I am concerned is regarding the application to repower the Blyth Harbour Wall wind turbines. The Wansbeck Blyth Harbour Wind Farm has a very detailed Environmental Impact Assessment including a Navigational Risk Assessment but I cannot find a Flood Risk Assessment . I am sure there should be one

Elizabeth Mann, Darlingtom, Durham

David,

Let's get real: the existing offshore turbines have not managed to exceed a load factor of 26.5% (the BWEA claims 30% is "typical" even for onshore).

They have not worked for more than 2 years. In April 2006 the company admitted that they were not producing power due to a broken cable.

Gordon, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK

David

It is not a choice of wind or conventional - due to backup you end up with more fossil fuelled generation.

Germany: 22,000 turbines and building 26 new coal-fired stations.

Denmark: highest per-capita installed wind capacity in the world - carbon emissions rising, no power stations closed

Gordon, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK

The first wind farm in the UK was at Delabole in 1991, not at Blyth which was two years later. It is still working at 98% availability.

Peter Edwards, Delabole,

What's the point? You never see them turning! Of the dozen turbines I could see from home today not one of them turned all day. I should know! I was out enjoying the sun!

pete, accrington, uk

Wind turbines are the Devil's work. And the government wants to build 7000 of them! Eight nuclear power stations are planned, so why this rush for wind - polluting the countryside and the shoreline. There is more than the CO2 issue involved. Someone somewhere is going to make a fat profit.

Dwight Vandryver, Scholar Green, Cheshire, UK

Why is the UK so backward ? We should be building these things ourselves with British companies and then exporting them around the world. A lost opportunity again !!

As for Blyth, these will improve the town no end !

slade wallis, Retford, Great Britain

I'm sure Freud would have had something to say about little boys and their dreams of enormous turbines!

The 'economies of scale' will, I am sure, be more than offset by a yet greater incidence of blade and gearbox failure for which wind turbines are already notorious in the marine environment.

Gordon, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK

These windmills will indeed become icons of the hot air wind industry - in the same way that the Millenium Dome became an icon of zanulab. It is not just that they are ugly - it is that they do not do what is required and that is provide a reliable source of energy

Liz Brown, Montmartin en Graignes,

This is school yard sillyness! Fewer bigger turbines sounds more efficient to a child BUT the fact is that bigger turbines means less power and even that is less stable due to wind variation, meaning a bigger conventional power plant is needed to provide the base load. Wind is expensive&unreliable!

Stephanie King, larnaca, Cyprus

It is amusing that man made features a few hundred years old are magnificent and must be protected - like windmills in Amsterdam - but anything new is a blight on the landscape.

Humans do change things, but for every change to be regarded as a blight in my opinion is extremely narrow minded.

Richard, London, England

It aint the zie but the density of the turbines that matter and hence anything that achieves this means more energy per given amount of area.

Pete Best, Northampton, UK

I hate to think how many birds those vile things will kill and when we are all up to our necks in snowthey will have died in vain and some people will look very stupid

peter c, devizes, wessex

Which is worse: A few parts of the landscape spiked by slender wind turbines, or a similar number of landscapes blighted by huge cooling towers and concrete boxes of traditional power stations?

David, Cheshire,

Why do you quote dimensions in feet when we have been using and teaching the metric system in this country for 40 years?

Ronald Donnelly, Haywards Heath, West Susex