I am in favour of wind farms because I see them as a small part of the answer to the greenhouse problem, but they are not all good (you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs).
One of my greatest concerns is the number of bats that might be killed by collisions with turbine blades. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, but can imagine that bats would follow clouds of night-flying insects and these might fly high enough to go through the blade area of wind turbines; also, the bats would not have reason to watch out for objects travelling at several hundred kilometres per hour.
Does anyone know more?
3 comments:
I have just discovered your useful pages. The followingsite gives up to date data on wind farms:-
http://windfarmperformance.info/
From this I have calculated that the Australia wide capacity factor for July 2010 was 24% and 1648MW is the installed or nameplate capacity.
It will be hard to make the 20% RET-
Kevin
www.globalwarmingaustralia.info
kevincasey70@gmail.com
Wind farms are devastating to bird and bat life. The turbine blades create a draft which sucks in the flying birds and bats and because the blades often turn too fast they do not see the blades. Wind turbines are devastating to the environment as they are made of fibreglass and steel all contribute to CO2 emissions and if on fire produce toxic fumes and no fire brigade goes within 1 km and no plane within 2 km. They also need backup 24/7 in case of no wind or too much wind. over 44 workers and over 14 passerbys have been killed by them. Genie81
I regularly traverse the South Gippsland Highway past the Toora wind (euphemistically-named) farm. Interesting that. Wind "farms" are never described as power stations like their coal/gas-fired peers. I guess the term farm conjures up prettier images of gambolling, fluffy baby lambs and the contented clucking of happy free-range poultry? Whereas power "stations" are noisy, dirty, smelly and frightening places?
Amway. Can I be the first to raise an objection on purely aesthetic grounds?
Although there's only a handful of turbines at Toora, even if one is pro-wind power, it has to be acknowledged that these things are undeniably UGLY! They're easily visible from more than 10km distant, and the entire townsite, and you can - somewhat incongruously - see them from the nearby Hazel Park (Agnes Falls) nature reserve!
Even from the falls viewing platform, one can see these things marching across the horizon like the aliens from H G Wells' famous novel.
Personally, I have no particular objection to the principles of wind-generated power (well, apart from its ludicrous 30% capacity factor versus a theoretical 100% coal/gas capacity factor that is!) but local communities and/or individual residents MUST have the ultimate say on the approval of these wind farms. To put this into some perspective, it would require at least 250 Toora-sized turbines to provide the same 100% capacity as the 1,200MW coal-fired Hazelwood power station.
And although Hazelwood alone provides 25% of Victoria's electricity needs, it only produces 2.8% of Australia's total CO2 emissions. Is there any short-term need then to close it down as the wind power lobby is claiming? Of course not.
Until the wind farm lobbyists can assure me that ALL wind farms will be located beyond the line of sight from residential settlements of any size, and the lines of sight to our natural geographical features and coastlines, I'll continue to vehemently oppose their construction.
The man-made visual pollution of Victoria's natural environment is too much to risk in return for the yet unproven capacity of wind-powered electricity generation.
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