A hill known as Grandpa’s Knob near Rutland, Vermont, is generally considered to have been the site of the first large (1 MW) electricty-generating wind turbine, back in 1941. (VPR story here) A truly historic accomplishment that New England should be proud of.
A developer proposed putting up a small wind turbine on the site – 1.5 MW, not too much bigger than the turbine of 61 years ago and nothing compared to modern turbines – as a memorial that would also produce clean power. But in a depressing but predictable turn of events, some locals objected, saying they feared “vibrations” and because it didn’t look nice, so the proposal has been withdrawn (Times-Argus story here).
Return to the Concord Monitor
Locals everywhere: “We all need clean energy, but we can’t have it produced near us.”
Those “vibrations” are a serious problem, even from turbines that size. To deal with them, people have moved to town, moved their bed to the basement, built bunkers of sand in garages and moved their bed there, at least one person committed suicide.
At the Antrim wind project, _audible_ noise issues have resulted in a lawsuit filed against NH’s Site Evaluation Committee for their lack of action in getting Antrim Wind Energy to follow what was thought to be the noise rule when the project was permitted over residents’ concerns. Given the noise has been brought to town, this is no longer a NIMBY issue.
https://www.ledgertranscript.com/Antrim-Wind-abutters-file-complaint-on-noise-46646933
BTW, last summer I bought a combination seismograph and infrasound recorder in order to record the infrasound at Antrim. I haven’t had time to get that in motion yet.