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Ancestral home could become wind farm site

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Published Date: 06 July 2009
The countryside surrounding the ancestral home of George Washington could soon become home to a wind farm if a planning application is approved.
Land between Sulgrave and Weston could soon be the site of a nine-turbine wind farm, with one of the 280ft (85m) turbines sited about half a mile from Sulgrave Manor, where ancestors of the first American president lived.

No application has yet be
en submitted but company Enertrag has applied for information from South Northamptonshire Council, which will consider the application, about the issues which it will need to address prior to plans being drawn up.

A meeting will be held in Sulgrave later this month for parishioners to make their views on the proposals known.

Sulgrave Parish Council chairman, Graham Roberts, said: "We are still trying to assess the impact of what is being proposed.

"It is an attractive part of the country but we do not want to be seen as NIMBYs.

"We are expecting to be consulted by Enertrag. I would not like to say we are against renewable energy but Sulgrave is a beautiful area of the country and the village is in a conservation area."

News of the latest wind farm project comes days after campaign group Stop the Spin, claimed the county was fast becoming "windfarm alley" because of the proliferation of turbines down the spine of the county.

David Linley, project manager for Enertrag UK, said: "This wind farm could be capable of generating power for 20,000 homes. When electricity prices go up, lights go out and the UK needs to meet its carbon trading requirements, I think the importance of wind farms will hit home."

The so-called Weston plans on the company's website say it sites all turbines a minimum of 700m from any residential property, which "is not a requirement of any planning legislation but a figure that Enertrag have found reasonable to counteract any issues with noise or shadow flicker".

Each turbine would have a maximum output of 2MW and power would be fed into the national grid via underground cables. Blades on the turbines will be 295ft (90m).

The meeting takes place at Sulgrave Manor on Wednesday, July 15, at 7.30pm.



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  • Last Updated: 05 July 2009 9:17 PM
  • Source: Northampton Chron & Echo
  • Location: Northampton
 
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1

Hrolf.,

06/07/2009 10:34:25
'Trying to oppose these Wind farms seems about as hopeless as trying to stop the march of the Academies.'

Any of them been built yet? Seems the protesters are doing quite well.
2

BucktonMan,

Northampton 06/07/2009 11:15:17
Can someone explain why its such a bad thing to be a NIMBY? Surely if we all were a bit more NIMBYish then we wouldn't have councils and companies building stuff without propoer consultation. Being a NIMBY might spare us the wanton vandalism we witnessed ate the weekend in Abington Park.

If being a NIMBY shows that you care about your community and what is developed there why do people treat them with such contempt? Its only become a 'Dirty' word since Yvette Cooper, speaking as Housing Minister at the New Labour conference some years ago, portrayed people who care,i.e. NIMBY's, because they were opposed to their point of view, i.e. massive house building schemes in rural areas of the South East.

Lets not be ashamed of preserving our area for future generations to enjoy, long live the NIMBY!
3

Whauped,

06/07/2009 18:23:23
David Linley says, "When electricity prices go up, lights go out ... I think the importance of wind farms will hit home."

How true ... mainly because Mr Linley and his pals in the wind industry will be responsible for the major rises in electricity prices in the coming years.

Subsidies paid by the electricity consumer to the the wind industry are currently 54% of a wind power station's income.

There are already massive costs in re-engineering the power generation and distribution system to cope with large amounts of erratic and intermittent wind power generation (WPG) and this will get steadily worse:

"Uswitch points out that the average energy bill for a typical household has more than doubled since 2005 to £1,243 from £580. Extrapolating that into the future and after adding in the energy infrastructure spending that the country badly needs, that average rises to £4,733 over the next 11 years.

"According to consultants Ernst & Young, investment in Britain's energy supplies will cost £233.5bn, of which half will go on renewable energy generation and the rest on new conventional power stations, 'smart' meters and grid upgrades [much of which is necessitated by WPG].

"The investment will add £548 a year onto household energy bills for the next 15 years." (Guardian, 22 June).

The problem is, we are duplicating investment: a huge investment in heavily subsidised wind, plus conventional thermal stations for all the time when wind isn't working.

Mike Anderson, director general of Defra’s Climate Change Group, recently addressed a meeting of National Grid investors. The Guardian reported:

"With an increase in intermittent wind power, Mr Anderson said the UK would require a jump from the current 78GW of power capacity to more than 100GW."

