Ian Bradford - The Wind Farm situation: It’s not getting any better

Part 1 - I have written previously under the heading: “Is there anything good about wind farms?”

Let’s recap on some of the problems I outlined then.

• A site needs to be found. This needs to be cleared. Often many trees have to be removed. In Scotland, a huge 14 million trees have been removed to make way for wind farms. The site needs to be a suitable distance from human habitation . It cannot be too far away from where the supply has to reach due to the cost to get the supply there. The proposed wind farm in Nth Canterbury will occupy about 7.5 km of a ridge. A small forest of native trees will have to go. The native birds there will need a new habitat. Lizards on the site will have to be shifted. This is a common occurrence. In many cases insects or animals need to be shifted. In some cases a shift means most of the shifted animals or insects die. In Nth Canterbury, a colony of bats is nearby. They cannot be shifted. Some will be minced up by the turbine blades.

• Roads have to be formed to get to the site. The base of a turbine requires a large excavation. If the soil is on the soft side then geo-piers are installed. Several holes are drilled of about 3/4m diameter and gravel is rammed down each to a depth of up to 5m. Then the main base is poured. The pad is 3m thick and covers a 20m diameter circle. That means 30-40 truckloads of concrete –about 300 cubic metres. A huge amount of soil/rocks need to be excavated for the base. (About 1200 cubic metres on average.) If there are 20 turbines, then that equates to up to 800 truckloads of concrete- the concrete produced using fossil fuels. 

 

• Turbines are getting bigger and bigger. Mid American Energy is about to build the tallest wind turbine in the US. With a blade extended it will be 180m tall. A blade itself will be 60m in length. The tower will be 110 m. And will require itself about 400 cub metres of concrete, and 30 tonnes of reinforcing steel. The base will be a bit over 3m deep and have a diameter of 30 m. It will need 53 concrete trucks to pour the foundations. The nacelle, that’s the “room at the top,” weighs 95 tonnes and contains the generator, gearbox, and rotor shaft. A medium sized turbine contains about 70 tonnes of copper for which about 50,000 tonnes of earth has to be moved. Oil drips from turbines and is flung off into the surrounding area. A single turbine may contain 850 litres of oil used in the gearbox and for cleaning and cooling. The step–up transformer at the base of each turbine contains about 2500 litres of oil. The substation transformers where the turbines connect to the grid contain 40,000 litres of oil each. So just one wind farm uses a great deal of our valuable commodity-oil. Over a ten year span, a lot of oil leaks from a turbine and livestock allowed to graze around turbines may be ingesting this oil. When the life of a wind farm is over, the ground around a wind farm is unusable due to oil contamination. 

• The Blades: Balsa wood is used in the interior of the blades. Specially grown balsa has run out so now the Amazon is being stripped bare to provide balsa. Increased demand has led to deforestation in the Amazon basin. An organisation called Balseros has been taking balsa illegally from the islands and banks of the Amazon river. This has had a terrible impact on the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Balseros have then moved on to the Peruvian Amazon. Then there is leading edge erosion of the blades. Epoxy resin containing Bisphenol A is being released into the atmosphere. The particles vary in size, but the microparticles are spread far and wide (up to thousands of Km) and may contaminate waterways, and of course pasture around the sites. Exposure to Bisphenol A is a concern because of the possible health effects on the brain and prostrate of fetuses, infants and children. It can also affect children’s behaviour. Additional research suggest a possible link between BP A and increased blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Leading edge erosion

• Every year, millions of birds and bats are sliced up by wind turbine blades, many of them endangered species. The ends of the blades move at about 300km/hr so flying creatures stand no chance.

This is a sea eagle slain by a wind turbine near Wernikow in Germany. In the state of Brandenburg 48 protected birds have been killed by wind turbines. Birds and bats in their millions have been slaughtered in every country.

• Those turbines built in the sea are causing problems to crabs and crayfish. The magnetic fields generated by the cables attract the crabs which become immobilised. The same magnetic field deform the crayfish (lobsters), so that they become crustacean cripples. Leading edge erosion is more significant in sea turbines due to the salt atmosphere. The Bisphenol A contaminates the sea and the particles are ingested by fish. 

• One in every 2000 wind turbines catches fire. Fire is usually caused by an overheated gearbox, a lightning strike or sparks thrown out then the turbine is slowing down. In 2017 there were an estimated 350,000 turbines, so that means in that year about 175 turbines caught fire. That number will be substantially more now. Because of the very large size of turbines now, they collapse more frequently in storms. 

The thick black smoke is toxic.

• Noise from wind turbines causes illnesses in humans. Every time a blade passes the tower there is a deep resonating thump. All the time there is a low frequency hum. The difference in speed between the top and bottom of the blades produces a swishing sound. When the sun is behind the blades there is a disturbing flicker. Major problems are sleep disturbance, nausea, heart palpitations, depression, headaches, and vertigo. According to the WHO, wind turbine noise is more annoying than industrial or transportation noise. There are thousands of case studies. In Germany, wind farms need to be 2km at least, from human habitation. Bits of blades break off from time to time and pose a danger to humans and livestock. Large pieces of ice in cold regions are also thrown off. 

• Disposal of the blades: The blades are supposed to last for 20 years but 10-15 years is about the life a blade. Generally, a blade is not recyclable. Some are ground up and mixed with cement etc, to make a kind of concrete but that is proving too expensive so the blades usually end up in landfills. Epoxy, fibreglass, and plastics will take a long time to degrade and over this time toxic materials will leach into the ground water. New Zealand is a small country. Can we afford to bury huge numbers of these which will be there for hundreds of years? As a matter of interest in the US, the cost of putting just one blade into a landfill is a mere $5200! 

Turbine blades being buried.

Remember: When the wind doesn’t blow there is no power.

Does the Green party care about all the birds and bats killed? Do they care about the health of people? Do they care about landfills full of toxic blades? Do they care about the Amazon stripped of balsa wood? Do they care about destruction of the countryside and the displacement of animals from the sites? Do they care about who is going to take responsibility to remove wind turbines when their useful life is over?

No they don’t care at all about any of these. The Green party is of no use to the public of New Zealand.

Part 2 coming next time- The latest developments.

Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.