Control room operators (and, by extension, system operators) have issues with both supply-side and demand-side dispatchability of resources. Derek's comment points to the supply-side issue with wind; the physical challenge of incorporating wind into the grid is that you have to produce power when the wind is blowing, and you can't control that. It's not like powering a gas turbine up or down, which is much more amenable to the centralized control paradigm in which the control room operators have traditionally functioned in the regulated environment.

Environmentalists have been promising for more than three decades that wind energy would be competitive if there was a "level playing field," but it survives only because the field has been tilted in its favor.

One thing it doesn’t mean is that Whole Foods will now get its power from wind. Though press accounts have praised Whole Foods for “going green” with this move, it actually changes next to nothing.

CRITICS OF PROPOSED US offshore wind farms have recently lauded efforts to develop deep-water offshore wind energy technologies that would allow wind farms to be built far from shore. They suggest that advances in research and development are proceeding at such a rapid pace that thousands of wind turbines could soon be operating off the northeast coast without encroaching on anyone's view or posing any threat to the environment. Clarification about the current state and potential of deep-water offshore wind energy appears timely.

In your column, you state bird mortality is a subject that wind energy opponents should stand down from. However, there is good reason for us to continue to shed light on this problem. To our knowledge, no commercial scale wind facility in the United States has been subject to pre-construction avian risk assessments that included remote sensing (radar or acoustical).

Editor's Note: Mr. Harrigan's reponse to this letter is available via the link below.

This paper is to respond to questions concerning the validity of various claims made about the potential for wind energy, particular including those in an outdated 1991 paper from the Pacific Northwest “Laboratory,” which laboratory is operated by Battelle.

Conclusion- Renewable power is here to stay. Utilities should embrace it as an opportunity and work to shape the regulatory and legislative developments so important to the renewables sector. They should develop and implement regulatory strategies for renewables. This new approach requires a careful choice of business model. For some, the traditional build/own/operate model or the newer contract model may make sense. Others will find that a new approach to renewables requires a new business model like the network manager model.

Glenn Schleede's letter to the Editor of Time Magazine regarding its article "War of the Winds" appearing in Time's Oct 31, 2005 edition.

This article is available in 'documents'.

The law establishes a D.C. renewable portfolio standard, which requires an increasing percentage of retail electric power sold in D.C. after 2006 to be generated from renewable resources. The RPS, in effect, is a quota on green power.

Wind power is an idea that is appealing to the imagination. It sounds like a "free" source of energy that would be non-polluting and stable in cost. I am an optimist, and I love technology. If I thought for one moment that windmills would be a source of low cost energy, I would be building them. The reality is quite the contrary--wind power is wasteful of human and natural resources.

What Vermont is lacking, however, is leadership on the controversial matter of wind turbines on mountain tops. The state's ridgelines are the wrong place to put 330-foot-tall wind towers.

"Almost a decade ago I suggested that global warming would become a "gushing" source of political hypocrisy. So it has."

SO HERE WE HAVE A SALVO FIRED in a little noted "green" civil war -- a conflict between groups whom one imagined were allies: environmentalists and the lovers of "renewable" sources of energy.

Environmental issues for windpower developers get the most press. But equally persistent is the question of intermittency-the fact that wind is the least predictable energy fuel for electricity production. The question is challenging on many levels for both generation and delivery.

Wind energy is environmentally harmful and costly to taxpayers. Furthermore, its expansion could adversely affect the nation's electricity transmission system.

Absent special political privileges - federal research and development subsidies, tax breaks, and state RPS programs - today's renewable-energy industry, or most of it, would not even exist. Three decades, $14 billion in direct federal support, and untold billions in state taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies have failed to make "green" energy economically self-sustaining. Enough is enough. Congress should terminate, not expand, its patronage of this boondoggle.

Conclusion. Wind power is expensive, doesn’t deliver the environmental benefits it promises and imposes substantial environmental costs. Accordingly, it does not merit continued government promotion or funding.

Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in all this current "fixative" thinking. Simply put, no matter how strong any Senate mandate, the technology needed to stabilize global atmospheric levels of CO2 does not exist. This crucial fact, noted in science journals, is woefully ignored.

In other words, the ad campaign was little more than "greenwashing" -- disinformation intended to present an environmentally responsible public image. BP wanted journalists, politicians, investors and environmentalists to perceive it as a "socially responsible" leader and reward it accordingly.

...Meanwhile, BP's total wind and solar electrical output last year was barely enough to keep the lights burning in Regina, Sask. -- and thoughtful observers began to realize that wind and solar aren't quite as eco-friendly as activists claim.

It's time to jump off the Production Tax Credit treadmill and work toward a more open, transparent support mechanism such as the Electricity Feed Law.