Dear Laura,
ON your show, Chris Packham repeated the false claim that the sooner we get most of our electricity from renewables the better because it will be cheaper. That is wrong, not least because solar and wind intensity can be negligible for two or three weeks a year, when conventional power generation plant must be available to keep the lights on. Conventional power plant does not need such back-up.
Try adding the capital, operation, maintenance and replacement cost of that back-up power plant to that of solar and wind to get the correct total. At around £5billion per GW, that would incur a further £200billion of capital. But sadly there was no one on your programme to challenge Mr Packham’s narrative, so here are some facts that you should feed back to him and to your viewers.
In September 2024 the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero said that bill payers ‘are to spend between £100 and £150 per household on new wind turbines’. But at £2.7 and £1.2billion/GW respectively, the capital cost of wind capacity, would be well over £200billion. That equates to more than £7,000 per household, ie around £700 per household pa over ten years, plus the cost of subsidies, but that was not challenged by the BBC.
So far this century, over £200billion in green levies has been paid out (more than £6,000 per household) to promote solar and wind energy. Any further efficacy improvements will be marginal and throwing further subsidies at the technology is not likely to reduce costs much further. It will just drive even more UK industry to the likes of China, thereby accelerating global emissions.
You clearly failed to notice that wind turbine Capacity Factors (CFs) have recently been reduced from 61 per cent to 43.6 per cent for Offshore and from 48.7 per cent to 33.4 per cent for Onshore wind farms. As a result the energy delivered by the 86 and 36 GW of UK wind farms planned for 2035 will be about 30 per cent less than expected, down from 611 to 433TWh (the CF is a measure of the Average Power Produced in GW divided by the rated power).
Assuming an average cost of 25p per kWh, the value of the shortfall of around 180TWh is around £45billion pa, ie around £1,500 per household. That shortfall could be plugged by an extra 20 and 35 GW of Off/Onshore wind farm capacity at £2.7 and £1.5billion per GW, totalling about £110billion more in capital cost, ie well over £3,000 per household.
Added to that is the cost of 3,000 miles of vulnerable offshore submarine cable connections, plus 600 miles of HV overhead lines, along with substation costs, which together will add more than £3billion to the capital cost of wind farms. That neglects the extra transmission power losses and the eye watering subsidies, which have been rising year on year, now comprising around 30 per cent of electricity costs.
Of course wind farms are not maintenance free and assuming £50million/GW pa, the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) cost for 135GW of wind capacity the O&M cost equates to more than £6billion pa. The wind turbines have to be replaced at intervals of around 20 years (gearboxes more often) and their energy output will never be free. You will also need to grasp the causes of the Iberian power failure to see that our grid is not left unfit for purpose by ideological forces.
In case you missed it, the capital plus the O&M cost of the backup power capacity, will need to be added to the cost of wind and solar. If your verifying department needs any help in scrutinising this information, then please let me know.
Regards,
Roger J. Arthur, CEng, MIEE, MIET.
