Cheers Damon.
I am a bit surprised it can cope with that kind of increase, decrease is a different matter, just dims things. Suppose it is only somewhere between 1.5 to 5% of the total.

I can see that the best way forward is to reduce consumption rather than icrease energy souces but if we believe that global warming is actually happening and not mother natured cylce then we have to try and generate green power. I agree turbines are not perfect but I truly believe they are the best form of generation for the UK climate. I am also a great believer however that capacity factors should be taken into account. What is the point of erecting a site with a mid twenties capacity factor? The money would be better off spent on other things.
Yes, turbines do not not provide generation for 100% of the time so what do we do, sit back and do nothing?
One thing that does frustrate me though is that the NIMBY attitude protects areas so the turbines go at a different location. I have great sympathy with people that find them offensive or an eyesore but I think they are majestic and great engineering achievement. I also hope that the ill feeling towards turbines is very much a generation thing (excuse the pun) and will alter in time as the younger genaration get used to seeing them.
Noise can be an issue but turbine technology does not stand still and blade design is constantly evolving to reduce noise and improve power curves.
Locally we have plans to improve the grid to allow the erection of more sites. Local people are oposed to the pylons being erected so what do we do? Move the plans to the next valley possibly?
Think of the future. I have 2 girls of 2 and 5 and at least they can say daddy repaired turbines and did his bit. Attitudes must change and I am sure it will in time (I hope)
Gusty.

Posted By: Joinersite isn't always about optimal performance, but too often about maximising return on investment

That is the way it should be otherwise you will have no one willing to invest in the technology. The optimum sites for the UK are offshore, but the price is too high at the moment, so the developer have to then choose the second, third, fourth best while the industry as a whole develops. There will come an optimum point (or on-shore/off-shore parity) sometime. Then there will be larger scale developments off shore.
The clincher being that the faster we deploy onshore the sooner that point in time is reached, and the real real clincher is that a turbine can be taken down in a week, leaving a great foundation for a rural industry.
Supply and Demand, one of two economic theories that holds true, can't see why we try and buck the market in the UK, we could sit back for 10 years and let others do the hard development work and then reap the financial rewards. We are a banking centre after all.

Do we have a lower cost/MW installed disregarding planning/land purchase? We have with PV being 10 years later into the market.

Obviously just my latent socialism informing my conscience that something essential to life shouldn't be subject to the profit-principle.

I suppose I should really have been a richer man had I just been prepared to take customers for everything I could screw out of them. Working class background showing there.

Steamy, planning conditions usually require the removal of foundations when turbines are de-commissioned. And the developers are even required to provide a third-party bond to fund the removal. (Wonder if that applies to the 3-phase overhead cable to the site as well?)

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: ted</cite>Steamy, planning conditions usually require the removal of foundations when turbines are de-commissioned. </blockquote>

Are wind farms ever de-commissioned? I thought they were allways "repowered" (fancy word for bigger turbines installed).

Ha ha. Damon, care to take a poll on the intellectual standing of bankers? Somewhere up there with lawyers and estate agents?

Anyone care to point out where I got personally abusive?

My question was have we a lower installation cost per megawatt because we are later into the market?. Being the first industrialised country has not done us any favours, unless you consider us diversifying into other area a good thing.

After a certain income level (considered to be $4000pa) people start to be less selfish and more altruistic. Oddly enough most of us on here are very altruistic as we share out knowledge (that division of labour, the other economic theory that works).

On the issue of noise, regardless of the legislation do people think that any 'extra' or 'new' noise is unacceptable and if it is must it affect a percentage of the population before action happens. I hate noise, clatters, bangs, wailing women, crying babies, darking dogs, dot matrix printers (remember them), clattering trucks, lawn mowers, basically all those intermittent noises. But wind noise, which is just about constant here (mean windspeed is 7.5 m/s here) and sometimes very gusty and noisy I can sleep through. Strange that.

http://www.nowap.co.uk/docs/windnoise.pdf

Effects of the wind profile at night on wind turbine sound

Abstract
Since the start of the operation of a 30MW, 17 turbine wind park, residents living 500m and more from the park have reacted strongly to the noise; residents up to 1900m distance expressed annoyance.

