Bye Bye sleep
If you live within 2km (1¼ mile) of a wind farm, there is every likelihood that your sleep will be disturbed. Poor quality sleep results in daytime fatigue, poor mental function and a host of other health problems. This may not occur every night but it’s likely to happen because the wind turbines are noisier and more intrusive at night.
How do wind turbines disturb sleep?
The simple answer is because they are noisy. Wind turbines generate two main types of noise. The first comes from the machinery as the rotor blades turn. This is a mixed frequency noise, not unlike the noise we experience from the M1. This can be heard for several hundred metres and varies with the wind speed and thus the speed at which the rotor is turning.
The second type of noise is much more intrusive and comes from the rotor blades, especially as they pass the mast. It’s a low frequency whooshing or thumping noise. If you want to hear it, there are plenty of examples on YouTube. Low frequency noise travels much further than high frequency, particularly in rural hilly areas, and they can be heard up to 2-3 miles away under the right (or wrong!) conditions. The wind speed in this area varies constantly and thus the frequency of the thumping noise varies. In addition, if there is more than one turbine, they will be rotating at slightly different speeds. When two or more rotors pass their masts at the same time, the sound level doubles or trebles producing a “pulse” of louder sound. The result is a “pulsing” sound which varies in frequency and intensity. One sufferer who lives near a wind farm described it as like a passing freight train that never passes! A recent study has shown that a freight train is more likely to disturb sleep than a passenger train or a car at an equivalent noise level.
This noise effects sleep in two ways, the second much less obvious than the first and completely overlooked by the industry. Note first of all that nobody has completely unbroken sleep. We all wake at least a couple of times in the night. If we’re awake for less than 30 seconds, we don’t remember having woken. As we get older we wake a bit more often and we remember being awake. This is where the noise from the wind farm becomes a problem as it can stop you getting back to sleep. Because the noise varies, it’s difficult to get used to it! It’s like a snoring partner that you can’t send to the spare room to escape the noise!
The second way that turbine noise disturbs sleep is much more subtle. The pulses of sound can easily be loud enough to produce a brief awakening (only a second or so) or an arousal (technical term meaning to move briefly from a deep to a shallow level of sleep). The sleeper is not aware of the disturbances but the sleep is still broken up into lots of little bits, making it un-refreshing and resulting in daytime weariness etc.
Why is the noise worse at night?
Windfarm developers rely on the ambient or background noise, such as wind rustling the trees and traffic, to mask the turbine noise. This is why they choose sites near motorways, they hope we won’t notice! However, as we all know, motorway traffic decreases at night while the turbines keep going. It’s also common for the wind speed at ground level to decrease at dusk while it is maintained 100 metres above the ground. Thus the turbine noise continues while the wind noise WE hear diminishes, unmasking the rotor sounds.
The wavelength of the low frequency sound from the rotors is about the same as the size of a typical room. The room can then resonate, amplifying the sound. The major organs of the body resonate at similar frequencies and thus the sound can be as much “felt” as heard and this is more obvious when we are lying still in bed.
Why hasn’t anything been done to stop this?
A very good question! The wind farm developers and their paid experts are good at making reassuring noises. Most of the research that has been done has been commissioned by the industry or government and is fundamentally flawed in its design and conclusions. For example, measurements of noise from wind turbines have looked at AVERAGE noise levels. As we have seen above, it’s the PEAKS of noise which disturb sleep and these are obscured by average measurements. They ignore also the particularly intrusive nature of low frequency noise. The human ear perceives a low frequency sound as louder than an equivalent high frequency noise. The varying frequency and intensity of rotor noise is especially disturbing.
The simple truth is that there is insufficient evidence to show that living within 2km of a wind farm is not harmful to human health and sleep quality as the developers claim. If the Low Spinney wind farm goes ahead, the inhabitants of Ashby Magna, Gilmorton and Dunton Bassett will be unwitting guinea pigs in an experiment on the effects of wind turbine noise on sleep quality and health. Once they’re built, it will be well nigh impossible to stop them.
Do you want to be a subject in this experiment?
The author of this article has recently retired after 20 years as the Consultant in Sleep Medicine at Leicester General Hospital. He has a national reputation in this field, having been a founder member and past President of the British Sleep Society.
Roger Helmer's recent letter
Across the East Midlands, local communities are facing up to the threat of wind farms on their doorsteps, with all the associated problems of noise, health risks, visual intrusion and housing blight. Some of the myths about wind power need to be exposed.
"Wind is not intermittent, so long as the wind farms are spread out -- it's always blowing somewhere".No it's not. It's not uncommon for a high pressure area to cover the UK for days. Anyway there are technical distribution problems in bringing wind power from Ayrshire to Abingdon.
"Nuclear is intermittent too". Nonsense. Of course it's possible for any generating equipment to fail (we've all seen the videos of wind turbines breaking up). But nuclear, like coal and gas, delivers the consistent, predictable, reliable base-load power we need to support our industry and our children's jobs. Wind offers an intermittent trickle of power if you're lucky -- usually less than 30% rated capacity, often much less.
"Nimbys claim that wind needs back-up, but so does every other form of generation".
Of course there needs to be a contingency plan for unexpected stoppages for any generator. But only wind is variable, unpredictable and intermittent all the time on an hour-by-hour basis. Only wind needs constant conventional power on stand-by, running at sub-optimal capacity and wasting fuel and money. These extra costs are rarely accounted for in the cost of wind.
Wind is only viable with the huge implied subsidies that are already driving up electricity costs for homes and for industry. They're not wind farms at all: they're subsidy farms.
There are real questions whether our national grid can operate at all with the sort of high proportion of intermittent wind power planned by the government. Certainly it's never been done before. If it can't, or if the government's plans for investment in wind are delayed, we'll be sitting waiting for the lights to go out, and cursing our government's folly. Never forget the wise words of the Renewable Energy Foundation: we must remember that wind turbines are garden ornaments, not power stations.
Yours faithfully
Roger Helmer
Conservative MEP for the East Midlands
The potential impact on the environment will need to be addressed by the company as part of their detailed application and they will be investing substantial funds to study many aspects in response to HDC's guidance and scoping documentation.