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See? THAT'S the problem!

A wind farm can't be the baseline source - which means that you (the utility in the region, not the wind farm supplier!) HAVE to keep up and build a baseline supplier because the wind farm is vunerable to drops ...

Sudden,irregular, unpredictable drops.

No wind - sure. No power. No money.

Only a little wind - only a minute amount of power (which means the EXPENSIVE baseline utility has to provide the difference! - but maintenance and deterioration and upkeep stays the same for the wind operator.

Regular "day" - Some power.

Windy day (the "peak power" time used the article!) means the wind farm makes a profit, the regular baseline utility has to pay all ITS workers and the power plant expenses - BUT DOESN'T GET PAID for its standing expenses!)

Stormy day - The wind farm HAS TO SHUT down. Its power generators must feather their props to protect the turbine when wind speeds GET TOO HIGH. (the blades can withstand storm winds of (maybe) 75 - 100 mph - but they rarely can be designed to generate regulated power over 45-50 knots. So, when there is too much wind - the baseline generators must run again.

When damaged by storms - the wind farm is OOC for maybe years - until repaired by experts who rebuild each generator and propeller wing. Again - a conventional power plant is almost NEVER damaged by storms - only the rural overhead lines are destroyed and can be simply repaired by outside line crews who come from out-of-state. Anybody can fix a power line.

Who is your "outside crew" who can drive up their crane and tugboat and aircraft factory from TN or VA or GA to fix an airlane wing in mid-air from a boat anchored in a bay off Mass?

You're telling me. Even having a sizable fraction of the baseload supplied by an inherently intermittant source is a recipe for disaster.

Lets forget about the Nantucket Sound boondoggle for a minute and think about a more likely proposition, maybe somewhere on the Western plains. Lots of land, a fair amount of wind, etc. But has anyone here ever seen a thunderstorm blow up on the Western plains? It is a fearful thing. Those who live back East can't imagine the difference.

You could be sitting there purring along with your windmills, then comes the dreaded "calm before the storm". If you're supplying a baseload to the grid, the grid power starts to sag. Dispatchers start to scramble to bring in neighboring power or maybe switch in spinning reserves from conventional plants. The stormfront is ragged, so the power sags are irregular and intermittant. As the storm breaks the windmills start to resupply their load, but the dispatchers have already switched in reserves. You're loading up lines with excess capacity. Instability sets in. So you throttle back the spinning reserves to allow for the capacity coming back online from the wind farm. But then the full fury of the storm hits. Too much wind! Feather those props so they don't fly apart! So output droops again. This time the dispatchers can't bring in enough power from spinning reserves or neighboring grids in an orderly manner. Only one thing to do: shed load.

The bottom line: intermittant sources mean system instabilities. Maybe your isolated ranch or homestead doesn't mind being out of power for a while if your farm windmill goes down, but its not the most helpful thing to have happen in a technologically advanced society where reliable electricity is literally its lifeblood.