Just as sound tests prepare to begin on two wind turbines in Fairhaven, opponents have announced – before the test has even happened – that they won’t be appeased no matter what the test results show. If the sound results come back normal, they’ll invoke wild conspiracy theories about how the test was rigged:
Ken Pottel, a member of Windwise, said the group fears Shah could tilt the blades to slow the turbines and thus lessen the noise they make during testing. He said the group is particularly concerned about [turbine builder Sumul] Shah’s ability to control the turbines remotely from his cellphone and laptop.
“It’s obviously in his best interest to make sure these turbines pass the test,” he said. “How do we know he isn’t controlling the pitch from his phone?”
Shah said he not only “would not do that” but that “it is impossible for me to adjust the speed of the rotor while the turbines are spinning.” Shah said he can only change the pitch of the blades when the turbine is turned off. If the turbine is on for testing, he said, its speed cannot be controlled.
“I have no intention of doing that and, not only that, I can’t do that; it’s technologically impossible,” he said.
Before the turbines were built, wind opponents pushed theories with no basis in reality about health impacts. Since the turbines were built, wind opponents have been busily filing noise complaints about the near-silent turbines. Now, we have new conspiracy theories about secretly rigged sound tests.
It’s important that these test be completed. If the sound levels are too high, that should be addressed. But no one should be under any illusions that these tests, no matter the results, will do anything to satisfy opponents, who deny any reality that doesn’t fit their pre-existing points of view.
And let’s be honest, views are what this is all about – “we don’t think we should cut the pollution that causes global warming and asthma and puts mercury in our waterways and fish and pregnant women because we think the turbines muck up the view” is a terrible argument that doesn’t sway anyone, so wind opponents try to come up with something more reasonable-sounding, hence health impacts and double-secret phone-based turbine-tampering.
What we really need to test is why anyone would think opponents of wind energy can be appeased.
All you have to do is follow the money, see who pays who. I can hardly wait for the African Desert Solar energy generators to take over world energy – as they will – it is only a matter of time…while Big Oil ensures backwater status to this onnce proud country, laughing as their predatory eleite owners and CEO types bank their money secretively overseas. Lovely picture, no?
Smart phone posting is tricky.
These very companies are passing up a huge business opportunity, it seems, to get on board with renewable energy while it’s still relatively early. The first company to break ranks will get a huge market share and they should be incentivized by Congress transfering subsidies currently offered to oil to renewables.
I spend time each summer at a point on Buzzard’s Bay from which you can see these two turbines, as well as a few more over in Falmouth. I don’t get the “spoil the view” argument at all. If they mess up the view, then so does the Ned’s Point lighthouse.
I’ve never understood what’s so unsightly about a wind turbine. But to each their own, I guess.
People have seen things one way their entire lives, so they instinctually reject anything that would change it, no matter how much better that change would make things.
They need to be educated, when possible, and ignored when not. When all is said and done — and the thing is built — they’ll quickly reason it’s no big deal.
I live less than half a mile from the wind turbine at the McGlynn School in Medford (visible from 93), and I have never heard it make any noise. Not only can I not hear it from my house, but I was unable to hear more than a gentle hum standing right at the the base. I’ve also been right next to the turbine in Newburyport, since it’s adjacent to the rock climbing gym we go to, and also haven’t heard anything.
Noise is a nonsense argument. We’ve already damaged our environment enough, we need to move away from fossil fuels and allow more renewable projects to go forward.
Seriously, my next door neighbor’s AC unit makes far more noise.
direction and speed of wind, terrain, and other noisemakers in the area have a substantial impact on the *perception* of sound. Different frequencies have dramatically different impacts on perception as well.
If we’re going to put industrial facilities near population densities, we have to be thoughtful about their externalities, both visual, auditory, smell, emissions, etc. Both wind turbines and other kinds of power plants.
Are these particular turbines in violation of either (a) the law or (b) reasonable standards? I have no idea. Just keep in mind that this kind of thing is extremely site-specific, and that experience at other locations may not be much guidance.
