LETTER: Wind turbines are just inefficient

From Mr Robert Woodward

Sir: Not everyone will share David Redom's rapture at the prospect of wind turbine power stations on every hill (Letters, 27 November).

What will save our landscape from the march of the wind machine is not a consideration of beauty, however, but the hopelessly inefficient nature of the technology. Wind turbines have been around for more than a century but have rarely been seen because they are unreliable (no wind, no output), ineffective (huge machine, tiny output) and uneconomic. Today's machines have the same output in proportion to size as those of 100 years ago.

The only reason that we are now seeing a stampede to erect wind turbines is that the Government has provided a guaranteed market for wind-generated electricity at a heavily subsidised price funded by a levy on every electricity bill.

To put it in perspective, a proposed six-turbine development at Betws- yn-rhos, Clwyd, operating over a whole year would generate the power produced by Drax power station in two-and-a-half hours. Over their estimated 25 year lifespan, they would generate two-and-a-half days' output from Drax.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Woodward

Vice-chairman

Country Guardian

Twickenham,

Middlesex

28 November