At Nae Fare we have many concerns about the turbines, and these include (with icons):
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- Impact – on the natural beauty of the Hill of Fare and the surrounding area that they will dominate, including the entrance to Royal Deeside and the Deeside Special Landscape Area.
- Distance – they will be seen up to 25km away
- High population (103 homes) within 3km of turbines compared to other windfarms:
- Disturbance – noise and vibrations can be extremely intrusive
- Private water supplies – many of them in the planned area and they can be affected by pollution created by construction activity
- Annoyance – Turbines can cause visual flicker
- Natural environment – loss of landscape character, deep peatland, habitats and amenities
- Disruption – significant access roads will be built with no need for planning approval
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- There will battery storage on the hill
- Additional pylons will be required to take the power off the hill. The size of the pylons, route and destination of the power lines will not be included in the RES wind farm application. They will be subject to a future, separate application if the wind farm application is approved, so we will not know what is planned until it is too late.
- Light pollution – Aircraft hazard lights will be installed
- Expansion – once established, experience elsewhere suggests the windfarm will grow and it will open the door to other windfarms in the area
- Financial compensation – for impacted areas this is likely to be spread too thinly over many communities.
- Health concerns – turbines shed microplastics which can affect growth, reproduction and blood pressure amongst other issues.
- Legislation on noise from wind turbines is out of date having been developed 25 years ago, and is inadequate for these industrial scale, offshore sized turbines.
- Safety – there have been more than 1770 safety accidents and incidents including blade failure, fire and ice throw from turbines
- We are pro-renewable energy but onshore windfarms should be in suitable places and the focus should move to offshore wind for the future. Scotland’s onshore wind generation targets for 2030 are well on track to be met by onshore windfarms awaiting, or already, under construction.