Our village Craigcefnparc, near Clydach Swansea Valley, was born out of coal mining about 200 years ago. We had several coal mines, our largest was Clydach Merthyr (known as Nixons). Mining ceased here about 65 years ago and our miners transferred to the Brynlliw Pit near Gorseinon and that closed about forty years ago. Mining is now a distant memory but its ghosts live on in our Welsh culture here. Our miners used to receive 8 tonnes a year of concessionary coal for domestic use, that’s also long finished. About that time, forty years ago, there were demands for a village gas supply – the nearest connection was at Clydach just a couple of miles away. Representatives of the Gas Supplier came to a public meeting in the Village Hall (which incidentally was paid for by the Miners’ Welfare Hall Funds). They explained they would take Gas anywhere as long as the demand was there, and the community paid for its costly installation household by household. The cost was too high then, so we still have no gas.
This history reminds me of a new example with our national UK electric grid. Our politicians are glibly talking of two systems of a new supply of electric. Those are from floating offshore wind turbines in the Celtic Sea and solar power via a sea bed connection from Morocco. So I’ve been checking in an old school atlas. The Celtic Sea is located between Pembrokeshire; Cornwall ; South West Ireland and North West France, with the deep St George’s Channel between it and us, of distance on average of about 120 miles of under sea cables and then an extra 100 miles from its landfall points to a high population of consumer demand.
The Moroccan solar panels would involve an international sea bed cable system of about 1,400 miles to its UK landfall. Our politicians in the Wales Government and Starmer’s Miliband are serious about this, despite costs of the cabling and costly offshore floating giant wind turbines and risks of storms and terrorist acts of cutting the cables. It all reminds me of those Gas supply Engineers of forty years ago, who said they would take supply anywhere as long as the demand was there, and the community paid for it household by household. Incidentally, our Irish friends call the Celtic Sea the ‘Sea of Myths’ inhabited by the fairy folk of the sea called the ‘Merrows’.
I. Richard, Craigcefnparc, Swansea,
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