Guest “Situational statistics” by David Middleton
Who else used to play Strat-O-Matic Baseball? One of my Moneyball–type strategies was to draft players with great situational statistics. I remember two players, in particular. We were drafting based on the 1989 Major League Baseball rosters. Paul O’Neill, then with the Cincinnati Reds hit .455 against righthanded pitchers and Fred Manrique, a utility infielder with the Texas Rangers, had nearly a .500 batting average with runners in scoring position.
Strategically platooning Paul O’Neill against righthanded pitching and using Fred Manrique exclusively as a pinch-hitter with runners in scoring position, racked up some impressive Strat-O-Matic results, but bore very little resemblance to reality, just like wind’s one day second place finish.
The Bloomberg headline (article pay-walled) is fake news on steroids:
Wind Passed Coal, Nuclear Power in U.S. for First Time on Record
Clickbait dominated the headlines:
- Wind power produced more electricity than coal and nuclear sources for first time ever
- For the first time, wind power eclipsed both coal and nuclear in the U.S.
- Wind power hit a major milestone
The E&E article, posted on Unscientific Unamerican is less misleading, but still fake news:
In a First, Wind Generation Tops Coal and Nuclear Power for a Day
The milestone showed both how far renewable energy has come and the lengths the country must go to reach President Joe Biden’s climate goalsBy Benjamin Storrow, E&E News on April 15, 2022
Wind was the second-largest source of power generation in the country on March 29, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported yesterday, marking the first time wind output had ever simultaneously exceeded coal and nuclear over a 24-hour period.
[…]
The surge in wind output on March 29 was driven by the Great Plains states. The Southwest Power Pool, the regional grid operator for 14 states stretching from Oklahoma to North Dakota, reported that renewable generation accounted for 90 percent of its electricity production on March 29, with nearly all of that coming from wind.
[…]
Unscientific Unamerican
The Unsci-Unam article links to this EIA article:
APRIL 14, 2022
Wind was second-largest source of U.S. electricity generation on March 29On Tuesday, March 29, wind turbines in the Lower 48 states produced 2,017 gigawatthours (GWh) of electricity, making wind the second-largest source of electric generation for the day, only behind natural gas, according to our Hourly Electric Grid Monitor. Daily wind-powered electricity had surpassed coal-fired and nuclear electricity generation separately on other days earlier this year but had not surpassed both sources on a single day.
Consistent growth in the installed capacity of wind turbines in the United States has led to more wind-powered electricity generation. In September 2019, U.S. wind capacity surpassed nuclear capacity, but wind still generated less electricity than nuclear because of differences in those technologies’ utilization.
The average capacity factor of U.S. wind generators (35% in 2021) is lower than the average capacity factor of nuclear generators (93% in 2021), which are designed to run at or near full output, which they typically do. Wind turbines currently rank as the third-largest source of generating capacity in the United States, behind natural gas-fired generators and coal-fired generators.
In the United States, wind speeds, and correspondingly, wind-powered electricity generation, often peak during spring. On March 29, the Southwest Power Pool (SPP), which covers parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and neighboring states, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) both reported new wind penetration records. Wind penetration represents the share of electric demand satisfied by wind generation. SPP reported wind penetration of 88.5% on March 29, and ERCOT reported wind penetration of 67.2% for the same day.
Because electricity demand tends to be lowest in the spring and fall months, some generators—including both nuclear and coal—reduce their output or scheduled maintenance during these months. Also, on days when weather patterns lead to more wind generation, competing coal-fired and natural gas-fired generators often are called upon to reduce their output so that overall electricity supply matches demand.
The natural variation of wind speeds contributes to very different amounts of wind generation, depending on the time of day or season. Wind first ranked as the second-largest source of U.S. electricity generation for an hour in late March 2021.
On a monthly basis, we have had less wind generation in the United States than natural gas-fired generation, coal-fired generation, or nuclear generation. We do not expect wind to surpass either coal-fired or nuclear generation for any month in 2022 or 2023, based on our most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook forecast.
