THE EDITOR, Sir:
IT IS indeed wonderful to see that the Wigton Wind Farm is up and running and I trust that we will seek to develop more wind-generating facilities in this area and in other viable locations like the Santa Cruz Mountains, Portland Ridge, Hellshire, Morant Point etc. I wish to congratulate Dr. Raymond Wright at PCJ and his team for this effort.
I also would very much like to see us vigorously pursue the development of the very significant additional hydro-electric potential (in the order of 500 GWH/year) which has been identified in a multitude of studies starting in the early 1970s most of which has yet to be developed.
Long ago we discussed the concept of setting up a Hydro-Electric Development Authority, which would develop the Hydro-Electric Resources with arrangements to sell the power to the JPSCo as indeed has been done for the Wigton Wind Farm.
These projects should be developed with emphasis on their financial viability rather than the economic viability. Unfortunately because of the very long life of hydro-electric projects when compared to thermal (oil fired plants), the method of economic analysis used has generally made the thermal plant more economically-viable which kills the real long term benefits of the hydro-electric plants. They are generally financially-attractive, particularly after the financing is fully paid for, given that the energy source is ours and free and maintenance and operational costs and problems are minimal.
HYDRO-ELECTRIC PLANTS
In the 1940s and 50s, the JPSCo developed the existing hydro-electric plants but as the long term situation for JPSCo became increasingly unclear they have focussed on oil-fire plants with relatively short pay back periods.
The full development of our hydro potential could save in the order of 25 per cent of our oil import bill for power generation, make us less dependent on imported oil and probably help to reduce electricity charges in real terms.
Further we should be pursuing the potential for generating electricity from the direct use of the sun's heat via computer-controlled mirrors focussing heat on a heat-collector and transferring heat using appropriate fluids (e.g. liquid sodium) to heat exchangers to produce steam for a standard steam turbine/generator ar-rangement (as used with oil fired boilers).
Such technology has been operational in France for about 40 years and a more recent in Arizona using more modern materials from the space programme (e.g. using rocket motor cooling cones in reverse for heat collection).
Maybe we should be setting up one "Alternative Energy Authority" to deal with wind, hydro and solar power generation.
I am, etc;
John Allgrove
Kingston
