wind turbines and horses

[diggerbez]

they are proposing building some turbines literally right next to the arena at the farm...and right by the side of one of the roads we ride on- now i'm writing an objection letter to the council- does anyone have any examples of wind turbines causing an accident with horses?

 

[LeneHorse]

There have been previous threads about this - try searching 'wind turbine' or wind farm'. Someone had posted a photo of her riding her horse right underneath a turbine!

 

[soulfull]

I'm interested in this too as they are building some on our college grounds where I keep my horse.

I'm not overly worried as he is not really spooky but would still like to know

 

[perfect11s]

they are proposing building some turbines literally right next to the arena at the farm...and right by the side of one of the roads we ride on- now i'm writing an objection letter to the council- does anyone have any examples of wind turbines causing an accident with horses?

Id sugest they just burn a huge pile of money instead, oh and I wound'nt worry about them upsetting horses they only turn about a quarter of the year the rest of the time they sit idle absorbing tax payers money ......

 

[Dancing Queen]

a local stud grazes their horses next to the turbines, they arent botheres. The turbines arent that noisy tbh, people say that they are but they arent - like a gentle whoosh sound, quite relaxing really. They can also be made inactive by locking the blades.

 

[oscarwild]

Id sugest they just burn a huge pile of money instead, oh and I wound'nt worry about them upsetting horses they only turn about a quarter of the year the rest of the time they sit idle absorbing tax payers money ......

My OH works in the wind industry and all turbines in the uk are privately owned by large multi national companies and no tax payers money is involved.

The goverment provides tax breaks to incourage investment but no tax payers money.

As regarding the original topic I've hacked my horse around the turbines in my area with no problems at all. And at some sites there are horses grazing in the fields the turbines are built.

 

[silu]

Glad there are beginning to be quite a few who are realising that wind farms are NOT the answer to our needs for energy. The latest figures show that wind farms produced futile amounts of electricity during the baltic conditions in 2010 and again during this last cold period. Why, because the wind didn't blow! When is it that demand is at it's absolute peak? according to the electricity companies themselves, when it is cold and foggy...what don't you get in these conditions? wind!!

The wind farms I have been close to are indeed fairly noisey, not only do the blades make a noise when they are actually turning, but the gearing systems create a fair amount of noise too.

I personally have no experience of riding horses near them but wouldn't fancy it, maybe not the noise situation but the flicker effect and moving shadows could well be enough to spook my horses, in cold weather the blades can ice up creating an "ice throw" risk.

There are only 2 real winners in the rush to erect windfarms, the developers and the landowners who make loadsa money from subsidies, the landowners get paid a huge annual rental whether the blades turn or not!

 

[perfect11s]

My OH works in the wind industry and all turbines in the uk are privately owned by large multi national companies and no tax payers money is involved.

The goverment provides tax breaks to incourage investment but no tax payers money.

.

so the money comes out of thin air does it???? and electricity bills wont go up to subsidise these follys, its a giant con pure and simple....If the company's involved were paid a fair market rate for the electricity they produce they would go bust in a matter of weeks.croc of s destroying one of the things that we can exploit and make money from, our countyside!!!! japanese tourists dont come to the lake district to see these windmills its vandalisim pure and simple..

 

[PeterNatt]

The effects of wind turbines on horses ranges from no effect on some horses to terrifying other horses.
The main issues are:
Sunshine being reflected on the blades of the wind turbines blinding horses as they pass them and also casting dark rotating shadows as the turbine blades rotate.
The noise of the wind turbines terrifies some horses.
The site of the rotating turbine blades terrifies some horses.
In Winter water may freeze on the surfaces of the wind turbines and the ice is then projected from them when the turbines rotate hitting horses or passing horse riders.
Also be aware that during the construction phase heavy vehicles will be using the local roads and tracks to and from the site.
I always ask the developers for a completely circular track of restricted byway status which is ten times the total height of the wind turbine away from the site of them. i.e if the wind turbines are 150 metres high then I ask for the new route to be placed 1500 metres away from the site. This means that horse riders and carrage drivers can keep well away from them.
I also ask for this new route to be put in place prior to the development of the site and that where the access road to the site crosses the restricted byway that the drivers of all site vehicles give priority to horse riders and carrage drivers.

 

[Dancing Queen]

your electricity bills go up due to the increase or decrease in the wholesale price.

wind technology is a good alternative to the use of fossil fuels, in terms of sustainability and reduction of harmful emissions.

