Wind power links

As of about 2018 I am not much updating this page

This page contains links to Internet pages concerning wind power, especially as it is developing in Australia.


Created as a separate page 2011/09/11, last edited 2023/07/10
Contact: David K. Clarke – ©

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Australia

Australia – General

• RenewEconomy a very informative free newsletter on all things renewable; especially concerning Australia.
• Sustainable Energy Association of Australia. "The aim of the association is to give voice to those with an interest in sustainable energy and to promote the development and adoption of sustainable energy technologies and practices."
• Carbon emission index (cedex): Pitt and Sherry.
• Ketan Joshi's informative blog (Some Air) on wind power.
• The Clean Energy Council
• Established in late 2005, The Climate Institute "is a non-partisan, independent research organisation that works with community, business and government to drive innovative and effective climate change solutions. We research. We educate. We communicate."
• CSIRO Wind Energy Research Unit
• Energy Matters has a free newsletter that is very informative.
• Wikipedia – Wind Power in Australia, Wikipedia wind power in SA; there are pages on wind power in other Australian states too.
• Clean SA; South Australian Climate Emergency Network.
• howlingpixel – Wind power in Australia; a Wikipedia-style treatment.
• NSW Farmers have released a Guide for farmers (who are considering hosting a wind farm). The document is generally favourable to wind farms, for example under 'Impact of farming activities', this document states "Host landholders generally find that wind farm development does not significantly impact farm operations."
• EnergyQuest, "EnergyQuest Australia provides timely data, rigorous analysis and sound strategic advice on Australian oil and gas, coal seam gas, LNG and liquid fuels" and also some interesting stuff on wind power.
• Movie of wind turbine construction at Musselroe, Tasmania.

Articles

Why wind is cutting energy costs, Climate Spectator, Giles Parkinson.

Data

• Renew Economy's map of large-scale wind farms in Australia.
• NemWatch provides a live view of the sources of Australia's electrical power, including the proportion generated by black coal, brown coal, gas, wind, large-scale-solar, small-scale-solar, etc.
• AEMO's Data Dashboard provides a live view of electricity generation on the NEM including the amount of power being transfered between states.
• Andrew Miskelly has devised a useful tool to plot the daily wind farm electrical output in a graphical form. He used to provide generation data from longer periods in 'csv' format with the option of averaging hourly or monthly, but this site (http://www.landscapeguardians.org.au/data/aemo) is no longer operating.

Health

Most wind turbine health-related links are on my Wind Health page.
Doctors for the Environment Australia are supportive of sustainable energy.

Reports

• On 2013/11/26 the South Australian EPA reported on a noise study they had done at the Waterloo Wind Farm over a ten-week period from April to June in 2013. In this study the EPA arranged with a number of residents who lived near the wind farm to keep diaries in which they recorded their level of annoyance from the wind farm. A summary of the EPA's findings can be read on elsewhere on these pages.
• The South Australian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) produced a report titled "Infrasound levels near windfarms and in other environments" in January 2013.
• CSIRO report "Acceptance of Rural Windfarms in Australia: a snapshot"; Nina Hall, Peta Ashworth, Hylton Shaw; 2012; found that there is strong community support for wind farms and discussed ways of increasing this further.
• CSIRO: Societal acceptance of wind farms: Analysis of four common themes across Australian case studies; N. Hall, P. Ashworth, P. Devine-Wright; 2013 – Seven case studies of wind farm development.
• The Pattern of Complaints about Australian Wind Farms Does Not Match the Establishment and Distribution of Turbines: Support for the Psychogenic, 'Communicated Disease' Hypothesis Plos One
• Impact of Operational Wind Generation on the National Electricity Market; P. Wild, W.P. Bell, J. Foster; School of Economics, Uni. Qld. Download pdf
  "The stand-out states are South Australia and Victoria which experience [wholesale electricity price] reductions of between 24.9 and 38.9 per cent and 14.5 to 21.6 per cent over the interval 2010-2012."
• Building Stronger Communities: Wind's growing role in regional Australis; Australian Wind Alliance (pdf).
• Exploring community acceptance of rural wind farms in Australia; CSIRO.
• Energy Networks Australia and CSIRO, Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap: Final Report; April 2017.
• Crystal Brook Energy Park Development Application Response to Verbal Submissions; 10 December 2018. An 82-page document answering a great many questions/objections to a combined wind and solar farm in Mid-North South Australia proposed by French Company Neoen.

