About this time last year, I wrote a light-hearted review of New Zealand’s love affair with Wind Generation.
Since then I’ve become interested in seeing just how effective these things really are. Where I live adjacent to a string of Turbines, we get some pretty impressive winds – 150Kph is not that unusual. But we also get days of complete calm – usually at times when electricity demand is at its highest.
Nonetheless, our green-biased Government elected just over a year ago are still pushing so-called renewables as the way of the future. Interestingly New Zealand already produces more than 80% of its energy from Renewables, with Geothermal and Hydro way ahead of Wind.
Ironically, the green movement vehemently oppose any new hydro projects, and insist on visually polluting the beautiful GodZone countryside with these wind turbines.
Eventually I decided to try and discover exactly just how successful and efficient these wind turbine things really are. But finding the data seems like hard work. I’ve been unable to locate data on individual windfarms (unless someone can help me out here), but I have located data covering each of the North and South Islands.
Since July last year, I have been collecting the data via a computer script that downloads data at 5 minute intervals and stores it in a MySQL database. I needed to wait a reasonable interval before analysing just to make sure I had a representative sample.
I’ve just done my first analysis, and the results are as predicted – shocking.
The above graph shows theoretical “Plated” capacity versus actual average production by month.
Here’s the supporting data:
| Month | Plated Capacity | Generated MW | Average Production |
| July | 658 | 186.15 | 28.29% |
| August | 658 | 132.50 | 20.14% |
| September | 658 | 174.62 | 26.54% |
| October | 658 | 157.63 | 23.96% |
| November | 658 | 149.15 | 22.67% |
| December | 658 | 124.54 | 18.93% |
| January | 658 | 179.51 | 27.28% |
| February | 658 | 157.86 | 23.99% |
Clearly in 6 months, there has been no capacity added to the National Grid, and last July had a high of just 28.29% productivity yet December could only yield 18.93%.
These results are pretty damning and expose the deceit we are exposed to every time a new proposal is put forward.
Next time there’s a public meeting regarding how wonderful these visual pollutants are, at least I can now present data to refute many of the absurd claims. They’d be hard pressed to refute this data since it comes from the Government’s State-Owned Enterprise “Transpower” who manage the National Grid.
I have made my data available to anyone who wants to analyse it at http://www.andic.co.nz/windextract.csv
Andi
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Nice work Andi. I wish you could show also the “anti-generation” that is always missing from these gross output numbers. Namely, the input the find farms absorb during the non-producing times such as during “windless” times, during repair and maintenance, when wind is too high. While such energy consumption represent a negligible amount at heat plants it is significant with renewables. The energy in electricity, natural gas, gasoline, diesel fuel – it ads up to 10 % in bad sites.
“we get some pretty impressive winds – 150Kph is not that unusual”
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150 Kph = 93 Mph
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Wow, hurricane winds are not unusual?
Yep, the Cook Strait tends to funnel the winds which is why this site was chosen for their “West Wind” installation.
Richard, I used to live in that part of NZ, Wellington region (And actually worked with Andi) and a bit further north, Featherston. 150kph winds were not unusual at all. In fact, sometimes the Rimutaka Hill road on state highway 1 between Wellington and Featherston would be closed due to wind.
The UK now has 20GW of wind capacity, about 2/3 of typical demand. It seems to produce about 5GW on average, about 25% capacity factor. Which matches your NZ results quite well.
So, the answer to low capacity factor could be just to build four times as many, and I’m sure the Greens and their wind industry backers would be rubbing their hands to together with glee at that suggestion.
The issue is, though, that outages of up to three weeks with next to nil output over the whole UK are not uncommon. It’s difficult to see how that one can be worked around without resorting to fossil fuels.
The other resolution would be to build nuclear backup, eg thorium, but then if you have the nuclear capacity to meet typical demand, why do you need the wind capacity anyway? You don’t.
This would be a typical reaction of Greenies. They are stupid enough to disfigure the landscape with four times the number of birdchoppers needed just to try to compensate the underperforming yield. But when the calms hit, they hit all these ugly machines and not a single kwh can be harvested by any of these impotent giants. Stringent logic conclusions have never been the outstanding feature of Grrrreenies, but stupidity certainly is inherent and prevalent in their limited world of thinking.
