Need a magnifying glass?

People more eloquent than I have written excellent documents and articles about photomontages and wind farms but it seems important that we try to demonstrate in a “Davidstow specific” way how the public and the planners are being mislead. I’m nervous of having a stab at doing this because of copyright issues and because I’m a member of the IET and I don’t like to put my name to anything I don’t think is strictly accurate in engineering terms. If you think I’m wrong about the following I hope you will find the time to put me right. The important thing as far as I’m concerned is to get to the bottom of what should reasonably be used in the public consultation about wind farms. There are hard choices to make – perhaps we are just considering whether we want to slice up a few birds in our locality and spoil the view – perhaps it’s a small price to pay for saving the planet – but perhaps we are all being conned. Many people are unpersuaded by wind farms’ ability to save the planet. The financial and carbon cost is so hard to weigh up and the Government is looking for politcial solutions not practical ones. Telling people they don’t have the right to use more than their fair share of fuel even if they are very rich is unappealing to any politician with any chance of being elected.

My question is: “Why don’t the planners force the developers to follow the guidelines and produce single frame photomontages of proposed developments?”

Because I don’t have access to photomontages submitted to the planners, I’ve taken a screen dump of a leaflet available at http://www.davidstowcommunitywindfarm.co.uk/images/flyer.pdf which shows one of the panoramic photomontages that the developers love. It makes the turbines look tiny and insignificant. Colin Caudery has described the problems with these representations at some length in an article at http://www.stinc.co.uk/newsID031.shtml and the original “best practice” guidance is available at Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) Guidance document. Here’s the screen dump (click it to view it full screen):

Screen dump of leaflet

I suggest that the turbines are all but invisible. If you take chunks of the panorama and enlarge it so that it is “something like” you might see if you were on Showery Tor it might look something like this:

A chunk of the panorma as you might see it on site

This is pretty unscientific. But what can you do when you have no resources to try and piece the evidence together properly? I’m not a photo analyst and as a group STINC doesn’t have the money to employ one. It gives you an idea of what we’re looking for though – we want to understand how it will look to a person who is actually going for a walk. If you were sitting on Showery Tor and looking towards Davidstow Woods you could have this picture on a sheet of A4 and hold it up and compare it with the view. When you’d recovered from the shock of how it would look you might manage to make your way home again.

It doesn’t look too bad though. That is until you realise that you can’t actually see the blades of the turbines at all. And it’s the moving blades that are very disturbing because it is not a natural site to see 90m diameter “things” moving in the landscape. And certainly not 20 of them in a space that used to be pleasant moorland.

So I’ve highlighted them by putting in a narrow rectangle of white approximately over the turbines so you can see them. If you drive back towards Camelford from an evening walk on the beach at Trebarwith you come to a T-junction where you get a “splendid” view of the Deli turbines and when the sun hits them as it is low in the sky they absolutely gleam and on this basis I think I am justified in putting the turbines in in PBW. Maybe you think otherwise? I have sized the column on the original taking the top of what is visible to be the hub of the turbine. I’ve then naively added 3 lines at 120Degree intervals measuring the lines to be a little over half the height of the hub (45m radius vs 80m to the hub).

Simplistic addition of blades and highlighting of the tower.

The turbines further to the east are more jumbled in and my simplistic approach is clearly inadequate to provide anything realist so I’ve just put in a few to give an impression.

Easterly view - just a few turbines highlighted.

The heights are entirely judged on the original photomontage. If they are under or over sized then my simplistic representations will be too.

So much fuss but you need a panorama to see the whole development at once don’t you? Absolutely not! The recommendation is to use a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera and this has an angle of view of 39Degrees as is explained in the references above. If you draw two lines at an angle of 39Degrees on a map you can just get the whole development into a single frame view from a viewing point on Roughtor (rather than Showery Tor) that could be posted on the planning website and the developer’s website and be printed by anyone with a normal A4 colour printer so that they could take a walk up Roughtor to get an idea of how the development would look.

A 39Degree triangle drawn from the top of Roughtor

Remember you can see the pictures full screen by clicking on them.

