Preamble
- Current industrial wind turbines being planned can have a total height at the tip of the blade of 200 m, or even more (207 m for the project of the Vallée de Joux in Switzerland).
- Emissions of infrasound are increasing in proportion with the size of the blades.
- In 2006, the French Academy of Medicine recommended a setback of 1500 m. Today, that distance is no longer appropriate because the size of the machines has kept increasing ever since.
Setback distance between wind turbines and dwellings: the new 10H rule protects residents in Bavaria
As wind turbines are getting bigger and higher, the setback has become proportional to the total height of the turbines.
We must not only serve the interests of those who wish to install wind turbines, but also those of the residents concerned.”
Otmar Bernhard, MP CSU
Extract from the ZDF Länderspiegel issue of Dec. 6, 2014:
Source: ZDF Mediathek
The new wind turbines planned for Bavaria are 200 metres high.
To better protect residents, they will be now located at least 10 × 200 m = 2 km from dwellings.
This will inevitably result in limiting the number of wind turbines, but the Minister-President Horst Seehofer said:
I won’t let giant asparagus ruin Bavaria’s nature and its wonderful landscapes.”
The 10H rule
The 10H rule was passed on November 12th and came into force on 21 November 2014 in the Free State of Bavaria.
It has the merit of taking into account the technological evolution of industrial wind turbines, which reach ever higher in the sky and emit ever more infrasound. Although residents will not be sufficiently protected against infrasound, which travels further than 2 km, we can only welcome such a move!
The 10H rule is an important step towards the protection of human beings. And indirectly it also protects nature, because if there are setbacks from dwellings, nature in these areas prohibited to wind turbines will be protected as well.”
Melanie Suckfüll,
President of the association Verein zum Schutz der Wadlhauser Gräben
Enhanced security in case of accident
The 10H rule enhances public safety in case of accident. Indeed, the basic laws of ballistics tell us that in the worst-case scenario, blade debris can be projected to a distance of 10H.
“The projection from the tip of a blade is comparable to the ballistics of a stone or a projectile launched by a catapult whose center would be the axis of the rotor, and the radius the length of the blade of the wind turbine.”*
For example, in the case of a wind turbine 125 m high:
The range is 1000 m and the rebound about 300 m, i.e. a total distance of about 10H.
* Source: Annex II of the study La sécurité publique des centrales éoliennes industrielles by engineers Jean-Pierre Abalain, Jean-Yves Chazal and Bernard Schumpp.