Wind farms: top 5 of myths & urban legends

A curious consequence of writing a blog about wind farms is that every now and then I’m contacted by someone hating wind energy.

In the majority of the cases, the writer also ask for help to stop or boycott a wind farm somewhere in the word, apparently ignoring the fact that wind turbines help me to bring food on the table every night.

To add insult to injury, in the emails they often ask me support to confirm some pseudoscientific “facts” about wind turbines.

I’ve collected some of them in this post – other are coming from anti-wind energy propaganda websites that I read on the subway when I’m bored to discover new, unexpected effect of windmills.

Some of them are similar to the urban legend of the albino alligator in the sewers of New York.

Feel free to contribute!

5. Wind farms causes bush fires. Well, it’s true that (very, very infrequently) a wind turbine burns somewhere. But to say that they are burning woods and bushes it’s a bit too much.

4. The foundations are poisoning the water. Unless you pump 1 million cubic meters of bentonite to do a piled foundation nothing will happen to the water – a foundation is basically only a big stone.

3. The turbine is scaring the fishes – I’m not fishing as much as before. This is courtesy of a fisherman in Juchitan de Zaragoza (Oaxaca, Mexico). I doubt that a fish 10 meters underwater can really hear a WTG.

2. You need more energy to build a wind farm than the energy produced by the turbines. I’ve seen several (serious, scientific) papers on the subject. The energetic payback is usually only a few months.

And the winner is…

1. Wind farms change the weather locally. I love this one. The theory is that, slowing the wind, wind farms modify somehow the climate in the area – some urban legends say that they warm it, some others that they make it more foggy. Well, at least here in norther Germany where I’m living they are not making it any warmer.

One response to “Wind farms: top 5 of myths & urban legends”

  1. Larren Avatar
    Larren

    I just came across your blog and is great! I’m switching fields from gas pipelines to wind energy and found your posts very useful.

    I just happened to know about the third myth from the government official conducting consultations with local populations and the reason fishermen were catching less fish was because they dumped the flashlights batteries they discarded directly into the lagoon thus poisoning the fish. It’s easiest to blame some outside cause than accept that their way of doing things was the reason for their problems.

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