… they are in violation of any operational noise specifications. Usually such specs are compared to a baseline. Based on anecdotal observation, the difference between baseline and full operation is probably negligible when you consider what the ambient noise levels are in any already windy area.
Let’s be honest, they are ugly monstrosities that will litter the ocean. Why a state with the highest electricity rates would push the most expensive form to generate electricity, ocean based wind power. Even Ted Kennedy was against it and likely smiled when Scott Brown won his seat, to continue his fight to save Nantucket Sound, and our money.
Deval should be reaching out to the owners of Pilgrim I to see if they want to build a modern nuclear plant. The land and power lines are already there and it is reliable.
… but choosing sides with the 1% over clean energy was not his finest moment.
Know what the *average* cost overrun of a nuclear power plant is? Over 250%. That’s the ones which get finished… some never did, and all that money generated no electricity whatsoever.
Check out Turkey Point in Florida. Huge cost overruns. Then, have a look at the nuclear power plants which are shut down *right now* due to operating problems. SONGS in California due to premature wear on parts. Millstone 2 in Connecticut because the cooling water (Long Island Sound) is too warm to effectively keep it cool. Braidwood in Illinois may have to shut down for a similar reason — its cooling pond hit 102 degrees. Quad Cities has to shut down from time to time because the water temperature becomes too hot to discharge into the Mississippi River — and it isn’t the only one. There are concerns that nuclear plants will have to close because their water intake pipes will be too high for the water level in the drought conditions currently faced between the Appalacians and the Rockies.
Nuclear power has very low carbon emissions [some due to construction, mining, and transportation]. But, it’s wicked expensive. Far more expensive than offshore wind. More expensive than solar panels even. Oh, and then there’s the risk of a massive disaster, and the question of what to do with the waste. Personally, I’m indifferent to nuclear — I think that there are other power stations which are harming people far more directly and dangerously than nuclear. However, since I do pay electricity bills along with everybody else, I would prefer if we replaced those dangerous plants with the most cost effective clean and safe generators out there — and it ain’t nuclear my friend, not even close.
P.S. The owners of Pilgrim I will only build a nuclear power plant in states where the state (a) guarantees that the ratepayers MUST pay for the plant, even if it isn’t cost effective, (b) includes cost overruns in that first part, and (c) requires the rate payers to pay for the plant before it’s even operational. That can only happen in parts of the country which have a top-down government-run system. Neither New England, New York, the mid-Atlantic, Texas, nor California have a system like that, and that’s why you won’t see anybody proposing to build a new nuclear unit in those areas — investors simply aren’t willing to take on the risk because it’s a bad bet. They’ll only build if the government puts the ratepayers (you!) on the hook for the risk.
Invest in modern nuclear plants. Pilgrim I has is over 40 years old, hardly a hiccup. I bet most of the cost overruns are due to environmentalists throwing lawsuit after lawsuit, delaying every step of the way. We need to fast-tract these new plants, which are designed never to have a meltdown, unlike the old ones still in operation.
How much did you want to bet. Come on. You’re making bets about an industry I study for a living… and you don’t.
So, put up $100. Let’s go. You talk tough. I will bet you $100 that “most of the cost overrun” [measured in real dollars] is *not* due to environmentalist lawsuits.
What say you? Do we have a bet, or are you skered?
Somehow I don’t think you’re going to hear more about this from Dan.
The Seabrook plant in New Hampshire suffered 2 years of delay7 due to intervenor activity based on the plant’s discharges of warm water (typically 80°F) into the Atlantic Ocean. Intervenors claimed it would do harm to a particular species of aquatic life which is not commercially harvested. There was nothing harmful about the water other than its warm temperatures. The utility eventually provided a large and very expensive system for piping this warm water 2� miles out from shore before releasing it.
But again with Seabrook, the most expensive delay came after the plant was completed and ready to operate. It is located in such a way that the 5-mile radius zone requiring emergency planning extends into the state of Massachusetts. Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts, in deference to those opposed to the plant, refused to cooperate in the planning exercises. After about 3 years of delay, which added a billion dollars to the cost, in early 1990 the NRC ruled that the plant could operate without that cooperation. Governor Dukakis is appealing that decision, but the plant is now operating.
