Regarding the coming election there could not be a better time to lobby both your local MP and AM about the nightmare of large scale wind generation, especially the proposed 800ft+ monstrosities planned for Wales.

I feel protest groups in particular would carry a lot of weight and more so if they could unite in their response. The following has been sent to my AM and copied to my local MP.                                                                                                        
                            

WELSH WIND FARMS

Developments of National Significance

As with many folk and indeed the number of protest groups across Wales, I am becoming increasingly concerned and wish to object about the number of wind farms being proposed for installation across our irreplaceable and beautiful countryside – especially those with generators exceeding 800ft in height.

The reasons for my objections are based not only on fact and logical reasoning, but recognising that there are other acceptable means of producing electrical energy. Therefore I am hoping you will raise the issue in the Senedd and offer your total support in stopping this unreliable wind electrical generation fiasco and consequent countryside industrialisation with its mindless wild life slaughter.

Specifically my objections are as follows:

1. Despoliation and industrialisation of irreplaceable beautiful Welsh countryside.

Wind farms tend to be constructed in areas that are ecologically-rich with peat-prominent eco-systems. Huge areas of deforestation and excavation practices will displace and harm many creatures, wildlife and their habitats that contribute vastly to the area.

The generators huge concrete bases and wide supply roads will, by necessity, replace highly absorbent peat and moorland, resulting in regular flash floods downstream. For a typical 1 MW wind generator, the slab foundation is usually 15 metres in diameter and 1.5 to 3.5 metres deep. Generators in the 1 to 2 MW range typically require 130 to 240 cubic metres (m³) of concrete for their foundation. Wind farms can potentially impact groundwater and local water environments, which in turn may have implications for flooding. The concreting and tarmacking of vast areas of peat-land and forest is unjustifiable and unforgiveable.

2. There is absolutely no need for this additional generation – as you will probably know, Wales has a surplus and exports electricity into the National Grid.

3. The majority of Welsh people do not want these wind farms, and the accompanying additional power routes – hence the number of protest groups.

4. The obvious negative impact on tourism and the Welsh economy.

5. The heath issues for unfortunate people within visual and audio range should not be trivialised as the impact is very real. Regarding physiological impact, it is said that wind generators create aerodynamic and mechanical noise. If this noise is sufficiently loud, it can disturb residents’ sleep, especially for those living in close proximity to wind farms. Chronic insomnia could potentially develop in individuals with greater sensory acuity or those prone to annoyance from environmental noise. The psychological impact of annoyance and sleep disturbance can lead to diminished psychological well-being.

6. Fire hazards will be a problem and the recent Blaen Bowi wind generator fire incident should be a wake-up call regarding generators already sited near, or planned for adjacent public roads and/or in forestry environments. The fire service has great difficulty in extinguishing any of these fires and usually standby whilst they burn out.

7. Electrical generation that is totally weather dependent, and thus unreliable. A lack of generation will necessitate backup from another source, otherwise the lights will be going out – especially during icy and windless periods such as the winter months!

8. It is a well known fact that wind farms slaughter birds and bats – one excellent Internet site to visit is, ‘Save the Eagles’ that will provide irrefutable evidence. It is a very sad and serious indictment for any civilised and caring society to promote the senseless slaughter of aerial life-forms. The unnecessary employment of large, weather dependent and bird/bat mincing machines – the aerial equivalent of rat and mouse traps – is nothing less than mindless barbarism.

   9. As a retired telecommunications/electrical engineering manager I can easily recognise that the term Wind Turbine is a clever marketing ploy by the wind industry. To exacerbate the situation politicians and indeed the media ignorantly persist in the use of this misleading term. The description conjures up a much more sophisticated and powerful machine than it actually is – it is all smoke and mirrors. These wind dependent and limited machines are simply wind driven generators; no more, no less. To be sure, a turbine is a fairly complex piece of machinery consisting of numerous blades along a shaft fitted within a casing i.e. an engine in which steam, water or gas is made to spin a rotating shaft by pushing on angled blades, like a fan. Turbines are among the most powerful machines with steam turbines driving generators in power stations and ship’s propellers, with water turbines spinning the generators in hydroelectric power stations, and gas turbines powering jet aircraft. Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931) the inventor of the compound steam turbine must be turning in his grave (please excuse the pun). Indeed, about 85% of all electricity generation in the United States in the year 2014 was produced by steam turbines. Simply stated a steam turbine is a device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. The wind driven machines the Wind Industry employ are not turbines as defined above, but simply, electrical generators connected directly, or via a gear box and clutch, to a large wind driven propeller, and are totally dependent on the wind. Perhaps of the very large propeller they should be termed wind rotors and not wind turbines.

10. It is shocking (pun intended) that in the 21st Century, UK Parliaments are apparently so lacking in engineering, technical, scientific, historical knowledge and skills, that they have not called an immediate halt to large scale wind and solar farms which, of course, will necessitate more power routes for Grid connection. Parliaments seem completely ignorant to the damage that large solar storms can inflict – the latest G5 solar storm should be a stark warning to the greater vulnerability of power outages due to their myopic and inane energy strategy. Indeed, it is unbelievable that wind generators exceeding 800 feet in height are being proposed for across Wales – consequently resulting in more exposed power routes – and, of course, being much more vulnerable to direct lighting strikes and indeed dangerous electromagnetic induction as a consequence of cloud-to-cloud lightning discharges – it should be noted that overhead telecommunications cables and equipment also suffer as a result of lightning damage!

Geomagnetic storms generate induced currents, which flow through the electrical grid. These currents can be substantial, exceeding 100 amperes. They flow into components connected to the grid, such as transformers, relays, and sensors, thus affecting critical electrical infrastructure, and lead to large-scale power outages. Wind farms and their necessary infrastructure will be ‘lambs to the slaughter’ when exposed to strong/significant solar storms – this is not science fiction but FACT!

