Wind power comes sailing back

Press, 11 October 1988, Page 21

Wind power comes sailing back

By

ROBIN McKIE,

science correspondent

A wind of change may soon blow through the peat lands of Caithness. A plan has been put forward to erect 300 giant windmills near Dounreay to generate power when the fast breeder reactor station there is closed down. The park of windmills, which could cover a dozen square kilometres, would generate 250 megawatts of power, enough to meet the electrical needs of a small town. The Dounreay reactor currently feeds the same amount of electricity into the national grid. The windmill plan is the idea of Kerr McGregor, energy spokesman for the Scottish National Party (SNP), who believes switching from nuclear power to wind would help soften the blow of the Dounreay closure on the local economy. Mr McGregor, a senior lecturer in energy engineering at Napier College, Edinburgh, estimates the windmills would cost £2OO million and would provide work for 500 people over 10 years. “Caithness is admirably suited for such a scheme,” he said. “It is quite flat and there is no scarcity of strong winds blowing in from the North Sea and the Pentland Firth.” The project is considered feasible because of the development of strong, lightweight alloys which are revolutionising technology. The new confidence in wind power was recently enhanced by plans from the Central Electricity Generating Board for the construction of three major clusters of giant windmills in South Wales. This project is dwarfed by wind park projects in California where until recently wind energy received massive state tax incentives, making them as economically viable as farms. Yet there has been a clear trend among economists and technologists away from nuclear power towards the generation of power by renewable sources such as sun, wind and wave power. For instance, in Orkney, just across the Pentland Firth from Dounreay, the Department of Energy has constructed several giant windmills, one of them capable of generating three million watts of electricity. This intensive investment contrasts with the fate of the fast breeder reactor at Dounreay. Last month, the Government announced it was no longer willing to support the project because it was not economically viable. There are also drawbacks to, the construction of wind power' plants, the chief one being the intensive use of land. At Altamount Pass in California nearly 7000 windmills cover 60 square kilometres. Yet when they are all working at peak production, their total output is only 1200 million watts — the equivalent of an ordinary power station. Such massive disfigurements of blots on the landscape would cause an outcry in the relatively populated English countryside. On the bleak peat lands of Caithness, now threatened by serious unemployment, that may not seem such a drawback. Copyright London Observer Service.