Hot Air
Moses. Lad! Hill walker; leader of men; stone carrier and, when it came to water, he surpassed even his own ambitious targets. Had he been born in Scotland in the twentieth century, he would have been a natural hydro-electric engineer. He would have found the twenty-first century quite interesting as well as we Scots have an eleventh commandment to add to his original ten. 31% of our energy needs will be supplied by renewable resources in 2011 and 100% is the target by 2020. This has led to a huge wind turbine building program all around the country.
I recently drove past the biggest wind farm in Europe. As far as the eye can see, 140 giant wind turbines face west to pick up the wind from the Atlantic Ocean and turn it into electricity. A further 75 of these turbines are being built so that the farm will be able to supply a city of 150,000. There the turbines stood – motionless; remarkable. There was plenty of wind – those of you who have visited Scotland will know that we have plenty of wind – but none of the turbines was moving. I did some research.
It turns out that there is a scheme in Scotland whereby landowners can apply for a grant to build wind turbines on their land. Once the turbines are built, there is a guarantee in place that the electricity distribution companies will buy their electricity. In the event of strong winds the wind farms can produce more power than the distribution grid can handle. In this situation the turbine owners receive compensation for switching them off.
I wondered what would happen if the distributors needed the electricity but, due to calm weather, the wind farm failed to produce any. I know that it might surprise you that, in what is officially Europe’s windiest country, Scotland enjoys many sunny, windless and bitterly cold days in the depth of winter when we