What you're saying is that wind needs a wholesale price of $50 to $60 per MWh but that the wholesale price that can be locked in with long-term contracts is $30 to $40. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
And the reason long term prices cannot be locked at higher levels is because it is difficult to force utilities to buy power at a higher price than they can get from coal-fired plants, especially older ones that have been grandfathered and do not have to fulfill all pollution and emission requirements and have to pay neither the environmental damage of strip mining, mountaintop removal or global warming.
So yes, I object to any expression that makes it look like wind gets huge subsidies. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
