THE late Terry Pratchett said: “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance”. He may well
have been right, but when it comes to how renewable electricity is actually
generated by wind turbines a little knowledge and a lot of ignorance is
dangerous to us all because, contrary to popular believe, these so called
renewable “technologies” are adding to CO2 emissions, not reducing them.
Almost all wind turbines use induction generators and, as the name
suggests, induce relatively small electrical currents from the UK National
Grid so that when the wind blows these currents are effectively “amplified”
and are added to the National Grid’s capacity. Unfortunately, because of
the blustery nature of the wind this “amplified electricity” is of such
poor quality the Grid will collapse as it cannot handle more than 10
percent of this corrupting junk electricity at any moment in time.
It is ironic that Scottish wind turbines are inducing England’s firm
electrical currents onto their armatures, “amplifying” them and dumping
them back onto the UK’s fragile Grid. Post-independence, without this firm
electricity supply from south of the Border, the wind can blow all it likes
up here making the combined output from Scottish wind turbines one fat zero.
Andrew H Mackay,
Causewayside, Tain, Ross-shire.
FOLLOWING the correspondence on Scottish wind energy exports (Letters,
February 1, 2 & 3), I would like to draw attention to the proposed
Greenwire Project, between Ireland and the UK. The aim is to build wind
farms in Ireland and export the energy to England and Wales by subsea
interconnector, 3,000megawatts by 2018 and 12,000 megawatts by 2020.
There will be no cost to the Irish consumer, and the UK will pay the full
price of production in another country, European regulations or not.
Perhaps Irish wind is cheaper than Scottish wind, but I doubt it.
GR Weir,
17 Mill Street, Ochiltree
YOUR article on the plans to increase the size of the Kype Muir wind farm
reports that, when complete, the wind farm will be able to provide enough
electricity to power 80,000 homes (“Wind farm extension approved”, The
Herald, February 1). This would never have been the case on numerous
occasions over the last four months, due to prevailing weather conditions,
but you have not qualified your report.
You have published some excellent letters recently, from well-informed
correspondents highlighting the real situation with our wind farms when
such conditions prevail. At times the interconnector between Scotland and
the remainder of the UK was within a few percent of its capacity when, had
it not been for the mild winter, our cookers would have gone off, along
with everything else – industry, travel, street lights and more.
Duncan Miller,
38 Middlemuir Road, Lenzie.
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