I don't know anything about the Altamont wind turbines, but here in WA state wind is considered a cost-effective part of an energy companies resource portfolio. No one expects a wind turbine to run all the time. Local utility PSE told me the threshold wind speed is something like 18 mph. What matters is the levelized cost of energy from any source, wind, solar, hydro, nuke, etc. Wind is competitive with other sources of "new" energy, even new hydro. PNW utilities might try nuke again, but most of them got badly burned financially by it in the late 70s and early 80s (WPPSS). I haven't heard what the cost of a new nuke is in $/MW turnkey. Even if someone says they can do it for less than $2,000,000/MW, the industry tradition of cost over-runs of 2X or 3X aren't likely to attract savy private investors in the near term.

I think energy is going to come from a variety of sources that form a resource pool for utilities for quite a while yet.

Sg