If you think what I’m saying is wrong please get in touch using the comments link at the end of the article or email me at webmaster@stinc.co.uk

I think decisions should be made on the basis of fact, not spin. Just to be clear I’m not asking for anything other than for the developers and planners to follow the SNH Guidance. At the least the developers should provide an additional set of A4 single frame images using the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera. If the developers are certain that the community (they like that word) are in favour of the turbines even though they are so astonishingly vast and will mince the birds they won’t mind following the guidelines and publishing some representative photomontages will they?

Tim Henderson

Source of extended map in the last picture was Google Maps, reproduced without permission. Maps aligned and scales matched on the cross of the runway and the woods by Roughtor car park.

 

What’s your opinion?

The truth about wind turbines is very hard to establish. Debate about the pros and cons is intrinsically riddled with bias. Perhaps this is the main reason why Government and commercial companies are able to impose their wishes on us without true consultation.

It almost appears as if the companies who propose the turbines go out of their way to be dishonest. Obvious example: “community windfarm”. You can’t call food “organic” unless it is organic. If we want a community windfarm we’ll come up with a scheme within our community thanks very much!

However the objection to the proposed windfarms is not personal. This is just simply not the place for 126 metre high wind turbines. Why would we be prepared to take the risk of mincing up the geese that live at Crowdy and the stunning flocks of starlings that live in the woods at Davidstow?

Starlings coming in to roost in Davidstow woods

How could anyone think that installing giant moving machines will not affect them? The turbines aren’t just on their flight path, they are actually being proposed in the place that the birds roost. Would the companies be prepared to install them on a “try before you buy” basis or is it the case that once the turbines are installed they are here for ever with the only change being to periodically replace them with even bigger ones? In other locations evidence suggests that turbines do kill birds in significant numbers. Whether the evidence is relevant to these particular proposals can be debated but it is hard to imagine turbines being removed once installed if this does prove to be an issue. Is this the way we do science, engineering and business in the UK? If they were removed as a result of problems, how does that leave the carbon footprint of the project? A prudent person would do a proper independant study first and minimise the risks.

Neither are wind turbines the solution to our energy problems in general. Our output of C0₂ is still increasing year on year. The first thing we must do is to be more energy efficient. Walk instead of using the car to pop to the shop. Wear suitable clothes so that we can notch down the central heating. Turn off the lights when we don’t need them.

Roughtor was left to the nation as a memorial to those who fought in 43rd Wessex Division. Some think the aerodrome should be left as a memorial to those who flew from it. It is ironic that our servicemen and women are still giving their lives in the name of democracy while other people are trying to make a fast buck out of messing up these memorials with no discernable democratic process at all.

We think there should be open and truthful consultation about these proposals. Whatever you think the solution is, please involve yourself in the debate. We are confident that the arguments in favour of wind power as a significant, secure source of energy within the UK are weak.

 

The Proposal

There is a proposal for a wind farm at Davidstow by a company calling itself ‘Community Windpower Ltd’. The name of the project is ‘Davidstow Community Windfarm’.

Would you like to sign off the planning application to industrialise this view?

This is a community project, right? 

Well you would have thought so wouldn’t you with a name like ‘Davidstow Community Windfarm’. The company is based in Cheshire and has no significant links to the area. It is a commercial company that seems to think it’s OK to hijack words like ‘community’ and redefine them. When you view their website on the links to the right just read ‘commercial’ wherever it says ‘community’.

Yes but they work with local schools. If the schools are in favour it must be OK.

Well no. Schools aren’t for or against developments. They are just busy educating our children. And when the schools hosts presentations by the Cheshire company they are not supporting it – just renting them a room. But it does all add to the impression of being a community project doesn’t it?

What is the scale of the proposal? 

The intial proposal is for 20 turbines with a hub height of 80m, the blades will be 45.2m long with a rotor diameter of 92.5m. This makes a total of 126.25m to the tips of the blades. This is 415ft in old money and from where they will be positioned, they’ll be higher than Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall!

It’s a brown field site - just the place to redevelop?

OK you could say that it is a brown field site because an airfield was built here during the war. But it is not any old brown field site. It is on the edge of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, partly within an Area of Great Landscape Value and Site of Special Scientific interest.

It is in area 17 on the map of Cornwall County Council’s Landscape Character areas rated Medium – High sensitivity and bordering area 25c rated High sensitivity.

It is a highly valued amentity for people and for wildlife.