Whitefield Wind Turbine

[peakbagger]

I was driving back from Carrigan Sunday and noticed the new wind turbine at the Mountain View Grand over form the turnoff on Rt 115. Definitely not utility scale (100KW) but still is pretty impressive from a distance, although not particularly keeping with the architecture of the place.

Surprised someone hasnt objected to this one as its on a "ridgeline", albeit a real little one

 

[erugs]

I, for one, hope they did adequate site analysis testing and found they have enough wind to turn the turbine and make energy, not just be a topic of conversation. They're much more interesting when they are spinning. Yay wind!

 

[peakbagger]

I expect that a large amount is PR, but Northern Power, the manufacturer is usually pretty thorough on insisting on a site analysis as they have a couple of options for blading which is dependent upon the average wind speed. Generally the local mountain tops in the area rank pretty well once the turbines get up above the terrain. This is a low speed permanent magnet turbine so the blades dont really crank up much compared to the small wind turbines that some are familiar with.

By the way this is a "twin" to the wind turbine that was installed at a greehouse complex down somewhere along the Mass Border

Northern Wind Turbines usually report out to a website so I expect that at some point there may be a way of checking real time generation.

 

[erugs]

Thanks, Peakbagger. Years ago I worked for a company that was involved in wind and solar energy and its site analysis equipment, and I've sort of maintained an interest. There's a wind turbine in Biddeford, Maine, that makes me smile when it is working as I drive by, and there are some wind generators going up on Vinalhaven Island in Maine, which are expected to provide the energy needs for two islands: http://www.nrcm.org/Vinalhaven_wind.asp I'm looking forward to seeing them running, too.

 

[NewHampshire]

Salty and I noticed it driving back from Dixville on Sunday. To say we were shocked would be recklessly engaging in understatement. Alas, it has begun. What a shame.

Brian

 

[forestgnome]

Being an optimist, I hope very few of these beautiful high-elevation forested ridges are sacrificed before the fad goes away. I hope that the sight of the deforested mountain will cause people to demand results, ie proof that less coal is burned for power production elsewhere. Of corse, that won't possibly happen and so maybe enough people will then realize the absurdity of it all. Destroying finite high-elevation forest with nothing to show...what a shame

 

[NewHampshire]

Being an optimist, I hope very few of these beautiful high-elevation forested ridges are sacrificed before the fad goes away. I hope that the sight of the deforested mountain will cause people to demand results, ie proof that less coal is burned for power production elsewhere. Of corse, that won't possibly happen and so maybe enough people will then realize the absurdity of it all. Destroying finite high-elevation forest with nothing to show...what a shame

Could not agree more FG. Here is what "progress" on one mountain already looks like:

Brian

 

[Lou Hale]

Could not agree more FG. Here is what "progress" on one mountain already looks like:

Brian

have you ever sees what mountain top removal for coal mining looks like ?
Its an easy choice between having to hike around a wind turbine or not having a mountain there any more.

 

[NewHampshire]

have you ever sees what mountain top removal for coal mining looks like ?
Its an easy choice between having to hike around a wind turbine or not having a mountain there any more.

Yes, but we have no coal (as far as I know) in New Hampshire. What we do have is a very sustainable resource, trees. I have been reading articles in the Society For the Protection of NH Forests magazine "Forest Notes" on the advancments made on wood energy technologies. When done right, logging would offer the north country continuous jobs (unlike the wind generators), is not an eyesore (unlike the wind generators), and provides benifits to wildlife habitat (unlike the wind generators.) Look, I understand we live in a political climate that pretty much guarentees "green" energy must be looked at. But wind generation will only ever be a supplemental energy, just like solar. I can't understand why some people are so willing to accept something that is an eyesore to the land (just like the coal strip mining you mention) all because it is considered ecologically friendly (which I would argue it isn't depending on one's definition of "friendly).

Brian

 

[Stash]

Redundancy

In the land of computers we call this a loop...

Where do Wind Farms belong?


a
b
c
goto a

 

[forestgnome]

have you ever sees what mountain top removal for coal mining looks like ?
Its an easy choice between having to hike around a wind turbine or not having a mountain there any more.

