The Oil Drum

According to to this, US net electricity generation was about 4 million GWH in 2006, which comes to around 500GW on a 24/7/365 basis. Meanwhile, that 5.25GW of new wind is presumably nameplate capacity, so we can divide it by four for reasons of normal wind conditions, maintenance, runaway rotors spinning into shrapnel, etc. In other words, realistically, it's maybe a whole 1.3GW, or 0.26%, addition to actual generation, and a smaller addition, if any, on hot, humid, still, health-threatening days. Except for hydro, which is noticeable in the table but has little room to grow, the other items can be dismissed as immeasurably small for now.

So next year we get a whole 0.35% if we "try", and less if Congress, this being an election year, focuses mainly on celebrity steroid use. Meanwhile, population is still headed skyward at just under 1%, three times as fast, and I wouldn't be surprised if that fails to guesstimate illegal immigration sufficiently. And said population, on the whole, is slowly but surely becoming ever older and frailer, increasing demand an extra bit, for extra heating, cooling, elevators and other gizmos, nursing facilities, etc.

So the original point probably stands - artificial, politically created electricity shortages seem likely to cause at least regional ructions in the near future. Angry citizens may suddenly attach less importance than they do now to whining about imperceptible effects of coal that only show up when they are teased out by statistical methods that, in the end, are only incomprehensible magic.

For now, politicians are responding to the whining by thumping on evil, wicked "big" business that unjustly tells people they have to get out of bed in the morning. And it's that thumping itself that most whiners are gleefully seeking. However, once the consequences inevitably thump directly on said whiners - as in, for example, "constantly repeated blackouts = no wages = no income" - the glee will continue on for about as long as a snowflake in Florida.