 

[diggerbez]

thanks will try searching. i don't really object to wind turbines- i live very near to some and actually like going up for a walk round them as there are a load all clustered together and they make the dogs go all loopy...but where they are proposing to build them at the yard is a bit scary- wouldn't mind if they were a few fields away but really don't want to school my horse literally underneath one- i know they are not *that* noisy- but they are still noisy- my horse is spooky enough at the best of times.
my other concern is that they are also going to be next to the road we use to get to the bridleways. this is a single track road- so there is obvious concern about increase in heavy traffic whilst the turbines are being errected. i don't ride on the roads for a reason (old accident) so really don't want to be passing plant machinery every day

 

[diggerbez]

The effects of wind turbines on horses ranges from no effect on some horses to terrifying other horses.
The main issues are:
Sunshine being reflected on the blades of the wind turbines blinding horses as they pass them and also casting dark rotating shadows as the turbine blades rotate.
The noise of the wind turbines terrifies some horses.
The site of the rotating turbine blades terrifies some horses.
In Winter water may freeze on the surfaces of the wind turbines and the ice is then projected from them when the turbines rotate hitting horses or passing horse riders.
Also be aware that during the construction phase heavy vehicles will be using the local roads and tracks to and from the site.
I always ask the developers for a completely circular track of restricted byway status which is ten times the total height of the wind turbine away from the site of them. i.e if the wind turbines are 150 metres high then I ask for the new route to be placed 1500 metres away from the site. This means that horse riders and carrage drivers can keep well away from them.
I also ask for this new route to be put in place prior to the development of the site and that where the access road to the site crosses the restricted byway that the drivers of all site vehicles give priority to horse riders and carrage drivers.

thanks peternatt- very helpful

 

[cptrayes]

The fact that wind turbines only turn when there is wind is irrelevant. We have multiple sources of power in this country. When wind turbines are turning, then gas turbines somewhere else aren't. If we have enough wind farms spread around then we can avoid building as many power stations as we would otherwise need (It's always windy SOMEWHERE in the UK ) For everyone who complains about having some white windmills nearby - how much will you complain if they want to build a filthy great gas fired power station near you instead?

 

[perfect11s]

your electricity bills go up due to the increase or decrease in the wholesale price.

wind technology is a good alternative to the use of fossil fuels, in terms of sustainability and reduction of harmful emissions.

what a load of rubbish, your electricity goes up because idiots make the wrong decisions and dont invest in reliable sources of energy and are infuanced by junk science and not common sense you still need power when there isnt wind so gas fired power stations are running on russian gas and our grid is drawing from the eficiant french nuclear power stations instead ..

 

[jumptoit]

Tbh I think the risk is minimal having competed in a field with a railway line on one fence line with a row of wind turbines slightly further in and a main A road on the opposite fence line, I have yet to find a horse that has a serious issues with them - my Dad even long reined the 3yo next to them. I think they are so tall that once you are underneath them or very close they are just a great pole the only thing that can cause some issues is the shadows ime.

 

[perfect11s]

The fact that wind turbines only turn when there is wind is irrelevant. We have multiple sources of power in this country. When wind turbines are turning, then gas turbines somewhere else aren't. If we have enough wind farms spread around then we can avoid building as many power stations as we would otherwise need (It's always windy SOMEWHERE in the UK ) For everyone who complains about having some white windmills nearby - how much will you complain if they want to build a filthy great gas fired power station near you instead?

 

[suzysparkle]

Wouldn't bother me. If it's that close the horses will get used to them very quickly. My first horse only took a day to get used to fast jets (moved to a yard right next to a RAF base) and was also much safer for the experience. These days the more exposure to things the better as it will only mean your horse is safer in the long run.

 

[Dancing Queen]

what a load of rubbish, your electricity goes up because idiots make the wrong decisions and dont invest in reliable sources of energy and are infuanced by junk science and not common sense you still need power when there isnt wind so gas fired power stations are running on russian gas and our grid is drawing from the eficiant french nuclear power stations instead ..

OK THEN! i guess you arent in the industry then, or dont have a clear understanding of the science you refer to as junk. oh well, never mind.

back to the original point - wind turbines in my experience have not caused any problems with the horses, but as we all know horses are individuals!

 

[oscarwild]

so the money comes out of thin air does it???? and electricity bills wont go up to subsidise these follys, its a giant con pure and simple....If the company's involved were paid a fair market rate for the electricity they produce they would go bust in a matter of weeks.croc of s destroying one of the things that we can exploit and make money from, our countyside!!!! japanese tourists dont come to the lake district to see these windmills its vandalisim pure and simple..

Not meaning to upset or offend you but as I stated my Husband works in the industry and knows exactly how it works.

