Green Building Forum - Wind farm noise in court

Wind farm noise in court

SteamyTea — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 07:37:18 +0100

This Buggenham
http://www.power-technology.com/projects/nuonmagnum-igcc/

"In April 2011, Nuon decided to postpone phase II of the project due to a rise in raw material prices and pending negotiations with the environmentalists."

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:52:13 +0100

I know, think that through and ask why? Helps to read the paragraph above it and then consider the fuel-source arguments against biomass in the light of the following paragraphs.

I'm considering it in the light of our own plentiful supplies of coal and the potential for CCS if only the boffins were allowed to get on with developing that particular technology.

But this thread is being shifted off noise when Paul's 'concerns' ought really to have been expressed in the "No new nuclear" or "Fuel for the 21st century" threads.

Wind farm noise in court

SteamyTea — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:55:00 +0100

Posted By: Joiner"Fuel for the 21st century" threads.

Been a bit quiet that one for a week or so

Wind farm noise in court

DamonHD — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:38:35 +0100

Needs a good jerrycan or two added...

Rgds

Damon

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:40:22 +0100

'Jerrycan' - doesn't that hold 440ml of German beer?

Wind farm noise in court

Paul_B — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:34:40 +0100

Joiner,

Please do not pressume to know my views and opinions. For what it's worth I am more than happy with nuclear and ultimately it will provide us all our energy needs whether it is by fission or more likely fusion, just not today or in the next decade. I lived as a child in south Oxfordshire and my father worked at Rutherford, next to Harwell, so I am very comfortable with nuclear physics. Also living in south Oxfordshire, an area close or within an AONB, meant you were never far away from a view of Didcot coal power station (when it was being planned models showed trees surrounding the plant as high as the main tower and "disguising" the cooling chimneys; not seen many trees in the UK that are 300 to 600ft high). In the last week even those nuclear power stations that have been approved for devleopment are having issues, let alone the length of time it would take for new power stations to go through the planning process. This doesn't mean I'm against nuclear, it means I'm realistic about the time taken to bring a station online. Maybe we should take a similar approach to nuclear power stations that we seem to have done with wind and pv in regards to development permission. Again in reality this won't happen because of media hype and politicians protecting their seat

Electricity is a miracle form of energy, you plug something in flick a switch and it works, but the majority of the population have no idea how much electricity they use or the imact on the planet caused by how it is produced. Currently in the UK 50% of electricity production is from natural gas, the easy option based on the North Sea, but this is in sharp decline and now we have to import. To me it doesn't make sense to use gas to generate electrictity as this isn't a very efficient use of the energy source, surely better to use it to heat our homes.

Coming back to the subject of the thread. I was trying to make two points, 1. any form of energy production has an environmental and human impact, is the impact on a relatively small number of people any greater or less for windpower than other forms of production like coal or nuclear? 2. the argument of noise / vibration causing intolerable living conditions currently has no means of measurement and is now being used as a counter-argument to any wind turbine in any location by groups opposed to wind turbines.

We are in a mess, wind can help us get out of this mess because this island is blessed with a relatively abundant and predictable supply. Shortcomings in wind can be overcome and it doesn't have to mean the lights go out when across the entire island it is windy. At the moment we don't have storage capacity but that doesn't mean we have the technology availabe to store energy that can be turned into electricity in seconds. You don't create storage facilities if the current generation is easily controllable with no latency. If the generation changes then storage becomes a consideration, but it isn't insurmountable. One distinct advanatage of wind turbines are they are relatively short lived (<30 years and more like 20-25), materials can be re-used, they use a small footprint that isn't heavily contaminated. We can build now whilst tidal power catches up, we can work on changing attitudes to nuclear power and being more aware of the amount of energy that we use.

Paul

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:54:53 +0100

All forms of noise can be measured, including AM which is a proven phenomenon, the issue is the assumption implicit in the current standard that all noise is tolerable within the limits set by ETSU-R-97, it isn't, as overwhelming but ignored evidence testifies.

