Why Wind Power Is Not Equal To Coal Fired Power

Hazelwood power station, Australia – closed in 2017 [image credit: Simpsons fan 66 at English Wikipedia]

How much enforced variability in electricity generation can a country’s power system tolerate? A close look at the numbers for Australia is not encouraging, to say the least.

How often have you heard that Wind power is intermittent, but has anyone ever explained that to you, or shown just how it actually is intermittent, and what it means, asks TonyfromOz.

What if you need a dedicated amount of power all the time? Can wind power be relied on to generate that dedicated amount of power?

Over the last Month, I have been detailing the closure of the 53 year old Hazelwood brown coal fired power plant in the State of Victoria here in Australia, and comparing that plant’s power generation with wind power across the whole of Australia, and that Post is at this link.

The main comparison was with all the wind plants across the whole of Australia, but I was also including the data for just the wind plants in the same State that the Hazelwood plant was in, Victoria.

While the Hazelwood plant had a Nameplate of 1600MW originally, its old age meant that it could no longer generate that level of power, but after 53 years it was astonishing that this ancient plant could still actually manage 86% of that original total, and that was 1380MW at its maximum with all 8 Units in operation. Across the whole 31 days immediately prior to its closure, the plant averaged a daily power generation of 1306MW, which gave the plant an effective Capacity Factor of 95% for that Month.

However when compared to just the wind plants in Victoria, the result was even more startling. There are currently 15 of those wind plants, and the oldest of them is the Challicum Hills Wind Plant, now only 14 years old. The total Nameplate for all those wind plants just in the State of Victoria is 1485MW, so there are around 850 of those turbines on poles around the State. That 1485MW nameplate is higher than the 1380MW (the recent maximum) of Hazelwood.

Yet, across those same 31 days in the lead up to the closure of Hazelwood, the average daily generation from all those 15 wind plants with 850 individual generators only came in at only 359MW, and that is just a tiny bit more than what was being generated from just TWO of the ancient Hazelwood’s 8 Units, an astonishing fact. Here you have 850 wind turbines and they can only generate as much power as two 53 year old generators.

However, when you say that the AVERAGE daily power from those wind plants was only 359MW per day, that is a straight line average across those 24 hours, where the power being generated is up and down across the whole day, so it is averaged to that amount.

So then, what does that mean, and can it be directly compared with an equal amount of Nameplate to show you how the wind power is variable, or intermittent?

Continued here.