Politicians must wise up to the reality of our energy supply

They won’t.

As always the renewables industry present the potential maximum output capability as the yearly performance which, presumably wittingly, misleads the general public.

Average figures for central Scotland wind farm output are approximately 30-35% of installed capacity. On many days it will be zero.

These repetitive untruths which can only be interpreted as deliberate have overtones of Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 and would put a manipulating dictatorship to shame.

Here is this past week’s reality.

The renewables publicity cohort including those salaried by the energy companies were unsurprisingly having a quiet time at the office over the past week. Trumpets are being rested. Perhaps being polished for the next windy day. Why?

In the calm early autumn weather there is a message that their working arrangement with the energy companies likely requires them to ignore.

UK wind output was again in collapse for six of the last seven days, delivering only around 4.7 to 11.0% of our electricity needs from less than 2GW to 3.9GW at lunchtime Monday from a UK-installed operational capacity, in May this year, of circa 30 GW.

Scotland has mostly been importing power from England over the last week, reaching at one random check more than 1100MW, which is almost the output of the two nuclear reactors at soon-to-close Torness.

Gas and nuclear generation are today having to produce almost 20GW, some 56.5% of our needs, ie more than five times today’s wind output and have been as high as 10 times that of wind in recent days. The UK is importing a further 13% of our power needs from our European friends: more than the output of our largely becalmed wind, and imports have been periodically as high as three times wind output in the last week For almost every day up to last Thursday we have been running the last remaining coal-fired station to help plug the shortfall, possibly to ensure we have adequate inertia in the Grid to protect against dangerous frequency variations. It is scheduled to close on September 30.

Senior politicians need to be aware of today’s all-too-frequent scenario and look down both barrels of energy reality.

Worryingly for us consumers, I doubt that they are or will.

DB Watson, Cumbernauld.

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• IAIN McIntyre suggests in his letter (September 21) that I might believe in electricity being beamed down from the heavens, while, if he had read my letter of September 17 carefully, it is quite clear that I do not (geomagnetic storms excepted, since they represent a threat rather than a usable source of energy). My response to his original letter of September 16 was prompted by the possible confusing message in his letter that a statement about cloud storage and electrical energy might have with some readers. Mr McIntyre describes himself as an engineer and I have no desire to trade qualifications with him. I would describe myself as well informed on the basis that I am also a professional engineer who spent his whole career in the electricity supply industry and worked closely with power generation, grid control and transmission. While I am not arrogant enough to claim that I know everything about the supply of electrical power, I believe I am reasonably well informed on most of the issues.

What I, and my professional colleagues, are concerned about is the failure of government to recognise the need for an entirely independent national energy authority charged with strategic planning which is solely directed to delivering a secure energy system at optimal cost. Levelised costs tell us something but provide a very incomplete story. It is whole system costs that should concern us and be the focus of entirely independent expertise and critical thinking about our energy future, rather than the short-term objectives of shareholders and politicians. How the new Government's GB Energy fits these requirements is as yet unknown.

Norman McNab, Killearn.

Why are there not more Jordanhills?

ONCE again I find myself nodding in agreement when reading an article by Guy Stenhouse (“How much financial trouble are we in? Quite a lot”, The Herald, September 23).

It is probably doubtful if anyone in the Scottish Government is sufficiently awake to act on (or even listen to) Mr Stenhouse’s numerous highly salient observations but one, in particular, leaps out.

Why doesn’t the Scottish Government ever ask why Jordanhill School consistently outperforms those run by local authorities and roll out similar models around the country? It is a question I have frequently asked myself and it is even more baffling as it is party politics “neutral”.

It is a state school and there are no fees. It receives a grant directly from the Government and is governed by its own board of managers (which includes parents). It is consistently top of the school league tables and families move into the catchment area so their children get a good quality of education.

It is a Scotland success story. Why on earth are we not making more of it? I’m flummoxed.

James Miller, Glasgow.

Jordanhill School (Image: Newsquest)

Lay-by lament

WHY do so many of the travelling public use our lay-bys as rubbish dumps and even worse, as toilets?

I regularly pass a lay-by beside the A9 dual carriageway and the smell is terrible. The travelling public should be ashamed of themselves and take their rubbish home rather than dumping it out of their vehicle window.

Come on Scotland, we can do better than this.

Colin Mackenzie, Dunblane.

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Timbers and tethers

I WAS amused by the thought of Peter Wright shivering his timbers and Donald M Manson being found at the end of his imaginary tether in successive letters published today (September 23).

This will help me enjoy, rather than choke on, my cornflakes.

David Miller, Milngavie.