The second issue is the disproportionately adverse effect for a given cost/benefit outcome when a viable alternative to onshore wind is widely available: offshore wind.

I've already explained in some depth about the problem of predicting whether noise will result from an installation. NO ONE, including the developers, will know whether noise will be a problem, nor indeed whether it will happen at all UNTIL THE TURBINES GO UP, at which time it's too late to do anything about it. Does anyone really think there is any consolation for those affected in knowing their fears and the objection based on those fears were justified?

I would suggest that all wind turbines be located around towns and cities because I'm constantly being told that the inhabitants of those areas have to live with noise all the time, 24/7, so a bit more won't come amiss. So buildings reduce their performance? Build the turbines higher then.

Wind farm noise in court

Gavin_A — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:28:57 +0100

Joiner,

In most of this thread you've seemed fairly rational about this up to the last few posts, so I'm going to ignore them and take at face value your earlier insistence that you're trying to keep the arguments rational.

If you want a clear defined target for a change in the law / to get councillors to apply better noise limit figures, IMO you should ignore everything else, and purely target a change to the use of db(C) for the purposes of determining the allowable noise from the turbines outside the nearest properties, as well as at the turbines themselves and in their distance models.

The use of db(A) in these regulations is IMO the entire cause of these problems, and the entire reason that companies can be complying with the noise restrictions while still causing severe problems for the occupants.

The reason for this put simply being that db(A) artificially downrates the db readings of lower frequencies in order to better match the human ear, which is fine in theory at the point of hearing (eg inside the house), but not outside the house as it's the lower frequencies that will travel the most through the house walls etc.

As an example, at the 100htz level, DB(A) will record 18db lower than the actual level recorded in db(C), so using this measure for a noise source that is predominantly operating at low frequencies is always going to cause problems. ie it will record 42DB when the actual db reading should be 60db. That 18 DB is equal to the reduction that could come from 8 times the distance from the sound source (a doubling of distance equalling 6db reduction).

So the simple measure of changing the terms of the conditions from using db(A) to db(C) will dramatically alter the actual allowable levels of bass and sub bass frequencies outside people's homes without any actual change in the numbers allowed.

see this diagram for more details on the difference between db(A) and db(C). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Acoustic_weighting_curves_(1).svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 08:51:08 +0100

I don't think the problem is just the amplitude. I think the fact that it's modulated makes it more annoying. Sometimes if you drive a car with a certain combination of windows open you get a horrible beating effect, I find that exceptionally hard to tollerate for very long in a way that's hard to describe even if it's not particularly loud.

Wind farm noise in court

SteamyTea — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:12:13 +0100

Posted By: CWattersI find that exceptionally hard to tollerate for very long in a way that's hard to describe even if it's not particularly loud.

Good excuse to wallop the kids in the back.
My Scenic makes very little noise when then back windows are open (actually makes very very little noise at moment as turbo is squirting oil, about a year after it last broke down, what a coincidence)

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:22:47 +0100

Thanks Gavin. A concise explanation of the weakness in the present standard and the reasons why.

Before anyone else pitches in, might I suggest they read "The effect of a common wind shear adjustment methodology on the assessement of wind farms when applying ETSU-R-97" by Mike Stigwood (27th September 2011).

Also any of the papers by Dick Bowdler, listed here for your convenience... http://www.dickbowdler.co.uk/papers-publications/

And for balance (and for an excellent example of how to spin information and data to suit your particular case) this paper: "Investigation of the â€˜Den Brookâ€™ Amplitude Modulation Methodology for Wind Turbine Noise
(Version 2, 11 November 2011)" Dr Jeremy Bass, MInstP, MIOA. (Coincidentally part of the RES management team.)