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Australia – Pro-wind power

• Yes 2 Renewables, supporting the development of renewables in Victoria
• Gippsland Friends of Future Generations: a group who are devoted to disseminating information and providing a foram for open discussion on windfarms, not only in Gippsland but in the whole of Australia.

  Youth of the year speech A refreshing view on wind farms from someone who has no axe to grind.

• Myths and facts on wind turbines, a six-minute informative animation produced by Friends of the Earth, Victoria.
• 100% renewable energy: "a community initiated campagn working to build community and political support for renewable energy."
• Blind Carbon Copy; A blog about climate change, socialist ideas, activism and sustainability.
• Independent Australia's The ugly landscape of the Guardians is an exposé by Sandi Keane on the less than shiny-white links between the Waubra Foundation, the Australian Landscape Guardians, the Institute of Public Affairs, the fossil fuel industry and others.
  Sandi has written a number of related pieces:
  • Anti windfarm astroturfers exposed in Parliament;
  • The Landscape Guardians and the Waubra Foundation;
  • Deception is our product;
  • How to spot an astroturfer or an online fake;
• SA ABC radio personality Peter Goers has written a column in the Sunday Mail Enough! I'm getting antsy about the 'anti' brigade; in which he likens anti-wind power people to anti vaccination, anti-climate change, anti-women bishops, anti-evolution, etc. cranks.

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Australia – Anti-wind power

Pages on this site in response to anti-wind misinformation Wind power problems, alleged problems and objections Wind energy opposition Boorowa District Landscape Guardians Heartland Farmers Liberal's war on renewable energy Stop Keyneton Wind Farm Stop These Things sWINDle Wind Watch Waubra Foundation Australian Landscape Guardians Also see Sandi Keane's pieces debunking dishonest wind power opponent groups under 'Australia – Pro-wind power', on this page.

Groups opposed to wind power in general

• Australian landscape guardians; ALG are linked to the so-called Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), an off-shoot of the right-wing think tank the pro-nuclear Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). Both the ALG and IPA have climate-change scepticism leanings and links to mining; see here. The ALG seem only to be opposed to wind power, they show absolutely no concern about the far greater damage to the landscape from mining, clear-felling of trees, the damage that will follow from climate change, etc.
• National Wind Watch seem willing to publish anything that puts wind power in a bad light.
• Stop These Things claims to give "the truth about wind farms in Australia". Readers should not hope for much truth, but they will find lots of ill-founded rumours, Stop These Things has a special page on rumours.
• sWINDle; well named, full of lies and aims at deceiving people.
• The Waubra Foundation claims to be independent, yet is run by anti-wind people and is effectively anti-wind-power.

Groups opposed to specific wind farms

• Boorowa District Landscape Guardians
• Heartland Farmers; a group who want to look after there own short-term future at the cost of everyone else.
• Stop Keyneton Wind Farm

Also see Wind power lies

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Australia – Regulation

• The Australian Energy Market Operator "delivers an array of gas and electricity market, operational, development and planning functions". The AEMO has replaced NEMMCO; see below. The AEMO give Price and demand graphs (prices in $/MW and demand in MW, I believe).
• The Office of the Renewable Energy Regulator (ORER) was replaced by the Clean Energy Regulator.
• National Electricity Market Management Co. Ltd. NEMMCO. (NEMMCO has been replaced by AEMO; see above.)

