IN response to the many letters written on the subject of wind energy in the Courier of August 16, I think the following misconceptions require clarifying.

1 "Fossil power stations being built in Germany are merely to replace nuclear stations and not to back-up renewable sources".

This is not the case as nuclear stations are for base-load provisions and are not capable of meeting the response time of wind and solar power variations.

The Germans have to go to fossil stations to back-up the large and unstable renewables which can be 25 per cent of their total output.

They say that they are replacing nuclear stations as they are unsafe but in reality they have no option in order to keep the grid stable.

2 "Using more energy or wasting energy at a farm will not make more money for the farmer as surplus power is fed back to the grid".

This is not the case as the farmer is paid around only 4.5p per unit for power fed back to the grid as opposed to around 20p per unit for the total energy generated.

The Endurance Wind Power Company website will confirm that for a farm in this area with an E3120 55kW turbine (which would struggle much of the time to supply one electric shower and a kettle) the revenue produced can be over £40,000 per annum if the farm takes 10,000 units per annum or over £60,000 if the energy used is 40,000 units.

3 "Noise from wind turbines is not really a problem as it's being able to see one that makes it worse"

Try telling that to all those people who are living in misery from the noise of an adjacent wind farm.

Current legislation ETSU R 97 allows a turbine to be located no closer to a house than will produce a maximum of 35dBA at night in a bedroom.

This is equivalent to a fridge running continuously alongside the bed. The noise consultants employed by the turbine developers are up to all sorts of tricks to shoehorn farm turbines into locations even closer to houses. One of them involves using inadequate windshields on noise microphones to boost the "masking" background noise.

At a wind farm near Chawleigh they used background levels from a very windy site in Canada rather than true measurements taken in the actual area.

I have written to The Institute of Acoustics regarding these unrepresentative background level measurements and they have now produced a guidance document on many turbine issues for planners.

John Dike

Coldridge