This agrees with what Paul Golby of E.ON UK has been saying:

"E.ON said that it could take 50 gigawatts of renewable electricity generation to meet the EU target. But it would require up to 90% of this am
4

Whauped,

06/07/2009 18:27:09
Sorry, last bit was cut:

"E.ON said that it could take 50 gigawatts of renewable electricity generation to meet the EU target. But it would require up to 90% of this amount as backup from coal and gas plants to ensure supply when intermittent renewable supplies were not available. That would push Britain's installed power base from the existing 76 gigawatts to 120 gigawatts."
('E.ON warns over backup for renewables', The Guardian, 4 June 2008).
5

M Eales,

Northampton 07/07/2009 11:56:43
Dear Whauped, i would be interested to know (since you appear to have some knowledge regarding the subject of wind farms) what your solution might be for the problem that is climate change? If not wind power and omitting Nuclear power (for the moment) what would you suggest?
6

Whauped,

07/07/2009 14:12:04
M Eales.

I would like to see a more balanced approach. The Government has created an onshore wind frenzy by a crude one-size-fits-all policy that followed the 2003 white paper.

The Renewables Obligation subsidy is both crude and hugely expensive and has been criticised by the National Audit Office, Ofgem and numerous parliamentary committees and experts. Most experts feel that the German system of feed-in tariffs is cheaper and more effective.

The government has adopted a hands-off, developer-led approach to energy issues which does not allow for sensible planning or implementation of policy.

As for 'solutions', I am not so stupid or so arrogant as to believe that we can 'solve climate change'. If you are asking what can we do to ameliorate our contribution to climate change gas emissions, I think that is a huge question that is not just a question of the c. 28% of CO2 from power generation.

Within that small area, it is worth noting wind is small beer.

The French have the best figures purely because of their high nuclear baseload. Our government recognised some time ago that nuclear is the only big low carbon generator in the game at the moment. I suspect that we will see a huge expansion of different nuclear technologies, especially using non-uranium fuel sources, in the coming years.

With renewables we have bet the house on the least efficient and most outdated technology - wind. Nothing is going to change the fact that wind has a huge visual footprint and is the most erratic and intermittent of renewables.

We keep hearing about Denmark's huge concentration of wind capacity, but few people seem to realise that Denmark, though cited as the shining example of wind power, actually produces much more power - and much more reliable power - from biomass:
"The largest output of sustainable energy in Denmark comes from biomass, that is, from the burning of, or the production of combustible gases from, hay, wood chips, manure from domestic anim
7

Whauped,

07/07/2009 14:13:12
To conclude the above:

"The largest output of sustainable energy in Denmark comes from biomass, that is, from the burning of, or the production of combustible gases from, hay, wood chips, manure from domestic animals, and garbage. Biomass accounts for 80% of the Danish production of sustainable energy." (Danish Government Portal).

The Teesport biomass power station (currently in planning), a compact industrial plant with a single 70-90 metre chimney, will occupy a brownfield, industrial site that is only 10% of the area of a small (10-15MW) wind power station. It will operate for some 8,000 hours per annum producing 2,400,000MWh of predictable, base load power. The project scoping report notes:

"As the project will run 24 hours per day, 365 days per annum, it will generate as much renewable electricity as a 1,000MWe offshore wind farm (equivalent to that generated by the London Array wind farm which is one of the largest renewable energy projects in the world)"

The facility should be operational by 2012, and would alone fulfil 5.5% of the nation's renewable energy requirements under the expected Renewable Obligation target for that year. It would save, "approximately 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions." Compared to equivalent generation from conventional power stations.

Unfortunately, the development of biomass plant in the UK has suffered due to the Government’s myopic concentration on wind power generation.

It is not attractive to the speculative cowboys of the wind sector because it demands some expertise and business acumen in planning feedstock and employment as well as the capital investment.

Microbial technologies are likely to be huge. The Danes, for example, are putting a huge effort into R & D into this area which will be providing both fuel and power in the future.

We are also failing to exploit developed marine and geothermal technologies and to provide serious funding for R & D in marine technologies which will be much mo
8

Whauped,

07/07/2009 14:15:08
And finally:

We are also failing to exploit developed marine and geothermal technologies and to provide serious funding for R & D in marine technologies which will be much more productive than wind.
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