Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
The land areas required to meet the very small target for wind power generation are huge. The wind generators have to be spread out at distances of several hundred metres and will be 150 metres high, generally white. They will usually be on ridges or on windy coastlines, often in areas of scenic beauty.

There is already a sizable body of opinion fighting against the plans. The generators make a whooshing noise as they rotate and when there are several thousand of them the noise can be heard miles away. There is gearbox whine too. They stand out against the hillside or horizon and the constantly rotating blades are almost giddy-making. In addition to the actual generators, there has to be a track to each suitable for heavy articulated lorries with replacement parts and an underground cable to take away the power.

At present I think wind generation is only 0.1% of our power requirements and to boost that to 2% or 3% would be such a big increase I can’t see it happening because of the irate public opinion.

Experts say it is not an efficient way to produce electricity yet even though the new machines are big and development has been extensive over recent years. Siting them out at sea is more efficient from the operational point of view but much more expensive.

Conventional power stations have to cover the load generated by all natural sources in case the generation is low at the time (say a cold, still winter night at ebb tide). As soon as power generation from all natural sources approaches 4% a whole conventional power station is effectively on standby or all of them are working below capacity which is not cost effective.

Perhaps one solution would be to take over one or more entire uninhabited islands off the west coast of Scotland and cover them completely with wind generators and also build wave and tidal power stations around the islands to maximise use of power lines to the grid.

I have been looking at a TV programme called “A place in the sun” where a girl (it used to be Amanda Lamb of the Scottish Widows ads) looks for properties abroad for people who want to emigrate or have a holiday home.

She often goes to countries which have a good standard of living, but the houses are extremely cheap compared with England.

For instance, once she was in Florida not a long way from Disneyland and showed several ranch style houses with several bedrooms, swimming pool, double garages, conservatory and lots of space around which were all in the £120,000 to £150,000 range. The room sizes were enormous by English standards. Some were new and given that the price has to include profit and sale fees, how are they so cheap? The material costs must be more than that. Certainly in England the material costs would be at least that much.

I realise that in England the demand and scarcity of land pushes up the price and low interest rates mean people can get a large mortgage sum, but I’m still surprised.

Other countries with similar good value include Australia and the Canary Islands.