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Wind home Top Index

Australia – Government

• Dept. of Climate Change site covers renewable energy legislation and targets.
• Operational renewable energy generators are shown on maps on AGSO's site.
• Senate inquiry into The Social and Economic Impact of Rural Wind Farms. Some informative submissions to the Senate inquiry included:
  • No. 204, by Dr Mark Diesendorf;
  • No. 353, Professor Peter Seligman;
  • No. 605, Climate and Health Alliance;
  • No. 628, Simon Holmes à Court, Chairman, Hepburn Wind;
  • No. 638, CFMEU (Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union; no illnesses from turbines in workers on wind farms)
  • No. 801, Australian Psychological Society;
  • No. 829, by Doctors for the Environment Australia
• Sustainability Victoria, a Victorian government organisation.
• The Department of Infrastructure released a revised document titled " Managing the risk to aviation safety of wind turbine installations (wind farms)/wind monitoring towers" on 2012/07/15.

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Australian opinion surveys

• Climate Institute
  

  The preferred energy mix of Australians Table from the Climate Institute

  Climate of the Nation research.
  
  "Since 2007, The Climate Institute has produced Climate of the Nation research capturing the nation's pulse on attitudes to climate change. This year's results show an increasing awareness and concern about the impacts of climate change and the country's future energy mix amid the intensifying political debate."
  
  The table on the right is from that report.
  
  Unfortunately sloppy writing and editing devalued the report.
  
  
• Clean Energy Council
  The CEC polled 1200 people on their opinions about wind power, the rights of farmers to do what they want on their land and the impact of wind farms on communities. A large majority of respondents (83%) said they felt that concerns about the health impacts of wind turbines will turn out to be nothing to worry about. The report was released in June 2012, showed a general 77% support for wind farms. It is to the credit of the CEC that they have shown the exact wording of the quesionts put to the people.
  
  
• Capital Wind Farm survey, May 2012
  Infigen calculated the approximate population of the area surveyed – Bungendore and Tarago (near the Capital Wind Farm) – to be 3300. Of these 200 householders and 34 businesses were interviewed by telephone. The survey report is available from Infigen's Net site. A small selection of the responses to the survey are:

  Do you think generating electricity from wind farm benifits the environment?

  Benefits, 75%; does not benefit, 10%

  Good or bad for the local community?

  13 times as many people said it was good rather than bad for the community.

  Good or bad for local businesses?

  More than 50% said good, only 1% said bad.

• Pacific Hydro
  November 2011 surveyed attitudes to wind energy in ten communities across Victoria, NSW and SA where wind farms were operating or proposed. The main result was 83% support, 14% opposed, 3% undecided. Support for wind energy by states: NSW, 77%; SA, 90%; Vic., 84%. The research was done by Qdos, a branch of Interconsult.
  
  
• CSIRO, November 2011
  A few days before the Pac. Hydro report, CSIRO released a report, "Acceptance of Rural Windfarms in Australia: a snapshot". Some of its key findings were:
  • There is strong community support for wind farms;
  • There is more support than suggested by media reports;
  • Wind farmers might improve acceptance by developing a 'Social licence to Operate' approach.

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Australia – Wind Energy Industry

Also see Wind farm businesses.

• The Clean Energy Council (which replaced the Australian Wind Energy Association) has information on the Australian wind industry.
• ElectraNet "Is the principal Transmission Network Service Provider (TNSP) and System Control Centre Operator in South Australia, and we operate in the National Electricity Market."
• Julian Law of Macquarie Generation has been putting the locations of all Australia's power stations, wind and all the others, on a special page of Google Earth.
• Building Stronger Communities report by the Australian Wind Alliance of April 2018.

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Legal matters

ERD court decision on Palmer Wind Farm appeal; 2018/03/07

Summary of Palmer decision by MWL Ebsworth.

