What was the contribution of wind to Ireland's peak demand during the most recent winter ? Remember, we are talking about over 2GW of wind capacity costing over € 4 billion to install.
The answer is very little, less than 1% :
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| Peak day electricity demand on the 2nd February 2015 and wind generation |
Check out "Eirgrid -- Generation Adequacy Report 2010 -2016" page 62 table A-4. This shows the contribution of wind at time of winter peak demand for 2001 through to 2009. Only a tiny contribution was made and if measured properly it was too small to count.Year
ReplyDeletehttp://www.eirgrid.com/media/Generation%20Adequacy%20Report%202010-2016.pdf
Same thing pretty much everywhere though some places like Ontario seem to be trying to hide the dismal truth. You might be interested in how it can get worse...http://coldair.luftonline.net/2015/08/a-heat-wave-exposes-ontarios.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FzRyow+%28Cold+Air%29
ReplyDeleteThe Big Panic must be setting. The target is unachievable. The whole wind program should be stopped. Eirgrids estimation of the capacity required is ridiculous. Wind Turbines loose up to 50% of their capacity factor every six years or so. So for every 100 megawatts installed in year 1 50 will have to be added , with the same wind conditions, in year 6 to maintain the output of the original 100. So in act they are replacing lost capacity not adding very much at all. What is even more interesting is that greater than 2 megawatt wind turbines have unique design failures . Which could shorten their lives to about 8 years or so. These are the great hopes of the Irish wind industry. Junk in 8 years. The wind program now has the same charachteristics of trying to generate electricity using a hamster and a spinning wheel and not expecting the hamster to get tired. Unfortunately lactic acid build up will up causing the hamster to tire and output will drop. So if they stop adding output wind electricity output will drop just like the hamster jumping off the spinning wheel.
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