Denmark has been pushing wind extremely hard since 1979, yet they get most of their electricity from fossil fuel and have the most expensive electricity in the world. Residential electricity in Denmark cost 1.92 DKK/kWh in 2007, 40 cents / kWh. In the U.S. it was about 9 cents / kWh.

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-SF-07-080/EN/KS-SF-...

For 20 years the U.S. completed 5 nuclear power plants a year, at a time when fossil fuel was abundant and cheap. France ramped up to 80% in a similar time frame, and has some of the cheapest electricity in Europe. If wind power is so cheap and easy to build, why are kilowatt hours in Denmark so much more expensive and carbon intensive than kilowatt hours in France?

Wind power in the state of California, was down to 4% on peak for several days during the 2006 heat wave.

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Wind-heat-06-5pc.htm

The entire U.S. wind output was down 20% below average during the heat wave while the demand was 20% above average. Nuclear power was 10% above average because outages are scheduled for spring and fall when demand is low.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.html

" Paul Gipe: Well, first of all, we do not need to store wind energy…. because you already have storage in any large integrated electric utility system ….

…you have fossil fuels and if you are offloading a generation of electricity, offloading fossil fuel generation, gas or coal, basically you are still storing that energy in the form of the fossil fuel that was not consumed "

Windmills depend on existing power plants and the existing grid to provide free battery backup and power conditioning. Existing power plants are aging and will have to be replaced at some point. If we become dependent on intermittent energy sources we will have to build new backup plants to replace them, and their cost should be included in wind cost estimates.

CO2 emissions for windmills never include the emissions from the backup plants, needed 2/3’s of the time when wind output is low. Including the emissions of backup plants would show that wind is not a very low emission energy technology. With nuclear power plants you only need enough backup to cover the largest plant on the grid, and that backup power is rarely called upon.

The U.S. should increase R&D to $90 billion per year (only 2.25 cents/kWh) and push every technology as hard as possible. That would include building at least one full scale commercial size plant of every promising technology. Actual performance data would give companies and individuals confidence to make rapid large scale investments in new and proven technology.

We should create a totally level playing field by including all external costs and deleting all subsidies for every energy source, and allow prices to rise as necessary to meet the demand? This policy will automatically select the best energy system possible. If wind deserves to be part of that system it will be.

This would accelerate the introduction of practical solutions and is much more sensible than providing feed in tariffs to mass produce expensive immature impractical technology that raises cost enormously while remaining largely dependent on fossil fuel, as Denmark and Germany have proven.

Reducing U.S. emissions is not important. Developing a low cost replacement for fossil fuel that the entire world can afford should be our goal. Wasting money on mass production of impractical expensive systems is counterproductive.

Research and development should not be considered a subsidy. It is an investment in the future, like medical research. Our R&D investment over the last 30 years was barely a token amount; just a small fraction of the taxes our government charged on the production of energy, and that tiny investment is a major factor contributing to our energy problems today.