of wind plants. They do not in general use storage systems, since storage systems are very expensive both in internal (charged) and external (uncharged) costs. Wind turbines are simply matched to the grid by the use of feathering the blades to control rotation, and through the use of modern electronics such as inverters (which are also used in solar cells).
Here is how Western Power in Australia manages load with their wind farm at Ten Mile Lagoon, with 2 Megawatts of installed capacity:
http://www.westernpower.com.au/html/about_us/environment/renewable_energy/renewable_wind.htmlThis link is interesting in another way, it gives an idea of the capital cost of building wind farms: According to the link:
"Situated on a ridge 16km west of Esperance, the Ten Mile Lagoon wind farm is ideally placed to take advantage of prevailing winds. Established in October 1993, with a capacity of 2025kW, at a cost of AUS$5.96 million, it is Australia's first commercial wind farm and is still one of the best-located wind farms in the world."
Now I will compare the two cleanest forms of energy known, nuclear and wind.
If we scaled this wind farm so that it produced 1000 Megawatts (electric) like a typical nuclear light water reactor, IE enlarged it by a factor of 500, the cost would be $6 million (Aus) X 500 = $3 billion dollars (Aus) or roughly $1.5 billion US. Of course, the wind farm has a zero fuel cost, whereas a nuclear plant has a nominal fuel cost. Still we see, at least in France, where the practitioners of bureaucratic judo are not able to artificially drive up costs, that the capital costs of building nuclear plants and wind plants are roughly comparable in dollars per Watt.
The wind farm would of course need to cover many square kilometers to match this capacity, whereas the nuclear plant could be contained in a few hundred hectares at most.
The wind farm of course uses completely renewable fuel. Nothing is consumed and presumably the energy will be available to all the generations of humanity such as may exist. Nuclear resources, depending on how they are used, are likely to last only a few millenia, after which they will be depleted (at the cost of eliminating about 10 naturally occurring elements from the periodic table.) Moreover the wind farm will produce very few materials that will require elaborate processing to reduce toxicity. It is possible to reduce the risk toxicity of nuclear materials to whatever level one chooses to do (depending on how much money one is willing to commit per life saved), but the systems for doing this depend on a highly educated workforce using highly sophisticated equipment.
On the other hand, wind farms have much lower plant utilization (they shut down whenever the wind stops) and therefore are much slower to recover capital costs. This means that if they are the same cost as a nuclear facility in dollars per watt of rated capacity, they actually have a much longer amortization period, since unlike nuclear plants, they can never run at 90%+ capacity.
On balance though, it is completely insane to oppose wind power wherever it is suitable for installation. (Note to the citizens of Massachusetts and New Jersey: Your ocean front views are somewhat less important than the integrity of the planetary atmosphere.) After my remarks on the decline of Chemistry in the UK, I am glad to read that Britons are sensible in some areas.
As we all know (since I am one to beat a horse not merely to death but in fact will beat the horse to the point at which the horse begins serious decomposition, even to the point where the horse vaporizes) I believe it is also insane to oppose nuclear power, but that's off topic here.
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