Wind farms are a great way to capture wind energy as evidenced by the recent increases in wind turbine farm installations. Based on raw output, however, wind turbine systems do not compete well with our modern combustion based energy stations. Combustion fuels have high energy density at low cost and in most cases outperform the cost of installing and maintaining wind power.

This fact is not as bad as it might seem initially. The truth of the matter is we take for granted all the things in life provided by a solid industrial base. An industrial base including mining, timber, metallurgy and manufacturing of farm equipment to harvest our food supply. This base of heavy industry needs reliable electricity in very big amounts.

Let's face it, when it comes to smelting ores, machining metals, and forging steel (just to name a few), these types of operations take a whole lot of juice. Such a large and varied industrial infrastructure, then, is difficult to power on wind power or alternative energy systems alone. The driving energy and motive requirements for processing is too great.

Wind turbines do makes sense in a large variety of applications, however. Wind machines are an age old, tried and true, simple way to tap a source of free energy.

It simply means that wind turbines are better for supplying residential power, and for small scale commercial applications.

As an example, a 500 MegaWatt power plant can fit in a relatively small space, less than a 1/4 square mile without much difficulty. As a comparison consider a wind power farm of equal capacity. Estimating 2 MegaWatts per turbine would then require over 250 wind turbines be placed in service. Imagine the area this would require!

Also consider a consistent supply of wind is required which is not always the case.

There are excellent locations and conditions for wind power and it should be part of our energy portfolio. But we can not abandon our combustion technologies where efficiencies and pollution controls continue to improve, combustion is the heart of our economy driving our heavy industry.