There’ll be a load of trouble when wind power runs out of puff
SIR – Further to your article (Sunday Telegraph, July 19) wind power is a white elephant into which our Government and many others are pouring enormous sums of state money. The big problem is that of ‘load balancing’. When the wind blows you get electricity but when it does not blow you get nothing because it is not possible with current technology to store alternating current unlike direct current which can be stored in batteries.
There will inevitably be periods when wind power will not even contribute a small percentage of the national needs. There must be generating capacity to meet that demand and capital has to be invested in that generating capacity.
Bill Filmer
Nuclear power is a case of savoir faire
SIR – The French have the right answer: lots of clean nuclear power. They decided they would have no oil or coal and would not be dependant on other shaky nations. Look what the Russians are up to with gas supplies; can we trust them? No we can’t.
Jim Dedicoat
Thermal capacity is a non-starter
SIR – The only viable back up for wind power will have to come from thermal stations and who will be prepared to build such new stations on the basis that they will earn money only on still days? In a free market for electricity, the notion that a generator will be content to sit in a power station with the steam turbines spinning but not generating and thus receiving no contribution to fixed or variable costs is preposterous.
Robert Guthrie
19 July 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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