"Windfall" the movie

http://firstrunfeatures.com/trailers_windfall.html

 

Reviews:

By Colin Covert, Star Tribune, Minnesota

Wind power was supposed to be the free lunch of green energy; Laura Israel's evenhanded documentary reminds us that everything comes at a cost. Focusing on an idyllic upstate New York farm town, she charts the community's growing disillusionment with the 40-story turbines. As the progressive locals learn about the giant fans' drawbacks -- flickering shadows, bird and bat kills and an incessant low-frequency hum -- town meetings turn contentious. The film isn't agenda-driven advocacy, but an invitation to think critically about an alternative energy source often presented as a panacea <universal remedy>. (U.S., 83 min.)

--Copyright © 2011 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

 

By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post 

With the Oscar-nominated “Gasland” (and its flame-throwing plumbing) enlightening viewers on the environmental and public health implications of natural gas drilling, and with nuclear power’s reputation in meltdown as a global community turns an anxious gaze toward Japan, some hardy souls may see hope in wind power. After seeing “Windfall,” those optimists will probably emerge with their faith, if not shaken, at least blown strongly off course.

“Windfall” takes place in Meredith, N.Y., a once-thriving dairy-farming community of fewer than 2,000 tucked into a bucolic Catskills valley that is teetering between post-agricultural poverty and hip gentrification. When Irish energy company Airtricity offers leases to build windmills on some residents’ properties, the deals initially seem like a win-win. A little extra money in the pockets of struggling farmers, an environmentally sound technology, those graceful white wings languorously slicing the afternoon sky — what’s not to like?

Plenty, as the concerned residents in “Windfall” find out. Not only do the 400-foot, 600,000-pound turbines look much less benign up close, but research has suggested that their constant low-frequency noise and the flickering shadows they cast affect public health; what’s more, they’ve been known to fall, catch fire and throw off potentially lethal chunks of snow and ice. 

Soon Meredith succumbs to drastic divisions between boosters, who see Airtricity’s offers as a godsend for the economically strapped community, and skeptics, who see the leases as little more than green-washed carpetbaggery. “Windfall” chronicles the ensuing, agonizing fight, which largely splits lifelong residents and the relatively new “downstaters,” who’ve moved in from Manhattan and want to keep their views and property values pristine.

...Wisely letting Meredith’s residents speak for themselves, the filmmaker avoids simple good-guy-bad-guy schematics, instead enabling each side to state its case.

Israel, a film editor making her feature debut here, has owned a cabin in Meredith for more than 20 years, a fact never made clear in “Windfall,” which is,

nonetheless, filmed with careful, dispassionate distance. In large part, the documentary follows Israel’s process of discovery. Although she wasn’t approached for a lease, she initially supported wind power in the community, she said in an interview. “I wanted a turbine on my property, which motivated me to learn more about it,” she explained. “A lot of the people in the film are illustrating the process I went through, from initial excitement to having it unravel as you find out more about the subject.”

Full review at http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ann-hornaday-reviews-windfall/2011/03/17/ABEaySs_story.html#comments

The Scientific Alliance: The Limits to Renewable Energy

"<Although the report>  focuses on the UK,  the essential messages are relevant anywhere.

Our main conclusion is that wind power (which is the only technology which could be deployed on a large enough scale to have a chance of meeting the UK government’s ambitious targets) cannot fulfil the expectations which policymakers have for it. The primary objective of the present UK and EU energy policy is to reduce fossil fuel use, and hence also carbon dioxide emissions.... The challenge is immense.

In principle, the use of ‘free’ wind energy is a good idea, but in practice it can deliver less than we might think. The primary problem with wind, as with other renewable energy sources, is that it is intermittent. Although windy and calm days can be forecast reasonably reliably, the wind rarely blows steadily. Since wind turbine output follows a cube law, a doubling of wind speed leads to an eight-fold increase in electricity output (and vice versa). Even when these variations are smoothed out across large arrays of turbines and wind farms spread across wide areas, the power delivered to the grid varies considerably over short timescales.

To an extent, the electricity grid can cope with that, although the problem gets more difficult as penetration of renewables increases. However, there are periods when the wind hardly blows, and each year we experience some of these at times of high demand, particularly in winter evenings. The worst situation is to have a stable area of high pressure over the country. In winter, this leads to calm, very cold conditions, while in summer it is equally calm, but very hot. In the UK, peak demand comes in winter but, in countries further south, there will also be increased demand for air-conditioning during summer heat waves. In both cases, power would have to come from sources other than wind.

The opposite problem can also occur. If the wind is blowing too strongly (above about 50mph), turbines must be shut down to avoid damage. This is exactly what happened last week in Scotland and northern England. According to a Sunday Times report (Storm shutdown is blow to future of wind turbines), wind farm output on Thursday 8 December fell from 2GW to 708MW between 9am and noon."

Unless consumers are prepared to tolerate an intermittent supply of electricity, fossil fuel generating plant – largely relatively inefficient open-cycle gas turbines – has to be left idling in order to ramp up its output quickly and balance the grid. The result is that wind farms save less fossil fuel overall than their output would suggest. Experience from Ireland, which already has a higher proportion of wind energy capacity than the UK, shows that installing new capacity produces diminishing returns in terms of fuel savings; beyond a certain point, erecting more wind turbines saves no more gas or coal and merely adds cost and insecurity to the system.

But despite the additional costs and inefficiencies which wind energy brings, there are moves afoot to install still more.

Full article at http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/article/default.aspx?objid=86395

Wind Turbines and Public Health

The link below will take you to an app. 7 minute video produced by the Waubra Foundation in Australia.

This organization has been the international leader in compiling documentation from all over the world on the health effects on humans caused by commercial wind turbines.

*  Note:  1 kilometer = .62 mile or just over half a mile   10 km = 6 miles  *

http://www.youtube.com/user/WaubraFoundation