DO you ever wonder what 40,000 homes look like? Probably not - why should you?
For a start you’d first have to know what a “home” means.
Is it, for example, a small terraced house occupied by mum, dad and one, two or three kids?
Or maybe a large detached house owned by an elderly widow whose several children and grandchildren come to visit regularly, not forgetting the resident cat?
Or just a loose conglomeration of 40,000 individual domestic dwellings? What does one of those look like then?
Who knows? It sounds quite impressive though, doesn’t it? Bigger or smaller than Wrexham, would you say? Or Mold, or Ruthin?
If you have to hold your hand up and say you haven’t got a clue what any of these things means – and you’d be in very good company – then you might like to spare a moment to wonder what you are supposed to make of reported statements such as “the 145m-high 2-3MW turbines will have the potential to power up to 42,100 homes.”
There are 32 of these turbines being proposed, incidentally.
Sound familiar? The words, similar to dozens of other claims made by wind farm companies over the past few years, and reported this week, are, of course, intended to be reassuring.
The numbers, certainly, are impressive. Blackpool Tower, for example, is 158m high to the top of the pinnacle - just 13 metres higher.
The roof height at 144m is fractionally lower, and the observation deck a mere 138m.
Now multiply that by 32.
But remember, together they will have the potential to power up to 42,100 homes.
Don’t you just love the exactitude? Not 42,000 or 42,200, but 42,100. It makes you feel the people behind the scheme know what they’re doing, doesn’t it?
But read it again: “Up to 42,100”. Doesn’t that mean anything less than? Yes it does.
And read it again: “the potential to power up to 42,100”.
What does that mean? Anybody's guess, is the answer.
So you've got 32 towers all taller than the observation deck of Blackpool Tower, which might possibly, on a good day, be capable of powering, in theory, anything up to 42,100 homes.
And you don’t even know what 42,100 homes means?
Oh, and by the way, these 32 towers are to be erected in Clocaenog Forest on an area consisting of “felled trees, new and old plantings”.
I bet you’re glad you understand what that means too.
The company behind the scheme, RWE npower renewables (whatever that means with its cute, unthreatening, lower-case title) says it wants to give local communities as much information as possible before it submits its final proposals early next year.
Yeah, right. The public exhibitions will be on October 8 at Llanfwrog Community Centre, Ruthin, between 10am2pm, and at the Plas Pigot Country Club, Ruthin Road, Denbigh, between 6pm-8pm; at Plas Pigot on October 9 between 10am-2pm; and at Cerrigydrudion Community Centre from 1pm-3pm on October 10.
That’s a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, by the way. But hey, it's only the finest bit of untouched forest in North Wales.
Still at least you now know what the Government means when it says it’s following a “green” agenda. It means chopping trees down.
Have your say on the issue by leaving comments below.