wind in the willows
Several of you understandably had a dig at my earlier ‘pro-nuclear power’ stance and vociferously defended the need for an enhanced renewable capacity. With the government now shockingly committing to reopen the debate for fracking in the frozen north, I’ll take you at your word and have a further nosey at our ability, or otherwise, to exploit the power and potential of something we’re all full of: wind!
The first windmills were unsurprisingly invented by the Chinese some four thousand years ago and were used exclusively for drawing water. The Persians took the idea one step further and developed wind powered mills, with sails that rotated on a horizontal plane, to crush grain. However, it took a Northern European (Dutch say you?) technological advancement in the form of the first vertical-axis windmills for them to really catch-on and prove their worth and versatility, before finally falling foul of the coal/steam powered mills of the industrial revolution.
In 1887, the engineer Professor James Blyth built the first electricity-producing turbine, a 33ft cloth sailed device that powered his holiday home in Kincardineshire (and you thought outta-town second-home owners were a recent scourge of society!). Wisely wishing to build bridges with his angry Scottish crofting neighbours, he offered them any surplus electricity free of charge but was roundly rejected as undertaking ‘the work of the devil’. Notwithstanding, by the mid-1930s, millions of wind turbines were being used to generate electricity across the US’s bible-belt but after WWII they lost out again to fossil fuels. The modern industry we now recognise began again in earnest in the early 70s and the UK’s first wind farm opened in Cornwall in 1991.
Aided and abetted by its plentiful supply and shallow coastal water (which make it relatively easy to position offshore turbines), the UK is at the forefront of renewable wind-produced energy. We are the world’s largest overall wind-power producer and currently generate over 20% of our electricity needs via wind. This is set to increase further by the continued expansion of offshore wind farms. When opened in 2013, the London Array off the Kent coast was the largest in the world and has subsequently been surpassed by both the Walney Extension in the Irish Sea and Hornsey One off Yorkshire. Dogger Bank, operational in 2025, will be bigger still and utilise turbines that reach 722ft (the Shard is 1,016ft).
In stark contrast to Boris Johnson’s pronouncement that wind turbines are “moaning seagull-slicers that couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding” wind power has become one of the UK’s industrial success stories. There are now 11,000 operational turbines in the UK (split 3:1 onshore to offshore), producing 25 gigawatts and employing just shy of 50,000 people.
However, the biggest single issue remains variability. If the wind speed is too low, the turbines don’t produce enough; if it’s too high they have to be shut down to avoid damage. Solving this is regarded as the veritable holy grail. The simplest solution is to have a blended approach to energy production where all production methods are employed. The longer-term initiative is to utilise a flexible tableau of renewable sources, principally wind and solar. Somewhat complementary, in winter there’s more wind and less sun, and in summer there’s more sun than wind. Probably. The key to this strategy, nevertheless, will be power storage on a massive scale.
Sadly, in the UK our storage capability measures less than half a percent of peak demand and, whilst we may be able to produce power we’re a long, long way away from being able to retain it for future use. There is no shortage of capital or investor appetite for offshore wind but the government have promised only £160m of investment. Contrast this to the recent study by Oxford-based Aurora Energy Research which details the necessary investment figure of £50bn with the essential installation of one turbine every weekday for the next decade and you begin to appreciate the gulf between the possibility and the reality.
