OK, will someone please tell me why these wind turbine installations are rated in terms of *power* (GW) rather than *energy* (GJ) production? Power is the rate of energy production per unit of time -- or rather, it is the *potential* rate of energy production per unit of time.
So if we have 74 GW of wind power potential, that is very misleading if they hardly ever produce at peak power because the wind is not blowing at exactly the optimum speed and direction.
My understanding of wind power is that it is very finicky. If the wind is too slow, you don't get much power. If it is too fast, they need to be turned off. We covered this a bit in a graduate level class I took about 20 years ago on helicopters.
The bottom line is that I suspect this article is very misleading. It makes wind power appear to be competitive with nuclear power, but I doubt that is true.
By the way, see http://RussP.us/nucpower.htm
No wonder these things need subsidies! With all that government gravy, there's no real incentive to come up with something that works on a regular basis!