>Here in Brazil, Wind is used as part of the electric grid (there is a country-wide electric grid, only >some parts of the Rain Forest are outside it). It helps save "water" and not consume natural gas when >the wind blows. So, Wind is _not_ one black swam away, it can be used complementary to other sources of >energy.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. Texas actually had a fairly large number of windmills. And, they had been used in tandum with expensive natural gas. The natural gas plants are cheaper than coal, but the fuel was more expensive. So, they were fired up when the windmills were down due to low wind. Now, with cheap natural gas, the building of windmills has slown down to a virtual halt. The largest German company in this field has calculated that they can only count on about 10% of the nameplate capacity from windmills. As a result, when windmills get to over 6%-10% of total grid power, they become impractical. The black swan I was talking about was a cheap efficient storage mechanism for vast amounts of power. That would make windmills practical as a significant source. Otherwise, we can have them as a 4%-8% source, but always need to rely on other sources. At low levels, this might make ecconomic sense. But, having two sets of power plants, overall, does not make sense. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
