Previous calculations of the economics of large-scale wind power have been generally limited to the evaluation of the marginal cost of energy, assuming that the addition of a wind farm to an electricity grid does not change the mix of base, intermediate and peak load plant in that grid. Here a simple but powerful numerical generation planning model has been constructed for grids containing wind farms and three classes of thermal power station, but no storage. Electricity demand and available power are specified by empirically based probability distribution functions and the plant mix which minimizes the total annualized costs of the generating system is determined. Capacity credit of wind power is automatically taken into account in the optimization. Using the model, the breakeven costs of wind energy in a model British CEGB grid, containing coal, nuclear, oil and wind driven power plant, are evaluated under various conditions. For a wide range of parameter values, large-scale wind power is likely to be economically competitive in this grid.