Is wind energy really that cheap？

  Wind power, as an alternative to fossil fuels, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation and uses little land。

  The effects on the environment are generally less problematic than those from other power sources。 As of 2011, Denmark is generating more than a quarter of its electricity from wind and 83 countries around the world are using wind power to supply the electricity grid。

  In 2010 wind energy production was over 2。5% of total worldwide electricity usage, and growing rapidly at more than 25% per annum。

Wind power is very consistent from year to year but has significant variation over shorter time scales。 As the proportion of windpower in a region increases, a need to upgrade the grid, and a lowered ability to supplant conventional production can occur。

   Power management techniques such as having excess capacity storage, geographically distributed turbines, dispatchable backing sources, storage such as pumped-storage hydroelectricity, exporting and importing power to neighboring areas or reducing demand when wind production is low, can greatly mitigate these problems。

  In addition, weather forecasting permits the electricity network to be readied for the predictable variations in production that occur。