Phone Interview About Noble

Phone interview with Dick, from Dicks Country Store in Churubusco NY.

Store is located within Noble Wind Farm on Route 11.

(Responses not word for word, unless quoted)

Q-What were the largest outcry's from the public against the wind farms before they were put up?
A-Many issues were addressed including noise, bird deaths, visual appearance and the change of the landscape. " The only two legitimate complaints were the visual change of the landscape and the noise, which is very, very, very minimal. There are 4 turbines directly around the store and we never hear them from inside.""The bird deaths concern was put out after the first year when they found only a couple dead birds under the turbines throughout the whole year."

Q-Since the wind farm has been put in, has the local support for wind power gained strength or lost strength?
A-The support has gained since, as no real issues have arisen. "Our town had virtually no industry before this, and while they were being built many jobs were created, and now many land owners are better off and taxes are lower in the town." The town is about 700 people, and only 8-10 were opposing and bringing up concerns. "Those 8-10 people are still opposed, but it seems that everyone who was on the fence about the issue and just let it happen, now support the farm fully."

Q-Has there been any major issues as far as safety or wildlife disturbances?
A-No real issues have come up, other than a turbine catching fire in January. "The turbine fire was later found to be an electrical fire due to improper wiring, and had nothing to do with the design of the turbine." The turbines don't seem to effect wildlife, and in some cases encourage wildlife. "I have a few turbines on my property, and I constantly see deer eating the clover that Noble seeded the roadsides and areas around the turbines with. Usually I see the deer directly under the turbines, it doesn't seem to bother them one bit"

Interview Q and A's

David Hallquist

CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative

VELCO Board member

Renewable Energy of North America board member

Principal at Stowe Consulting Company

Mohawk Valley Community College

Q: What was the largest hurdle to get over, as far as permits, laws and zoning?

A: Public service board approval – getting water resources. 

Q: Was the opposition from the public mostly due to consideration of wildlife/environment, noise/sight problems or safety concerns?
A: Noise and aesthetics—50/50. Every single electric source has issues, however wind has the most potential.

Q: Has there been any major issues yet? (safety concerns, reports of wildlife problems...etc)
A: Safety is our biggest concern. Hauling the equipment can be dangerous. 2 weeks ago a man was injured hauling heavy equipment and is still in a coma.

Q: Has the support for wind power gained strength or lost strength in the region since the wind farms have been built?
A: Lost strength. Public support dropped from 80% to 70%

In reality, it’s easy for people to say they support it until it actually shows up. Then they question if it is worth it.

Willem Post

Founding member of Coalition for Energy Solutions

Consulting Engineer and Project Manager

BSME New Jersey Institute of Technology

MSME Rensselear Polytechnic Institute

MBA, P.E. University of Connecticut

Focus: Master Plans and Case Studies

VERY interesting conversation with Willem Post who knows just about everything there is to know about wind energy around the world (specifically in Europe).

Focuses on Master plans and studies for past 10-15 years of his career.

-       Helped design UVMs mater plan for the steam and water pressure systems.

-       He talked a lot about wind energy in Europe (Norway, Denmark, Sweden tradeoffs)

·      Asked him the most important message to convey to class: “I think New England should just forget about wind”

o   Midwestern prairie states have tremendous wind power opportunities and that’s where we should utilize wind energy

o   He compared Midwestern wind capacity to that of Saudi Arabia’s oil capacity

·      Biggest issue surrounding wind energy is noise

o   In Willem’s article on Lowell Wind Farm in July 2011 he states:

·      infrasound consists of air pressure pulsations; not audible, but felt; usually not measured by acoustics engineers; and more or less ignored by state regulators

·      People have been known to get sick from the infrasound that the turbines emit

o   Infrasound was used in the war to torture people

o   He met a farming family in Austria that lives less than a mile away from a wind farm and after a while the chickens started laying eggs without yolks

·      Needless to say, noise has a huge impact on the community and environment

Q: Adverse effects of Lowell wind project?

A: Environmental degradation. Preserving the Lowell mountain environment is very important.

Q: What is Vermont’s energy potential?

A: Vermont is not good for solar. There is decent wind on the ridge lines and better winds offshore as well, but offshore is very expensive.

