True cost of London Array

Readers letters

We, the electrical subscriber, will pay a subsidy of £74/MWh - £122 million per year

What a truly magnificent engineering project the Array is with all its difficulties (PE April 2011). Your article is totally spoilt by the silly facts and figures saying "Enough Power for around 480,000 homes per year". This is a sloppy tabloid newspaper unit and should not appear in a technical magazine. There is no technical definition of how much power an average house uses and people are free to quote whatever figure they like. It would be far better to state that at the current pool price of £33/MWh and a 30% effectiveness of the wind it will produce electricity to the value of £54 million per year. If it does that we, the electrical subscriber, will pay a subsidy of £74/MWh in other words £122 million per year.

You state Derek Birkett is against because of cost and availability of wind turbines to match the demand but if you had stated that for every £54 million of electricity the Array sold into the grid we will have to pay a subsidy of £122 million people would understand how daft massive wind power will become. As usual you have let the head of Renewables UK off the true costs by hiding behind the "helping us deliver our climate change objective".

A massive increase of the cost of electricity, which is only a service, will adversely effect our wealth creating industry which is reputed to be pulling us out of recession.