A rather different source of cost escalation is cash flow problems for utilities. When they institute a project, utilities do financial as well as technical planning. If the financial requirements greatly exceed what had been planned for, the utility often has difficulty raising the large sums of extra money needed to maintain construction schedules. It may therefore slow down or temporarily discontinue construction, which greatly escalates the final cost of the plant. For plants completed in the 1980s, this source of cost escalation was to a large extent due to regulatory turbulence, which caused the original financial planning to be so inadequate.
In summary, there is a long list of reasons why the costs of these nuclear plants were higher than those estimated at the time the projects were initiated. Nearly all of these reasons, other than unexpectedly high-inflation rates, were closely linked to regulatory ratcheting and the turbulence it created.
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html
Which part of “the most expensive delay” was confusing? Emergency planning is NOT “environmentalists throwing lawsuit after lawsuit”.
The bet that you made was that “most of the cost overruns are due to environmentalists throwing lawsuit after lawsuit, delaying every step of the way.”
Your own research shows that you lost your bet.
Because your own, ahem, analysis blames (1) enviro delays caused by warm water discharge, (2) “the most expensive delay” having nothing to do with a lawsuit, environmental or otherwise, (3) cash flow problems which could be caused by any number of problems related to intervenors, regulators, supply chain, engineering, weather, etc.
In summary, for one nuclear plant, you mentioned a list of things which caused cost overruns, and only one of them was related to an environmental lawsuit.
Words have meaning. Specific words have specific meanings. You’re nowhere near close to proving your claim. I eagerly await an email from Bob, David, or Charlie letting me know you’ve inquired how to pay me the $100 check your diarrhea mouth wrote.
He purposely did the environmentalist wackos bidding. You lose, send cash to any animal shelter.
Never mess with a bull or you’ll get the horns!!!!
n/t
n/m
I get lots of sixes, that a good rating?
.
They were thought to be the best and safest in the world at it, building plants which were “designed never to have a meltdown.”
How’d that work out for them?
Nuclear plants don’t — and can’t — have a simple cut-off switch, so none of them are 100% safe from a meltdown. They may be safe, so long as there’s not a natural disaster, but Murphy’s Law has an answer for that — and Pilgrim itself is considered one of the highest earth quake risks in the entire country.
Furthermore, you completely dismiss the cost of nuclear — which has nothing to do with lawsuits. Any proposed plant or project will get them; Cape Wind was derailed by lawsuits for a decade and I don’t see you complaining about that. (Cough*hypocrite*cough*)
Nuclear power is so expensive…. because it’s expensive. Way, way, way expensive. Moreover, the costs don’t just disappear, even when the plant closes. Those plants have to be staffed and maintained for decades beyond when they stop producing power — and guess who has to pay for that?
Dan, you claim to be an “independent” but all you do is Rush Limbaugh parrot talking points. You can’t have it both ways. Either you should be honest that you lack any and all intellectual curiosity and merely like to shill, or you should write substantive posts that actually add to the conversation and show some independence of thought (thought being the critical word).
I said that there was no way to make a nuclear facility completely safe from natural disasters. I should have just said disasters. God knows nuclear plants haven’t been designed to be 100% protected from a highly coordinated act of terrorism.
Don’t forget the staggering costs of dealing with the waste generated by nuclear plants. The US has evaded the question of how to handle nuclear waste for decades — and the cost of “solutions” only climbs. The aftermath of the tsunami highlights the dangers of using the plants themselves for “temporary” storage of nuclear waste.
Wind turbines are beautiful. I’d go see them as functional works of art, as far as I’m concerned.
They’re little different than other coastal works of functional art, from old fish houses to light houses to boardwalks and piers.
Whether at sea or on land, wind turbines are beautiful constructions of humankind that provide an invaluable service to our species in a safe and sustainable way.
They’re modern day extensions of windmills, which have a long and storied place in our specie’s cultural history and art — and I’m sure faced their own share of NIMBY complaints and delusionals of ‘ugliness’ back in the day, too.
