Tuesday, 1 July 2008

Wind Turbines 2

Had a comment on my wind turbine post (or rant) pointing me to this webpage - - Rattle and Hum
About the line "the argument about noise is false", I accept the point and I should maybe have said "in my opinion, or based on personal experience the argument about noise is false", as the large ones I worked near were virtually silent, or couldn't be heard above traffic noise from a nearby 'A' road.

It reminds of an incident about 5 years back at the power station where a few people living in a small housing estate about 1½ miles from the station, had complained to the council of a similar problem "a low frequency hum" usually only heard at night.
Eventually the council figured out it might be down to the power station and sent various environmental types down to do readings, at first no problem was found and nobody at the station could hear anything (myself included).
The problem persisted and further checks finally revealed a problem, it turned out to be just one of the gas turbines, which had a flexing of one of it's parts when the cooler night air was drawn in causing an inaudible hum which seemed to only become mildly audible over a distance?
One night shift around 3 in the morning I travelled down to the area and although I couldn't hear anything you could feel a mild pulsing vibration on the body of the van?
Strange stuff.
Anyway the offending parts were replaced and everyone seemed happy.

So the lady in Deeping might have to raise this problem at a higher level, as I'm guessing at least one of her local wind turbines has a minor problem.
I imagine cost cutting that is seen in every other walk of life goes on in this industry as well, and there is every chance inferior cheaper turbines were installed to cut costs.

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