THERE has been a lot of concern over the Navitus Bay (Poole Bay) wind farm recently as some of the detail has leaked out.

For those who have not read the Challenge Navitus website, the government are looking to engage the Dutch company Eneco in conjunction with multi-national EDF to build the world’s largest wind farm of up to 333 wind turbines, between Bournemouth and Swanage within eight miles of the coastline.

Each one is potentially 40m higher than the London Gherkin skyscraper.

I am a firm supporter of renewable energy but I have concerns over this project. I am not going to cover the usual concerns of visual impact, noise (amplified by the SW wind and the lack of terrain), sailing, sand movement and ongoing maintenance costs.

The farm will cost £3bn to build and will generate 900GW powering 800,000 homes. 900GW is the equivalent of 225,000 4KW solar panels, a cost of £1.8bn.

If this number of panels were fitted it would provide mass local job generation, require little maintenance and would drive down the cost of panels in the UK.

This area has some of the highest tidal energies in the UK and is unique in the world providing two tides per day.

The UK leads the world in tidal energy so why can we not capitalise on this? Tidal power provides low maintenance and unobtrusive energy.

While wind farms are suited to some areas, it is clear that Poole Bay is more suited to a tidal scheme capitalising on the local marine engineering excellence of the area combined with micro-generation to reduce local demand.

So why is the government pushing wind power?

TIM ROBERTS, Radipole Road, Canford Heath