And then to get the taste of that piece of RES bullshit out of your mouth read: "Wind Farm Noise: 2009 in Review - Research, public concerns, and industry trends" from the Acoustics Ecology Institute.

All fascinating stuff!

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:14:17 +0100

Stigwood, 2011, http://docs.wind-watch.org/Stigwood-shear.pdf

Bass, 2011, http://www.res-group.com/media/846250/investigation-of-the-den-brook-amplitude-modulation-methodology-for-wind-turbine-noise.pdf

AEI, 2010, http://www.acousticecology.org/docs/AEI_WindFarmNoise_2009inReview.pdf

Wind farm noise in court

Gavin_A — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:24:04 +0100

No problem Joiner, fwiw my background in this comes from running festivals for a decade or so, where the licensing chaps also inexplicably let us off the hook noise wise by using db(A) instead of db(C).

I've stood outside houses taking measurements where the bass and sub bass were blatantly louder than should be acceptable, yet the meter when set on db(A) showed we were under the noise limits specified. Switching the noise meter to db(C) however told the real story, and we'd have been about 10db over the noise limits if they'd used that measure instead of db(A).

I'm also well aware of the phenominum in certain atmopheric conditions of the sub bass frequencies bouncing back off layers in the atmosphere, with the effect that this sub bass can effectively skip several miles before landing again. This can cause noise complaints from people several miles from the site, but with no noise complaints from people closer to the site... Most LA noise control people haven't got much of a clue about this though, and tend to brush these complaints off as being obviously unjustified because nobody closer to the site was complaining and in their minds it must have been louder for people closer to the site.

In wind turbines I'd expect this could be a significant issue as there will be a significant proportion of the noise that is initially directed downwards, then bounces back up off the ground into the atmosphere, where it can then bounce back down to the ground again in the right atmospheric conditions. It's probably mitigated a lot though by the fact that these atmospheric conditions mostly apply on still days.

Interestingly for the subject of this thread, I actually learnt most of the theory I used when attempting to plan festivals to reduce noise issues from a couple of books in my dads collection on understanding noise from wind turbines.

Wind farm noise in court

Gavin_A — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:36:21 +0100

just so my positions clear, I'm a supporter of both on shore and off shore wind, and disagree with most of your points in the last few posts where you've strayed away from the issue of noise.

I don't support largescale windfarms being forced onto people living in surrounding areas based on lies / misrepresentations about the noise problems they will cause either from a moral viewpoint, or a pragmatic viewpoint, as such misrepresentations will only get found out and cause a backlash against wind and wind farm developers that results in nothing they can say being believed for years / decades as a result of poor practice now.

If the wind industry is to be a sustainable form of power generation in this country then it must be done right, and should have been done right from the start, and hiding behind obviously flawed guidance issued 15 years ago is no excuse.

I'm forming the opinion that there probably is a maximum size limit for turbines beyond which the noise problems caused are simply too great to be considered for anything on shore in this country. Or at least that some very clever wind farm designs will be needed to potentially allow for bigger turbines in the middle, and smaller turbines around the outside closest to houses.

Much better noise modelling software is also needed to take into account and mitigate against the impact not just of distance, but topography for both noise and shadow flicker issues.

bottom line, there's no point protecting us against climate change if in doing so it renders vast tracts of the upper areas of the UK uninhabitable, particularly when better design and honesty at the outside could have resulted in much the same power generation, but without the noise impacts.

Wind farm noise in court

djh — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:01:05 +0100

Well said, Gavin.

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:18:27 +0100

I'd second that.

I think it was 'windy' or 'gusty' who said a while back that a lot of the wind industry boys were bringing trouble on themselves by misrepresenting the problems, not helped by the government's skewing planning in favour of onshore wind in the face of the mounting criticism of ETSU-R-97. Jeremy Bass's paper is a classic and reinforces all the bad stuff that came RES's way after the 'Wind Farm Wars' documentary, featuring the tearful Rachel Ruffle.