Energy company(eon,natural power etc) buys for example 20 wind turbines
Energy company rents land from a land owner for said turbines
Wind turbine company (Nordex, Siemens, Vesta etc) build and run farm
Energy company sells electricity produced into national grid

As I said its a business and nothing to do with tax payers. For example Shipping giant Fred Olsen owns a large proportion of the uk wind turbine market.

Wind turbines merely act as a means to reduce carbon output and further polution from large scale power stations. They will never be able to provide all the electricity needs of the uk. The alternative which has already been pointed out is more oil, coal and gas fired power stations to met the uk rising energy demands.

So what would you prefer?

 

[perfect11s]

OK THEN! i guess you arent in the industry then, or dont have a clear understanding of the science you refer to as junk. oh well, never mind.

!

No not in the industry!! oh well never mind maybe I will also one day find a golden goose to fleece the nation with ...... sadly I do have an all too clear understanding of what is going on and maybe it will be funny in a train wreck sort of way when most of joe public also realise what is going on... they will want idiots like Hunne hung drawn and quartered....

 

[perfect11s]

Not meaning to upset or offend you but as I stated my Husband works in the industry and knows exactly how it works.

Energy company(eon,natural power etc) buys for example 20 wind turbines
Energy company rents land from a land owner for said turbines
Wind turbine company (Nordex, Siemens, Vesta etc) build and run farm
Energy company sells electricity produced into national grid

As I said its a business and nothing to do with tax payers. For example Shipping giant Fred Olsen owns a large proportion of the uk wind turbine market.

Wind turbines merely act as a means to reduce carbon output and further polution from large scale power stations. They will never be able to provide all the electricity needs of the uk. The alternative which has already been pointed out is more oil, coal and gas fired power stations to met the uk rising energy demands.

So what would you prefer?

I would prefer a reliable source of power, the lights to stay on and our country not reliant on gas imported from russia and the country side not wrecked with these monster windmils and most importanty our nuclear stations up graded and or replaced ......

 

[silu]

I'm very glad someone else has mentioned about the French and us buying nuclear from them! Around where I live a group got together to fight the BIGGEST (actual structures, not numbers of )and CLOSEST to habitation proposed wind farm yet in Britain. The German developers were are real bunch of lying bully boys. With over £30,000 raised by our group we fought it. We PROVED that if the turbines had run at 100% capacity for the lifetime of the turbines (25 years) the amount of a "green effect" would NEVER be offset by the amount of energy needed to erect the windfarm in the 1st place. The Germans got a "hot shot" specialist lawyer to fight their case but with the huge amount of work done/money we raised, the application was turned down. What did we gain from fighting the application?..absolutely nothing other than trying to protect the beautiful countryside from being lost forever (housing would likely follow if you could trust the site would be decommisioned properly by the developers). I was FOR windfarms before I bothered to actually find out a lot about them. I'm maybe wrong but I think years ago there were laws passed in Holland that windmills (the oldfashioned wooden ones) could not be sited close to anywhere where horse drawn vehicles passed because they were considered too much of a danger to horses. I will stand corrected if this is not the case. Cartainly I do know that windfarms are responsible for many birds and especially bats being killed...very green. The landowner in our particular case had evidently decided he was going to leave his property and live abroad on the income form the turbines, great, so we would have been left to put up with the huge disruption, constant noise (well that's if they were actually working!) and distruction of a wonderful piece of our countryside. Nuclear is the only answer whether we like it or not.

 

[soulfull]

The effects of wind turbines on horses ranges from no effect on some horses to terrifying other horses.
The main issues are:
Sunshine being reflected on the blades of the wind turbines blinding horses as they pass them and also casting dark rotating shadows as the turbine blades rotate.
The noise of the wind turbines terrifies some horses.
The site of the rotating turbine blades terrifies some horses.
In Winter water may freeze on the surfaces of the wind turbines and the ice is then projected from them when the turbines rotate hitting horses or passing horse riders.
Also be aware that during the construction phase heavy vehicles will be using the local roads and tracks to and from the site.
I always ask the developers for a completely circular track of restricted byway status which is ten times the total height of the wind turbine away from the site of them. i.e if the wind turbines are 150 metres high then I ask for the new route to be placed 1500 metres away from the site. This means that horse riders and carrage drivers can keep well away from them.
I also ask for this new route to be put in place prior to the development of the site and that where the access road to the site crosses the restricted byway that the drivers of all site vehicles give priority to horse riders and carrage drivers.

Ours are being built on a staffs college ground so doubt we will get any sort of help with where we ride around the grounds

 

[cptrayes]

I would prefer a reliable source of power, the lights to stay on and our country not reliant on gas imported from russia and the country side not wrecked with these monster windmils and most importanty our nuclear stations up graded and or replaced ......

