[mrweasel]

A few years ago I worked on software that manages selling electrical power from small decentralized power plants. When the wind isn't blowing the missing power can be supplied by electricity generated by plants that are built for generating heat. These are typically 2MW plants that can ramp up in 20 minutes or so, and they are scattered through out Denmark. These are all a mix of biomass, gas, oil or goal, or even garbage incinerators. The smallest one I saw was a large commercial greenhouse, with a 0.7MW generator. You bundle all the small plants up into 10MW packages and sell their potential output via www.nordpoolspot.com.

There's also a plan that involve simply pay large power consumers to halt production do compensate for missing electricity in the grid.

The Danish power grid is also closely linked to the those of Norway, Sweden and Germany, allowing export of cheap wind power, when there's a surplus and import of nuclear, hydro, coal and gas when there's no wind.

You're right in as so fare that wind power isn't magical, there needs to be a backup when the wind isn't blowing.