DougM

Wind's Our Future, but Natural Gas Is Now

I agree with CLH. The elephant in the room for wind is that it's intermittent and operates at low capacity factors. The "contental grid" won't mitigate this much - power companies will be forced to have stand-by capacity, and will have to somehow smooth out the intermittent flow. Solutions to that problem are expensive and still in development - who knows how long it will be before they're commercialized? (I'm still waiting for nuclear fusion - it was 30 years away 40 years ago, and it still is!)

I think in the end it will be mainly solar and nuclear. Solar is much more predictable than wind, and there are simpler methods for banking the power thermally in utility-scale projects. Solar-NG hybrid plants could have a common power-generating infrastructure fueled by the sun during the day, and by NG at night or on cloudy days. Nuclear can replace coal for baseload. As Paris says, "Energy problem solved!".