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:58:52 +0100

I agree with Gavin aswell!
I believe that the onshore turbines now being proposed are much too big - fine offshore but just not suitable in land. This, in terms of scale within the landscape, potential noise, disruption/modification to existing transport routes to get the things to site, etc, etc. As I said before a 65m high turbine can be accommodated within a landscape but scale that up to over 100m and it's a very different story. The increase in size is driven by economics and the developers push that back partially on the nimbys by talking of the immense cost of getting an application through. If it's gonna cost Â£500K for the planning process, then why apply for 10 x 65m turbines when you can put up 120m high ones? Human greed - whether thats a wind farm developer or some retired towny who's worried their house price will drop by ten grand - it's all of our doing!

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:23:35 +0100

Pushing it with the "retired towny" bit windy. My experience has been of people who have lived in the local villages for a very long time, many of them all of their lives, their parents having worked on the land around the village. The landowner concerned took the farm over from his parents and his grandparents were there before them, many locals having known the family all their lives, hence the bitterness over what he's prepared to do. Of all the local people actively campaigning against, the shortest tenure is eleven years, of the 280 people against, there are only about a dozen 'incomers' and they're only active in that they've signed-up to the campaign. None of the group actively campaigning for the turbines lives within eight miles of the site. I'm involved purely in a supporting role because even my limited knowledge was more than the locals had when they started out, faced with the professionals from Natural Power. It really is a case of the small man against the corporation.

Wind farm noise in court

SteamyTea — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:21:34 +0100

Well I found that old turbine, it was very quiet today (a rare day in Cornwall).
Looking around the area I could see, you ready for this:
2 Provens 6Kw, an Evoco, and Iskra (or is it Eviance now), the 6 larger stumpy ones at Goonhilly, not much solar though, the two new turbines just outside Penryn (by the working quarry that explodes the rock out of a hole), the remaining satellite dishes, one is called Arthur, the radar dome and control tower for Seahawk (where the helicopters go from to save people at sea and those foolish enough to fly a seaplane, fall off cliffs, jets fly from there too) and a lot of gorse (or scrub as I prefer to call the evil stuff)
Now get ready, this is an area of beauty to some, it is covered in loads of old pump houses/chimneys from the industrial mining that used to go on here a couple of hundred years ago (they all have some sort of preservation order on them now, every one I am told), countless power lines, along with telegraph poles, some large power lines, a very large substation (does Helston and the Lizard). The agricultural land is mainly grade 4, so pretty worthless apart from keeping cattle on)

But I think I found an even older turbine (second picture). Jeremy probably knows this one.

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:55:15 +0100

Ever wondered what happens to old wind turbine blades? Too big for landfill it seems the fiberglass blades have to be burnt...

http://www.reinforcedplastics.com/view/319/recycling-wind/

Highlights..

"..from 2040, 380,000 tonnes of fibre composites will have to be disposed of each year:"

"At the moment, there are three possible routes for dismantled wind turbine blades: landfill, incineration or recycling."

"The most common route is incineration. In so-called combined heat and power (CHP) plants, the heat from incineration is used to create electricity, as well as to feed a district heating system. However, 60% of the scrap is left behind as ash after incineration. Due to the presence of inorganic loads in composites, this ash may be pollutant..."

"Wind turbine blades also have to be dismantled and crushed before transportation to incineration plants, placing further strain on the environment in terms of energy used and emissions. Henning Albers suggests that there are also cause for concern in relation to the health and safety of workers involved in the incineration process."

"Grove-Nielsen does not believe that the recycled GRP wind turbine blade material can be reused in new blades, however: â€œRecycled glass fibres will always have lower strength than virgin materials. Therefore the industry cannot use recycled reinforcement fibres."

"As far as Reinforced Plastics has been able to establish, there is no European-wide legislation in place for the recycling of wind turbine blades.."

