We took the new car for a spin yesterday as the weather was so nice, taking in a café lunch and a visit to a small village vide grenier [ a sort of garage sale, but out in the street on tables]. I was shocked at how many electrical generation windmills have sprung up near us, and just how big they are when you get up close. I must say it was unnerving to see the blade tips seeming to cut arcs just behind residential property roofs, especially when we drove out of the commune and realised they were actually over 2 kilometers away. The residents hate them. Is this impact on their village worth the power they produce?

I think this issue will be debated forever. From what I've heard, they are also quite noisy due to the gear reduction, akin to the sound of a generator running nearly continuously.

Hey, I'm all in favor of finding new and creative ways to generate electricity. Frankly, I cannot for the life of me understand why people protest placing windmills in an off-shore environment. Note: I'm not so sure that the high transmission cost back to shore is worth it, but........

I'm a big fan of exploring development of nuclear energy too. It obviously works, but it is such a political hot topic that I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

As much as I hate to say it, it doesn't matter what we do to generate electricity, some politician is going to find a way to shoot it down. In some cases, as in proximity to local residents, they are probably right. In most instances, that isn't the issue at all.

The large ones made by Vestas and Siemens on wind farms out in the gorge aren't very noisy... The wind makes more noise than the turbines from about 50 yards away. In that particular area, I've heard that most landowners are happy with them since they get a decent lease payment for the land they're sitting on, and since they don't take up very much space on the ground they can still grow crops or graze animals.

I know in one area in Wisconsin did have large windmill farm area the last count I did it was over 110 or so I did not get a chance to count all of it and it not very far from my area in Wisconsin only about 80 Km or so

The max height of turbine blades if I did recall it correct it was little over 50 meters plus they have aircraft warning lights in the top of the generator / gearbox housing and all the warning lights are schyronouns so there is no differnce on the speed of lights.

Now for the noise what I heard the later models don't make much noise as early models did.

Merci,Marc

Marc, I think it's drôle that a country that would fit easily into Texas, has 57 atomic power stations operational and more being built, lots of hydro power on line, practically nil carbon-based generation and which exports electrity in bulk to most of its neighbors should feel the need to go 'green' this way at all. Especially when the taxpayer is picking up the tab - it being well known that these things will never cover their construction costs from electricity sales. Then today on the BBC I learned that these things kill bats by exploding their lungs. Oh, Great!