Madam, – The view of ESRI’s Prof John FitzGerald and Laura Malaguzzi Valeri (Opinion, December 17th) that “Irish electricity prices could be reduced by extensive wind generation” is delusional.
The one certainty about wind is that it does not blow on demand. In fact, wind is typically absent when most needed, like in winter, in times of high pressure, coldest temperatures, peak power demand, but no wind. Therefore wind power must always be 100 per cent backed up by conventional power plants fully fired-up and consuming fossil fuels.
Consequently, wind power is always an extra add-on cost to the consumer.
But the real scandal is that we are forced, by Government policy, to purchase every watt of wind energy from the wind moguls, at premium rates, even when it’s produced in the wee small hours and is totally worthless.
This is one of the reasons why we have the second highest electricity costs in Europe and the more wind power we connect to the grid the more uncompetitive we will become. – Yours, etc,