I read with interest your article entitled ‘Fortunes are blowing in the
wind …’ (News, October 14). In the box headed “Wind energy factfile” it
was stated that “there are about 750 wind farms in Scotland capable of
generating up to 5,700 megawatts of energy, which is slightly higher than
peak demand”.
The article omits to mention how much actual energy is produced by the
plethora of windmills littering our beautiful landscape.
According to www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk site, at 2.30pm last Sunday, 2.59
GW of energy was being produced by all of the UK’s windmills, and that
equated to 7.85% of demand.
Given there are around 9,088 windmills in total in the UK capable of
producing 20.1 GW then it can be seen they are operating at 13% of capacity.
And given conventional power sources are needed to provide the other 92.15%
of demand then one surely has to wonder what the point of windmills are.
MSP Maurice Golden is quoted as saying that “Community benefit was devised
as a means of helping small, rural communities mitigate the after-effects
of large-scale renewable energy developments. After all, it is only right
that communities affected by wind farms receive due compensation”.
Which is all very well but it us electricity consumers who pay for it.
Brian Bell
Kinross
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