….
And after Fukushima, you’d have to be OFF YOUR ROCKERS to think that the citizens of this Commonwealth would prefer nuclear to wind. The vast majority of people in this state — including Cape Cod — support Cape Wind. I doubt any regional population of this state, nor the people of this state itself, would support another nuclear plant.
…when I see one. They are so graceful.
And look, peeps, I’m a nature lover (despite my city living) and an artist, so I know from aesthetics. These windmills are seriously pretty. They remind me of seabirds on the wing.
That is what I was trying to convey above. Thanks.
bring ’em on.
I return to BMG to find that trollin’ dan is still at it, and people are still feeding him. Guess I’ll hold on to that $40.
Incidentally, I spent the last week on Maui, which really is a paradise. They have a large array of windmills on the west end of the island, in full view of several of the more popular beaches and hotels, and almost nobody seems to mind.
The communities that host those beaches and hotels have not been prompted to generate evacuation plans in case of a windmill disaster. (See: Hampton Beach.)
Six!
Those windmills on Maui are owned by a Boston business.
it seems unlikely that the plant will close after so much was just invested to lessen its environmental impact.
But if we were to replace the energy production of Brayton Point, roughly how many wind turbines would we need?
Brayton Point 1,290 Megawatts – Cape wind 468 Megawatts – plus single stage (which are not efficient) gas plants for backup when the wind doesn’t blow.
Why not just build gas plants ?
Why force the residents of Massachusetts to buy Cape Wind power at a premium?
because it forces the masses to use a much higher percentage of their hard earned money to pay for energy, this limiting their disposable income toward high carbon emitting endeavors like travel, taking a airplane trip, purchasing a vehicle with a large engine, etc. Keep the people living poorly so they emit less carbon in order to save the planet fr climate change.
You’ve posted since I’ve offered up a bet on your nuclear claim.
What say you? $100? Are you confident in your claims?
The “Brayton Point coal plant” is less than 1100 MW. Brayton Point units 1-3 are coal:
* Unit 1 – 243 megawatts
* Unit 2 – 240 megawatts
* Unit 3 – 612 megawatts
Total: 1,095 MW. Not 1290. Unit 4 is natural gas.
One need not build 1 MW of natural gas for each 1 MW of wind, and New England currently has LOTS of natural gas generation, both “single stage” (known as CT) and the more efficient combined cycles (CC). While CTs are less efficient than CCs, the carbon emissions from CTs are less than coal. The SOx emissions from CTs are essentially zero [coal is much more than zero]. Their NOx emissions aren’t materially different.
Why not just build gas plants? The fact is that Massachusetts is a divested state — anybody is free to come in and build whatever plant they want and compete in the marketplace, subject to permits, etc. I’m not opposed to more natural gas plants per se, but there are a few reasons why adding wind (and PV, and EE) may make more sense:
1. New England has lots of gas generation already. Betting bigger on natural gas will make the region more susceptible to supply or price shocks
2. Natural gas emits about half the CO2 per MWh as coal, but that’s still a lot more than zero.
3. Wind turbines are far less susceptible to sudden large outages, which actually adds to their reliability relative to a gas or coal plant. Sure, transmission could fail either way, but a sudden wind turbine failure brings down 1-5MW of generation, not many 100s of MWs. But the wind could stop blowing at any time! Not really. Folks have gotten really good at forecasting wind as far as 6 hours out, which means that they’ve got a 6 hour warning to replace that wind generation — and CCs can certainly ramp up that quickly, as can CTs.
To answer your last question: because we refuse to charge fossil fuel and nuclear plants the full cost of their externalities — CO2, SOx, NOx, Hg, ash, PM2.5, PM10, site cleanup, transportation of fuel, and risk of major disaster. If we did, we wouldn’t have to “force” residents to buy Cape Wind — it would be the cheapest form of electricity available in New England in large quantities.
If you drive up the costs – you will drive the jobs and companies to China and India – where there are much less controls on pollution – and we all share the same atmosphere.
