The answer isn't blowing in the wind

You'll recall the the Clark Government has insisted that all the country's energy eggs be placed in the 'sustainable' basket: between their moratorium placing restrictions on new power plants using fossil fuels and the RMA's strictures making new hydro stations impossible, that means it practical terms that the only basket that's not prohibited is the one marked 'wind.'  Alan Jenkins from NZ's Electricity Networks Association warned government three years ago about the forthcoming energy shortage created by ideologically-fuelled short-sightedness:

It's very hard to invest in coal [because of Kyoto], nuclear's a sort of four letter word... hydro is suddenly becoming too hard... what's left? ...we can't do everything on windpower.

No, you can't.  Two words sum up wind power: unreliable, and expensive. The British experience is instructive.

   The facts are clear: the United Kingdom’s 165 wind farms have failed to deliver on their promises: they are not significantly cleaner; they are certainly not cheaper; and they are already draining the pockets of the consumer, hitting the poor and needy hardest of all.
   Wind is, by its very nature, unreliable: sometimes it blows, sometimes it doesn’t. So wind farms sometimes produce a surfeit of electricity; and sometimes they produce next-to-nothing. There needs to be a contingency plan, lest consumers be left without electricity when the wind turbines stop turning. So coal-fired power stations are kept running in the background, ready to step into the breach at a moment’s notice. The CO2 emissions generated by keeping these power-stations on stand-by aren’t counted in the “carbon reduction” totals for wind farms. At best this is an oversight; at worst it’s grand hypocrisy – the big business equivalent of cycling to work while a car follows behind, carrying your bags.
   The background-running of power stations adds to the cost of wind -farmed electricity. Figures from the Royal Academy of Engineering show that the cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity from an onshore wind turbine, including the cost of stand-by generation, was 5.4p. The corresponding figure for an offshore turbine is a daunting 7.2p. By contrast, gas, nuclear and coal-fuelled power stations could produce the same quantity of electricity for 2.2p, 2.3p and 2.5p respectively...
   Wind farms are fast becoming millionaires’ playgrounds. Indeed, wind power is the perfect business investment: it adds a splash of green to any bulging portfolio, ticks the “corporate responsibility” box and rakes in bulging fiscal rewards as surely as any hedge fund or coffee franchise...
   Those that succeed in building wind turbines, however, can make a killing and quickly join the ranks of the green energy fat-cats exploiting ordinary consumers – especially the most disadvantaged who pay a larger chunk of their incomes on energy than average – who are paying for the cost of the Renewables Obligation via increased energy prices. When Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, recently asked energy suppliers to explain soaring energy bills, the suppliers hit back by revealing that around 50% of the increases are directly attributable to the green agenda imposed by London and Brussels.

Here's a video of a Danish wind turbine destroying itself ...