Tim, I live on norways western coast, an area ideally suited for wind power.

Wind power is not much used here yet, becouse:

1: They are ugly, and tourists dont come here to see windmills. Tourism is very important for us, and increasingly so.
2: They are very expensive to both build and maintain pr Kwh (compared to other local alternatives).
3: They are noisy. An investigation showed that neighbours of an planned farm here will be subject to 40-45Db when the mills run.
4: Yes, birds are killed by the wings. The tips of the blades moves _very_ fast. Sea eagles killed by wingmills has been documented here, even if they nested below them (not much traffic around the windmills, so they probably felt safe there).
5: They can cause problems with airborne transmissions, like TV/Radio and even GPS I have heard. Not sure about that tough..
6: They 'chop' your wind, if you race close to them (got to keep this relevant to cat sailing)

In addition, we here in Norway have buildt lots of hydroelectric plants so the need is not as large as other places. We are also developing gas (not as in gasoline) fueled powerplants with no CO2 pollution to better take advantage of the natural gas resources in the north sea (wich are just burnt off out at the platforms today!!). This makes wind power as good as uncompetitive, becouse of it's high maintenance and construction costs.

If you accept that there is such a thing as 'visual pollution', I personally think windmills definatly come within that definition.


If you want to do a project, how about tracking down one of those old bicycle dynamos and fix a propeller to it? Should be small and cheap.