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Maybe they (the wind generators) could begin paying for themselves rather quickly.

Couple of advantages here, several disadvantages compared to a loarge conventional power plant. or a conventional wind plant too for that matter.

The wind itself is "free" - IF they can actually build the bases, towers and generator units - BUT the transmission cost of the cables underwater to the shore-side distribution facility IS NOT "free" and the constant maintenance cost of many small generators spread all over the bay is deadly!

That (perpetual maintainence) of many hundred SMALL generators at remote, hard-to-get-to spots (on top of small towers) is the real killer of wind farms in CA. Each time I drove psat, more than half were stalled out on even the windiest days - no power, no money earned - only money spent (by the taxpayers !) on "free power."

Now, multiply a simple wind farm where you can drive up in a truck to a widely distributed group in a remote bay miles from the shore where access is MUCH, MUCH slower in a boat than an open field. Worse, work itself is slower: imagine a wind farm where you can drive up and get a crane on site "cheap" (only a few thousand dollars rent vice tens of thousands for a boat/barge crane/tugboat plus the crew for the whole thing!) for a single day.

What if forget a part? Now, you'd need several hours to get back in the boat, go back to shore, and THEN drive to the supply shed. On shore, you call your buddy on the cell phone, HE drives out from the supply shed and gives you the part.

Salt spray and salt-laden winds are DIRTY compared to land farms. Things will break sooner, and even paint becomes more expensive, and less successful - what happens when the AL and fiberglass housings start to fail, or internal copper tabs and circuit boards and electrical connections need to be replaced in ten years? Or in two years? Or the grease and bearing fail in three years - as they do in CA?

One advantage of distributed power plants is that each small generator can come on line faster - so SOME money can be recovered even before the whole project is done - unlike a conventional power plant where the whole has to finished and tested before any money is generated. Also, since each small genreator is independent of the others, losing several dozen to maintenance at one time leaves the remainder able to make money.

But then too - the power connections and control system and distribution has to be built before anything is sold - and the infrastructure won't be cheap - so the company will be in the red for decades before they see an investment return.

The generators are comparable to an entire 727 WING - they require care and expensive maintenance to keep working - or they tear themselves to bits of expensive aluminum shreads.

What if forget a part? Now, you'd need several hours to get back in the boat, go back to shore, and THEN drive to the supply shed. On shore, you call your buddy on the cell phone, HE drives out from the supply shed and gives you the part.

What if there's a storm? What maintenance crew is gonna go 5 miles offshore in violent seas to repair a windmill?

IMHO, it'd much more efficient to simply generate electricity from tofu.
All ya gotta do is put a bunch of enviro-monkeys in one room where they can beat on quartz crystals with little hammers. That'll generate plenty of piezoelectricity that can be sold commercially. And since the only fuel that is consumed is tofu, it's the perfect means of disposing of that hazardous waste!

One advantage of distributed power plants is that each small generator can come on line faster - so SOME money can be recovered even before the whole project is done - unlike a conventional power plant where the whole has to finished and tested before any money is generated.

This is exactly how the Luddites have killed the larger projects (all of them, not just nuclear units). Stretch out the completion time until the carrying charges kill you. So an advantage of a smaller unit is faster completion time. Start generating revenue quicker, as you say, and start paying off the bonds and other financing charges.

So it sounds like a typical engineering problem, making the best of the trade-offs. But if this recent blackout snafu has taught us anything, its that we place a premium on reliability. If a sizable portion of your baseload capacity is derived from a source that is inherently intermittant, instead of having grid instabilities that take you down every 20 years or so, you'll be dealing with them on a weekly or monthly basis. I for one wouldn't want to have a NE blackout occurring on a monthly basis. The economy would go to pieces, and the people would tar and feather and run out of town on a rail any utility executive that "allowed" such things to happen.