àKansas has the best wind energy potential—maintence is low cost and there is a tremendous wind capacity

àSaudi Arabia of wind = Midwestern prarie states à evilvalent of Saudi oil

àMaintence of operation for Kansas wind farm = 1, VT ridgeline = 2

àOperation of maintenance + initial capital cost > energy actually produced in Vermont. We are spending unnecessary capital

cap in Kilowatt x 8760 x capital factor = kilowatt hours

*equation is critical to know

Q: When are winds strongest in Vermont?

A: wind is stronger at night

spring & fall = moderate wind

winter = strongest winds at night 

summer = weakest winds 

 Spring and fall intermediate

denmark sends their wind to Norway and Sweden

these plants close water valves and absorb surges of wind

½ is consumed in Denmark and ½ is exported

Sweden and Norway have more storage capacity than Denmark….they don’t have to use their own water

to run hydroplants

Germany is going to shut down all of their nuclear reactors by 2023.

Q: What do you think should be the most important takeaway from my presentation?

A: I think new England should forget about wind.

Q: Why?

A: noisy, visually offensive, destroys ridgelines

people get sick, low frequency noise /infrasound à used in the war to torture people

In Austria, I met a farm family that lives within a mile from a wind farm and eventually their chickens were laying eggs without yolks. 

Interview with Willem Post

Willem Post just emailed me a bunch of his articles on various energy issues and this one about Lowell is great. Take a look:
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/61309/lowell-mountain-wind-turbine-facility-vermont

Details of the Wind Farm: Capacity

The Kingdom Community wind farm in Lowell proposed by Green Mountain Power will be 21 wind turbines, each with a generating capacity of 3 MW, for a total of 63 MW. The farm will be on top of a 3.5 mile stretch of a 2600 ft ridge line, and according to this piece, http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/61309/lowell-mountain-wind-turbine-facility-vermont, will generate the equivalent of just under 3% Vermont's annual consumption.

According to Vestas, wind energy costs (per MW) between $1.3 and $1.5 million, so the Lowell project will cost between $81.9 and $94.5 million, which appears to be significantly less than what was mentioned in this piece, which is a by man who seems to be against the wind farm: http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/61309/lowell-mountain-wind-turbine-facility-vermont

He says the wind farm will cost $157.5 million, or $2.5 million per MW.

With regard to the wind turbines being noisy, interestingly, Vestas, the Danish company that designs and sells the wind turbines that GMP has bought for Lowell, actually have put some special software in their 3MW turbines that they call 'noise modes', and that can lessen the noise of these, (whilst sacrificing some power generation, of course). Read the description: "The V90-3MW can be specified with one of five different 'noise modes'. Each mode is set in the turbine software as part of the installation, although may be changed to another mode later. Each different noise mode implies a different power curve, so that for quieter operation, some energy yield is sacrificed. Noise mitigation is managed by adjustments to the blade pitch angle." -Wikipedia page of for Vestas 3MW.

VPIRG made an info sheet about Wind farms in VT and especially Lowell: http://www.vpirg.org/files/windfactsheet.pdf

This is perhaps biased towards the wind farm but sheds a certain light on the health studies done on "Wind turbine syndrome."

Wind Map

An awesome wind map of the US... could be used as an attention-grabbing introduction for our presentation.

http://hint.fm/wind/

No response from Noble..

Hey guys, I havent heard anything from the people I emailed from Noble. I found their website and a phone number right to there headquarters in the town next to my land. I will call this number tomorrow, hopefully get an interview done.

Meanwhile, I found this to look at. http://www.noblepower.com/faqs/index.html  Its a page with questions, myths and facts about their wind farms.

Ryan

The Map of the Lowell Mountains ridge line.

(Not 100% to scale)

Digging for a Solution

Here's a few articles I've collected from the VT Digger on Kingdom Community Wind and Vermont's opinion to renewables as a whole.

The first article is just an update on the prjoect (as of 1/11/12). It just gives the specs of the project and describes what new jobs have been created as a result. Although construction slowed down in the winter months, activity will be increasing with the arrival of the spring weather. The project is still on track to be complete and operational by the end of the year.

The second article explains that Green Mountain Power will be conserving over 2,700 acres of land to mitigate the impacts of the project. This is a big deal since the footprint of the project itself is only 159 acres, which means that GMP has made substantial steps to assure that wildlife impacts will be fully minimized. One of the key oppositions to wind turbines is habitat fragmentation, which GMP promised to address if the project was approved. So far it looks like the company is actually following through.

