does anyone else here wonder if these turbine makers are focussing too much on bigger is better?

while as you know i have been a big fan of J's work, and CH's and how windpower is helping incredibly much to lighten our load and respect the earth more, it still is only half the story, imo. without corollary efforts to distribute and decentralise the generation we remain vulnerable to utility companies' price gouging, and even natural disasters, terrorist attacks etc.

these mega windfarms are still reactionary, they point the way, but i think/feel that 'small is beautiful' is a philosophy that will take us better to our goals in the long run.

/ducks

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Now for a comment. Wind is intermittent, even on an annual scale – well duh. When will they do a similar 'study' for hydro? But, even their specific numbers are suspect.

From the report (which was clearly made with the objective to bash wind power):

NG can "see" around 50% of all industrial UK wind generation. There is no reason to believe that wind generation not "seen" by NG performs any more efficiently. Indeed, it is possible that, since all the onshore wind generation in the metered total is presently in Scotland, which is generally windier than the rest of the UK, the "unseen" wind generation may perform less well.

Well colour me unconvinced. I rather rely on official statistics, which put the load factor at 26.9% for on-shore and 33.7% for off-shore in 2009. Preliminary data for 2010 is here, albeit without load factors yet.

• They mention however a 8% fall of generation from on-shore in 2010 due to low wind speeds in the first half of the year (from 7,564 to 6,979 GWh), but off-shore jumped 75% (from 1,740 GWh to 3,042 GWh), giving an overall growth from 9,304 to 10,021 GWh ( +7.7%).
  
• At the same time, capacities grew (on-shore: from 3.483 to 3.959 GW or +13.6%; off-shore: from 941 to 1,341 GW or +42.5%, all together: 4.424 to 5.3 GW or +19.8%).
  
• So in 2010, on-shore capacity factors must have dropped while off-shore ones likely rose, and overall dropped by around 11%. The drop in the capacity factor indicated by that study is twice as high. (It all depends on when plants were brought on-line intra-year, though.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}