Wind Power will NOT Keep the Lights, or the Heat, ON!

February 4, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Power Goes AWOL Right When Freezing Brits Need It Most

February 4, 2015 by stopthesethings 7 Comments

The hackneyed myth that wind power “powers” millions of homes with wonderful “free” wind energy is taking a beating around the globe (seeour post here).

The idea that a wholly weather dependent power generation source can ever be – as is touted endlessly by the wind industry and it parasites – an “alternative” to conventional generation is, of course, patent nonsense.

If there wasn’t already a complete power generation system built around on-demand sources, such as gas, coal, nuclear or hydro – then a country trying to run on wind power would – unless it was keen to revisit (or remain in) the stone age – would inevitably need to build one (see our post here). So far, so insanely costly, and utterly pointless.

Now, just when winter starts to bite, and the Brits are looking for some extra sparks to toast their crumpets, brew their tea, to warm their homes and keep the icicles from their noses and toes, their massive fleet ofblade-chucking, pyrotechnic, sonic-torture devices has completely downed tools – proving once and for all that wind power is the greatest fraud of all time.

Here’s The Telegraph with, yet another tale of just why it is so.

Electricity demand hits highest this winter – as wind power slumps to its lowest
The Telegraph
Emily Gosden
20 January 2015

UK electricity demand hit its highest level this winter on Monday – while wind turbines generated their lowest output, official figures show.

Cold weather saw UK demand hit 52.54 gigawatts (GW) between 5pm and 5.30pm, according to National Grid.

At the same time, low wind speeds meant the UK’s wind turbines were producing just 573 megawatts of power, enough to meet only one per cent of demand – the lowest of any peak period this winter, Telegraph analysis of official data shows.

Earlier on Monday wind output had dropped even lower, generating just 354 megawatts at 2pm, or 0.75 per cent of Britain’s needs – the lowest seen during any period this winter.

The analysis will fuel concerns that despite receiving billions of pounds in subsidies, Britain’s wind farms cannot be relied upon to keep the lights on when they are needed the most.

Britain now has about 12 GW of wind capacity installed on and offshore – meaning during Monday’s peak demand period, wind farms were generating less than five per cent of their theoretical maximum output.

Gas, coal and nuclear power plants instead provided the vast majority of the UK’s electricity needs.

A spokesman for National Grid said that Britain’s spare margins – the safety buffer between supply and demand – had remained “adequate”.

On average, UK wind farms produce about 28 per cent of their theoretical maximum power output.

But critics warn that cold snaps when demand soars can often coincide with periods when the wind doesn’t blow.

They argue that Britain’s energy security will become ever moreprecarious as old coal and gas power plants are closed and the country becomes more reliant on intermittent wind farms.

Dr Lee Moroney of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank critical of wind farms, said: “Low wind speeds frequently accompany low temperatures as happened yesterday.

“The proliferation of wind farms encouraged by Government policy is misguided because a reliance on wind energy in these conditions leads to inevitable extra costs for consumers.

“Either reliable backup electricity supply from conventional sources must be provided when the wind does not blow, or extra costs in the form of constraint payments are incurred when there is too much wind on the system. It is a lose-lose situation for consumers.”

National Grid’s data, which covers the period since December 1, shows that the second highest peak demand – 50.9GW on December 4 – also coincided with the second lowest peak wind contribution, at just 1.5 per cent.

However other periods of particularly high peak demand, such as the evenings of December 9 and 10, coincided with much higher wind power output, with turbines meeting 18 per cent of demand.

The data also shows that Christmas Day was the only day when solar panels contributed anything at all to peak demand – because it was the only day when peak demand fell in daylight hours.

Demand on December 25 peaked after 12.30pm as families cooked their Christmas dinners.

On all other days demand peaked after it got dark – the vast majority between 5pm and 5.30pm.

Ministers were last year forced to approve a series of emergency powers to help prevent blackouts this winter, by firing up old power plants or paying factories to switch off.

National Grid said it had not yet needed to use any of the emergency powers.

Jennifer Webber, director of external affairs for wind industry body RenewableUK, said: “It’s wrong to cherry-pick statistics for short periods when the wind didn’t blow, as they’re unrepresentative of the full picture of the benefits wind provides for the UK.

“To get a proper idea of how well wind is performing as a vital part of our energy mix, you have to look at National Grid’s official figures over a meaningful period. In December, wind energy provided a record monthly high of 14 per cent of all the UK’s electricity needs.

“As a whole, 2014 was wind energy’s most productive year so far in this country, generating nearly 10 per cent of Britain’s electricity – equivalent to the annual demands of a quarter of all British homes.”

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “We need a diverse energy mix to reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels and renewables, including wind, are helping us to achieve this.

“Over £10bn was invested in clean energy in 2014 and the sector could also support up to 200,000 jobs by 2020.”
The Telegraph

Another fine piece of “doublethink” and “doublespeak” from wind industry spin-kings, Renewable UK and DECCs – in the other-worldly, Orwellian tradition under which they operate; and which they deploy in their efforts to control the energy ‘game’ (see our post here).

When the hard numbers see it pressed on its central claim about “powering” millions of homes, the wind industry and its parasites start back-pedalling at a full pelt, whine about “cherry-picking data” and resort to waffle about ‘averages’, ‘overall benefits’ etc, etc (that’s if they haven’t already run off and hidden from their interlocutors – see our post here).

And, in this case – resorting to their classic “hey, quick look over there” tactic – the spinners pitch up the well-worn lie about wind power ‘investment’ creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs (see our post here); as if that will be some kind of consolation when Brits are all left freezing in the dark.

STT just loves their exhortation about the need to measure wind power output “over a meaningful period”, which, apparently, means “averaging” wind power output over a month or more.

Funny, you know, that power punters – selfish lot that they are – tend to consider having power available when they need it, as a “here and now” kind of thing. So let’s see how things are “averaging” out over at the ICU:

DECCs and Renewable UK are obsessed with the ultimate (nonsense) goal of Britain running exclusively on wind power – and every malicious move they make is aimed at seeing wind power totally ‘displace’ fossil fuel generation sources.

If their (impossible) ‘dreams’ were ever realised, it would be interesting to see how the (few) remaining businesses would manage to operate without power for hours on end, every other day; and how householders might toast their crumpets, and keep warm and well-lit homes whenever the wind does what it’s done since the dawn of time.

STT buffed up the crystal ball and conjured up this forlorn image, that might be somewhere near the mark:

A Simplifies View of the Recent “Cooper Acoustic Investigation”…. by the Waubra Foundation.

February 3, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Acoustic Engineering Investigation into Airborne and Ground-Borne Pressure Pulses from Pacific Hydro’s Wind Turbines at Cape Bridgewater

