Well, I read your article and unlike some others, I read it right through (in a few minutes - what's with the miniscule attention span of some of these critics?) and found it interesting and reasonable. I will not attempt to get into the economics of this because I simply don't have the expertise to ferret it all out, but it is very likely that wind power can't compete right now and be viable from that point of view.
I visited California a few years back, where there are wind farms of thousands and thousands of wind generators - it was incredible to see them covering hundreds of acres of ground. Obviously some governments at least believe that it is worthwhile to invest in such projects even if they don't intend to make money out of them quickly. Cost alone is not the only factor. Incidentally, it was only a few years ago (certainly when these wind farms were operating) that oil was about $30 a barrel - now it is more than double that and rising, so surely they must be more cost effective now than they were then - and likely to be even more so given the present shortfall in oil production. BTW, I realise that most of the world's power is not necessarily generated by oil).
I'm not plugging for wind power as if no other forms of power generation cleaner than what we have now exist, but I do think it is worthwhile investing in such projects even if on a limited scale so that they can be tested on a level playing field. Hell, the government just made an extra $92 million in taxes on the increase in oil prices over the past few months - they owe it to us to diversify power generation and experiment with other forms of clean energy production with some of their windfall profits from increased taxes on petrol.
Rifty -- Academic and Computing Help