To assess actual sound immission, long term measurements (a total of over 400 night hours in 4 months) have been
performed at 400 and 1500m from the park. In the original sound assessment a fixed relation between wind speed at reference height (10 m) and hub height (98 m) had been used. However, measurements show that the wind speed at hub height at night is up to 2.6 times higher than expected, causing a higher rotational speed of the wind turbines and consequentially up to 15 dB higher sound levels, relative to the same reference wind speed in daytime.

Moreover, especially at high rotational speeds the turbines produce a ‘thumping’, impulsive sound, increasing annoyance further. It is concluded that prediction of noise immission at night from (tall) wind turbines is underestimated when measurement data are used (implicitly) assuming a wind profile valid in daytime.

Posted By: CWatters

Posted By: BrianwilsonTrees are noisy in the wind, are we to ban them ?

No we should figure out how to make the trees noisy at night.

It seems that at night falling temperatures somehow cause wind shear to increase. In other words the wind speed at ground level can drop so that the trees near your house fall silent and make the turbine much more audible.

See paper above.

IMO that paper misses most of the actual causes of the problems, which are mostly well known phenomena in festival noise control circuits (I spent 10 years running festivals).

1 - night time in certain conditions you can get an atmospheric temperature inversion, which effectively results in certain bass and sub bass frequencies bouncing off the temperature inversion point and 'landing' upto several miles from the site - less for wind turbines as the initial bass volume is lower, but the sound source is more dispersed so it will impact on a wider area within a narrower boundary.

2 - they use dbA in this paper, all the regs, environmental impact assessments etc. dbA is the noise level adjusted to the equivalent of what the human ear hears, which means that the bass and sub bass components are artificially reduced in the measurements. It's the bass and sub bass components that travel the furthest, and that also travel through walls, windows etc. and can even set off wierd resonances in certain size and constructions of buildings. They should use dbC for all measurements except those actually inside people's houses to give a true picture of the noise problems people are going to experience. If they did this, then the noise calculations for distance are simple to work out, and it would be fairly easy to work out what the minimum acceptable distance should be from the turbines (although the impact of any temperature inversion is more difficult to predict and allow for). Alternatively they could just focus on these frequencies entirely.

3 - The UK regs for wind farms are far too permissive, allowing for higher levels of night time noise at neighbouring houses than for regular outdoor music events (5dbA above background being common) , which is daft as the turbines are a permanent fixture.


I'm a died in the wool supporter of wind, but am pissed off at the short sightedness of those who've put the regs / planning conditions in place, resulting in such a big public backlash against what should be a relatively benign technology if it was installed sensitively.

I missed a few hours sleep once, still grinning about it

Solution is simple if people really want a choice. £130/tonne CO2
Actually that is not enough as it is only 6p/kWh.
The problem is that people are mixing up so many things that it makes a decision just about impossible.
An individual wind farm (or coal fired power station) will make no difference to global CO2 levels.
Alternatives are cheaper.
Scenic views are either natural or man made, never both.
Noise is subjective otherwise people could not live in towns and cities (or agricultural areas for that matter).
Legislation skews the calculations, but that is why it is there as the alternative (carbon tax) is not acceptable either.

There are alternatives, pay to not have a wind farm, nothing to stop that happening in our legal or government system.

Be interesting to have a referendum on wind farm planning against carbon tax, but that would be skewed from the beginning because of the higher number of voters in urbanised areas.

There is another option, that people don't mention much, move, no one offered a guarantee on your property price when you bought it.

Halfway down that Guardian page is a comment from Plataea, I tend to agree with him.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: CWatters</cite><blockquote><cite>Posted By: ted</cite>Steamy, planning conditions usually require the removal of foundations when turbines are de-commissioned. </blockquote>

Are wind farms ever de-commissioned? I thought they were allways "repowered" (fancy word for bigger turbines installed).</blockquote>

Correct. Normally involves less turbines but larger machines,
Gusty.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Brianwilson</cite>Trees are noisy in the wind, are we to ban them ?
Stephen Fry made statement in QI that lungs of bats collapse near turbines due to pressure fall, anyone care to comment?</blockquote>
Was he serious? I have not seen any dead bats on sites. Maybe they inflate again after?
Gusty.