A Voice of Reason from the man who keeps our lights on

George Wood, the retired head of Technical and Economics, Balancing Services, at the National Grid has written a brilliant piece about why the Government's obsession with inefficient wind turbines is madness. Its so sensible I wanted to share it with you. He writes:

"This crazy dash for development of inefficient wind-turbines and other renewables both in Scotland and England and Wales requires the upgrade of National Grid £17.6-billion and Scottish Power £7.6-billion plus interconnectors by undersea cables to many countries in Europe.

We must looking at transmission and distribution upgrades in total of over £40-billion pounds to deliver energy that is intermittent and requires the equivalent capacity to operate as regulating and standby reserves.

The intermittency is causing very efficient gas-turbine generators to operate more frequently at reduced outputs thereby lowering their load factors and decreasing their overall operating efficiencies causing more carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

The transmission losses of the network must be another significant factor, of the order 10% to 15% between Scotland and England. We are heating up our atmosphere by these transmission losses and surely this is additive to global warming, plus the manufacturing and construction carbon footprints of these new transmission connections. These effects should all be loaded against the wind turbines and other renewables because they are so very remote.

On top of this the off-shore wind turbines receive 12p/kWh subsidies and on-shore currently 6p/kWh. Additionally to this, the balancing costs caused by the necessary standby and operating reserves operations (on conventional generators) are increasing.

All of these increased carbon emissions and cost increases should be factored against the renewable generation developments because they are causing these changes.
It is very unlikely that there will be any beneficial reduction in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the government induced ‘so-termed’ renewable energy developments.

The total increased costs must be in the order of £100-billion or more which amounts to £3,300 per household which will relate to an increase in electricity bills of £330 per household per year ad infinitum. I have offered Chris Huhne and DECC to set up a team to honestly and rigorously evaluate all of these pollutant effects and cost differentials but they have declined even to answer me.

This resultant cost increase will be devastating for the end consumers for what appears to be no overall reduction in green-house gases. On top of this we will all be encouraged/forced to accept the roll-out of smart electricity meters at a DECC quoted cost of £11.1-billion which in the final costings is likely to be twice this that would cost at least £34 per household per year ad infinitum. Why are we doing this?

The developments of shale gas extraction off our shores and new efficient gas-turbine power station implementations would in reality reduce carbon dioxide emissions by a greater extent and we would not require these exhorbitant transmission infrastructure costs.

I simply do not understand this madness, its as though there has been a brain disconnect by our politicians not asking if there are any real carbon dioxide reduction savings from the deployment of vast swathes of wind turbines destroying our beautiful landscapes and seascapes.

If Chris Huhne, as the LibDem's voice on energy in Government, refuses to listen to the wisdom of such as George Wood, is it time to rise up against his Department's intrangigence?