For Attention of the Petitions Committee

Petition

Meeting 13^th. March 2012

I have been asked by members of Galar, and the Blaengwen Group to offer further clarification to the letter I have sent to Mr. William Powell , because they feel it disadvantages their case if the committee are not fully aware of the implications of their visit to both Pendine and Alltwalis on the 27^th and 28^th. February.

The research on this petition was done entirely by myself from a design engineering background with a working knowledge of Health and Safety legislation regarding acoustics in the manufacturing sector.  Knowledge on the wind turbine sector is through research, visiting conferences, visiting turbine sites and gathering information from engineers involved in the installation and operation of existing turbine sites over several years.  The research for the petition was carried out by myself and though I discussed the reasoning with others, I didn’t fully inform everybody on the technical detail and where the research took place.

I have visited Pendine, and because it has several attributes that would make it acceptable as a community, rather than commercial development;  I used the information I got from that visit, in the research for the petition.  Prime reasons I considered it more a community wind farm are: Turbines feed into local grid, (no transmission lines and pylons); blade tip height to land mass for shore sites, local involvement and landowner supports jobs with income, biodiversity projects etc. This specification was longer than the petition itself, so using Pendine as a model of turbines which would be acceptable the limit of 1.3MW (see petition para. three), as the community level turbine.

I would stress this does not mean that turbines of 1.3MW and below are noise free, but as most wind farm distress noise is caused by factors which are related to larger blade spans, or swept areas.  1.3MW was chosen as being the maximum size community projects would require, and turbines around that size tend to attract less noise complaints.  I also believed that noise problems arising, in these circumstances, could be dealt with at a community level.  It should be noted the Blaengwen turbines are 2.3MW installed ((or plate) capacity, 1MW greater than the 1.3MW we suggest as a community development. (43% larger).

What the petition set out to do, was point out a serious health problem, and at the same time offer what was considered a solution.  Using a combination of existing legislation which was cost neutral to the developer, and yet relieved the County Councils of operating monitoring systems; which are laborious, expensive, confrontational and contentious.  The system would also be cost neutral to the electrical consumer.

It was felt, when drafting the petition the Pendine type community project may be disadvantaged by being included alongside much bigger projects, so we included the 1.3MW break point.  There is cross party political agreement in Wales on community energy projects, a view accepted by the majority in our group, and we do not want to obstruct developments which are locally approved and meet ecological and biodiversity parameters.

I apologise for the misunderstanding, and hope this explanation makes our intentions is clear.

James Shepherd Foster