That's an interesting article. But this sentence is silly: "'It’s clear the theoretical upper limit to wind power is huge, if you don't care about the impacts of covering the whole world with wind turbines,' says Keith."
No one is thinking of covering the whole world with wind turbines. That would make no sense. Many areas such Georgia are not suitable for wind turbines. A wind map shows the distribution of wind is uneven: http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_maps.asp If the author is correct, it means high-wind areas such as North Dakota will not be able to produce as much as previously thought. That would be a problem. But it is not a problem that we might fix by putting wind turbines in Georgia or Florida. By present estimates, North Dakota has ~770 GW of potential wind energy. The U.S. has a total of just over 1000 GW of total generating capacity. If this author is right, and interference reduces this by a factor of 7, that would still be a lot of capacity but it might be uneconomical. Needless to say, with present day transmission technology there would be no point to constructing 770 GW of wind generation in North Dakota! - Jed
