Harness the wind to secure our future

JUDGING from newspaper letters, urban myths and misunderstanding abound regarding wind generation, with people thinking fossil fuel generation is working flat out day and night, regardless of energy generated by wind farms.

Demand for electricity and the amount of energy generated by wind farms varies considerably, but both are predictable by forecasting the weather.

This means that a very small amount of spinning reserve is required, which can accept load within seconds. Further generation, which takes several hours to start up, is brought on line in time to suit the predicted load, with the most efficient power stations given priority.

As an analogy, a car uses very little fuel when ticking over but when load increases as speed increases, fuel consumption rises accordingly, and if the engine is turned of it uses nothing at all.

The fuel for wind turbines (wind) is free, so all wind energy generated is fed into the grid, which displaces and therefore saves the consumption of fossil fuels. Because the wind is free, the efficiency of wind turbines is irrelevant – all that matters is the infrastructure cost

Massive investment in wind energy and other renewables is essential for our survival, so misinformed nihilists should be corrected quite firmly.

Michael Job

Rossnagrena

Glengarriff

Co Cork