FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: What kind of tax revenues do wind farms provide?
A: Wind farms are typically multi-million dollar projects that provide significant tax revenues for rural communities. These revenues often serve to lower tax rates for other residences and businesses.

Q: Do wind turbines afftect wildlife?
A: Local wildlife studies are conducted prior to constructing a wind farm to ensure the project is developed in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Most wildlife is not negatively impacted by wind farms. Birds and bats occassionally collide with wind turbines, as they do with other tall structures. Except for a few areas of the country (the Altamont Pass in California), these impacts are generally considered to be low and are not a major concern. Wind's overall impact on birds is lower than other sources of avian mortality such as vehicles, buildings and house cats.

Q: Are wind turbines noisy?
A: Manufacturers of large, modern wind turbines expend considerable effort to ensure their machines are as quiet as possible. With years of experience installing machines in areas of high population concentration, especially in Europe, turbine manufacturers and engineers have developed quieter machine technologies.

One source of noise from a turbine is aerodynamic noise—i.e., the “swish” sound that the rotor blades make as they pass the tower of a wind turbine.Aerodynamic noise primarily occurs at the tip and the back edge of the rotor blade.The higher the rotational speed, themore noticeablethe sound.Aerodynamic noise has been cut dramatically over theyears due to better rotor blade design, particularly in the blade tips and back edges,and lower RPM machines.Rotor blade manufacturers take extreme care to ensure a smooth surface, which is important to reduce noise.

It is important that developers perform careful turbine siting, which in turn regulates the amount of noise produced. There are many techniques used to develop low-impact turbine locations: developers place turbines at a sufficient distance from homes, factor in the prevailing wind direction and the attenuation characteristics of the surrounding terrain, and understand the effects of other noise contributors such as yard noise and traffic sounds. As an effect of this turbine siting, an average residence in a well-designed project area should have turbines that produce sound levels similar to that ofa kitchen refrigerator. You are more likely to hear the wind over the sound made by the turbine.

Q: Are wind turbines safe?
A: Wind energy is one of the safest generating technologies in the world. Some of the many safety features include shutdown at high wind speeds and lightning protection.

Q: The wind doesn't always blow. Is wind energy reliable?
A: If a power system were relying on wind energy to meet 100% of its needs, the intermittent nature of the wind would be a problem. But wind energy today is used on a much smaller scale - less than 1% of the nations electricity supply currently comes from wind energ. And there is enough flexibility built into the system to accommodate the fluctuations in the power produced at a wind farm.