The Parish Council are holding an open meeting regarding Navitus Bay Wind Park at the Community Centre on Thursday 1st March 2012. The meeting starts at 6.00pm and is scheduled for an hour. The Parish Council have called the meeting to cover some questions that they hope Eneco can clarify before the Parish Council respond to the consultation.
The two website links below will give you more information on the proposals. One is the developers site, the other as its name implies has somewhat opposing views.
Bernard Brewer, a local resident makes some personal observations. “From a personal point of view the challenge Navitus site seems to focus on the visual aspect of the site, but it is the cost of the unreliable and therefore inefficient electricity it produces that is unacceptable to me. In simple terms if you used a month’s electricity generated solely from say a gas fired power station it might cost you £40 (and that already includes around 15% extra for so called green measures). That same amount of electricity provided purely from an offshore wind farm which gets a guaranteed 200% subsidy would be £120. I appreciate it would not literally happen like that as power comes from a mixture of sources (currently around 85% from coal/gas/nuclear) but you can see why this Dutch company which is owned by 61 Dutch municipalities is so keen to develop the site and get a nice guaranteed return for 25 years as does the crown estate and ultimately the government via the crown estate and VAT on the higher bills.
Milford is considered an affluent area and I am sure many can cope with paying higher bills but my concerns are for those who will be elderly and on their own in particular with perhaps a somewhat limited income who may be house bound for much of the time and in winter will not be able to afford to keep their home as warm as it should be.
The problem is of course government policy which makes it attractive to firms such as ENECO/Navitus, but while we have a Prime Minister who supports such subsidies (indeed his father in law reportedly gets £1000 a Day from some turbines on his land again courtesy of our bills) nothing much is going to change unless of course as I suspect wind farms will become an election issue.”
If you would like to add your views, for or against the Wind Farm, please do so in the ‘comments’ section below this article.
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Navitus Bay Wind Park
In January 2010, The Crown Estate awarded Eneco a 279 square mile area of the seabed located off the Dorset and Hampshire coasts (& due south of Milford on Sea) and to the west of the Isle of Wight to explore the most suitable place to locate a wind park with an approximate capacity of at least 900MW. Over the past year, Eneco has been appraising the area and concluded that a project of between 900MW and 1200MW of capacity could be located in the northern part of the awarded area, a site which covers 76 square miles.
Navitus Bay Wind Park will have the potential to make a contribution to meeting national targets for the increased use of renewable energy, reducing the country's dependency on fossil fuel imports and help to address the causes of climate change.
We should vigorously oppose the proposed wind farm in Christchurch Bay. The cost of generating power offshore in this manner is outrageous and far more than it would cost to provide ‘clean’ technology on conventional power stations. If conventional power stations were to receive the same subsidy, we could have clean energy at a much lower cost.
ReplyDeleteI am also concerned about the climatic impact. With a prevailing SW wind, the disturbed wind and increase in pressure caused by the turbines could reduce surface temperatures locally by as much as 2degC. A disaster for the local tourist industry on which we depend.
Less serious but also a concern is the problems that will be caused to sailors who come into and out of this area, including the many visitors we get from France who may be put off from coming to this area thus impacting the local economy.
I have often commented that power generated from the racing water between Hurst Castle and the Isle of Wight using turbines would be a much better option than trying to take electric for too greater distance ... the electric generated gets lost on the way. Why not get solar pannels on your house instead ... let other people pay the cost of government fumblings for green energy and create your own ... pass it on to the neighbours who pay for your system ... get a nice paycheck at the end of each month?????
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