Fears over the health of his pregnant partner and unborn child is forcing a man to demand a wind turbine standing a stone’s throw from his family’s home is removed.

Andrew Randall says that the constant noise from the turning blades is causing sleepless nights and stress for Rachel, who is four months pregnant.

Mr Randall (23) said: “Rachel’s stressed all the time and she can’t cope with the lack of sleep. I’m concerned about the health of the baby.

Mr Randall’s neighbours have joined the fight and each household has logged a complaint with the Environmental Health department at Fenland District Council.

Read the full story: Peterborough Evening Telegraph.

About a fifth of the electricity produced annually in Denmark is generated by wind. Of this, just over a half can be used directly within national borders over the year. The rest must be exported (often at much reduced prices) to preserve the integrity of domestic grids.

The need to backup the variable supply of wind power with electricity from combined heat and power plants for internal use, and the necessity to export large surpluses of wind power, mean that domestic savings in carbon emissions are relatively small at the present time.

Investigations to develop novel power transmission and usage systems for the greater exploitation of wind power within Denmark are in hand, but public opposition and concerns about safety have temporarily halted the deployment of wind turbines on land.

Read Dr Mason’s article at Windpower in Denmark
(Copyright Country Guardian)

Plans for a wind turbine on top of the City of Manchester Stadium have been abandoned for fear of falling ice.

Planning permission for the 280ft (85m) turbine – which would have powered the stadium and some neighbouring homes – was granted in August 2006.

But the project was delayed after experts warned of a risk of ice falling from the blades in cold weather.

A Manchester City Football Club spokesman said it had now become “impractical to continue”.

The turbine, designed by Sir Norman Foster, was planned as a partnership between the club and green energy company Ecotricity.

Read the complete article on the BBC website.

We had good support at all three Brixworth Parish Council meetings.

Mercedes flew a blimp on 1st. November, to help us judge the final turbine height.

The Brixworth Parish Council meeting on 3rd. November, voted to oppose the turbines.

We have a display in the Brixworth library starting this Saturday 15th. November.

We still have until the end of November, to register objections with Daventry District Council.

The decision day will be at the Daventry District Council Planning meeting, date to be advised, we look forward to your full support on this important event.

This application can be seen in full on the Daventry web site under application number DA/2008/0997

Mercedes High Performance Engines through the developer Wind Direct, wish to build two 127m high turbines on the Brixworth site. These turbines will dominate the village, Saxon Church and the countryside which includes a designated ‘Special Landscape Area’.This will have more impact on Brixworth than the Lodge Farm proposal.

One turbine is placed far too close to the A508 and it will pose a strong risk to traffic should there be any malfunction in the turbine. Mercedes have ignored all but the biased wind industry-derived dated information on Health and Safety. There is a well reasoned case for 2km exclusion zones round larger turbines. They propose putting a turbine in the car park, just 200m from the factory. Apart from turbine malfunction, fire, ice-throw and blade break-up. The blades spinning at up to 150mph, are aerodynamic, weighing many tons and potentially extensive damage can be done to buildings. There are also possible risks to employees and villagers from low frequency noise. Here they again hide behind outdated wind industry justifications. There are many serious wind turbine scientific studies linked to our web site, Wind Turbines; Noise, Health & Human Rights issues being a good starting point.

Noise is an issue that could affect many people in Brixworth, some houses are only 400m from the turbine. There is always some noise and there are proven cases where noise is a serious health problem for residents, it is accepted that this can affect up to 20% of installations. The turbine manufacturers do not know why this is. Like many other developers, Wind Direct do not even know specifically which turbines they will get, it is what is available at the time. This is in addition to all the variables caused by the terrain and the local weather conditions. Why won’t Wind Direct show us a complete noise contour map, again what have they to hide?

Shadow flicker is another area of concern, it is mainly caused by the low morning sun behind turbine blades and is at its worst when the turbines are situated to the east of buildings. In addition to the moving shadow which can thrown over 2km from the turbine, there is a strobe effect caused when this light and shade pattern goes across blinds or narrow windows. It also affect people out of doors when this pattern goes past winter trees and slatted fencing. You will be familiar with this as you pass trees, with the sun behind them in the winter. In law in can be argued that the rights of residents in their garden are the same as they would have in the house. There can also be problems from blade reflections from the evening setting sun. Wind Direct carefully say they will discuss this for twelve months, there have been developers who suggest house blinds are put up to shut this out. Why don’t they commit to stopping shadow flicker, the technology is there.

Wind Direct own and maintain the turbines, Mercedes supply the site and get turbine generated electricity at a 10-20% discount under current price. This potentially leads to another problem, in that should they get installed we will be dealing with Wind Direct and not Mercedes The turbines have the capacity to supply some 20% of Mercedes electricity requirements. It is very debatable if the modest electricity saving justifies what could well be a large negative impact on Brixworth.

This is the lowest wind speed area in the country, why can’t we see are the wind speed records from their anemometer mast. What have they to hide?

They say there is no evidence of property devaluation associated with turbines. Do they think that people desperate to sell are going to advertise that they are blighted and risk lowering the value even more? What will pensioners do when they try and get equity release on their last remaining asset and find that the adjacent turbines have drastically reduced the house value? Something is badly wrong here, we the energy users will be giving them up to £400,000 in subsidies annually, for what, a negative impact on the area.

Mercedes are an important well regarded local company, we hope they will reconsider and withdraw this scheme, for the good of the community.

IF YOU WISH TO OBJECT PLEASE USE THE LETTER BELOW TO CONTACT DAVENTRY D.C.

Or e-mail b.osborne@daventrydc.gov.uk

Brett Osborne
Daventry District Council
Lodge Road
Daventry
Northants NN11 4FP

Application number DA/2008/0997

I wish to object to the two proposed 127m high turbines on the Mercedes Brixworth site, which will dominate the village and have a very high impact on Brixworth and the countryside which includes a designated ‘Special Landscape Area’.

One turbine is placed far too close to the A508 and it will pose a strong risk to traffic should there be any malfunction in the turbine.

The proposal to put the other turbine in the car park, just two hundred metres from the buildings, raises many concerns. Apart from turbine malfunctions, blade break up, fire and ice throw. There is also the possible risk to employees from low frequency noise. There are many serious wind turbine scientific studies on this, Wind Turbines; Noise, Health & Human Rights issues being a good starting point. There is a well reasoned case for 2km exclusion zones round larger turbines, which are applied in some countries.

Noise is an issue that could affect many people in Brixworth, some houses are only 400m from the turbine. There is always some noise and there are proven cases where noise is a serious problem for residents, it is accepted that this can affect up to 20% of installations. The turbine manufacturers do not know why this is. This is in addition to all the variables caused by the terrain and the local weather conditions.

Shadow flicker is another area of concern, like flash photography this can cause health problems. Wind Direct carefully say they will discuss this for twelve months, there have been developers who suggest house blinds are put up to shut this out. Why don’t they commit to stopping shadow flicker, the technology is there.

Around 60 people attended the protest against the huge, unsightly, noisy and potentially dangerous wind turbines which Mercedes are hoping to build.

The Chronicle & Echo reported on the demonstration.

Interestingly, the comments following the article seem to be written largely by people from outside the village, who will not have to suffer the environmental problems often caused by such turbines.