From what research I have done, wind energy looks to be more of a euphemism, like ethanol, then a viable energy source. The problems of wind energy are as such:

Much has been written about Denmark's success as the world's wind power pioneer. But the regularly repeated claim that Denmark generates 20 percent of its electricity demand from wind sources is highly misleading. That 20 percent of electricity is not supplied continuously from wind power. Denmark's wind supply is so variable that it relies heavily on neighbors Norway and Sweden, taking their excess production.

In 2003, its export figure for wind power electricity production was as high as 84 percent, as Denmark found it could not absorb its own highly variable wind output capacity into its domestic system. The scale of Denmark's subsidies was such that in 2006-07, the government increasingly came under scrutiny from the Danish media, which claimed the subsidies were out of control. Overall, Denmark, a small, flat, windy country of about 5.5 million souls cannot be a model for the U.S. to follow.

Researchers in Denmark have gone a step further and put a value on this effect. They say that wind power shaved 1 billion kroner ($167 million) off Danish electricity bills in 2005. On the other hand, Danish consumers also paid 1.4 billion kroner in subsidies for wind power. The Danish government cut wind power subsidies that year. The result:

The building of wind turbines has virtually ground to a halt since subsidies were cut back. Meanwhile, compared with others in the European Union, Danes remain above-average emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. For all its wind turbines, a large proportion of the rest of Denmark's power is generated by plants that burn imported coal. Moreover, because you cannot store any wind power that is generated when no one wants to use it, Denmark has to sell excess wind power to Sweden.

So the main problem of wind power is you don't have it when you need it and you have excess generation when don't need it. So without a cost-effective way of storing the energy derived from wind, this is like throwing money into the wind. And companies and individuals who promote wind do it mainly for the subsidies. Currently, wind receives 14 times and more the subsidy paid for nuclear and a whopping 53 times that of coal.

The current method of compensating for wind brownout is to build gas turbine power stations which parallel the wind energy facility and just add to the costs. They also increase natural gas and gas prices. But the real question when computing cost doesn't lie just with the turbines themselves, but rather how to get that electricity onto the grid.

Texans were already disturbed last month by wind power-induced brownouts. Now, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports, Texans "could be on the hook for $3 billion to $6.4 billion to build new transmission lines" to connect the state's rapidly-growing wind farms to the grid. And Texas already had an ambitious program to link wind development with new transmission lines the construction of which faces many of the same NIMBY obstacles as wind farms themselves.

So, directly connecting wind farms to the grid is not as cost effective as the "envirohawkers" would have you believe without adequate storage facilities. But then there's the problem of erecting a grid network.

That won't happen in the near future. The only reason energy producers would gravitate toward wind is if carbon taxing and subsidies force them to, and that would lead to consumers holding a big bag of costs. Under that plan, energy production would see a big drop, and it would severely impact the economy for decades.

Solar has somewhat better cost ratios, but it, too, only produces as long as the sun shines, and without an energy storage scheme would require gas turbine power backup, too. Mainline power facilities are not really capable of ramping up and down to compensate for energy variations. They are running at near full capacity except for maintenance downtime, if their reserves are down also.

It looks like the alternative energy folks are counting unhatched chickens that will come home to roost one day as vultures of prophesy. Unfortunately, it will be on consumers' bank accounts.