Dave Smith writes: " . . . all wind power has to be backed up by conventional power sources anyway due to wind's inherent intermittency/unpredictability. Taking out a wind turbine results in no net loss of generation capacity."

To the best of my understanding, this is incorrect. Wind is not firmed one-to-one. According to the DOE (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/41869.pdf), "Wind energy contributes some net increase in variability above that already imposed by cumulative customer loads. This increase, however, is less than the isolated variability of the wind alone on all time scales of interest. . . . It is not necessary, or economically feasible, to counter each movement of wind with a corresponding movement in a traditional energy source. As a result, the load net of wind requires fewer reserves than would be required to balance the output of individual wind plants, or all the wind plants aggregated together, in isolation from the load. In the very short time frame, the additional regulation burden has been found to be quite small, typically adding less than $0.50/MWh to the cost of the wind energy (Zavadil, et. al. 2004)."

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