Wind is terrific as well, however it's pretty hard to improve the tech all that rapidly like solar. It also kills birds, ruins sight lines, etc.
But yes, wind is good. I love this article in the economist: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21587782-europes-electricity-providers-face-existential-threat-how-lose-half-trillion-euros "Europe’s electricity providers face an existential threat ON JUNE 16th something very peculiar happened in Germany’s electricity market. The wholesale price of electricity fell to minus €100 per megawatt hour (MWh). That is, generating companies were having to pay the managers of the grid to take their electricity. It was a bright, breezy Sunday. Demand was low. Between 2pm and 3pm, solar and wind generators produced 28.9 gigawatts (GW) of power, more than half the total. The grid at that time could not cope with more than 45GW without becoming unstable. At the peak, total generation was over 51GW; so prices went negative to encourage cutbacks and protect the grid from overloading. " On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > Wind power is much larger than PV solar at present. That does not mean the > future capacity is more, it means wind has been developed longer. See: > > http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_installed_capacity.asp#yearly > > It is fun to watch the changing graphic map chart at the top right of this > page. > > In 2012, total installed nameplate capacity was 60 GW. With a capacity > factor of 30% that's ~18 GW. It produced 3% of U.S. electricity. Compare > that to nukes, which are left on all the time to produce baseline > electricity. They produce 19% of U.S. electricity. They have roughly 100 GW > of capacity. The numbers are in reasonable agreement. They produce 6.3 > times more electricity than wind, and they have about 5.5 times more > capacity. > > At the rate wind is expanding it will not take centuries to catch up with > nuclear power. It is increasing at around 13 GW nameplate per year, or > about 4 nukes. See: > > http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/pdfs/2012_annual_wind_market_report.pdf > > Once wind reaches parity with nukes, at ~20% of capacity, it will become > more difficult to integrate into the network. That's what EPRI said 10 > years ago. > > > I believe that wind installations do not degrade as quickly as PV solar. > The turbines last longer, and continue to produce efficiently. They last 20 > to 30 years. The big expense in making them is for the towers. You can > leave the towers and replace only the turbine and blades. > > - Jed > >
