You are absolutely right. A recent issue of Windpower monthly lamented the decision made by some country to build up both nuclear and wind. The reason is that Wind is not available on demand and nukes are not flexible as peakers, they are base load and run best at 100 percent power all the time. The two are not compatible without additional peaking plants for the various stages of reserve.
Juggling wind into a grid does pose new challenges. Wind is not completely unpredictable though and grid operators are finding that it is not as big a pain as they first thought, especially in places like Spain, Germany and Denmark where they have a lot of wind which greatly reduces the amount of fluctuation of wind output.
There are some important driving forces that are pushing the development of windpower. People flat out love it. Usually a region is 70 percent favorable to wind power being developed until after it has been done. Then the same region becomes about 90 percent favorable. Martha's vineyard is the exception. Also, when given a choice people will opt for renewable power over every source and people are being given that choice more and more.
Some nukes can do load following, such as adjusting the recirc flow rate on a BWR to vary the reactor power output. But it is not the most efficient mode of operation.
There will always be baseload units and peakers, as well as miscellaneous units that contribute to the overall available capacity as they are able. Some units are better suited as baseload units, because they crank out the megawatts, day and night, regardless of the weather conditions. Others can best be suited for peakers, others just to throw in as a component of the reserve as best they can. That is probably why there were some advocating parallel development of the various resources in your one journal. Seems like a reasonable strategy. Its just the nature of the demand curve in an industrialized society with a high living standard. You're going to have a constant demand topped with a varying demand that will depend on environmental conditions and other things.
Juggling wind into a grid does pose new challenges. Wind is not completely unpredictable though and grid operators are finding that it is not as big a pain as they first thought, especially in places like Spain, Germany and Denmark where they have a lot of wind which greatly reduces the amount of fluctuation of wind output.
I have to tell you that I am not too impressed with examples from countries like Denmark or Spain. Those are geographically small countries with relatively small population somewhat concentrated in certain locations. And, a country like Denmark, while having a relatively good standard of living, isn't exactly a world economic, heavy manufacturing, or military power. As for Germany, they are thinking of phasing out their nukes, and developing things like windpower, but the last estimates I saw were that they would be forced to forgo compliance with the Kyoto protocol, or import electricity from their neighbor, which happens to be France, which happens to be in the range of 80% nuclear for electricity generation.
There are some important driving forces that are pushing the development of windpower. People flat out love it. Usually a region is 70 percent favorable to wind power being developed until after it has been done. Then the same region becomes about 90 percent favorable. Martha's vineyard is the exception. Also, when given a choice people will opt for renewable power over every source and people are being given that choice more and more.
Well, nobody has asked me yet, but if they did, I'd say I don't like it as it is currently deployed or proposed. It's ugly and inefficient and costly. Like I said above, if you'd deploy it in a manner suitable to it's nature as an energy source, and use it to make transportable, storable fuel for use in the transport sector, then you'd probably be on to something.
As far as choosing renewables, the only person I know who did that was my one brother-in-law who lives out in Denver. And he "chose" it only as long as it took for him to get his first electric bill using the "choice" option. That's because he has kids in school and a family to support, and those have higher priority for his money than a feel-good choice on a utility bill. My guess is that those who choose the "renewable" options are those wealthy enough to have disposal incomes that support such feel-good options. Hey, but, don't get me wrong, that's okay by me if people want to throw their money at that kind of thing. There are plenty of things we all do that are feel-good choices. It's just that we all have our priorities, and most of us have limits on what we can spend on feel-good stuff.
Here's how Denmark has to deal with the wind availability issue.
In 2002 total installed capacity within Denmark was 12.74 GWe, 9.84 GWe of which was fossil fuel-fired and 2.89 GWe wind turbines. This had grown to 3.12 GWe at end of 2004, the majority on or offshore West Denmark. The wind turbines depend heavily for their effective utilisation on 2.15 GWe of hydro capacity in Norway, up to half of which can be despatched when wind power is unavailable in West Denmark. With good winds, power can be exported back to Norway and they conserve hydro potential. There is a small net import of hydro electricity from Norway, though the amount is very variable. Robust connection between Norway's hydro turbines and West Denmark's wind turbines holds the key to successful exploitation of wind for Denmark.Trade from West Denmark is through a 1040 MWe DC connector to Norway, a 630 MWe DC link to Sweden, and a 1400 MWe AC connection to Germany. From East Denmark there is a 600 MWe DC connector to Germany and a 1775 MWe AC link to Sweden, total 5.4 GWe (though more recent total is 4.6 GWe). The 3.40 billion kWh/yr imported from Sweden is almost half nuclear and half hydro, the 2.66 billion kWh/yr imported from Germany is largely generated by brown coal and nuclear power (Germany itself imports 18.8 billion kWh/yr from France, which is 80% nuclear). Norway is almost all hydro. Hence there is a natural and felicitous interdependence between West Denmark's wind and Norway's hydro. Beyond this there is back-up capacity from both Sweden and Germany, with the potential to export surplus power when it is available.
Source: http://www.uic.com.au/nip99.htm