In the local news, Tri-State Generation, an independent electricity generation company that provides energy for a lot of Colorado residents through local co-ops and Duke Energy, the third-largest coal consumer in the American electric utility business, have announced that they're going to put up 34 big wind turbines near Burlington in eastern Colorado.

The governor's office said this would equal 55 megawatts (55,000,000 watts) of new, green power.

In reality, wind-power generators in ideal locations don't produce nearly as much energy as their "nameplate capacity," which is the number the governor's office used.

Actual wind production is never more than about 30 percent of nameplate over an annual average, since the wind doesn't blow constantly, even in Burlington.

So the news should have been that another 15 megawatts, on average over the year, has been added to the Front Range grid.

That's enough power for about 1400 homes -- for the eight days out of the year the wind blows 24 hours a day.

But since wind is intermittent energy, what it really means is that a company called Cogentrix Energy, the independent power producer that owns the Plains End power peaking plant in Arvada, now will have to import more huge natural gas generators from Finland in order to provide reliable electricity whenever the wind changes.

That's not bad news. The Finns still accept dollars.

Plains End is a unique power station since, according to Power Engineering magazine, it doesn't use traditional steam turbines but instead provides over 111 megawatts of "on demand" energy with 20 Wartsila natural gas engines, generating 5.7 megawatts of electricity per unit.

The plant typically runs about 2,000 hours per year, filling the gaps effectively as natural wind-farm power ebbs and flows with nature's cycles.

The massive gas reciprocating engines that turn the generators, similar to the 2 megawatt gondola power backup systems on Vail Mountain but much larger, can go from zero to 50 million watts in under two minutes and can deliver 111 million watts in under 10 minutes.

They do this more and more, as we add more wind energy to our grid. The Finnish firm that makes these reciprocal engine peaking plants also provides them in diesel, which means the nation is now adding imported oil to our utility fuel base of coal and gas -- in order to be greener.