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 (%) |
| 9Jun 2024 |
319GWH | 1898MW | 16.64% | 7.5% |
Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 28.16% (Last Week – 28.67%)
Long Term Capacity Factor – 297 weeks – 29.87% (Last Week – 29.91%)
Comments for this weekly Update.
After last week when, across the whole week, wind generation was above average for the first time in many Months, this week was back to well below average, in fact, not much better than half the average.
For three days, wind was a third down on the average, and on the other four days, all were below half that average, and closer to just a third of the average in fact.
What that did was to drag the only metric we can use to compare wind generation on a week to week basis, that important Capacity Factor (CF) percentage lower, and because this week again had a very low CF for the week, at just 16.64%, then both of those percentages fell significantly, and now that CF percentage for the most recent 52 week year is closing in on a differential gap of two percentage points lower than the full long term average.
*****
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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Angusmac
Tue 06/11/2024
Anton, do you have a graph of the capacity factor from the time that you started collecting the data?
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TonyfromOz
Wed 06/12/2024
Thanks for this comment.
As much as it seems like a good idea, for any degree accuracy, it wouldn’t look like all that much.
On the vertical axis, it’s a zero to 100 percent type of thing, so it would look pretty much like a (well, relatively anyway) straight line across the very wide page, the horizontal axis, considering it’s been spread over 297 weeks now, more than five years, so you ‘could’ narrow the percentage part, and then even narrow the time across the page, and either way, it would still look pretty meaningless.
As is the nature of something like this when you start it, it takes a while to settle down, so here, after one full year, that percentage was 29.4%.
It took a further two years, so, around the end of the third year before it finally ‘struggled’ to 30%.
For the next two years it ever so slowly incrementally rose by tiny amounts to reach a high of 30.4%. During this time, there was a small six week period where it dropped back below 30%, but only very marginally.
For the last almost six Months now it has fallen back from that all time high point of 30.4% to where it is now, 29.87%
So, after settling down, there has only been around a one percent variation in all that time. (from 29.4% to 30.4%)
So, the whole point of it all really is to SHOW that even as more and more new plants come on line, that percentage stays virtually the same, considering that the overall Nameplate has now well more than doubled.
I think that’s why wind supporters keep (reminding themselves anyway) saying that Capacity Factor is not all that important. I mean, if it’s as low as it is ….. and actually staying at that low level ….. then they would say that, now wouldn’t they!
The WHOLE idea of Capacity Factor is that it is the ONLY thing that can be used to compare wind generation at any point in time, comparing on a week to week basis, a month to Month basis, and on a yearly basis, as that overall Nameplate does increase.
So basically, a realistic graph would show only ONE important thing, and that is that no matter how many new plants come on line, that Capacity Factor percentage stays the same.
Tony.
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