This postmodern art is what wind power looks like on our national electricity grid. (Like a kindergärtner on steroids). There are 35 wind farms on this spaghetti graph, spread across 6 of our 8 states and territories. They cover thousands of square kilometers and are connected in allegedly the largest electricity grid in the world. This frenetic action covers the last two weeks, and is pretty normal.
You might think the wind “averages out” across the nation. Noooo. Some days, Australia is windy…
Graph from ANEROID ENERGY for 1 – 16 August, 2015
The total megawatts output varies as per the black line, from zero megawatts right up to 3000.
This below is a typical days national grid demand in winter. Even in the dead of night, the minimum baseload demand is 18,000MW. The nation is talking of going 26% renewable (unless it goes 50%). What could possibly go wrong!
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According to AEMO Australia has the largest interconnected electricity grid in the world covering the east coast from Port Lincoln in South Australia to Cairns in Queensland (See the green and red squiggles on the right hand side of the map below) . That’s most of the Australian population. The wind power is mostly sited in the South East – SA, VIC, and NSW.
Australian Electricity Grid, transmission lines, 2009 | Click to enlarge
We are a windy country with wind turbines spread all around. But this big nation has big weather systems. Some days the whole grid is windy and other days, not.
Australian synoptic chart August 15th 2015.
Just in case you think August is unusual. Here’s the action for July — with the spaghetti removed and the unit in megawatts.
Pity the network manager.
The whole month of July 2015 — wind power across the national grid
Graph sourced from ANEROID ENERGY.
As Tonyfromoz has pointed out, if the Greens were serious about cutting carbon (sic) they would talk about the new ultracritical hot coal plants which can save as much as 15% of our emissions and produce reliable electricity at the same time.
Or, if say, the health of the planet was a stake, I reckon they might even discuss nukes.
h/t George and his friend on Facebook
Background on wind power
- Wind farms only 80% effective at CO2 reduction (0% effective at temp reduction)
- Wind Turbines expensive for carbon reduction — From $50 – $120 ton.
- New small study: Wind farms show health effects – why wasn’t this done before?
- OK to kill endangered birds? Yes if you are a windfarm.
- Bill McKibben says wind is cheap as coal. Jo Nova says “so who needs a carbon tax then?”
- Let’s copy Germany: 23,000 wind towers make 7% of its electricity to stop 0 degrees of warming
- UK Government hides its own graphic comparing Nuclear to Wind and solar
- Wind Farms: Turbines break like match-sticks in medium waves, and their capacity is “overestimated”
- Tim Flannery – baseload is just a “coal” industry idea (Yes and darkness is a “renewable” idea, right?)
- Wind farms — are 96% useless, and cost 150 times more than necessary for what they do
- Renewable energy is a $250 billion dollar industry that makes about 3% of our electricity