False choice...There's no coal here. There was beautiful forest. No less coal will be burned. False choice. Phoney environmental concern. No disgust at these images prooves that. Pure pop culture. Pure "feels-good".

 

[Lou Hale]

False choice...There's no coal here. There was beautiful forest. No less coal will be burned. False choice. Phoney environmental concern. No disgust at these images prooves that. Pure pop culture. Pure "feels-good".

nothing I can really say and keep with in the guide lines of this website

 

[Taconic]

False choice...There's no coal here. There was beautiful forest. No less coal will be burned. False choice. Phoney environmental concern. No disgust at these images prooves that. Pure pop culture. Pure "feels-good".

I realize that this is going a bit beyond the topic at hand, but...

Last semester I had a course (2000-level physical geo) that had a significant segment devoted to emerging data on climate change. The professor that taught it detailed some of the effects that he has seen in his own research over a number of years. The situation presented by emerging science is rather bleak. I'd have to go back and find my notes for exact details, but the "best case" scenario at this point--which basically requires not only the US and Europe to curb emissions immediately, but also China and India--more or less predicts the destruction of alpine environments in New England within the next 150 years (not to mention what will happen in the arctic and in the ocean.) And for the record, this scenario is considered unrealistically optimistic to hope for and the "middle of the road" scenario is more bleak. It's a pretty complex issue with multiple outcomes, so there's a lot of "play" in regards to what the ultimate outcome may be (the immediate scenarios, for example, didn't really account for what would happen when melting sea ice is dumped into the conveyor currents. In all likelihood this would slow or stop them, ultimately greatly cooling the climate at this latitude. This would likely happen after we've lost a lot of rare environment, however. There's actually an ongoing study going on in the Green Mountains that has demonstrated that the boreal forests are shrinking and that the hardwood forests are encroaching further upslope than they were even 50 years ago.)

Prior to that class, I pretty much shared your viewpoint--that wind power was not the worth the destruction of forest habitat. However, my opinion has since changed. If a place presents a viable opportunity for wind power, it should be seized upon. While there may be no coal in the Whites, every KWh of power generated there by wind is one that needn't be generated by coal and transported there. Waiting for the environment around a turbine to recover is better than losing that environment altogether IMO.

Although personally I think they should be building coastal turbines. They're generally more reliable than ones located in the mountains.

 

[peakbagger]

Outside of the rather significant thread drift, I did take an upclose look at the turbine at the Moutain View after a Cherry Mountain hike. Unlike the prior postings showing "despoiled" virgin timberland from elsewhere, the new turbine is about 500 feet away from the Mountain View Hotel and in the same general area as the water tower that services the resort. I drove up from the south via RT 3 out of whitefield, where the hotel and turbine are quite evident. The turbine is laid out to the west of the hotel outside of the typical view of the whites which is predominately easterly.

If anything, the turbine is probably too well blended into the local terrain as it sure looks like there is a potential for turbulence from surrounding structures and the general treeline. In general, its always hard to argue against "nothing" but from a distance, the impact of this facility is minimal as compared to other significant manmade terrain and viewshed impacts.

 

[Roxi]

Thank you Peakbagger. Your observations are very much appreciated.

 

[Kevin Rooney]

There's an article in the LA Times about the rapid die-back of aspens in the West, notably Colorado which has thousands of acres of aspens, believed due to GW. The phenomenon is called "Sudden Aspen Decline". "The decline of the tree is most visible in Colorado, which has seen nearly 500,000 acres afflicted by SAD -- nearly a fifth of its aspen groves." You can read the article here. As the article points out - it's not just Colorado effected by aspen die-back - all the states have a similar situation - it's just that Colorado has more aspens than other states.

This is particularly sad for Colorado, as large sections of their evergreen forests have been under attack by beatles, and whole mountainsides are now brown from dead pine trees - again, due to rapid climate change which allows the beatle to thrive.

I'd like to think this sort of devastation won't happen in New England, but that's probably unrealistic.

