Jones Beene wrote:
> JR: This makes no sense.... Everyone knows that actual power
generated is less than nameplate capacity.
Yes, of course they do, but the devil is in the details - and one
point of the article is that the performance seems to have been
badly miscalculated by the "experts".
I don't see that part of the article, but that seems highly unlikely.
People have been doing this worldwide for decades and the methods are
mature and highly reliable. They set up towers and measure wind for
months or years before committing to a site. There is never any doubt
what the ratio will be.
From the report it appears that this could be an endemic problem
going all the way back to the planning stages - i.e. that some
sites can have such a surprisingly low load factor - makes one
wonder if they they not bother to test them thoroughly in advance.
27.4% average is not surprisingly low for land based installations.
It is about the same as the German average. It is not as high as the
best U.S. locations in the Dakotas or Texas, but well within
expectations. Offshore installations do much better. The article
says: "The worst performing U.K. turbine had a load factor of just 7
percent." That one may need to be moved, but I would like to know:
Over what period of time, under what conditions?
The load factor for nuclear, by comparison, often exceeds 100% since
the planners tend to be rather more cautious from the start in
stating capacity - whereas the promoters of wind have apparently
erred on the side of optimism.
The only time I have heard it was over 100% was when Connecticut
Yankee was run for nearly two years without refueling or maintenance,
in a tour de force. It was also leaking and self destructing the
whole time, and when the run came to an end it was a "de facto
nuclear waste dump" as the state Attorney General put it. The plant
was broken up and the site cleaned up at enormous expense. The was
the fifth U.S. nuclear plant to self-destruct or burn, counting
Enrico Fermi. Rancho Seco was destroyed by a light bulb in the
control panel, perhaps the most ignominious demise.
Davis-Besse has not actually destroyed at present, but it was off
line for years, it was the source of "two of the top five most
dangerous incidents" in U.S. history. It is presently back on line.
Nuclear plants tend to be either up and working, or disastrously
disabled. With a nuke, you put all your eggs in one basket, and when
it goes down for any reason a large fraction of the entire national
generating capacity goes down with it. This is the case in Japan
where an earthquake took down the world's largest nuke last year. It
is still not fixed.
The actual numbers do not lie. The problem is in reconciling them
with what had been predicted in the planning stages - and then in
using that knowledge for future planning.
I doubt there was a discrepancy. The article does not say there was.
It just points out that there is a difference between actual and
nameplate, which is common knowledge, although perhaps not to this author.
If energy from either wind or nuclear cost $4 watt (faceplate)
installed, and wind delivers only one fourth of that as the load
factor, then it is a minimum or four times more costly, and it is
hard to paint that picture any other way...
That is NOT the case! People would have noticed by now. The actual
cost of electricity is closely monitored and reported.
... except to say that it is actually worse for the users, in
practice, because the peak usage for consumers is at mid-day to mid
afternoon, and that tends to be the time of day when wind is the
least reliable.
Where does it say that? That's news to sailors.
- Jed
