Wind Power Has No Commercial Value Because It Can’t Be Delivered as and When It’s Needed

Weather-dependent wind power has no inherent commercial value, simply because it can’t be delivered as and when it’s needed. The only “value” is the massive and endless subsidies that it attracts.

The graph above depicts the output for the month of March, from every wind turbine connected to Australia’s Eastern Grid, with a total notional capacity of 6,960 MW. Those turbines are spread between Far North Queensland, all along the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, the north coast of Tasmania and across the central parts of South Australia.

Collapses of anywhere between 2,000 to 3,000 MW over the span of an hour or less are matched sudden surges of equal magnitude.

If you were looking for a definition of “chaos”, what’s thrown out by Australia’s wind power fleet on a daily basis should do the trick.

Rafe Champion adds detail to that definition, with a little wind watching of his own.

I appreciate that wind watching is not a major concern these days but somebody has to do it because we have three years to rescue or replace Liddell power station to keep the lights on. Consider the contribution of unreliable energy at dinnertime last light. At sunset, half an hour after the marker in the chart below, there was zero solar in the system and the wind was contributing 500MW that was 2% of the demand across SE Australia, the National Energy Market.

All day the windmills were delivering less than 10% of plated/installed capacity as you can see from the chart further down the page. The figures only momentarily dropped below 5% so it could have been worse, it has been down to 2% in recent times and veteran wind watchers recall periods of zero wind.

All the states, Zali Steggall and the ALP are determined to get rid of coal-fired power at the earliest opportunity in the quest for zero emissions. The pictures demonstrate that those plans cannot work but what are the signs that they are being reconsidered? Where are Audrey Zibelman and the brains trust at the AEMO standing on this? And the Board?

4pm update. The wind supply has slid down to next to nothing since breakfast time.  Wind is providing 2% of demand and RE in total 6GW of 25GW demand. Over 6GW of coal capacity in reserve.

At 7 the wind in SA contributed 19 MW to the demand of 1.3GW (1.4%)  blowing at 0.8% of capacity. Most of the supply came from local gas with 280MW from coal burners in Qld (via NSW) and hydro in Tasmania (via Vic).

NEM: 1.GW for 20GW demand (5.5%) at 16% capacity.

Watch for yourself throughout the day using the Aneroid wind supply page.

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