Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
1. During the study period, wind generation was:
* below 20% of capacity more than half the time;
* below 10% of capacity over one third of the time;
* below 2.5% capacity for the equivalent of one day in twelve;
* below 1.25% capacity for the equivalent of just under one day a month.
The discovery that for one third of the time wind output was less than 10% of capacity, and often significantly less than 10%, was an unexpected result of the analysis
And:
Quote:
4. The incidence of high wind and low demand can occur at any time of year. As connected wind capacity increases there will come a point when no more thermal plant can be constrained off to accommodate wind power. In the illustrated 30GW connected wind capacity model with “must-run” thermal generation assumed to be 10GW, this scenario occurs 78 times, or 3 times a month on average. This indicates the requirement for a major reassessment of how much wind capacity can be tolerated by the Grid.
http://www.jmt.org/news.asp?s=2&nid=JMT-N10561
When I've been involved in any wind studies, a test tower is installed for a while to find out what's there, how often, and then economists carry out a cost benefit of the location and decide to build or not build.
No-one puts hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear up then stands looking shocked at the lack of output.
Like your oil people do test wells before putting a platform there...although test wells are less than 20% successful (i.e. 80% of the time, the result is virtually nothing), so I guess that drilling isn't very useful either.
