Not Much Wind, But Plenty Of Hot Air!
Dave Ward has sent me some details of an onshore windfarm site in Oxfordshire.
The Westmill Wind Farm consists of 5 x 1.3 MW turbines, and their website provides live updates of output.
http://www.westmill.coop/westmill_windfarm.asp
The chart covers two days, up to 18th July, when Dave took the screen shot, during most of which next to no electricity was produced.
Windspeeds were typically around 5m/sec, which, if my brain is working properly, works out around 11 mph.
Dave particularly draws attention to the dramatic variation in output at low wind speeds, even on an hour to hour basis or less.
The Westmill website goes on to list some of the “Facts on wind generation”:
Construction of Westmill Turbine at NightWind energy is often criticised for being unreliable. Critics claim that wind energy can never replace existing power stations, or remove the need for new power stations to be built, because the wind cannot be relied upon. Wind energy can be relied upon; even though wind is not available 100% of the time. In fact, no energy technology can be relied upon 100% of the time.
Different energy technologies have different capacity factors (load factors). No individual power plant is always available to supply electricity. All plants are unavailable at certain times, whether for routine maintenance or for unexpected reasons.
To compare heavily intermittent and highly volatile wind output with, for instance, gas power plants that would typically be capable of running at up to 85% of capacity, and whose shut downs for maintenance are progammed in advance, is of course highly misleading.
The ” Facts” also include this humdinger:
Wind generated electricity does not replace electricity from nuclear power stations because these operate at ‘base load’, that is they will be working for the whole time that they are available.
Electricity from wind turbines replaces the output of coal-fired power stations as these are the most flexible plant on the system.
Nuclear plant operates at base-load, as do almost all gas plants. It is the output from coal fired plant which is adjusted to meet the electricity demand on the system. In other words, most ‘load following’ is carried out by coal-fired plant.
As we know, it is coal, along with nuclear, that provides the base capacity, and gas, which is more flexible, that tops up.
By claiming that wind replaces “dirty coal”, they no doubt think it makes wind power sound more attractive.
In any event, it shows that we can rely on very little that the wind industry tells us.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Reblogged this on JunkScience.com and commented:
Not much electricity either.
Ramping coal fired capacity up and down is the most inefficient way of use, both in terms of overall efficiency and CO2 emissions.
The professionnal winf energy liers are slowly going buried under tons of falsification evidences. Their promises mislead investors, politicians and achieved a huge economic loss with millions of ordinary jobs lost at the end. These liers shall be drag to Cout, judged and jailed, their money consfiscated and returned to mislead people.
I have been in dozens of coal fired plants using a variety of systems. One of the larger old ones (Built in the 60s using Combustion Engineering equipment) was Crystal River Unit 2 in Florida. I don’t know about now, but back then that large unit supplied the majority of the power for Disney World. During the five years my Company did scheduled shut down work in that it was shut down at basically the same time every year for maintenance for 2-3 weeks. Even though it is on the Gulf coast and condenses seawater for it’s needs, it only failed to deliver the expected power during that period due to hurricanes or storms. And then it wasn’t the unit it’s self that failed. What happened was during storms salt water spray from the Gulf being blown in would cause the breakers in the transmission yard to short.
I would suggest that anyone that gets an opportunity to tour one of these large generating units jump at it. They are marvels. The huge wet wall boiler at Unit 2 is hung from huge beams to allow for it’s expansion. It expands vertically over 8′ in length as it comes up to temperature. Five different compounds of Stainless steel are used in the tubes of the boiler and there are 1,000s of miles of them in there. Each panel of of tubes is installed by being precision welded by highly skilled welders.
The bottom ash clinkers (Cinders) sometimes the size of an automobile fall into the bottom of the boiler to be crushed. Out the top comes the fly ash. All of the ash is transported pneumatically and stored and then trucked away for industrial use. The black grit on roof shingles is coal ash and in that industry called “handlap”. It is used for sandblasting abrasive. It is used as aggregate in concretes. It is used as a grit that provides grip in industrial floor paints and coatings. All kinds of other uses.
Oh, and BTW. Because the four coal fired and one nuclear units at Crystal River suck in huge amounts of salt water and thus some sea life there is a fishery on the property. Each induction inlet for the water has a cage which captures the creatures. The number and species of each animal found in the baskets is recorded and then the fishery replaces them.
I just wish the “journalists” that write about evils of pollution from coal fired plants would tour one so they actually would know something about what their writing about. They demonstrate time and time again that they don’t even know the difference between a water cooling tower and a smoke stack! They have no idea what blending coal for compliance means or the different scrubber technologies being used. In short they don’t know shit about what they are writing about and prove it time and time again.
“All of the ash is transported pneumatically and stored and then trucked away for industrial use”
And therein lies another “Unforeseen Consequence” of the Green lunacy – what will the makers of building blocks, lightweight concrete and a myriad of other products do when the last coal fired power station has been closed?
I am quite impressed by that Graph, they actually managed a whole 50% of Plated output for about 6 or 7 hours of the 48 hours plotted.
Shame about the rest of the time.
I wonder what the Average output is?
Their website estimates it will run at 18 – 20% of capacity.
@ AC Osborn – I think you read the graph wrongly. The yellow line is power output, and it only just reached 50% (3250 KW) during two short spikes. Even at 3000 KW It looks to me as if the total time for three spikes was less than two hours!
Dave I was being kind.
The spokespersons for RenewableUK have lying down to a fine art. If they aren’t telling outright lies, then they are giving misleading information. All the wind turbine developers follow the lead set by RenewableUK.
The graph illustratesthe random spikiness of power generated by wind,which of course tends to destabilise the grid.The grid operators then have to continually strive to maintain grid stability at high engineering costs that the consumer pays for on the energy bill.This is a deliberate attempt to destroy a once totally capable and efficient energy delivery system.
The perpertrators of this attack on our nation should be charged with terrorism.
“The perpertrators of this attack on our nation should be charged with terrorism.”
Rather, the MPs who agreed the subsidies; without subsidies, there’d be no wind ‘industry’.
I think that is who winter37 means. LOL
Reblogged this on Cornwall Wind Watch and commented:
who cares about energy output, Co2 from fossil fuel stor, bird deaths, LFN exposure etc etc when they look so pretty and allow Ed Davey to sleep well at night! Good grief what a shambles.
Maybe they should be made to read this and get tutored on what it means.
In October 2013 a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering (GB Electricity Capacity Margin) warned that the threat of blackouts will grow as the UK faces a widening gap between the power it can generate and its consumption.
Click to access RAEng_GB_Electricity_capacity_margin_report.pdf