5 September 2013 Lesley Black - Wind Turbines
Thu, Sep 5th 2013 at 12:00 am - 12:00 am
Lesley Black from Weir Group talked to the club about wind turbines and their role in the energy market.
Wind turbines - a force for good?
Love them, or hate them, wind turbines generate strong feelings. However it would seem they are here to stay according to Lesley Black, who works as a business development manager for renewables for Scottish company Weir Group.
Lesley, who has worked with wind turbines for 10 years, was guest speaker at the Bridge of Allan & Dunblane Rotary club meeting last Thursday evening when she talked about her responsibilities. "I work in Campbeltown which has now become a renewable energy hub and the company currently employs a workforce of around 300 personnel, which is forecast to grow significantly in the next few years."
Her job, which takes her all over Europe, is mainly concerned with maintenance on power plants - coal , gas and nuclear - as well as turbines. "I am not involved in building turbines - my concern includes inspecting safety equipment, oil changes and blade inspection. And these checks are carried out once or twice a year."
She also set out to dispel some of the concerns that people have about turbines saying that they definitely contribute to the country's energy mix. Are they expensive and will they push up energy bills? "No it's one of the cheapest forms of energy available and within the next 15 years will become more so. In fact we are currently exporting around 15 per cent of renewable energy to other countries," she says. How about the visual impact on the landscape? "Well I would say that I don't think there is any! However, the lifespan of a turbine is around 25 years and it can be dismantled relatively cheaply."
Noise is another contention but Lesley says it is perfectly easy to hold a normal conversation underneath a turbine. "I was involved in the making of a documentary and the sound operator was having problems with noise levels - not from the turbine but from the tweeting of birds!" And as for the likelihood of bird strikes, impeding bird migration or interfering with flight paths, she says that planning regulations have been tightened up considerably and that organisations like the RSPB now support them, seeing climate change as a bigger threat to the environment.
And as for the assertions that many of them never seem to be working, Lesley says not true, as it is very rare in Scotland for the wind not to be blowing. "They can be brought on/off line very quickly and because they are so sophisticated and becoming more so, they have an automatic cut-off as soon as there are gale-force winds."
In other news: Jim Cooper was inducted as the club's newest member. His wife Audrey joined the club more than a year ago.