I like the idea of Cape Wind, but it messes up the entire idea of the ISO system. Cape Wind should compete on its own – it already gets huge tax breaks – why should we be required to pay for the output if it’s not competitive.
I understand your comment about wind farms and major outages – one turbine goes down – you only lose a small percentage as opposed to one large gas turbine – but is it correct – if you bring all of cape wind over one line to the mainland – you still have one point of failure.
Both approaches to energy generation are susceptible to such single-point-of-failure weaknesses. That’s a separate readily-managed engineering issue.
Electricity is one form of energy businesses use quite a bit of, along with oil/gas for heating their buildings and gasoline/diesel for transport. For most businesses, electricity is a *tiny* part of their cost, and moving to India and China because of electricity costs is rather implausible, as labor, taxes, and transport cost substantially more. Sure, there are exceptions [like aluminum smelting], but they are quite rare. I’ve read your claim a number of times, but never — not once — seen evidence that anything more than a few heavy raw material based industries like metallurgy have ever moved offshore because of electricity prices. Perhaps you’ve got something from an economics journal which suggests otherwise? It’s true — amortized over ~25 years, Cape Wind is more expensive than a new natural gas combined cycle (CC) plant. It’s also true that simply looking at immediate cost is insufficient to properly plan for a reliable, low cost, low-polluting system moving forward. Cape Wind will provide a number of benefits [and avoid a number of harms] for this region that an additional CC or other fossil fuel plant can’t provide [nor avoid]. The market isn’t set up to capture those benefits nor costs, so it’s no surprise that the market doesn’t show Cape Wind as the lowest cost.
The ISO system is NOT a free market. Not by a long shot. Some plants get reliability-must-run (RMR) status, and get paid more than the market rate. Other plants, because of slow ramping rates, minimum run time, minimum on time, and minimum off time, impose inefficiencies on the market which get socialized. Those “other” plants — steam plants, coal and some gas. Furthermore, ISO can’t and the states and feds don’t [completely]* impose the detrimental externality costs imposed by coal and gas. By no means does Cape Wind mess up the entire idea of the ISO system. The ISO system is to encourage sufficient capacity and to efficiently dispatch power stations. Adding Cape Wind increases generation capacity, and Cape Wind, once built, will be placed in the economic dispatch stack — and will be dispatched precisely because, per marginal cost of generating a kWh, it is cheaper than all coal and all gas plants.
* There is a cap and trade system in place for SOx and NOx, but certainly not for Hg, ash, CO2, and so forth, not to mention the externalities of mountaintop removal and so forth.
No question that a smelter is going to find the cheaper source of energy. I seem to remember Tesla built the first AC power station to run a smelter near Niagara falls.
In my business energy costs amount to 3% to 4% of gross revenue – typically more than profit. I use energy to run expensive machinery with expensive employees to compete against firms overseas that make the product(s) by hand. Double my energy cost – I’ll have to raise prices and lose sales and possibly staff. This is true in the few manufacturing companies left in Massachusetts – be they machine shops or metal fabrication facilities. The firm in my facility previously departed to Texas for low cost energy (and housing).
My understanding is the ISO costs don’t get “socialized” – if your plant isn’t on-line when it’s suppose to be – you are responsible for the cost of providing the electrical at whatever price. You don’t ramp your plant up on time – you are in trouble. So is Cape Wind also exempt from these requirements, they shouldn’t be ?
Marginal cost of providing electricity from Cape Wind should be cheaper than coal or gas – but I’m pretty sure nuclear wins – actually I believe sometimes the cost of Nuke power goes to zero in the middle of the night.
… which is why many of the upper income Indians and Chinese are leaving India and China for cleaner, greener pastures…
And while there may be, for the present, less controls on pollution in China and India, this does not mean that those countries are NOT investing in wind, solar, hydro and nuclear in a very big way.
So any company that leaves the US for China in search of cheaper energy might, in any respect, end up just as tied to solar, hydro and/or wind as they would be here… What?
