Signs of Wind Power Economics Improving
Though this article is titled "Windpower is Becoming a Better Bargain" (NY Times, registration required), its context is mixed at best. Wind seems to be comparatively more competitive as prices for other fuels rise, but that does nothing to fix the inherently unpredicatable, unreliable nature of wind power.
This paragraph begins to explain part of the problem:
Because windiness is hard to predict, the electricity made here is worth less. In the complicated world of electricity pricing, power is valued two ways. The familiar one is as energy, meaning the work that the electric current can do. The second is as capacity, the amount that can be called upon as needed. Wind power is generally sold only as energy because most wind plants produce only 30 to 40 percent as much energy in a year as they would if they ran at full tilt, every hour of the year, a measure called "capacity factor." Unlike coal or nuclear plants, which achieve capacity factors of 90 percent or more, the wind operator cannot decide when the windmill will run. However, as much as this situation sucks for wind, because natural gas is going sky high on price, and coal may come to cost more and more as carbon emissions become a cost center, many utilities may continue to work with wind as its fuel costs and carbon costs are nil. That's a form of predictability coal and gas can't touch.
posted by Andy Bochman at 9:53 AM
 
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