Truth on turbines

The figures quoted usually refer only to domestic electricity consumption, and indeed in your particularly slanted article, “Weather can power 4m households”, even exclude electric heating, the largest part of electricity consumption in many rural homes.

Domestic electricity represents only about 24 per cent of domestic energy consumption, and is only about one third of total electricty consumption. This in turn is only about one quarter of overall energy consumption.

As I write this, all of the UK’s wind turbines are producing around 0.35GW or 0.82 per cent of the country’s electricity, thus approximately 0.2 per cent of our total energy requirements, or enough to supply the actual needs of the residents of fewer than 50,000 households.

Perceptive readers will note that this is less than 4 million.

Jack W Ponton

Earlston

Berwickshire

Your report about Weather- Energy calculating that the wind had supplied enough energy for almost 4 million homes seems very odd.

Why has this company calculated figures that exclude electric heating, which must surely be one of the largest components of energy usage in houses which are not supplied with gas?

I hope it was not because it would have generated a much less impressive figure for the number of households actually receiving all their energy needs from wind.

Also, nowhere in your report do we learn how many households were supplied with energy from wind on the days when there was no wind. I wonder why WeatherEnergy has not supplied this information.

Alan Black

Camus Avenue

Edinburgh