Our Hourly Electric Grid Monitor publishes electric generation from generators that are metered within reporting balancing authorities. Typically, balancing authorities do not meter generators on the distribution system—both large-scale resources and small-scale distributed resources, such as rooftop solar photovoltaic systems. The data series in our Electric Power Monthly represent our official statistical reports and include both large-scale and small-scale resources in the generation data.
Principal contributors: Jonathan DeVilbiss, M. Tyson Brown
Tags: generation, coal, electricity, natural gas, nuclear, renewables, wind
EIA
On a particularly windy spring day, when thermal power plants are gearing down for a low demand season, in the windiest season of the year, wind edged out nuclear and coal generation on one day.
This “milestone” was largely driven by the Southwest Power Pool (SWPP), a region with phenomenal wind resources and a lot of installed wind capacity.
At this time of year, wind is often the top generation source in the SWPP…
It would be interesting to see how much wind power had to be curtailed and how many migratory birds were killed on March 29.
Putting this into context and we can see that wind is still in a distant fourth place:
Wind works OK where it works, when it works, unless you happen to be a migratory bird… In which case it works best when it doesn’t work, which is most of the time in most places. Fake news isn’t necessarily false… It’s often an un-newsworthy headline story, reported breathlessly by the media because it fits their worldview.
“It would be interesting to see how much wind power had to be curtailed and how many migratory birds were killed on March 29″
I find this interesting since March 29 we were driving with a great tailwind north on I29 in SD past what appears to be 100’s of turbines. I noted the ones turning had greater revolutions than I’d ever seen and I’d say that at least a third of them were not turning at all, guess they were curtailed.
The winds of Griff logic are upon you.
The headline of this article says this claim of wind exceeding both coal and nuclear (for electrical energy production) for the first time in US history is fake news. This article claims that the news article saying this happened for one day is “less misleading, but still fake news”. That causes an impression that a statement is coming up to say that this is not true. (Which is not the case, no effort was made to deny the truthfulness of the claims of wind exceeding both coal and nuclear.) I had to read through the article to the end to see the reasoning (that I disagree with) for calling this fake news. This has me feeling that I got drawn in by a clickbait headline that causes a false expectation.
When bird deaths from turbines are higher than car kills or higher than window strikes or higher than cats, it will be a problem. Maybe.
In Michigan, the eagle deaths went up when the DNR stopped picking up deer kills.
The Southwest Power Pool didn’t produce much wind-driven electicity in February 2021. We had rolling blackouts because the windmills were frozen or becalmed for days and days.
Yeah, let’s supply all our electricity with windmills.
We are living in an Idiocracy. Our leader has to be led around by the Easter Bunny.
“We are living in an Idiocracy. Our leader has to be led around by the Easter Bunny.”
For those who didn’t see the video, this is not sarcasm, it’s true. Brandon was indeed led around by a giant Easter Bunny (similar to the giant mascots at football games). Probably most often when he was asked a question he couldn’t answer.
WOW. LOTS to unpack and debunk.
First, real news by journalists, who are generally much smarter and factual and with better ethics than most (if not all) who post here, is NOT “fake news.” Trumpish BS accusations and slams I can easily fool the ignorant who don’t understand facts and are incredibly gullible as proven by their 100% hearsay, unverifiable and unverified religious beliefs. You’re going to have to PROVE it’s fake. Your unscientific, unethical post didn’t.
Second, clickbait headlines are unethical, below-the-belt tactics used by those who can’t wield facts properly in debate. Again, these are plays DIRECTLY out of Nazi, Russian, GOP and Trump disinformation campaigns: Lie, lie bigger, lie continuously, distract, deflect, and cherry-pick. All you “proved” is that you’re incapable of making a point without lying to, or at the very least misleading, your audience (of largely brainwashed, arrogantly ignorant fools and “true believers”*) in a headline and in much of the article.
