Letter from the Hutt News, June 2008 

Turbines: give me hard evidence, not opinions

Ken Mosley's viewpoint article ''living in the shadow of the wind turbines" (Hutt News, 22 April) is right up there with your coverage last year about the search for Noah's Ark. Three important points leap from the article. First, despite an open invitation to over 1,000 households in the Ashhurst area to have their say about the Te Apiti windfarm, no more than 2.6% chose to provide any opinion at all. That means that the 32% who reported sleep disturbance actually represents less than 1% of the population of Ashhurst and Woodville. Every other negative' impact was less than 0.5%!

Second, it is likely a greater percentage of households believe they have been abducted by aliens or they saw Elvis at Petone Pak'n Save.  Such a level of concern pales in comparison to the citizens worried about immunisation, fluoride, mercury amalgam tooth fillings or cell phone radiation none of which concern me in the slightest.

Third, if there is some sort of scientific evidence of clear negative . physiological impacts of wind turbines, where is it? If the internet, you can believe in anything you want. Elvis still lives, aliens are abducting and impregnating our neighbours and that the moon landings were faked.

Surely we can do better than this or are we expected to believe that the vast majority of "experts" on wind energy and its impacts are part of a planet wide conspiracy? I know many people don't like wind generators for a number of reasons. I don't agree with them but I'm open to a debate on the basis of rational, objective and verifiable argument. I am not swayed by subjective, emotive, selective and unverifiable claims of negative impacts. That's called "opinion", and opinions are like anuses, everybody has one.

Right now, I remain one of the 78% who favour wind farms and the 84% who would be happy for a wind farm where I can see it because I am unconvinced by any of the anti wind farm arguments I have read or heard. By all means convince me but please give me evidence, not opinions.

NEIL TONKIN, Horokiwi

Letter in Reply to Neil Tonkin

If Neil Tonkin wants ‘evidence’ on the impact of windfarm noise he should refer to a survey headed by Dr Robyn Phipps of Massey University in November 2006.

From 1100 surveyed living near the existing wind farms in Tararua and Ruahine ranges near Palmerston North,614 responded (56%) which is considered a very high strike rate for a self-returning survey with no follow-up after the close off date.

80% of the households considered the turbines intrusive, 73% unattractive. 52% of households located between 2-2.5 Kilometres and 5-9.5 kilometres reported that they could hear wind turbine noise and 68 households reported sleep disturbances. Nobody reported seeing Elvis which is surprising given the sleep deprivation, strobing, and vibrations which are common. 128 people said the noise ‘was like a train that never arrives’ so if this is the sort of experience that Mr Tonkin thinks is acceptable then perhaps he should consider relocating to that community.

Add to this that any power generated by turbines cannot be stored, they are only productive for 35-40% of the time, what electricity that is generated by turbines is over 60% more expensive than hydro generated, property values are adversely affected for those with a direct view – not to mention the visual pollution to our landscapes – and ask yourself why?

Wind farms are nothing more than hugely expensive political ornaments being peddled by developers looking for commercial gain and carbon credits.

Pete Jenkins, Leeward Drive, Whitby

Blowing away some wind turbine myths

If Ken Mosley believes that qualifications as an engineer are a requirement for understanding the effects of wind farms (20 May), he will be pleased to know that the chief executive of the New Zealand Wind Energy Association Is also a qualified engineer. I find this qualification very helpful from discerning fact from myth, and accordingly I agree with Mr Tonkin's assessment of the relevance of Mr Mosley's survey (29 April).

Mr Tonkin's assessment is also not markedly different to that of the Environment Court in their decision on Project West Wind. Given that our comments need to stand-up to inspection to be credible, we look to present verifiable information about wind energy. We will also challenge inaccurate or misinterpreted information from other sources· like statements 'by Pete Jenkins (13 May). Wind farms in New Zealand actually produce electricity over 90% of the time, not 35-40% as Mr Jenkins suggests.

