Unanswered point
12:35pm Friday 23rd May 2008
Comments (1)Sir, - What a delight to read at last an authoritative letter on the subject of invidious wind turbines.
David Clarke (D&S letters, May 16) has highlighted the facts and figures which so clearly demonstrate that the whole campaign is a complete fiasco.
There is one outstanding question which I have repeatedly asked, without any reply from the turbine lobby. How many turbines, covering what area of (say) North Yorkshire would justify the closure of just one fossil-fuel-burning power station?
I suspect the answer which has been studiously avoided is that such a replacement will never happen, for very simple operating reasons.
The whole business of electricity supply is based on the ability to meet a regularly fluctuating demand. There are two clear peak demand periods every day, the first around breakfast time, the second in the late afternoon and early evening.
Power stations are kept on standby at other times, so that they can be brought into full production at quite short notice to meet such surges. How can anyone whistle up a wind at just the right time and at just the right strength to match such flexibility? What are we supposed to do with electricity generated at times when it isn't actually needed?
So how will green house gases be reduced? By ceasing the manufacture of useless monstrocities destined to clutter up the countryside.
A BRENNAN Goodwood Close, Sadberge.
In this section
Sponsored Links
Local advertisers
Local Information
Enter your postcode, town or place name
Vindblas, Hillside says...
9:04pm Fri 23 May 08
Germany has over 20,000 turbines and is running out of onshore sites.
All these turbines
have not resulted in the closure of a single thermal power station.
German utilities are warning the government of bottlenecks in power transmission grids due to the difficulties of integrating higher shares of wind energy, Handelsblatt reported.
The number of incidents has risen significantly over the past two years, the report said. Vattenfall Europe AG's transmission unit recorded 155 days where the situation was critical on grids last year , and 28 out of 29 days so far this year.
(Thomson Financial News, 31 Jan 2008).
Production companies also complain at the use of 'curtailment' (shutting down of wind power stations) in the effort to dampen instability. In 2006 wind turbines were taken off the grid for several hours on about 40 windy days, And with respect to this year we are already talking about a downtime of 15 percent, said Hermann Albers, vice president of the BWE. There are also huge cost implications in strengthening the transmission system to try and cope with intermittent wind power surges.
Germany is committed to not replacing nuclear stations and it was announced last year that they are having to build 26 new coal- and lignite-fired power stations in order to provide stable, base-load power generation. Lignite, or brown coal, is even more environmentally damaging than coal.
Indeed, Germany is now building another 26 coal/lignite-fired power stations.