Wind Power Today in June

I haven't visited the excellent NETA-bmreports site for a while so I thought I'd have a quick look tonight just to see how much the wind power generation has improved by since my last visit.

I hit the enter key with a great deal of excitement, would it be wonderful?

Would it be, well, at least an improvement?

After all it couldn't get much worse than my last analysis during last winter (See Here)

I waited impatiently while Firefox fired up Java. The seconds ticked away then I watched as all those wonderful little applets burst into life.

My God! NETA is undoubted one of the best and most informative sites on the net!

Here is the one I was hoping to see an improvement in:

Sadly, I was disappointed (again).

Today the whole of the wind turbine fleet was running with a capacity factor of just under 8%. But tomorrow it goes up (wait for it) to 13.5% Woo Hoo!

So today that equates to 1/4 or a single average sized power station for the whole wind turbine fleet. Tomorrow that equates to 1/3 of a average sized power station.

Now I might have incurred the wrath of those who think that the odd snapshot like this is not really indicative of the true output.

To an extent that is true.

But I would like to point out that neither is the so-called capacity factor that windies like to quote. Often blindly quoted at 30% , last year it was 22%.

But whatever the value, Capacity factor is no more worthwhile than my single snapshot.

Because of the nature of wind energy, turbines will be running for most of the time well below their capacity factor,.

They only make up for it due to a few days of high wind.

Most of the time the output of a wind turbine will be less than 20%. For  30% of the time it is less than  10%.

What we need is the most likely output not some dodgy average of power generated from a cube law.

So, are we getting value for money out of these things? Is the irreparable damage done to the countryside and peoples lives worth this pitiful level of power generation?

I think not.

p.s. I must do another 3 or 6 month rolling appraisal again soon.

Wind Power: The Reality Today.

In these frozen autumn days, Billothewisp thought he would cheer himself up by having a look at all that free energy flowing into the grid. After all wind turbine generators  get a Billion quid a year in subsidy paid for by the likes of Billothewisp and other assorted grubby English folk, so perhaps a little payback in the form of happy-time may be in order.

He had a look at the NETA Site, which is the site that shows the day-today costings and accounting for the countries power grid. It tells us how our electricity is made, transmitted, paid for and regulated.

Billothewisp puzzled over the figures for the mighty wind turbines. Surely there was something wrong. There must be a mistake! There was no happiness here! A single tear rolled down his knarly cheek.

He had seen this graph:

His rheumy old eyes misty with tears, could barely make out the contribution from wind power. A billion quid seemed a lot of money for a barely legible pixel wide line!

Then he read this.

For a moment his sorrow was placated as he read the bottom line (or boiler plate rating) giving the theoretical output for his billion quid. But then he looked up.

Oh sorrow on sorrow!

The boilerplate rating for all the wind turbines in the country was 2430 MW but the maximum nationwide output today was 276 MW.

11.3% of their much lauded boilerplate rating.

But then it got worse . He looked at the predicted output for the next day. The maximum output was going to be just 94 MW.

That is 3.8% of their boiler plate rating.

I will write that again in large letters in case you missed it.

3.8% 

But even worse than that. This maximum occurs at midnight. Just when Billothewisp and the rest of old England is tucked up in bed, with the low energy light bulbs turned off.

Don't forget these are national figures. Not a single isolated case. National. All major turbines. And these are the PEAK values for these days.

So much for the argument that if the wind isn't blowing in one place it will make up for it elsewhere.

These figures are so bad, so dreadful, so outrageous that I feel I must have made a mistake. Our politicians and assorted environmental dreamers are not really this gullible are they?

Surely we are not spending and extra One Billion quid a year for this?

Thanks to Jockdownsouth and his comment on This Post at WUWT that tipped me off to the magnificent NETA site and the distinctly un-magnificent figures for wind generation.

I think I am going to have some serious fun here with the figures from NETA in the future.