Originally Posted by
BlackPeter
Lets hope for shareholders they don't; Gas is cheap and easy to control - you can switch on and off a gas turbine exactly when you need it.
Wind is not controllable at all. Sometimes it blows, sometimes it doesn't - and its availability is in no way correlated to its need. As well - given it is not controllable does the country need to be able to supply 100% of the peak electricity demand without wind - i.e. always building and maintaining more generation capacity than what it otherwise would need ...
If you want to know what the return on investment for a wind farm in New Zealand is - look no further than NWF and ask the shareholders who put in a buck a share more than 10 years ago how happy they are with the returns on this investment. Just in case you are not familiar with this company (New Zealand Wind farms): their dollar turned into 12 cents, they received the first decade no dividend at all - and only recently 0.7 cents. Pathetic investment (for the shareholders of the first hour ... (which IFT would be as well if they build wind farms in NZ).
But maybe IFT wants to make a takeover offer for NWF? Lots of expensive infrastructure very cheap to buy ...
Discl: hold at current neither IFT nor NWF - but with latter still bruised from the experience ...