Aesthetically pleasing
I have been reading that there are a small number of people that oppose the proposed Glenkirk and Tom Nan Clach windfarm sites in the Highlands.
They oppose the turbines as they believe it will effect the tourist industry, film industry and that it will make the country side look bad; one person has said that it will directly effect their self-catering units. This may be true as the companies that are to build the turbines may rent the units for the duration of the builds. Another has said it will make the castle in Lochindorb look bad, while others have also said that the noise will be horrendous and that birds may fly into them (laughable).
I have recently returned to Scotland after serving almost seven years in Germany with my wife and two children were we lived one kilometre from a rural windfarm site that had approximately 30+ turbines and we did not hear them. Nor did we see them unless we looked for them, and when you did see them they were aesthetically pleasing and relaxing to watch.
I would suggest driving a number of those opposed past sites that are already in commission and asking them if they had seen them. Don’t they realise that renewable energy is a safer, cleaner option to have power in their homes, also that it will create jobs for the local communities in the building and upkeep of the turbines.
They may also produce enough energy for the homes/businesses in the areas and more therefore we can sell off the excess power to the national grid which will strengthen our economy in Scotland. I hope that ministers make the right choice and approve both the sites.
Allan Duffy
Craigton Avenue,
Inverness.
David Grant
Mr Duffy is quite right. Living near turbines need not be – although it can in some cases – be a bad experience. For two years I lived half-way up Burgar Hill on Orkney, beneath what was then the largest wind turbine in the world, with a wing-span greater than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
However! As anyone who has researched the question knows full well, turbines need wind and on those days when there is none, what do you do? You switch to the back-up coal, gas or nuclear power plant that you can’t get rid of for this very reason. Not only that but I will stick my neck out and suggest that, had the previous government not created a gravy train for developers with heavy subsidies, not one commercial-scale wind turbine would ever have been built.
As for aesthetics, Mr Duffy, you and some other people may love these things but personally I resent the ever-increasing industrialisation of the countryside, especially when it is for spurious so-called ‘green’ reasons. The Lochindorb/Dava Moor area is one of the most wonderfully unspoilt areas left in Scotland and stuffing turbines in, near or around it would be sheer vandalism.
I am all for domestic and small-scale community turbines. Indeed I owned a 4kw Elektro and was feeding into the grid before most people had even thought about such things. It, however, did not produce what was expected of it and eventually blew to bits in a gale. Things have moved on though and today firms such as Proven Energy supply excellent small machines.
But please, let us have no more onshore monstrous, white elephants – in Inverness-shire, on Shetland or anywhere else