Friday, February 5, 2010

Fair Isle, Scotland: Sister Island to Matinicus?

Stumbled upon Fair Isle, the most remote island off of Great Britain, with 68 year round residents. They are using wind for much of their power production, and use two separate grids for constant power and for flexible power, used for heating and non-essential uses.

links at Wikipedia and Fair Isle Electricity . There may be something for us to learn there.

I have been reading Withouthotair.com which has a very good book about renewable energy. Read about Fair Isle on page 198 of the pdf download. If you use the page numbers in Adobe Reader, it is located on p. 211 (out of 383)

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Bad press for bad reporting

Philip Conklin has written an excellent rebuttal to the Portland  Press article about Vinalhaven's wind turbines. The article stated implied that ten percent of the island residents were complaining about the noise (which would be terrible), when the actual quote was that ten percent of the people within one mile were complaining. In other words, not 200 people complaining, but maybe half a dozen.

Philip's article is in Working Waterfront , the Portland Press article is at Portland Press.

We all need to have our facts straight on the issues in order to make good decisions. Our media often does not help or has objectives other than truth.