Low Efficiency Wind Farms

30/08/07

It has been claimed that wind farms are been built in areas of Britain which can't support the amount of wind a turbine needs to be economically viable. These low efficiency wind farms are funded by the government to the cost of hundreds of millions of pounds.

A Mr. Michael Jefferson of the world renewable energy network claims that wind farms are been built in areas of England, Wales and Scotland without enough wind. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has responded and branded the claim as "nonsense".

Mr. Jefferson has told the costing the earth program on BBC Radio 4 that financial incentives are encouraging companies to develop wind farms in bad locations.

There have been recent claims that wind farms in Britain are under performing due to the varying wind speeds of our location.

So, why are these possibly low efficiency wind farms been built in Britain?

The government is attempting to reach an EU set target for 20% of our energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. It is unclear whether the pressure of meeting these demands is prompting the construction of low in efficiency wind farms across Britain, and more research is needed.

Large companies such as e.on have and are developing offshore and onshore wind farms around Britain, and these are proving economically viable and efficient.

Large sums of money are put into site surveys before the construction of wind farms proceed, and not many wind technology firms would like to invest in wind farms in areas of Britain which are not economically justified to support efficient wind turbines.

Low efficiency wind farms only cost the developer money, and threatens the future investment in such developments.

Scientists believe we should not only be looking at wind farms to produce our renewable energy demand for the 2020 dead line, but that we should also seriously consider the use of tidal power. Recent studies in Scotland for the use of modern in design tidal power generators are proving highly efficient.