The problem here is that all this nonsense has to be paid for. If a crooked politician steals a ton of money and lives the life of Riley with the proceeds at least the money finds its way back into the local economy. However the money is just being wasted. In many cases, certainly here in Thurrock, working infrastructure has been destroyed! The windmills need not have been installed in the first place! Chances are the blasted things were built in China using electricity generated by burning coal! Somebody wake me up and tell me it was just a bad dream!
Anthony Watts said:
“I’ve just done my first analysis, and the results are as predicted – shocking.”
What is shocking about those figures?
Andi ==> Don’t stop your recording of the data ..eight months is a tiny tiny sample — but as time goes by, your sample gets better and better and can be used to check official claims. Nice idea, nice project!
Thanks Kip. Yes project is ongoing and 5 minute intervals were chosen to make up for some unreliability both in accessing the source data and the pathetic Chinese weather station I currently run at home.
But will keep running – as Isaid this is just my first analysis. Let’s see what we get after a year!
Cheers
Andi
I find it highly disturbing that at the bottom of the article the data is made available, what kind of science makes the date available!
What could possibly be wrong with an intermittent power supply, that has a big environmental foot print, a maintenance profile like an aircraft 200′ up in the air and kills birds.
Andi,
Capacity factor is the ratio of energy produced in MW-hrs divided by the theoretical energy produced (Name plate power x the same period of time). I believe that your table column label should be “Average Power Generation” and not “Energy Generation” to be correct. Is that what they report? Utilities are focused on the MW-hrs since this is what they usually bill customers.
Hi Jim, quite correct. I will update on my next analysis
Cheers
Andi
Andi, do not do what Jim suggests. You are right in specifying output in watts (kW, GW, TW …) just as the people who specify the name-plate output in watts (kW, MW, …) are correct. Please stick with your unit or percentage just avoid the verb “generated.” It is “generation.”
Capacity Factor is simply the ratio of the “actual output” to the “name-plate output” and times 100 if expressed in percents.
Speaking of CF, its ultimate value is the output averaged over the life of the plant (wind, solar, nuclear or coal) where the nominator is the net value, the “net” meaning “minus the power delivered from other energy sources be it in the form of electricity, natural gas, gasoline, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, propane, …. needed in the operation during those typical 20 years.”
The true, life CF(life) may be a half of the CF delivered under the best conditions, as is often proclaimed in the daily and pro-renewables press.
The EIA updates their databases monthly. The AVG capacity factor for a few non FF technologies in DEC:
Wind- 38.3%
PV- 15.1%
CSP-7.0%
Nuclear- 96.9%
Geothermal- 80.8%
Ref- https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b
There seems to be something wrong with the wind farm results.
Generated Mw is a peak load that could apply to a very short period only. It has no bearing at all on the quantity of electricity generated over the period.
Mwh is the generated quantity of electricity which should be the point of the whole excercise. Actual Mwh then compared to the maximum possible (nameplate rating and total time available) would be the indication of the generating efficiency of the installation.
You may find these parallel analyses useful:
Quesstimates of amounts of waste from Renewables
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/usa-2016-renewables/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/uk-weather-dependent-renewables-in-2018/
https://edmhdotme.wordpress.com/eu28-weather-dependent-renewables-in-2017-and-indicative-costs/
FWIW. In the United States, the average capacity factor (CF) for wind for 2013 through 2018 was ~34%. See Table 6.7.B here: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b (U.S. Energy Information Administration). However, the CF for wind varies considerably by region and by state. Nuclear generation has the highest CF for those 6 years, ~92%.
In 2018, wind accounted for ~7% of total megawatt hours (MWh) generated in the USA, see https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01. Natural gas and coal accounted for 63% of the MWh and nuclear, ~20%. While generation share of non-hydro renewables (wind, solar and geothermal) have quadrupled since 2008, the share of total generation is still small, ~10%.