The third and final article talks about how recent weather patterns have really alarmed Vermont residents to climate change. Overall residents are all for conservation, renewables and such as a means of addressing climate change. However Vermont residents have heavily opposed deals with VT Yankee, Hydro-Quebec, and even the Lowell wind farm. The writer calls for community scale energy as an alternative to the same old crap that industrial size energy corporations have been pushing for years, now just in a different wrapping.

Clean Energy for Vermont by Vermont

This is a video by Green Mountain Power, one of the corporations behind the Kingdom Community Wind project. Its definitely supporting a biased argument but it does do a good job of highlighting many of the pros for the project.

Essentially the way they put the video together makes the project out to be an energy source for Vermont, by Vermonters. Over 90% of the workers involved in construction are from the local area. This helps generate local income which can then flow back into local businesses. They promote the project as a clean energy source which is going to provide the Vermont community with a reliable and cheap source of power.

All the footage came from a meeting in Lowell discussing the issue of Kingdom Community Wind. Because Green Mountain Power represents a major player in the project, and holds significant stakes in its outcome, it would be interesting to see what was left out of the video.

What it Looks Like

Simulated picture of the end product
When viewing this picture, keep in mind that this is only a few of the windmills which will be in place.  About 20  will be on the ridge.
This is what's actually happening now.  It seems ironic that we're grinding down our ridges for cleaner energy.  It is, however, much less of an impact than the alternative: mountain top removal, hydro fraking, and drilling.

The primary documents behind the Lowell Project

http://www.kingdomcommunitywind.com/permitting/Petition-and-Prefiled-Testimony-filed-August-7-2009/

This link is from the project's official website.  It has a bunch of links which are good primary sources.  For instance: the Lowell town letter of approval, a testimony from a wetlands expert about the environmental impacts of the project, and more.  The long list of sources speaks to how thoroughly the project was talked about and studied; it was not done in a back handed, zero transparency way, it was brought to the public and voted in favor of.  This is fair in a democratic sense (everyone got their say and most people are happy) but what about the 25% of people who voted against? That's a quarter of the population of the town.  In such a small community, that has the potential of causing great disagreement and disturbance.

Although it seems too idealistic and time consuming, I believe in these situations, a consensus is necessary.  Rifts should not be caused in a community by an outside project.  Having a large portion of the population hesitant about wind power is also a side effect which we should avoid.  So, taking all of this into account, my newest question is: why are all these projects happening in rural areas?  Why are there no sky-scrapers with windmills on them?

Energize Vermont's Video

I found a documentary made by Energize Vermont regarding the Lowell Wind Project.  The organization was opposed to the idea of putting the 20-21 wind turbines on the mountain top.  They interviewed wildlife biologists, hydrologists, and other people involved with energy organizations, so that they could share their opinions of the project.

Energize Vermont's main argument is that the turbines will be harming the ridgeline.  The process of installing the turbines is said to have 9 headwater streams filled.  Also, wildlife use the ridgelines as travel routes, but wont be able to once turbines are in.

One part of their argument against the Lowell Wind Project was that studies have shown that people living near the turbines have trouble sleeping.  This argument seemed weak to me because it did not show what households would be affected by the turbines due to noise.

Their argument was made more effective by including an interview with an energy consultant, who stated that there must be trade-offs made.  We do not eliminate carbon emissions with no other costs.  Off-shore wind, mountain top wind, solar, and hydropower must be used.

All in all, the documentary was effective at getting their point across.  The Lowell wind turbine project seems to be not the best option for Vermont.  It is harming mountain ridgelines, which in turn is harming the hydrology of the mountain ecosystem.  It seems to be more effective to use a combination of grassroots energy methods than to use industrial sized renewable energy.

Liccardi, John, & Johnston, Alta. (December 1, 2011). Vermont’s Energy Options: Utility Scale vs. Community Solutions [Motion picture]. U.S.A.: Energize Vermont. http://vimeo.com/33008285

Town Meeting Notes

http://www.townofcraftsbury.com/assets/wind%20tower%20project/10-08-04-meetingb.pdf

This would be a summary of a Craftsbury Common town meeting, meant to inform the towns people about Kingdom Community Wind (Lowell Wind Project). The first few notes give the general specs of the project. What the people really seem to be concerned with is what infrastructure changes will be necessary for the project and how wind compares to other energy sources. The interesting thing is that the town seems to be completely opposed to  the project, yet they have essentially have no way to legally dispute the project which was passed by a 3-1 vote in Lowell. Basically the town of Craftsbury feels that the vote wasn't fair since only Lowell needed to approve the project which effects all neighboring towns.