D WEEKS (Letters, 3 October), seems to be unaware of the colossal amount (in total) of electricity generation needed by UK industrial and domestic consumers, and the only way this requirement can be met is 354 days a year producing electricity, reliably, effectively, economically and as cleanly as possible.

Yet in advocating wind power, Mr Weeks, in promoting part substitution by wind, does not seem to realise that wind power meets none of these preconditions, due to viable windspeed being present on only 90 (approximate) days out of every 365 – so what do you substitute your “substitute”

with for the remaining 275 days?

Wind power is just expensive part-time duplication of electricity generation and in the real world, no other commercial undertaking would be permitted to operate like this: making money for 25 per cent of the time.

In the real world this scenario might be known as “bankruptcy”, yet this is the basis on which the wind turbine industry operates.

“Funded” bankruptcy – with the funding provided by massive subsidies, financed by equally massive impositions on the UK’s domestic and industrial electricity bills.

Mr Weeks’ imputation about nuclear power does not bear scrutiny either. For years the French have generated 80 per cent of their electricity through nuclear reactors, and with no significant problems.

In the USA fracking is reckoned to have reduced energy costs by near 50 per cent, and the carbon footprint, to what it was in the 1970s.

Given the scale of the thing, the only viable basis is nuclear power and fossil fuel electricity, but again this shows another ‘generational’ failure here – that of successive British governments to display the necessary foresight and political leadership needed to keep the National Grid up with the times.

Paddy Keenan, Ward Close, Andover.