Victorian Police Perplexed: Furious Neighbours Continue to Shoot-Up Noisy Wind Turbines

The photo above was cooked up a couple of years ago by wind industry stooge, Andrew Bray. The stories below, though, are real enough.

‘Could result in death’: shots fired at Waubra wind turbines
The Courier
Derrick Krusche
27 Sep 2017

Police suspect a long-arm gun such as a rifle was used to shoot turbines at the Waubra Wind Farm northwest of Ballarat recently.

Detectives have launched an investigation after technicians found bullet holes on several of the big structures, which are located on private farms.

The offence could have occurred at any time from late last year before the damage was discovered by renewable energy company Acciona.

There have been six similar incidents since the wind farm opened in 2010.

Detective Senior Sergeant David Hermit said Acciona employees were at risk as they were regularly inside the turbines performing maintenance.

“This kind of reckless behaviour could result in the serious injury or death of an employee,” he said

Wind turbines have often sparked controversy over their appearance and also over health concerns.

But Detective Senior Sergeant Hermit could not say what the motivation was.

Police have previously interviewed people of interest but no charges have been laid.

They were looking into whether the gun was fired from a paddock or along a road.

“It’s probably some form of long-arm, just because of the distance involved,” Detective Senior Sergeant Hermit said.

Acciona turbine technician Frank Cartledge said: “To find these bullet holes and the damage they’ve done, it’s pretty scary.”
The Courier

Here’s another take on the story.

Someone keeps shooting at a well-known Victorian wind farm
Business Insider Australia
Simon Thomson
27 September 2017

One of Victoria’s best-known wind farms, Waubra, 35km north-west of Ballarat, has been shot at several times in recent years, police have revealed.

The details have emerged as detectives from the Ballarat crime unit investigate the latest report of numerous shots being fired into one of the turbines.

Waubra is Australia’s fourth largest wind farm, with 128 turbines capable of generating a combined 192 megawatts of power – around an eighth of the now-closed Hazelwood coal-fired power station.

But the site has attracted the ire of opponents of wind farms, who claim they damage the health of people living nearby. The Waubra Foundation is an advocacy group set up at the time the wind farm opened and campaigns against the developments claiming they cause a range of health problems.

Police say they’re unsure when the latest damage to a turbine occurred – it could have been as far back as late last year – but say six similar incidents have been reported them since 2010.

Detective senior sergeant David Hermit said these incidents are incredibly dangerous to employees who regularly work inside the turbines performing maintenance.

“This kind of reckless behaviour could result in the serious injury or death of an employee who is inside one of the turbines,” he said.

“It may not always be apparent that someone’s working inside the wind turbines. If you are shooting at these wind turbines there is a high chance you could hit an employee.”

Police believe someone in the local community knows who is responsible and is appealing for people to contact Crime Stoppers with information.
Business Insider Australia

Simon Thomson represents the kind of gormless twit that passes for a journalist in Australia.

In 2017 – after the disaster that’s played out in wind ‘powered’ South Australia, it beggars belief that a sentient being could write that Waubra has:

“128 turbines capable of generating a combined 192 megawatts of power – around an eighth of the now-closed Hazelwood coal-fired power station.”

Simon prefaces that nonsense with the word ‘capable’, but he clearly intends to give his readers the utterly misleading impression that Waubra’s 128 whirling wonders are a head-to-head match with a conventional generation system, like the now-defunct Hazelwood coal-fired plant. Otherwise, why make the comparison?

If Waubra really was delivering 192 MW around the clock (like coal-fired plant do every day of the year), it would show up in the data – but, for some strange reason, it doesn’t. [Note to Simon, when you’re planning your next kite flying holiday, don’t plan it too far ahead – the weather may fail to deliver the fun and games you hoped for.]

What appears above and below is taken from the Aneroid Energy website and captures the entire output of every wind turbine connected to Australia’s Eastern Grid during June this year.

That output includes every single spark generated by Acciona’s Waubra operation.

And yet, on something like 13 occasions during the month of June, the total output from all turbines hooked up to the entire Grid was less than 200 MW (or less than 4% of total capacity); on at least 6 occasions, less than 100 MW (or 2% of capacity); and, on more than one occasion, closer to 20 MW.

Drilling down on the actual output from Waubra during June shows that comparing its ‘performance’ with a coal-fired power plant is simply risible:

Taking pot shots at wind turbines is a phenomena not limited to Australia or Western Victoria:

Angry Wind Farm Victims Pull the Trigger: Turbines Shot-Up in Montana and Victoria

Angry Neighbours Shoot-Up Wind Turbines; as Hosts Hit With $Millions in Developers’ Debts

Wind Industry Goons Beating Up On Women, as Furious Community Defenders Shoot Up Turbines (Again)

There are any number of reasons why someone would get angry enough to start plugging away at these things.

To the obvious – such as, being driven insane by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound that prevents neighbours from enjoying a comfortable night’s sleep, in their very own home – can be added the frustration that comes from journalists so dense that they remain bemused by the fury and hostility that having a couple of hundred of these things speared into your backyard inevitably generates.

To have wet-behind-the-ears reporters peddling hackneyed wind industry propaganda, such as “this wind farm powers 100,000 homes and sucks a million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere”, or – citing a former tobacco advertising guru – trotting out nonsense such as “wind farm health concerns have been dismissed by experts”, merely adds insult to injury.

That kind of rubbish is put forward as justifying the kind of suffering that Acciona has dished out at Waubra to people like Carl and Samantha Stepnell, Andrew and Maggie Reid, Noel and Janine Dean, Robyn and Glenn Brew, Berni Janssen, Enid Thomas and Donald Thomas. For what they have had to put up with, see our post here.

Their tragic and unnecessary suffering is a matter of public record, having been presented to the Federal Senate on a number of occasions.

What these lazy hacks will not disclose is the fact that, since July 2009 when its turbines started operating, Acciona has quietly purchased 8 of the 11 homes surrounding Waubra that their owners abandoned; homes which were rendered uninhabitable by the low-frequency noise generated by its turbines.

To keep a lid on its liability, and to prevent any unhelpful PR issues, Acciona forced the unwilling vendors to all sign bullet-proof “gag” clauses – that prevent them from ever talking about the “sale” (see our post here). Trish Godfrey is just one tragic example (see this article and our posts here and here).

Nor will these intellectual pygmies pursue Acciona’s pet acoustic consultants, MDA, for presenting fraudulent acoustic reports which it uses to claim ‘compliance’ with the noise conditions of its planning consent. Notwithstanding that its wind farm has never complied with those conditions.

In the ordinary course of human affairs, when someone’s suffering becomes another’s opportunity for ridicule, or simply gets dismissed by those in a position to do something about it (which includes so-called ‘journalists’, like Derrick Krusche and Simon Thomson), anger and frustration follow like night follows day.

That a disgruntled neighbour, treated with practiced contempt by a wind farm developer, abandoned by the authorities paid handsomely to protect their right to live in and enjoy their home, and continually mocked by two-bit journalists, might ‘tool-up’ and start pumping hot lead into his tormentors should come as no surprise. While that kind of corporate and institutional malevolence against wind farm neighbours prevails, the likes of Acciona can expect its neighbours to respond in kind.

This isn’t the first time neighbours have shot up wind turbines, and it won’t be the last.