Waubra Foundation – 1st February, 2015

1. Background

Turbines create “waste energy” in the form of airborne pressure waves (sound) and ground-borne pressure waves (vibration).
Noise is that part of the sound frequency spectrum which is audible, but “noise” is also defined by psychoacousticians as “unwanted sound”.
The strength (sometimes expressed as a loudness in the case of noise) of the sound is measured in decibels (“dB”).
The wavelength of individual sound waves is a measure of the distance between the peaks of the pressure waves. The speed of sound divided by the wavelength gives the frequency of the sound and is expressed in hertz (Hz).
Where the frequency of the sound waves is below 20 Hz, the distance between the waves is relatively long, and the general term for this portion of the frequency spectrum is known as infrasound. Infrasound is only audible at very high levels (dB). However it can be damaging to the human body at levels well below audibility.
Impulsive infrasound from a variety of industrial sources has long been known to have the potential to be harmful to humans, especially with chronic exposure. For example, human and animal studies have shown infrasound directly causes both physiological stress,i and collagen thickening in a variety of tissues including cardiac valves, arteries, and pericardium which themselves lead to a variety of cardiovascular diseases.ii
Infrasound persists for much greater distances than audible sound and, unlike audible sound, penetrates well insulated building structures (including double glazing) with ease; and often increases the impact by resonating within the house, like a drum.iii iv This occurs, regardless of the source of sound & vibration energy. Penetration of buildings and amplification via resonance can also occur from sound and vibration from natural sources such as earthquakes and thunder.
Standards for wind turbine noise pollution in Australia are set in audible decibels (“dBA”) outside houses.v Use of dBA excludes accurate measurement of frequencies below 200 Hz, including both infrasound (0 – 20 Hz) and low frequency noise (20 – 200 Hz). These Standards do not require infrasound (either within or outside homes) to be predicted in planning submissions nor to be measured in the required compliance testing to the planning permit noise conditions. Most jurisdictions do not require wind turbine generated low frequency noise to be predicted or measured either (unlike other sources of industrial noise). In fact most noise measuring instruments and microphones are unable to measure accurately in the infrasound range, especially below 8 Hz, and some Standards explicitly specify the use of equipment which cannot measure infrasound.
Wind turbines produce infrasound along with audible noise. The morepowerful the wind turbine the greater the proportion of infrasound and low frequency noise emitted,vi which then increases significantly if the turbines are sited too close together, now common practice in Australia.vii Most newer wind turbines are now 3 MW or 3.5 MW, compared to 2MW at Cape Bridgewater.
By the use of different sound meters and microphones, and in narrow (frequency) bands it is quite possible to identify and measure infrasound specifically from wind turbines, in the field. This unique “wind turbine signature” has now been demonstrated by the acoustic consultants involved in the Health Canada Studyviii and by Professor Colin Hansen’s team at Waterloo,ix in addition to Mr Cooper’s measurements at a number of locations in Australia prior to, and including, the Cape Bridgewater Acoustic Investigation.
Increasing numbers of residents living within 10km of wind turbines have suffered, and are still suffering, severe adverse health impacts since the wind turbines started operating.x xi Many have left their homes repeatedly, and eventually permanently, to live in greatly diminished financial circumstances, as their homes are no longer habitable or saleable. Some residents become too unwell to work. Wind turbines are not the only source of impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise causing severe health damage. The same pattern of identical serious adverse health effects, sleep deprivation and home abandonments, sometimes out to similar distances are being reported by neighbours to other known sources of infrasound and low frequency noise, at open cut coal mining (eg Hunter Valley in New South Wales), underground mines with large extractor fans (eg Lithgow, in New South Wales), gas turbinepower stations (eg Uranquinty, in New South Wales, Port Campbell in Victoria) and numerous other sources (eg Tara gas field in Queensland).xii
Wind power projects and other energy generating noise polluting industrial developments involve very large sums of money in construction, in revenues and in the case of industrial wind turbines – public subsidies. It is not uncommon to find companies with large investments and large cash flows going to great and improper lengths to maintain their cash flows.
The wind industry has never been asked to prove that their machines are safe, unlike other products on the market. When queries are raised about impacts on neighbours, the industry and its supporters trigger the “Four Ds” of denial, dissemble, delay and destroy the messenger, despite the wind industry being well aware of the seminal research by Dr Neil Kelley and NASA which established direct causation of symptoms from impulsive infrasound and low frequency noise from wind turbines and other sources in the 1980s, by both field and laboratory research.xiii

2. The Purpose of the Cape Bridgewater Acoustic Investigation

The purpose of the investigation was simply to find out what was causing the symptoms and sensations, resulting in sleep disturbance and health damage, reported to Pacific Hydro between 2009 and 2014 by the residents of three homes sited between 600 – 1600 metres from wind turbines sited at the Cape Bridgewater Wind Project in Victoria, Australia.xiv

3. What Are the Key Findings of the Cooper Acoustic Investigation?

The findings include:

Please read on

Village Destroyed to Accommodate Wind Turbines.

February 2, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Company’s extreme wind strategy: “Recently we bought most of a village to make a windpark.”

We solve the problem of unsellable properties in peripheral regions. We solve the problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms.”

Farm in Bollerup — Farmhouse purchased by Vattenfall for demolition.(photo: René Schütze)

The Copenhagen Post

Company’s extreme wind strategy: Towns today, turbines tomorrow

By Philip Tees

Swedish energy company Vattenfall is going to extreme lengths for the sake of its Danish windfarms – buying up whole villages in rural Denmark, razing them to the ground and replacing the buildings with wind turbines, Børsen reports.

Mette Korsager, who is responsible for Vattenfall’s onshore wind projects in Denmark, told the business newspaper that the strategy was to make it easier for the company to achieve the goal of installing 250 MW of wind turbines in Denmark by 2018-2019. “We typically buy up farms in bad condition and demolish the farmhouse,” she said.

“Recently we bought most of a village to make a windpark.”

Helps the region, according to Vattenfall

That village is Kølby in northern Jutland, and Vattenfall plans to acquire a total of 20 properties.

Korsager told Børsen the strategy served a number of purposes. “We solve the problem of unsellable properties in peripheral regions,” she said.

“We solve the problem of neighbours being critical of wind farms, and we make it easier to reach agreements about the installation of wind turbines at the municipalities because we go in and help them by developing problem areas.”

Kølby in northern Jutland.(photo: Google Street View

Windpushers Do Not Protect the Health of Vulnerable Children, (or anyone else)

January 31, 2015January 31, 2015 / 1957chev / 1 Comment

West Norfolk mother tells of blindness fears for son over wind farm scheme

Karen Robinson with her son Ronnie Robinson (9) in the garden at Clenchwarton Hall, showing the current view. ANL-150129-112536009

Ronnie Robinson suffers from primary congenital glaucoma, a severe visual impairment in which his eyes cannot cope with changing light conditions.

Developers of the Ongarhill wind farm, which is due to be debated by the West Norfolk Council planning committee next week, say conditions attached to any permission, and technology on the turbines themselves, will prevent shadow flicker from affecting residents.

But Ronnie’s mum Karen says she has been warned by doctors that she will have to leave her home on Hall Road, Clenchwarton if the plan goes ahead, in order to save his sight.

She said any flicker would leave Ronnie at risk of becoming disorientated and banging his head.

The slightest knock could mean he loses all his remaining vision.

Mrs Robinson, who moved to the area from Hertfordshire five years ago, said: “The whole reason we moved here was because it was off the road and it was safe for him to live.

“Why should we suffer just because they want to put turbines there? We moved here for a better life.”

A planning report, published last week, recommended that councillors approve the wind farm proposal, subject to the completion of a legal agreement for an ecological improvement plan within three months.

But opponents are unhappy with what they claim will be the unacceptable impact on localresidents and wildlife.

Mrs Robinson, who will be addressing Monday’s planning meeting, also fears the noise of the turbines would affect Ronnie, as he relies on his more sensitive hearing due to his eye problems.

But Cath Ibbotson, project manager for developers Coriolis Energy, yesterday said they had discussed Mrs Robinson’s concerns with her and were taking them seriously.

She said: “Tried and tested technology exists to switch off turbines at appropriate times and therefore prevent any shadow flicker occurring at the property or in the grounds for those few hours a year when it might otherwise do so.

“The council has proposed that a planning condition would be attached to any planning permission to ensure this.

“In respect of noise, anyone who has visited a wind farm for themselves will know how quiet turbines are in operation. However, national noise limits exist to protect residents.

The council have proposed in this case that the Ongarhill wind farm would have to operate to even more stringent limits, and we have agreed that we would do so. Again, this would be secured through planning conditions.”

Monday’s planning committee meeting will take place at the Lynn town hall, starting at 10am.

The Futility and Ridiculousness of the Windscam!

January 30, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

It Don’t Take Sherlock to Know; When the Wind Don’t Blow, The Power Don’t Flow

January 30, 2015 by stopthesethings Leave a Comment

STT has – just once or twice – smashed the myth that wind power can provide a meaningful supply of electricity (ie power “on-demand”) – and relegated to the fiction aisle the the wind industry’s “playbook”, where you’ll find, in bold print, the oft-told furphy about wind farms “powering” 10s of thousands of homes.

At STT the term “powering” means exactly what it says: that when someone – at any time of the day or night – in any and all of the thousands of homes claimed to be “powered” by wind power – flicks theswitch the lights go on or the kettle starts boiling.

The wind industry never qualifies its we’re “powering thousands of homes” mantra by saying what it really means: that wind power might be throwing a little illumination or sparking up the kettle in those homes every now and again – and that the rest of time their owners will be tapping into a system of generation that operates quite happily 24 x 7, rain, hail or shine – without which they’d be eating tins of cold baked beans, while sitting freezing (or boiling) in the dark.

Here’s a little collection of posts busting that and other wind power myths in Australia:

And hammering the same myths, elsewhere around the world:

Now, Andrew Rogers of Energy Matters has done a beautiful number on the same myths, as relentlessly pedalled by the wind industry in Europe. (Oh, and if the graphs are too puny or fuzzy, click on them, they’ll pop up in a new window and you can magnify them from there.)

Wind Blowing Nowhere
Energy Matters
Roger Andrews
23 January 2015

In much of Europe energy policy is being formulated by policymakers who assume that combining wind generation over large areas will flatten out the spikes and fill in the troughs and thereby allow wind to be “harnessed to provide reliable electricity” as the European Wind Energy Association tells them it will:

The wind does not blow continuously, yet there is little overall impact if the wind stops blowing somewhere – it is always blowing somewhere else. Thus, wind can be harnessed to provide reliable electricity even though the wind is not available 100% of the time at one particular site.

