I'm not anti wind power at all and think windmills are cool. I don't suspect they pay themselves back though and all in all I like to approach energy as a business decision.

It's the same with solar, sure they are neat and all and it's not a horrible thing to distribute power load down to a rooftop that is just sitting there otherwise. When I looked into it even with the government paying me a tax credit for it, the payback was totally unreasonable compared to what I pay to get power off the electric grid, the majority of which comes from natural gas and nuclear. I'd essentially have to bet on getting more than the expected useful life from the panels to break even.

I think nuclear and natural gas is the way to go. Nuclear is slow to spin up and down, so make it cover the base load along with the existing coal plants. Supplement as needed in high demand times with natural gas. Leave wind and solar for small applications unless it gets cheap enough to be viable without subsidies. Yeah I know it won't happen because everyone is afraid of nuclear because the Soviets screwed it up and the Japanese built them in risky areas.