The Mercury reports that Mr and Mrs Lovelady, from Carlby, hope to have a small wind turbine in their garden, and tells us that it will produce "2.5 to 3 megawatts an hour of energy." Wow, if that were true the energy crisis would soon be over!
I think you meant to write 2.5 to 3 megawatts a year. This would fit in better with the proposed 1,600kg of carbon dioxide savings.
Wind turbines can only produce electricity when the wind is blowing.
On average they only generate about 25
per cent of their installed capacity.
They are intermittent and unreliable, needing back-up from conventional carbon dioxide producing power stations for when there is no wind (or too much).
If the Government achieves its target of 20 per cent wind energy, this back-up has been calculated to cost the tax payers (i.e. you and me) billions of pounds every year.
Add to this the billions in subsidies, sorry, I mean Renewables Obligation Certificates payments (paid to entice the power companies to build otherwise useless wind farms), and we can look forward to a very bleak future of exceedingly high energy bills.
Miriam Crouch
Dunsby Fen,
Bourne
Editor's note: We apologise for the error in the report on the wind turbine plan. The turbine will produce between 2.5 to 3 megawatt hours, not 2.5 to 3 megawatts an hour.
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