Comment In response to Liberal visit regarding Allendale Wind farm 

I would like to Applaud The Liberal Party for listening to the concerns of the community. Their commitment to facilitate the undertaking of further research into the noise and health aspect of wind farm placement demonstrate a party willing to show real responsibility and an understanding of the necessity to listen to the people who have very real concerns. In addition the Liberals commitment to undertake the improvement of the planning aspect demonstrate that they have the ability and the fortitude coupled with the desire to show real fairness in leadership and tackle the complex issues. These two aspects are fundamental requirements of our leaders and a continuing commitment of this type will demonstrate that the Liberal Party is prepared for the job of leading our state. (I must point out that I have never previously been a Liberal voter)

In response to the behaviour shown by Berkfield and his sidekick Mckinnon I appreciate the Statesmanship of Richard Paltridge in putting Berkfield in his place. Apparently this is not the first time he has demonstrated poor manners and obvious contempt at the communities justified concern. It is Time for this pair and their cohorts who stand to make a buck at the expense of battling families to put their money where their mouth is. The landholders who wish to house turbines can install a clause in their contracts with the developer whereby- turbines that diminish the Property Value, Exceed the noise threshold or create any other hazard will be removed. At no time have the State Government, the District Council, Acciona nor the Host Landowners offered any such Guarantee. It is quite simple- if the product you wish to impose on the community is so damn good stand by it. They wont because they cant- Turbines have been shown to exceed noise, cause property devaluation and health problems. Berkfield and Mckinnon are blatantly ignorant if they claim otherwise.

In response to Tim Oloughlin Commissioner for Renewable Energy who seems to have been let of his chain lately please respond to my following claim. Australia will propose to sell more carbon intensive products than ever to the world community- there is a national rush to build some of the biggest coal load outs possible and SA will build the biggest most poisonous hole in the ground possible – obviously we cannot get the poisonous stuff off our shores fast enough. Then we will continue to trumpet the climate change tune and force these poor countries who are addicted to our carbon intensive products to purchase carbon offsets by the way of subsidising our Wind farm white elephant at the expense of battling families such as mine. It is like manufacturing and selling tobacco then forcing the drug addicts to purchase our nicotine patches all at the rural communities expense. Tim Please see the following letter from someone who knows a thing or two about Energy Research and development. It is time for the community to be aware of the futility of Wind Farming.

The futility of Wind Farming (A Letter to “The Land ” by PAUL MISKELLY
BE MEngSc (both degrees in Electrical Engineering)

Dr Benjamin Ticehurst (Letters, The Land, November 24) seems to believe that building a large fleet of wind farms around the NSW countryside will forever remove the risk of dire climate change posed by the otherwise-required burning of fossil-fuel. Sadly, this view has no sound basis.

An examination of operational data shows we can be absolutely certain that wind generation can have no mitigating effect whatsoever on climate change.

A retired electrical engineer with more than 30 years experience in energy research and development, I have examined in detail the electrical generation performance of the fleet of wind farms presently connected to the eastern Australian electricity grid.

This fleet has an installed capacity of some 2000 megawatts and is spread right across the grid for a distance of some 1100 kilometres in an east-west direction and some 500km north-south. Its performance is therefore representative of what we can expect from any proposed larger fleet of wind farms in this region.

Dr Ticehurst might be interested in the results of this analysis based on publicly available data.

The output can never be described as “smoothly varying”, as some commentators would have us believe. Indeed it is quite the contrary: it is constantly varying over a very wide range, and at times extremely rapidly.

On more than 30 occasions during the calendar year 2010 the total wind farm output plunged to less than two per cent of that installed capacity. Indeed, on some occasions the output was absolutely nothing at all. In addition, there are frequent, sharp, unpredictable changes in the output amounting to up to several hundred megawatts at a time.

On an electricity grid, where the load/generation balance must be managed second-by-second, this sort of behaviour is not only an absolute nightmare for the grid operator, it is totally unacceptable, because it has to be compensated for by varying the output of controllable generators constantly running, whose sole task is to balance wind’s vagaries.

To an engineer, this dive-to-zero failure is an example of what is called a “common-mode failure”: it is another way of saying that the entire wind generation fleet has failed at those times. Such a fault condition would never be tolerated in conventional, reliable plant. Indeed, the total failure of the entire generation fleet of a particular type of conventional generator, for that is what this event is, would result in an immediate, full-scale public inquiry, with heavy fines placed on the operators of such generation plants.

It gets worse. Because this is a common-mode failure, whether 10 or 100,000 wind farms were to be connected to the grid, there would still be the same unacceptable number of common-mode failures, but with an additional twist: the larger the number of wind farms, the larger are those totally unacceptable power excursions, making it even harder to control the grid.

The more wind farms that are connected to the grid, the greater the impact of wind’s inherent instability on grid reliability: more wind energy means an increasing likelihood of frequent, unpredictable, widespread blackouts across the eastern Australian grid.

As for Dr Ticehurst’s fond hope that more wind farms will mean that we can stop burning coal and gas, in fact seemingly perversely, the exact opposite would occur.

The results of the analysis show that each increment of wind generation requires the provision of fast-acting, controllable, backup generation: that is, each new 100MW of wind farms will require 100MW of new fossil-fuelled generation solely for backup.

Furthermore, each such 100MW of fossil-fuelled generation has to provide on average 60-70MW output because of the wind farms’ poor capacity factor.

Dr Ticehurst can rest assured that, if anything, the coal and gas industry are jumping for joy at the prospect of more wind farms.

PAUL MISKELLY
BE MEngSc (both degrees in Electrical Engineering)
Mittagong.

In Closing: the Community Concerns, the ever increasing evidence demonstrating that there is a problem with Turbine Placement, the National Health and medical research Council of Australia have recommended a Precautionary approach, Specialist Courts have rejected various aspects including Visual and Noise of Development applications and the futility of wind farms- it is becoming obvious that the state government and Councils do not have the skills necessary to facilitate the delicate planning required to implement the Wind Farm white elephant. There does not have to be collateral damage so that hypocritical Governments can make a buck out of selling carbon credits to the addicts of carbon rich products at the expense of Aussie Battlers. Keep up the good work Mr Ridgeway, Back in ya box Berkfield and Mckinnon, get back on ya chain Oloughlin and pull ya head in Mr Rau. They call us Aussie Batllers for a reason and the battle is only just beginning.

Paul Manning
8 Mile Creek.