Even so, some wind power plants have produced noise nuisance for some households, and there have been lawsuits, threats of lawsuits, and buy-outs of residences by development companies behind the scenes. And lots of folks do find them ugly.
One result has been that any new development plan attracts committed local and state-wide wind power activists to public hearings and planning board meetings, while ordinary Mainers mildly in favor of wind power are, of course, going to stay home.
Another result has been a proliferation of different lines of argument against wind power development from these activists. Some of these lines of argument are perfectly reasonable, such as worries about noise, or the fact that many folk find them ugly, or worries about sustaining tourism when landscapes are plastered with turbines.
Other arguments are less reasonable and one or two are perfectly spurious. One in particular, that wind turbines don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is the falsest of the spurious arguments. That they are not profitable is also held to be true, when of course development proceeds apace simply because wind turbines are, or can be, very profitable on the right site.
The development companies have their own lines of argument, of course, and their own somewhat spurious memes. But in general, and probably because they can be sued, the development companies show more respect for reason.
Even so, I've developed a new line of voluntary work in my role as a wind power expert that hasn't been bought and paid for by a development company, helping planning boards and selectors sort all this out, winnow the grain from the chaff as it were.
It's interesting to go to planning board meetings as a kind of piggy-in-the-middle, between the two sides. I get interesting emails from both developers and anti-wind activists, as well as from development companies, and of course unless the letters I receive are hateful -- one or two from anti-wind activists have been -- I generally write back with as much useful information and perspective as is available to me. My responses of course change over time, as I find out more information on a given topic. It's interesting to me to record how and why the changes take place.
A gentleman would never publish his private correspondence, right? But this is private correspondence about public matters that Mainers care deeply about, and I for one would like to have the material available to others. At the very least it would save me some work. In any case, it's easy enough to redact names and other identifiers.
Here are two examples, suitably redacted for anonymity. The first is a letter-and-response to an activists, the second to a developer.
The spelling of my last name is, as it always has been, approximate. (Sigh!)
________________________________________________
Hello Dr. Wormsley – My wife recently found (using Google) a study of the actual metered wind power output in the UK compared to the output that was predicted. The study also reports the frequency of times when there was no wind at all, also when there was too much. The analysis was done for the John Muir Trust by Stuart Young Consulting - asksyc@btconnect.com
The title of the study is: “Analysis of UK Wind Generation November 2008 to December 2010.” The document is dated March 2011.
One thing I remember (from scanning the Executive Summary) is that “wind speeds are averaged”. As an amateur, I am beginning to realize the significance of this fact. Electric power, from any source, is generated and consumed instantaneously; and averages can only be useful if sufficient power storage and grid-balancing power is available and used. Apparently pumped storage has not been sufficient in the UK. As far as I know Maine and the NE grid have no pumped storage. Anyhow, maybe this study relates to your work in some way.
Also you might want to contact Dr. XXXXXXXX,(Economics, Univ. of XXXXXXXX) He and his wife are long-time cottage owners in the XXXXXXXX. When Dr. XXXXXXXX spoke at the LURC Bower Mountain/Kossuth hearing Monday night, he noted the lack of cost/benefit analyses of existing Maine industrial wind farms. I think he would be interested in your studies.
At the LURC hearing Monday night at least 75% of the public who spoke were opposed, and most who spoke in favor were local municipal officials and representatives of construction companies.
I think you and Dr. XXXXXXXX will find mutual interest in studies of actual wind power production compared to predictions. The FERC website is the only source of grid-scale wind power production. I am certainly interested in knowing if these things are actually producing power, and how much.
Thank you for all your work.
XXXXXXXX
______________________________________________
Dear Mr. XXXXXXXX
Thanks for the study. Although otherwise they are an excellent environmental group, I tend to think the John Muir Trust an unlikely source of unbiased wind power analysis. NREL has a very good study by Milligan available on the web site for NEWEEP seminars. NREL, a branch of DoE, is staffed by serious scientists and engineers and they are not biased either for or against wind power.
http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/newengland/filter_detail.asp?itemid=2837
In general, yes, wind turbines don't produce power all the time, nor do they ever produce their rated capacity. This is understood by developers and the government. If they ran at rated capacity, they would be able to produce that capacity 8760 hours a year. (365 times 24.) Instead they produce some factor of that capacity, usually between 25 % and 47% (the lower number representing when break even points are generally achieved, the upper number the highest capacity factor so far achieved by the wind industry -- in Denmark, I believe).
As long as the wind power total that is produced at any given time is less than 20% of the total power used in the grid, this poses few problems balancing the grid. As even a very large wind farm comes online, the grid acts more or less as it would if a large demand source were suddenly turned off -- like the end of a football game on TV, for instance. That many so-far unused electrons means the grid senses a slight rise in power availability, as it would if a lot of people all turned their TVs off at once, and resultant less demand for peaking power load, and some power stations, generally the most expensive ones, are turned off. (Fast dispatch peaking load from conventional power stations for grid area balancing may cost up to $1/KWh.) This saves power companies money, which is why they are prepared to pay a premium for wind power up to that 20%.
