TURBINE: Answers are needed?

FURTHER to Trevor Watson s letter about the new huge wind turbine adjacent to the A605. He thinks the massive wind turbine is overkill and the factory should only have been allowed to build a small turbine sufficient for its needs. The McCains site next

FURTHER to Trevor Watson's letter about the new huge wind turbine adjacent to the A605.

He thinks the massive wind turbine is overkill and the factory should only have been allowed to build a small turbine sufficient for its needs.

The McCains site next door already has three of these mega turbines and I believe in average weather conditions over a 12-month period, they say these only supply up to 60 per cent of their total electrical power requirements.

Perhaps McCain's could buy any spare power from this fourth mega turbine to try and reach 75per cent of their yearly power needs?

I suspect these figures are all based on optimum rather than probable performance. Also, when either factory is not running, the turbines will sell power back to the national grid and I don't know how that has been factored into any of the 'energy saving' calculations.

To get people thinking, below are three questions I would like answered:-

1: In average weather conditions over a 12-month period, how many McCains/Abbey food sized wind turbines would it take to power a city like Peterborough?

2: In average weather conditions over a 12-month period, how many days are actually windy enough for such a bank of mega turbines to supply all the electrical energy for the city?

3: Excluding all grants and subsidies and including all costs, what is the payback time over the full lifecycle of one of these mega turbines?

I think the answers will surprise many of us and may show Fenland is still a long way off from becoming a net exporter of energy.

ALAN BESSANT

Glenfields

Whittlesey