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World
General

Summary of wind farm and health reviews

• British Wind Energy Association.
• American Wind Energy Association
• Danish Wind Energy Association, The best site of all for detailed information on wind power in general.
• GWEC, Global Wind Energy Council (Produces an annual global wind energy report)
• Power plants around the World; a photo gallery of power stations of all types, including wind.
• Wikipedia has an extensive page on the Environmental effects of wind power, and many other pages relevant to wind power.
• World Wind Energy Association
• UK Centre for Sustainable Energy, and in particular, their document on Common concerns about wind power (this is to some extent specific to the UK situation, but contains a number of very good references).
• International Energy Agency
• Canadian Wind Energy Association
• Paul Gipe's informative Wind Works pages (North America). Paul is a good writer; he has written several books.
• Mike Barnard's Answers about wind power. Mike also wrote a wide-ranging article Wind Energy is a Key Wedge in the Fight Against Global Warming for the Energy & Policy Institute. Mike is very well informed on wind power matters and is a prolific writer on the subject; he was in Toronto, now lives in Brazil.
• Renewable Energy World "World's #1 Renewable Energy Network for News and Information".

World: reports

• The Conversation: Are public objections to wind farms overblown? 2018/05/02; Jeremy Firestone, University of Delaware; Ben Hoen and Joseph Rand, Berkeley National Laboratory. 1,700 people living near 250 wind farms across 34 states were asked how they felt about being close to turbines. The majority of people within 5 miles and even within half a mile of a wind turbine were positive about it; only 8% within five miles and 25% within half a mile were negative.
• Health Canada; Exposure to wind turbine noise: Perceptual responses and reported health effects. "Self-reported health effects ... and perceived stress were not related to WTN [wind turbine noise] levels"
• The journal Environmental Health (impact factor given as 2.45). Health Effects and Wind Turbines: A Review of the Literature, by Loren D Knopper and Christopher A Ollson, 2011/09/14. Suggests no direct causal link between wind turbines and ill-health.
• University of Connecticut/Berkeley, 2014. A joint report titled Relationship Between Wind Turbines and Residential Property Values in Massachusetts by Carol Atkinson-Palombo of the University of Connecticut and Ben Hoen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Benjamin Sovocool, for the peer-reviewed Journal of Integrative Environmental Sciences (vol. 9, No. 4) wrote a paper titled The Avian and Wildlife Costs of Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in which he compared bird deaths from these sources of electricity to wind power. His paper was a synthesis of findings from many studies and was dated 2012/06/30. He provided figures of 0.27 avian fatalities from wind power per gigawatt-hour of electricity generated, 0.6/GWh for nuclear power and 9.4/GWh for fossil-fueled power stations.
• A study of Wind Turbine Setbacks from Residences for the Minnesota Department of Commerce by Katheryn M. B. Haugen
• Ontario, Canada, Environmental Review Tribunal finding in the Kent Breeze proposed wind farm. "The Environmental Review Tribunal finds that the Appellants have failed to show that Suncor's Kent Breeze Project, as approved, will cause serious harm to human health." (With some qualifications.) The findings document seemed mainly to discuss harm that could be caused by wind turbine noise.
• Strategic Health Impact Assessment On Wind Energy Development In Oregon. A 106 page review of the literature. No direct links found between wind turbines and health apart from anxiety related matters.
• The Lancet, Electricity generation and health, Prof Anil Markandya PhD and Paul Wilkinson FRCP. 24 deaths and 225 serious illnesses per TWh of coal-fired electricity.
• "The influence of negative oriented personality traits on the effects of wind turbine noise"; by Jennifer Taylor, Carol Eastwick, Robin Wilson, Claire Lawrence; published in Science Direct.

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How wind turbines might cause health problems

There are a great many claims that are simply unbelievable, I have not listed any of those. The few below seem to have some credibility, but are not sufficient, in themselves, to show any link between wind turbines and illness.

