Plugins are the perfect load for intermittent power sources, since you got about a 14 hour time window where you need to charge for 3-6 hours.

-David Ahlport

But I like this idea of tying wind farms together before piping the energy to consumers. But I wonder though if wind could ever be considered for baseload power. It might in coastal areas where winds are pretty constant. But I thought the Mid West was prone to summer high pressure systems that occasionally effectively reduced winds to zero over large areas (though this one-year study didn't seem to find this.)

Linking in a network of concentrated solar plants would definately help in that case. Or geothermal plants, of course. But for obvious reasons that sort of R&D will be mightily opposed by the fossil-fuel lobbies, just as they are gutting the energy bill of its Renewable Portfolio Standards. (Did you know there are over 60 lobbyists for each Congress person?)

Could wind generation feed PHEV's quickly enough? (I like your assumption of phasing out coal plants!) Could be a problem in the North West where only only 10 - 20% of our car fleet could be electrified currently. As you know, it will take decades to even get 25% of our power from renewables.

But the bigger crunch might be peak oil. Jeffrey J. Brown reckons world oil exports are currently shrinking over 3% a year (hence the run-up on prices). At some point U.S. consumers will have to reduce oil use commensurably. Three percent of 200 million cars (estimated U.S. cars on the road) is about 6 million cars. That's about half the cars made each year here. So could we see every other new car in the show rooms be a PHEV? I doubt it. Not for a few years, anyway.  

In many coastal marine areas it is exactly the opposite. The atmosphere stabilizes at night creating low wind speeds. During the day, mixing down allows higher winds at the surface.  To me it is a fact of life where I live.

Sheesh!

Onward through the fog

So, each generator is a quantized unit of power that is added as needed.   You are talking both about a wind farm of multiple turbines, and a grid of wind farms.

So, with a single for the wind farm, you have lots of variety.   But basically you have to build enough turbines to cover peak demand.    But wait, wind can be variable, so you have to build more, maybe many more to cover peak demand.

And yes, you can "link them up" but what about the people who need that power locally?  And what if both places have low wind?

With standard fossil fuel generators, the point is I can start 'em up when I want to.   And I can depend on how much total capacity I have and map that to my total demand.   With wind you never, ever have access to the initial input.  

The way I heat my home is with passive solar, a wood stove and a LP furnace.  I'm guessing that the large windows to the south with tile floor for mass storage contributes about 40 percent to my heating.   I've got a wood stove which I fire up often and that contributes another 40 percent.   And then I've got the furnace for when I'm lazy.  The pipes in my house are insulated and heated for below zero weather so my house can `go cold' when we are away.  

So 20 of my heat comes from fossil fuels.   I could just heat with fossil fuels because I have to have the furnace anyway, but I think I am better off this way.

That's the same thing that we can do with our electricity grid.   The way electrical grid is talked about now is Peak, Shoulder and Baseload power demand.   But we can also talk about majority or significant part of total power being renewable and have a percentage of the grid being from fossil fuel as backup and we can be better off.  Because if we are going to make any headway into reductions in fossil fuel use some power plants will have to run less than maximum.

So, theoretically, if you made your turbine 100 yards tall, the power generated would be fairly steady during most of the day. Fortunately, this is not what we want to do.

That hamster is devastatingly cute.

BioD's hamster is as spooky as Schroedinger's cat, and as uncanny as Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit.

In fact it is the Head Honcho Hamster.  You can tell by that alarming orange rinse it has just got.  It loves to lounge by the pool sipping margaritas, while the other, lesser hamsters are inside running running running in the treadmill, doing double and even triple shifts.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.