Wind Turbine Controversy?

I was spurred by criticism of wind turbines on a Green Party email list to review the controversy over wind turbines for my blog - something I've been meaning to do for ages.

First, wind turbines are only one component of the renewable energy mix, which includes:

1. Wind 
2. Wave
3. water current
4. Tidal
5. Solar PV
6. Solar heat
7. Concentrated Solar Power
8. HVDC supergrid
9. Storage - pumped water
10. Storage - compressed air
11. Storage - hydrogen
12. Storage - thermal
13. Grid balancing - Electric vehicle batteries
14. Grid balancing electricity storage heaters
15. Biomass
16. Wood gasification
17. Anaerobic digestion
18. Combined Heat and Power - large and small
19. Heat pumps - ground and water
20. Geothermal
21. Conservation 
22. Increased appliance efficiency
23. Anchored seaborne multi-modal energy platforms (ask me for details) 
24. Other things I haven't thought of here
25. Other things nobody knows about yet

The great advantage of wind is that it is cheap and is ready for deployment.
Like every energy source (including the good old wood fire), wind turbines have their downsides.


Bird and Bat kills

from Climate Desk

We must keep things in proportion. Bird kills are a tiny tiny fraction of one % of the total kills made by humans, mainly by our cats, but also by cars and glass windows.

Having said that, every dead bird is a tragedy for its loved ones and dependents, and we must reduce them, chiefly by not siting wind farms in major bird migration routes.
Emission of distress calls from the turbine in response to radar detection of birds in the vicinity is a possibility. Starling distress calls have been shown to be effective on many species.
Silhouettes of raptors on the blades might be worth a try.

Bats are attracted to smaller, but not larger installations. It is not so much strikes as pressure changes that kill bats. I have a theory that bats' echolocation mistakes the tip vortices for clouds of insects (otherwise why would they approach them?). In that winglets reduce tip vortices (thereby increasing efficiency of the blade by 5%) they will reduce bat deaths.

Even simple addition of red bands to turbine blades can reduce bird kill.

Vertical Axis wind turbines claim to have minimal bird strike record and to be quieter. Though that is disputed.

Electromagnetic fields of subsea cables
These do affect some species in different ways. Notable is the propensity for some fish to attack cables.
There is a 2010 review here:http://www.oregonwave.org/wp-content/uploads/1-Effects-of-electromagnetic-fields-on-marine-species-A-literature-review.pdf

I did not see anything unduly alarming, given that cables cover such a tiny area of the sea bed.
More knowledge (for instance, about fields surrounding HVDC cables, and influence of sheathing and burial) should mitigate this problem.

Neodymium
Neodymium is a rare earth metal used in turbines (and many other applications) because it can create very strong light magnets.

97% comes from China, where there is no care taken about pollution from extraction.
Here is the Daily Mail on the topic. How nice to see the Mail taking an interest in pollution for once.

The answer here is to help the Chinese with their approach to cleaner extraction techniques, not to abandon any technology that uses magnets.


Intermittency

The variability or intermittency problem has been dealt with in many other places, so I will not go into it in detail here. It is to be met with by normal balancing procedures, amplified by HVDC , dispersed storage in domestic and Electric Vehicle batteries  and  electrolysis.

We should be pushing Government very hard to implement these storage solutions. Storage heaters are back in. They can store excess electricity by diagnosing overproduction (frequency increases) and storing it as useful heat. Otherwise electricity is wasted as grid overheating.

Breakdowns.
This was put forward on the list. My answer - Yes. Next.

"Health Problems"
The correspondent on the email list did not mention this, but there have been claims in the UK about health issues from extra low frequency sound. These issues are higher when there has been a big anti-wind campaign, and they do not occur on the European mainland. The claims are discredited.

Anti-wind prejudice

We should not be naive about turbines. There is a massive campaign against wind turbines in the denialosphere, in the Mail, Telegraph and Murdoch organs. It is an extension of the climate change denial campaign of the fossil fuel companies. Despite their sustained propaganda campaign, polls show consistently that 60% of Brits quite like wind turbines. 

Acceptability will be improved when anyone living within certain distances (determined by local topography) of wind turbines should be given lower electricity bills in compensation for visual and sound amenity losses.

Let us be clear. Greens oppose coal, oil, and gas. Greens oppose nuclear. Greens oppose the tidal barrage. If we oppose wind - the cheapest, most available flagship technology - what credibility do we deserve? None.