Wind turbines.
I have to use a wind turbine - not having mains electricity, for a coastal holiday chalet. To keep this running is very expensive, due to the short life of the turbines, the severe corrosion occurring between aluminium castings and the stainless steel mounting poles, and the tendancy of turbine 'burn out' to occur in very high wind speeds. Also a very high mast is required to reach non-turbulent air conditions. My advice is do not install a wind turbine - unless there is no alternative, it is a waste of resources and gives continual hassle in order to be kept in operation.

Will the proposed wind turbines be visible from the Northumberland National Park and Holy Island? If so surely this must be a massive consideration on the impact on local tourism.
I assume that wind turbines are not allowed under planning law to be built in a national park due to the impact on the visual beauty of the area. However if they are built just outside the national park and are visible from the national park then the principal must be the same.

As a homeowner I would like to have a small wind generator mounted on my house, or garage. Unfortunately the prices are still too high as a like-minded friend found out.

As an engineer who served twenty-eight years in the Electricity Supply Industry I know that the idea of using wind generation for base load is preposterous. Ask the grid control engineers what happens when the wind drops in a particular area taking out a complete farm or farms. Ask the control engineers at Drax Power Station how they feel at being instructed to run their 660MW machines at only 600MW, and other stations too, I believe, just so that there is reserve available when the wind stops. Spinning reserve is inefficient thus the carbon and other emissions are higher.

In CEGB days, before Privatisation, we were told that the four Aire Valley stations (Drax, Eggborough, Ferrybridge C and Thorpe Marsh) produced 25% of the UK's energy requirement on a normal Winter's day. Drax (4,000MW) provided 10% on its own. Compare this with the piddling power output of a wind farm which is proposed near a friend's village (Pollington, in East Yorkshire) where fifteen 3MW V90 windmills will produce 45MW! This is the same amount of energy needed to power two of Drax's Main Boiler Feed Pumps. Drax has six of these - one for each boiler - rated at 30,000hp/22.4MW.
In the well-ordered CEGB days when we were working to the Statutory Article which required us to provide electrical energy for this country, CEGB used a number of sources - coal, nuclear, water - in order to spread the risk. As a further safety measure each station had to have Black Start capability which meant that in the event of a total country-wide trip stations had to be able to re-start without external help. Drax has two 35MW Rolls-Royce Olympus gas generators firing into an E.E. power turbine. So the entire Pollington field could not even start up one of Drax's Boiler/Turbine units. Hence my use of the adjective 'piddling' to describe what this windfarm can produce.

As the V90's are from the same company, I understand, as the failure-prone V80's we have the possibility of damage done to people and animals - the average passer-by has little to fear from a conventional power plant.
RDM.

I am a local lowick resident. And although I will probably be able to see the turbines from my house, I will not be part of an anti-turbine group.
These turbines are renewable energy sources, they utilise the wind to create clean/green electricity. I find that the fact that you are against this step forward in power production proof enough that you infact DO NOT care at all for the environment or infact the ecology of this or any other other region of the world.
What I do not understand is that people who claim to be representing the the natural environment can prefer the disgusting pollutants released through burning fossil fuels.
OK, individually they can be unreliable but how is that a reason to completely forget about them?
Yes, now theres a great idea, lets keep the views around barmoor, lets just keep things the way they are. And in 100 years when we have ran out of fossil fuels and as a result of not creating any alternatives we are plunged, through the lack of electricity, into the dark ages. And, through the build up of green house gases, it is a very wet(melting ice caps) and hot dark age. To you, the members of 'soul' this may seem proposterous but if you deny small changes the whole can never become better.
As a young person in the world today I believe that the world of tommorow, my world, my childrens world, is being spoiled by people who do not look at the bigger picture when they make their opinions. The wind turbines in barmoor will not save the world but it is a little step that must be completed. And as Tesco says 'every little helps'

But they do not provide power at 'critical times'.

I recall driving up the M6 near Tebay on what was a typical February bitterly cold windless day. It turned out to be the coldest day of the year so far. Passing the nearby windfarm the widmills looked very striking but uselessly still!!

No doubt the taxpayer subsidies go down well though and thankfully the Heysham nuclear station a few miles away was there to make up the trivial loss.

These huge turbines simply don't do what they're meant to - so why destroy the landscape when they do no good. And I never liked pylons either - they spoil the landscape too. Electricity companies should have been made to bury the wires underground - and pylons are a FRACTION of the size of these turbines

Everybody wants todays technology but nobody wants it near them.

I think you have look at society and appreciate that we are trying to move forward, wind turbines are an essential part of the future. We need to create energy and these are part of the future. I am sure that most people objected to electricity pylons in the first instance but they are a familiar feature on todays landscape, so too will wind turbines!

I am a shepherd near Barmoor and last year I did a 3 week lambing stint in Cornwall on a Farm which had turbines. Every morning I found dead birds at the bottom of these things and I also noticed that the sheep would not go anywhere near the turbines… which is not what the developers say about stock grazing nearby. Not all the turbines worked at the same time and the ones that did, only worked for a little while. So, because of what I saw in Cornwall I am strongly objecting to the Barmoor Wind Farm.
P.S. If a child’s “windmill” is used to stop moles burrowing in lawns, what would the vibrations of 360ft turbines do?!!

Comments: I really don't think so. They would have to become much more efficient and reliable than they are at present. Something needs to be done about Co2 emissions, but Wind power is not even scratching the surface of the problem. In fact emissions of Co2 went UP in Ireland after wind power was introduced because of normal power stations having to keep running to cope with the fluctuation in wind power output - and power stations create MORE co2 when they tick over than they do at full pelt. The big problem for Co2 increase is the threat posed by the developing world. For example, 1 in 1000 households in China have a car at present, and that figure is expanding at an explosive rate. More money needs to be spent on research about cutting vehicular Co2 emissions instead of pontificating about how lovely wind farms are.

what's all the fuss about i'd rather have wind turbines than nuclear power. true that electricity cannot be stored but demand at times can reach very crictical levels of supply at peak times. people should wake up and embrace wind farms as this is the future