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:57:38 +0100

Nick, that second pic is of one of the old pumps that I grew up knowing as "Worcester pumps", which used to be made in an old factory on the Droitwich Road in Worcester, later the site of Metal Castings Doehler. They went all over the world for use in irrigation and drainage. (Look closely at it next time you're there and you might see a plaque on it giving the name of the maker.)

Wind farm noise in court

wookey — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:28:05 +0100

bottom line, there's no point protecting us against climate change if in doing so it renders vast tracts of the upper areas of the UK uninhabitable

I'd say that was a bit blanket. If that's what's necessary then it might be an acceptable tradeoff. i.e ultimately protecting against climate change is not optional. Living in upland areas is.

And 'uninhabitable' is probably a bit strong. Even in areas where there are complaints there are plenty of people not complaining too. Maybe some people are just deaf?

Wind farm noise in court

DamonHD — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:35:28 +0100

A lot of our energy use is optional, as I've demonstrated to myself.

What about enforced rationing instead?

Rgds

Damon

Wind farm noise in court

SteamyTea — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:29:38 +0100

Posted By: wookeyultimately protecting against climate change is not optional

Not going to stop it, regardless of causes, adaptation and migration are the way forward.

Posted By: DamonHDWhat about enforced rationing instead?

We have already tried that by having poor housing stock, and infective transport infrastructure and (in some cases) rising energy prices.
Have to tackle the causes not the symptoms. We are all in this together.

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:24:35 +0100

Nick, a million apologies, but... "infective transport infrastructure" ?

Wind farm noise in court

wookey — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:44:30 +0100

Might be true in Cornwall. :-)

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:48:22 +0100

OK, so I was a bit cheeky about townies.
Talking of laying vast tracts of our uplands uninhabitable, isn't that what Chernobyl did? Only last week were the restrictions lifted on the remaining welsh farms affected. For years the British taxpayer had been buying lamb to be destroyed because of radioactive contamination - and that was from a power station 1000s km away. The worst a wind turbine can do is fall on you or blight your life with low frequency noise (which could be stopped by throwing a switch). At least you don't have to remove 7000 square miles of topsoil or wait for 25 years for the radiation levels to drop back to "safe" levels.
Sensible noise limits are needed or everyone should have an annual limit of 3000kwhrs per household - regardless of the numbers of teenagers therein!

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:05:00 +0100

The Chernobyl argument is a big distraction and more than adequately covered in other threads. But suffice to say that the record shows the incident had more to do with ancient technology and the absence of fail-safe systems that allowed human operators to over-ride all the warnings. Comparing that plant with modern nuclear plants is akin to comparing a Model T Ford with a Ferrari. The current ageing plants of the UK would not have been replaced with Chernobyl clones and the nuclear technology of the future will probably be based on whatever comes out of the work on LENR or fusion. Fukishima was a hiccup compared to the Bhopal plant incident in terms of fatalities (and consequent abnormal births) and France's nuclear programme (which we benefit from, including the turbines that have to plug into the grid to get going again after a period of calm or too-high winds) has hardly rendered vast tracts of their countryside inhospitable to man nor beast.

All I want is a sensible mix that adds up at the end of the day, not an indecent rush into inappropriate sites for no other reason than a skewed planning system makes it possible to do so.

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:40:20 +0100

I bet a Model-T Ford breaks down a lot less than a Ferrari and when you crash you're only doing 25mph not 125mph.

What I was saying was that wind turbines are a lower safety risk than nuclear however you look at it. As for decommissioning, the only problem is what to do with the glass fibre in the blades - they still haven't figured out what to do with nuclear waste - Oh yes, bury it in Cumbria in the Borrowdale Volcanics only the most permeable hardrock geology with regular earthquakes (all be it small ones) Good thinking Batman!

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:58:18 +0100

"I bet a Model-T Ford breaks down a lot less than a Ferrari and when you crash you're only doing 25mph not 125mph." TouchÃ©