Update On Wind Power Generation

In my earlier series on Power Generation I looked at Wind as a source: (Wind power - part 1, Wind power - part 2, Wind power - part 3). Journalist Terry McCrann has done a recent examination of Wind Power Generation as it applies in Australia in his article and has some interesting conclusions, via Andrew Bolt's blog : If we relied on wind power, Australia would have shut down . (My emphasis added)

The great green energy scam is exposed. The above chart shows the total electricity produced from May 13 to May 20 by all Australia’s windfarms, on which we’ve spent billions.

Terry McCrann:

Could any rational person—indeed, even gutless half-rational politician—build our energy supply on the total unreliability of so-called wind power.

This is what our total wind `power’ industry across southeastern Australia—NSW, Victoria and South Australia—delivered in one week in May. To all intents and effective purposes: ZERO power…

When the wind don’t blow the power don’t flow. Further, often the wind don’t blow at the same time, right across southeastern Australia… Further wind can go from very high power deliverability to very little in very short time spans.

So you don’t only need installed back-up power almost equivalent to the wind industry, to pick up the slack when it comes, but you need to keep it running, rendering utterly pointless having the wind power anyway.

Despite all the starry-eyed and empty-headed gazing at the power of the sun, wind is the only `practical’ alternative `renewable’ energy `source’ anytime soon.

Almost all our politicians are committed to 20 per cent alternative/renewable energy by 2020. It means a commitment to blackouts and brownouts—quite apart from unnecessarily higher power charges.

(No link to McCrann’s column.)

To confirm what Terry McCrann was saying I looked at the power generation by wind from all generators on 1st June 2010. This was the result:

The bottom graph shows a combined power peaked at less than 65MW of generation at approximately 4:30 in the morning then very little after that. If it wasn't for back up generation (probably from the La Trobe Valley's brown coal fired generators) much of the South East of Australia would have been blacked out. It also poses the questions, if you have signed up to pay for "green power" and none is available should you be paying the premium that is asked given you are instead being supplied by coal? Is this simply false advertising by the power companies when they cannot guarantee reliable supply? Are the consumers getting what they are paying for?