Err on the side of study

Kevin,
Cutting and pasting from the wind industry's web site does not address my arguments. AWEA is the mouthpiece for an industry that is a glutton for tax subsidies. Why are you seeing all those ads for GE turbines on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC? Because GE owns NBC. Tax money spent on wind turbines is a misuse of our tax dollars. It needs to to be spent on reducing consumption, not on very expensive, but unreliable and essentially redundant wind turbines.

If you lived near turbines many many years ago as you say, you did not live near turbines anywhere as large and as noisy as modern turbines. They have doubled in size in the last 10 years. Try living at Mars Hill today.
Steve Thurston

Over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80%. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants. The most important factors in determining the cost of wind-generated electricity from a wind farm are: (1) the size of the wind farm; (2) the wind speed at the site; and (3) the cost of installing the turbines. Each of these factors can have a major impact. Generally speaking:
The larger the wind farm, all other factors being equal, the lower the cost of energy;
The higher the wind speed, the lower the cost of energy;
The less expensive construction costs are, the lower the cost of energy.
On New England ridgelines, for example, wind farms are likely to be smaller, to experience lower wind speeds, and to cost more to install than in the flat terrain of northern Plains states. While wind power may cost less than 5 cents/kWh in the northern Plains, it may cost 6-7 cents/kWh in New England.
In the case of offshore wind farms, the distance that power must be transmitted to shore is a fourth potentially significant cost element.
With the price of natural gas, oil, and other fuels soaring today, wind energy is becoming more of a bargain than ever. A recent landmark study of wind integration into the New York State electric power system, looking at a 10% addition of wind generation (3,300 MW of wind in a 34,000-MW system), projected a reduction in payments by electricity customers of $305 million in one year.
I lived by a wind farm in California for a couple of months many many years ago. I was at first put off by these behemoths. But after awhile I came to realize there is a rather stark beauty in 200 turbines spining madly in the wind. I gladly await these wind farms and would most definately welcome one in my backyard. While wind farms themselves may not be the answer to all of our energy problems it will help us in not only lessoning our dependance on foreign energy markets but the most important is the lack of pollutants given off as these generate electricity something that our coal industry can not claim.

I wish you were right Bill. You are wrong on both counts. People living near turbines, like the folks on Mars Hill, frequently were in favor of turbines before they were installed, for the same reasons you are - getting us off foreign oil, clean and green, the wind is free, etc. It was not until their lives were impacted by the noise that their opinions changed. Unlike living near the predictable sounds of airports, train stations, highways, wind turbines produce random, low frequency un-synchronized pulses of high energy that some humans cannot adjust to. People living in rural Maine live there for a reason. If they wanted to live near airports or train stations they would. They like hearing the stillness of the night, the call of the loon, the morning chorus of birds. There is no justification for imposing intolerable nighttime turbine noise on these communities.

Virtually none of the electricity in this country is generated with oil, domestic or foreign. Oil is used for heating and transportation. To reduce reliance on foreign oil we need to reduce consumption. That requires conservation and efficiency programs that have some meat on their bones.

Wind power is a scam. It costs over $100 per MW to generate electricity with turbines. Electricity sells for about $35 in the wholesale grid market. The difference is subsidized by tax payers and rate payers. If the money spent subsidizing wind power was spent, where it should be, on conservation and efficiency incentives for Maine families and businesses, there would be a substantial reduction in the use of heating oil in Maine. It will cost about $6.9 billion to blanket Maine's mountains with over 1000 turbines to achieve Baldacci's goal of 2700 MW by 2020. That works out to about $20,000 per household. Imagine how much consumption could be reduced if your tax dollars being directed to the wind industry were instead directed toward incentives to insulate your attic and basement, install good storm windows, upgrade to a more efficient heating system, or buy a more fuel efficient vehicle. How much is Maine spending on conservation and efficiency programs this year? About $15 per household.

