As some of you my have noticed I like to mock the idea that wind can take over for fossil fuels.
Here is the Actual Wind Production versus the day ahead prediction.
Purple is the the 1450MW of power wind could generate (and never does).
Green is actual. Notice it goes to zero 4 times and under 200MW a bunch of times.
And several of those low stretches last a whole day!
Germany is planning to rely on wind and solar. Last week on April 8th, wind and solar combined for 0.94GW out of 55GW.
Averages don’t keep the electricity on. They will need lots more brown coal when they shut down the nuclear power stations.
The whole week (just solar and wind). Yes, sometimes combined they generate a lot of electricity.
But on April 8th Germany went almost a 1.5 days where almost nothing was generated by wind.
Word of the day:
In German, the term Dunkelflaute is used to describe the predicament. Dunkel means “dark”; solar is simply not available half the time, and solar power production is significant for only around six hours a day even when the sun is shining. Flaute is “doldrums” – when the wind is not blowing. So the “dark doldrums” are times when solar and wind power is not available in sufficient amounts.
This chart is just wind+solar for March in Germany. Red lines are periods less than 5GW.
Lets say its April 7th 2016 3am or so in Ontario and there is about 15GW of demand.
Nuclear+Hydro+Gas keeps the lights and heat on.
Biofuel+Wind+Solar are just posturing. And they cost a fortune.
sunshine hours 