I’ve been following the debates about having wind farms come to Wells county. I figure it’s about time for me to put my 2 cents in. Your opinions about the topic are welcome as long as they are well thought out and factual. Remember, we are deciding the future, and it WILL have an impact on our children. The arguments that I have seen against having wind turbines are aesthetics, safety, noise, economic impact and impact on wildlife. So I’ll start with aesthetics, champions against wind turbines state that they are aesthetically unpleasing. The produce a shadow flicker, they have bright lights that flash all the times, and that they are just generally unsightly. Shadow flicker is when the sun passes behind the turbine creating a shadow that nearby residents may find annoying. Be that as it may, a solution to that problem is to find an out of the area where there is not residents nearby. It’s not like there is scarcity of open land in Southern Wells county. I’ve lived in places in southern wells where my nearest neighbor was a half a mile away. So is this really an issue? As for the blinking red lights, they are everywhere, you just don’t even notice them. They are on every tall building, AM/FM/TV/Cellular tower, and water tower built. We hardly notice them because they emit a power of 20,000 candelas during the day and 2,000 candelas at night. So obviously, they are not like a lighthouse. It’s definitely not going to keep you up at night. I don’t believe that aesthetics are a problem. I’ve seen some people talk about safety concerns. I’ve even heard that one of the county commissioners held a picture up of a turbine blade that was torn off and flung and almost hit a house or a barn. That’s simple rhetoric you see. I actually see two fallacies, the slippery slope and the hasty generalization. The hasty generalization is when you draw a conclusion about a population based on a small sample. So, if one does it, they all do it right? The slippery slope fallacy means that if it has occurred, it will occur again. So what commissioner is trying to say is that if we ever had a tornado, all the blades would rip off, and kill everyone! My thought is, is that if we ever had a tornado, I would be more worried about tree limbs and other flying debris well before a turbine blade ever came to mind. The commissioner does have a valid point, I say we get rid of all of the debris during a tornado, Who’s with me!? The second concern of safety is that the wind turbine will sling ice. Admittedly, older wind turbines did sling ice. However, the new models are designed to detect ice and stop the blades from rotating. In addition, even when there was no such technology, ice only flew a maximum of 260 feet. So my advice if you are really paranoid that ice is going to be flung, hit you and kill you, stay back 261 feet away from the turbine. Problem solved. And in case you are wondering, I actually have used credible sources just in case you’re interested in looking. Noise.. I looked up how much noise the wind turbines actually produced. They produce noise at 50 decibels. To put this into perspective, a quiet whisper in a library from 6 feet away 30 decibals, a normal conversation at 3 feet away is 60 decibels. Since we are all staying 261 feet away, because we are scared that ice is going to kill us, is noise really a problem? Can you hear a normal conversation from over half a football field away? Neither can anyone else for that matter. The most interesting thing that people say against wind turbines is that their houses will lose value. Okay, maybe, but we are talking about agricultural land. Neighborhoods aren’t going to be built right next to wind farms. They’ll be out in the country, in the middle of nowhere. The thing that I find interesting about these statements is how we condone having a pig farm or a chicken coop out in the country. Does that necessarily raise property value? I don’t think that I would want to live by one just because of the smell. I did live on a hog farm when I was younger, and I understood that the smell was just part of the business. Why are we condoning one, but demonizing the other? I would not have any problem living reasonably close to a wind farm. Having a windfarm does indeed have a negative impact on wildlife. More specifically it kills birds. The little itty bitty birds fly into the windmills and die. Poor little birdie, didn’t even know what hit him. The bird mortality rate depends on location, when wind turbines are located near the cost or wetlands (where many birds actually are) there is a higher mortality rate. Other places there is zero bird fatalities, an article in Nature stated that there is 4.27 bird fatalities caused a year by wind turbines. So again, lets put this into perspective. . To put it in perspective cats kills 210 million birds a year, windows kill 97 million, cars 50 million, wind turbines 20,000. So by this logic, I say we get rid of all the cats, cars and windows. Again, If you’re interested, I can show you were I found my data. I even read someone stating that we wont recoup the cost of building and maintenance of the wind turbines. This is true if we were building tiny wind turbines. I imagine that the wind turbines we would build would produce around the range of 2 megawatts. So lets do some simple math, say that we sell the energy produced at 5 cents a kilowatt. And I’ve seen that many electric companies will actually buy it for .13 cents a kilowatt. But lets just say 5. A megawatt is 1000 kilowatts. 2 megawatts an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 2*1000*.05*24*365=$876,000 . That is the total potential but in reality since the wind doesn’t blow all the time you’re looking to make about $400,000 Now I looked it up and the maximum cost of a 2mw turbine would cost no greater than 2.2 million. That means it would only take about 5.5 to 6 years to pay off. After 6 years it’s pretty much all profit, and it makes good sense. Even without calculating the reduction in CO2. So with all this being said, I think that it is a good idea. The only problem that I have with it is that only a few people are going to reap the benefits. The company wants to ship the energy to some far off place, and sure the land owners are going to see a profit. So I really do see the problem. Why would anyone want to have wind turbines in their back yard when they wont see the benefits? Here’s one option. There are about 4000 households in wells county. One wind turbine can supply enough energy for 400 households. So we’d need 10. The cost would be 22 million, but you know, it would be worth it in the long run to have our own sustainable energy. And instead of raising taxes, the wells county government could issue municipal bonds. After they are paid off, we essentially have free, green energy. Everyone makes money, everyone saves money. How is this not a good plan. European nations have been using wind energy for a long time, you cant tell me it don’t work. If there is a better plan, please, let me know. One of these days we will run out of fossil fuels, why not prepare for the future now.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:57:19 +0000
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