Here we will review whether this assumption is valid. We will do so by progressively combining hourly wind generation data for 2013 for nine countries in Western Europe downloaded from the excellent data base compiled by Paul-Frederik Bach, paying special attention to periods when “the wind stops blowing somewhere”. The nine countries are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, Spain and the UK, which together cover a land area of 2.3 million square kilometers and extend over distances of 2,000 kilometers east-west and 4,000 kilometers north-south:

We begin with Spain, Europe’s largest producer of wind power in 2013. Here is Spain’s hourly wind generation for the year. Four periods of low wind output are numbered for reference:

Now we will add Germany, Europe’s second-largest wind power producer in 2013. We find that Spanish low wind output period 4 was more than offset by a coincident German wind spike. Spanish low wind periods 1, 2 and 3, however, were not.

Now we add UK, the third largest producer in 2013. Wind generation in UK during periods 1, 2 and 3 was also minimal:

As it was in France, the fourth largest producer:

And also in the other five countries, which I’ve combined for convenience:

Figure 7 is a blowup of the period between February 2 and 15, which covers low wind period 2. According to these results the wind died to a whisper all over Western Europe in the early hours of February 8th:

These results are, however, potentially misleading because of the large differences in output between the different countries. The wind could have been blowing in Finland and the Czech Republic but we wouldn’t see it in Figure 7 because the output from these countries is still swamped by the larger producers. To level the playing field I normalized the data by setting maximum 2013 wind generation to 100% and the minimum to 0% in each country, so that Germany, for example, scores 100% with 26,000MW output and 50% with 13,000MW while Finland scores 100% with only 222MW and 50% with only 111MW. Expressing generation as a percentage of maximum output gives us a reasonably good proxy for wind speed.

Replotting Figure 7 using these percentages yields the results shown in Figure 8 (the maximum theoretical output for the nine countries combined is 900%, incidentally). We find that the wind was in fact still blowing in Ireland during the low-wind period on February 8th, but usually at less than 50% of maximum.

But even Ireland was not blessed with much in the way of wind at the time of minimum output, which occurred at 5 am. Figure 10 plots the percentage-of-maximum values for the individual countries at 5 am on the map of Europe. If we assume that less than 5% signifies “no wind” there was at this time no wind over an area up to 1,000 km wide extending from Gibraltar at least to the northern tip of Denmark and probably as far north as the White Sea:

During this period the wind was clearly not blowing “somewhere else”, and there are other periods like it.

Combining wind generation from the nine countries has also not smoothed out the spikes. The final product looks just as spiky as the data from Spain we began with; the spikes have just shifted position:

Obviously combining wind generation in Western Europe is not going to provide the “reliable electricity” its backers claim it will. Integrating European wind into a European grid will in fact pose just as many problems as integrating UK wind into the UK grid or Scottish wind into the Scottish grid, but on a larger scale. We will take a brief look at this issue before concluding.

Integrating the combined wind output from the nine countries into a European grid would not have posed any insurmountable difficulties in 2013 because wind was still a minor player, supplying only 8.8% of demand:

But integration becomes progressively more problematic at higher levels of wind penetration. I simulated higher levels by factoring up 2013 wind generation with the results shown on Figure 12, which plots the percentage of demand supplied by wind in the nine countries in each hourly period. Twenty percent wind penetration looks as if it might be achievable; forty percent doesn’t.

Finally, many thanks to Hubert Flocard, who recently performed a parallel study and graciously gave Energy Matters permission to re-invent the wheel, plus a hat tip to Hugh Sharman for bringing Hubert’s work to our attention.
Energy Matters

Interest in Wind Projects Wanes, and Prices Dropping Fast!

January 29, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind auction sees low interest

Only two of four offshore MA wind areas get bids; sale prices much lower than prior sales off other states

By Mike Lawrence

Only two of four wind energy lease areas in federal waters south of Martha’s Vineyard received bids in an auction today and the sale prices were millions of dollars lower than previous auctions for leases of smaller sizes off other coastal states, according to statements by federal energy officials.

Leaders of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) expressed a sunny outlook, though, in a conference call to media following the sales.

BOEM put four lease areas up for auction this morning. The areas are collectively known as the Massachusetts Wind Energy Area and cover more than 742,000 acres in federal waters about 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

BOEM Deputy Director Walter Cruickshank said the 187,523-acre lease area closest to shore sold for $281,285 to Renewable Energy Systems (RES) Americas, and the adjacent 166,886-acre lease area sold for $166,886 to Offshore MW. The other two lease areas, farther from shore, were not bid on, he said.

U.S. Wind paid $8.7 million in August for leases on two areas totaling 79,707 acres off the Maryland coast, according to BOEM data. In September 2013, Dominion Resources paid $1.6 million for a lease on 112,799 acres off the coast of Virginia.

Deepwater Wind paid $3.8 million for two lease areas totaling 164,749 acres in the Rhode Island/Massachusetts Wind Area – adjacent to, and closer to shore than, the areas auctioned today – in BOEM’s first competitive auction of offshore wind development leases, in July 2013.

BOEM Director Abby Ross Hopper said the bureau was “happy with the results of (today’s) auction” and set the minimum bids lower than in previous auctions because of water depth and other factors.

“The Massachusetts Wind Energy Area is located in deeper water than some of our other wind energy areas in other states,” Hopper said. “We knew that developing…in this area was going to be more expensive.”

Hopper said another factor was that, unlike Massachusetts, other states had offered offshore wind credits and other financial incentives to renewable energy developers.

“That obviously has value,” Hopper said, adding that legislation has been introduced in Massachusetts to add incentives for offshore wind, but has not yet been approved.

Cheap oil and gas prices this month also may have deflated interest in wind power ahead of today’s auction. Additionally, the regional wind industry recently took a separate hit to the jaw, when utility giants NStar and Northeast Utilities announced the termination of their contracts to buy wind power generated by Cape Wind in Nantucket Sound, saying Cape Wind failed to meet critical financing milestones.

Hopper denied a connection between Cape Wind and the lack of bids on two lease areas today.

“I think the recent activity at Cape Wind shouldn’t be read as any sort of indicator of what happened in today’s auction,” she said. “I am very encouraged by the fact that two experienced wind developers have won provisional leases in the state of Massachusetts.”

The provisional leases bought today represent less than half of the 742,000 acres that were up for auction.

Cruickshank said the two areas that did not receive bids “are still part of the Massachusetts Wind Energy Area” and the bureau will discuss future options for their use with state agencies.

He said RES Americas and Offshore MW were the only companies that placed bids in today’s auction.

Follow Mike Lawrence on Twitter: @MikeLawrenceSCT

The Not-so-Great, Wind Power Fraud!!! Falling apart at the seams!

January 28, 2015 / 1957chev / Leave a comment

Wind Industry RUNS & HIDES as World Wakes Up to the Great Wind Power Fraud

January 28, 2015 by stopthesethings 5 Comments

Around the world, people are waking up to the scale, scope and magnitude of the great wind power fraud.

Rural communities are fighting back hard – in efforts to protect their homes, health and well-being. Their anger extends to the goons that lied their way to development approval – and the bent officials that rubber-stamped their applications and who, thereafter, help the operators ride roughshod over locals’ rights to live in and enjoy the peace and comfort of their own homes and properties (see our post here).

A little while back, the usual response from those opposed to wind farms was along the lines of: “we’re all in favour of renewable energy, so long as wind farms are built in the right place”.

But that was before people understood the phenomenal cost of the subsidies directed at wind power through massive corporate welfare schemes, like Australia’s mandatory LRET (see our post here) – and the impact on retail power prices (see our post here).

Fair minded country people are usually ready to give others the benefit of the doubt; and, not used to being lied to, accepted arguments pitched by wind power outfits about the “merits” of wind power: guff like “this wind farm will power 100,000 homes and save 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions” (see our post here).

Not anymore.

Switched-on people everywhere have cottoned on to the fact that wind power – which can only ever be delivered at crazy, random intervals – is meaningless as a power source because it cannot and will never replace on-demand sources, such as hydro, gas and coal.

And, as a consequence, that wind power cannot and will never reduce CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. The wind industry has never produced a shred of actual evidence to show it has; and the evidence that has been gathered shows intermittent wind power causing CO2 emissions to increase, not decrease (see our post here; this European paper here; this Irish paper here; this English paper here; and this Dutch study here).

The realisation that the wind industry is built on series of unsustainable fictions has local communities angrier than ever and helps explain the remarkable numbers opposed: 90% is what’s fairly called a solid “majority” in anybody’s book (see our post here).

