Energy policy
Your correspondent Nick Dekker (Letters, 3 March) draws attention to the loss of reliable electricity generation capacity in Scotland. Though worst in Scotland, this is a problem for the UK as a whole.
The recent cold spell has been unusual in that it has been very windy. More typically, extended winter cold spells are associated with an anticyclone which can result in several nearly windless days. Wind generation has indeed helped to keep the lights on over the last few days, but our true saviours have been the UK’S nuclear and remaining coal-fired power stations which have been running flatout.
It is planned to close all our coal-fired power stations. They could be kept if our governments come to their senses, but at a price, for they cannot compete with subsidised wind, and would have to be paid (as some already are) to be kept idle for most of the year so that they can bail us out for a few weeks or days in the winter.
The same problem would apply to new pumped storage. The present facilities were designed to fill up using overnight surplus nuclear generation, of which the UK usually still has a sufficiency. They earn their keep by generating and selling to the grid every day at peak demand times. Further storage to mop up surplus wind generation would only be able to sell at times of low wind. This is why one such proposed development has not been built and why German pumped storage facilities have been losing money.
We can no longer rely on gas generation, as we have seen from the National Grid’s request to large industrial users to cut down consumption, because we have lost the UK’S major gas storage facility. Competition with subsidised wind has also made the construction of new gas capacity uneconomic. Scottish Power had planning consent for a gas-fired replacement to Cockenzie but decided that it could not be profitable.
Scotland already imports electricity from the south at times of low wind or when Hunterston or Torness nuclear stations are refuelling. Passing control of energy policy to the present Scottish government would be no solution, as they are opposed to the replacement or extension of these, which would go some way to addressing the problem, but want more intermittent wind generation. PROFESSOR JACK PONTON
Scientific Alliance Scotland, North St David Street, Edinburgh