Dear Chris,
I'm "with you" all the way on that - but in Principle Only !! This is because not many have "wasted" some 20 years researching the subject of getting energy from wind (as I have) and so cannot be expected to be aware of certain in-escapeable realities- one of which I shall describe here.
1) Data obtained from Public meeting about proposed Windfarm at Llandeilo, Wales July/Aug 2005
Cost of proposed farm ------------------ 153M
Expected annual income from it ------ 000.2M
No-one so much as "batted an eyelid' !! That is over 500 YEARS to return the energy (money) invested in it !!
Wind schemes - it turns-out - don't have to be a millstone like this. Here is one of the reasons why ;
"Wind turbines" as they are called, are in fact a wind Turbine turning an Alternator !! This may seem pedantic, but in fact it is not - because Turbines have Opposite "Economy of Size" to that of Alternators. Viz - a T of Twice the diameter replaces 4 previous, but costs 8 times as much for materials (Area becomes 2 squared, Volume 2 cubed)
One Alternator, however, (to replace the 4) costs only Twice as much as any one of them. So the A-bill halves if we double the diameter of the "TAD"s, and use 1/4 as many, i.e.same size "farm".
The Total cost of T +A can be seen to be minimum for sizes where the T and the A cost about the same. Now by some remarkable piece of Cosmic serendipity ?, that size is not a mile across - nor an inch across - but just happens to be a very convenient, man handleable, 0.5 to 1.5? m across. It is hard to justify building them much outside of this range, on economic grounds.
There are two or three other major factors which - if taken into account in a design - will bring the annual return from the small fraction of 1% currently suffered (while they build nuclear "bcoz wind doesn't really work'')
to a self-sustaining 10% without being too optimistic, but as yet no one has shown any interest in having such info - but hope springs Eternal, I guess !