Up until now, the lies pitched up endlessly from the wind industry’s well-scripted “playbook” by wind industry parasites – like the American Wind Energy Association (AEWA) and Australia’s Clean Energy Council (CEC) – among others – have worked a treat.

Wind industry spuikers have been aided and abetted with the aid of the useful idiots that happily parrot for them in the media. You know, the usual ABC wind industry love-ins that occur with remarkable regularity on The Drum; and the sheep-like publication of the endless stream of press releases pumped out, ad nauseam, aimed at “shaping” the debate: aka “churnalism”.

Well, it seems that the wind industry’s spin-doctors are having a harder time of it these days – as real journalists get a grip on the fundamental nature of what is – without a shadow of a doubt – the greatest economicand environmental fraud of all time.

Better still – there are a growing number from the fourth estate with the temerity to call it for what it is; and equally keen to wallop those that have profited handsomely from it.

When finally rumbled by well-briefed journos with the facts of their own infelicities – like any good fraudsters – these hucksters do the only honourable thing: they run and hide.

Here’s a great little report from Michigan Capitol Confidential that shows how – when factual push comes to shove – the wind industry’s “case” turns to water; and its spruikers respond in kind, by slamming doors and slamming down phones.

****

Around the world, people are waking up to the scale, scope and magnitude of the great wind power fraud.

A little while back, the usual response from those opposed to wind farms was along the lines of: “we’re all in favour of renewable energy, so long as wind farms are built in the right place”.

Not anymore.

Better still – there are a growing number from the fourth estate with the temerity to call it for what it is; and equally keen to wallop those that have profited handsomely from it.

When finally rumbled by well-briefed journos with the facts of their own infelicities – like any good fraudsters – these hucksters do the only honourable thing: they run and hide.

What REAL Experts are Saying About Steven’s Cooper’s Wind Farm Noise Study

In our recent post we popped up the study done by Steven Cooper at Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm, that’s sent the wind industry and its parasites into complete melt-down.

Its keenest advocates have turned on Pac Hydro, with the kind of hate-filled vengeance (usually reserved for traitors) for letting Cooper off the leash in the first place (see our post here).

And a band of others – with their trotters firmly in the wind industry subsidy trough – have chimed in, in an hysterical effort to pooh-pooh Cooper’s study.

This band of Twitter jockeys – made up of pseudo-scientists, mock-medicos and eco-fascist barrackers have been uniformly desperate in their attempts to deride and attack Cooper personally; and in their attempts to demonstrate that the study is somehow “flawed”.

Curiously – none of them hold any qualifications relevant to the task at hand – save and except the ability to compress non sequiturs into 140 characters.

In a classic bait and switch technique, this reliable band of useful idiots start out by branding Cooper’s study as a piece of “academic work”; and then set out to attack it on that basis.

The study is not “academic work” of the kind familiar to those firmly ensconced in sandstone citadels, but is, rather, a field study where data was gathered; set against the hypothesis that there is a relationship between the adverse health impacts complained of by neighbours and turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.

On that basis, the study can be seen as a robust piece of basic research; ready for further testing.

The idea of science (well, it used to be) is to propound some hypothesis directed at a particular relationship; to gather some evidence in relation to that hypothesis; and then throw that evidence firmly against the hypothesis, in an effort to disprove it. What Karl Popper called “falsifiability”; which he defined as the essential feature of science.

Science is not conducted by a show of hands or a popularity contest. Having a million scientists (or Twitter followers) “agree” with a particular hypothesis does not add to the robustness of that hypothesis. Indeed, the entire point of science is constant conjecture and repeated challenge to establish and maintain a robust and reliable body of fundamental human knowledge. Humans have been at it – in an organised way – for around 300 years and have improved their lot as the direct result of that quest.

And it most certainly isn’t conducted on the basis of the popularity of an ideologically driven agenda, generated by carping and nitpicking on Twitter; or during ABC propaganda love-ins.

In 1907 – when Albert Einstein – then, a lowly Austrian patent clerk – started scratching out what became known as his theory of “relativity”, young Albert was very much on his lonesome. In fact, he was roundlyridiculed and criticised by his contemporaries – and it took decades before his theory was taken seriously. The lack of “agreement” among physicists with Einstein’s theory did not, however, render the theory false or incorrect.

Einstein (correctly) identified that: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong”. Physicists are still trying to prove Einstein’s theories wrong – and so it should be.

If the eco-fascist cheer squad were, in fact, serious scientists, they would be out in paddocks and inside homes armed with microphones and sensors, gathering their own datasets to throw against the hypothesis, in an effort to disprove it; and advance science.

Cooper’s methods and approach sit fairly and squarely within that model: the target hypothesis was set; and data was thrown against it. The hypothesis remains; leaving it standing to be belted again and again, until such time as evidence shows the hypothesis to be invalid.

If any scientist seeks to protect their pet hypothesis (eg, the nonsense “nocebo” effect, for example) then your Spidey senses should be tingling: the “scientist” in question is then simply an advocate for their idea; the whole concept of scientific progress is to belt the hypothesis repeatedly with evidence relevant to that task. If the hypothesis remains, then so be it.

In the case of Cooper’s study, limitations on the length of the study and the size of the dataset (number of participants etc) were firmly set by Pac Hydro – the wind power outfit in question, which paid for the study as its Penance for being the object of over 6 years of residents’ well-justified complaints.

No such controls or limitations are placed on “academic research” – here, Pac Hydro’s deliberate controls and limitations were driven by, obviously, commercial considerations, and aimed at protecting a corporate reputation under threat (ie, “damage control”).

So it seems a bit rich that the Twitter jockeys are attacking Cooper’s study as “flawed” on that basis.

Among the raft of limitations placed on Cooper by Pac Hydro, was its rejection of Cooper’s request that the study be peer reviewed, prior to its release. Pac Hydro, sensing it already had a public relations disaster in the making, deliberately decided to prevent peer review of the study, which would have only added weight and validity to its results.

However, as a piece of basic scientific research, Cooper’s study stands alone; and is, therefore, easily capable of being:

reproduced;
scaled up to include more homes and residents;
further validated and supported with the inclusion of a representative cohort as a control group in any further study; and
therefore, repeated, validated and extended, both here, and all around the world.

So far, so scientific.

But instead of letting the eco-fascist cheer squad, wind industry and its parasites “own” the debate about the validity of Cooper’s study, why nothear from two highly qualified and experienced acoustic engineers, instead of media manipulators armed with arts and sociology degrees?

Rob Rand and Stephen Ambrose have, between them, published dozens of peer reviewed articles on wind turbine noise impacts (a few are available here); have over 65 years of acoustics experience between them; and have been working specifically on low-frequency noise and infrasound emissions from wind turbines for nearly 20 years.

Let’s hear what properly qualified experts have to say about Steven Cooper’s study.

January 21, 2015

Dear Steven,

Re: Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Acoustic Study

Congratulations on this superlative work investigating the neighbor reports and correlating (unintended) adverse effects of the facility. The scope and detail of your report is sure to assist acoustic investigators, planners, utilities, and the public to understand without any further doubt or dismissal what wind turbine neighbors have been saying for years, as you so clearly sum up,

“What we found was that previously they were complaining about the noise, but it wasn’t really the noise, it was sensations.”

The report’s establishing of tonal energy at the blade pass and harmonics along with higher frequencies with sidebands as the wind turbine signature, puts to rest any further tendency by acoustic professionals to rely on constant-percentage bands to attempt to assess neighbor impacts from wind turbine signals.

The correlation of sensation level to WTS tone level in the infrasonic and audible bands brings wind turbine acoustics right to the door of medical science. Medical tests in the homes, long overdue, can now be correlated directly to WTS. May the medical testing in homes begin without further delay.

I would like to express my deep appreciation to Pacific Hydro for sponsoring the study and providing turbine on/off conditions for evaluation.

Best Regards,
________________________
Robert W. Rand, ASA, INCE
RAND ACOUSTICS

Original letter from Rob Rand

January 22, 2015

Ref: Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Acoustic Study

Congratulations, I commend you for pursuing scientific truth by investigating the human response to large wind-turbines in the acoustic environment. Your correlation of human response journal entries with scientific waveform analysis clearly shows hearing is not limited to audible sounds. Research continues to reveal that the ear has multiple functions and capabilities. This study merits recognition by acoustic and public health professionals for more research.

Your study goes far beyond the 1980s Neil Kelley et al. studies that identified operating wind-turbines can produce airborne transmissions that humans detect as “sensations”. Bray/James research showed that one-third octave band filters could not measure the low-frequency peaks produced by wind-turbines.

Neighbors’ complaints were ignored by the majority. Acoustic experts failed to understand the limitations of their instruments and analysis methods. The Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Analysis Study should end blaming the neighbor. Neighbors deserve respect. Experts earn respect.

