By Paul Homewood
In 2017, Dr Capell Aris wrote this paper.
Although it was based on a larger proportion of onshore wind and wind capacity of 10 GW, its findings are still relevant:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
What is frequently overlooked is that the power output of a wind turbine is not linearly proportional to wing speed, but is proportional to the cubed power of wing speed. If the wind speed reduces by a factor 2, the turbine output power reduces by a factor of 8! https://windroseexcel.com/guides/how-to-compare-wind-speed-vs-wind-power/
Is it any wonder why the wind fleet output is so unreliable?
Also, is it any wonder that MPs and Greens, who couldn’t understand that principle, think that wind is free.
Coal is free … it just needs some machine to harvest it. And coal, is also 100% from organic solar energy. Hydrocarbons also burn to produce two things plants love: water and carbon dioxide.
As for bird mincers …
There are inefficiencies at lower wind speeds that mean that the curve is initially steeper, after no power at all until cut in speed. Maximum efficiency is typically around 75% of the theoretical limit (the Betz limit of 16/27ths), and holds roughly over a sweet spot range of wind speeds. Then when generator capacity is hit the efficiency starts falling off as 1/cube of velocity until the cut out speed designed to protect against damage from high winds, where it becomes zero again. See this chart:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GqyyC/1/
Send a copy of this to every MP, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Europe!
97% of them wouldn’t read it.
97% of them wouldn’t understand it if they read it.
The ones who make decisions about energy would ignore it (even if they could understand it).
Very few MPs have a brain, let alone any scientific qualifications or ability.
Off topic but there is an article about flooding after a heavy rainstorm. Cause, traffic calming measures.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23911256/stirling-bar-flooded-storms/
We have speed bumps in local residential neighborhoods where the speed limit is 25 mph. There is NO way you can even approach that limit w/ them.
Some years ago at a Morgantown City Council meeting there was a discussion. A street which had been slow to drive for years had been paved. Now there was a proposal to install speed bumps. I said they should just take up the pavement as the potholes were environmentally-friendly speed bumps.
We fix up the roads for “safety” and then install traffic hazards on them.
There was a trial of a rubber hump that inflated more the faster you drove over it so that at the required speed it was unnoticeable. But of course they were to expensive and with a short lifespan.
We have speed ‘hollows’/pot holes in our lane/cart track, they also provide puddles for children to play in after rain. Cost effective and environmentally friendly.
They call it Nutbush city limits
Nutbush city
Twenty-five was the speed limit
Motorcycle not allowed in it
Amazing isn’t it that today’s Morons of Parliament can’t see that there was a good reason that our ancestors moved on from windmills – and waterwheels – to steam, then diesel and finally electricity to power the economy.
Great read. These “turbines” are basically big fans, and as such follow the laws of physics pertaining to fans; i,e, the power follows the cube of the wind speed. The only thing windy enough to make these things work is the hot air spewing from the Green Mafia.
For those who don’t know, Dr Capell Aris spent time working at Dinorwig, so he really knows how it helps to handle grid stabilisation.
‘Wind is, by its nature, intermittent and so the extent to which this affects the output of the fleet of wind turbines in a typical year is crucial in determining how much conventional generating capacity is needed by way of backup and thus what the overall system costs are.’
‘in a typical year’ is a useless perspective. Demand is continuous.
‘This study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment of wind variability and intermittency based on nine years of hourly measurements’
Hourly is much better, but it still doesn’t cover real time reality.
Perhaps hourly may be the best granularity data available.
In terms of calculating required backup the difference between hourly data and say 5 minute data is very small. There may be very short term differences, but they tend to average out in the longer term trend. Think of a pile carpet on a staircase: the individual strands of pile may look like food mountains to a carpet beetle, but you don’t really notice that when you go upstairs – where the destination is a whole floor higher.
Shorter term fluctuations due to gustiness are an important problem for grid stability, and are in the realms where fast acting batteries can be helpful for at least some of the issues it causes. More extreme cases such as flicker in tidal stream output can require that the output be diverted via a battery bank to act as a smoother. This happens at both Bluemull Sound in the Shetlands and the O2 Orbital Marine project in the Orkneys. Part of the battery accepts the fluctuating charge while another part discharges to the local grid, and roles are reversed as the parts get charged up or discharged sufficiently.