Wind Turbines - What a waste of money and effort
An unexpected and controversial feature of the Cornish landscape is the wind farm. Unexpected because you somehow assume you will find wind turbines in remote Scottish or Welsh places. Controversial because not only do some find them a terrible blot on the landscape but there is a very great deal of doubt as to whether they truly serve any useful purpose. Heavily promoted as the green answer to renewable energy production, the wind turbine produces incredibly expensive power that has to be heavily subsidised. It is far less efficient than its promoters like to suggest since it cannot operate in too little or too much wind and even has to draw power from the grid if stationary for too long. Worst of all, since it cannot be relied on, it requires 100% back-up of stand-by conventional power plant. After publication of reports in 2004, about new and safer methods of nuclear generation and waste storage, I am surprised that successive governments fail to pursue the nuclear option. Whilst we are strongly against wind turbines on practical grounds, and understand the controversy about the thrumming noise a wind farm can produce, we really don't mind the look of them. Anywhere in North Cornwall we are usually near one farm with a couple more in sight. With only a dozen or so turbines to a farm, they can look quite elegant against a background of sky or sea.
Part of a wind farm on the A30 highway
UPDATE DECEMBER 2014: Since I wrote this wind farm item there have been a lot of developments. At that time there were 6 wind turbine sites in Cornwall, each with no more than about a dozen turbine towers. Since then they have proliferated. Small towers have been replaced by large (or massive) ones, numbers on many sites have doubled, there have been many new sites and individual massive turbines have sprung up all over the place. As if that were not bad enough - all that subsidy straight down the drain - we now have a proliferation of solar panels. These cover what would otherwise be productive farmland, produce electricity only during daylight hours and then only if the sun shines. Apologists for solar panels will tell you that they don't reduce the extent of farmland because animals can graze under them. Rubbish! the grass dies or at least loses its nutritional value because of the lack of sunlight, and how on earth could you graze a cow under a solar panel. And, of course, just like wind turbines, they require 100% conventional back-up. Who profits? greedy landowners and electricity companies! Who loses? all the rest of us!
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