Goodbye gas, welcome wind

In the year of its birth this magazine strongly argued that the great thing about wind power was that it allowed the consumer to escape from the tyranny of fluctuating fuel prices by "fast freezing" electricity costs. Eighteen years and a decade of deregulation later, the free market forces governing America's highly competitive power industry are bringing that fact to light. FPL Energy, one of the world's largest independent power producers, is dropping conventional electricity generation in favour of wind -- partly to avoid fuel price risks.