If you think about it, you'll realize the grid is always handling intermittent demand, and intermittent production works much like intermittent demand. This is the beauty of distributed production, wind and solar both. The important thing is to make sure any given power line is capable of handling both demand and production load on that line.
Ordinarily, grid demand balancing requirements vary by much more than 20%, indeed around 60% diurnally. If wind power exceeds 20%, as it sometimes does in Texas or Spain, first wind forecasting is used to handle the excess, then after some point storage is needed for grid balancing, or turbines are turned off. It isn't a big deal to have turbines turned off. At any given point in the grid day, turbines are turned off -- usually natural gas turbines. All this is taken into account in cost analysis, and it still pays to have turbines as long as they are on decent sites.
Eventually storage is helpful. Pumped storage, storage in electric car batteries, and storage in grid scale battery systems are the leading ideas in storage so far. Another option is to shunt excess capacity to some other purpose than electricity, building heat being the most useful.
The UK, with over 4,000 turbines, is much closer to needing storage than Maine is. Their pumped storage hydro power stations, originally built to handle large amounts of slow dispatch coal power over the diurnal cycle, have been used to store wind load, and they've been useful. (We have such a station at Racoon Mountain in Tennessee, built for the same reason.) Their long term solution is to build more offshore wind, but also build a large undersea cable to deliver the power to mainland Europe, and to switch to electrical home heat from heat pumps. I can't say I blame them considering that natural gas (used for heat) availability there is held hostage to Russian whims, and so energy independence for home heat is crucial.
I think I'd choose wind over the Russians.
So, unfortunately for your point of view, there is as yet no good economic or grid balancing reason not to build turbines in Maine. One might determine this by reading the analysis of experts such as Mr. Milllgan, or one could infer it from the fact that companies that sell power to consumers do want to buy wind power from producers. And ordinary business plan-type cost analysis is done for every wind farm.
It can be argued that natural gas is currently cheaper than wind power, and it is. It's also increasingly abundant since we learned how to extract shale gas. We're very lucky in the States to have this bridging resource, but it won't last forever. And it's not cleaner than wind power, and it still attracts protests, indeed more protests now are held against 'fracking" in Pennsylvania than are held against turbines.
I have a nice PowerPoint slideshow of seven different actual protests: against oil, coal, natural gas, hydropower ( a new dam), nuclear power, wind power, and even solar power (the desert tortoise, an endangered species, is slowing solar development in the southwest). Apparently there are good solid protests available for every form of energy production. Go figure.
It sure is a puzzle.
It can be argued that wind subsidies distort the market and this is true, but coal and oil are also heavily subsidized. But to balance out subsidy is the factor of variance in wind site quality. Maine's anti wind activists ignore or conveniently forget this in their condemnation of subsidies. In effect, if we were to remove subsidies, our Maine wind turbines would be restricted to only the better sites. Maine wind turbines would still be built without subsidy. There would just be less of them.
There will a good economic argument one day, as our turbine capacity approaches that 20%. But if we allow for the fact that we can also export power to Massachusetts, it's even further off than you might think.
There are instead other far more reasonable arguments, mostly the fact that they are ugly on the landscape, produce noise, and a minority don't want them. These kinds of questions can be asked economically, using "contingent evaluation" cost benefit studies that attempt to put a dollar value on the nuisance or the dislike. This may have been what your friend was referring to.
If it could be demonstrated that wind turbines deter tourists, that would also be a good economic argument, and likely to carry more weight since we'd be foolish to give up one paying industry to develop another. (Instead we should then concentrate on offshore wind, over the horizon, because tourists aren't going to keep us warm in the winter if we get another serious energy crisis in this lingering recession.)
If the Maine anti wind movement stuck to these perfectly valid reasons, I tend to think that they'd be more intellectually honest and believable.
I particularly object when it is stated by anti-wind activists that wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is patently not true, and I wish
XXXXXXXXXX would stop saying it. He just makes me cringe every time, like listening to a "birther," or a black helicopter conspiracy theorist. I'm afraid I now think of him as a rather untrustworthy character as a result, when previously I had a good opinion of him as a forest sustainability activist.
Regards,
Mick
And here's the one to and from the developer
____________________________________________
Dear Mick:
First, I seem to recall now that you and I were on a panel together for a virtual seminar a while back – along with Javier Herrero. Nice to see you again.
I appreciate that you are acting in a position to represent the Town's interest from a third party perspective, so I do not intend to try to start an offline dialogue directly with you or to influence your position. I appreciated a good deal of what you had to say last night and am hopeful that the 6 residents appointed to draft an ordinance in the town will listen and do proper research.