“For generations, the world’s less-developed countries have suffered brain drain – the flight of many of their best and brightest to the West. That, of course, has not stopped. But now, a reverse flow has begun, particularly to countries like China and India and, to a lesser extent, Brazil and Russia. Some scholars and business leaders contend that this emigration does not necessarily bode ill for the US.”
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/nri/returning-to-india/gen-next-of-immigrants-in-us-return-home-india-china-to-gain-from-reverse-brain-drain/articleshow/12696172.cms?
I think it doesn’t bode well for us. I want them to stay here.
Natural gas is relatively cheap now (compared to oil) especially since it has been overproduced lately but we don’t have an unlimited supply of that either and many people depend on it for heating and cooking. I would rather we not use that as our primary power supply since that would be upward pressure on the prices many of us will pay for heat.
Eventually we are going to have to switch to renewable energy or maybe if we are lucky someone will figure out how to make fusion power work (and work safely of course), so we may as well start doing this now.
Sure, supply and demand, right?
It turns out that those fracking shale aren’t drilling for natural gas. Not really. They’re really drilling for oil, or more precisely, liquid hydrocarbons. They get natural gas as a byproduct, and are happy to sell it, but the gas doesn’t justify the risk of drilling the well — the oil does. It is the global oil market which has made fracking so attractive, regardless of the low price of the gas market.
It’s true that in the mid term, traditional gas plays might slow down — but there’s no slowing the fracking game in the foreseeable future. It’s also true that America might allow for the construction and operation of a slew of offshore LNG terminals (like Everett). But, until then, there’s a massive price difference between low prices in tUSA&Canada [and Russia] and higher prices elsewhere.
The price of gas is remarkably lower than it’s been in quite a long time — your heat bills should be lower.
To be clear, I don’t disagree — we really do need to keep pushing for more renewables, to reduce our use of gas and coal. It’s a journey of many miles, so lets start taking steps in the right direction.
Those of us with an interest in saving the planet would very much prefer that renewable power be cheap so as to encourage its use.
Fossil fuel plants have long been able to EXTERNALIZE the costs of their business. Pollution, global climate change, even the building of those plants were often subsidized. They don’t have to pay to clean up their messes most of the time and they certainly don’t have to be the ones addressing global climate change – no, the rest of us have to do that.
Compare that to the modest (in many cases VERY modest, comparitively) subsidies wind and solar get.
If fossil fuels (and nuclear) had to face the entire costs of their negative results, they would be SOOOO much more expensive than building and setting up a wind farm. SO much more.
in the case of fossil fuels, the fact that the getting of the fuel (fracking, oil drilling, coal mining like mountaintop mining) are heavily subsidized and externalized. Who cleans up after a mountaintop has been removed and the rivers are heavily polluted? Who is going to address the water that can be put on fire from methane from local fracking, or damage done by the earthquakes fracking is causing? Not the companies! Oh no! Never them. Or else they’ve never crack open the ground in the first place, it’d be so expensive.
Industrial machinery, with blades spinning @ 200 mph, does not belong in residential neighborhoods.
This tone of this article is dismissive of noise problems that plague the wind industry and the citizens subjected to associated health problems when wind turbines are deployed in their neighborhoods.
Perhaps the State would be more sympathetic if fewer Public Officials were in the wind business, and more Public Officials had industrial wind turbines in their backyards.
As for Cape Wind, we need and are entitled to a reliable energy source that’s commercially reasonable. Cape Wind is neither, nor, as Cape Wind is “discontinued”, “sinking”, “shifting” and “corroding”, as specified by the developer and installed offshore UK, the evidence:
http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2012/07/29/13018297-cape-wind-is-discontinued-sinking-shifting-and-corroding-by-developers-specifications
Home Depot offers a leaf blower and proudly advertises “air speeds measuring up to 235 mph you can tackle tough cleanup chores”.
I’m confident that “blades spinning @ 200 mph” are no more dangerous than that leaf blower. I think you’ll find such “industrial machinery” is far more common in residential neighborhoods than you suggest.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll take the wind turbine over the leaf blower any time.
I use a rake, so should everyone else.