Taxpayers’ money being poured down a green pit

Sir, – Your regular correspondent Alastair Ballantyne waxes lyrical about Gravitricity (Letters, May 3). But is this another green money pit like the kiteflying generators which were supposed to produce electricity near Stranraer, and about which little has now been heard.

Dropping a heavy weight down a hole in the ground reminds one of the various technologies which existed in the medieval era.

They want to generate electricity by dropping a 2,000tonne weight down an old mineshaft.

They seem to have forgotten that old mineshafts were filled in and capped – such as the 3,042ft deep one at the former Monktonhall Colliery, Midlothian, and if they were somehow excavated they would fill with water or methane.

Why should a modern economy rely on primitive methods of generating small amounts of electricity when reliable, large-scale ones are available? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to replace Torness and Hunterston nuclear power stations with new state-of-the-art plants which work 365 days a year, are not weather dependent and do not fail like wind farms? (As I write on Tuesday evening, the 12,000 onshore and offshore wind machines throughout Britain are producing 2.46% of Britain’s electricity).

Mind you, credit where it’s due. Gravitricity has secured a £900,000 grant from BEIS and a £640,000 grant from another government agency, Innovate UK, as well as raising millions from crowdfunding from people who have more money than sense.

On the back of their test rig at Leith they are trying to inveigle the Czech Republic into allowing them to use one of their mines as a further test bed.

Nothing like taking taxpayers’ money to invest abroad, is there?

William Loneskie. Justice Park,

Oxton.