I CAN appreciate Stuart Young’s concerns regarding the difficulty to move around Caithness without a wind farm in sight, whenever a long view is available (“Bid to halt wind farm plans over switch-off payments”, The Herald, November 4). Tiny East Renfrewshire may not have the stunning scenery and tourist industry which giant Caithness enjoys, but it is home to many people, living in rural properties, villages and old and new housing developments. The majority of rural East Renfrewshire is designated as green belt, recognising the importance and inherent sensitivity of the landscape. In addition to this sensitivity there was the value of this landscape offering recreational opportunities and a contrast in relation to the adjacent urban landscape. Sadly, East Renfrewshire now only offers an industrialised, wind farm landscape to those who not only once cherished it as their home, but to neighbours in Glasgow’s southside, one of Scotland’s premier cities, which suffers from one of the worst health records in Europe and whose residents more than most need an escape to the peace and tranquillity of the country to enjoy and benefit from recreational activities. Unlike Caithness, residents of East Renfrewshire are confronted with wind turbines no matter which way they turn or how long or short the view. A day trip to the centre of Glasgow gives no respite, as Whitelee wind farm is seen in all its glory from the top of Buchanan Street and the single (at present) gigantic monstrosity on the Cathkin Braes is visible all the way home on the train from Glasgow Central to Neilston station. A wise friend once told me there were three different types of people in the world; those who made things happen, those who watched things happening and those who wondered what happened. I believe East Renfrewshire Council has allowed this to happen; the residents and neighbours of East Renfrewshire have watched in disbelief as it happened and our grandchildren will ask why we allowed this to happen.
Aileen Jackson, Knockglass,
Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire.
I WRITE to offer some much-needed clarification regarding your article
about wind farms and constraint payments.
I have looked into the constraint payments that National Grid makes to
electricity generators in order to, in its own words, “operate the
transmission system in an efficient, economic and co-ordinated manner”.
According to National Grid, from April, 2012 to March, 2013 it cost £169.6m
to constrain all types of electricity generators from the grid. During the
same period, the cost of constraining wind farms was £7.16m.
While it is clearly preferable to reduce the costs of constraint payment to
as low a level as possible, through investment in improved grid
infrastructure, it strikes me as odd to fixate on the cost of constraint
payments to wind farms which only received around 4% of the total, when the
other 96% goes to other forms of electricity generation such as coal and
gas power plants.
Jenny Hogan,
Director of Policy,
Scottish Renewables,
Bath Street,
Glasgow.
2 Comments
Stop the gravy train · November 5, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Ah, the new myth developed by the windies! They talk about the small percentage of constraint payments paid to not produce wind power but forget why the majority of constraining payments are paid to fossil fuel generators, it is to keep them on fast start and spinning reserve to cover for the intermittency of wind turbines. Every useless wind turbine has to have a shadow fossil fuel generator sitting somewhere waiting to instantly kick in when the turbines decide that it is either too windy or not windy enough. With most fossil fuel generators it is expensive and polluting to fire them up from cold, so they are kept running without producing power (but still creating CO2) just to cover for the wind turbines. That is why the amount of CO2 produced by electricity generation in the UK has not decreased at all since 2010 despite all the money being stolen from pensioners electricity meters and thrown at the wind turbine parasites. At the end of the day, all the myths about turbines being green and ecologically friendly are shown to be just that, a load of hot air.
Stop the gravy train · November 5, 2013 at 5:11 pm
The commonly bandied 4% figure is based on an article published in “Utility Week,”. It conveniently ignores all the costs carried by the mainly fossil fuel generators to provide instant and reliable reserve for when the ugly bird killing fans don’t work. Given that in the UK a turbine is lucky if it can average 30% of its plated capacity and since all the wind turbines in the country turn off at the same time if the wind is too little or too high.there is a big need to keep reserve capacity available all the time. In other words we, as utility bill payers, subsidise the wealthy land owners, farmers and foreign utility companies to build their monstrosities and we then have to pay again for almost the same generating capacity to be built, maintained and run just to keep the lights on. I wonder why the UK’s CO2 output is essentially the same now as it was in 2010 despite all the billions wasted on turbines?