Before wind turbines, the highest negative community reaction was “vigorous community action to stop the noise”. Wind turbines have raised the bar to “home abandonment”. This life-saving option is not affordable; most experience diminished quality of life, degradation of health, and loss of wellbeing. The population majority remains unknowing and unaffected by wind turbines because they live far away or genetically protected from “sensations”. I was surprised to learn that I should not live near a wind turbine neighbor. I have no sympathy; I have real empathy.

Thank you and best wishes.

Respectfully,

Stephen E. Ambrose, ASA, INCE, Board Certified
Principal Consultant

Original letter from Stephen Ambrose

Pacific Hydro’s “Monumental Own Goal”: Or How Steven Cooper’s Wind Farm Study Helps Sink the Wind Industry

In our last post we popped up the study done by Steven Cooper at Pacific Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm, that’s sent the wind industry and its parasites into complete melt-down.

And its keenest advocates have turned on Pac Hydro, with the kind of hate-filled vengeance (usually reserved for traitors) for letting Cooper off the leash in the first place (see this rant from the Climate Speculator).

One thing that’s really incensed them is the fact that they’ve completely lost control over the (usually pliant and gullible) media – as seen in this sharp little piece from Channel 7’s Today Tonight – available here.

And here’s a couple more press articles, detailing just what’s causing the frantic-fuss among giant fan advocates and profiteers.

Cape Bridgewater wind farm ‘a health hazard’
The Standard
Peter Collins
22 January 2015

SIX Cape Bridgewater residents involved in groundbreaking research on side-effects of wind farm infrasound have called for the state government to declare the area a health hazard.

They have also called on the federal government to fund new studies on long-term health implications of living near wind farms, of which many are scattered across the south-west.

However, the Australian Wind Alliance, which represents companies associated with the renewable energy industry, has disputed the study findings and described them as speculative.

Acoustic engineer Steven Cooper was commissioned by Pacific Hydro to determine if wind conditions or sound levels caused disturbances identified by residents.

His preliminary findings from eight weeks of monitoring data and residents’ diaries claim to have identified a trend between acoustics produced by turbine blades while generating electricity and sensations reported by the residents.

He also claims to have identified a “signature sound” from turbines below the level of normal hearing which he said should be the basis for medical research.

Alleged health side-effects have been debated for decades. Some residents living nearby the huge towers and turbines have long complained of effects including headaches, nausea, pressures in their head, ears and chest, ringing ears and racing heart.

The Cape Bridgewater residents issued a joint statement yesterday saying the Cooper report also demonstrated that current noise pollution guidelines were useless. “Are we just third-class citizens whose fate it is to become collateral damage to these unsafe machines?” they asked.

“We expect Pacific Hydro will rectify the problems at Cape Bridgewater, address proper compensation for those who have been harmed and join,indeed lead, the drive for reform of regulation of wind power facilities.”

Mr Cooper will present his report to a public meeting at Portland Golf Club on February 16. The wind alliance said the report was based on a narrow band of information and did not account for the sensations described by residents when the turbines were not operating.

“Hundreds of thousands of people live comfortably in close vicinity of wind farms across the world – this report can’t change this,” the alliance said.
The Standard

Among the howlers pitched up by wind industry parasites, the – creepily named – Australian Wind Alliance is this piece of demonstrable rubbish: “Hundreds of thousands of people live comfortably in close vicinity of wind farms across the world”.

No they don’t: see our post here.

And the fact that they don’t “live comfortably in close vicinity of wind farms”, has been admitted by Danish wind power outfits that are buying up homes and villages, calling in the bulldozers and flattening them (seeour post here).

The wind industry in Australia is equally alive to that FACT – and – wherever they’ve had to concede it – they quietly buy out their victims’ properties, bulldoze them (see our post here) and make damn sure they stitch up the unfortunate (homeless) family with bullet proof gag clauses (see our posts here and here) – that their lawyers enforce with the zeal and vigour of the Old GDR’s Stasi (see our post here).

Next is the carping about the report being “narrow” and “speculative”.

STT doubts that the unnamed spruiker from the Australian Wind Alliance has even bothered to read, what is a detailed and technical report, and if they did, they clearly haven’t understood it. Calling a report of 295 pages with 500 pages of Appendices “narrow” suggests the spruiker concerned hasn’t even seen it, let alone read it.

Moreover, as is the want of eco-fascists, these boys have a keen eye for what’s been and gone; but their lack of intellectual equipment generally leads to a failure to consider what comes next: what those with the equipment call “foresight”.

A theme to which we’ll return in a moment, but first, here’s another fine wrap up from Graham Lloyd.

Noise specialist cheers wind farm report
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
23 January 2015

A STUDY of health impacts from low-frequency noise at Victoria’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm is “groundbreaking” and makes “a unique contribution to science”, a noise and health expert says.

Bob Thorne, a psycho-acoustician qualified to assess health impacts from noise, said the obvious question from the report, written for owner Pacific Hydro, was whether the operation could be modified to reduce or mitigate disturbances to residents.

“At 235 pages for the report and six technical annexures (491 pages), the study cannot be matched by any previous wind farm study in Australia,” Dr Thorne said in a letter to its author, Steven Cooper, and provided to The Australian.

Mr Cooper was asked by Pacific Hydro to assess three households that had complained about impacts from the wind farm.

He used sophisticated recording equipment inside and outside the houses and near the wind turbines and matched the wind farm performance with sensations recorded in diaries by six residents.

In his report, Mr Cooper said the residents’ observations “indicates that the major source of complaint from the operation of the turbines would appear to be related to sensation rather than noise or vibration”.

The impacts were found to be most pronounced when the turbines were starting up, at full power or changing load by more than 20 per cent up or down. The trigger for adverse sensations was identified as 4Hz to 5Hz at 50 decibels, well below the hearing threshold for that frequency.

Mr Cooper said the results were in line with studies in the US on early-model wind turbines and appeared to be the result of instability of the turbine blades, which did not have free air flowing over them.

Due to the small number of residents surveyed, Mr Cooper and the company said, more testing was required. Pacific Hydro has said that it did not accept Mr Cooper’s findings that a “cause and effect” had been established between wind-farm performance and resident complaints.

The Clean Energy Council has dismissed the findings.

Dr Thorne, who has been asked previously to investigate the health concerns of residents living near wind turbines, said the Cooper report “has raised hard questions for Pacific Hydro to discuss with the residents … The development and determination of the concept of ‘sensation’ as distinct from ‘noise’ due to infrasound, low-frequency sound, audible sound or vibration is groundbreaking and unique”, Dr Thorne said.

“The concept has an important place alongside standard measures such as ‘quality of life’ and psycho-acoustical correlates.”

The obvious support from both Pacific Hydro and the residents was the standout feature of the Cooper study, “and it is clear from the text that the outcomes were not envisaged by yourself (Cooper) or study participants”.
The Australian

Good to see the Clean Energy Council adopting the “if we ignore it, it will all go away like a bad dream” approach. But, with what’s to follow, their wind industry clients might reasonably ask for a refund.

STT hears that the spin-kings at the CEC – now headed up by near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen’s head, Miles “Boy” George – are seething at how Pac Hydro let this one get so completely out of control.

Just goes to show, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. The ruckus that’s blown up amongst former team-mates, is a bit like what happens among professional gangsters, when things don’t pan out quite as meticulously as they were planned.

So, how did it end in such a trail of wind industry tears?

After 6 years of being bombarded with hundreds of bitter complaints from residents, Pac Hydro engaged a top-flight “community outrage” management outfit, called Futureye to slam the lid on those complaints (see our post here).

Futureye failed to quash the complaints – the victims’ seething rage and the complaints continued. No surprises there.

Pac Hydro then made a decision which runs entirely counter to everything that appears in the wind industry’s “playbook”.

Pac Hydro decided to give the residents what they wanted: agreeing to pay to engage Steven Cooper to carry out a proper noise study – and to cough up all the wind speed and turbine operational data required for that task – what’s called SCADA data.

In that one move, Pac Hydro turned the “playbook” on its head, rule 1 of which says:

never, ever, ever cooperate with independent noise studies;
under no circumstances will a wind power outfit hand over wind speed and turbine operational data for any such study (or at all, ever);
if faced with any heat to do so, the operator must automatically claim “commercial-in-confidence” over (wait for it) wind speed measurements etc; and
unless and until hell freezes over, no wind power outfit is to shut down wind turbines to allow for meaningful on/off noise and vibration testing, ever.

Although, we note, the “on-off testing” that occurred at Cape Bridgewater was the result of a two-week shutdown related to high voltage cabling work associated with the wind farm; rather than any deliberate decision on Pac Hydro’s part – much like the “lucky break” that occurred at Waterloo, SA last year (see our post here).

