Do the maths
Should the proposed pumped storage facility at Coire Glas Power Station be approved? It will take many years to complete at a cost somewhere north of £1.5 billion. The proposers, SSE, are asking the UK government to provide the funding so we must look at this as a UK rather than a purely Scottish endeavour.
If we believe all we are told then by the time Coire Glas is up and running UK winter peak electricity demand will be in the region of 180GW, half of which will be from wind.
Let me remind readers that power output from wind turbines depends on the cube of wind speed. For the non-mathematical that means if the wind speed drops by half, the power output drops by eight times – a not unusual occurrence. Coire Glas will have a reserve energy capacity of 30GWh which would take care of less than a half hour of the foregoing example – and will of course then require recharging.
A McCormick, Dumfries
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