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To: Cincinatus' Wife
The trouble with wind farms is you still need all the conventional generating capacity they were supposed to replace.

The wind doesn't blow every day, but everyone wants their lights on every day.
80 posted on 02/05/2007 7:19:05 AM PST by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: redgolum
No kidding.

And the royalties are not guaranteed.
81 posted on 02/05/2007 7:24:33 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: redgolum
And the incremental costs for the "backup" power become very, very high, because you essentially have to maintain all the infrastructure associated with those systems, but you're selling fewer units of output if you are simply a "backup" supplier.

That is the Achilles' Heel of many of these schemes. People just assume that when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining, they can just tap back into the grid and draw energy from it at the same cost with the same reliability as they always had before. Well, if they do, they'll probably be paying a heckuva lot more per unit than they are used to, and, worst case, it may not be there at all.

88 posted on 02/05/2007 7:48:46 AM PST by chimera
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