NIMBY Abuse of Power Ratings

An article by Richard Blackwell of the Globe and Mail discusses how opponents of wind are trying to use its capacity factor as an argument against it. While in reality the votility of wind power is a major strike against it the article implies that turbine manufacturers are essentially lying about how much power their systems actually deliver by listing nameplate peak generation instead of average. The manufacturers will no doubt counter by pointing out that the wind blows differently everywhere in the world but people not well educated on the fundementals of power production (the vast majority of the population) probably won't see it that way.

This is a gross simplification of the real problems behind wind and a dishonest debate tactic, but well, there it is. It's high time that the wind and solar power industries start changing their nameplate power from a peak to a standardized mean power production. For solar (and a lesser extent wind) producers would be well served to list mean annual energy production (for the US lower 48) in kW·h rather than power. That would allow laymen to much more readily assess their economic value, then a peak watt value that isn't immediatly obvious.