Pie-in-the-sky thinking

Bob Baird (Letters, 17 December) has dropped one the biggest boo boos I have ever heard from supporters of wind farms. Please ask his colleagues at the Renewable Group of Strathclyde University to show him and the world some of these hydrogen-producing units at work in a commercial context. Can he tell us where pumped-storage has been built specifically to serve the needs of wobbling wind power?

For the foreseeable future, Mr Baird is projecting pie in the sky.

The electricity which wind turbines supply to the grid fluctuates wildly and would not be marketable without enforced purchase and the huge consumer-sourced subsidy of the renewables obligation. This fluctuation means that they have to be backed up all the time with conventional fossil fuelled power plants or nuclear. Our government's current unrealistic target is 12,000 of these monsters carpeting our landscapes and seascapes by 2020.

If that target was reached it would mean that not only would all the gas, coal and nuclear stations have to be serviced more regularly, but a large number of additional conventional power stations would have to be built, just to keep the lights on when the wind is not behaving properly.

Surely the time has to come to call a moratorium on the commissioning of any more wind farms at least before these hypothetical storage units are up and running.