PowerSwitch

BBC News - 17/07/10

Up to 100 residents have held a protest against plans to build four wind turbines in a field next to the M4 in Berkshire.

Walkers, horse riders, cyclists and runners joined the march along the byway at Rushey Mead, Reading.

It was organised by Harm (Householders Against Rushey Mead).

Reading university, which owns the land and is developing the plans with an energy firm, said they would generate electricity for thousands of homes.

Harm said it has renamed the byway next to the site "Harm's Way".

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emordnilap wrote:In a grid power shortage, everyone is affected. If you choose a supplier that uses renewable sources, you should not, in fairness, be cut off.

goslow wrote:can't believe it, the M4 is between the houses and the turbines....

isn't there an ecotricity wind turbine next to the M4 somewhere?

RenewableCandy wrote:People are really, really strange about wind turbines. Especially when compared to roads. As the Psychiatrist in Fawlty Towers said, "There's enough material there for an entire conference..."

Just then they came in sight of three or four wind turbines that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, three or four hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.

"Those you see over there," replied his master, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length."

"Take care, sir," cried Sancho. "Those over there are not giants but wind turbines. Those things that seem to be their arms are blades which, when they are whirled around by the wind, generate electricity."

Roger Helmer MEP wrote:Some people tell us that we should be using wind power, because the wind is free. Well the wind may be free, but wind power is very expensive indeed. Currently the annual subsidy per turbine is nearly £150,000, and that's paid by you, the consumer, and by British industry.

To add insult to injury, wind farm operators are even being paid extra to turn off their turbines when their power is excess to requirements -- for example at night. Scottish Power were recently paid £180 per megawatt hour for switching off, which amounted to £13,000 for turning off two wind farms for just over an hour.

More generally, UK subsidies to wind farms topped a billion pounds last year. It is estimated that total renewable energy subsidies will reach £10 billion by 2020, as the UK struggles to meet the EU's hopelessly optimistic renewables targets. In addition, the National Grid will need investment of around £10 billion to cope with this new world of intermittent and distributed power sources.

The cost of wind is further increased by the need to keep conventional back-up constantly fired-up and available, for when the wind drops.

Taken together, it is likely that the costs of our renewables objectives will drive a million more British families into fuel poverty by 2020.

Wind power is intermittent, unpredictable and very, very expensive. Shaun Spiers of the Campaign to Protect Rural England has said that we will come to see wind turbines as the "redundant relics of our compulsion to do something". The Renewable Energy Foundation says that wind turbines are garden ornaments, not power stations. Wind power is simply about gesture politics -- about salving the consciences of the chattering classes.

Meantime the turbines are continuing their march across of some of the UK's finest rural landscapes. They are blighting villages, and homes, and lives.

RenewableCandy wrote:People are really, really strange about wind turbines. Especially when compared to roads.