Where I live there's a huge increase in commercial wind and solar electrical generation. I think in general that people are way past the aesthetics of the structures, and the environmental issues are more concerned with topics like "how can we minimize danger to birds during annual migrations".

 

[forestgnome]

What is the fraction of energy produced by this windmill of the total energy produced or consumed? What is the projected global demand for energy? I have asked, in vain, on these threads but I'll ask again.

Why would any producer of energy slow production by one zillionth just because they heard that a windmill in NH just went online and is now producing on zillionth of market demand for the product?

Imagine you produce energy. You sell every bit of energy you produce instantly. All competitor's energy sells instantly. World energy demand outstrips the ability to produce energy. There is no possible way to fullfill market demand, and demand is growing exponentially. Foreign producers are producing far more energy because they have no legal restrictions. Even they cannot produce enough energy to meet demand. China, alone, is opening a new coal plant each week. Demand for the product cannot possibly be met.

Demand for the product cannot possibly be met. Demand for the product cannot possibly be met. Demand for the product cannot possibly be met.

Now, imagine you hear the news that a little windmill on a mountain is now producing an amount of energy that is utterly meaningless to demand. Demand for the product cannot possibly be met. Nothing has changed. It is less that a drop in an ocean. Why would you produce that much less energy? What difference would it make? Could the gauges at you energy plant even detect such a microscopic amount in order to turn the dial down by such an amount? Why would you?


When the high-elevation forest is devastated, with gleeful blessings of "environmentalists", nothing has changed in the energy market. But much has changed in the lives of those who call the area home.

 

[Craig]

I agree Forestgnome.

These new technologies (solar, wind, geothermal underground storage or somesuch) are IMO a feel-good for public consumption and a stopgap for economic stability.

I heard a podcast this morning that indicated some scientist think the world needs to convert around 80 percent of the energy we now get from fossil fuels to cleaner alternatives in order to escape the worst effects of global warming. They estimate that getting to even a quarter of that goal would require installing a wind turbine every five minutes for the next 25 years.

Spend the money, if you must, on these new innovations but don’t have tunnel vision while putting the bubblegum on a crack in the dike.

 

[peakbagger]

Patrick obviously wants to vent his displeasure of remote wind farms on privately owned "wild" mountains that he regards as spoiled by the presence of wind turbines, despite the far more obvious impact to the environment of the industrial forestry surrounding these sites that is obvious to anyone who has looked at some of the regionally proposed wind farm sites on Google Earth.

The reason these summits are "pristene" and may contain "old growth" is not that the owners were interested in their conservation value, as much as there was no economic value to cutting the area. I expect that the onwers will be glad to sell these areas to anyone who wants to buy them like Dillon is currently doing on the AT in the Mahoosucs. Just realize that they will want an equivalent amount per acre of what the land would be worth for other users be it forestry or wind turbines.

I will leave it up to him to continue with his effort at trying to keep his "backyard" pristene rather than turning this into a discussion of regional and global energy policy as this is not the intent of VFTT, but will point out that the Whitefield Turbine is immediately adjacent to a major resort complex complete with an 18 hole golf course. To infer that this project is in a "wild and remote" area is just not valid.

 

[erugs]

I agree and disagree.

Consumerism is too great, but this process has run our world for ages. Many people (not most of us) want more, and more and more. How do they get it? How do they begin to realize they are never going to be really satisfied by the next thing they get? That they'll just "jones" for something more?

Our global society can't expect to change overnight, nor is a different technology for running our global community of today available just because we need it. Small examples: How many ways of listening to recorded music have come our way through to this day? From carts to wagons to trains and planes, look at the evolution, the experimenting, the failures and successes, only to have the technology evolve again. From heavy glass plate cameras using toxic chemicals to produce black and white images to tiny digital cameras that are difficult to find in the bottom of a pocket. A little turbine on private property to help us all see there is hope for a better world if we all work at it? The continuum goes on. It's important that we all do our part to impress others by our own actions that less can be more, that there are "other ways" to accomplish our goals, that we can reset our priorities.

Here's to less damage to our beautiful Earth, more understanding, and, well, let's add greater peace and more love while we're at it.