Australian Wind Generation – Long Term Capacity Factor – Week 296 Ending 2 June 2024

Posted on Sun 06/09/2024 by TonyfromOz

By Anton Lang ~

This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 23 December 2023) for wind in Australia of 11,409MW from 84 Industrial Wind Plants, and at the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 3422MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 11409MW – (Change) +6108MW (an increase of 115%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Week Ending	Total Generated Power	Average Power	Capacity Factor	Power To Grid (%)
2 Jun 2024	643GWH	3827MW	33.54%	15.7%

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 28.67% (Last Week – 28.71%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 296 weeks – 29.91% (Last Week – 29.90%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

This last week was the highest weekly total for wind generation in the last 33 weeks, and even then, it was only marginally better than the average. It was helped along because of three days in the middle of the week when wind was exceedingly high, and on one of those days, it was a little more than double the current average for power generation, a huge day, when wind delivered 175GWH of energy to the grid, and across just this one day, wind generation was operating at a Capacity Factor (CF) for the day of a whopping 63%. Wind generation has only twice in its history here in Australia operated at a higher CF than on this day, and note the irony in that, only two better DAYS than this one day in time. Still, that’s a really good result for wind.

Now, while those three huge days added considerably to the overall generated power for the week, those other four days were in fact quite low. So across the whole week, that comparison we use to compare power generation, Capacity Factor (CF) was only a little higher than the average, and as I mentioned above, the first rise for those 33 weeks. Even so, the same week last year was actually higher than this, so the most recent 52 week yearly percentage for that CF actually fell a little, while the overall longest term CF percentage rose by only the smallest amount.

It’s almost a rare thing to write that wind had a good week, and even then, a good week shows only the most marginal of increases. And again, note how there will always be days when wind generation is high.

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Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

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