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Monday, January 15, 2007

WIND IS USELESS, NUCLEAR IS NEEDED - HERALD LETTER

Another letter in the Herald today:
To say that windmills work 90% of the time, as Kerr MacGregor of Scottish Solar does (January 13), is true but misleading. The amount of power produced varies roughly with the cube of windspeed up to the optimum of about 24mph. Thus a 6mph wind does indeed produce electricity, but only about 1/64th of capacity, which will not keep many lights on. This is why windmills overall produce about 27% of their rated power performance. Whenever you see another politician saying that such and such new wind farm will produce power for 50,000 people, it won't. Even with "planned downtime" - which, being planned, can be set for when demand is low - conventional generators are vastly more reliable.

Storing power is less feasible than suggested. The only serious method is the pump storage system we use at Cruachan which loses 25% of the power put into it due to inherent inefficiencies and is, in any case, comparable in expense to a new conventional generator. If onshore wind is already twice as expensive as coal generation and four times as much as nuclear, the additional expense of building more pump storage facilities can be imagined. As Denmark and Germany have found, the inherent instability of the system means that it is very difficult to get windpower above 10% of the grid.

All our political leaders know this and know that if we do not now start building the replacements for the 50% of our power produced by Hunterston, Torness and the high-emission coal plants due to close in the next decade and a half, we are going to have blackouts on a massive scale. Windmills are an expensive token to give the appearance of action. Despite the hysteria, nuclear is the safest and cheapest method of generating electricity, as well as being effectively CO2-free. If more of them do not find the guts to say so, we are going to have many more hypothermia deaths.

The letter is unedited. There is also a 2nd letter from a G I Crawford making similar points in one paragraph. No mention this time of party affiliation.

Separately there is a letter from Robert Brown SLD MSP )whose affiliation is mentioned) on how the LIB DEM policy of federalism is more sensible than either separation or the status quo advocated by SNP & Labour respectively. A trifle wordy though I do like the use of the term "skulking in their tents" to describe the SNP's refusal to join the Convention that prepared devolution. They have clearly decided against defending themselves from my previous letter about my expulsion.

Comments:
Presumably that will be the conventional generator, Hunterston B, which closed down 3 months ago.. and the back up for nuclear closing down is? Wind. How ironic.
 
Presumably that will be the conventional generator, Hunterston B, which closed down 3 months ago.. and the back up for nuclear closing down is? Wind. How ironic.
 
It didn't & it isn't.

Hunterston didn't close down 3 months ago - what happened was that an inspection revealed some tubes needed to be sealed off & it was decided that it would go offline for a short while this April, when the peak winter demand was gone. I don't know what makes you think windmills are being used as backup for nuclear - if that is so since windmills have to close in high (or low) winds the high winds last night must have meant our lights went off. I must have missed that.

The sensible point about this repair is that we are dealing with reactors that are reaching the end of their life & the claim by people like Prof Salter, that we don't have to make a decision because Hunterston & Torness lives can be extended until the politicians make a decision is an illusion.
 
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