Oil is running out. We have already passed the peak of worldwide oil production and supplies are running down.

Gas will last longer than oil but is also running out.

Coal doesn't grow on trees either The Chinese CURRENTLY consume 50% of worldwide production and they are building a new coal fired power station every 2 weeks or so. Coal will run out too, estimates vary as to when but start at 7 years time.

The raw material for nuclear power, uranium, is not in limitless supply and there are already signs that it will run out in 7 to 10 years if all the nuclear power stations in the world which are currently planned are actually built.

Nuclear fusion (does not require uranium) is still predicted to be 30 years away, the same as it was predicted in 1970. Many scientists believe it will always be 30 years away and is actually impossible to use to create commercial amounts of power.

The future for electricity production has to be renewables - sun, wind, sea. OK, things aren't perfect right now but we have to start somewhere and go through interim phases to get there. My house is lit by one small wind turbine. A small south facing monocrystalline solar roof is generating most of the rest of our electricity per year, including £600 of electricity for the compressor to increase the heat from my geothermal heat souce to the temperature required to pump around the radiators (this is VERY inefficient compared to underfloor, but we couldn't justify digging up the floors too!)

Renewables DO work.

And wind turbines are here to stay so you may as well get used to them.

 

[silu]

In response to the previous post, perhaps you could answer why it was that we had to buy electricity from France which was generated by Nuclear if wind farms are "the answer". Even those in the industry admitted that wind generated power was virtually non existant during the really cold spell in 2010 and again this year due to NO WIND.
I accept that windfarms have a part to play but "the world and his wife" are jumping on the gravy train. It wouldn't have mattered if we'd had 5 million turbines in Britain during these very cold periods, they were useless.

 

[cptrayes]

duplicate

 

[cptrayes]

Wind turbines are neither useless nor the whole answer. They provide a level of power which currently enables the UK to have one less gas turbine power station. If we get rid of all the wind farms are you volunteering:

a) to have a gas turbine or nuclear power station built beside your house.

b) to have rota power cuts when gas is no longer freely available and uranium is all used up, which will probably, depending on your age, be within your lifetime.

People seem not to know that electrical power can be stored. My wind turbine feeds batteries. Those batteries light my house even when the wind turbine is not turning. There are three properties near me whose entire electricity need is supplied by wind turbine, all farms. They too have battery banks and can last for a couple of weeks without wind. Two of those properties are not connected to the grid and have no other source of electricity.

I'm sorry if you hate them folks, but they DO work.



The reason that we have had to buy French electricity is that the Labour party did an appalling job of planning for the future of electricity supply and for the last several winters we have been on the brink of rota cuts. They simply did not plan for replacements for end of life power stations. Perhaps they were too busy banning fox hunting.

The cross channel link is a sensible mechanism whereby we can share peak loading with the continent. There is rarely maximum demand across the whole of Europe and we can be helped with our peak load and help European countries with theirs. It saves the whole of Europe having to build enough capacity in each country to supply an unusual peak of demand.

Next question ?

 

[perfect11s]

I can see the value of producing your own electricity from wind and solar and yes storage is fairly practical on a small scale, maybe that is the answer and everyone has a battery and inverter set up in their house so when the wind blows they buy and store power when the system has a surplus ...
however the current set up is just stupid as the wind is too unpridicable and hence the need for the normal forms of generation... insulation and heat pumps are the best idea its easyer to save energy than produce it...

 

[cptrayes]

It is not stupid. It is one piece in a renewables jigsaw.

How are you proposing we should produce power when there is no more oil, no more gas, and no more uranium?

It will be done by collecting light, wind and wave energy and the wind will be part of a much bigger picture.

The current set-up is not stupid, it is a step on the way to the solution for the future. Small installations prove the concept. Babies start with small steps, and so far, we are babies in using renewable energy. But we must start somewhere so that we have a full solution in place before oil, gas and uranium run out.

 

[silu]

In response to Cptrays, next question!

If wind farms are being erected as being the "green" answer, how is it that there are wind farms which have been proposed which would never generate as much energy as it would take to build them, presuming they ran at full capacity for their 25 year lifetime? This to me doesn't make sense. Obviously there are sites which are suitable but perhaps they are now getting thin on the ground and totally unsuitable sites are being given the go ahead to satify the Government's/EU targets?


Electricity being stored, how large would the batteries need to be to supply the National Grid? and how much would they cost in energy terms to build?

I would be very interested in learning more about the problem of supply of Uranium, perhaps you could advise a website where I could read some facts about this please.