Wind turbine farms are an excellent way to the tap the energy of wind, as highlighted by the number of installations in recent years. When you look at raw output wind turbines can’t put out the power modern combustion power stations can. The energy stored in combustion fuels is significant, and as long as these fuels can be obtained at reasonable rates they will outperform the wind power market.

This is not as bad as you might intially think. The reality is that the things we have grown to love are provided by a solid industrial base. These industries include manufacturing, timber, metallurgy, mining and even production of equipment used to harvest our food supply. A heavy industrial base needs very reliable power in very large quantities.

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.

To illustrate, a commercial size power plant capable of 500 MegaWatt output will fit in the area of 1/4 square mile without challenge. As a comparision consider a wind farm of equivalent output. At 2 MegaWatts per wind turbine, then over 250 wind turbines would have to be put in place. Think about the amount of space this would require!

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

When the location and conditions justify wind power it should be a 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.