I wonder if it wouldn't be appropriate to move some of the energy heavy industries to the wind farms. Aluminum and copper refining were located near hyrdo power for this reason.

Copper refining in particular... the last stage of the refining involves using electrolysis to plate the copper from one electrode to another. This could be a good match for wind power since when the wind dies down you could just run the process slower. I suspect the capital and man power costs of those facilities are small compared to the energy costs so it wouldn't hurt the bottom line much.

Aluminum might not work as well, I think a batch takes longer than you can predict the wind.

I think energy should be local, like everything that can be. It reduces outages, increases security, saves resources and money - but doesn't really make anyone millions of dollars so I guess that's out.

Anonymous, I tend to agree with you. Decentralization of just about everything makes sense on a number of levels. There is some truth in economies of scale, but as Jane Jacobs points out in "The Economy of Cities" the flexibility that small-scale producers bring to the market can outweigh any disadvantages. It applies to food production as well: a number of studies have shown that small scale agriculture is more productive per acre/hectare than agribusiness.

Enough pontificating. I'll let you readers have the floor.

Decentralized power is great. But small turbines are inefficient, kill birds, could have NIMBY problems, and PV solar is really expensive. Continent-wide transmission linking population centers with a diverse range of renewable technologies is a must (the need for this can be reduced with the advent of plug-in hybrids or straight electric cars, which can charge their batteries when the electricity is cheap). Decentralized is great, but will require even more resources to produce the extra capacity needed on a local scale to ensure some minimum level of power generation.

While decentralized power may never be enough on its own to replace a continent wide grid, if deployed at a greater scale than it is currently (you may have missed: Could Microgeneration Be as Powerful as Nuclear Energy?) there is the potential to reduce the burden on larger grids. My general feeling is that we should be throwing everything we've got at the problem. Including finding every possible means of reducing our own demand: doing more with less and doing less, period.

Additionally, in places where exisiting transmission infrastructure is non-existant, minimal or easily damaged to weather (ie: Bangladesh, much of the rural developing world) then decentralized power generation seems to be the only logical solution, even if that means less power is generated.

I've recently read that a major reason T. Boone Pickens is moving ahead with building transmission lines is that (due to recent legislation in TX) he will be able to run pipeline for pumping water alongside these same electricity transmission routes. He has invested a lot of money over the past 10 years buying water rights in the Texas panhandle in order to pump groundwater to those cities closer to the coast that are rapidly growing in population (if he can find any buyers). His opponents in this endeavor have actively tried to thwart him over the years, but apparently legislators slipped up and didn't catch that Slim could use the new utility rules to his advantage until after they were passed. Previous unfortunate rules changes had allowed him to create a local water utility in the county where his ranch is located, giving him the power of eminent domain (thru his utility board) in order to run his power lines and water pipelines. He'll be making a lot of money selling electricity, but he'll be making a lot more money selling water in South Texas in the coming decades.