So why did Pac Hydro do it?

STT hears that the boys from Marshall Day and Sonus – Pac Hydro’s pet acoustic consultants – took the view that Steven Cooper would never find anything; their own testing showed that the wind farm was “compliant” with the noise standard; that the infrasound produced by the turbines was the same as that produced by waves on a moonlit beach; the whole thing was like a zephyr in a thimble; and that it would all blow over soon enough – so why not let Cooper have the data and knock himself out?

Hubris can lead to destructive over-confidence; and that can easily lead the sufferer into unforced errors – just like this one. Oops!

And this little boo-boo leads to COMPENSATION time.

As we pointed out above, the wind industry – and the eco-fascists that parrot for it – score high on the register for carping and moaning about matters immediate; but tend to lack the intellectual finesse needed to forecast anything that might pop up from the other side of the horizon.

Sure, this study was limited to 6 long-suffering people and a period of 8 weeks, but as we pointed out in our last post, what Steven Cooper achieved at Cape Bridgewater is easily capable of being:

reproduced;
scaled up to include more homes and residents;
further validated and supported with the inclusion of a representative cohort as a control group in any further study; and
therefore, repeated, validated and extended, both here, and all around the world.

And that is what is going to allow for a raft of litigation, pursued by hundreds of wind farm victims around the Globe.

In the distance, STT can hear the gleeful sound of lawyers opening files, already.

The evidence gathered so far at Cape Bridgewater – and that which will be gathered in reams, both elsewhere in Australia and around the world – will provide lawyers with precisely the kind of ammunition needed to slot just about everybody that is involved with – or who has profited from – the great wind power fraud.

The grounds for liability to victims are pretty straightforward: common law claims in nuisance and/or negligence (for starters) to obtain substantial damages for personal injury – caused by either – for pain and suffering, loss of amenity and enjoyment of life etc – as well as very substantial damages for the loss of the use and benefit of homes; diminution in the value of those homes and properties; relocation costs etc, etc.

The defendants in the gun will include:

the wind power outfits concerned;
the landowners hosting the turbines that cause the damage;
local Councils (where they are responsible for approving noise conditions and/or enforcing them);
State government Planning Departments (where they are responsible for approving noise conditions and/or enforcing them);
authorities, such as Environmental Protection Authorities (where they have either been involved in the creation – and/or (non)-enforcement – of wind farm noise standards);
acoustic experts engaged by the wind industry for their manifest failure to protect the health and well-being of wind farm neighbours – part of their (purported) ethical responsibilities, and especially those involved in the production of the noise standards;
State Health Departments, etc.

In short, a veritable cast of ‘thousands’. And behind them (with the exception of turbine hosts) stand a phalanx of insurers and underwriters – who will, no doubt, be taking a good hard look at their exposure.

Pac Hydro, Infigen & Co are already in a world of financial pain (see our post here).

Pac Hydro is backed by IFM Investors – which last year announced a $685 million profit forecast write-down due to the collapse in the value of its Pac Hydro wind farm investments. Pac Hydro has had $220 million knocked off its value due to “uncertainty” surrounding the RET (see our post here).

And things for these cowboys – and wind power outfits everywhere – can only get worse from here.

The word that investors and lenders need to sear into their cognitive machinery is simple and – wherever the big bucks are involved – profane: we’re talking about RISK.

STT hears that commercial lending institutions in Australia have slammed the door on wind power outfits looking for the cash needed to fund new wind farms for very good reasons (see our post here). What blew up at Cape Bridgewater will simply reinforce that attitude – banks will not touch wind power outfits with a barge pole from here on.

Now, while wind farm victims have the opportunity of slamming those responsible in private litigation, STT begs the poser: why should the victims of a government sponsored subsidy scheme have to pay upfront to be compensated for their inevitable suffering and losses?

The wind industry exists (and only exists) by reason of the Large-Scale RET and the REC Tax/Subsidy directed to wind power generators under it – and paid for by ALL Australian electricity consumers, including those with homes and properties adjacent to wind farms (see our posts hereand here).

As the beneficiaries of what Liberal MP – Angus “the Enforcer” Taylor properly describes as “corporate welfare on steroids”, mandating that the wind industry fully compensate wind farm neighbours for all of their losses seems only fair.

At the Federal level, Australia is all about compensation: whether it’s Centrelink, a National Disability Insurance Scheme or a national healthcare scheme (ie Medicare), the Federal government has no trouble at all forcing taxpayers to cough up and ensure that those without, or who have suffered some of the bad luck dished up by daily life, get compensated.

In the same vein, the wind industry has already pocketed something like $9 billion worth of REC Tax/Subsidies – and is lining up for a further $50 billion of the same under the LRET: “compensation” for producing “renewable” energy that they hope to gleefully pocket at power consumers’ expense.

The wind industry’s victims have, therefore, been belted twice: once through their power bills, paying for the subsidies that resulted in the giant fans speared into their backyards; and again, through their personal loss and suffering, and the economic loss of the value of their (often unliveable and/or worthless) homes and properties.

The wind industry and its parasites were pretty quick to set the ‘rules’ in a way that means wind power outfits can operate around the clock, without any regard for the harm caused (eg, sleep deprivation) – ‘rules’ maliciously designed to discriminate against wind farm neighbours.

These are the boys who have sought to evade and avoid any kind of reasonable controls on their operations.

From the outset, they’ve made every effort to ensure that irrelevant and, therefore, woefully inadequate noise standards were adopted and are maintained; refused to cooperate whenever victims are trying to impose even those woeful standards; and who now – like the Clean Energy Council and the Australian Wind Alliance – are quick to pooh-pooh Steven Cooper’s study on obviously spurious grounds; and who will fight tooth-and-nail to prevent any possibility of the same thing ever happening again.

So, it seems only fair that wind power outfits – who benefit from the largest single industry subsidy scheme in the history of the Commonwealth – see some of the value of the REC Tax/Subsidy (that they would otherwise keep for themselves) get siphoned off to compensate those whose lives and interests they’ve bent over backwards to destroy.

Remember, governments set this mess up in the first place; and, therefore, it is well within their power to clean it up and put things right.

And now is the hour.

Fortunately, all these matters and more are on the radar and squarely in the sights of the Senate Select Committee, it’s terms of reference including the following:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Wind Turbines be established to inquire into and report on the application of regulatory governance and economic impact of wind turbines by 24 June 2015, with particular reference to:

…

(b) how effective the Clean Energy Regulator is in performing its legislative responsibilities and whether there is a need to broaden those responsibilities;

(c) the role and capacity of the National Health and Medical Research Council in providing guidance to state and territory authorities;

(d) the implementation of planning processes in relation to wind farms, including the level of information available to prospective wind farm hosts;

(e) the adequacy of monitoring and compliance governance of wind farms;

(f) the application and integrity of national wind farm guidelines;

(i) any related matter.

If, like those unfortunates at Cape Bridgewater, you are suffering from, or are threatened by, turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – then you’ve got chance to have your say on:

the ‘standards’ and planning ‘controls’ that are so lax as to be risible;
the callous conduct of wind power outfits, like Pac Hydro & Co;
the institutional corruption that not only permits, but which actively defends that conduct;
the losses you have suffered, or are likely to suffer, as a result of the above;
why there should be mandatory compensation payable to wind farm neighbours for all such losses (incurred or anticipated) caused by wind power generators; and
that the compensation payable should come from a fund set-up through a mandatory levy placed on the RECs received by all wind power generators.

So why not get in there and hammer them, by dropping a detailed submission to the Senate Inquiry along those lines?

Note that the opportunity to make submissions to the Committee ends on 27 February 2015. See the link here.

Steven Cooper’s Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Study the Beginning of the End for the Wind Industry

Earlier this week, a small, but very effective, nuclear device was detonated at Cape Bridewater, which – before Union Super Funds backed Pacific Hydro destroyed it – was a pristine, coastal idyll in South-Western Victoria.

The bomb that went off was a study carried out by one of Australia’s crack acoustic specialists, Steven Cooper – and some typically solid journalism from The Australian’s Graham Lloyd – that put the Pac Hydro initiated pyrotechnics in the International spotlight.

Over the next few posts, STT will analyse just what the detonation, its aftermath and fallout means for an industry which, in Australia, is already on the ropes.

And we’ll look at what it means to the thousands of wind farm victims here – and around the world.

We’ll kick off with the front page story that has sent the wind industry, its parasites and spruikers into a state of terror filled panic.

