Representation by Peter Linfoot Crowther
- Date submitted
- 26 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Where to start? I am not against solar but its limitations in the UK for effective electricity generation need to be recognised and taken into account. I am against opportunistic change of land use for personal gain by the landowners and their associates. Firstly, any large scale solar installation should be on brownfield sites where any benefit would be incremental unlike the substitutional effect of Mallard Pass which takes productive agricultural land out of use where the solar energy it receives grows food and other produce ( including lower carbon fuel) for which we are nett importers. I am in favour of the renewable energy sector as a whole and cognisant that progress here is an imperative. The sector has been developing and maturing, as all industrial activities do, with a competitive market emerging after a ‘wild west’ subsidy chasing era characterised by speculative start-ups, hopefully now in decline. It seems that offshore wind has become the renewable mainstay and the large and effective installations are integrating unobtrusively into the fabric of the country and the coast. Solar on the other hand has found its niche with small installations integrated into industrial and commercial premises providing them with power on favourable days and capable of feeding any excess into the grid aided commercially by smart metering developments. This technology has also seen widespread domestic use. A lot of this has been prompted by subsidies but those showing to produce a nett gain without subsidy will probably show the way for effective incorporation in new builds. So why is a mega scheme proposed at Mallard Pass? One feature mentioned is the substation which seems to be offering a magic portal to the supergrid albeit with a large blanketed and blighted hinterland , whereas other modest less in your face systems seem to coexist with the grid quite effectively. Other substations and interfaces are likely to be available in more appropriate brownfield locations and if the equipment at Mallard Pass is surplus to requirements it could be relocated. The promotional material for Mallard Pass does unfortunately contain a nonsensical statement by stating the output as 350 megawatts (MW) of solar energy. Firstly megawatts is a unit of power and not energy. The 350 MW is the power the facility can put out on a good sunny summer's day at the peak of the day and year but this power is not there in the night time, the winter or even summer cloudy and gloomy days. To get to an energy rating it is necessary to multiply the power by the time that power is available and due to the day and night and seasonal variation the appropriate unit should be megawatts years of energy for which the 350 is too high by an order of magnitude and an output around 100 megawatts years is a more realistic expectation. A conventional 2000 MW station can work very close to its rating year in and year out producing 2000 megawatt years of electrical energy albeit by consuming fossil fuel all the time. Unfortunately, for us in the UK, we rank very low in the hours of sunshine world ranking but fortunately, nicely off for offshore wind. In summary, the colossal footprint and removal of productive agricultural land for a fraction of the benefit stated should not be justified and the blight on the surrounding countryside makes for a very poor comparison with the railway to which the name of the scheme alludes.The railway threaded its way into the west glen valley with a remarkably light touch in comparison with the Mallard Pass scheme.