My village is fighting...

... a proposal to site a massive 254ft wind turbine right next to our tiny village. This is a peaceful rural area with abundant rare bird life, owls, resident bat populations and red squirrels.
This monstrosity will dominate the area and severely impact on our lives as well as the supposedly protected species mentioned above.

Don't be fooled by green arguments and alternative energy.
This particular turbine will cost around £1.25 million to build and will provide a nice income of £250,000 per annum to the developer/land owner guaranteed for 20 years. :broon:

This money is paid by the electricity generating industry who are obliged to give all turbine operators over 20p per kwh for energy provided to the grid (whether they want or need the electricity). This is around twice what I pay to purchase electricity FROM THOSE SAME ELECTRICITY COMPANIES.
Of course this money comes from you and me via a surcharge on our electricity bill. So our electricity bills rise every time one of these turbines goes up. There are plans in the UK for another 30,000 of these things.

For every kwh produced by wind power there still has to be backup in the form of traditional power generation ie coal/gas or nuclear, because they can only produce electricity when the wind blows in a finite range. Anything over 50mph and they have to shutdown the wind turbines to prevent them bursting into flames or shattering. :omg: There were 117 wind turbine fires last year alone.

Please help our fight by signing this. http://chn.ge/1zYDRUR

Think yourself lucky!

There's a chemical company up the road from our house that wants to build an incinerator that will burn old scrap wood 24/7 365 days a year with upwards of 80 trucks of timber PER WEEK!!!

N I M B Y !!

Btw, there's around 120 turbines in the bay opposite us!!

(Signed your petition)

difficult...

Would you prefer to have a nuclear power plant near your home? Or a coal-fired power station?

We all need electricity - but nobody wants to see the reality that it needs to be produced.
It's another story if a wind turbine is the right option from a financial point of view.

David, as you're affected directly now, what would you recommend to produce the energy you need for your lights & fridge & telly & ... & ... &...?

We already have a nuclear power plant thanks. Or have you forgotten Windscale?(Sellafield)

We also have one of Britain's biggest offshore wind farms.

I think Cumbria has done more than its fair share.

I am not against alternative power generation, but wind turbines are only viable because they are massively subsidised. If they received the same amount per kw/h as other generation methods, none would be built. The fact is that we still have to have the back-up of traditional generation because wind power is not dependable.
If we are serious about alternative power why not use a source that is reliable. Tidal power? Geo thermal power?

In fact we have a company in the village who dig wells to produce geothermal power. These are obviously much less visually intrusive.

Good luck with your fight David. The Gov't here has massively subsidized the wind farm industry as well. Wind turbines are popping up everywheres because the subsidy is so sweet. Presently I pay between 0.075 and $0.135/kWh depending on the time of day, whereas the wind turbine companies recieve more than $0.40/kWh. Our electricity bills have risen by 10% each year for the past 3 years. Companies are leaving Ontario for the US and Mexico because of the cost of electricity is so high here. And yes, wind turbines are only viable because they are massively subsidised. Only once have I seen my salary rise by 10%, usually a raise is between 0-2%.

We failed to block ours 5 years ago and have 2 ugly noisy monsters, there must be plenty of european money and grants going around as the investors and the company that runs it is a Spanish investment company and nothing back into our local economy.

Some statistics from the greenies given during one of our parish council meetings; During the production of a turbine from raw elements to the finished, installed and a commissioned unit, the turbine has to run for 5 years to produce the same amount of electrical energy that was consumed to make it happen, they also gave evidential proof that the output is grossly overstated. Anyway it all fell on deaf ears as "investors rule OK"

We also have a large solar farm which was pushed through 3 years ago and later found out that Cornwall Council received investment money from the deal and spent it in another parish, looks like they are all on the gravy train except for those of us who have to look at it all day long.

However the same investment company put in a planning application 18 months ago to double the size of the solar farm, thankfully after our hard campaigning it has just been rejected by Cornwall Council, but the investors can take it up for review at central government and planning refusal can be overturned. We are hoping that they don't, but the government have to make targets by 2020 set by europe on green energy production and we are way off the mark, at the moment so it still may happen.

We tried to understand why the solar farm could not be put on the roofs of local industrial buildings or the likes of superstores like Asda, Tesco and similar, what we found out was it's the cost of the connection to the grid. The investors look for the closest available connection to handle the proposed input and the feasibility of the route and the minimum impact without planning consent for the power cable. Our solar farm is placed at a national grid main distribution point, hence very low cost for groundworks and cabling, very cost effective for the investors.

Another thing we found was after planning consent on the green field site (arable farm land) after 25 years the land will be deemed as a brown field site so building will be allowed on what was original arable farm land. The landowners are on a win win situation and have 25 years income of rent from the investors but the the value of the land will increase 10 fold as building plots at the end of the term.

Fight on and good luck.

Thanks for the support guys.
If I may I will copy your reply to our village coordinator, Brian. It expresses a lot of truths that are being conveniently glossed over.

I'm not a massive fan of wind turbines and we have a few in this part of the world. I think offshore farms are reasonably OK - you wouldn't see them half the time in Pembrokeshire anyway because it rains so much!

What I do not understand is why the government do not sponsor a barrage scheme in the Severn estuary. It has a huge tidal range and the impact would be fairly minimal. OK, a few (probably tens of thousands) wading birds would have to relocate but they did so very happily when the Cardiff Bay Barrage was constructed so I don't see it has a huge issue. Obviously the cost of such a venture would be HIGH but the benefits could be enormous for donkeys years to come. I'd suggest much more beneficial than High Speed Rail links (further debate, which I'll stay out of as there's no benefit to Wales)..

I remember crossing the Rance barrage near St Malo about 30 years ago and that is a successful electricity generating project still as far as I know. Why can't we so similar things in GB?

Dragons Den idea...

Quick get it patented...

Field of cows with methane extracting device tunnelled into a generator as a fuel source.

Job done.

Lots of cows farting away in the world, lets make use of em first before eating them.

bensewell wrote: Lots of cows farting away in the world, lets make use of em first before eating them.

I'll never be able to view beef in quite the same way again! :lol:

To be honest cows are extremely lucky to see a field these days. Most of the dairy herds around us are kept inside all year around and fed silage.
Farmer speak {Much more efficient for me and **** to the animals welfare!}