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Industrial wind turbines are the proverbial yo-yo
Credit: Parker Gallant Energy Perspectives, April 10, 2023, parkergallantenergyperspectivesblog.wordpress.com ~~
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Translate: FROM English | TO English
Over the past few days those of us living in southeastern Ontario couldn’t help but notice the ups and downs of the wind with both windy ones followed by almost a mid-summer doldrum! As a result of that experience it was worth a look at some IESO data and that is displayed below in a screenshot of April 4th to 9th taken on April 9th.
The green on the chart shows the IWT (industrial wind turbines) grid connected generation over that timeframe and if you spot red and yellow, they respectively represent biomass and solar generation. The dark blue is natural gas generation responding to either IWT absence or its high output during demand for each of the many hours in the screenshot. The light blue is hydro output, and the orange is nuclear with a large portion of hydro and all of nuclear considered “baseload” power!
Should one examine the IESO data for April 5, 2023, they forecast grid connected IWT would generate 79,740 MW (67.8% of capacity) and reported 76,932 MW (65.4% of capacity) were accepted suggesting just under 3,000 MW were curtailed. Peak demand on that day occurred at Hour 20 (hour ending at 8 PM) and reached 16,573 MW and those IWT were humming delivering 3,626 MW or 21.9% of peak demand.
In contrast to IWT generation on April 5th, on April 8th those IWT were almost absent generating only 7,685 MW over the full 24 hours. That represented only 6.5% of their capacity and only 10% of what they delivered three days before! At the peak hour which again was Hour 20, IESO reported they delivered 96 MW or 0.62% of that hour’s peak demand which was only 15,513 MW. Peak hour generation on April 8th came from nuclear, hydro and natural gas (1,366 MW) so, without the latter Ontario may well have experienced a blackout. Alternatively, IESO may have shouted out: “don’t charge your EV” (electric vehicles) as the grid operator in California (CISO) does when their IWT are not spinning or the sky is cloud covered!
Now try to imagine one of Ontario’s hot summer days when the wind isn’t blowing, and peak demand is over 21,000 MW as it was on nine of the ten highest peak hours last summer! Don’t charge your EV or turn on your air conditioner will be the message should the Minister of Energy order the closure of Ontario’s natural gas plants!
The recent two days clearly demonstrate the Yo-Yo characteristics of IWT as an unreliable supply of electricity due to their intermittent nature.
Time to flush them out with the bath water!
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