While the debate surrounding the pros and cons of wind power rumbles on, the increasing numbers of turbines that are appearing across the country are beginning to make a real contribution to the UK’s energy supplies.

The National Grid reports that Monday 6^th September saw a record output for the wind farms of Britain – generating nearly 5% of all power going into the Grid at that time. The company confirmed that with output peaking at 1,860MW, the power generated by the wind energy sector was greater than that produced by three nuclear power stations.

The National Grid believes that over that 24-hour period (and taking into account embedded wind generation), nearly 10% of the UK’s power came from the wind alone. A great achievement, even if the UK is still a long way behind other parts of Europe in this field. Spain and Portugal, for example, consistently meet 50% of their energy demands through wind farmed along the Iberian Peninsula. But as mentioned in an earlier post, the political, social and economic infrastructure of these nations seems to offer greater support to the renewable cause than here in the UK.

When considering the 2020 target of generating 15% of the UK’s energy from renewable sources, this latest data should be encouraging news for the industry – and could go a long way to helping raise the common image of wind farms from ‘noisy blots on the landscape’ to valuable part of the renewable energy mix.

The developers of an innovative ‘wave power’ device claim that within 5 years, their invention will be generating energy for 50,000 UK homes. The ‘Anaconda’ energy converter is currently in the test stage, but recently announced results have shown that each 200 metre rubber tube could generate enough energy to power 1,000 homes.

The Anaconda (named for its resemblance) is anchored to the ocean floor, moving with the tides. The waves in the water create bulges along the tubing that travel along its length gathering energy. At the end of the tube, the surge of energy drives a turbine and generates electricity. It’s rubber construction makes it cheap, resilient and low-maintenance, and the designers, Checkmate Seaenergy Ltd are confident that not only will it be cheaper than it’s wind-farm equivalent , but it will face less opposition from the public as the ‘shoals’ will be under the surface of the water – effectively out of sight. The company are now looking for further investment to sea-test the devices, with the aim of deploying a shoal along the west coast of the UK by 2014.

With the EU targeting the UK to source 15 per cent of all the country’s energy needs from renewables by 2020 (the majority of which is expected to come from wind power ) the Carbon Trust suggests that the Anaconda ‘has the potential to deliver breakthrough reductions in the cost of wave energy’ and that it could ‘represent the next generation of marine renewable energy’.

This is not a political blog but why do we not follow the vision sometimes? President-elect Obama has just announced his plans to stimulate the US economy through large infrastructure projects and alternative energy initiatives. The UK government goes for tax breaks on the one hand and rises on the other. Same old recipe in the UK – something exciting in the US. No wonder the Conservative Party just have to sit back and let Labour win the next general election for them. ‘Yes we can’ versus ‘No we can’t…’