2700 MW of installed capacity will provide about 4% of the electricity used by the New England grid. The claims of substantial impacts on fossil fuel consumption or reductions in global warming are patently false. Dont' drink the Koolaid Bill. I know you are too smart for that.

Steve Thurston

Steve, I grew up living next to the railroad tracks. I can still remember trains going by, blowing thier airhorns very early in the morning, It is something you get used to, and after a while, you don't even notice it. I'm sure it's the same for these wind turbines. It seems to me that the naysayers all just suffer from the "not in my backyard" syndrome. I'm all in favor of anything and everything that will decrease our reliance on foreign oil.

Its about time the Sun Journal recognized the potential damage that awaits the citizens of the state if 50 Mars Hill - sized wind projects get built in the near future as Governor Baldacci decreed. Since Maine's noise regs, by their reliance on the dBA scale which discounts low frequencies by 8 decibels, do not require the accurate measurement of low frequency noise such as turbines produce, and since the state does not require the repetitive "blade thump" produced by turbines to be considered a "short duration repetitive" noise which requires a 6 decibel increase in the predicted noise level, the reality is that turbine noise well in excess of Maine's 45 dBA nighttime sound limit in rural communities is considered acceptable by the state.

"Blade thump" is the number one complaint of people around the world who live within proximity of turbines. It causes annoyance, sleep disturbance, anxiety, migraines, depression, feelings of hopelessness, ringing in the ears, vertigo, strange physical sensations as body cavities reverberate to the powerful whump, whump pulses emitted by these enormous machines. Unlike many locations where turbines are located in broad flat prairie or farmland, in Maine turbines will be located on ridges high above the treetops and will fill communities in the quiet valleys below with noise like lights in a football stadium illuminate the field.

The most egregious failure of the state is the failure to require a line of turbines on a ridge to be considered a line source of noise, like traffic on a highway or a long train on a track. Instead, for every wind project proposed thus far, the state is allowing the wind industry to ignore basic principals of the acoustics profession by treating each turbine as an individual point source of noise. Noise from line sources decays at half the rate of point sources, so the prediction model used by the wind industry's only noise consultant in the state of Maine has underpredicted the noise levels of every single turbine project beginning with Mars Hill by the failure to employ methods that are esxplained in basic acoustics textbooks.

Even without considering the line source issue, in Roxbury, RSE Consulting has predicted that 37 decibels of turbine noise will reach all homes on Roxbury Pond. Adding 8 decibels for low frequencies, and 6 decibels for blade thump to accurately predict the expected noise levels, nighttime turbine blade thump at 51 decibels can be expected, while background noise levels will typically be in the 2O decibel range due to still conditions in the valley, even though sufficient wind exists at turbine height for the rotors to spin. The people in Roxbury have been told by Angus King that turbine noise will be undetectable, no louder than a room full of people holding their breath. The magnitude of this deception will be discovered after the turbines are built. Does anyone believe that a $120 million dollar project will cease operation when residents complain of turbine noise? After two years nothing has been done to quiet the turbines at Mars Hill. Instead the state issued a letter of "substantial compliance" even though turbine noise in the mid 50 decibel range is commonly measured at affected homes.

Modern wind turbines weigh several hundred tons and stand hundreds of feet above the treetops. Each blade may weigh 16 tons, is 150' long and rips through the air at tip speeds approaching 200 MPH. The wind industry, and Dora Mills, would like us to think these are benign machines, no louder than a refrigerator. In reality they are the largest industrial machines on the planet. Turbines emit over 110 decibels of noise, equivalent in sound pressure to a rock band in a night club. It is a relief to see the editorial staff begin to question its blind allegiance to the propaganda of the wind industry. If only Angus King would take his rose colored glasses and see the reality of what his turbines will do to Roxbury when the stillness of the night is replaced with the cacophonous echoes of turbine blades thumping away on the ridge.
Steve Thurston