"Ash Wyllie" wrote:

Texas had a big problem a few weeks ago: the wind stoppped blowing. There
was a
hell of a scramble to get the fossil fuel plants online.

Oh, dear!


The big problem with wind is that it is not constant, and unpredictably so.
So
you must have conventional backup ready to go. So all you save is fuel costs
at
a huge capital expense. A gigawatt of wind power will not replace a gigawatt
of
coal, or nuclear power.

There are various ways to "flywheel" wind power.

Also, wind becomes more reliable when the generating field becomes large
enough to span several states. The wind's blowing somewhere in the Midwest.

Finally, no one is proposing that wind and solar can be the sole sources of
electricity with present technology. The goal for now should be increasing
their supplementary role in power generation, while developing uses for them
in the direct production of fuels.