THE discussion about renewable energy on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg this week (BBC1,
April 21) left me so frustrated that yet another politician, this time Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood, missed the point on the matter of baseload. She rightly pointed out that no power is generated by wind turbines or solar arrays when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, but she wrongly inferred that hydrocarbons (oil or gas) were the only means by which a baseload could be provided to keep power flowing in such an event.
Is she unaware of the huge potential for tidal stream generation? We in Scotland are blessed with a number of locations round our coasts with high tidal current speeds, four times a day during peak ebb and flood. With the Maygen project in the Pentland Firth, we are already a world leader in the development and deployment of tidal stream energy technologies, hosting the world’s largest tidal stream array and the world’s most powerful tidal stream turbine. The point is that these flows are predictable for centuries to come. Of course, between peak flows, there are short periods when current is not generated, but as the time of high and low water differs round the coast, the tidal stream is always running somewhere, providing thereby a reliable baseload so long as the disparate sites are connected to the grid. While the rate of flow varies over the 14.8-day spring neap cycle, the lower rate of flow and generation potential at neap tide will provide a guaranteed baseload.
To illustrate the huge potential, it is estimated that Scotland alone has around 32 TWH per year of reliable and zero carbon potentially exploitable tidal stream resource (Crown Estate, 2012). Why was this not mentioned, not to say extolled, in the programme? Indeed, why is this world-beater not being promoted as a strategic priority?
Roy Pedersen
Inverness
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