No no. First, eliminate the billions of dollars of subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, especially coal and then we can start talking. The cost of wind power has decreased tremendously over the last couple of decades.  At least, they are apparently doing something with those subsidies. And, while we're at it, charge the fossil fuel industries for all the external costs for the pollution they cause, including global warming, and then we can talk about a level playing field.

We need to keep pushing the envelope on wind.  As far as off peak power goes, we need to move to strategies for using that off peak power by recharging sources that don't need steady power.  If I can recharge my plug in at night, I don't care whether or not that power was intermittent.

The capital costs per kwh are coming down as well so at least progress is being made.  One thing is for sure, coal will destroy much of what is good about this planet if things continue as they are.  

 

Combine dispatch of wind with hydroelectric (Bonneville has a lot close by + PG&E locally) as Norway & Denamrk co-operate. (Actually more complex with Swedish & Finnish nukes, etc.)

Build some pumped storage.  Good for wind, good for nukes (see Raccoon Mountain).

Nukes are as poor, if not poorer, solution than wind since they are all base load and prone to common design faults (all of one design get forced off-line for months & years at a time w/o warning).  Nukes will take a decade, minimum, before first new US goes commerical.  Wind can come on-line in as little as 12 months after a commerical decision to build is made.

Wind IS a viable solution.  Adapt yourself to it, and not the other way around.

"The specifics are that wind is more capital intensive amortized over output ($/MWh) than conventional power sources."

Sure, wind is capital intensive.  But what matters is overall cost/MWhr, and on that measure wind does very well.

wind..has a low capacity factor (25% nationally and in California)"  

Do you have a source for that?  The AWEA says 29% overall for the US. http://www.awea.org/faq/tutorial/wwt_statistics.html

wind..requires almost 100% backup power. "

Not so.  I've seen  wind described this way ac couple of times, here and by an Irish analyst (for a similar, very small system).  It seems to me to be a clear sign of prejudice against wind, as it is a very misleading way to describe wind's contribution to system capacity.

Wind generators have a rated capacity (e.g., 3 Megawatts) which is designed to be substantially higher than the normal operating range, in order to maximize energy capture. A reasonably well placed wind turbine might have a capacity of 3 MW, and utilization of 33%, or an expected average production of 1 MW. A coal or nuclear plant would be considered to be badly failing it's design goals at 33%, but a wind farm very likely would be considered quite successful.

This means that the maximum contribution to peak capacity expected from such a wind farm would be 33% of capacity. You could describe a 2GW wind farm as requiring backup capacity of 1.33 GW, and you would be describing a successful system. It wouldn't sound like it, though.

A 2 GW system that required 1.8 GW backup would be providing .2 GW capacity contribution, or 10%. That would be roughly 1/3 of what would be ideally expected.

In this case E.on gets a 9% contribution from a 18% capacity factor.  At 50% that's half what you would want. It's not ideal, but not bad for such a small, isolated system.

Let's be clear: describing wind as needing backup for it's maximum output is misleading. The correct way to phrase it is that wind's capacity contribution is a % of it's maximum, rated output.  That % should be the same as it's capacity factor, though that will fall off as market share rises above, say 10-20% (under current conditions).

In the longrun wind's potential market share will rise. As PHEV's and EV's grow that share will rise symbiotically.