Turbines may well blow an ill wind over locals, ‘first’ study shows
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
21 January 2015

PEOPLE living near wind farms face a greater risk of suffering healthcomplaints caused by the low-frequency noise generated by turbines, a groundbreaking study has found.

The study by acoustics expert Steven Cooper is the first in the world in which a wind turbine operator had fully co-operated and turned wind turbines off completely during the testing.

It opens the way for a full-scale medical trial that may resolve the contentious debate about the health impact of wind farms.

Funded by wind farm operator Pacific Hydro, the study was conducted at Cape Bridgewater in southwest Victoria where residents have long complained about headaches, chest pains and sleep loss but have been told it was all in their minds.

As part of the study, residents living between 650m and 1.6km of the wind turbines were asked to diarise what they were experiencing, including headaches, pressure in the head, ears or chest, ringing in the ears, heart racing or a sensation of heaviness.

Their observations were separated into noise, vibration and sensation using a one to five severity scale.

“The resident observations and identification of sensation indicates that the major source of complaint from the operation of the turbines would appear to be related to sensation rather than noise or vibration,” the report says. “For some residents experiencing adverse sensation effects, the impact can be exacerbated by bending over rather than standing, with the effect in some cases being reported as extremely severe and lasting a few hours.”

Mr Cooper said it was the first time that sensation rather than audiblenoise had been used as an indicator of residents’ perception of nearby wind turbines.

The report found offending sound pressure was present at four distinct phases of turbine operation: starting, maximum power and changing load by more than 20 per cent either up or down.

Mr Cooper said the findings were consistent with research into health impacts from early model wind turbines conducted in the US more than 20 years ago.

The relationship between turbine operation and sensation demonstrated a “cause and effect”, something Pacific Hydro was not prepared to concede, he said.

Survey participant Sonja Crisp, 75, said the first time she experience discomfort from the wind turbines, “it was like a thump in the middle of the chest.

“It is an absolute relief, like an epiphany to have him (Mr Cooper) say I was not crazy (that) when I am doing the dishes I feel nausea and have to get out of the house.”

David Brooks, from Gullen Range near Goulburn, NSW, said health concerns from wind farm developments were not confined to Cape Bridgewater.

The findings should be used as the basis for a thorough health study of the impacts from low frequency noise, he said. “Until this is done, there should be a moratorium on further wind farm developments,” he said.

Pacific Hydro and Mr Cooper agree that more widespread testing is needed. Andrew Richards, executive manager external affairs at Pacific Hydro, said: “While we acknowledge the preliminary findings of this report, what they mean at this time is largely unclear.

“In our view, the results presented in the report do not demonstrate a correlation that leads to the conclusion that there is a causal linkbetween the existence of infrasound frequencies and the ‘sensations’ experienced by the residents.”

Mr Cooper said the findings had totally discounted the so-called “nocebo” effect put forward by some public health officials, who said symptoms were the result of concerns about the possibility of experiencing them.

The Cape Bridgewater study included six residents over eight weeks in three houses.

One hearing-impaired participant had been able to identify with 100 per cent accuracy the performance of wind turbines despite not being able to see them.

Another Cape Bridgewater resident Jo Kermond said the findings had been “both disturbing and confirmation of the level of severity we were and are enduring while being ridiculed by our own community and society.”

Mr Cooper said residents’ threshold of sensations were experienced at narrow band sound pressure levels of four to five hertz at above 50 decibels.

The nominal audible threshold for frequencies of four to five hertz is more than 100 decibels. Mr Cooper said an earlier investigation into health impacts of wind farms by the South Australian EPA had been flawed by limiting the study to only one-third octave bands and not looking at narrow band analysis.

“By looking at high sensation and narrow band I have developed a methodology to undertake assessments using narrow band infrasound. We now have a basis on how to start the medical studies” he said.

Mr Cooper was not engaged to establish whether there was a link between wind turbine operation and health impacts, “but the findings of my work show there is something there,” he said.

Mr Cooper said Pacific Hydro should be commended for allowing the work to proceed.

“It is the first time ever in the world that a wind farm has co-operated with a study including shutting down its operations completely,” he said.

Mr Cooper has coined the term Wind Turbine Signature as the basis of the narrow band infrasound components that are evident in other studies. He said the work at Cape Bridgewater had established a methodology that could be repeated very easily all over the world.

Pacific Hydro said it had conducted the study to see whether it could establish any link between certain wind conditions or sound levels at Cape Bridgewater and the concerns of the individuals involved in the study.

“Steven Cooper shows in his report, for the limited data set, that there is a trend line between discrete infrasound components of the blade pass frequency (and harmonics of the blade pass frequency) and the residents’ sensation observations, based on his narrow band analysis of the results,” Pacific Hydro said.

“However, we do not believe the data as it currently stands supports such a strong conclusion.”

The report has been sent to a range of stakeholders, including government departments, members of parliament, environmental organisations and health bodies.
The Australian

Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater wind farm has been an absolute disaster from the get go, which has destroyed the lives of dozens of people since it carpeted the area in giant fans, starting back in 2008.

In a perfectly predictable response to the results of a study fully (but reluctantly) funded by Pac Hydro itself – the wind industry, and its highly paid spruikers, including the Clean Energy Council – have set out to smash the findings of the report in the usual fashion: shoot the messenger and – as is the want of eco-fascist profiteers – to ridicule and lambast their victims.

Here’s Graham Lloyd again.

Wind lobby rejects health link
The Australian
Graham Lloyd
21 January 2015

THE peak wind industry lobby group has rejected a report linking low-frequency noise from wind farms to health complaints from neighbours.

Clean Energy Council policy director Russell Marsh said he would not support further research into the report findings which linked “sensations” felt by residents to low-frequency noise below the threshold of hearing.

The research was funded by Cape Bridgewater wind farm owner Pacific Hydro which said further research was needed.

“Noise measurements had been taken at just three houses and a small number of self-nominated people participated who had previously made complaints about the wind farm’s operation,” Mr Marsh said.

He said the report’s author, acoustics expert Steven Cooper, “believes he has discovered a link between ‘sensations’ felt by the participants and the operation of the wind turbines”.

“However, a number of these ‘sensations’ were reported when the wind turbines were not operating,” Mr Marsh said.

Mr Cooper said wind farm owner Pacific Hydro had limited the study to three houses and the brief was to measure noise and vibration and see if the complaints from residents could be related to specific wind conditions or noise levels.

The houses selected were chosen because residents had stated they were being affected by the wind farm.

One house had been abandoned because the residents said they could no longer live there.

“The study was required to work backwards from the resident’s observations and see what wind or noise levels agreed with the complaint,” Mr Cooper said. “I don’t think you can get any more objective than that.”

Mr Cooper said simple monitoring of each house had cost about $40,000 and complex monitoring with multiple microphones and vibration detectors was $100,000. On-site monitoring of the turbines had cost a further $40,000.

Some sensations and vibration impact had been reported when the turbines were not operating. But Mr Cooper said this was due to vibration of the blades and towers when they were subjected to wind gusts.

The National Health and Medical Research Council has reportedly said it will call for special research into the link between wind turbines and health impacts.

The Clean Energy Council, which is largely funded by the wind and renewable energy industry, said the Cooper report had come to questionable conclusions, and “the vast weight of scientific evidence shows that wind turbines do not directly affect health”.
The Australian

Nice effort there from CEC spin-king, “Rusty” Marsh. STT followers will remember Rusty’s “Atari” defence – conjured up when the wind industry had to front the work done by NASA in the 1980s, that showed precisely the same kind of problems that are experienced by wind farm neighbours now, existed way back then (see our post here).

Now, why on earth would the Clean Energy Council be out to prevent any further research into the suffering of its clients’ victims?

Could it have anything at all to do with the fact that the Clean Energy Council is now headed up by Miles “Boy” George – the strangely youthful looking head of near-bankrupt wind power outfit, Infigen (aka Babcock & Brown)?

STT’s Spideysenses are tingling.

Could the threat of costly litigation on a massive international scale be sharpening wind industry spin doctors’ minds and their press releases?

It’s a theme to which we will return.

But, first let’s have a look at the guts of the report and just what the study shows.

The report itself is a doorstop – the report runs to 235 pages, with 6 appendices adding another 500 pages or so. The whole shebang is available in the links below:

Cape-Bridgewater-Acoustic-Report

It is detailed; it is technical – so, before you crack into its contents, we suggest that you boil the billy, equip yourself with a brew and plop into your favourite reading chair for a solid day’s work.

While you’re waiting for the billy to get a steam-up – here’s STT’s ‘in-a-nutshell’ version of the study:

The impacts from noise and vibration generated by wind turbines include sleep disturbance – defined by the WHO as, in and of itself, an adverse health effect (see our post here).

