There is a good report in the Sunday Telegraph today, 29 Jun 2008, about research into the efficiency of wind farms, funded by the Renewable Energy Foundation, so that the result would be expected to say they were the way to go. Unfortunately for the Renewable Energy Foundation, the report says that wind energy is too inefficient for use in the UK and there would be a need for conventional generation to remain online as backup. This is the most wasteful way to run conventional power stations. The report also states that the number of wind turbines has been deliberately understated because their inherant inefficiency has been ignored. The number as stated by the government must be multiplied by three to make up for this. In fact all other research states efficiency as 20% so the number must be multiplied by 5! The report does not mention the problems of intermittant supply from wind turbines which was the cause of the massive power failure in Europe a couple of years ago, nor does it mention the extra billions needed to be spent to wire these things up to the present grid.
All this money would be better spent on clean burn coal and nuclear provision both of which provide energy at half the cost of wind. As customers we should be saying what system we want and at what cost. The Telegraph report states that these wind farm proposals would drive household costs up by another £260 per year. Given this I would expect the generator of choice to be clean burn coal, the cheapest, followed by nuclear. Wind would not come into it.