“Not only aren’t the maintenance issues of the wind turbines considered, neither is the maintenance impact on the existing coal and gas fired units... those units used to go up and down slowly over the course of a day to reflect the increasing/decreasing demand of the grid. Now with wind entered into the mix, the coal and gas units are expected to go up and down like yoyos. Metal and thermal fatigue is a fact of life and like it or not, dragging wind into that mix will greatly shorten the life of these other power units.”
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Excellent, excellent point! I had never considered that aspect, but had only considered the raw loss of efficiency as the major cost of cycling those units, as they require a certain amount of time at any given output level to attain best efficiency at that level.