Is a wind farm suitable, or necessary, for Guernsey?

Both of these sources deliver a fairly stable supply, minor fluctuations of load managed by the control room at the station to ensure supply is matching demand. The generators generally run with little variation. The same applies to the cable link.

In countries that have a national grid where the wind farms are connected, they are often many miles apart and as such are unlikely to lose wind power all at the same time.

If one farm loses wind energy, it is covered by the vast resources of power available from other means of generation, be it solar, nuclear, hydro, and so on. This is not available at present in our little island and can only possibly be covered by the grid system in France via the cable link.

However, since wind can blow at various speeds, it’s hard to predict the amount of energy that can be collected at a given time. This means suppliers and cities need to have an energy reserve or alternative sources of power in case the winds die down for longer lengths of time.

Imagine one of those lovely summer days that we have with a fresh breeze blowing, then the breeze drops to nothing, then comes back again and repeats this for a period of time. How will this be covered and controlled by means of other sources of power available to Guernsey? I certainly would not wish to be in charge in the control room at the station.

All this turning to renewable energy is led by global warming and Co2 figures, bandied around by various bodies.

Perhaps it would be better to encourage a more careful use of the energy that we use every hour of every day.

Our contribution to global warming can be attributed to another source, which it would seem few people are considering.

It would seem that the average use of energy for most households in this island is between 10Kwh and 20Kwh per day. Let us take the lowest figure as a starting point. I believe there are around 25,000 households in Guernsey.

Multiply this by the lowest figure of 10Kwh per day, and that comes to 250,000Kwh (equivalent to the heat from 250,000 one-bar electric fires) one awful lot of heat going back into the atmosphere each day. This does not take into consideration the amount of energy also used in industry and finance (air conditioning etc.).

Include the rest of the world in these simple figures and the energy expended back into the atmosphere is colossal.

Think about it and start saving energy.

Graham De Jersey