There is a difference between a small system tightly tied to diesel back-up and a bank of batteries to supply a home and the large multi-turbine facilities meant to supply the grid, where -- except in the rare cases of substantial pumped hydro -- there is no large-scale storage to smooth the highly variable wind-generated power.

A thing that intrigues me about the pronouncements by politicians etc. about wind power projects is that everyone quotes "Installed Capacity" ratings. I've never heard anyone talk about the actual Load Factor attained by any of the existing Wind Farms in Australia.

In the UK it is about 27%.

On the general matter of Global Warming, which may or may not be actually happening at this stage of the World's existance, but has certainly happened several times in the geological past.
There are ample records of ice ages, world wide, which have certainly subsequently melted and they did so without any contribution whatsoever from human generated Carbon Dioxide. Are we wasting time and money on this "Carbon Capture" nonsense?

You're right, Britbasher. Anthropogenic global warming is on the run:

US Senate press release, Oct 18 2006

"Washington DC - One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.

....Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming...

Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming.

....new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.

60 SCIENTISTS DEBUNK GLOBAL WARMING FEARS
Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.

“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

GLOBAL COOLING ON THE HORIZON?
In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html

ETC."

http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777

Well good on all you dole-bludging do-gooder greenie anti-wind farm campaigners that somehow manage to keep having plans for new wind farms canned. Now we're getting 25 new nuclear reactors. That's much better, isn't it? Or maybe we should just build a few more coal fired power stations to add to the 80% of our power that is already generated by coal. Look at the big picture and think what you're doing!

We will need to build nuclear or coal-fired power stations REGARDLESS of how many windfarms we have:

- for the days without wind.

- to balance wind intermittency. This must be done 24/7
and consumes the very fossil fuels that the wind turbines are saving.

The E.On Netz report, from Germany, is eloquent in this regard.

I can hardly wait for mark duchamp and eric to tell us all how wondereful it will be to live next door to a nuclear reactor. What's the bet these two advocates of selective evidence don't actually live adjacent to a reactor themselves?