'Wild places' for wind farms

Your thoughts – I am torn and while my first response is ‘protect wild places’, I also get the local communities pragmatic response that they need income and jobs (although the money will not go far…)

The b&b’s will do well putting up the contractors, that’s about it

seosamh77 – Member

the hinkley c power plant will only have a 60 year lifespan.

We’re talking 30-60 years here, so hinkley c might actually be operational by then

NW, wasn’t referring to lifespan as a negative. Just that they’re no necessarily permanent.

Re the wind not running out, if we can lower the cost of offshore wind then we’re laughing.

Given that it’s based on a 30km viewing distance, I’d say it’s not that bad as you’d have to be fairly elevated to see that sort of distance. The distance to the horizon is less than 5km away.

It is 30km visibility radius from each wind farm and the observer height should be around 2m above the ground level of the terrain model being used. For some offshore windfarms I seem to recall using 35km buffer of wind farm given the sea being flat, horizon distance is not 5km. I’d imagine the data used in that map will be fairly coarse at 50m resolution or larger and thus visibility will be a bit over represented as a result..

Fill your boots on the topic here http://www.snh.gov.uk/planning-and-development/renewable-energy/visual-representation/

And here’s an interpretation of wild land

http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlands-nature/looking-after-landscapes/landscape-policy-and-guidance/wild-land/mapping/

It is a bit off though.

From personal experience. Whitelees wind hill farm, you can see that from the north side of glasgow, ie up the top of the high street and stuff on a good clear day, it’s 20km away but it hardly spoils the view.

From the southside, ruggie and the like, only turbine you can see is the one up at cathkin braes mtb course, aye you can see it, but it’s there so you do see it, it’s a sort of monument to wind turbines. I like it for the fact it’s a lone turbine. And it’s an area i’m very local too.

That map is coloured as if you can see turbines from all of glasgow, you can’t. Even less so if you exclude the braes turbine.

So, it’s a bit alarmist the map I posted tbh. why I was curious if there was an actual map with correctly draw in their relative sized areas rather than dots. guess you would need a bit of patience to got through all the OS maps to get that.

re the horizon. Assuming it’s flat. which Scotland most certainly isn’t. Most wind farms you don’t notice until you are pretty close to them.

For an observer on the ground with eye level at h = 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), the horizon is at a distance of 2.9 miles (4.7 km). For an observer standing on a hill or tower 100 feet (30 m) in height, the horizon is at a distance of 12.2 miles (19.6 km).

Plus I still have trouble seeing them as a blight on the landscape. I like their form, we bit of variety and creativity wouldn’t go a miss, but generally they are reasonable pleasing to the eye.

I can probably get that information tomorrow seosamh

I’lll see what data sets we have at work.

Edit: correct size areas i mean.

WGAF

Surely the only important question is whether the Inn is still worth the trek to get there 😉 ?

cool, cheers josh! Don’t go out your way though, I’m just a curious onlooker!

teamhurtmore – Member
WGAF

Surely the only important question is whether the Inn is still worth the trek to get there ?

Too true! 😆

You can see objects above sea level much further away, hence why you can see mountains, wind turbines etc that are much further away than 5km. In visual impact assessment you will calculate visibility of the turbines from maybe 20 to 30 km typically. Turbine tips can be over 100m above ground and are often on high ground too, several hundred metres up even. The software we use takes account of earth curvature and light diffraction etc.

I don’t think there is a go to source of all wind turbine locations, typically when you are assessing cumulative assessment of all wind farms around a proposed development you would have to approach councils and site developers themselves for the information, it can be very time consuming. SNH do publish a spatial dataset of many wind farm sites as do BWEA but neither are complete to my knowledge.

Seems SNH have stopped updating the dataset,, unsurprisingly as it would be nearly impossible to keep on top of.

These maps will give you an idea of the footprints of probably a majority of wind farms as it was a few years back anyway

http://www.snh.gov.uk/planning-and-development/renewable-energy/research-data-and-trends/trendsandstats/windfarm-footprint-maps/

This is a fairly decent source of offshore site boundaries

http://www.4coffshore.com/offshorewind/

The local communities will benefit to some degree from these wind farms, however, the benefit is not huge. The construction phase is performed by contractors from outside the local areas. These contractors will stay locally so B&Bs etc will benefit during the construction phase.

Once the wind farms are established, there is only the maintenance work, which is also performed by contractors, again not local. The maintenance work is not ongoing, it is not only seasonal work, but carried out over a very short period.

The other way that the local communities benefit is through a fund that the wind farm operators set up. Some see these ‘funds’ as a bribe, others as a way to help the local communities. The funds however, are not huge amounts of money.

Although the turbines have a life span of 30yrs, the concrete bases and access roads are permanent structures. So, it is fairly obvious that these locations will be used again with new turbines.

There are also larger turbines being used now, so it is also quite possible that the replacements could be larger and visible from a greater distance.

Or the sme size but more efficient.

Unlikely to be much larger of the foundations would need rebuilt.

The funds however, are not huge amounts of money.

Actually they can be significant and local communities sometimes fight hard for them.

Question, how much does 1 turbine power and much does it cost to run? (After the initial build, ongoing maintenance).

And how much of Scotland’s power comes from wind? (And other re-newables?)

Re that map above, cheers, just noticed it. It looks largely that the plan is open moor and farmland, it’s not really impacting on the more scenic parts of Scotland. It is encroaching though. So some concern warranted, I guess.

Let’s just burn more hydrocarbons cause they make much prettier views see here 😛

Question, how much does 1 turbine power and much does it cost to run? (After the initial build, ongoing maintenance).
And how much of Scotland’s power comes from wind? (And other re-newables?)

No simple answer, depends on size of turbine and capacity factor of the site, which varies greatly from places like Orkney where it can be hard to find a turbine manufacturer who will warranty with the amount of wind their turbine will have to deal with, to lowland sites which are borderline worthwhile.

It should be possible to find decent info online but I’m not aware of anything off the top of my head, just beware of nimby anti renewables sites like euanmearns etc which are full of nonsense.

Cost varies with turbine and site too, a farmer friend has a little 1mw turbine and I think that cost a million or something, he’s got a very windy site and as well as powering the farm it will pay itself off after a few years and then he will have a nice income.

In Scotland we have a lot of hydro so have exceeded our requirements by renewables alone quite often.

I’m a maintenance tech on the Ormonde offshore farm in Barrow, and the construction mulitplyer bandied around when it was build was about 6 times the onshore turbine cost. However, offshore models tend to be larger in the UK, as you would notice if you’ve even been through northern Germany where they are less sensitive to large onshore turbines, allowing the use of monumental tower heights of 120m+

Onshore turbines are way cheaper to build and maintain, purely because of ease of access. I think our boat burns about 600l of diesel every trip! Bit more than a Transit doing the same job onshore…

Scotland produced IIRC 60% of its electricity from renewbles last year. Here is a load of data to wade through. One day this summer all scotlands electricity – domestic and industrial came from renewables.

However I think we have enough wind farms now. You need a mix. Of the alternatives the largest part is wind. I’d like more small scale hydro and investment in tidal flow turbines. there is a small commercial farm of them just been installed. Dunno if it will still be there after the winter tho 😉

Loads of data here
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0046/00469235.pdf

Dunno if it will still be there after the winter tho

Does the tide flow faster in the winter?

bigjim – Member

it would be nearly impossible to keep on top of.

Yeah, because they keep spinning

Our local onshore offshore test facility is seemingly generating infrasound which is giving people dizzy spells and has even maybe possibly killed someone. Nothing to do with the fact the community council object to literally everything even when it’s nothing to do with them.