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The only flaw in Pickens' plan is trying to put wind on the grid. The grid is for 'baseload' power sources that plug away constantly day and night, and 'peaking' sources like natural gas, which can be turned on instantly and at will at times of highest demand.
There's a lot of energy in wind, but it fluctuates. We need to match it to appropriate uses. Traditionally, wind was most often used for pumping water. In wet parts of the country, we could have wind send water uphill, when it blows, into pumped-storage reservoirs. The water would then be available for peaking use on the grid. In dry parts of the country, why not use wind for desalination? The more seawater the wind can generate in California, the less water that state needs to suck from inland. Environmentalists, consider: with enough windfarms churning away on the dry parts of the Pacific coast, we could restore Glen Canyon.