True, electricity generated from wind turbines is not stored, but nor is electricity from any other form of generation. Our electricity system is designed to generate sufficient electricity to match consumption. Similarly, wind farm developers are not building wind farms to earn carbon credits. Wind farms are not eligible for carbon credits under the government's proposed Emissions Trading Scheme, and wind farms have not been eligible for carbon credits since the final round of the Ministry for the Environment's Projects to Reduce Emissions in 2004. Wind farms in the Wellington region will be built because they can produce electricity at a cost that is competitive with other forms of generation, not because developers or. the government will profit from carbon credits.

 FRASER CLARK, Chief Executive New Zealand Wind Energy Association

Reply to Blowing away some wind turbine myths

 Fraser Clark of the Wind Energy Association claims that I have been inaccurate and misinterpreted information (10^th June)

His bio states that he is qualified in Chemical and Process Engineering, but what relevance this has with wind farms will be as lost on Ken Mosley as is it on me.

There is not a wind farm anywhere in the world that can claim to produce 90% of its installed capacity. Local and overseas experience shows that a 150 megawatt wind farm will only on average produce around 30 megawatts of installed capacity as wind is notoriously unreliable and other more consistent forms of generation are necessary to cover for nature’s shortcomings.

Perhaps Mr Clark should check with Meridian Energy and Trustpower (presumably members of his association) about carbon credits if he thinks wind farms are not eligible.

 Meridian Energy is claiming to have sold carbon credits from their Te Apiti and White Hill farms and as recently as October 20^th 2006 they announced they had sold $9 million in credits to a Swiss organisation from White Hill alone. Victoria University School of Architecture have also bought some of Te Apiti’s to achieve carbon neutrality. In March of this year Trustpower agreed to sell 300,000 credits from their Tararua wind farm to a Japanese electricity company and their spokeswoman Therese Thorn stated that this had paid for the wind farm. She went on the say that “there was never enough revenue to build the farm without selling Trust power’s credits”.

 Are you seriously trying to say these are not an important part of the financial consideration whilst accepting that production costs of wind energy are considerably higher than most conventional forms of generation?  At your own recent Wind Energy Conference it was admitted that power prices needed to increase by 30% to make wind power viable. Contact Energy (another member?) say 40% increases are necessary.

I daresay that wind farms in Wellington city are a more attractive financial proposition to W.E.A members because of their proximity to national grid hook-ups. The problem is that this also means their proximity to significant numbers of homes makes them completely unacceptable in terms of visual pollution to our ridgelines and the impacts of noise and vibration on residents.

The only myths being weaved here are by Mr Clark and his association’s members who seem happy to practice environmental vandalism in pursuit of profit.

 Pete Jenkins, Leeward Drive, Whitby

Further Comment :

At a presentation by Fraser Clark to Moonshine Valley residents he was asked to justify his statements above about wind farm productivity and available of carbon credits to wind farm developers. It turns out that the 90% 'producitivity' that Mr Clark was referring to is based on the percentage of time that turbines generate some electricity, even where this is minimal. So included in this 90% are times when sufficient electricity is being generated to light a torch bulb. The 35% to 40% figure that Pete Jenkins was referring to is based on the percentage of the rated capacity of the wind farm that is produced. So if the rated capacity is 100 MegaWatts, a 40% productivity figure is 40 MegaWatts.  This is the typical definition of windfarm producitivity that is used worldwide.

With regards carbon credits. It appears that the NZ government scheme has indeed ceased for all new wind farms, but that carbon credits continue to be available on the commercial market.  Developers of existing wind farms have already received sufficient funding from carbon credits to in some cases pay for the entire wind farm development.

So it appears that Mr Clark's answers in the newspaper were partial truths stated in a way that was highly misleading, particularly to the less informed, and intended to discredit Pete Jenkins. This is the kind of tactics that we tend to associate with less reputable pushers of dodgy goods and services. If wind energy was truely beneficial to the extent being touted there would be no need for this kind of behaviour as the technology would stand on its own merits.

Ron Segal, Moonshine Valley resident