The letter by Melanie Morcom of Newquay (WMN March 11, invites a response in a similar vein of ethically flavoured stand back from Alternative Energy prospects.
It is unavoidably true that energy from wind power requires that the devices which harness that energy will always have to commend technically efficient high sites which will always detract from that beautiful panoramic outlook over the countryside. But it is that very form of natural unspoilt beauty which unseen in the other 12 hours of dark, spells in unending life of desperate impoverishment during the day, combating primeval regression in amongst its ghastly terror of a starving inhumanity. Worldwide media reveals many such areas of despair.
Every type and method of milking Mother Nature of some of her boundless energy comes with strings attached and often with sacrifices to pay – coal being the very worst for deaths, miserable underground lives, pollution and local environmental devastation – yet when it comes to wind energy, this is the greenest, most powerful and abundant primary mover of all, with his greatest assistance, tantalisingly roaring over and escaping us every winter.
Currently, we are very much in the nursery with our thinking about the wind, and are paying lip service to the concept of wind power, and at the same time talking the whole idea down.
Even so, it is possibly fair comment in that the concept at present is dust-laden, and not really suitable for grid generation, consisting of frail, essentially stand alone machines, with a limited power conversion capacity.
Melanie is astute to point out that wind, as being intermittent because the wind does not always blow, also when it blows "too much". This is an important point, on account of wind energy increasing to the square root values. Meaning, wind power does not increase in cute measured graduations per miles an hour; its energy content, increases at alarming strengths, until as we all know, it turns into a monster, flattening all in its path, trees, barns, bridges and sinking the biggest of ships. Now that's wind power! Eventually, we shall have systems which are properly matched to all wind energy, and turbine stations will be pumping up water into storage, then it can be said that we have ample wind power – "in the bag" – ready for continuous use. When dealing with Mother Nature, one has to think big or suffer sundry humiliations and defeats!