High Court in Dublin orders permanent switch-off of three Nordex machines and payment of aggravated damages
A judge ordered the shutdown of half of a project’s turbines and slammed the “seriously unimpressive” approach of the wind farm’s owner and operator as he ruled they have to compensate local residents over noise nuisance.
A judgment at the High Court in Dublin requires the permanent switch-off of three of the six Nordex machines at the Gibbet Hill wind farm in Wexford, Ireland after a 12-year standoff with a couple whose home is nearby.
The judge also ordered the project’s investment fund owner Wexwind Limited and developer and operator ABO Energy Ireland to between them pay the complainants a total €300,000 ($343,000) compensation for noise nuisance stretching back to 2013 and an extra €60,000 in “aggravated damages” for their approach to resolving the issue. Costs for the case will be decided later.
Delivering his judgment, Mr Justice Oisin Quinn said expert witnesses called in the trial told him that recognising and mitigating noise nuisance is “critical to the future success of wind as a major source of renewable energy”.
In the case of Gibbet Hill – which the judgment says has been delivering annual revenues of €1m-plus – the judge said the “approach of the defendants for the period of twelve years prior to the trial was seriously unimpressive”.
“They did not substantially engage with the plaintiffs’ complaints and declined, without explanation, to provide requested information or properly co-operate with the legitimate investigations of the local authority. The approach of the defendants significantly aggravated and prolonged the upset, disturbance and distress experienced by the plaintiffs.”
The defendants even did nothing when approached by Nordex with a potential mitigation plan in 2019, said the judgment.
“If an evidential basis for a solution or combination of solutions had been put forward then this could have readily resulted in an order that would not have involved directing the full shutdown of the three turbines.”
The defendants admitted nuisance halfway through a trial earlier this year and offered to switch off the machines for some of the time.
Gibbet Hill consists of five 2.5MW and one 2.3MW Nordex turbines and entered service in May 2013. The plaintiffs’ home is just over 1,000 metres from the nearest turbine.
The judge visited the site during the trial and said of the turbine noise: “Initially, to the unsensitised ear, it sounded as if an aircraft might be flying overhead. To my ear, the noise on the day was moderately intrusive.”
However, he added that one of the couple reported the noise disruption that day as being on the lowest end of the scale experienced.
He also recognised that the couple had suffered ‘shadow flicker’, described in the judgment as when “depending on the position of the sun vis a vis the wind turbines, a rapid flickering of light is experienced by nearby residents”.
