Wind And Solar Intermittency May Be Worse Than Originally Thought, Reports Show
Last month, multiple news outlets reported on the record-smashing year the wind industry had in 2023.
The Global Wind Energy Council released its latest report showing the world installed 117 gigawatts of capacity. [emphasis, links added]
The Associated Press called 2023 a “record year for wind installations” and Reuters noted that the U.S. was among the top five markets for wind installations.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration released a report this week showing that installing more wind farms doesn’t necessarily mean generating more electricity.
According to the report, the U.S. tripled its wind energy capacity from 47 gigawatts in 2010 to 147.5 gigawatts at the end of 2023. While that may sound impressive, generation from all those wind farms dropped 2.1% over 2022.
Much of that drop was during the first six months of 2023 when wind generation fell by 14% compared to the same period in 2022.
The capacity factor for the nation’s wind energy fleet, the EIA explained in its report, dropped to an eight-year low of 33.5%.
This is the ratio of the amount of power produced compared to the total it could have produced if it ran continuously.
Fairly common
Renewable energy has an intermittency problem, which is why even though it’s cheap while it’s producing electricity, it’s more expensive than any other form of energy due to all the costs associated with making it reliable.
These extra costs include the costs of battery facilities, baseload backup generators, transmission lines, and overbuilding of capacity.
However, as the drop in wind generation in 2023 shows, even with wind farms spread out across the U.S., it’s still possible that the wind won’t be there to turn the turbines. These wind lulls are called wind droughts.
“Wind droughts can happen at any time and are fairly common. As regions of the country become more reliant upon wind turbines producing electricity during periods of high demand, they become more prone to electricity shortages during these wind droughts,” energy experts Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling write in an article on their “Energy Bad Boys” Substack.
Orr and Rolling, who are policy fellows for the Center of the American Experiment, produced a report in 2022 showing how a 15-state region experienced a “wind drought” lasting more than three days.
Science Magazine describes wind droughts as “prolonged periods of low wind speeds,” which “pose challenges for electricity systems largely reliant on wind generation.”
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, an organization tasked with managing the flow of high-voltage electricity across that region, produced less than 10% of its potential 22 gigawatt wind output over 82 hours.
For 42 hours straight within that period, the wind output was only 1.5% of the total. Fortunately, coal and natural gas were available to meet demand.
Energy droughts
A new study by researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) found that some parts of the country experience energy droughts lasting a week. Energy droughts are when both wind and solar energy fail as a result of windless, cloudy days.
The researchers found that energy droughts can occur in any season across the lower 48 states, and they vary widely in frequency and duration.
California, for example, experienced energy droughts lasting several days, whereas Texas experienced frequent energy droughts lasting a few hours.
The study also discovered that these energy droughts happen at the worst times.
See more here Climate Dispatch
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Tom
| #
What the heck is the digital world and A/I gonna do without power to run its anti-privacy and surveillance machine?
Reply
aaron
| #
Free energy would explain it
for them but we pay for gas and oil,
just another scam
Reply
Howdy
| #
How can a figure be placed on something that relies on a natural world with all it’s variables and intricacies?
Science once again shows how gullible fallible man is at attempting to understand the esoterics of the real world.
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Just thought I’d stick that in there, as it’s so relevant, and true.
Reply
Carbon Bigfoot
| #
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/high-interest-rates-hit-renewable-energy-harder-than-natural-gas-wood-mack/715199/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rasa_io&utm_campaign=newsletter
Rising interest rates have hit renewable energy harder than fossil-fuel based sources of energy, and could also impact the viability of nascent energy technologies like low-carbon hydrogen, according to an analysis published in April by Wood Mackenzie.
A two percentage point increase in interest rates hikes the levelized cost of electricity from renewables by as much as 20%, with utility-scale solar experiencing some of the greatest impacts, according to Wood Mackenzie. The LCOE for a combined-cycle natural gas plant, by contrast, increases just 11%, in part because fossil fuel generators already paid higher rates before central banks began to hike interest.
Higher interest rates could jeopardize the energy transition and impact the U.S. push for more domestic manufacturing, said Peter Martin, Wood Mackenzie’s head of economics and the lead author on the interest rates report. It remains uncertain whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will begin to cut decades-high interest rates this year.
When do money managers know anything about anything??
Reply