For the possibly one two three readers here who understand logic and typical conservative disinformation, distraction and deflection techniques, debunking this absolute horsesh1t is EASY.
And it wouldn’t be hard to do, even for any typical CONNEDservative reading here, IF they wanted to do the time-consuming, at times
tough, digging themselves. But conservatives who hate progress AND reality, like so many here, are too lazy to do so, too unwilling to challenge their (to be kind, let’s call them “not critically examined”) preconceived notions, which are usually harvested from unethical opinion leaders, NOT experts, continually feeding loser white undereducated racist dumdums similar HORSESH1T. Why don’t they examine their preconceived notions critically? Partly because they’re not smart enough to do so; partly because those notions are too tied in to their weak egos; and finally, because they’re too unintelligent and/or lazy to earn MSs or PhDs in climate science, meteorology, astrophysics, alternative energy, environmental science (or any other discipline) that requires intelligence, diligence and perseverance to succeed.
3rd, slamming established publications known for the veracity of their scientific reports, and their ethics, doesn’t make them unethical or unscientific. The ad hominem here is an obvious fail that’s obvious to anyone but those who don’t understand logic and debate and disinformation techniques. Only stupid people would believe Scientific American is unscientific and unAmerican based on your ludicrous false labeling. (SERIOUSLY, you believe someone’s going to find you MORE believable than an established scientific publication just because you CLAIM THEY are unscientific? And you’re SUCH an EXALTED figure in science, SOOO respected in EVERY discipline of science, and so trustworthy it MUST be true??) WHY do you think this kind of lying is believable, let alone acceptable?? Don’t you grasp the pertinent, key principle of science and discovery, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”?? Maybe the answer lies in point no. 4, next:
4th, when are you going to admit that posting such hogwash is only an exercise to feed your ego with utterly insubstantial “props” (praise, in noncolloqial terms) by trying to gain followers you are obviously smarter than, and willing to hoodwink for such lowly goals? Or, are you too undereducated to know you’re promoting absolute hogwash?
One explanation: It could be a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. If you aren’t intelligent and knowledgeable enough to know how unintelligent a knowledgeable you are, how would you even know what you’re posting is absolute hogwash? You believe it because you’re trusting pre-existing notions which have never been tested in a scientific way or against scientific facts. And that’s a typical conservative viewpoint, based mainly on having being brainwashed since birth, into the unscientific, virus-like Christianity cult so widespread in America.
Is anyone else intelligent enough to grasp what’s going on with the OP and the disinformation?? Please, let’s hear your take.
*Ref. to Alvin Toffler’s “The True Believer.”
I know you are, but what am I? 🙂
FYI, the entire basis for this website’s existence got shredded, AGAIN, as it has been DAILY ever since Michael Mann’s (and that of many others) research and consequent “hockey stick” graph proved global warming is human-caused, inexorable, and should be preventable, but for the greed of a few fossil fuel companies and the ignorance of those, complicit in spreading BS, misinformation, disinformation and lies about AGW.
So if you’re hell-bent on revealing yourselves as the most gullible, poorest educated, dumbest people in the universe, keep posting “fake news”: the likes of “global warming isn’t real,” or “isn’t caused by humans,” or “isn’t as bad as ‘so-called’ experts say it is.”
Keep proving you know nothing, because you’re not an expert, you only believe (and inanely, mindlessly) quote non-experts who cherry-pick the science YOU cannot possibly understand.
Keep proving you’re lazy and unscientific and undereducated because you won’t — in fact, CANNOT — earn a climate science PhD., the only qualification that matters, along with a hell of a lot of mind-numbing, tedious research (yeah, the kind conservatives are generally too dumb and lazy to take on), to disprove the CLIMATE SCIENCE ALREADY PROVEN.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” — Carl Sagan
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/atmospheric-methane-higher-preindustrial-levels/