An example of how the wind industry misleads the planners

I found the video posted below on James’ blog and it has been reposted by Geoff Edwards’ blog, “My Wild Camping” as well.

It features a chap who was actually pro-wind – until the day dawned when the wind power station was built and he realised that he had been fed a pack of lies by the developers. He now has to live with a lot of noise and flicker. Flicker is not usually mentioned a lot on posts about wind power stations but it is worth noting.

The developers have helped frame the guidelines used to determine how far turbines should be built from habitation. The current guideline is 10 times the rotor diameter. You will see from the video that this chap is experiencing flicker at twice these distances.

So: Why is he experiencing this dreadful flicker when he lives almost twice the prescribed distance away? It’s down to simple maths that the overly simplistic guidelines simply ignore. There’s a slot of “simples” in there aren’t there? Yes – the wind industry likes that because, as we shall see, it serves their purpose well.

In real life, rather than the abstract world that wind power station developers live in, the world isn’t flat. In fact it suits the power stations’ efficacy not to be so; To be situated on top of a hill increases the mean wind speeds so the turbines have a better chance of spinning at the required rate. So – Let’s put the turbine on a modest hill of 150m above the nearest house:

(CLICKABLE DIAGRAM)

I have chosen, for illustrative purposes only, to select a fairly common turbine; 125m to tip height with a rotor diameter of 80m and a hub height of 85m. Fairly standard,

Just by looking at the very simple maths, above you can see that the house will experience flicker at over twice the wind industry's current planning guidelines.

So – If you have a “windfarm” coming near you, Be Aware of these horribly simplistic guidelines that the Wind industry loves using and which seem to satisfy the planners.