Letters / Severe shadow flicker
Open letter to the Trustees of the Shetland Charitable Trust:
The Disturbing Effect of Shadow Flicker
Aren’t these wonderful sunny mornings great? May be for you, but not here at Tingwall House.
Our house lies approximately 800 metres NNW of the Burradale Wind Farm and every sunny morning during the winter months we experience severe shadow flicker for at least an hour from about 10am.
First the fields start to flicker alongside us, then it is directly in the windows of the house which makes every internal wall flicker and appear to be moving. This is exceedingly disturbing and disorientating.
It then transfers to the fields to the other side of the house. It is so severe we are unable to use any of our south facing rooms during this time, which includes our work rooms. It even manages to invade the north facing rooms too.
The shadow flicker started in November as the sun became lower and stronger in the sky and sadly we expect to experience it for another two/three months yet. It makes me feel very light headed and sometimes nauseous.
What is commonly called shadow flicker is in fact a stroboscopic effect due to the constant revolution of the turbine blades for which the effects are well documented.
This constant frequency, akin to our electrical supply frequency, can cause visual fatigue and migraine headaches and in extreme cases epilepsy.
Warnings are given nightly on television news reports concerning flash photography, a similar stroboscopic effect.
Burradale is a small wind farm, both in size of turbines and numbers. We have raised our yearly winter experience of shadow flicker in all our objections to the Scottish Ministers and to Viking Energy, but we have seen absolutely no evidence of any work being done in this regard.
In fact it seems to have been dismissed, yet it is likely to be a real problem for many houses within the Viking Energy Wind Farm Plan with the low lying sun here in Shetland during the winter months.
Any house from NE through to NW of a turbine is likely to experience shadow flicker at some point during the day.
I hope you will consider this disturbing aspect of wind turbines when you make your decisions with regard to the Viking Energy project.
Can you really dismiss such disorientating and disturbing experiences?
The wind turbine industry is generally dismissive of claims that wind turbines can affect human health, however, the experience of the stroboscopic effect is widely documented and should be considered before going any further with this project.
Yours faithfully
Jennie Atkinson
Tingwall House
Tingwall
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