• Ontario, Canada The Potential Health Impact of Wind Turbines; "The review concludes that while some people living near wind turbines report symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, and sleep disturbance, the scientific evidence available to date does not demonstrate a direct causal link between wind turbine noise and adverse health effects."
• The journal Noise & Health, 'Evaluating the impace of wind turbine noise on health-related quality of life', Shepherd, McBride, Welch, Dirks and Hill. "Our data suggest that wind farm noise can negatively impact facets of HRQOL [Health Related Quality Of Life]". The journal has a claimed impact factor of 0.739.
• The US Acoustic Ecology Institute's "Wind Farm Noise 2011: Science and policy overview" is generally well balanced and interesting. The author seems convinced that wind turbines have some physiological health effects, but states "it's extremely rare to hear of health problems from residents more than 1.5 – 2 km from wind turbines". He makes the point that there is much more annoyance from wind farms in rural areas than in suburban areas.

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World – The facts of wind power

• Wind Facts, Dr. David Colby on wind turbines and human health.
• Life cycle assessment of a multi-megawatt wind turbine; from the peer-reviewed journal Renewable Energy; by Martinez, Sanz, Pellegrini, Jimenez and Blanco. States that "during its lifetime, the wind turbine allows us to recover nearly 31 times the environmental contamination caused by its manufacture, start-up, operation and decommissioning."
• Mike Barnard's answers about wind power. Mike is a prolific writer on the facts about wind energy.
• Paul Gipe's informative Wind Works pages (North America).
• Glen Estil's Wind-blog.com, Canada
• The facts about wind energy and emissions, Renewable Energy World
• Danish Wind Industry Association Guided Tour on Wind Energy; a pdf document with internal hyperlinks.
• Up to half of all birds are threatened by climate change; New Scientist. Changing from burning fossil fuels to renewable energy will slow climate change and give birds more time to adapt.

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World – Pro-wind power groups

• Pro Wind Alliance, UK (their page has a list of other pro-wind groups worldwide)
• Yes 2 Wind, UK
• Women of wind energy; a north American group

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World – Anti-wind power groups

• National Wind Watch, A US site that claims to be "Presenting the facts about industrial wind power", but actually is very loose with the truth. I've written something on the lies in NWW.
• European Platform Against Windfarms, an organisation that brings together the work of many smaller anti-wind power groups. An expose of some of the lies of the EPAW has been written by Ketan Joshi.
• The Industrial Wind Action Group, an anti-wind power group based in the USA.
• The Society for Wind Vigilance, "advocates for authoritative guidelines for wind energy development to protect the health and safety of communities like yours".
• Renewable Energy Foundation claims to be "a registered charity promoting sustainable development for the benefit of the public by means of energy conservation and the use of renewable energy" although their website is made up almost exclusively of criticism of wind energy. The Australian branch of the REF is an off-shoot of the right-wind think tank the Institute of Public Affairs and have links with the misleadingly named Australian Landscape Guardians

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Miscellaneous

Advanced Wind Technologies, a supplier of renewable energy equipment based at Kuranda in Queensland.

Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage; an interesting paper on how methane leakage from the natural gas industry could prove worse for climate change than burning coal (and it doesn't seem to consider the leakage from coal seam gas).

Many photos of wind turbines and wind farms are on Flickr at my wind farm photos set and international wind farm photos.

Homegrown Power: projects and info from TheBackShed – Build your own wind turbine.

The physics of sound: Uni. NSW has a fascinating site with lots of graphics and audio pieces on what sound is all about.

This is an interesting concept. Radio, mobile phones, etc. communications requires towers and communication towers require electricity. Wind turbines require towers and generate electricity. Why not combine the two? Wind-it

Wind farm businesses – links, contacts and farms.

Wind home Top Index

The 'Information' column gives a guide to the quantity and quality of information provided by the businesses about their wind farms. The more stars the better, a blank box indicates I have not sought information from that company. Australian wind farms tend to change ownership fairly often; my apology for any errors in ownership.

Australia
Australia – Articles
Australia – Anti-wind power
Australia – Data
Australia – Health
Australia – General
Australia – Government
Australia – Opinion surveys
Australia – Pro-wind power
Australia – Regulation
Australia – Reports
Australia – Wind Energy Industry
Legal matters
Miscellaneous
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Wind farm businesses – links and contacts
World
World: Reports
World – Anti-wind power
World – Pro-wind power

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