they were jsut commenting on how many are turned off at any given time, no comparing.Not sure what you mean. Modern turbines have 98.5% uptime. Again, if you're looking at Altamont Pass, you're looking at the equivalent of Model 'T's. Or, at best, '62 Ramblers.
And even in the modern wind farms a lot of turbines are turned off at any given time because they need to be tuned to particular wind speeds and won't be on if the wind isn't going the right speed.
As I understand it, they produce electricity at wind speeds from 9 MPH to 50 MPH. That's the "right" speed. Put 'em where the wind blows, and they're turning. Look for an average-windspeed map on the 'Net. When I drive by the wind farms in NW Iowa or SW Minnesota, it looks like 1 or 2 of every 100 is stopped. That's just my observation.
It's becoming all the more apparent that you use canned responses.
Not sure what gives you that impression. If I come across as terse and/or short-tempered, it's because I've learned over the years that, no matter how much data we 'believers' post, the FR crowd has no desire to learn the facts about wind power. With a very few exceptions they are more than happy to simply, in effect, follow Rush's lead when it comes to wind power.
That's still a junky uptime, the competing systems have uptimes that goes months or years without a break. In Altamont we're looking at the equivalent of Chrysler K cars, it's only 20 years not 80.
You're responses come off as canned because each one is built around an ASSumption of why I think windpower isn't there yet, and each one of your ASSumptions have been wrong. You assumed it was because I was anti-green, not the case. You assumed it was because I hadn't bothered to do any research, not the case. Here you're assuming I'm following Rush' lead, again not the case (I hate talk radio and don't give a damn what Rush says about anything anywhere at anytime). Windpower simply isn't there yet, the technology isn't efficient enough or reliable enough. Someday soon it may be but it's not now. The only part of it I'm against is implementing it when it is not yet a viable power source, it should only be implimented in experimental blocks until it's ready. When it's ready it'll be great, until then we're sinking a lot of time money and land into it when we could get a better return on other power sources.