, one of the residents who had to move from his house, Noel Dean, commissioned a sound assessment by an independent acoustical engineer, Robert Thorne.  Thorne has submitted his findings to several regulatory agencies in recent months; there has been no significant challenge to his findings from wind farm developers, though he has responded to some specific critiques in his final report, which was just released.  Thorne’s report includes detailed sound measurements taken at the Dean residence; the results largely affirm that infrasound is well below audible levels, while also showing that the turbine sound spectrum (how loud the turbine is at each frequency) is often weighted toward lower-frequency audible and inaudible infrasound frequencies.  He finds a strong pulsing character to the noise, and notes the many meteorological factors that contribute to variability in actual sound levels that are not fully captured by current sound models. The report also contains a section assessing health effects, with good reference to other studies; his conclusion is that “Adverse health effects such as sleep disturbance, anxiety, stress and headaches are, in my view, a health nuisance.” Thorne takes some of the government reports to task for being incomplete assessments, and themselves not peer-reviewed.  The report concludes with a section assessing vibration, which is present, but well below levels considered problematic.  Addendums include a detailed assessment of noise complaints at several wind farms, including the Te Rere Hau wind farm in Palmerston North, New Zealand, where noise issues have occurred at far greater ranges than are observed elsewhere (surprisingly severe impacts are reported at distances of 2100-3100 meters, or almost two miles).

Most of the new wind turbine designs you see floating around the tech blogosphere are oriented toward small backyard turbines, in the tens or hundreds of kW range.  So it was kind of a thrill to see this new design for a 10MW offshore turbine, partly inspired by a spinning sycamore seed:

Aerogenerator X concept

After an 18-month feasibility study funded by a consortium of energy companies and the UK government, new funding and agreements are moving the project forward, with the goal of building a full-scale test version of the design by 2013 or 2014.  The current version is over 900 feet across, but half the height of vertical turbines (which would have the benefit of creating a markedly lower visual profile from shore, and even being “over the horizon” in many more near-shore locations).  The power-generating equipment sits at the bottom, rather than the top as in a tower, greatly reducing both the cost and complications of servicing. The horizontal design reduces pressure on the blades (which rotate just 3 times per minute), thus breaking through a stress barrier that will likely limit traditional turbine designs from moving much past the currently-envisioned 5MW size.  The drawback is that the lower profile will not access higher wind speeds at greater heights.

Here at AEI, we have great hopes for offshore wind, which moves the noise far from people’s homes, while tapping into a very consistent wind resource.  It’s not clear from the current news reports whether this design can be adapted to our ideal long-term scenario of floating turbine platforms (which allow deployment farther offshore in higher winds, and also greatly reduce the amount of loud construction noise, which is the primary impact off offshore wind on ocean acoustic ecology.) New conceptual technologies should always be treated as speculative, but this one does seem to be moving forward at a pretty good clip.  For more info:
Here’s the company press release, which has the most detail
And here are three blog reports on the announcement.

As noted here on AIEnews in May, a single new wind turbine in Falmouth, Massachusetts triggered noise problems for many nearby residents (12 formal complaints were filed, an unusually high number for any community, and residents of up to 45 of the 120 homes within a mile raised concerns in informal local meetings).  The town appears to have responded quickly: this news report from mid-June notes that the turbines had been shut off 39 times in the preceding month, when winds topped 22mph and noise would have been at its worst.  Both the town and a group of neighbors have hired lawyers and sound consultants to help them work through the situation; everyone spent a month discussing the nature of the noise issues as a study was designed to assess the conditions in which noise is the worst.  This recent article from the Falmouth Enterprise (sorry, no direct link found) summarizes the recent noise measurements made by both the town and residents’ sound consultants, and the first survey that recently took place.  Everyone seems to agree that the sound was much worse in its first three months of operation (March-May), when winds were higher, so it’s not altogether clear whether this survey, taken at a time when the air was quite hot and still, will suffice to answer the longer-term questions.
UPDATE: A more recent article, from the Cape Cod Times, appeared on August 1st.

Falmouth is the second small New England town to run into unexpected noise problems after installing wind turbines in an effort to reduce electric bills and contribute to a sustainable energy future in their localities. Residents of Vinalhaven, Maine are also trying to find the balance between wind energy and local quality of life; AEInews has tracked their efforts since last December. It appears that Falmouth is being a bit more pro-active, as evidenced by the quick decision to shut down turbines in high winds.  By contrast, the sound study project proceeded a bit more slowly in Falmouth, which may also be a good thing; in Vinalhaven, there was some confusion and uncertainty as a noise survey commenced suddenly this winter, without much pre-consultation with neighbors of the turbines on the design of the study or the sorts of qualitative descriptors used on the surveys (which some neighbors found did not encompass the sounds they experienced).

This is new territory for every town that grapples with it; both Falmouth and Vinalhaven are at the forefront of constructively dealing with noise issues (especially in contrast most wind projects, where the turbines are owned by large and comparatively impersonal energy companies).  As more towns and energy co-ops consider erecting small wind projects, the lessons learned in Falmouth and Vinalhaven will serve to make the process of dealing with noise issues a bit easier elsewhere.

On July 13, I was honored to be one of three presenters in a webinar sponsored by the New England Wind Energy Education Project (NEWEEP), a DOE-funded project of Wind Powering America.  Complementing the technical and regulatory information presented by Mark Bastasch and Ken Kalinsky, my presentation focused on the “qualitatitive” data that we are receiving from people living near wind farms, which can be as useful as the quantitative data coming from engineers and scientists.  The main point of the presentation was that reports in wind farm communities, as well as our best research indications, suggest that a significant minority of nearby residents—25 to 45%—are quite seriously impacted by noise issues when sound is 40dB or more (roughly within a half mile); I also included a look at interesting research into rural place identity and noise sensitivity, both of which provide some clues as to why many people find wind turbine sounds very annoying, while other neighbors are not much bothered by them.

UPDATE, 8/4: All three presentations, along with the audio of the webinar and a transcript, can now be downloaded at the Wind Powering America website: http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/calendar_past_events.asp Scroll down to “Understanding the Impacts of Wind Turbine Sound.” Mark’s presentation is largely about measuring sound; Ken’s focuses more on regulatory approaches.

A pdf version of the presentation can be downloaded here, or you can view or download the Powerpoint version via Slideshare: