The Raleigh News & Observer reports that Senator Albertson is proposing legislation that would clarify that commercial wind turbines are prohibited in the mountains.
The article states:
“The legislation bans all windmills except single units that generate
electricity only for private use. Such units could not be hooked up to
the power grid to sell excess power, a condition that wind energy
advocates takes away a key incentive for building wind turbines.”
First, as of now, the legislation being discussed in the article is not available to the public. This legislation though is supposed to be added back into Senator Albertson’s bill, SB 1068, which currently only addresses wind power on the coast.
Previous versions of SB 1068 did address the Mountain Ridge Protection Act, the law that prohibits tall buildings and structures from being built in the mountains. Any reasonable interpretation of the Ridge Law would lead one to conclude that wind turbines are prohibited in the mountains. Even the Attorney General, Roy Cooper, agreed that the Ridge Law prohibits commercial scale wind turbines.
The earlier versions of SB 1068 would have actually weakened the Ridge Law by expressly allowing “wind turbines for the generation of electricity having less than 100 kilowatts rated capacity” to be built in the mountains. The new legislation discussed in the N & O article sounds even worse. The only thing that currently would be allowed under the Ridge Law is, as the AG’s office wrote is, “?the solitary farm windmill which has long been in use in rural communities.”
In other words, Senator Albertson would actually be weakening the Ridge Law, not clarifying existing law. I don’t have a problem though with amending the Ridge Law so that smaller scale non-commercial wind turbines would be allowed. However, many people in the mountains will mind.
The wind extremists though aren’t even satisfied with Senator Albertson’s proposed weakening of the Ridge Law–they want commercial wind turbines on the ridgelines. These are the same people that heaviliy criticized Roy Cooper for properly interpreting the law and at one wind workshop I attended, one audience member even “joked” about imposing bodily harm on Roy Cooper.
As I wrote in a paper, the amount of ridgeline required for 1,000 MW of electricity generation (not maximum capacity) from wind power would require an astonishing 300 miles of ridgeline–this is what the extremists want.
I commend Senator Albertson for taking action that would prohibit massive industrial wind turbines in the mountains and now he should do the same thing for the coast.
There’s no reason why the mountains would be protected but the coast would be burdened with 500-foot
industrial wind turbines that could even be placed offshore. Of course, if the extremists have their way, there will be massive wind power plants on the coast and in the mountains.
