Windfarms will have to go offline
The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com 31 October 2011
I sympathise with the bewilderment of your correspondent Chris Parton when he asks, “Why do windfarms have to be shut down for providing too much power?” (Letters, October 27.)
It is difficult to understand, and our politicians have been lazy in failing to appreciate the issue for far too long.
As a result we are still subsidising the building of windfarms, when the more we have, the larger and more frequent will be the losses of power experienced.
Wind farms in Scotland operate in concert, causing peaks and slumps in electrical supply, which are impossible to anticipate accurately.
Normal power stations cannot technically or economically be shutdown and started up again fast enough to make use of these ever-larger pulses of power.
Consequently all windfarms will increasingly be instructed to shut down to avoid them overloading the grid – and the consumer will be paying for that.
Bruce McIntosh,
Corriedoo, Dalry, Castle Douglas.
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/11/01/windfarms-will-have-to-go-offline/