Pre-Tour Studying - Wind Power in Portugal

While researching Portugal for our upcoming trip, I ran across an article online from the Renewable Energy World International Magazine.

The article can be found at this link: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/12/integrating-wind-power-in-portugal

The article gives the reader an overview of the employment of wind energy through the use of wind turbines in Portugal. Going along with their launch of a new energy policy, known as the "E4 Programme: Energy, Efficiency and Endogenous Energies", Portugal hopes to increase its wind energy capacity over the next couple of years in order to each their goal of 39% renewable energy production. The article goes on to explain the use of wind power as an energy source, and also states the negatives attached; One such negative is that wind energy can not be relied on in nature and "is essentially ruled by random meteorological changes, [resulting in] its ability to reach peak load requirements being the biggest problem for producers of wind energy". Despite its problems, Portugal is actively persuing the use of these wind turbines, and hopes to achieve an installed capacity of 5300 MW by 2012.