In addition, those impacts include a range of other adverse sensations, such as: headaches; pressure in the head, ears or chest; ringing in the ears (tinnitus); heart racing; or a sensation of heaviness.

The impacts are most pronounced when turbines start up, are at full power or changing load by more than 20 per cent up or down.

The trigger for the adverse sensations suffered is turbine noise measured inside homes in the 4Hz to 5Hz frequency range at sound pressure levels as low as 50 decibels – well below the hearing threshold for those frequencies (ie, what is termed “infrasound”).

The audible noise measure (ie dB(A)) – used in the noise guidelines is irrelevant.

The sensation impacts correlated with infrasound generated by the turbines and measured inside homes.

Turbine generated infrasound is readily distinguishable from infrasound generated by natural sources, due to the “signature” produced by wind turbines.

The results accord with the work done during the 1980s by Neil Kelley, et al, which proved that very low frequency noise generated by wind turbines caused the adverse effects suffered by wind farm neighbours.

The wind turbine signature identified by Steve Cooper (for details, see the report and the numerous graphs in it) shows distinct periodic patterns caused by the blades passing the towers; as in this graph from the work done at Waterloo by Professor Colin Hansen and his team (see our post here):

For those unfortunates who have to live with and suffer from any and all the above, so far so obvious.

For a roundup of what Pac Hydro’s victims at Cape Bridgewater have had to suffer for nearly 7 years, see the following posts:

Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Victims to Be Told What They Already Know: Turbine Noise Has Ruined Their Lives

Pac Hydro’s Wind Farm: How the Mandatory RET Destroyed Cape Bridgewater

Pac Hydro’s Cape Bridgewater Wind Farm Victims Vindicated

Pac Hydro promises but fails to fix its screeching fans at Cape Bridgewater

STT suggests that you take your time to read Steve Cooper’s study from start to finish so you gain a proper appreciation of what his report actually says.

Which is something that the wind industry’s apologists in the media; the AMA; the pseudo-scientists who advocate for the wind industry; and spin-doctors like the CEC, Andrew Bray & Co clearly haven’t bothered to do – and if they have bothered to read it, are incapable of understanding – or, more to point, are, for mercenary reasons, obstinately unwilling to do so.

One of the spurious attacks from the wind industry cheer squad is that the number of homes selected, the length the study and what was measured was a matter determined by Steven Cooper.

On the contrary, Pac Hydro – who engaged Cooper and paid for the study – set the parameters, as is clear from the report itself: the third paragraph of the Acknowledgment defines the brief; the fourth paragraph of the Executive Summary repeats it; as does the first three paragraphs of the Conclusion.

It has to be remembered that Pac Hydro was forced by residents to carry out this study – having previously engaged a top-flight “community outrage” management outfit, called Futureye to put a lid on six years of bitter complaints from neighbours (see our post here).

So, Pac Hydro determined to limit the study to a question of whether certain wind speeds and noise levels would give rise to disturbance – and limited that study to ONLY 3 homes and their 6 residents.

Pac Hydro originally set the study period of 6 weeks, but this was increased to 8 weeks to take account of a two-week shutdown related to high voltage cabling work associated with the wind farm.

Given that Pac Hydro itself set the limitations, it seems a little rich that the wind industry’s spin doctors have drawn their bows on Steven Cooper (attacking him, personally) – and are braying in unison that the study is “flawed”, due to those very same limitations.

The easy answers to the carping coming from the wind industry and its parasites, breaks down like this.

Is the study capable of being reproduced? YES.

Is it possible to scale up the study to include more homes and residents? YES.

Is it possible to find a representative cohort as a control group to further validate this or any further study? YES.

In the light of those answers, is it possible to repeat, validate and extend the findings made in the study? OBVIOUSLY.

So far, so scientific.

But, before we leave the topic, we have to notice one mighty red herring that’s been tossed into the ring by pseudo-scientists and mock-medicosthat says the study is “flawed” because it involved “self-reporting” of the sensations experienced by Pac Hydro’s victims.

Now, it just might be that these nitpickers have superlative powers that allow them to simply look at a patient and determine whether he or she is suffering a headache, for example – and the degree of severity of that headache – or any other such “sensation” of the kind the subject of the study?

But we doubt it.

country gp

Sensations and symptoms, such as headaches – and pain, more generally – are always “self-reported”.

The usual drill goes something like this.

Patient: “I’ve been suffering from a headache since Tuesday”.

Dr: “where precisely?”

Patient: “to the front and the right, up here” (touching his bald spot).

Dr: “how would you rate your headache on a scale of 1 to 10?”

Patient: “it was a 7/10 yesterday, but it’s more like a 9/10 today”.

The exchange might result in some diagnostic tests – MRIs etc that might show a tumour, say, but which are yet to establish the existence (or otherwise) of the sensation of pain. But, more often than not, the patient will be sent packing was some analgesics and advice to take it easy for a while.

In all manner of circumstances, sensations of the kind being reported here will always and everywhere be reported by the person experiencing them to those engaged in recording them.

Unless these boys have uniquely mastered the art of telekinesis – then their carping about the study being “flawed” on that ground falls just a little flat.

What the wind industry has to fear is not so much THIS study, but the DOZENS of studies that will be scaled up, repeated and follow on using the same methods and techniques – both here and around the world.

There are hundreds of unwilling guinea pigs in Australia: Bald Hills, Waubra and Macarthur in Victoria; Waterloo, Mt Bryan and Hallett in South Australia; Cullerin, Lake George and Gullen Range in New South Wales – for starters.

Therefore, finding willing participants for any further, larger and more detailed studies doesn’t present an obstacle.

No, it’ll be the wind industry and its parasites – seeking to protect their entrenched financial interests by avoiding liability to their hundreds of victims – that will be working overtime to prevent any further research. The howling from Rusty Marsh from the CEC is just the beginning of a brewing-blockade by the wind industry on any further scientific endeavour.

And those in on the efforts to stymie and shut down any proper investigation into wind farm health impacts include Infigen’s “great white hope”, Energy Minister, Ian “Macca” Macfarlane (see our posts here andhere) and Australia’s utterly disgraceful National Health and Medical Research Council.

The NHMRC has been infiltrated and co-opted by wind industry plants – like Liz Hanna – from Drs for Wind Turbines – and Norm Broner – who worked as a pet noise expert for wind industry consultants, SKM (see our post here).

And – despite having a massive pile of taxpayers’ cash and years to find it – the NHMRC failed to rustle up (or deliberately ignored) the highly relevant work done by Neil Kelley and Co back in the 1980s (see our postshere and here and here) – which STT found without too much trouble (see our posts here and here).

To keep the Cape Bridgewater ball rolling, it is imperative that “Macca” and his Department and the NHMRC be excluded from having any involvement or role to play in any further repeat of Steve Cooper’s work.

Far better to have the Federal Health Minister, Sussan Ley and her sidekick, Senator Fiona Nash put on the case – and to have them appoint a multi-disciplinary team of suitably qualified experts to crack on and do what the wind industry fears most.

And nor should further studies depend on the whims of wind power outfits choosing to co-operate: ‘co-operation’ should be a mandatory obligation placed on the operator at the planning level – as well as a mandatory requirement attached to their ‘entitlement’ to receive$billions in REC Tax/Subsidies, such that a failure or refusal to assist should automatically result in immediate suspension of their accreditation to receive RECs by the Clean Energy Regulator.

The CER is obliged under the Renewable Energy Act to suspend the entitlement for wind power generators to receive RECs where evidence exists of non-compliance with a range of laws, but flatly refuses to do so – even in blatant cases like Gullen Range (see our post here).

Fortunately, all these matters and more are on the radar and squarely in the sights of the Senate Select Committee, it’s terms of reference including the following:

…

(b) how effective the Clean Energy Regulator is in performing its legislative responsibilities and whether there is a need to broaden those responsibilities;

(c) the role and capacity of the National Health and Medical Research Council in providing guidance to state and territory authorities;

(d) the implementation of planning processes in relation to wind farms, including the level of information available to prospective wind farm hosts;

(e) the adequacy of monitoring and compliance governance of wind farms;

(f) the application and integrity of national wind farm guidelines;

For those suffering from or threatened by turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound – the product of ‘standards’ and planning ‘controls’ that are so lax as to be risible – the callous conduct of wind power outfits, like Pac Hydro; and the institutional corruption that not only permits it, but which actively defends that conduct – now is your chance to hammer them; and the so-called ‘standards’ and planning ‘controls’ that set this mess up in the first place – and which, if left in place, will allow it to continue unabated.

Why not drop a submission to the Senate Inquiry along those lines? Note that the opportunity to make submissions to the Committee ends on 27 February 2015. See the link here.

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