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RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Oh My!! 34 681 MWh has gone missing from the grid...

UNRESTRICTED | ILLIMITÉ

Andrew
 
Your calculations reflect the general results for wind power - an ANNUAL load factor of ~30%.  I wrote and update a page on the Canadian Nuclear Society's web site, regarding CANDU performance (http://www.cns-snc.ca/media/reliability/reliability.html).  In it, I have a summary of wind power (of which I am somewhat of a "fan", pun intended) in Appendix A.
 
Here's a snip:

Wind Power

Preliminary and some final data is now available from seven Ontario wind farms:

From preliminary (plus some final) IESO data to July 26, 2009, a total of 3,948,000 MWh has been generated and the overall capacity factor for the wind fleet is estimated to be 29.2%.   This is for the period since the wind stations were declared commercial (i.e., fully operational), and accounts for the stations being declared commercial on different dates.   It takes a full year of operation to give a more accurate picture of the overall annual wind capacity factor, due to seasonal variations in wind; to date, December 2008 has the monthly maximum with a 47.1% capacity factor.

Five stations have attained at least their 1st anniversary of commercial operation, with annual capacity factors (bold = final data, otherwise preliminary data) of:

The highest daily output of wind generated electricity to date was 16,585 MWh on March 11, 2009, corresponding to a daily wind fleet capacity factor of 82% (a peak hourly capacity factor of 93%).   The next day the total wind fleet hourly capacity factor was 17%, with the hourly CF dipping to 2%. The minimum daily nuclear output in Ontario (since IESO hourly output has been available, Sep 10 2003) was 96,196 MWh (39.9% capacity factor) on Oct 10 2003.

So you can see that wind power has an annual capacity factor of ~ 30%, at the best sites in Ontario.  This value does not reflect the considerable variation from minute-to-minute and day-to-day.
 
Wind power can make reasonably significant contributions, but requires a big grid to provide the support generation for the 
times wind power is not producing much.  E.ON, the big German utility with lots of wind power (7050 MWe in 2004) wrote in their 2005 Wind rpt:
 

An objective measure of the extent to which wind farms are able to replace traditional power stations, is the contribution towards guaranteed capacity which they make within an existing power station portfolio. Approximately this capacity may be dispensed within a traditional power station portfolio, without thereby prejudicing the level of supply reliability.

In 2004 two major German studies investigated the size of contribution that wind farms make towards guaranteed capacity. Both studies separately came to virtually identical conclusions, that wind energy currently contributes to the secure production capacity of the system, by providing 8% of its installed capacity.

As wind power capacity rises, the lower availability of the wind farms determines the reliability of the system as a whole to an ever increasing extent. Consequently the greater reliability of traditional power stations becomes increasingly eclipsed.

As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously to around 4% (FIGURE 7). In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms


Morgan Brown, P.Eng.

Opinions expressed are strictly my own and do not reflect the opinions of my employer.  So there!

 

-----Original Message-----
From: cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA [mailto:cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.McMaster.CA]On Behalf Of Andrew Daley
Sent: July 20, 2009 3:51 PM
To: Nuclear
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] Oh My!! 34 681 MWh has gone missing from the grid...

Hello all,
 
It's good to be back...
 
So, this past weekend I went camping in Sauble Beach... on the way up I drove by Ontario's largest wind farm (near Shelburne...).
 
It was quite an impressive sight I must say... but I got to wondering... how does it perform...
 
So I did a little research... from the Canadian hydro and IESO websites, here is what i found.
 
The site includes 133, 1.5 MW GE turbines.  The installed capacity is 199.4 MW.  The "expected" output is 545 GWh every year.
 
Doing some quick math (and feel free to correct me) I calculate that the "expected" capacity factor is  ~ 31.2 %. 
 
(545000/(199.5*24*365)).
 
Now, of course one could debate what is the point of something that only works 1/3 of the time... BUT we won't go there.  (personally, I am in favour of deploying wind power... as long as the limitations of doing so are acknowledged).
 
So, how is the farm actually doing?
 
Using the data from "Hour 1" on January 1 until "Hour 24" on July 14.  I calculate that the farm has generated 256620 MWh so far this year...
 
Assigning a "max" value of 199.5 MW to each of those same hours I calculate that the maximum it could have generated was 933660 MWh.
 
(The IESO data comes in an excel spreadsheet so summing all the hours and adding a column for "max power" was easy to do).
 
256620/933660 = 27.5% Capacity factor...
 
Actually, not bad!  I was surprised it was doing this well!
 
But let's look at it another way... IF the farm had operated as "expected" it would have generated 9933660 * 0.312 = 291301.92 MWh...
 
This is a shortfall of 291301.92-256620= 34681.92 MWh over the first six months of the year.
 
So, my question is... where are the headlines?  Where is the outcry?
 
How come there is no hard hitting investigative report:  "BOONDOGGLE:  Wind industry blowing smoke with overly optimistic estimates.  Taxpayers short 35 000 MWh of electricity!"
 
Etc.
 
Ok, I obviously realize that this is a pittance... Pickering B gets this done in about 17 hours, Darlington in about 9...
 
But I thought it was an interesting exercise to go through....
 
Have a nice day



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