There were several concerns I wanted to raise with you in the interest of maintaining an accurate record of the science, and the business side, of the wind business.
We were concerned about your representations regarding shadow flicker. We believe that the concerns about the potential impacts of shadow flicker may have been over stated and led to an impression that the problem is worse than it is. We agree that this is very easily modeled.
We generally agree that a sound level limit is the appropriate way to regulate noise, rather than distance setbacks. Our concern here is that offering lower numbers than DEP regulations casually (37 or 40 dBA) may have very substantial impacts on a potential project prior to any analysis regarding whether existing standards and models are adequate. I do not believe anyone in Town has said that the 45 dBA limit required under DEP regulations is inadequate in this case.
The issue of requesting the wind data to validate sound models. We do not agree with the assertion that our interest in protecting proprietary and expensive data constitutes a "red herring". A person's ability to estimate within 10-20% what the wind characteristics and anticipated NCFs are for this site does not concern us. But those uncertainties are approximately an order of magnitude greater than the margins upon which power sales contracts are won or lost. If every developer in New England knows precisely what our wind resource and plant capacity factors are, that is a substantial competitive advantage in the market. There is nothing nefarious in our desire to protect our interests. Further, understanding the reason why the data was being requested, we offered to supply it confidentially to the Town's consultant, who we would pay for. This is the proper solution in any event since the data is useless to individuals without modeling software. I got the impression you may not have thought this proposal was satisfactory, or that you too exception to proprietary data protection in general. I am asking only that you reconsider this position, particularly in light of an easy solution that allows everyone to get exactly what they want in this case.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best Regards,
XXXXXXXX
________________________________________________
Dear XXXXXXXX, thanks for the note.
The only substantial differences we have are that the wind data should be shared and that sound levels could reasonably be set that are lower than the DEP requirements.
I realize now that my shadow flicker comments were too academic and might be taken out of context. The planning board members have a good grasp of the flicker problem, though, so I shouldn’t worry.
As for data, you need to accept that a public anemometrist will generally feel that all wind data should be shared, in which case, basic market economics would dictate that wind power developers must find something else to compete on.
Additionally, towns can plan better for noise impacts when they have the data.
As for sound levels, I suggest you study the Jackson and Dixmont wind ordinances and take note of what was in the end stipulated and passed the town vote.
Once a wind power subcommittee with as many members hostile to wind power as those in Jackson and Dixmont gets going, behind closed doors and out of range of your ability to influence them, you’ll be fairly happy to end up with a sound level at or close to the upper range of my suggestion, which for the record is either 40 or within the range from 37-43 dBa.
I concede that 37 would make life difficult for developers, but making life easy for developers is not my job. My job is to answer the questions to the best of my ability and knowledge. I was asked to provide a feasible range as a basis for a tighter noise standard if one were needed. What you got was my stock answer.
Absolute noise level regulation makes the most sense and is easiest to measure. I suggest 43 as a start point because it is significantly less than 45, otherwise there’s no point regulating further at all, except were towns to decide to regulate to 45 during the day as well as night. Humans can’t easily distinguish differences of less than 3 dBA, so it makes sense to use steps of 3 dBA.
I think 37 is the minimum feasibly applied. Less than this, and my guess is there would be immense difficulty filtering out turbine from background noise. 34 would be ridiculous.
It follows that if the planners wish to protect residents very forcefully, then they should regulate at or around 37, if they are less concerned, 43 is the only maximum level that makes any sense, given the Site Location of Development law. As a center point, 40 is a nice round number. In either case I would be keen to clarify, I mean 37-43 dBA at the doorstep, not the property line, and I mean 37-43 dBa from the turbine alone, not including background.
This isn’t casual. It’s just simple, process of elimination, common sense, given the site law and the feasibility of measurements, should residents wish to regulate noise at all.
Since noise is the primary substantive complaint from existing Maine wind developments, you must realize that most people who have thought about it at all now think 45 too high at night-time.
You’d probably have an easier time of things if you conceded this whether you can come to believe it or not, psychologically at least, particularly with the planning board members if not the subcommittee. Otherwise it’s easy to seem as if you discount the response from residents who believe themselves affected by 45 dBa at these other sites, and that makes you suspect, since there obviously must be some difficulty, even if we don’t know quite what it is. Call it group think, or mob rule, or herd mentality or what you will, you can’t do a durn thing about it. If the move is to regulate noise, you’d do better to go with it and work for 43 DBA. The planning board seems inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt at this point. The subcommittee does not.
Generally speaking, though, I’m not your problem.
Your problem occurs when this subcommittee copies boilerplate from Jackson or Dixmont or similar restrictive ordinances. My recollection was that one of these (I forget which) disallows any noise more than 5 dBa above ambient, which you and I both know is effectively 25 dBA on a calm summer night.
Mick
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