Apex MX making the news again..

Today's Droitwich Advertiser reports on calls from the so-called Tibberton Action Group (TAG) to reject the proposals for a medium size wind turbine at the Apex motocross site next to the M5 motorway despite a recommendation to pass by Wychavon planning officers. TAG claim the siting near to the motorway is dangerous even though the Highways Agency have given the project the all clear.

The 91m tall turbine would be 140m from the M5. Of note is the much larger 125m Ecotricity turbine in Reading which is only 150m from the M4. Clearly wind turbines can co-exist with major roads without incident since the severe weather conditions that cause ice to build up on the blades typically only happen one day per year in the UK. Keeping the turbine stopped until the ice has melted mitigates any risk. Still, TAG maintain that there is "a real risk of the turbine causing a major accident with significant loss of life" and that their "engineers" have calculated that huge lumps of ice could be thrown at 200mph to almost a kilometre awayNo such evidence has been produced for scrutiny in their submission to the planning authority however.

Recent research papers have concluded the chance of being hit by ice thrown from a wind turbine at 150m is 1 in 1,000,000 which is about the same as the risk of getting struck by lightning. As above fitting ice sensors to detect the formation of ice before it becomes a problem almost completely eliminates any residual risk.

TAG also insinuate that the turbine will not be economically viable, although without the benefit of project capital costs this assertion can only be described as uninformed opinion at best and certainly not a valid planning matter on which the proposals could be refused. TAG point to the rumours that George Osbourne wants to redirect subsidies away from renewables and into nuclear power, however this highlights a misunderstanding of the current schemes since the Feed in Tariff is guaranteed until at least 2030 and at the prevailing rate (index linked) when the turbine becomes operational. Subsidies for future schemes may well drop but this would not affect operational plant. Furthermore, support for nuclear is at an all time low and expected to add £600 annually to the average household energy bill - compared to just £6 annually for wind.

In their most recent letter to the planning authority, TAG claim to have almost 90% support for their objections among villagers. However the Office of National Statistics lists Tibberton as having 482 residents in 194 dwellings. TAG have only 111 signatures on their petition which is less than 25%.

In a Worcester Evening News poll from earlier this year a whopping 67% of WEN readers said they supported wind turbines. In a recent poll for the Independent newspaper 68% of participants said wind power was an acceptable  price for green energy with an even higher 79% in the 18-45 age groups.

DistGen MD, John Zamick said "the level of opposition has been somewhat surprising - you'd think that we were proposing a monster wind  farm rather than a single medium sized turbine."


The carbon cost of wind

A  comment was recently passed to us from a planning authority regarding one of our wind turbine applications. A member of the public had asked what the carbon cost of a wind turbine was in comparison to the claimed savings.

To answer this we first need to assess the relative "costs" of energy generating technologies. A 2011 Government report gives us the following numbers which represent the amount of CO2 released during the manufacture, delivery, installation, operation and decommissioning of each major technology expressed in grams of CO2 per kwh generated:

Technology Lifetime Cost in gCO2/kWh
Nuclear 5 to 7
Wind 5 to 20 (includes micro, onshore & offshore)
Wave/Tidal 12 to 39
Solar PV 75 to 116
Biomass 60 to 550
Gas 365 to 488
Oil 650
Coal 786 to 990 (includes use of carbon capture & storage)

The particular wind turbine in question (a Vestas V52 on 74m tower) with an average windspeed of 6.8m/s should be on the lower range of costs associated with wind energy, but for fairness we will choose a value a 10gCO2/kwh. Annual generation output is predicted to be around 2,000MWh.

So the total lifecycle CO2 "cost" can be calculated as below:

2,000,000 (kWh) x 20 (years) x 10 (gCO2/kWh) = 400 metric tonnes of CO2

Now let's look at the total lifecycle CO2 "saving" by calculating the CO2 released if we were to produce the same amount of electricity using existing UK powerplant. The Government publish the CO2 cost of UK grid electricity as 540gCO2/kWh, so the calculation is:

2,000,000 (kWh) x 20 (years) x 540 (gCO2/kWh) = 21,600 metric tonnes of CO2

Put another way, the turbine will yield an equivalent CO2 saving of 1,080 tonnes per year. So its quite easy to see that it will account for its entire lifecyle CO2 emissions in less than 6 months of operation.
This is why wind turbines are so popular, in UK and even more so abroad.