The Renewable Energy Reality Check

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35. Ah, the credit is only temporary.

That's what they were saying in 1992 when the goal was to "reduce average wind energy costs to 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour by 1995" (1995 came and went 18 years ago, and we're not significantly closer to that goal).

The PTC can be applied in two different ways, but it's most commonly used to take 2.2 cents off every kwh hour that's produced and bill it to American taxpayers. That has nothing to do with "allowing the cost per unit to come down", but artificially buoying up a sinking industry. Your contention that it "won't be needed in another year or two" is delusional, even by industry standards:

"Wind Power development in the United States has shown a great dependence on the PTC. The wind industry has experienced growth during the years leading up to the expiration of the PTC and a dramatic decrease in installed wind capacity in years where the PTC has lapsed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Wind_Energy_Policy

Now about this GE "dispatchable power" silliness: the battery in the GE Brilliant wind turbine is capable of storing 50kWh of electricity, or exactly 72 seconds of the turbine's max output. You're correct that it increases the profit the operator can make, but only as a clever marketing tool directed at tech-challenged greenies (this is the same marketing gyp Nissan used to sell the Nissan Leaf SL, the tiny solar panel on which attracted people innocent enough to think it would power anything more than the car's radio).

I've never fought ingenuity but gullibility, which is a far better-armed and tenacious foe.