For example, in Germany, when wind is 20 percent of electricity, its cost to the grid rises 60 percent. And when wind is 40 percent, its cost rises 100 percent.11 This is because of all the power plants, often natural gas, that must be standing by and ready to fire up the moment wind dies down, the extra power lines that have to be built to remote renewable energy locations, and all of the other extra equipment and personnel required to support fundamentally unreliable and often unpredictable forms of energy.
