Reposted from the No Trick Zone
By P Gosselin on 12. September 2020Share this…
Here’s another example illustrating just how volatile and unreliable wind energy really is.
Wind energy proponents like to claim that although turbines installed on land don’t produce so optimally, the ones at sea are wonderful because the wind there is always blowing and so it all kind of evens out.
The chart below shows the output of all wind turbines installed in Germany, both on land and offshore, from the five major German grid operators:
The dark horizontal line denoting 60,000 MW represents the so-called installed total capacity. Readers will note that less than 10% of rated capacity often gets produced. Only rarely does an output of 33% (20 MW) ever get reached.
The newest boondoggle seems to be hydrogen production from excess wind. OPM indeed.
Now there is metallic hydrogen!
Stupid post again : just apply a filter which means in this case to store energy at high level and release it at low level !
If only they could schedule the blackouts to coincide when Germans leave for a month at a time for carbon-intensive globetrotting, things would be utopian green. I guess the real point of Nordstream II is to cover up policy mess behind the scenes for the green globetrotting and keep the money flowing for more schemes.
The graph is conclusive proof that you can not run an economy based upon the assumption that “Average output” will provide the needed power.
Look carefully at the weather maps when a weather front moves through the area that you live in. Do this for every front and note the area that it covers. In the US often several states are completely affected by the front. In the EU several countries are affected. That means that power needs to be transferred across several states. Which, in turn, sets you up for weather related blackouts lasting hours to weeks.
Will they blame the grid operators like they do in California?
Today 15 Sept 2020, the Australian Federal Minister for Energy (right leaning politics) announced several moves to lower the domestic price of natural gas, including incentives for States (several left-leaning and responsible for mining laws) to do productive things like encouraging fracking and greater use of gas as an electricity source.
Part of the announcement was Federal finance for the building of a new Heli gas plant.
This could be taken as an admission that more fossil fuelled generators are needed, soon, to overcome the inadequate wind and solar generation that some States have allowed, even encouraged.
Griff, why else can you imagine that the Feds would take this step unless their future estimates showed variable renewables to be inadequate as to cost and/or reliability? Geoff S
My wife and I disagree over wind power. I think it’s really funny she made me sleep on the couch.
On a more serious note does anyone know how much the land owner is paid annually per white elephant sorry wind turbine in the UK.
Thanks.