Fossil fuel plants can’t be turned on and off as the wind rises or falls

LIKE the wind industry in general, Airtricity’s Eddie O’Connor (Letters, January 26) is strong on word-play, but weak on the substantive issues.

He rejects my assertion (Letters, January 22) that his wind farms would not get off the ground if the Government did not impose take-off contracts.

Yet Airtricity’s USA chief, Declan Flanagan, wrote in 2003 that “all wind farm developers require bankable power purchase agreements giving security over 15 years if they are to raise funds”.

Mr O’Connor’s claim that Airtricity directly supplies 38,000 clients with clean energy is pure fiction. Airtricity simply buys electricity (generated mainly from dirty fossil fuels) from the national grid at wholesale prices, resells it at retail prices and pockets the difference. Again, his claim that wind energy on the grid displaces power from dirty fossils is total nonsense. It is simply not possible to turn coal, oil, peat and gas plants on and off as the wind rises and falls. Even if you take them off-grid, they are still fully fired up and belching out CO2. So there is no saving on fossil fuels and no reduction in harmful emissions.

Contrary to Mr O’Connor’s view, wind power must always be fully backed up by traditional power plants because wind is missing when you need it most — such as periods of high pressure in winter causing the coldest weather, peak electricity demand, but no wind.

Likewise wind speed typically drops at dusk and dawn just when power demand tends to peak.

Wind energy can indeed be useful for projects that can use the power whenever it is generated, such as pumping water to high storage for later hydro-generation, but dumping it on the grid is as useless as a spare groom at a wedding — its volatility and unpredictability only causes disruption.

So, as owners of the ESB and the national grid, we taxpayers get a triple whammy from the wind industry and our own Government.

Our contracts fund the wind farms in the first place, then we pay premium rates for wind power that is useless on the grid, and finally we sell our electricity to the wind moguls at wholesale prices and buy it back from them at retail prices.

There’s nothing strange about our policymakers wasting our money with such abandon, but Mr O’Connor saying it’s for our own good is a bit galling.

Dick Keane

35 Silchester Park

Glenageary

Co Dublin