Recent days have provided clear evidence of why the obsession with building wind farms on spectacular landscapes is badly flawed, writes Grahame Sydney.

Settled summer warmth, an occasional thunderstorm, two power stations up north out of action, another couple at work but crook, and suddenly the big boys at the top end of the power generation pole have all got thumping headaches.

The lingering hangover of Max Bradford's foolish dissection of the old Electricity Department into competing corporates is beautifully demonstrated in the chaos and consequent stratospheric prices on the energy spot market recently.

This is what happens when there is insufficient reserve in the north to cover a possible failure of the Cook Strait cable when northwards power flow exceeds 400MW: the North Island cannot supply its own power needs, the cable is tottering and about to collapse completely, and some of that West Coast coal being shipped off to feed Chinese thermal plants might just be needed here at home instead. The sleeping monster of Whirinaki diesel plant is elbowed from its slumbers for the second time in a year to get them out of jail. Better not tell the IPCC.

The coincidence of this national-grid clamour with the first round of the appeal process against Meridian Energy's own Think Big Project Hayes wind factory on the Rock and Pillar Range in Central Otago could not have been more telling. No matter how giant the scheme, no matter how many billions you spend, one inescapable fact hangs like a poisonous cloud over large-scale industrial wind generation schemes like Project Hayes and Trustpower's Mahinerangi: when Nature fails to co-operate and the wind doesn't blow, wind farms are totally useless. And when the wind farms are not performing, which is often, you have to back them up with something reliable.

Actually, it's worse than that. No matter how many billions you spend on a wind farm, no matter how much landscape you sacrifice in the name of this particular renewable energy source, you have to build something else to cut in when it cuts out - and it has to be constantly at the ready to go. Not switched off, but warmed up and spinning - consuming, in other words, fuelled by something else more dependable.

Don't be fooled by the "dry year" threat, either: we're in a La Nina summer now, and there's no evidence yet presented to indicate that a dry year is a windy year, as the Meridian theory requires: the theory is that in a dry year for southern lakes, the wind turbines will allow the dams to be rested and water to be stored for later use. But most dams are run-of-the- river schemes, with water always having to be spilled to keep the rivers alive; a dam can only hold a finite volume - you can't keep accumulating more water without going over the top. It's quite conceivable that a dry year might also be a calm year, the westerlies which produce the South Island lakes' rain not blowing according to plan, in which case the turbines will be again under-performing, and dams all generating just the same.

So, in essence, wind farms cost you double, at least: the $2 billion for Hayes, (though it's odds on it'll be more) will be necessarily followed by a blank cheque for whatever dependable base-load generation is going to back it up, unspecified hundreds of millions for Transpower's necessary upgrade of the grid, and God knows how much for the replacement Cook Strait cable. This is what happens when the south is plundered to power the north, as it has been for decades.

Guess who pays? Look forward to the monthly account, gentle citizens. Generation companies are not social welfare - profit is their lifeblood, and profit their mantra. Think of it as another tax. After all, the Government is a majority shareholder in most of them, and the annual collect by Treasury is a Cullen's dream.

If Project Hayes had been operational in late January, it would not have powered a bedlamp. The same applies to Central Otago's famously placid, frosty winter days, when there is real pressure from consumers and the grid must provide for peak demand. Wind energy is not about providing for peak demand, because it cannot be depended on to reliably contribute when the consumers need it most.

Nor is wind power about energy security - only dependable base-load generation does that, and the Government's head is deeply planted in the sand over that option. (Don't mention nuclear!) Instead it is dictating that wind generation gets priority and a declaration that the dreadfully scarring and destructive Project Hayes is now a matter of national significance.

Common sense would surely suggest that it would be a matter of national significance to spend the billions, if we have to, on a large, reliable generation source in the North Island, close to demand, and a gradual development of small-scale localised generation systems around growth centres in the South Island - thereby obviating the need for the desecration of the unique landscapes on which so much South Island tourism depends, sidelining cable and grid problems.

Better still, of course, is a campaign to use existing energy more wisely, and government- sponsored initiatives to be more intelligent and sustainable consumers: eliminate the waste and save the landscapes. Then we might have something to be proud of on the international planet-care stage.

There are plenty of options out there, some of them shrivelling on the vine for want of research and development funding, some starving for support, and many are the consistent, predictable producers this country so urgently needs. How tragic to be witnessing the indecent haste enveloping the Mahinerangi and Hayes schemes, whose own environmental footprint is so devastating to our magnificent landscape heritage, when at heart they are both so inappropriate in so many ways.

* Grahame Sydney is one of New Zealand's foremost artists, best known for his depictions of Central Otago landscapes.