It was recently (24.05.2024) reported in the media that thousands MORE electricity pylons will be built across Britain as the National Grid ‘rewires the nation’ for net zero – whatever net zero is supposed to mean. More than £30billion will be spent to overhaul the network to prepare for the switch to green energy – thousands of miles of new cables will be constructed by 2030 to connect wind farms to towns and cities to meet Government anticipated soaring demand (EVs and Heat Pumps) for electricity.

Are the Westminster, Scottish and Welsh Parliaments fully aware that very strong solar storms have happened before, and one such storm caused havoc with one of the earliest electrical technologies! On Sept. 1 and 2, 1859, telegraph systems failed catastrophically. The operators of the telegraphs reported receiving electrical shocks, telegraph paper catching fire, and being able to operate equipment with batteries disconnected. What the world experienced in 1859, now known as the Carrington Event, was the largest recorded account of a geomagnetic storm, far stronger than the May 2024 solar storm.

During a solar storm in March 1989, the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid went down, resulting in damage and loss in revenue at an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars. It should be noted this was a third less powerful than the Carrington Event of 1859.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) gave warning that the Earth would experience a G5 (extreme, geomagnetic storm) during May, saying it is the first G5 storm to hit the planet since 2003, when a similar event temporarily knocked out power in part of Sweden and damaged electrical transformers in South Africa. The NOAA centre predicted that this current storm could induce auroras visible as far south as Northern California and Alabama – across many parts of the UK people have experienced the Northern Lights – seen also here in Ceredigion.

In terms of the internet, a geomagnetic storm on the scale of the Carrington Event could induce currents in cables that form the backbone of the internet as well as the data centres that store and process everything from email and text messages to scientific data sets and artificial intelligence tools – This would potentially disrupt the entire network and prevent the servers from connecting to each other.

Alas, recent research has revealed the Earth has been victim of even far greater storms in the past, and these are called Miyake Events. These events are marked by a spike in the concentration of radioactive carbon isotope 14 C in tree rings. At present, five significant events are known (7176 BCE, 5259 BCE, 660 BCE, 774 CE, and 993 CE). How long before an equivalent Carrington, or indeed a devastating Miyake Event?

11. Why is GEOTHERMAL ENERGY being ignored with the waste of billions on wind farms, not only in Wales, but across the whole of the UK – it is a ‘Head-in-the-sand’ strategy as there are numerous other viable and eco-friendly means of generating electricity. Apart from by hydro and hybrid tidal schemes, salvation is there for the taking by effectively burning fossil fuels to lessen fossil fuels – that is, until genuine eco-friendly generation becomes a reality. This deliverance can be accomplished by accepting the efficient gas-fired power station of the Combined-Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) type, which is far much cleaner than its coal cousin, being also quick and cheap to build.   

Indeed, CCGT stations can further be much more eco-friendly if supplied with pre-heated geothermal water. It is shameful that billions wasted on large scale wind had not been spent on geothermal technology – the Romans, if around today and given our technology, would truly have exploited this gift beneath our feet – note the Roman Baths in Somerset.

At soil depths greater than 30 feet below the surface, the soil temperature is relatively constant. At greater depth the temperature increases and on average, the geothermal gradient is approximately 0.03°C per metre, thus at 152 metres (500 feet) below ground, the temperature could be in the range of 40 to 45°C. During a German Continental Deep Drilling Programme, located in Windischeschenbach, northern Bavaria, a borehole reached a depth of about 4,000 metres (approximately 13,123 feet), where the temperature was found to be 100°C.   

Thus it begs the question of how much fossil fuel could be saved if Pembrokeshire CCGT Power Station were to be supplied with geothermal heated water – additionally, and ignoring all the negative propaganda, controlled UK fracking would ensure the UK was totally independent on energy, seriously driving down energy bills and enhancing the whole economy – as it has been accomplished in the USA – surely a no-brainer?

12. It is very doubtful if political representatives are conversant with SPACE ENERGY and that generating power from space in the 21st Century is now a reality and commercially viable – proving to be approximately a quarter the cost of horrendously expensive, potentially dangerous and dirty nuclear fission generation.

 Indeed, I wonder how many know that electrical generation from space is no longer science fiction now that SpaceX Starship launch costs are just 1% when compared to 20 years ago. To be sure, Starship is a two-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. It is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship’s main objective is to lower launch costs significantly via economies of scale. This will be achieved by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline, and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. 

Misguided and Misinformed opponents of orbital power stations will claim the microwave emissions from such power stations will be akin to Death Rays, when the simple truth being that if you stepped into a ray you would experience emissions about a quarter of that of the midday Sun. But of course, the gas, oil, wind and terrestrial solar industries will not appreciate the competition to their very lucrative markets, and no doubt vigorously oppose and mock the technology.

Government should stop wasting billions on fickle countryside industrialising, weather dependent wind and terrestrial solar farms, and start a programme for electricity from space – which can be achievable within a decade – in the meanwhile reliance should be on the efficient, reliable, cheap and quick to build gas-fired power stations of the CCGT variety, supported by hydro and hybrid tidal schemes

Please recognise that we have been using energy from space for over THIRTY YEARS in the form of television transmission from satellites (SKY), and fundamentally power from space will employ the same technology in employing the electromagnetic spectrum.

  The developments for the many reasons/objections I am offering are therefore not of national significance.

It is of prime importance for all of us and indeed future generations for sanity to prevail, and in relation to wind generation and democracy Wales should not become a nation where the tail wags the dog.

If you should wish further information you may also be interested in my latest book which covers the above topics and much more titled, All Smoke and Mirrors, (ISBN 978-1-80369-289-0), available from Amazon and all large book shops on order.